game eater blog

September is often a busy time for my family and I! While my last play session was August 28th, I didn't get to play this again until September 27th.


There were some setup woes at the beginning, both because it had been a while and my machine had been set up to capture other things and because I had to alter the little tracker application I've been using. In particular, there had been some discussion about the proposed ban from FFTacticsKevin, "no abilities learned in WoB". I tried to modify this into something with less administrative overhead by suggesting it was easy to ban any items obtained in the World of Balance when you enter the World of Ruin, but, based on post #42, that didn't exactly satisfy him. :)
While I'd already beaten Ultima Weapon (AtmaWeapon), I still had to finish the Floating Continent before any of my new changes and most of the other rules could matter.

There was no particular issue here - I mean, besides the whole world destruction thing. As per Smash_Master's ban, I made sure to save Shadow.

Just for fun, I decided I would feed Cid medicinal fish! Nobody banned medicinal fish.


When we ended up on the shore near Albrook, I stripped Celes, I saved, I closed the game, and I pulled up the aforementioned save editor. Then, I carefully removed every spell, Blitz, and Lore I learned in the World of Balance. SwdTech/Bushido doesn't seem to be editable in this save editor, which given an earlier ban I'm just going to be okay with. As well, it feels like editing the Rage list doesn't work? This is something I may need to come back to.


An amusing note about so many characters un-learning their abilities is that I never taught any spells at all to several usable characters: Sabin, Shadow, Setzer, and Relm. They are all going to be blank slates who can still learn any spell from WoR espers later on.

I went into Albrook and sold every single item I had, literally - even the ones I was going to repurchase. I decided selling was better than using the save editor to straight-up remove the equipment, because the difference it would make was a few hours of fighting rare World of Ruin Leaf Bunnies. This is less agonizing.


Then, we re-purchased Albrookian equipment. They've at least got lots of things Celes can equip; I suppose it could be worse.


Before we continue discussing gameplay, given we're freshly into the halfway point and, in a way, starting over, it's probably a good time to review the elements of the game that are banned.

• Boldrin: "I ban Edgar from not dropping trou the second a woman is in his presence." - once Edgar joins, with Celes in the team, he won't be able to wear body armor. He might be able to put armor back on later, depending on the circumstances.
• VVagner: "I ban the back row." - unfortunately, my now-purely-melee Celes has to be in the front row. She is pretty fragile!
• VVagner: "I ban Gau from using Rages from monsters with first letter L through Z." - Unfortunately, the save editor I'm using doesn't seem to give me control over this, so I'm not sure what to do about this. I may just avoid the Rage command in general. Mitigating the issue here somewhat: I barely learned any Rages that aren't the starting ones.
• kingbob08: "I ban purposefully using status buffs/debuffs or curing them in battle." - This has been weird, but given Celes' very limited options it's not impactful at the moment. Frankly, as long as I'm editing spell lists I'm probably going to fully remove the ones that are strictly for status infliction.
• VVagner: "I ban having a full party of 4, unless needed for the story, or the final boss." - Because of this rule, I need to avoid recruiting Sabin in Tzen.
• Wyldstar: "I ban actions that require pressing the 'up' button in battle." - At the moment, this has an unexpected impact when it comes to Celes' ability to swap elemental swords. Between this and the status effect ban, fighting Phunbaba early to get Fenrir is more-or-less worthless - if it's even possible.
• CB_Archer: "I ban equipping an esper if you already have any of the spells learned 100% that it teaches." - Messing with my save editor is going to make this one a bit weird and complicated. I am still going to abide by this and not re-learn any unlearned spells or anything like that. If a spell had been learned, espers that teach it remain fully unavailable.
• Smash_Master: "I ban the doggo." - This will matter when I get Shadow.
• pumaloaf: "I ban any of Sabin's Blitzes that scale off of magic." - Amusingly, I think all of Sabin's Blitzes are permanently banned between this, the WoB ability ban, and the "no pressing up" ban... except Mantra? I'm not sure since they keep changing its inputs.
• MonadoGuy25: "I ban (optional) Moogles." - We can't recruit Mog or Umaro!
• Outl4w: "I ban Phoenix Down." - As long as Celes is solo, this certainly doesn't matter! It may matter later.
• Knight S. Hade / sierramadresquatter: "I ban not using SwdTech/Bushido." - I think to honour this ban, Cyan will need to be one of our first few recruits. Unfortunately, there's another ban relevant to that below.
• kingbob08: "I ban any relic that gives a stat boost." - I've come close on this a few times! No White Cape, no Prayer Beads, no Zephyr Cape, or anything like that!
• Smash_Master: "I ban natural magic." - Well, yeah. This could matter later. Celes learns something at level 26, I think.
• FFTacticsKevin: "I'm banning Dexter, no equipment is allowed to be used in the right hand." - Everyone can only use one hand. You can see in the image above that there was an issue with this. More on this later!
• Boldrin: "I ban Shadow not living out his dream of being a life-coach starring on hoarders." - This won't matter until we get Shadow back; it's just "if there's something to throw, Shadow must throw".
• Smash_Master: "I ban Team CES actively fighting together." - Once we get the Falcon, we'll be breaking up the team again and soloing a bit more.
• FFTacticsKevin: "I ban all abilities and items obtained in the WoB." - As noted above, this is sort of my fault, too. We've lost a lot of options!
• Wyldstar: "I ban reviving anyone by any means while in a multi-party dungeon." - This was proposed as a way to make Phoenix Cave and Kefka's Tower into Nuzlocke Challenges. It includes no using Tents if someone is dead.
• throva: "I ban Cursed Shield and Illumina." - it's about time someone straight-up cut out some of the overpowered options for late game!

With these bans, Celes has no magic, bad defenses, and is forced into the front row. She's limited to items for healing, so if she can't survive an encounter under these circumstances... well, that's that.

The Albrook equipment was adequate, I guess. I wanted to see what was in Tzen, but I didn't realize that once the crumbling house is triggered you've unable to leave. Since my rules prohibit recruiting Sabin, I'm unable to shop in Tzen.

I could go to Mobliz, but the Stop spell is banned and I can't summon Fenrir, so that's not going to do very much for me. Plus, I would have to beat Phunbaba and Celes has permanently lost access to the Bio spell - actually, everyone has, haven't they?
So, we're going on to Nikeah. I did a bit of shopping including getting two Enhancers and left. Selling all of my belongings in Albrook didn't actually provided an egregious amount of money in the World of Ruin's economy, so Celes couldn't afford Diamond Armor in South Figaro. She could, however, afford some Hermes Sandals - and I'm very thankful for that because I'm not sure how I could win against the game's next boss without these.

Outside of South Figaro, I thought I would be so damn smart to grind where there were Nohrabbits/Desert Hares since they randomly heal the team. These battles were still really tough. Sometimes the Desert Hare healing allowed me to defeat the Cancer/Maliga or other enemies in this area, but it was still hard to pull through and Celes could barely stand up to other enemies. After a short bit I decided I should gauge performance in the next area instead of grinding up to prepare for what's more-or-less an unknown challenge.

The cave and depths of Figaro Castle carry some risk - enemies have some bulk and some nasty tricks like confusion here - but running from everything Celes made it to the Tentacles in okay shape.

This fight was... intense. The odds are stacked against you with no magic, but when you've got Hermes Sandals and an Amulet you're immune to their poison and their slow/grasping effects. It was very hard to keep Edgar alive for any span of time, but Celes did okay. On the first attempt, I gave Celes a Flametongue and had her attack the bottom-left Tentacle to kill it, figuring Edgar could maybe help take out the one that absorbs fire. This approach had... many problems.
Thus, we really had to bet on Celes and use a non-elemental weapon. I experimented with the Rune Blade and its MP-powered criticals but its attack power is so much lower than the Enhancer that it wasn't a good strategy. Celes and Edgar would work together to get one Tentacle down quickly, Edgar would generally die around that point, and then Celes would either use Hi-Potions or attack. Sometimes we'd make progress, and sometimes the Tentacles were just mean. We were taking usually just under 500 damage from Bio and just over 200 damage from Poison, and there was one attempt where three Tentacles used, Bio, Poison, Bio is succession - so unless some very lucky dodges kicked in (which sometimes happened), that wasn't survivable even with full HP.

It probably took 10 attempts and ~60 Hi-Potions, but eventually, it came together.
 
I was so excited! The first thing I needed to happen was for Edgar to "drop trou" as per the very first ban.

Then I realized: Edgar has a shield on. Dexter is banned. Wait. Did Celes have a shield on the whole time?
Oh damn. That's why she had so many lucky dodges.

Augh!

Okay. That sucks. I completely disregarded an important rule, and clearly it had made a difference. I was going to need to try again. I loaded a save from before Figaro Cave, which was also before Celes had won any fights in the WoR (besides maybe a couple of Desert Hares).
Given the struggles I had barely eking out a victory against Tentacles with a shield at level 24, I thought I might need to get to level 30 to make this work. I ended up eventually getting to 29 - a while after realizing that Desert Hares don't even give experience points.
 
I wish there was another strategy I could lean on besides level grinding, but with no espers and severely limited equipment I didn't see myself with other options.

Five levels makes a really big difference in this game! Celes' HP and damage both went up considerably. It's worth a note, actually, that the game still thinks Celes is equipped with Zona Seeker even thought we don't have Zona Seeker, so she's still gaining Magic +2 per level. This is a foible of the save editor, and one that I've chosen to be okay with since, technically, I could've just grinded these levels back in World of Balance (much more easily, I might add!) - but I will fix this at the earliest opportunity.

Anyway: we went back to the Tentacles at level 29. It still wasn't easy and took a couple of attempts, but Celes won.
 
Finally, it was time for the actual, proper, ceremonial pantsing of the king:


We bought Autocrossbow, Drill, and Debilitator - but realized I couldn't use the other tools, since they inflict status ailments - and saved outside of Kohlingen. We'll be recruiting Setzer very soon and then team CES will have their last hurrah.

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