And now that the gameplay guys have spoken, I guess it's time for two sessions in a row of LFT Multiplayer Recap! Don't worry, one of them was really short.
So, when the last report ended, we were about to head for Golgarand Execution Site. We picked up an Erek for this session, which led to us having a spare Agrias to tool around with. Turns out this was for the best.
Anyways, first battle starts, Shaker and Jasmin are hanging with Cyril, while Agrias and Archer Fargus are hanging out at the far end to take advantage of their ability to ignore height, be it through movement or skillset. Two bits of bad luck then strike us, Gaff is best compatability with Jasmin, and both of the rampart mages have good faith scores. They lock a couple of annoying statuses on Fargus. But, Fargus can sneak in between the two archers on the ground and take a shot, which he does. Shaker and Jasmin combine to make short work of Gaff, while Oracle Cyril attempts to Paralyze the dangerous Archer. So, three status effects hit that grouping of Fargus and the two archers. Fargus and the non-dangerous archer eat all three, while the dangerous one doesn't get hit. At this point, Jasmin is starting to go up and down like a yo-yo, with frantic scrambling to keep her alive, while Fargus comes out of his status induced trance and complete with Shaker and Agrias, start taking down the squishier enemies. And then it happens. One of the remaining Mages locks a Bolt 2 on Cyril, only source of revival. Due to a Head Break early on this is enough for a OHKO. Cyril gets a turn, but not enough time to do anything about the spell. So, he runs next to one of the Knights, stick beats him, and then hopes to evade. Stick beats fail, Bolt 2 hits Cyril, whiffs on Knight. Mage is then promptly put out of his misery, but we have a problem. Jasmin and Cyril are down, Fargus and Agrias have bad compatability with the two knights remaining, and they are both at full health. So, what do we do now? Two words: Death Sentence. Fargus, with his Punch Art secondary, uses Secret Fist to remove one of the Knights from the game. Agrias then rushes forward with Split Punch. Secret Fist hits, but Agrias went for the same Knight Cyril failed to harm, and he manages to avoid the status. Secret Fist won't work in time anymore, so now we need to rush him. A couple of Split Punches from Agrias help, and Fargus pings with his Charged bow, but the real threat is Shaker, who runs up as fast as he can, swinging once, and throwing a ball once. This leads to one whiff in his two attacks, leaving the Knight with a sliver of HP left, as well as the ball failing to be useful, and delaying Shaker just enough that Jasmin Crystalized just one clock tick before Shaker landed the killing blow. After a tense and exciting finale, we had nothing to show for it but a reset.
Golgarand - Take 2. Setup mostly the same except that this time Jasmin went Summoner with White Magic instead of Black Mage with Summon. The tone of this battle was set when Fargus hopped up to the good charging mage and repeating fisting it to death and Shaker and Cyril played the roles of good little meat shields in order to prevent Gaff from killing Jasmin (or escaping) from the Salamander that was being dropped on him and both Knights. With those four units out of the way, the rest of the battle was a mop up.
Gate Battle - This battle, there were some issues on the outside of the gate, as though the summoner dropped fast, they still had to play things defensively for a little while. That said, within about four rounds, battle is done. Me, I mostly paid attention t Cyril's battle against Gaffgarion, which can be summarized as Gaffgarion had six turns, a 2HKO, and an opponent with no healing. And he got to go first. So yeah, Paralyze for the win there, with a 100% chance of infliction after the first hit.
End of previous session, at this point we drop Agrias as Erek wasn't around, and move on to the marathon session.
Queklain still has Nightmare. I'm told Nightmare still sucks so that future Zodiacs can remain in the realm of Vaguely Sane. Just means Quek himself gets to suck. Anyways, between Cyril and Shaker, we have two people with Heal in this party. Queklain does a grand total of two things not Nightmare. One is to kill Jasmin (who got put to sleep on her second turn, and promptly ignored because, dude, we don't want to face Counter-Salamander), and the other is to hit the entire party with Bio 3. Bio 3 2HKOed at least Cyril, and possibly Fargus too, and Jasmin was down for the count by this point and unlikely to add to the battle at all. But it was too little, too late as Two Sword Accumuknight Shaker, and Charging Gun Chemist Fargus win the day.
Before the Olan battle, Cyril heads to Mediator, while Shaker goes Thief. This is in order to pair up Invite with Steal Weapon so that Fargus can be more awesome. Olan then opens with Galaxy Stop and running towards the enemy thieves. Better plans have been formed. But he survives, gets most of the enemies, and Jasmin tosses a Cure 2 his way for full healing. Meanwhile, Cyril invites a Mithril Chemist, as well as the Main Gauche thief. Only other highlight of the battle was one of the thieves hopping up on the roof, stabbing Olan once before getting Counter Tackled off the roof.
Did you know, Charge +10 against neutral Zodiac with a Mythril Gun does 240 damage.
Another fun fact. Zalmo 1's new HP Total is equal to 240 HP.
Just wish they were related somehow.
Alright, on to Orbonne 1. Cyril's done with Mediator by now, and is in Time Mage to finish getting JP for Calculator. Also, Shaker is either having fun with his shiny daggers, or learning how to parry with them. Battle starts with the Lancers generally failing as they cannot attack, and the party swarms forwards to kill one of them. Alex comes up, freshly hasted, and slings a Phoenix Down, bringing one back, as the lancers now get their hits in. Cyril goes down as Weapon Guard + Flame Shield + Wizard Mantle fail to stop any hits, one of which comes over a Lancer's head, thanks to Float making him an extra easy target. However, with Fargus' pool of Items, including the freshly gained Phoenix Down, and the insane offense of Jasmin and Shaker, Alex goes down with the Lancers following shortly thereafter. The Time Mages at the bottom are just a simple exercise in mopping up.
Izlude proved to be far more of a challenge. His Archers were the first to go, as we tried to chip at his support first. Unfortunatly, that soon got us in a position where Gate, armed with Spike Shoes, was able to leave us with a dead party aside from Fargus, who armed only with an Elf Mantle, was cut off from the rest of the party. He did the only thing he could, resetting Jasmin's counter and letting Gate whiff twice against his back evade before charging forward and bringing the party back. At this point, Shaker managed to, freshly revived, run up to a full HP Archer and land a critical hit. Sadly, the second hit would have killed without the knockback. Fortunatly, that one hit inflicted sleep. At this point, Cyril is entirely a buffing/ressing machine, as is Fargus, while Jasmin and Shaker attempt to kill the support before we get killed. During this, we get lucky and Taishyr the summoner decides his mojo is needed to heal instead of killing us. This lets Shaker get him, and we rejoice. At another point, Cyril (whose 52% front evade stops nothing over about a half dozen shots the entire fight) and Fargus are trapped between two Knights on a bridge unable to move, but Izlude doesn't take advantage of that to jump on us. Finally, the battle is too much for us. We're running low on resources, and the Knights are to mobile and putting too much pressure on us. So we ignore them and focus on Izlude. Fargus charges once, but the real victory comes as Jasmin drops a Salamander on Izlude for the win. On a side note, it should be mentioned that Jasmin had Half MP learned and equipped for this battle.
Wiegraf 2, much easier battle, despite screwing up and letting him hit two people with good compatability with Lighting Stab. Mediator Cyril manages to live, Summoner Jasmin does not. Cyril manages to block an arrow sent his way and live to get a turn, while the Geomancer fails to status Shaker, which was the one important thing we needed to go our way. After this, Shaker runs up, Weapon Breaks Wiegraf for a shattered weapon and free hit. Fargus PD's Jasmin. And Cyril and Jasmin drop summons on Wiegraf.
Grog Hill 1 - Cyril starts this battle as a Calculator with Black Magic secondary, Shaker's still in Knight, and Jasmin is still Summoner. First action? Slasher to Jasmin's face for .5HKO. This is followed up by Fargus getting charmed and Cyril whiffing the attempt to uncharm him thanks to the Elf Mantle. So, with our entire first turn eaten up simply trying to survive round 1, things are looking bad. They never really get better, and this run ends poorly. Didn't help that both Death attempts whiffed, and the enemy Chemists had PD and X-Potion in the right order.
Grog Hill 2 - Main change is that Shaker has Item, and Cyril goes to Squire with White Magic. Not that it matters, Slasher dude is much weaker this time, as is the rest of the fight, and we're prepared this time. We never lose control, and a well placed Salamander ends things quickly and brutally.
Malak's battle shows how despite his improvements, he's still the worst unit on the field as he never hits once. Rafa, on the other hand, scores three ninja kills, and turns Shaker into a fairly dangerous person to be around for one of them, abusing the fact that she can't hit him. Calc Death fails it up again, but it's just random chance there. And it was at least bloody stylish to pop up on top of the houses and point at someone, saying die. Would've cut off a summon too. But yeah, battle was essentially over after that early swarm of two elementals and Heaven Thunder got the ninjas.
After this we go do some equipment upgrading before getting wiped out at a random in Grog Hill and deciding we were all just too tired to continue. Next time, expect notes on Samurai/Basic Skill upgrades.
