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The Omnithief Chronicles, Part 2
So, we left the Ship Graveyard and are on our way to Carwen.
What?
Alright, fine, we can deal with her first.
The answer was the friends he'd made while training with Bambi's mother before her assassination by Elmer Fudd's half-brother:
Brer Rabbit's cousin, who was a part-time stage magician. Unfortunately, he wasn't a real magician, but he could make kids laugh.
Sally Squirrel and her friends from their flapper days. They could dance hard enough that it'd almost feel like a earthquake if it went on for much longer.
Then there were the bees. Boo'tz never got the full story before Bambi became orphaned, but from what he was told, a man from Italy who worked with aqueducts came upon a grove of magical cherries and mushrooms, and became a feared fighting force all over the world.
All told, Boo'tz's friends from training came through for him in style.
No more Siren. Honestly, with some levels under me this would have been trivial, but I ended up making it harder on myself.
Deaths: Something like 30? If you haven't figured I'm not going to be keeping exceptionally accurate count by now, I reserve the right to laugh at you.
Used strategies: !Released Goblin, !Lance, !Animals
Stand Guard!: 3
So, Carwen.
Carwen is notable for being able to buy more daggers, as well as the hidden Ice Rod that I didn't bother to screenshot.
No one cares about Carwen and I hate the music track that plays here.
North Mountain is where it's at.
North Mountain is home to two things.
First, there's Magissa. She has nothing to steal, annoyingly. She casts offensive magic which hurts, and Drain. Drain sucks.
I died in short order. I decided I needed Elixirs.
This room here has a high encounter rate with Undead Husks and CarNotGonnaBotherRememberingTheGBANameCursers. Both of them drop Elixirs at a rare rate. Now, Boo'tz is an Omnithief, and I am impatient. As far as I'm concerned, grinding for anything is the single greatest foe in anything ever.
Oh, and no, I'm not picking up the map, just to be different.
!Slash here in the SFC version is !Ianuki in the modern parlance. According to rudimentary Googling, it refers to iaijutsu, a Japanese sword-drawing technique. I guess the intent is the wielder focuses so much power into a single sword draw it grants them the ability to instantly kill things. Interestingly, the PS1 translation calls this ability !FDraw. That most likely stands for Fast Draw, an association I wouldn't have guessed without Wikipedia's See Also section. So, that's one mystery I've been wondering about solved.
Also, you're not required to have a katana or even a weapon equipped for this, so clearly Boo'tz has mastered Bushido so much that he can use a samurai technique revolving around drawing a weapon without a weapon. Weeaboo.
Any time I need to grind things, this is how I'll be doing it. Grinding sucks.
Used strategies: !Released Goblin, !Lance, !Animals, !Iainuki
Yes, this does in fact mean that !Iainuki's off the table for the Seal Guardians. Being boring sucks, why do you think I'm using an 85% accurate enemy party kill move to get rid of boring fighting?
Even that's not enough, by the way. 1/16 is way too rare for my tastes, and I stop after the second Elixir. I came up with a plan, you see.
First, !Steal an Ether. I never got the one in Tule or the Pirate Cave because no one ever actually needs an Ether in this game.
Done. Now, to use my Omnithief powers!
Learning will enable me to pick up Blue Magic I can then recast. Notably, this requires me to not have anything else in my secondary slot.
Such as !White.
Or Equip Armor/Shields.
Or anything capable of doing more than 40 damage from the back row.
After multiple tries, I finally knock out the slugs and one of the Headstones without dying.
I snag a pair of shades, hit a stone block until it's just about to die, and feed it some anesthesia.
Perfect.
Unfortunately, blinding a magic user does next to nothing, and being prepared for Forza also does nothing if I don't live until then.
I decide I need some levels, so I go for the other notable feature of North Mountain.
The fantastic view.
Feast your eyes on the Land Above The Sky...
The famed Eastern Abyss...
The Grassland of Improbability...
And the Legendary One Way Cliff...
North Mountain. Book your vacation today. Reserve your North Mountain getaway through our agents and receive a limited edition Dark Matter.
I stopped when I got to level 13. I'm lazy and impatient.
Oh, the walking around the air? It's a glitch in the SFC version that was probably fixed in later releases. There's one tile to the west of the exit from that area that doesn't have its collision set right and you can walk right through it. As far as I can tell there aren't any ill effects other than graphical issues, which makes it both safe and unexciting to experiment with, not unlike an unpopular mind altering drug.
Right, the boss. I still died.
Alright, new plan. If I drain Magissa of MP, then she can't do anything. I've already used !Lance, so what else gets rid of MP?
Sick moves, that's what.
Except it turns out that !Dance will just kill fast anyway. That works!
After an inital death in the back row, I realized I could just move to the front row and kill Magissa faster that way.
So, Boo'tz's legendary dancing skills win the day? Of course they did.
Forza was so ashamed as his lack of style that he killed himself right then and there.
Deaths: Call it 45. I died only a couple of times to Magissa and Forza, but I racked up double digits trying to learn Flash.
Used strategies: !Released Goblin, !Lance, !Animals, !Iainuki, !Dance
Stand Guard!: 3. First boss fight that misses it, actually.
Obligatory laugh at Lenna shot.
So we now have a transportation device that will be promptly forgotten about for a long time come the next plot beat. I go to Tycoon and loot the treasures there. Nothing notable except Boo'tz now has a real katana to go with his imaginary one, although he can't equip it and use his special sword-drawing move at the same time. It's funny because it doesn't make sense.
Walse is mostly unexciting, so have an awkward Mode 7 meteor shot. The exception is the random murder beast in the basement.
Jackanapes as you all know him. He'll always Back Attack you unless you've got the passive to prevent it. He also hurts, hard.
I managed to !Flee before I got killed. Except I then noticed I was out of Potions. Well, might as well go on, I just saved.
Next fight with him was a Preemptive, so that's a !Flee.
The Elven Mantle, a godsend for every character. There's really only five accessories that get any attention in a challenge run. The Elven Mantle, Flame, Coral, and Angel Rings, and the Hermes Sandals. Aside from the specific circumstances where you'll want the rings, this will stay equipped for nearly the entire game. It also has less defense than my Silver Glasses. Remember that.
Third fight with the demon. My new toy kicked in, just in time. That was also the last encounter before I left, so I'm not complaining.
Walse Tower is boring. This entire segment of the game is boring, actually. I love FFV to death, but there's really little of any interest in between the Wind and Water Crystals. Hell, even the boss here is boring.
Garula attacks. When it's under half HP or so, it'll counter attack with more attacks. Sometimes these attacks may be its Special, Rush. Rush does the same amount of damage as a normal attack and applies the HP Leak status that mostly serves to annoy you.
Boo'tz's new weapon and levels. I'm definitely a little overleveled compared to a normal game, although obviously not so for a solo. Level 15 is always when I hit the Ancient Library. Experienced FFV hands know why I can remember that so easily.
Another emulation bug. I could use SNES9x, but then I wouldn't get the chance to laugh at things like this. A literal reading of these screenshots would indicate the crystal only exists in the mind of the redshirt.
Boss time!
Wait, forgot to reequip after climbing up, since the mages cast Sleep and Stop so I just used !Flee. Switching back to !Blue. Never one to let a plan go to waste, Boo'tz is attempting to create a reason for seizure warnings in the innocent nation of Walse.
I'm finding myself dying pretty easily. Even with Flash inflicting Darkness and knocking Garula's hit rate to 25% its usual, I'm getting hit way more than I expected. In fact, I haven't noticed...the...cape...
This is why I normally set my re-equip settings to Empty. But no, I just had to be lazy.
Speaking of laziness, I would rather potentially redo the fight than use an Elixir here.
No, wait, there he goes.
Deaths: 49. I actually counted.
Used strategies: !Released Goblin, !Lance, !Animals, !Iainuki, !Dance, !Blue Magic Flash
Stand Guard!: 4
no lenna didn't you see. the crystal was never there to begin with. we were deceived.
Yes. Let the hate flow through you.
Next time: We get to the good part of the game.