Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quick bug report
Forced March gives +1 MA to all allies, rather than Speed +1 like the description says.

Wait, Zalera had 50 MA? Wow, that explains why I had so much trouble with him.

Eh, Masamune is decent for its +1 Speed, helmet would be great if it worked (but it doesn't, so it's just an equipment with lower HP and MP gains than usual), and all the rest are honestly quite medicroe.

Equipment Rundown

As a general note, in this patch, the Attack command sucks, except possibly on Gunslingers, whose skillset are basically Attack + added effect. Guns also happen to be entirely free of special abilities, which basically doesn't come into play if say you're using an Enchanter + Bow/Crossbow.

I think it's because of the lack of support abilities. Two Swords is now Two Guns, meaning only Gunslingers benefit from that (already made that exception above), while Doublehand is stuck all the way at the top of the tech tree in Mystic Knight... who probably won't benefit from it because he's holding a Knightsword for their huge WP.

Even if you push Doublehand earlier, there's still the fact that a lot of weapons are forced Two-Hands compared to vanilla and I really don't think they need to be, such as Spears and Poles, but I'll get to those individually. Doublehand also doesn't allow two chances of procs the way Two Swords does but I suppose that can't be helped.

There's also Attack Up which happens to also affect special abilities. People usually don't use it for getting a bonus to the Attack command though it is a nice bonus. Same thing with Concentrate.

Now, the item analysis, by weapon groups.

Knives: Not a good formula, especially on a slow class like Cooks. No outstanding special abilities. Throwing Knives are cool, but see what I said about the attack command and probably comes way too late. Overall a weak weapon group overall.

Bandit Knives: Same formula as knives. The three proc weapons might actually be TOO useful if you get lucky with it, which I don't quite like. Mighty Sword doesn't work on monsters though... Dead does (unless they're Skeletons)

I don't think the non-Proc weapons are worth anything though. Up their weapon guard evasion some more or something. Shrug.

I say the biggest reason I'm not using these is because I believe they're Bandit-only (are they?), and Bandits can equip crossbows too.

Swords: This is interesting. The class has quite a few handy defensive options, such as Immunizer, Guardian Sword and Heretic Blade. Not sure whether you would count Kusanagi as a "defensive" weapon but it does have Speed + 1 and I don't normally hit stuff with it...

On the offensive side, it's a bit poor. Ignoring all the weapons with no procs, Slick Blade has a terrible one, and Slow is a good proc on bosses but not quite on mooks. If you're fighting a boss you generally want a MUCH more consistent way of inflicting Slow on them.

There is ONE really good offensive sword though. The fluffy bunny can either be used as the highest power 1 handed weapon at 12 WP with a shield... or you can use it as essentially a 24 WP power for the Attack command (though low WP means weaker Enchants or Swordskills, who still want Knightswords.) It's a really interesting weapon both for use and in design flavour.

You get it as a War Trophy too which means you don't have to go out of your way for it. Though the guide says only Bethla South gets it. Does that mean you don't get it if you go North? That would be... silly.

Knight Swords:
Extremely good.

Knightswords have giant WP making them good for formulas involving them. They innately give you a 25% bonus damage since they strengthen their own element (in vanilla you would need to equip a Black Robe to pump your Ice Brand or a 108 gems) and also allow you to boost a blitz skill that you like. If that isn't enough, the later weapons come with great status conditions. Stonecutter has Innate Protect, Queen's Guard has innate Shell (great for surviving those pesky Warlocks) and Soul Cutter has innate Immunity (great for Altima, probably would be great for Hashmal if he actually used Fear)

Oh, they do make you weak to an element. The enemy doesn't seem very capable of taking advantage of that though, especially something like Fire which usually requires you to come within melee range.

Axe: They don't use random damage formula anymore, joy! I think the shop unlocking is a little screwed since I saw Labrys show up before Icewolf Axe.

Seems like an okay weapon group. Starmetal Axe has strategic uses even. I'm probably just not using these more because of class access... any class with access with Knightswords is pretty much going to use those. So that leaves... Vanquisher I guess?

Wands: Well, they are bugged... but still, you don't use the attack command as a mage except in desperate measures. As far as special abilities goes, well, they're just about the same as they were in vanilla. So they're good.

Staves: The ones without special abilities suck, being a weapon that can only be equipped by mages that is melee range. I'm not a big fan of Mop Handle either.

Still, there are a wide variety of decent special abilities in this set, even though some of them are outclassed by their Wand counterpart (the +1 MA staff). Cadaceus probably needs a buff as well, due to the fact that Distribute doesn't trigger if you heal yourself.

Whip: Ahhhh random damage weapons KILL IT WITH FIRE! Granted, the formula is more consistent in this patch.

Morningstar says it has +2 PA in the master guide but it only has +1 in-game. Could have made Vanquisher a carrier for Blitz but oh well.

Never used the top end weapons. Though I probably wouldn't use Vamp Killer for my undead killing needs. I'll just throw Phoenix Downs. Shocking Lash and Flame Whip don't quite impress me either with the lack of 108 gems or Black Robes available but this is theory.

Guns: Guns are... still guns. I think Rifles actually unlock faster than Arquebuses which makes you go from 25 damage to 49.

The elemental ones are lamer than their vanilla counterpart though. Mustadio can change his element to Holy if you run into a Bomb while wielding the Inferno or something but when would Frostbite and Thunderclap EVER get any use considering where you have to be to steal those guns? Hashmal, Ultima Demons and Altima aren't weak to said elements...

Crossbows: You can copy paste what I said about the 2 bandit knives weapons, except that these are ranged and have the gun formula so you can twink for Speed.

If you poach the Scorpion Sting this group gets a LOT better.. I wonder if it's the common drop on the cocatoris or if I just got lucky with the rare poach.

Bow: Another speed formula weapon. Like I mentioned, in FFT, the enemy will generally have a better starting position. With Two Guns existing, guns are usually the favoured ranged weapons.

That being said, there are certain places where guns are just terrible because of giant mountains blocking your way or something where Bows can shine. Still...

Tomes: Well, this is just about the worse formula in the game because what class has a high PA and MA at the same time that can also equip books? I dunno.

Chocobo Tome allows classes access to healing if they have some other way to kill enemies but I don't think it scales very well. And there's a Shock tome? Isn't that MaxHP - CurHP formula? I don't think I have enough balls to use a physical attack for a 25% chance when I'm low on HP instead of healing!

The rest doesn't seem that worth it compared to just about every other ranged weapon which have better range.

I never got the Panther Tome or the Archaic Tome (might want to check the War Trophies list again) so I can't comment on the higher end tomes.

Spears: The fact that one of the spears is 1H instead of 2 is interesting, though shields aren't great yet at that point of time but most spears are just about empty in terms of special ability. I believe only the Don't Act spear is any good. I mean, the Angelic Lance does extra to a grand total of Dycedurg, Rofel and Altima 2 (not counting the undead which deals to Phoenix Down anyway and are extremely easy).

If you're lucky using Spears you can catch two people with it, but that doesn't happen THAT often. Other than that, not a lot of characters have Counter as their reaction either, meaning the advantage of a 2 range keeping you "safe" from counters is lost.

Without Jump, the ability to equip a shield or Doublehand this weapon class is lacking.

Poles: The negative poles fills a niche to enable the Tactician class (if it worked). The normal poles are just lame though. It doesn't pierce like Spears so the 2 range attack means even less than spears and like Spears they're 2 handed which they probably shouldn't be. Poles were passable in vanilla because Yin-Yang didn't benefit much from MA boosters and can't damage anyone directly (well, Drain technically can but...) so it fills a role for them. All MA-based classes in this patch has some form of attack which would rather benefit from an MA boost I think.

Just like Spears, the inability to doublehand them (Oracles didn't benefit from MA up or Short Charge as much as other classes did) or equip a shield hurts them.

Armor
Heavy Armour: High HP, immunity to status effects of varying usefulness, scales better than Vanilla.

Magic Armour: The lower ones are really terrible, with their MP bonus too low to give you even more than 1 casting of whatever you want to use.

It gets slightly better when Half: Element starts showing up but unfortunately the one I really want unlocks way too late (that would be the Half: Lightning armor, which would have stopped my guys from being killed from Storm Ring if it unlocked earlier.) A lot of times it's not really relevant unless you get lucky and have an enemy Warlock spawn with the exact same element you are halving.

Helmet: Viking Helmet stands out for being a 100 HP equip with a +1 PA. Amaterasu Helm would be amazing if it worked. I can't remember anything else but still, those show up pretty early and are good.

Hats: Really terrible until the end where Balk's Wind Wrap shows up. Otherwise they give some really low gains and no special abilities I can think of.

Crowns: Sort of like Hats with reverse HP/MP ratio. MP is more valuable than HP if it doesn't get you one hit KO'd though and Jade Hairpins show up rather early for a quick MA+1 boost.

Light Armor: Lots of special abilities that make them worth using, such as Gained JP Up or Enhance. Camouflauge Clothes +1 speed is also good. About the only one I don't like is Noble Clothes, which gives... Secret Hunt, a 100 JP ability late in the game? It unlocks after said +1 Speed clothes too and is double the price which... huh.

But compared to Helmets/Hats, Light Armor turned out pretty decent.

Accessories: A bit of a mixed bag... I like a lot of the ones that give you skills, such as the Magnifier, even though I don't memorize Move-Find items but I think a lot of people would.

But a lot of them are to be honest, not very useful. Any enemy unit who is silly enough to wear a Time Egg basically gets a Venom at him and I can't think of many situations where enemies cast Stop on me (living with Slow is acceptable)

Also Maiden's Charm. Do you ever fight enemy Cooks past a certain point? Will they live before they can use Fowl Play 3 times to turn you in a chicken? It probably had some use in the past when Champions had Intimidate... maybe. I never actually played those versions.

Same with Frog. Flowing Strike is the most common way I've been frog because Red Mages don't show up past a certain point in the plot too, and that doesn't seem like a good use of said accessory. Maybe if you added Half: Water to it...

Oven Mitts for some reason seem like it should be a lot better than it worked out for me, being a very early source of Cancel: Fire. I wonder why I never used it.

The most common accessories I've used are Red Boots (Move + 1 is always good... unless you have Dash), Fresh Herbs (it's basically innate Move HP up), PA + 1 and PA + 2, MA + 1 (I never got a chance to steal the upgraded version, which only adds some magic evasion. It is nice I guess but not something I would kill for.)

Running Shoes is pretty nuts and helps anyone who doesn't rely on stats (Alchemist, Gun users) for "playing tag". You can probably kill an opposing gunslinger or something before he can go "What the hell?" with your double turn straight off the bat. It is limited in availability though I suppose.

Sometimes I wear the high end mantles if I know I'm up against Gunslingers but the lower end mantles are not mathematically useful.

I think a lot of the niche defensive accessories (the ones that defends against status especially) needs a look at. If there was an accessory list I could go over all of them but the Master guide only has weapons so that's all I remember.

Poach notes: A lot of poaches need to be redone. Getting something like potions is lame, although it saves you some money I suppose but quite a lot of poaches are... Chapter 2 unlockable equipment. There's no need to buy a Red Hat for half the price at Chapter 3 when the fur shop is unlocked...

Well, I opened up Meliadoul's skillset and took a look because I had absolutely no idea she was supposed to be a blue mage. I mean, it's not entirely obvious and I was just confused that she started with a Choco cure.

Still, Blue Magic in FFT has an innate problem in that monsters have exponential MA growth while humans... don't. Which is a problem because a lot of the damage formulas are linear. Also starting with terrible job levels is a candidate for not being used at Chapter 4. That being said, let's see the skillset.

Choco Cure: The formula is MA * 3. I'm going to use a (probably generous) MA of 10 at Chapter 4 levels but that gives you a 30 HP heal at point blank range. Mantra with a lower range and no MP heal.

Self Destruct: On a human... this does have potential in a sandbagging match since I believe the damage formula is MaxHP - CurHP. Oven Mitts even exist to protect your own teammates from the blast.

Ice Soul: MA * 3 as a formula for healing is terrible. MA * 3 as a formula for single-target damage (albeit one at range) is much worse.

Look of Devil: Hmm, random Petrify, Darkness, Silence, Don't Move or Don't Act. Darkness loses out in this list but all the rest are probably good. Well, Don't Move isn't as great as the rest in the patch due to the abundance of ranged attacks I guess. Passable... wait, success rate is 35% + MA which means around 45%... that cuts down a lot.

Leaf Dance: What, really? It's our best friend MA * 3 again, except with Turn Punch range. With zero vertical tolerance. Um, not usable.

Flare 2: Well, I don't know if you can learn it in the Zalera fight and whether it will appear when Meliadoul joins you after the battle... it just seems too hard by the fact that Meliadoul isn't under your control or will probably die to the Flare 2 casting.

If you can't learn it in the Zalera fight then copy and paste my Zodiac entry. Otherwise... well, this isn't really a monster skill with a faith-based formula instead of linear so it is... actually good.

Zodiac: Bragging rights reward.

I would keep Look of Devil and Self Destruct for actual tactical worth, Flare 2 and Zodiac can stay but the rest needs reworking.

Class rundown:
Warrior: Well, the good news is that they can equip crossbows (not stat-reliant) and have speed save. Otherwise they are lame.

Cook: I never delved too deep but the skillset is worse than Homemaker to be honest, for one thing you're running off a Male MA.

By the way, I don't think I have ever managed to once cancel anyone because every charge skill seems blazing fast in this game. If I get a turn while someone is charging it's basically never with a unit that has a "cancel" skill like Frozen Meatball. Either that or I can just kill the charging guy. Which leaves the Cook's early skillset being a random damage skill and... poison. I never had the chance to try out the end of the Cook's skillset.

On the other hand, not very good skillset means it's nice to just grab Work the Line and ditch the class.

Homemaker: Now this is much better. Sugary Candy is cheap spammy JP gain and if you have best compatibilty it actually heals decent very early game. Early single haste is crazy if you have something like a Chocobo. Ambrosia is targeted Scream but the 45 MP makes it unusable in actual battle (compare 50 MP to a Warlock blast) but it's about the only Brave increaser. The damage spells aren't great though so I don't think she has any late game potential as a secondary.

Terrible RSMs though.

Champion: Nice class. High PA means it's good for carrying physical secondaries like Blitz, and the skillset is solid, with the exception of Death Ward which will blow most of your MP for a 20% chance of reraise at melee range (huh?)

Red Mage: Well, it's basically the only real "mage" class you have early game. Works well enough for said time period. Once I unlocked Warlock though it basically never gets used (even by the enemies themselves it doesn't show up a certain point.)

Enchanter: Well, it's good early. The MVP skill is probably Quiet for allowing you to "kill" mages at range or disable any annoying abilities. Cripple is good and so is Dazzle so the early game is solid.

Now, Envenom is lame (because it's poison), Gamble is exactly what it name says and Slay is silly because Death Sentence is a weak status effect and yet it costs like 20 mp per shot. I must be extremely unlucky with Solidfy but I suppose two gunners will love it.

Nomad: I only use them when I need to equip a bow. Which I don't think scales up very well as a game goes on, unfortunately. Skillset seems nice but like I said, I never spent too much time here once guns were unlocked... oh well!

Brawler: Nice damage after the patch, but takes way too long to get going without propositions. Bum Rush surprisingly doesn't wow me for its 1000 JP cost. Mantra heals too little HP and doesn't heal self anymore so it's hard to justify using it especially with Vertical issues (by the way, Air Slash is very buggy on uneven terrain). I personally think this class could use a huge cut in most of their JP costs.)

Alchemist: Sooooo borked. Any class that has instant revival at no in-battle cost is basically going to be broken but in addition to that, Alchemist has very good free healing, both HP and status until the late end-game and pretty much the best "control" moves in the game.

Venom just screws so many people over, especially any AI silly enough to equip a Time Egg on themselves. Adreline isn't really a buff item as I believe was intended, it's "kill target mage", because the only way to cure Berserk in this patch is an expensive Ghaele spell. It also works pretty good on Gunslingers too, who will start shooting at walls and killing their own teammates in the way most of the time.

Fairy Dust is okay for early game and Number 9 is an upgrade although by that time I basically moved on to using the above two for control.

The only thing I found silly is Mosfungus and its 900 JP for a weak status effect. Uhhh? Ahriman eye for 1000 JP is kind of silly too, since you only get 3 from war trophies. Or can you poach them...?

At least one aspect of the class needs to be toned down, and I suspect it's probably going to be Venom/Adreline.

Demagogue: Only way to access Invite. Never really used the rest of the skillset but I suspect even if you equip everyone with Phoenix Charm they wouldn't be broken at all.

Ghaele: Wow, a class with instant AOE revival, healing (hp and status) AND haste and can wear Heavy Armour so it won't die to Zodiacs? At least it's limited by those huge MP costs but it fills a very nice niche.

Warlock: So overpowered that basically every battle after I unlocked it became "Can I protect my Warlock as it shoots off 2 blasts"? The answer is pretty much always "yes" except for cases like Lionel 1 where they start in the thick of things.

Imagine if the summoner in Vanilla FFT could hide in a corner and almost be absolutely sure that once he starts charging, maybe ONE character might be able to take a turn before they are hit for 3/4 of their HP, if not dying outright to one of their spells.

While 600 JP is quite expensive, you should unlock them by the time you get propositions and you really only need ONE spell, with getting the rest being a small bonus (you want another 400 JP for Magic attack up later on).

They should either have a longer charge time or scale down their MP cost/damage ratio, because another side-effect of how their skillset works is that they can basically only carry Item or Engrave as a secondary. You will never use Red Magic if you can cast an Eldtritch spell.

Vanquisher: I honestly can't quite judge this class. They're quite late on the techtree... do you blow your JP on the cheap skills that will probably be worse than your secondary command? Or do you save your JP to spend on the finishers, which will drain most of your MP and is inferior to anything a Warlock can cast anyway? It's hard to fit this class into a strategic role, since it doesn't fill any real niches. It's just damage and more damage.

Mystic Knight: Nice. With 2H swords it can deal solid damage for an affordable MP cost and has a wide variety of equipment choices meaning it can carry a bunch of secondaries. JP costs are affordable compared to something like Monk too and the RSMs are good, if pricey.

Bandit: They can equip Crossbows which already means their fighting abilities is much better than vanilla thieves. Unfortunately it's a hard balance between combat abilities and stealing abilities, because you will slap yourself when you come into a battle and find out the enemy has a nice helmet but you only have steal shield. Propositions REALLY help in training a thief.

For my money, I find helmets to have the best steals throughout the game. Second would be weapon steal.

I've gotten great use for just about every skill not named "Blinding Powder" on this set... uh, and steal Gil. Good job with this one.

By the way, Steal Spirit is bugged. It uses Weapon Range instead of Range 1.

Torero: Interesting class. Spears aren't a great weapon honestly without Jump, and it's a mix of half good skills and half I don't use.

Good:
Slow: A lot of bosses AREN'T immune to Slow, such as all the Zodiac bosses before Adramelk.

Berserk: Really high percent chance (50-75%) and a long range of 5. I already said how good Berserk is back when I talked about Adreline and this is pretty much the same, except not certain to work (but still quite high)

Quick: You can cross the battlefield with this and get into position depending on how much mana you have. Combos well with the next skill...

Terminar: This thing just does obscene damage. Ramza dealt 300-500 with one casting of this and if you catch someone mid-charge you'll probably hit them for 999. It's 40 MP which is high but you can generally take a huge chunk off a boss HP and kill off any supporting mook in your path.

Bad:
Poison: Duh.

-2 PA: Most of the time I'm being beaten by a magic user, not a melee unit... Blitz is about the only melee skillset anyway... actually what the hell does Vanquisher use anyway?

Provoke: Uh, I don't think this works? Great for JP grinding though!

The class also has Move +3 which pretty much everyone wants. Overall this is one class you want to bring in when fighting bosses when you get the skills I listed as good. Quite a painful start it has though!

Lapidary: Completely overpowered at the start at the hands of the enemy. They access Storm Ring VERY early and will slaughter your mages and take 3/4 of your fighters health in a shot.

Once you get the money to fund it, I think this skillset is indispensible for its strategic purpose. Even characters with not great MA can heal for more HP than a potion, and Protect/Shell makes you not die to enemy Warlocks. Amber and Storm Rings can make for a decent ranged attack in a pinch although it's a bonus and you should get the first two first.

Reraise is... okay depending on whether you abuse save states. I can see how casting Reraise on multiple people might be abusive enough to set the rate at a low 20%

Never tried Ruby because I didn't go into the DD.

Tactician: Bugged, sorry. Damage Split was basically the Reaction I used on everyone in the end though!

Gunslinger: I HATE THESE ASSHOLES.

In normal FFT, Knights move 3 squares and are extremely slow and are unlucky to break anything of yours.

In this patch, Gunslingers have 2 shots at a pretty high rate of breaking your nice rare equipment at 8 slots away.

They aren't even that great when you use them because breaking enemy equipment aren't as valuable to them and they unlock really late.

Other than Warlocks, Gunslingers are my number 1 go to target for Venom or Berserk.

Not sure what you can do about that though.

I only had experienced of Arm Aim and Leg Aim through Mustadio but basically you don't use them for their status procs, since it happens once in a blue moon. Don't know about the rest of their skills.

Best designed classes: Mystic Knight, Champion, Bandit.

MVP Support skill: Equip Shield. It costs 200 JP and your mages probably don't need the Champion skillset so it's easily buyable with spillover. Even fighter classes like this ability actually because shields offer such a wide variety of abilities.

In general I think RSMs are still almost entirely too expensive and there needs to be a bunch of cheaper, if crappy ones. Just about everyone used Equip Shield (some have to use Martial Arts) and had their Reaction slot empty throughout the game. I only slapped in the Movement slot with Dash right at the end by doing a lot of propositions.

Misc comment: There's a bunch of people equipped with an accessory called Enhancer. You can get one as a war trophy. You can't do anything with it at all like equip it and the description is completely blank. What's up with that?

Equipment breakdown tomorrow, it's 2 am and I need to snooze.

Airship go boom.

Orbonne 1: I think the equipment scale is wrong here, the enemy units that aren't named Warlocks are wearing stuff like Cold-Iron armor (huh?).

Anyway, the Warlocks are right in the open so general Warlock strategies apply. Nothing interesting here.

Rofel: Now that I think about it, the dude has the Soulcutter sword which actually is pretty good because of its Immunity. The item list says you're supposed to get it from Dycedurg as a war trophy but you don't. You could steal it here which will also prevent him from using MIGHTY SWORD on you if you're feeling lucky.

Look, the 2nd time Holy Shot is useful!

Kleteinne: Kleteinne will hurt you with Warlock spells, but he's squishy. However, he has a lot of good stuff too so this is going to be a bit tough. It's not that hard to wipe his support with your own Warlock, but Kleteinne can't be silenced so there's no easy way out and you're going to have to sandbag if you want him stuff.

Personally I just stole his rod (wait, that sounds wrong) and called it a day.

Balk: If you don't have a Warlock, I would pretty much call you insane for trying to steal from Balk, since this is one of the hardest fight in vanilla FFT and it's been made harder.

However, Hydras have a weakness to ice and you can pretty much wipe them in one or two casting of the Warlock ice spell, leaving Balk alone for you to steal stuff from him.

However, I don't find his WEAPONS really good. The ice and lightning element of his weapons are honestly quite pointless and you basically just have a 9 power weapon. Eh. You should already have the Inferno from Balk 1 and an 8 point weapon isn't a huge downgrade...

Now his armor, that's the good part. He comes with a speed + 1 hat again, and an armor that gives you always immunity, which will be useful vs Altima.

Hashmalum: He casts blasty spells that cover a wide area and deal huge damage and is immune to Slow so no advantages there. Still he has no support and doesn't seem to use Fear a lot so he's easily controlled if you can heal or revive multiple people at once.

Altima 1: Alma has some really obscene natural MA. Too bad she dies if you don't protect/shell her ASAP but I suppose if you keep her alive you can receive the benefits of a 300 hp heal once in a while.

The 4 Ultima demons aren't immune to any status effects I believe, so here's your last chance to throw all your Ahriman Eyes! Budget option being your Venoms or something.

Altima 1 can deal huge damage, either through physical (300 with a really awesome animation), Ultima (around 200) or use Grand Cross to really screw up your plans. Make sure your most important Ghaeles and Alchemists have Immunity in some way (Ribbon, Soulcutter or Balk's armor.)

You should probably have good movement (at least Move + 2, best +3) or her teleporting will really annoy you but if you can take down the Ultima demons fast it shouldn't be hard.

Altima 2: Um, terrible. Her physical only does around 150 damage now for some reason, and she doesn't cast Ultima anymore, trying to either Grand Cross me or be inefficient with her physical. She also gained a weakness to Holy which means your Mystic Sword and Aura Bolts will do obscene damage and Mustadio is finally happy to be able to use Holy Shot for a grand total of 3 times in the entire game. Not much to say here, it's Altima 1 but worse.

Final thoughts coming soon!

Dycedurg's elder brother: Hopefully you pick skillsets with a good vertical tolerance like Mystic Sword and not Blitz (unless your Brawler has Teleport and Fly I guess.)

This is surprisingly easy. Dycedurg can be taken out from where you start assuming he doesn't run into a corner or something... incidentally I think he is just about the only time Holy Shot is actually useful since I can't remember any other character who is weak to Holy that is not vulnerable to being killed with a Phoenix Down. Too bad Ramza's onii-chan has innate Defense Up though so it's not as effective as you would like.

Adramelk is really easy. Like Velius he basically casts Warlock spells repeatedly. Unlike Velius though he doesn't have support you need to off first plus you should have much better equipment to survive those spells. Due to the base game bug you also get a free turn when the 2nd part of the battles starts, which if you have haste will probably translate to like 2 free turns to whale on Adramelk.

Murond 1: This is surprisingly hard. There are two Warlocks with a Mime and if a Warlock gets his shot off you will quite likely be dead.

Surprisingly enough you should probably put your mages in the first group. They're safer from the gunners there than in the 2nd group. The 2nd group should be able to take out stuff above them by having guns of their own or Mystic Sword or other similar skillsets.

Group 1 should have a way to get to the top of the tower (Teleport/Fly) and kill Warlocks and mimes, which isn't easy to do because those guys are pretty optimized in terms of equipment. One fun way to kill the Warlocks is to give Damage Split to everyone (and make sure they can survive a blast.) Essentially you'll take half damage and then murder the Warlock with reflected Damage Splits.

Vormav and co: If I'm not wrong Vormav and his flunkies do have some unique armor on them, the Ironheart Armor (+250 hp and charm) and Kleteinne has Crown of Glory (Mag + 2) which collectionists should steal.

I didn't have maintainence on everyone and I didn't want to risk being hit by Mighty Sword (assuming they don't have entirely new skillsets) so I basically ran up to Kletienne, stole his Crown with my Thief (Concentration as ability since you're going to have to steal through his evasion cape) and then blitzed him to death (he only has like 350hp compared to his buddies)

Zalbag the douc... excuse me: Zalbag isn't immune to Don't Act.

Yeah.

Special characters update notes thing:

T.G.Cid: Awesome, it's T.G Cid! Let me steal his Excal... oh, it's a pretty crappy sword that makes you weak to Dark and whose innate status is not as good as either Earthcutter or Queen's Guard. Well, at least I can use his overpowered skil... oh, he has a bunch of MA based skills with only one element (albeit a really good one in FFT) and no niches he can fill. Welp.

Meliadoul: Well, ranged breaks aren't really that unique in this patch since Gunslingers exist, and Meliadoul still can't do anything to monsters with her skillset. Let's see what new skills she has to help her out...

Um... choco cure? I don't think this is right at all...

I'm probably not going to do the sidequests, since I hate Deep Dungeon and I forgot about the Colliery which means Beowulf and Reis wouldn't be of much use to me now, so I'll probably finish up Orbonne within the next few hours (later if I get distracted.)

Germinas Peak: Haven't seen Nomads for a while. Not much to say here.

Poekas Lake: It's full of undead! Strangely enough, the undead guy who says "Give us the stones and we'll ascend to a higher plane of existence" is under YOUR control. He spawned with Item secondary so I made him kill his own teammates, which is pretty funny.

Limberry 1: Apandas are fat and annoying. Getting the assassins to cast Ultima isn't that easy especially if they spawn with OTHER ranged attacks like Red Magic but this is the best place to do it I guess.

By the way, in this battle and the next, both Assassins are not immune to a whole bunch of status effects, including Berserk which makes them... surprisingly easy.

Limberry 2: It's the steal stuff from Elmdor stage!

Elmdor is a lot weaker because he has Mystic Sword instead of Drawout, which is effected by evasion! Elmdor can be affected by blind which will increase your advantage in that regards even more. Controlling him is extremely easy and for some strange reason his blood suck doesn't give vampire status but instead Berserk and Undead.

This is actually pretty bad since apparently there is no way of curing Berserk I can find in this patch except killing your own guys, and then once his dead you can't revive him because of the undead status. You basically want to always line up your guys in an AOE bunch ironically so he doesn't use it.

Speaking of his equipment, the innate Half of MP on the helmet doesn't work. I don't think his equipment is any good honestly. The helmet would have been worth using... but yeah, it's bugged.

Zalera: *Incoherent screaming*

Okay, so Zalera is extremely fast and will double-turn you quite often. He clearly has Short Charge or something because the first thing he usually does is fly up to my guys and cast Flare 2 for damage in the high 200+ even with neutral compatibility before anyone can act, pretty much killing any of my mage classes like Warlock which means I basically have to change them to Heavy Armor using classes to live.

But ok, let's say you manage to survive, revive everyone and protect them with Shells. Unfortunately, he still has Nightmare (huh?), Confuse 2 and Void which he can use to screw over your strategy. Pray that his Nightmares give something tame like Don't Move.

Oh yes, let's mention his support. The two gunslingers will annoy you by breaking your equipment, forcing you to restart the mission if they break a rare item. They can be killed with Phoenix Downs but there is a chance that they will raise again after 3 turns so you better hope they turn in treasure chests. Unfortunately they usually reraise or turn into crystals for me and I was dumb enough to let Zalera eat like 3 crystals which basically reset my progress.

There's also 3 skeletons in the back. Skeletons are lame but if you're usually hanging around with single-digit hp because you're sandbagging, a badly timed Skeleton revival will just screw you over. Their biggest role is to make Meliadoul act stupid because she usually deals terrible damage to them with her sword or sit in a corner doing nothing, despite spawning with some Ghaele's moves if I'm not wrong since I did see her use them sometime.

I really wished I learned Seal Evil because it would have be extremely useful for this fight... but I didn't because pretty much anywhere else with undead you can finish the battle with phoenix downs quickly. This is about the only battle which dragged on long enough that Phoenix Downs can't cut it. Joke is on me I guess.

I basically abused savestate in this mission by save-stating reraise castings (wow, Topazs only have a 25% chance of triggering reraise?) and reloading when I fail to proc Slow from that Torero's ability, because if Zalera isn't slowed at all times he will just slaughter your team with his double-turns. I used 2 of my elixirs on this fight and I wonder if it's possible to farm more or whether I just blew them.

By the way, apparently I got a Cursed Ring from a Treasure Chest which means I don't think the Cancel: Treasure on the item does what it says. Nifty, now I have an innate maintence item!

Bervenia Free City: Miluda doesn't have anything to steal unlike the original where she had a perfume meaning you can go all out. There's a lot of breakers in this map but Berserk works extremely well here, including Miluda who isn't immune because the terrain makes it very hard for Berserk characters to actually attack anyone. Amusingly enough I actually had a berserk enemy gunslinger kill his own teammate trying to shoot one of my own.

Finath River: First try had too many chocobos and my guys were too far out in front. Second try had a bunch of yellows and a pig which I forgot to recruit by bringing a Demagogue. Then again, I suppose Perfumes don't exist in this version (do they?) so I probably don't need to bother.

Zeltennia Castle: Wow, 2 Warlocks in a hard to reach location! Thankfully it takes a while for the two forces to collide so you have more than enough time to throw up Shell and Haste on your guys. Zalmo isn't that hard once his forces are out.

Bed Desert: Yikes, Balk has Martial Arts/Blitz with Bum Rush meaning cornering the dude or stealing his gun at the start isn't THE optimal strategy. Mantles are really helpful in this mission because Guns don't have 100% hit rate anymore (unless the enemy uses Arm/Leg Aim due to a bug... I think)

By the way, there's a Warlock with Bone of Selune with Maintainence, which I don't know whether it was intended, but it's possible for him to drop the wand as a treasure chest, along with one you get after the battle, and then you get one after the water sluice battle, meaning... you can get 3. Which is probably more than you'll ever need.

South Wall (Uh, I think, I just picked the first option): The Lapidaries start in a position to be killed straight off the bat, and the Gunslingers somehow decide to jump down and get themselves easily killed for me. Demagogues in the back probably won't join the battle until it's lost.

Sluice: There are 2 warlocks here but if you are using a gun user they will be easily killed since they don't hide in the back where they're safe. Great place to eat a lot of crystals like in vanilla FFT.

Either Tactician is bugged or I'm doing something wrong.

As a Tactician main I bought:

Wheel Formation
Call White Wind
Forced March
Spike Pit Trap
Take High Ground

I equipped Monkey Pole (Always Dark)
Dusk Shroud (Start: Transparent)
and set Float as my movement ability.

This should give me Don't Move, Dark, Float and Transparent as starting status.

Strangely enough, I was only able to use Take High Ground (slow to all) once, which required Transparent, Don't Move and Float. Then I couldn't use anything anymore. Which makes sense I guess, since I don't have Transparent anymore... still, I should be able to use most of the moves I've learn straight from the start, like Wheel Formation which only requires Don't Move and Float, so... what gives? *Shrug*

Chapter 3 done!

Edit: No real place to put this but Wand weapons seem broken. They usually deal like 3-5 hp damage which is... clearly wrong.

Orbonne 1: Oh no, an enemy Warlock! Thankfully if you have some bow users (and Imbue) you can take care of this easily. Guns don't work however because of the terrain layout. If you didn't come in with those, then you can try to Engrave Protect/Shell on all your dudes and last out the 2 blasts.

Orbonne 2: Izlude doesn't jump and he doesn't break stuff either, just use a bunch of Champion stuff. He has Innocent Blade but since that doesn't protect his other people from dying to Warlocks all you got to do is beat him down after.

Orbonne 3: Wiegraf has a nice helmet to steal, arrange dudes so he only hits 2 at once, hopefully not your Warlock.

You could break his sword if you have gunslingers but I didn't. Didn't had too much trouble anyway since I managed to pull off a steal on first try.

Hill: The hill with the deserters, forgot the name. There seems to be some decent accessories here like Titan Guard and Running Shoes you should try to grab. Otherwise while the enemy happen to be better than Vanilla's FFT squire/chemist, they still aren't that threatening.

Zaland Fort City: Everyone here is a squishy, including Malak who isn't much better than his Vanilla form. Hopefully the Gunslingers don't break anything of yours.

Yu-Gi-Oh Woods: It's full of undeads, and Holy/Fire is by far the most common property of attacks in this patch I find, so yeah, easier than usual.

Riovanes 1: Enemy starts out on high terrain that's hard to reach, but Warlock ignores that totally. They managed to break some of my equipment before I killed them all though, annoying.

VELIUS: HURGH.

Okay, so Wiegraf has 400 hp or so and has a sword which grants always Protect and deals around 80 damage per shot, you're not going to last with a magic build since he'll definitely Silence you with Lightning Stab eventually so you basically have to punch 800 hp or so. If you equip shields and Magic Armor you can half both Earth and Lightning which will cut his damage down to 40 hp and make him more manageable, but he's still going to outslug you.

Unfortunately Ramza is extremely underdeveloped since I basically end most fights with a Warlock in about 2 shots, so I had to go for this extremely ghetto setup of Hero main/Item Secondary.

I basically did the strategy of running around Accumulating and then healing 90 hp with potions until I got up to 30 PA. Unfortunately my only spare weapon was a Nebula whip and none of my secondary involves dealing damage which means this took a while but the side advantage is that Tend Wounds suddenly hits 100% success rate apparently... didn't realize it was PA based....

This fight would probably be trivialized if I had Speed Save. Alas, it's 900 JP and I don't want to grind that.

Velius has Warlock skills and he basically killed my own Warlock every time and only once did I somehow manage to catch him mid-charge to deal extra damage, which is just crazy... those spells charge way too fast! The 3 Ultima demons aren't a pushover either and I had to try to lure them into using Dark Holy, then Bum Rushing or Mystic Sword them.

I don't know how much MP Velius has but there seems to be an "AI" advantage you can take of in that if there's an easy target in front of him, Velius would rather use "Void" to kill instantly as opposed to slapping your team with Warlock spells, even though the time spent charging is insignificant. I took advantage of this by having Mustadio be a dead punching bag. When you get him down to killing only 1 character per turn you can win a sandbag battle.

Riovanes Roof: Well, it's the Elmdor fight. Haha he's equipped with Necklace of J. Funny that.

If you have quick, hard-hitting ranged moves, you win this fight. Otherwise you do the entire Riovanes over again, I guess. There's no easy answers like Ninja but stuff like Running Shoes REALLY helps the blitz.

Misc Class Notes:
Champion: Why does Death Ward have a huge mana cost that basically takes up his entire pool but has a success rate of... like 20% at good compatibility? If you use it, it's likely to just fail and leave you mana-less. If I wanted to blow my MP load on something it might as well be Behemoth Power at 100% success.

Vanquisher: I can't figure out when I want to use this class skillset. I mean, he's just about the 2nd highest thing on the job tech tree so I end up not having much use for say, Dagger in favour of whatever I'm carrying in the secondary. Hohum.

Ramza: Not... a great class compared to vanilla Ubersquire.

Bandage doesn't get much use since the percentage is way too small, and doesn't affect Ramza himself.

Tend Wounds IS technically revival, and more revival is always nice. On the other hand, it has a charge time, required you to be right next to the dead body, and has a chance of failure, maybe it the worse revival pretty much.

It has Accumulate and Accumulate... the magic version, which has a charge time here, meaning it's not as safe an action as it is in Vanilla. Accumulate was only useful for JP grinding in the original game past a certain point anyway and no one used Bards even though they could give +1 PA/MA to everyone...

Lend Spirit is actually kind of nice if I had went for a magic Ramza build I guess. Still, I would have to use the secondary slot for Heroics instead of something more useful.

Chapter 2 Ramza gets... Steal Heart with lower range, eww. It was a half decent move on the old Thief but...

Chapter 4 Ramza gets... a move that restores HP and MP to full at instant speed?! Wow! Oh wait, it costs 99 MP. I must be missing something here. I guess I could grind Half Of MP but I'm certain there are easier set-ups that doesn't require that much grinding...

I'm not sure if Ramza can still learn Ultima now but I suppose it would be extremely ironic if it ended up one of his better skillset abilities just because the rest of his abilities were lacking IMO...

Agrias: I think it's missing ONE of the good Holy Sword moves but otherwise removing the worse Swordskills in favour of some flexibility in healing plus the ability to use huge 2 Handed Swords does help her. I don't know if Holy Knight still has that terrible PA multiplier though.

Mustadio: Hmm, not sure what to think. Mustadio came with Alchemist level 5 for me making him quite usable from the get-go! Sort of.

Arm Aim purpose is kind of changed now, since the Don't Act/Poison procs once in a blue moon. Instead, it has this weird effect of setting accuracy to 100% which guns don't normally do in this patch and thus the status effect is more of an after-thought. Maybe Leg Aim does the same thing too but I haven't bought it yet.

Seal Evil isn't really needed. There are a billion other ways to kill undead, including just throwing Phoenix Downs at them.

Holy Shot and Dark Shot... seem to does the exact same damage as just shooting the dude. Which means they're only useful for taking advantage of elemental weakness... I honestly can't think of anyone who's weak to Dark though... and Holy weakness usually means undead... see Seal Evil.

Flame Kick is hurt by its PA based formula (I think?)... Engineer doesn't have much of that. You could carry it on something like Monk I suppose but I think that would make the Aims and Shots useless because they're weapon-based? I've used it in the "I'm trapped in a corner and this is my only move!" sort of situation but it isn't very tactically useful or anything...

I think the best use of this class is that it gets Two Guns without having to move up the Techtree for it.

Rafa/Malak: One of them has half of the Red Mage spells with a crappy healing move, and the other has half of the Red Mage spells with a crappy attack move. They both come with no job levels whatsoever at Chapter 4... Yeah, unusable unless it's changed.

Patched to the latest.

Lionel 1: Well, I got lucky with not getting Storm Ring'd or Berserk, and with the nerfed armor, pretty much everyone outside died to one Warlock blast.

Managed to steal Gaf's sword and armor with Ramza. Come to think of it, I haven't trained any dedicated thieves. I definitely don't have someone to steal from Elmdor... hum.

Lionel 2: Wow, how much HP did you give Queklain? The battle took forever and I was wailing with him with Bum Rush and other high power moves. It's basically sandbagging him while he bios your team. Did you remove Nightmare from him? because that would have made the battle a lot more interesting to be honest.

Chapter 1 done whoo.

Goland Coal City: So anyway between Galaxy Stop and Warlock everyone died and I probably should have stole the Rifle first but oh well!

By the way Olan used Updraft for some reason. His secondary was Cooking.

Lesalia: If everyone didn't die to Warlock this could be a little difficult because Zalmo is really good at staling with White Wind which can heal like 150 HP per shot.

Though Berserk renders him toothless, yay!

Barius Hill: Lapidaries are overpowered, at least in the AI's hands. They can knock off like 90 hp from multiple targets lined up or heal themselves and others for 100 hp for exactly no cost because the CPU cheats.

That being said, I managed to get a Magic Attack Up Warlock who basically wiped the entire enemy team in 2 spells (finishing off the Lapis in between each casting, because they'll easily heal themselves back to full if you don't!)

Swamp: Reloaded around 5 times, figured the pig wasn't going to show up, decided to just carry on.

Anyway they all died to Warlock. If I didn't had Warlock, between Potions, Seal Evil and an entire bunch of Holy attacks I don't think they would last long either.

Goug Machine City: See Barius Hill, except slightly harder with a naked Mustadio and no Agrias. Mystic Knights seem to deal way too high damage if you ask me.

Execution Site: The two party members under the bridge had better be extremely tough heavy armour users because they're going to get everything thrown at them from the first strike. The first party of 3 can thankfully hide one member reliably which happens to be my warlock. I probably wouldn't have won if I couldn't get a Warlock shot off.

Lionel Castle 1: Sigh, stuck because I got too greedy.

I didn't realize how lucky I was in my first try at this battle but then I realize I forgot to buy Steal Weapon for Ramza and opted to restart.

There are so many ways this battle can go wrong for you. The computer gets first strike in an enclosed area and can easily wipe out your team with Storm Ring depending on your formation setup (there's no real good way to avoid this) and the Torero can berserk key members of your party. Hilarious they can also Berserk Ramza, which results in you losing this battle since he'll get killed by Gaf and then there's no way to open the gates before he crystallizes.

The strategy of wiping with my Warlock fails here, because she'll pretty much die due to Lapis targetting her right off the bat with Storm Ring. Not sure what I'm going to do except reload until I get extremely lucky that the computer doesn't generate with too many Storm Rings and Berserk.

Misc class thoughts:
Warlock: If your opponent can't kill him in one turn these guys seem way overpowered. If I had known their power and used 2 or 3 of them at once I think you can pretty much wipe the entire enemy team before they get a turn. With one Warlock on a team only the enemy at least has a chance to heal up in between blasts.

Lapis: So overpowered in the enemies hands. I suppose a human player can't abuse them because the gems are expensive but a CPU can knock off 90 damage off multiple targets or heal multiple characters for essentially no cost. Urgh, thank god they don't have much in terms of HP but because of level scaling the enemy usually goes first and knocks me out before I can do them in.

Quote from: Celdia on July 02, 2011, 12:39:38 am
Zaland: I haven't seen how this goes since I changed Musty's skillset. Not sure what to expect from that.

Musty still has his original base skillset as an NPC (although his RSM is different) for some reason. I'm guessing you forgot to change like the 2 other classes he has as an NPC in the editor or something? Shrug.

Quote from: Celdia on July 01, 2011, 05:50:35 pm
Windmill/Zeakden: Yeah, now it just sounds like you are way out of the assumed party level range at this point. (Just how much did you grind while wearing that Vest? o_o )

I alternated between playing random battles and doing Dorter 1 around 3 times (before you patched it to be easier) until I suddenly realized that the enemies were scaling. After that I don't think I really did any more but when every enemy spawn is 1/2 levels above you with 200~ hp, you tend to gain quite a bit of levels after slugging it out unless you blitz the boss.

QuoteBrawlers are an absolute pain in the ass to try and balance because of how you can stack up things like Martial Arts and Attack Up. I don't really want to remove one or the other which is why I nerfed M. Arts but as you go on about it I'm wondering if now they need both of those just to compete with other units now. I just haven't had the time to test as much as I would like to on them sadly.

Well, lowering JP cost might help. I can't remember how many times I went "Well, I sure wish I had Dolphin Kick/Fire Dance here", except that I only had one, because both of them would cost 550 JP (if I don't buy Pummel).

Continuing on...

Dorter 2: This is Dorter 2 right? The one with the thief ambush, who magically has his hat on and off when he turns to talk, some sort of sprite glitch, hahaha.

Anyway, you would be surprised to know that this is... surprisingly easy. Chocobos are extremely mobile and can find nice places on top of buildings to snipe people. Agrias does obscene damage with a Frostbrand, dealing 70 damage at WORST (I've seen her deal 140, probably best compatibility and crit) to multiple people. Gafgarog is quite a wuss though with 35 damage, which is okay, because he's Gafgarog.

I managed to kill everyone and eat some crystals but not get much abilities, so I assume they aren't very well-skilled.

Araguay Woods: It's full of goblins. Goblins that have to walk up to you to actually accomplish something. Goblins that are weak to ice. And there is an easily accessible weapon that has 8 base power and Ice elemental.

So yeah.

Edit: Oops, missed a battle.

Waterfalls place: Hey, Gafgarog is actually equipped even though I stripped him. I guess you got rid of that trick.

Anyway, this is really easy because... Demagogues have a terrible skillset to be honest even with overly scaled equipment. I can think that maybe if you equip your entire party with status immunities or something they would be good? I dunno, but most of the Demagogues in this mission just spent their time using Imbue. I think one of them blinded his entire team just to blind Delita, who ignores hit rate with Holy Sword anyway.

Zaland Fort City: Chose the Save Mustadio version... which I hope is the version that gave you more Brave because I can't remember.

First Try: Vanquisher got really lucky with whip, Mustadio rolls over dead in one hit. Welp.

Second Try: Not much to say, a few well-placed Silence shots will take care of a lot of stuff. Everyone should get Jump + 1 through something like Spring Shoes to hop on the walls and go for a ranged strategy.

Red Chocobo died in one hit when an enemy Vanquisher used Thousand Blades on him, but I'm thankful that at least he didn't use it on Mustadio I guess.

Speaking of Mustadio, he spent the entire battle throwing Faerie Dust at people. After the battle I realized that for some reason he didn't have any skills learnt, so I gave him Seal Evil. Then I realized the next battle is Barius Hill, whoops.

Random thoughts:
Enchanter: Why are their attack stats (both PA and MA) so terrible? Imbue is a decent secondary on something like a Nomad but an Enchanter using a Tome usually deals like 20 damage, ew. Because of that I don't think Enchanters can carry any secondaries well either, except Item which... everyone can carry actually as long as they have half-decent move.

Lenalia Plateau: This is surprisingly easy compared to Thieves Fort for some reason. Miluda not having Move-HP Up and not being any Brawlers REALLY helps the fact that Training Vest has dicked me over. I was able to eat 3 crystals (none of them gave me anything good) and pick up a Torero Suit from a chest or something (What does Innate: Enhance do...?)

Map sets up for Fire Dance really nicely here.

Also you can field 5 units here.

If it carries on like this I might actually have a decent time!

Windmill: Oops, spoke too soon. Wiegraf gets super lucky and stops 3 of my dudes on my first try with one Stasis, prompting a restart.

Unfortunately I couldn't really find a way to beat him. The standard vanilla FFT strategy of slapping him with weapon break doesn't work because... gunslingers are pretty high on the job tree and enemy brawlers having 2-3 times my HP from awesome equipment and being only able to field 4 units doesn't help.

Can't grind because things will get even worse so...

Sad to say but I "cheated" and RNG-scummed Pummel until Wiegraf rolled over and croaked.

Fort Zeakdan: I had a lot of trouble with this one. The thing I remember most is that there's a Champion with 200 hp who will happily sand-bag you with potions/phoenix down or disable a dude completely per turn with Venom, which seems extremely overpowered on the enemy side. 100% gurantee "screw 1 character over" for a few turns seems crazy.

The important setup for me is having Ramza in Nomad with Move + 1 and Imbue Silence from Enchanter. You have just enough move to walk forward and knock the first Red Mage with Silence, which no enemy ever thought to cure, although she did slap Delita for 40 HP with her staff which is hilarious.

Oh yeah, my Chocobo pooped out a Red one which is great, though I seem to have terrible luck with monster Brave, rolling low 40s all the time, sigh. It was fat which was great for tanking in this mission, is fast and can deal good damage.

After seeing Venom used on me I basically used it myself to kill Algus. Poison doesn't trigger Damage Split and the Knight didn't use Potion on him for some reason so... shrug.

Misc thoughts:
Brawler: Still disappointing. Ramza does 28 per punch with 70 brave and 6 PA in Brawler. My Champion does around 40 with a 2H sword, while a Black Chocobo does 55 and a Red does 44 with superior mobility. True Dolphin and Fire Dance are AOE but normally if you get 2 you're very lucky and you're likely to be screwed by enemy Red Mages using Heal. I guess I could grind for Bum Rush and Mantra.

Chocobos: Still a pretty good unit... for now anyway, although Yellow isn't that great due to 90 HP potions existing.

Alchemist: Is poison intended to nerf Faerie Dust and Potion 9? One trigger of poison knocks them out of it meaning you get 1 round of either poison or charm.

Venom seems kind of crazy because the negative effect of haste ends at exactly the same time Don't Move/Act wears off, meaning the target doesn't benefit from it. Hum.

Yeah, ASM hacks is probably the cause here. LFT is about the only FFT patch I can get running on an eboot (because it has little to none), while Mercenaries, Call to Power and 1.3 all don't work on PSP for me either.

I guess it really can't be helped and I just have to play this patch on an emulator and not actual consoles.

Continued from the old thread

Dorter: Patched version is much easier. Crossbow Nomads means the 3rd guy doesn't get to do much while the 2 nomads closest to you actually have to expose themselves instead of being able to snipe at you indiscriminately.

The Red Mage and Champion managed to walk in a way that I could Dolphin Kick a few times both helped too.

Sand Rat's Cellar: Lots of Champion means quite a long battle but I managed to get a few Stone Strikes off which REALLY helped.

There was a tense part at the end where my Champion had 0 left on his crystal clock with my only unit left being Ramza but I managed to pull off a chain of sandbag revives that went Ramza->Champion->Alchemist->Red that made me win without any dead dudes.

One of the enemy dropped a crystal and my Alchemist picked it up. He gained a pretty crazy amount of skills which makes me wonder exactly how pumped enemy class levels are.

Thieves fort: I have a feeling the Training Vest item is actually counterproductive. I entered this fight with level 13-14 opponents wearing 40-80hp heavy armour items which means I'm facing a bunch of brawlers with twice my champion's HP and a 200 hp Miluda who has Move-HP Up and can cast Regen on herself.

Try 1: Red Mage ran and got off a Thunder which killed Algus and my Alchemist and reduced my Champion's HP into half. Restart with better formation.

Try 2: Champion had best compatibility with Miluda beating 70HP per Frost Brand hit. Miluda actually ran into the deep Water causing me to lose because she regenerated her health while I was trying to blitz her, which is hilarious.

Try 3: Replaced my Red Mage with a Black Chocobo (Oh yeah, I grabbed one earlier in a random with a Demagogue) and blitzed Miluda pretty much. Can't really kill the entire enemy team like I usually do in Vanilla FFT because of level scaling. 

Random comments: I'm not convinced that the nerfed Martial Arts deserves to cost 300 JP and for that matter, considering there doesn't seem to be an easy way to raise Brave, punching people with a 25% bonus only doesn't seem that great at 70 Brave (highest you can get from Soldier shop I think.) There's also a lot more special abilities on weapons now which decreases its worth.

Also Demagogue has like single digit numbers and charging for Invite? I guess it's to stop abusive stuff but even after I defeated everyone else and crippled the monsters I want to recruit... man does it take a while to land.

Well, I have no idea what to say, because I just about tried everything suggested in this topic (turned off popsloader, tried 3.3/3.71/3.72/3.8 firmware, tried 0 compression)

I don't believe I can ask for an eboot here, can I? At least that will cut down on one more factor but I don't think I'm screwing up on the conversion part.