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In case you've forgotten, thanks to a fuck up on my part we need to make a full round trip to Narshe and back to fix our party before progressing. That sucks, but let's try and find a silver lining, shall we?
For one, since we already know that all the enemies along the way are piss easy, this gives us an easy opportunity to squeeze in some extra experience and start learning spells before moving on to potentially more dangerous pastures.
Somehow I still manage to get Goten killed at one point, though. 
Backtracking also makes for a good excuse to stop in Kohlingen and upgrade Goten's weapon, now that we're not quite so strapped for cash. It's not a huge boost, but it's something at least.
Nothing else notable happens on the way to Narshe, but before we take off again I decide to take another stab at this chest, newly armed with the raw power of BK-201's flare.
After one false start due to forgetting about their innate reflect...
Much better. However, Jettoes have one last fuck you up their sleeve:
Their magic defense is insanely high. This is the damage from Aoi's first aurabolt. Flare still does decent damage, but we don't have the MP restoratives on hand to keep spamming it for much longer.
Surprisingly, the solution turns out to be bio. The initial damage is miniscule, of course, but the ticks from... poison? Sap? Whichever status it inflicts, are much more significant.
They also escalate as time goes on, apparently. Is that normal for FF6? I honestly have no idea.
I was fully prepared to restart one more time with this knowledge in hand, but incredibly, thanks to a combination of regen and enough defense that the counters aren't instantly fatal, BK-201 barely manages to pull out the win.
Our prize for surviving the ordeal? Two drainers. 
They're a slight upgrade over the thunder blade on paper, but it also means dealing with all the dumb bullshit surrounding draining attacks in this game. Even so, healing is hard enough to come by right now that I let Gilga hold on to one for a while.
Anyway, now that we're leaving for real I'm swapping Cell back in. I maybe would've considered giving them a break had I not screwed up party selection in the first place, but we've got another long walk ahead of us and there's still a couple key lores that I'm after.
So of course we learn literally nothing new on the way back to Jidoor. Oh well, opera time!
Not sure how you can tell underneath all the cloaks, but you do you, Impresario.
Been a while since we've done one of these! That leaves Terra, Sabin, Strago, and Mog as the sprites still unaccounted for, I believe.
Moving on, right before reaching the opera house our luck turns, and we manage to pick up both remaining lores I was looking for in the same battle. Mighty Big Guard needs no introduction, but if you're not familiar with ForceField, I don't blame you. I believe the only enemy you can learn it from normally is one of the Warring Triad. You know, the penultimate bosses of the entire game.
Force field picks an element at random and completely nullifies that element for everyone in the battle. This isn't cumulative iirc, so casting it a second time will overwrite the first one. It's the sort of thing that's pretty pointless in FF6 proper because, well, there's nothing left to use it on after you get it, if you get it at all. Get rid of that constraint, though, and it suddenly becomes much more useful. You'd be surprised at the number of fights where our best strategy is going to end up being to sandbag until force field hits whatever element the boss is spamming.
So yeah, this probably marks the end of R-Lore spam for the run. I can't think of anything important that we're still missing, and while I can't check for sure without Iria around, I feel like our collection is getting close to complete, so the odds of learning anything new at this point are pretty slim.
Obligatory inclusion of this line.
Sadly, the lack of sprite replacements in this version of the randomizer means the opera doesn't have much to offer us, contentwise. The color pallets aren't even all that weird, chocobos notwithstanding.
Here's Aoi-as-Celes-as-Maria, at least. 
Okay, the bright blue western resistance fighters are pretty good, I'll admit.
But enough of that, it's time for some actual gameplay.
No time for fancy tricks against these guys. Luckily they're fairly unremarkable and go down easily to a few fight commands.
I also switch Gilga back to the thunder blade at this point, primarily because I thought I saw drainer doing absolute shit for damage even with plenty of HP missing. Looking back at my footage though, the attack definitely did in fact bring Gilga back up to full, so who knows what was going on in my brain.
Oh, and for some reason all the encounters were either pincers or back attacks. Not sure offhand if it's just a coincidence or if "always back attacks" is a flag that enemies can be randomized into having. ...Actually, it probably is, considering Phantom Train and Zombie King Behemoth.
Anyway, Ultros.
He's... kind of a pushover, honestly? His only threatening move is tentacle, which hits hard, but Gilga hits harder.
Meanwhile, he wastes a bunch of turns on level 3 muddle, which none of our characters are the right level for, and fire, which two of them are immune to thanks to red jackets.
Ultros does have a couple annoying traits. For one, he inflicts imp, a status we currently have no way to reverse. This cuts Gilga's damage output down to about a third, which is... fine. They're still contributing the most out of the team.
He also absorbs both holy (the element on the kaiser knuckles) and fire, not that the latter really matters, because much like the only other significant fight in the update so far, Ultros' magic defense is off the charts. All of this put together means that Goten is pretty much dead weight once they're done spreading regen around.
Still, none of that actually makes Ultros dangerous, and he's even nice enough to turn Gilga back eventually. We smack him around for a while until he peaces out, leaving behind the greatest reward of all time. 
Do you think the Impresario ever actually comes up with a part 2? ...I guess his window of opportunity is pretty narrow before the World of Ruin happens, but he could always revisit it after the end of the game.
It's more likely than you think!
I like to imagine that instead of Edgar's Cell's special coin, this is just the two gil that Ultros dropped hastily glued together.
Low key one of the most iconic lines in the game imo.
We made it! Could just go straight to Vector, of course, but let's see the sights, shall we?
None of these towns have much in the way of hidden items or other points of interest, so this is mostly just gonna be a quick rundown of all the shops. I did find this vanilla clock, though!
The big standout here is probably the relic shop, but there's something to take note of everywhere. I don't think I bought any consumables at this point, but it's good to know that all the basics are covered since we just lost access to all previous shops. Weapons and armor are mostly stuff we've either already seen or can't really use, but there are a couple new things that I'll get to in a second. As for the relics, buyable wall rings and earrings are very tempting. It's just a shame they're so expensive.
The true knight is much more reasonably priced though, so I pick one up, only to discover that it's... kind of garbage? Still, it could potentially be useful if we end up in a situation where one character's armor selection just completely outclasses the rest of the party.
Circling back around, there's one piece of armor I wanted to check out. Sadly, the bard's hat is enough of a stat downgrade that I don't think the extra mp is worth it, not on Aoi at least. Could be good on BK-201 the next time they're in the party, though.
While messing around with equipment, I notice two things. One, apparently the coronet also comes with the green beret's hp boost (note that Aoi isn't at full right now). And two, nobody's been wearing the tiger mask, which means Gilga could have been doing even more damage.
Speaking of Gilga, I also pick up an epee for them. I'm guessing this actually comes out to a slight DPS loss on average after factoring in spell procs, but not having to worry about elemental resistances is nice.
That's it for Albrook. The walk to Maranda is fairly uneventful, with only one new encounter. Jees are... amusing, if nothing else. Their hp is so low that they die to a single fight command, they have innate sap, and they're extremely prone to exploding. Essentially, they're ticking time bombs that get less dangerous the longer they tick, and they aren't that dangerous to start with.
Oh right, this is a new gameplay session, so I've noticed my error with the drainer at this point. There's going to be a lot of micromanaging of Gilga's equipment going forward.
Maranda's shops are full of overpriced armor and useless weapons. That bard's hat is twice what we just paid for it! I do have a feeling the hawk eye might be good, but nobody we have can use it and I'm not about to drop that much cash just to sate my curiosity.
What I do drop cash on after selling some junk is a gold shield, for one very specific reason. Previous junk selling has left us with only one buckler in our inventory, which up to this point has been the only shield either Cell or Aoi can equip. That means one of them has been going shieldless this whole time, but no more! And now we're done with Maranda.
More new enemies! These guys don't do anything interesting this time, but future encounters reveal that they know white wind. It'd be annoying, if they didn't die twice over to a single aurabolt.
Unwedibs, on the other hand, are a fucking menace.
For one, they also love exploding, and unlike jees they have enough hp to make it sting. (I'd already hit this one a few times)
They also know aqua rake, which is still a bit more than we can reliably handle. At least we're not trying to tank it with a solo character anymore?
Oddly enough, this is a situation where the "W" in W-Aurabolt ends up being incredibly relevant. With Aoi's current stats, the first aurabolt doesn't kill 100% consistently, but that little bit of extra damage from the second one is always enough to finish the job.
Well, it wasn't pretty, but we made it. The one nice thing about unwedibs is that they have revivifies as a guaranteed drop. Zombie is one of the more annoying status effects to deal with, and I don't recall offhand if we've seen them for sale yet, so this is a welcome find.
The question now is this: do we dip into our limited supply of healing items to get everyone back on their feet, or push on and hope we don't run into any more of them? I opt for the latter, mainly due to momentarily forgetting that tents exist.
Welp.
Fortunately I saved right after leaving Maranda, so very little progress was lost.
Here's the ...pearl wind I mentioned earlier.
Another brutal encounter. This is about where I start to cotton on to the fact that exploder is a counter. So uh, nobody except Aoi is allowed to attack going forward.
It's also when I remember that tents are a thing. 
...Okay, in my defense it was still possible up to this point that they only countered fight commands.
One small mercy: unwedibs only have enough mp for a single aqua rake.
It's even enough to get us through the fight without anyone dying! 
Mercifully, that's the last we see of them before reaching Tzen. I think I've actually included screenshots from every unwedib encounter thus far, which is wild to think about.
Tzen is somehow even more of a bust than Maranda. Buyable running shoes would be neat if we weren't already swimming in them, but that's about it. I pick up some green cherries and literally nothing else.
The final leg of our continental tour is short enough that nothing of note happens.
First things first, gotta unlock the free healing.
Now for the shops. I pick up another marginal upgrade for Goten, but decide not to worry about the tiara for now. That fire rod might also be good to keep in mind for later, because I believe that gives us places to buy all three basic elements. Rod breaking may not be as powerful here as it is in FF5, but it can still come in handy.
With that out of the way, let's head straight to the dungeon.
Gonna be honest, I'm not really a fan. This place is far too much of a pain in the ass to navigate for its own good. The music does slap though.
Speaking of pains in the ass, say hi to our first encounter.
See those green numbers peeking out from behind the UI? So glad I invested in those poison claws.
Algotifores are ultimately pretty harmless, though. It's the zinnisties that you really have to watch out for. Problem one: they're one of a few enemies that have retained the high defense that this dungeon is known for in vanilla.
Problem two: ice 2. They do die to a single aurabolt, but there's only one of Aoi and two of them.
We sure are off to a great start!
To make matters worse, our healing situation still leaves a lot to be desired. I just burned through all of our tonics getting everyone back to vaguely reasonable hp.
To help take the pressure off, I swap Aoi to Kirin, seeing as they've learned pretty much everything of value from Stray. Still, this isn't ideal, because any turns Aoi spends setting up partywide regen are turns not spent eliminating priority targets.
Maybe Goten can use some magic to help ou- fuckin' auto-reflect, man? Also even single targeting a zinnisty would take at least two casts to kill, so that's not really speeding things up at all.
This time Aoi dies.
The first of several times I accidentally take a one way path before getting all the loot on the other side.
Doubling back nets us a great relic for our current situation, and also a useless weapon. Not only is this one less person Goten needs to cast regen on manually, the cure ring also rolled some elemental immunites! Fire and... I wanna say that's earth?
Speaking of useless weapons...
Oh hey, different enemies! ProtoArmor is technically a boss somewhere, I guess?
It's also got a new piece of equipment as a steal. Neat!
Its tek laser is pretty weak, as is its magic defense apparently. That's significantly more damage than aurabolt's been doing to anything else in here.
Flochews are a very interesting enemy. First off, they can use fenix downs! This actually can target dead enemies, though it takes a while for me to see it happen.
Second, they absorb holy, which is annoying. Fortunately they aren't one of the high defense enemies, but it still takes a couple people ganging up on one to take it down.
They also have this draining attack that's just incredibly weak for some reason. This one's at full health obviously, but even nearly dead I've never seen it do more than about 50 damage.
So far all of this is no big deal, but if you leave flochews alive too long they eventually start throwing shit at you. Throw's damage formula is weirdly deadly when you're on the receiving end of it, so this is to be avoided if at all possible.
Here's a look at TackMirror's pitiful damage output. This guy literally dies to the next attack.
That diamond shield we nicked off the proto armor is a decent upgrade for Aoi, and only Aoi. Guess we didn't need to buy the gold shield after all!
Oops, left treasure behind again.
So uh, you know how I said we want to kill flochews quickly? Turns out that's easier said than done when there's five of them.
The only nice thing I'll say about this encounter is that it's the one time where there's no real opportunity cost to Aoi casting Kirin.
Yeah, fuck this shit, I'm outta here.
We're essentially out of healing items at this point, so all we can really do now is hope that Goten can run away from every fight.
Oh fuck off! 
...Oh. Huh. This is fine, actually. Sure, why not, I'll take some more free running shoes.
Even with no real danger though, the fight still finds a way to piss me off. Plyi paces absorb poison and are immune to holy, forcing Goten to go all the way back down to the mithril claws.
Goten does manage to escape one more fight afterwards, but uh, you can't run from a pincer attack, rip.
Okay, new plan. Time to grind.
Two things happen in the middle of that grinding session. First, I realize I never checked the shop on the Blackjack. I think this might be the only place we can get tents right now?
Second, we run into a new encounter. I wasn't recording video while grinding, so you'll have to make do with whatever screenshots I was able to grab in the moment. Don't worry, you haven't missed much; the most notable thing about it is that the orchdu is weak to holy.
Anyway, what we really need more than levels is money, so we can stock up on enough healing items to avoid running out of gas halfway through the dungeon. Fortunately we have means other than grinding to raise funds, which speeds up the process. Using the future knowledge that there's more coming our way, we can safely dip into our surplus of running shoes. In all honesty we could probably sell most of the extras and be fine; it's a long time before we need to outfit multiple parties at once again. Still, I like knowing that I could theoretically equip the entire roster, even if there's no reason to.
...Yeah, this should be enough. The fenix downs might seem like overkill, but remember, this needs to last us through not only the dungeon but also four whole boss fights.
Fast forwarding back to more or less where we left off, a disappointing discovery: diamond shields are apparently proto armor's rare steal. This is still a decent consolation prize though. Other than that, we've seen pretty much everything there is to see as far as encounters go, so all that's left is to round up the rest of the treasure until we reach Shiva and Ifrit.
...What is this again?
Oh! It's part of the imp set! Conveniently, it even teaches the spell itself. Not only that, but you also still benefit from everything other than its defense stat even while not an imp, so wearing it doesn't completely tank a character's effectiveness.
From a pure stats perspective, my first choice would be to put it on Cell. That low magic defense has been proving very annoying lately. Unfortunately their lack of magic command means it'd put us no closer to unlocking the true power of both it and the imp halberd, so it goes to Goten instead.
I lied slightly earlier, there's still a couple neat things that happened in fights. A flochew actually used a fenix down for its intended purpose, and Aoi managed to survive having something thrown at them with literally one hp.
And I guess I have to talk about this fight too.
Honestly there's not much to tell. The most interesting thing about hazils is how quickly they die. Seriously, they're made of tissue paper.
Probably a reasonable drop relative to the difficulty of the fight, but it's useless to us now. Oh, and the chest next door just has money in it.
Somewhere in the middle of wandering around, Goten finally learns shell, which is going to make our lives a lot easier.
After yet another wrong turn, we stumble into the plot. This place is a fuckin' maze, man.
We'll be back.
This is all the rest of the treasure. Turns out we get that diamond shield after all, plus yet another element for enemies to randomly resist when Goten attacks.
Quick status update before we jump in, everyone except Cell has hit level 20. I feel way more comfortable with these hp totals than what we had at the beginning of the dungeon.
How many kids do you think got screwed over back in the day by not checking this save point room before triggering the boss fight?
...Well this is embarrassing. I've managed to stumble into an encounter from the second half of the dungeon literally the moment before talking to Ifrit.
These things are eerily similar to what you'd normally expect from flan type enemies, with elemental immunities and sky high defense.
Fire works well enough, at least.
Oh, and they can use this as a death counter.
Which wouldn't be that big a deal, if we hadn't just killed three of them at the same time. 
So uh, let's not and say we did.
Okay, now for the boss. I'll warn you now, these upcoming fights are mostly a bit of a letdown compared to what we had to endure to get this far.
A lot of that has less to do with the bosses themselves and more to do with where the gaps in our toolbox are. Regen is a horribly inefficient way of trying to deal with attrition from random encounters, but when it comes to carrying us through a boss fight it more or less gets the job done. Plus a longer fight means we have time to get other buffs online, too.
That said, Ifrit and Shiva are probably the "hardest" of the lot, insofar as they take the longest to kill. They're mostly indistinguishable from their normal selves, with high defense and immunity to everything except their opposite element.
As for which of the two we'd rather be facing, it's a bit of a wash. Shiva's significantly easier to deal damage to; her defense isn't quite as high, and Aoi hasn't learned ice, forcing them to rely on the defense ignoring dispatch instead when Ifrit is on screen. She also does more damage in return though, since half the party is immune to Ifrit's flames.
Speaking of which, this would've been pretty scary otherwise!
The fight ends soon after that. New espers! Here's hoping they're better than the ones we already have...
......
...Kefka was right to throw you in the trash. 
Okay, to be very slightly fair, Ifrit has some decent utility spells, much like Siren before him. Also Shiva is technically the new best option for any characters without a magic command, which is the very definition of damning with faint praise. Let's just move on, shall we?
Weirdly, the second half of the dungeon is far less dangerous than the first half. Ghan vegs are a nonissue now that we know to avoid aoe, and most of the rest of what we run into are repeats from the phantom train. That includes more hedoras, who I discover also have running shoes as their rare steal. They're so helpful!
There is one new enemy tho- oh God what happened to your face?! 
Yeah, uh, turns out most enemy sprites really aren't meant to be hanging from the ceiling.
Fortunately, Cell possesses a true artist's eye and is able to make sense of the chaos. Less fortunately, as the state of our party in this screenshot might suggest, plus the fact that I'm resorting to sketch in the first place, nounsps are kind of a pain.
They're not that dangerous, though they do have a decently powerful single target attack. What they are, however, is very annoying.
They cast imp, they're immune to holy, they have auto reraise and regen, these things just refuse to fucking die. Oh, and their defense is pretty high too, though not as much as some of the other enemies in here.
Moving on, there's one last treasure before we hit the next boss. This would have been really nice to have at the beginning of the dungeon, game!
Imma be honest, there's not really much worth showing off about Number 024. This is the only nonstandard attack I see from him, and he knocks Cell out of the confusion immediately after.
I mostly don't bother engaging with the wallchange gimmick. His defense is reasonable enough that just whacking him with weapons works well enough. Sucks for Goten I guess, but they're spending most of their turns setting up our buffs anyway.
Uhhh, he's a pinata full of niche relics? That's something I guess.
Anyway, on with the plot! After we unequip Aoi, of course.
Cid has gone from Banana Man to Carrot man, good for him.
Oh no! Who could have foreseen this sudden but inevitable betrayal obvious misunderstanding!
Yeah, good luck with that buddy.
And we have control again! At least for a few seconds.
...I'm afraid to look.
Hey, now we're talking! Cure! Life! Tier 2 elemental spells! Level up bonuses that aren't stamina! Our lives just got a whole lot easier.
You heard the man, time to blow this popsicle joint!
I feel like we've seen these enemies before, but maybe not? I dunno, either way they don't do anything notable.
Gilga does nick a second break blade off one of them, though. And at long last, we can heal outside of battle without using up items!
Um, in all honesty I don't really remember this guy's normal attack patterns all that well, but I don't think he does anything too crazy here? And our strat is the same old song and dance of "Goten spreads buffs around, Gilga piles on the damage, Cell sits in the corner and pretends to contribute." That being the case, I'm just gonna show the steal and drop and move on, not that either of those are very remarkable either.
Something important did happen in the fight though: Goten finished learning imp, which means it's time to unlock true power! Before...
...and after! Tanking Cell's defense is unfortunate, but it's workable for now even if it takes us a while to find any more imp gear. And it's not like we're missing out on much by locking out Cell's other abilities.
I always forget that there are encounters in this little section. But hey, this gives us a chance to test out our new setup before the boss! Cell now does... about as much damage as one of Gilga's attacks. Which is still the most reliably useful they've ever been, to be fair.
This is such a silly premise for a boss fight, it's great.
Annoyingly, the game tosses in a free heal before the fight, so we'll need to re-imp Cell when we get a chance.
Cool, cool, another fire3 jump scare, love that when we're dealing with a new party member we haven't properly outfitted.
Speaking of, first impressions of Kars: this skillset is... fine, I guess, but damn, that damage is pretty bad. Hopefully it's just an equipment issue.
The cranes' gimmicks are so heavily scripted that there's very little room for the randomizer to mess with them. Even so, this fight ends up being way more hectic than it needs to be. Between fatigue from reaching the end of the gauntlet and trying to get a feel for Kars, I'm just playing very sloppy at this point.
But hey, we made it, and that's all that really matters, right?
I feel like this update has gone on extra long relative to how much progress we've made. I do want to power through just a bit further though, so we can take a proper look at Kars.
Luckily all that's standing in our way is a glorified cutscene, so I can just throw in a couple token screenshots and call it a day.
Also welcome back Rei! You're just in time, we finally have some worthwhile spells for you to doublecast.
Sure Kars, right after we check your stats.
Okay yeah, this definitely explains the awful damage output earlier. That's the same shitty ass sword Hideki joined with way back when. Good thing we have no shortage of much better swords to swap Kars to! (Actually I just checked as I'm sitting here writing this, and they can't use the epee or the break blade. Thunder blade and drainer are A-OK though.) They also have access to the full moon, but who knows if that'll continue to any other thrown weapons.
Otherwise, their base stats are solid, jump is... whatever, and I have to admit that I've never really messed around with throw much in FF6. It might be good? I dunno. It gives us something to do with our neverending supply of shurikens, at least. (It's just background noise to me at this point, but they were definitely still a drop for at least one new enemy we faced this time.)
Oh, and this is just kind of amusing: we finally have someone who can equip the tintinabar. Too bad it came literally at the same time we got reliable out of battle healing, otherwise it might've actually been relevant.
So yeah, that'll be it for now. Hopefully it doesn't take me another four months to get around to the next one!