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The Omnithief Chronicles, Part 1

What's a solo Omnithief? Well, he's a solo. He's on his own. Or she. It's all because we can only rename one character. Three fifths of the playable cast are women and yet it's always Bartz who gets billing. Granted, it's because he's around almost all the time, but still.



I'd like to say I'm bucking the trend here, but I'm not. God knows that the names are going to be the only way to distinguish everyone, so I'm not about to have Zerky!, Walter, Mimir, Rock, and Lenna. I mean, I could rename one of the other characters, but that's a pain and a half because of how FFV stores its data.



I mean, it's not that bad, but if I wanted to put effort into things, I'd be working on my summer class work.



And it's funny I bring up the whole distinguishing thing, because mine's going to be easy to pick out. I'm using the RPGe translation of the SFC version. I'm just more used to its look and feel, and since I'm using a Thief, the one important addition to the later versions doesn't really apply. Besides, running faster just means you get into random fights more often. Such is the downside of step based games.



Ah, right. Omnithief. I'm going to be using a solo Thief, with one twist: He has access to all abilities in the game. Everything from !Mix to Find Pits. This seems like it should make things easy. Well, sort of. Thieves have some of the worst equipment choices in the game, and my command ability might as well be a blank. It'll help out a couple of times, and otherwise do nothing for anything difficult. So, I can do nearly anything and equip nearly everything, but only ever one thing at a time. All the while, I'm saddled with mediocre stats in everything but Agility, and let me tell you, Agility's not a stat to be excited about.



So I've got a character who thinks he's all that because he has all this potential at his disposal, that he's going to go so far on his amazing innate talents, but is actually going to stumble because he's nowhere near as awesome as he thinks since none of his potential can really be put into action.



Boo'tz here is a totally original fantasy character. He's a thief so he's super fast, but he also learned to punch from Shaolin monks, while studying all of the sciences and learning to fight with every weapon. Also he's a totally cool wizard who can cast all the spells and light his sword on fire while being a ninja. On top of that he's secretly a druid who can commune with animals and Mother Earth and is totally better than all of you losers.

Oh, and did I mention he was dubbed a Knight of the Round Table by King Arthur himself?



Problem one was getting to the Omnithief state. Unlocking all jobs was a simple matter of an Action Replay code, but there wasn't a nice simple code for the SFC version to hand over all the abilities. Some searching found me a code that would set my current job AP to 999. So, I went and beat up the enemies near the healing spring in the Pirate's Cave until every single job was mastered. This, of course, didn't take long, but I did gain some levels in doing so. So, I resolved to avoid getting a bunch more experience and beelined my way to Wing Raptor.



You might think that, at least for these early bosses, I wouldn't have a challenge. And you'd be right, of course. Sort of. My challenge isn't just to use the Omnithief, my challenge is for Boo'tz to look as stylish as can be. It's not enough for me to win: I want to win with distinction. Every strategy I use needs to be different than the ones before and be interesting, quirky, funny, or at least some form of notable or this run is no different than if I just cheated myself two Chicken Knives and !Rapid Fire. Nothing's off the table as long as it makes a good story.



So, how do I deal with Wing Raptor? There's a hint on this very screen.

Yes, it says Release. If you guessed !Catch and !Release based on that, punch yourself. I mean how exactly?

Well, it's one of Final Fantasy V's little funny easter eggs. The very first enemy in the game (technically not, but whatever), in an area you never have reason to travel back to and fight things. How do you reward people who go out of their way to experiment?



You give them the biggest damn laugh you can.



For reference, Wing Raptor has 250 HP.

Deaths: 0
Used strategies: !Released Goblin

By the way, basically every single boss has Boo'tz say "Stand Guard!". I forget what the GBA translation does, and if it's as not-varied.

Stand Guard!: 1



Karlabos is pretty simple, in much the same was as a bomb in your face is simple. I racked up a dozen deaths here, trying to find something interesting to kill with. I mean, I could have just tried Bolt or Bolt Sword, but that's boring, so I didn't.

Eventually, I figured it out.

Karlabos will kill through one of two methods. Either he uses !Tentacle/!Feeler multiple turns in a row until you die, or you get hit by Tailscrew and then Fight for a two hit kill.

Luckily--and I swear to god I will almost never say this again--the Thief's speed came in handy.

Boo'tz is fast enough that even if Karlabos took a turn right after him, he'd get to act first, provided I was quick on the draw. Now I need to use that. What's an ability that can heal Boo'tz? Well, there's a bunch, but I also want to win. Therefore, I need to attack and heal at the same time.



!Lance, as it's called now. All conventional damage formulae are ((Attack - Defense) * Multiplier), or ((A-D)*M) for short. M is based off of your Strength multiplied by your level (which is then divided by 128) for most physicals, while you use Magic Defense and the Magic Power stat for magical attacks. Notably, in magical attacks, the product of Magic Power and Level is divided by 256, resulting in a slower growing damage formula.

All of the multiplier formulas have a constant added to them, for a bunch of logical reasons that I won't go into here. Physical attacks have a constant of 2, while magical attacks use a constant of 4.



What all of that nonsense means is that even though 8*19/256 comes to 0 as far as a computer is concerned, I still get to do a whole bunch of damage. It also means that !Lance starts out really nice right now, and will certainly not be worth a slot as Elixirs and better methods of attacking become available, making this the perfect time to use it.

As long as he doesn't stunlock me, which is an issue every character has to risk, Karlabos can't kill me. Sucks to be him. Unlike other characters, Boo'tz didn't even need to level up for this boss. I'm sure that'll be fine in the long run, right?

Deaths: 6
Used strategies: !Released Goblin, !Lance
Stand Guard!: 2




I'm a lazy old fart (at 24) and so I don't even feel like configuring other emulators when I don't have to. Coincidentally, ZSNES is also a lazy old fart. There's a button to enable and disable the "old graphics engine" which I guess cheated accuracy in a different way for transparency and such. On, the fog is visible while Boo'tz is not, but off Boo'tz appears normally while the fog has trouble with the water. It's worth a chuckle, I guess. It's something to do with the multiple layers of transparency, I guess, since it's some rooms with both water and above ground areas that this happens, as shown above.



Far more vicious foes await. Such as 1998 fan translations. Look, I don't think the SFC version is superior, I'm just lazy. I fully admit that Galuf's line is far better in other versions.

Let's not forget "Me private shame", of course.



More importantly, Siren.



I kind of lost count of how many times I died against Siren. Each ability was tried at least once or twice, so I'm going to conservatively say 25 or so.

I was lost here. Why was I dying so much? I don't remember other people having a big problem with Siren, and it's not like there's an obvious quirk I'm missing.

Sulla posted:

I took Jesse up to Level 14, and accumulated 5 Elixirs in the process.


Right. Five more levels of HP and Elixirs. That would be a useful thing, I'm sure.



Well, dammit, I'm going to keep trying. I honestly kind of wished Pharmacology had worked, but it just didn't kill fast enough.



!Chakra was also doing hilariously well in not dying, but then I got put to sleep and there went that.



!Throw was the ticket, though. Look at that!

Except I only had two Broad Swords.



So I threw an extra Dagger. It wasn't enough.



So I chucked the Knife as well.



This was it. Boo'tz's last stand, where he tosses his weapon in a last ditch dramatic effort to seize victory.



Hey, it worked for Legolas, so it has to work for our plucky Original Character Do Not Steal!



Besides, dramatic clutch victories always happen for the hero! It's like, a rule, or something.

By the way, I've done 540 damage so far. Do you know how much HP Siren has?



Don't know off the top of your head? Neither did I.



It's 900.



Fuck Legolas.