Off-site Screenshot test poster

Omni-Dragoon: Flight 3: Lancelot

Surprise! We're here and we're awesome. Lenna doesn't want to hang around in a boring old castle being eye candy for foreign dignitaries, so she's going to bugger off again. Not before a good night's sleep, though.

Also this.
(Obligatory shocked-but-not-really-expression-since-we-knew-this-already)

: Yep! He's not getting it back, though.

: We'll take good care of it, right, Jordan?

: (450 gil? What a rip! Might as well not even- crap!) Uh, sure we will, Lenna. Yep, all about the treasuring of family heirlooms.

Family matters attended to, Jordan forgets about the king again. After dragon-riding for a while, we come across this place.

Jordan sells off a bunch of useless gear (aside from the Healing Staff since Lenna was looking) and loads on up. Then we head to Walse to warn the king about how the crystals are in danger (oh, right, we were doing that, too!)

But first, being JRPG heroes, we look the place bare.

Our first stop is in the basement, against these jack~~anapes~~asses. They always hit you with a back attack, as far as I can tell, but even planning ahead and switching to the front row doesn't help much, as you can see. They also have a defense of 50, so this early on, physical attacks aren't going to do, well, jack.

That said, I endure each fight, run like hell, healing up between fights to get...

This bad boy. Jordan wants this nifty little accessory for a buncha reasons. He likes the agility boost, he likes the magic defense even more, and he loves the 25% evasion chance. He'll even like the magic boost, for reasons I'll get into shortly. And the defense loss doesn't hurt him at all given his already impressive defense and spot in the back row. And it's fashionable! It's perfect and stays on Jordan for a good while.

One really cool thing I discovered in this run is that even in the air and alone, you can keep trying to run. This is a great way to extend your life when you're trying to run for it.

So, I decide to try out Shiva, next. I slap on HP+30% to try and last long enough, but at this point it's a bit short of the task. Jordan has about 750 HP after the boost, and Shiva, as shown, hits like a frozen truck. The Ice Commanders only hit for about 25 damage, assuming they even hit through Jordan's shield and mantle. But that's still potentially up to 250 damage per round, so Jordan's got about 3 turns to manage it.

He'll need far more than that to bring down her 1500 HP though, especially since he's still got that damn Dagger. I could probably get by with Elixir healing, but fuck that, I'd probably need my whole stock. Simpler to come back later. Let's go pass on that crystal warning.

Christ, don't you people ever watch movies?! Why not just start exclaiming nothing can go wrong, or that you'll marry your lover when you get back from this mission?

MORE METEORS IN JORDAN'S AIRSPACE! God!

The king heads off and we follow him to the tower where the water crystal resides.

I WARNED YOU ABOUT THOSE CLICHES

I TOLD YOU DOG

Stupid wyverns, always stealing the Dragoons' jobs!

Anyway, Garula time. As everyone who's done a physical job against him so far knows, Garula is crap against heavy armor classes, and Jordan only makes things ~~worse~~ better by sitting in the back row.

In fact, he's so crap that I stick Equip Axes on Jordan and give him an axe I bought back in Walse town for funsies. The damage varies a bit, but it can score some respectable damage. Might've been better to stick with the Dagger, but eh.

Final Level: 17 (Or was it 18? Maybe even still 16? I forgot to write it down, sorry.)
Deaths: 0

Yeah, this wasn't much of a challenge. Moving on.

Oh, look at that, we're Too Late.

I SEE YOU, YOU LITTLE BASTARD, YOUR TIME WILL COME TOO

Sea Dragon!

Sea Dragon, nooooooo!

Jordan proceeds to jump across a couple of continents. From inside a meteor. Don't ask me how he did it.

(Also you have no idea how many attempts I needed to get that stupid middle shot)

The trip to Karnak is rather annoying, since enemies keep getting higher and higher HP and Jordan is STILL stuck with that Dagger. He goes to the weapon shop to upgrade to a Mythril Dagger, and gets arrested for trying to shoplift one. Thankfully they don't think to take it from him. Bwa ha ha.

Anyway, Cid is a bro and helps us get out in exchange for community service. We'll serve our time by SAVING THE WHOLE DAMN KINGDOM. We start by working our talents and loading up on drugs.

Even with a shiny new Mythril Dagger, Jordan is taking far too long to kill anything.

I find a quick way to fix that. Now he's back to killing most everything in one shot, with the exception of those Trappers that show up if you kill a Defeater last. They can Stop you and hit pretty hard, so they suck and I try to avoid them. I get through most of the ship, but as I near the boss, I notice I'm about 10 ABP from Dragoon Level 2. So I grind a bit (I don't necessarily have to, since I have all abilities, but I figure I might as well have this next skill legitimately first) and get...

This. This is the only not-innate skill in the Dragoon list (last one will be Equip Lances) and the next step to making a Dragoon effectively immortal. When used...

It summons a fucking dragon spirit thing.

Which drains both HP and MP from the target.

Now for a bit of :sperg:. !Lance (known in other translations and games as !DragonSword, Dragon, and Lancet) simulates the effects of the actual Drain and Osmose spells, packing Drain's normal spell power of 45 and half of Osmose's (!Lance absorbs MP with a power of 4, compared to Osmose's 8). Now, some of you might think those amounts are a bit low for such spell powers. Why is that? Well, let's look at the damage formula.

Attack = Spell Attack + (0..(Spell Attack/8))
M = (Level*Magic Power)/256 + 4
Defense = Magic Defense
Damage = (Attack - Defense) * M. Max Damage = 9999.

That's for the Drain section. Osmose is mostly the same, except the possible boost to Attack is (Spell Attack/32) instead, which means no boost at all (even if FFV didn't truncate decimals, 1/8 is low enough to be virtually nil) and Defense is (Magic Defense / 32) instead. Now, what's the most important phrase in that formula?

Yep, Magic Power. It's magic-based, which means our magically-stunted Dragoon friend gets much less out of it than magic classes. At level 21 (which is where I was at the end of this update) and assuming the target has no Magic Defense, Dragoon Jordan with an Elven Mantle will drain for 225-250 HP and 20 MP. A Black Mage Jordan (who has a natural Magic stat of 56) of the same level and no other boosts besides Elven Mantle, will drain 360-400 HP and 32 MP (and remember, that MP drain on !Lance is half power, so a Black Mage casting Osmose will recover 64 MP).

However, all of this does NOT mean that !Lance is useless in Jordan's hands. It's far more efficient for healing than Potions, and he can drain MP too, which I'm going to get some use out of.

Oh, and for the record? Despite being magic-based, it's considered a physical move. Which means Omniscient will counter with Return if you use it against him (yes, I tried it).

Anyway, we find the Queen and HOLY FUCK MY EYEBALLS ARE MELTING

Liquid Flame. He likes his Blaze, damage shown here.

He's got some Magic Defense, unfortunately. Human and Whirlwind forms both have 15 M.Defense, so !Lance isn't quite as effective as it was against the mobs on the way here (the MP drain works just fine though, since M.Defense gets divided by 32 first and thus gets dropped to 0 by virtue of truncation).

The end result: we drain his MP dry. Bwa ha ha!

Well, not entirely. As far as I can tell, each form has its own MP pool. The human form has 100 and probably won't drain all the way considering all the shifting forms (also I'm not sure if Blaze even costs MP). Hand form has 30, so one !Lance and his initial Fira counter will lave him dry. Whirlwind form has 50 and will burn (hurr) right through it in short order.

Each form also has a different special attack. Human's Rush will ignore defense, Hand's Ray will paralyze, and Whril's Critical will deal 150% normal damage.

I forgot to take a screenshot of !Lancing the Hand form though, but he has even more Magic Defense at 30, so I go back to !Jump for that form. It's not a tough battle with !Lance keeping me healed, but it takes a while to burn through that 3000 HP of his ~200 at a time.

Level 21
Deaths: 0

Next, we have to get the hell out of Dodge, er, Karnak.

Oh look, !Lance doesn't give any fucks about Toad either!

I make sure to grab the important chests, foremost among them this.

I also prioritize nabbing this for increased damage and evasion. And with the former point in mind, I make sure to grab a couple of Elixirs too (and of course, I get the unguarded 2000 gil chests).

Finally, we encounter the disguised Iron Claw. Rather than deal with Death Claw (probably could've gotten around it with Equip Ribbon, but I couldn't be bothered), I !Lance and !Jump him before killing most of his currs, so he dies without transforming (I mistimed the death fade shot, but you can tell from the timers that the last one is just after he died).

Next time, we finally achieve full Dragoon regalia and take to even more skies.