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This is a half-blind LP! I am going to bring in research about FFV only when it's necessary for me to get over hurdles in this solo run. I'm going to talk about stuff with a lot of assumptions and guesses based solely on observations. This is partly for the challenge, partly in the interest of time, and partly . Feel free to correct me after things come up, as there are a bunch of people ITT that are way more knowledgeable about this game than me. I don't care if I learn stuff by reading people's corrections, so don't worry about that.

Walker, Texas Ranger Lever, GO



Ranger, Part Five: Walker, Texas Fremen

After some soul-searching (read, "FAQ look-ups"), I decided to go back and kill Liquid Flame again (and again and again...) to get the Flame Bow. It has a higher attack power than the Main Gauche, which isn't a surprise, and it doesn't proc Fira. It renders all of its attacks fire-element as well as physical. That's way more valuable to me against Byblos.

So why didn't I get it the first second time fighting Liquid Flame? In short, I didn't think it would matter quite this much. With a solo run and with the evasion of the Main Gauche, I expect to be using that more than the bow for a lot of boss battles. That, and I killed Liquid Flame seven times and failed to do so in the tornado form, so I failed to get the bow. I made a calculated risk based on my impatience and my need for the bow, and I thought the bow wouldn't be as necessary as it is against Byblos. This is my first solo run of FFV, and perhaps it is showing more now than ever, and I'll probably make less of these mistakes in the future. I'm still flying blind other than the insights I am getting form other LPs ITT, so I'll probably miss some more junk in the future.

So it's back to Liquid Flame to kill him six more times (no deaths for Walker! smile: and I finally get the damn bow. Then it's onto Karnak to get the Main Gauche and, hopefully, the Ribbon. I had enough time for both even when doubling-back last time, so I get the Ribbon in an easy fight made easier with the Flame Bow, and then I get a bunch of assholes guarding the Main Gauche again. It was always that same Sorcerer/Gigas/Hound combo before, which is why it took so damn long, but this time it's different. Have I mentioned yet that bows don't care about rows on either side of the combat?

There are a lot of benefits to bows. It lets Walker sit in the back row again, which might offset the loss of the Main Gauche's evasion. It also ignores the opponent's row, so it lets you snipe jerks in the back without worrying about losing precious actions doing half damage. They probably have terrible hit %, but with !Aim, I don't care a tinker's fart about hit % or evasion. Someone mentioned a little while back that Byblos has 30% evasion. Who knew? Certainly not Walker.

Hey, the Ranger kind of sucks, so I have to take what I can get for perks.

I mosey on back to Walse to get the Elf Mantle. With that and the Flame Bow in hand, I decide to try my luck with Shiva while I'm in her neighborhood. The problem with her before was the sheer number of attacks between her Blizzara and her minions. This time, I can one-shot the minions, so I pick off two of them and leave the other to the Elf Mantle and my back row buffer. The quicker I move onto Shiva, the less times I have to roll the dice looking for Nightingale to counter her Blizzara damage. I'm dealing enough damage with the bow to kill her in three attacks. So, with two timely Nightingales and a few attacks, she and her minions are slush in one attempt.

Shiva
Walker Level: 22
Deaths: 0

Then it's back to the Library of the Ancients. I'm level 23 again by the time I get to Ifrit, whom I am able to kill just as I did before, after two deaths.



Yeah, no kidding, buddy.

Ifrit (Again)
Walker Level: 23
(More) Deaths: 2

The battles in the library itself are a joke with the bow, since I can one-shot everything instead of two-shot everything. 80% of the time, the opponent doesn't get an action before it meets the business end of a fire arrow. I would level grind here, but I don't want to because of Lv 5 Death, I don't need to (hopefully), and the XP here is not so hot.

Speaking of hot, let's set a book on fire:



code:

Byblos (Creature)
HP: 3600
MP: 1000
Weak to Fire.
Absorbs Water, Air, Earth, Holy, Poison, Lightning, Ice.
Vulnerable to Poison, Blind, Paralyze, Berserk, Slow.

AI Script:
{Thread,Hammer,Fight}
{Fight,Charm,Wind Slash}
{Hammer,Fight,Thread}
{Sonic Wave,Wind Slash,Fight}
React:Death  &  React:Magic:Ifrit{
     No Interrupt{
          Display Text: Byblos:  I, Ifrit...
          Display Text: 'You fools!  The seal...
          Display Text: 'But the seal of my master
          Display Text: 'Still lives!!!
          Nothing
          }
     }
React:Death{
     No Interrupt{
          Display Text: Byblos:  Uggh!!!
          Display Text: 'This is the end....
          Display Text: 'But the seal of my master
          Display Text: 'Still lives!!!
          Nothing
     }
React:HP < 800  &  HP Damage{
     {Drain,Drain,Nothing}
     }
React:Physical{
     {Armor,Nothing,Nothing}
     }
React:Magic{
     {Toad,Nothing,Nothing}
     }


The Flame Bow and the back row ironically doesn't directly fix the problems Walker had with Byblos before. I still don't have a solution to Slow, Confuse, Discord, or Protect. What it does do is make the fight shorter, so the fewer times Byblos gets to go through his cycle, the fewer times he has to use Discord and such. The back row makes his physical attack weaker than Wind Slash and almost a free turn for Walker. That's about it. I'm still going to need a lot of luck. Walker is dealing about 900 damage with the bow, which is enough to kill Byblos in four attacks (with a random animal inevitably thrown in there while I'm spamming for Nightingale). The animal damage should get him just over that 3300 HP (surely that won't be a problem...). Protect and Discord effectively half my damage, but that just means one more action unless he manages to get both running.

On my first try I get him on the ropes quickly, as he fails to get up Protect until after the third attack. I get luck with his choices of attacks and he uses Magic Hammer three times. I deliver a knockout punch that should deal just enough to kill him, but then I forget about this:

code:

React:HP < 800  &  HP Damage{
     {Drain,Drain,Nothing}
     }


It deals about 200 damage to Walker, which kills him. It also means that the next time around, I need to both keep my HP above 200 when I go for the kill, but also kill him by more than 200. It's going to mean an extra attack, and probably a bit more luck. In short, Byblos is a piece of shit.

But things stay lucky. I die only two more times before I get a Preemptive Strike on Byblos, hit him twice before he gets up Protect, and I'm off and running. He doesn't open with Web and two of his first few actions are physical attacks that the Elf Mantle evades. The last bit is a little touch-and-go lucking into Nightingale to keep my HP up and hoping he doesn't undo that while I wait to finish him off. Then, finally:







Byblos
Walker Level: 23
Deaths: 3

Byblos' death gets me Mid, Mid gets me Cid, and Cid gets me the Fire Ship. I tool around like a moron that doesn't remember a damn thing about this game, because I am a moron who doesn't remember a damn thing about this game. The fights at sea get me to level 24 and get me more sweet, sweet ABP. I try my hand at Ramuh, but his Thundara does 2/3 of Walker's HP, and Nightingale can't get me up enough to survive a second, so that might be a bridge too far at this point. I'll revisit him later. I go to some more stupid places (that aren't Texas) before I make my way to the Crescent Island.



Thanks, dickhead.

Shortly after this, FFV's bizarre pace and sequence of events starts to come back to me. I remember only a few specifics of the plot, and what I do remember amounts to:

A planet blows up or vanishes or whatever.
There's another planet, which also might (probably) blow up.
At some point, both planets mash together. (?)
You fight Gilgamesh 5,000 times for no reason.
You fight XDETH about 1,000 times, for that matter.
At some point, Galuf is replaced by a teenage girl.
The game follows the tried-and-true plot arc that ancient Greek playwrights all the way to modern novelists use: Exposition > Conflict > Climax > resolution Conflict > Climax > Conflict > Climax > Climax > Conflict > Climax > Resolution.

So, the game just gave me a boat just to turn around and give me an airship Black Chocobo. Not even a dungeon or boss in between. Had I not wasted time tooling around on a boat, I could have had the Black Chocobo just a couple minutes after the Fire Ship. Anyway,



FINALLY, A CHANCE TO BE A HUNTER RANGER! (I remember the job being called "Hunter" in the PS1 port, but I may just be senile.)

Speaking of which:



Band and Ranger: two jobs covered in Chocobo barf. How apropos.

I tool around a bit more with the Black Chocobo to visit some more places. There isn't much for Walker to stock up on. Tents and Ethers are cheap at Lix, but Walker doesn't need MP right now. I pick up the Lightning Bow and Ice Bow to add to my golf club full of elemental bows. I also pick up a Mage Masher, just in case. That's the most exciting thing I find in a half hour of dicking around all over the world map. Oh, that and I get killed twice by Skull Eaters in a cave.

So, finally, we're back to the library to meet with Cid and Mid.



Arrakis. Desert Planet.



Well, they don't call it "Arrakis, Jungle Planet."



A Stillsuit, probably.



Well, we don't have whatever secret Tleilaxu crap he's using, so we're going to have to call Shai-Hulud.



Yeah, Galuf Duncan Idaho. What's the worst that could happen?



It's called a Thumper, Cid Yueh.



Typical Imperial-centric view, Duncan. Eventually you'll see the value of the Fremen's ways. It just might take hundreds of lifetimes, so hang in there.



SHAI-HULUD. HE COMES.



code:

Sandworm (Desert, Heavy)
HP: 3000
Vulnerable to Slow.

AI Script:
{Fight,Quicksand,Quicksand}
Condition:??{
     Change Target:Self
     ??
     }
React:Magic:No-Damage Magic{
     Fight
     }

...

Hole
HP: 3000
MP: 10125
Vulnerable to Slow.

AI Script:
Nothing
React:Physical{
     Demi
     }


The Great Maker is a simple fight for Walker Maud'Dib. All it does it attack and use Quicksand, and the latter only does about 60 damage + an HP leak effect. The attack does about 80. With Muad'Dib in the back row with an Elf Mantle Weirding Way, Shai-Hulud's physical attack isn't dangerous. With Muad'Dib doing about 450 damage with any elemental bow, all I have to do is not hit a hole by accident, and maybe get a tiny bit of help from Nightingale. My hope is to not have to use Nightingale at all, since if I get any other animal friend besides Nightingale or Mysidian Rabbit, the Holes are going to fuck me (the irony of that statement is deliberate, yes). And, as it turns out, the goofy timing of Shai-Hulud moving around makes me hit a hole once when it moves between when I enter an !Aim command and when it executes, so I have to go to !Animals once to heal. I get Nightingale, and the rest is history.





Sandworm
Walker's Level: 25
Deaths: 0

Work's bearing down on me this week and next, so the next update will be in a week or two. Soul Cannon is rapidly approaching, so Walker has a big challenge still in front of him. Maybe by then He'll have mastered Ranger and I can start playing with some fun Omni-Ranger options.

Walker's Current Level: 25
Total Deaths: 40
Animal Friends: 5