Journey of the Five Battle Logs

[gatebuster202]

Elric is right on the nose. ANY FF game has benefited from a bit of "Pre-game" grinding. (FF7 has the notorious train tunnel spot.) That once you get a five level advantage at the start of the game you leveled out the curve.

Now, you do that in FF 13, it's sequels, you sorta make the combat pointless. (Oh and the CP and job capping was retarded.)

Jot5 honestly made me think of my resources before I entered each fight. Cloud has a disable and Black magic. Snake has item, and his skill set, Dante has the monk set and his skill set. Link is a ranger and his set, and Ramza has either black or white magic. I try not to use Agrias(She may or may not be dead to me due to abandoning Ovelia...) Of course, If I have to pick four(And I do) I lose Dante... Though, I try reeaaly hard not to level Ramza as much a possible. the white Mage makes that possible.. (Low JP for the most effective spells.)

The point is I can handle, most things, with great syngery. (Thanks to awesome items.) I wish I had time magic. But an effective variety of skills and the mostly striaght up fights that chapter 1 has makes that mix effective.

By chapter 2 I want to have my tier two and three jobs unlocked, but I mostly stick to tier 1.

[DaHammerCrush]

These have all been tough but manageable battles thus far, save a few randoms that I was not ready for. my big issue was not diversifying my damage abilities and not having enough hard hitting AOE attacks, especially magic based ones. Smart hitting and good use of the revamped regen have been keys for me.

Worst one was 3 mixed mindfayers, 3 mixed evil eyes, and 3 mixed skeletons. I was not ready for that one...

Crush

[gatebuster202]

@Crush. Where did you hit that one?? I must have missed it. (And am grateful I have!)

[DaHammerCrush]

That Gem came at the Falls. went one round and just said... Impossible! and restarted

[gatebuster202]

I tend to avoid the Falls for leveling, as the Turtles have great starting position coming back (to Lionel) if they spawn. Also, lacking magic makes the turtles hard to hurt, much less kill, and the only magic using of the Five is Ramza. (Shame Cloud didn't come packed with Fire and Bolt, ala departing the Train.(Well the JOT5 equivalent, you changed the abilities.))

[Nyzer]

I tend to avoid the Falls for leveling, as the Turtles have great starting position coming back (to Lionel) if they spawn.

Float ftw

If you use Float on your party and block off the single path up on your side of the cliffs for units with 3 Jump, the only way for them to even touch you is to go scale the waterfall itself, and they rarely commit to that. At that point, you have the luxury of abusing Cloud's Finishing Touch or Snake's Assassinate (with a ranged weapon of course) until the magic happens and you start making tortoise corpses. Your Floater can also try using Stop while they're at it.

Even without Float, you can stagger out the party to different heights on that cliff. If you've got something that can prevent them from Reacting to your attacks (like an instant kill or a Stop) then the battle's still doable without Float. Just be prepared to do some resurrection. Poison is also a good choice.

Also, Link and Cloud come with high Faith and are good choices for fellow magic users along with Ramza. I find that Cloud's worth giving White Magic to, because it's an early enough Job that he barely needs to grind for it at all, and you can usually unlock Equip Light Weapons the moment you unlock the Knight itself, allowing him to retain his Limits while a Priest. You definitely don't want Ramza to be your only magic user.
In fact, being completely honest, magic is absurdly useful compared to what most of the physical jobs get. Combining Faith and Death, or stacking multiple Melts, will just destroy enemies.

[gatebuster202]

@Nyzer.
I tend to avoid them because I'm grinding for other jobs and don't pack tons of Magic. (Ramza and Could typically are training a Magic Class, and Link a Archer offshoot.) Link has to keep his HoT skillset for all the useful skills. Dante almost never keeps his skillset, and Snake, Always has his. My issue is that I never seem to have float learned. (I know it's cheap. And damn useful) So, I have to take the tortoises the hard way, (or Assassinate them.) I rarely have good luck on the RNG and refuse to save scum... That defeats the purpose of High Risk/High Reward.

I do love Melt though, for Faith/Death. Once I got both Faith and Death I was headed to fight our

spoiler

BBGs Sephy and Gannondorf

and I had really overleveled at that point. But it worked out.

[KingUrameshi]

Link with black magic as the Hero of time is a juggernaut. And Snake is gonna make one hell of a thief.

Gonna repost this as I feel its a good choice. Link in the HoT class with Black Magic is down right awesome. Granted his faith may not be the best but the shear versatility you can have with him is awesome. Bow skills and the occasional black magic gives him excellent range and power, just try to fight the urge of using him as a pure melee fighter.

[gatebuster202]

In Twilight and Skyward I only used the Bow each time I found it. The OoT though did require us to rely on the Master Sword and Big Goron Knife way to much. I will try Link as a caster next run. He does buff his own MP and can Stop anyone to stupid to stay away.

[DaHammerCrush]

I gave dimentionalist to Snake and it is working out great for me. Comet not being tied to faith for damage is wonderful and books being both long range and giving a MA boost allows him to assassinate from a distance. Comet might be broken but once you level up above 23-25 and the big opponents get to 300-400 HP the 100 per shot is almost needed.

Oh and don't hit plagues with Meteorain. It counts as a spell and Double Magic with a large AOE, that is unevadeable, and hits the players WAYYYYY harder than it hits them will be coming right for you... Ouch!!!

Crush

[DaHammerCrush]

Ran in to this one yesterday and the new Chocobo healing mechanic makes it so that high health chocos can full heal their friends making grinding their HP a chore.

[gatebuster202]

Not impossible, but really not my idea of a fair fight. I'd assume you started with the bombs and segmented off the Yellows with Snake, and/or Link. That Lamia could probably be out paced and ignored until you could two shot it in rapid succession.

I'm curious to know how you handled that one Crush.

[Nyzer]

I know I did that one with Faith/Death spam. Moved as a group towards the blue Bomb and killed it first, shielding my casters with the bodies of my party (and the fallen). Lured a yellow Chocobo in and surrounded it, then beat it to death. Threw status effects at the Lamias when they got close.

Fun fact: a Bomb that gets a turn while Death is being prepared on them will Self-Destruct, doing nearly no damage if they're at high HP.

[gatebuster202]

@ the Bombs, I've seen it happen DS'd too on Vanilla.

Good strategy. Depending on what what was equipped, ability wise, that was probably fastest. I'm going to have to start playing again before the rerelease.

[Nyzer]

Cloud had Oracle skills, I had a generic Wizard with Death, Ramza was an Oracle with only Paralyze (but came with Wish & Altima from his Duke job), Dante was there with his Dagger skills and Auto-Potion (and was thus effectively immortal), and then there was Agrias, who ran out, drew ire, and died quickly right from the start. She spent much of the fight being useless up until the Lamia approached and used Confuse to cause major issues - at that point, I moved over to her, got her to her feet, and she took a turn to heal herself before coming back just in time to turn the tide. (She did things like reappear only to crit-kill a Chocobo that was about to get a turn to heal itself, use Full-Life on someone, and slap Doom on the Lamia. Was super badass.)

[gatebuster202]

No Snake Nyzer?? Agrias bores me so I leave her at home half the time. (Also, that ranged Assassinate.  .) If I happen to stumble on that one I'll record it. And the Turtle Pit on the Falls. It fights like those, that *never* happened after FF6, that I think make a great FF game.

[DaHammerCrush]

Had a good one this weekend that had a water skeleton heal a mindflayer with aqua soul and end up frogging him I let my generic and my chocobo on top of the skeleton to just kill him after each revive and I just trolled move jp up with my 3 main characters (all of whom had regenerateor on so the frog attack actually healed them) the gen and the choco were way behind in level anyway so I was able to let them get bulked up on exp without pumping up my main level.

[Xujints]

Whoever made the multiple parties thing a thing in combat... I love ya!

[Pandemoniu]

Whoever made the multiple parties thing a thing in combat... I love ya!

That exists in the original, too, it's just something that isn't seen too often unless you scout for obscure Random Battles.

Here, they seemed to have made it a bit more commonplace and easier to not miss.

[Guru]

I think they greatly improved the battles as well. Some of those multiple party battles get pretty damn tough, especially at higher levels. Glad you are finally playing the game Xujints! They improved a lot of stuff in this release and once they re-release ch1 it's gonna be just insane. Make sure you save a lot  Even on my second play through a lot of stuff caught me off guard.