Another week, another chronicle.
This time, we begin with the elusive Sluice Battle.
The battle starts with Cyril and Shaker hanging out together, while Jasmin and Fargus take on the mages. The Knights advance on Shaker, whose player mocks them because he's far too invincible for them to take down. Seems they know this too. Next thing we know, Shaker's down 3 PA and his armour and it's his turn. He shows them a nifty trick most Knights lack, as he tries his hand at the breaking game with a sword for each of them. In responce, the Knights show him why Knights hang with a shield. Waiting on the spot to double turn them, Shaker gets to go 0/4 before fleeing from the enemy knights, tail between his legs.
Advantage, Sluice.
On the other side, the cameo wizard, resplendant in his 80-some Faith, wanders over to help deal with Shaker, and finds that his good compatability with Cyril and lack of any ID protection was a bad idea. Cyril then ports over to hang with the Chemist where a second archer shot takes him down (not that he misses a turn, go 5 Speed!). Between them, Fargus and Jasmin take down the other wizard as he charges a mostly lethal attack on Fargus. From there they start charging up as Cyril slaps a Reraise on Fargus. There's another close call as Shaker almost gets Weapon Broken (fortunatly, it would only have been the Ice Brand and not the Materia Blade) giving us priority number one, but otherwise we lock down one of the archers as Fargus guns down the other and Jasmin's innate Move Underwater pays off. In the final waiting for things to crystalize so we can end the battle, Fargus and Jasmin split Archers, both of whom leave crystals. Jasmin gets a nice suite of Charge abilities, half of which Fargus lacks. Fargus, who has actually been using Charge to augment gun damage, gets Jump skills. And the battle ends with the typical come-uppance overly invincible characters having their defenses getting cut through. Namely, Cyril hitting Shaker with Death for a last bit of JP before ending the map.
After this we gain 1 X Excalibur. Oh, and a TG Cid too. Also, we get a bit of party shakeup. Cyril picks up Level and 4 then declares himself finished with Calculator for the time being, and moves over to Thief in order to go to Ninja. Shaker heads over to Oracle, but gets talked out of a Two Poison Rod setup, largely because with 4WP, Poison Rods suck at hurting things. Jasmin... picks up some new skills, and that's about it. And Fargus moves over to Archer to flesh out Charge. Oh, and our buddy Erek joins as the famed Cidolfas Orlandu.
At this point, we get a single random encounter which we steamroll as we go from Bethla to Goug, to Goland/Lesalia. The only thing of consequence here is that Shaker unlocks Mediator, learns Threaten, and heads back to Knight with a Talk Skill secondary. And then we venture into the mines...
As we realise that we're up against five undying abominations, one other realization kicks in. Only Fargus has ressurection. Sure, Cyril has MS-Reraise, but that's no good once someone's already dead. Naturally, in round one a OHKO Meteor gets tagged onto Fargus, another on Cyril. Of course, this is all after our novice Cid has a good idea/bad idea moment. Good Idea? Realising you have the MP Busting Dark Sword and hitting a Ko with it. Bad Idea? Standing close enough to the slowest party member that you can both be hit by status spells. As such, Shaker is slowed, and both Shaker and Cid are stopped. Cyril saves himself by cutting down the Ko aiming the giant space rock at him, while Fargus waits as Jasmin Kiyomori's him and bolts, letting Fargus survive and then Auto-Potion the attack. Fargus then gets a good place to counter attack from as Cyril busts out the Reraise. And while we can't deal with their Reraise, it does mean we can spam it via Math Skill as much as we want. Unfortunatly, while he gets Fargus, Cyril whiffs on himself right before a Ko kills him. Fargus charges forward, killing a Ko that's about to meteor the knight types while Jasmin began sparring with another Ko. But, no matter how the two fought, for each Ko struck down, two more slavering beasts arose in their place, and it seemed that the neverending hordes would over whealm them and render unto them the fate of the fallen Cyril when a sign did appear. In cyan letters o'er the heads of the blade wielders did form the word "Stop". And did Shaker of the Twin Blades of Speed Busting, and Orlandu, Annihilator of the Sacred MP cut down the Ko Menace, leaving behind naught but shattered dreams in the wake of their righteous fury. And as Fargus restored unto the fallen Cyril life, the Thief-Mage did raise his twin daggers, bestowing with one the gift of life unending, and with the other speed unrivaled, giving his allies the strength to cut down the last straggling members.
And it was Good.
Going with less epic prose, we get to the next battle, wherein Cyril has unlocked Ninja and wandered over to it. We take a few moments to realize exactly what's up with the enemies at the top, and find that setup fairly awesome. Then we spot Strago, and find that far more awesome. So we have Cid stand on top of his hidey-hole and stab the ground, causing Ice to fall from the sky, through Cid and the turf he's standing onto Strago, killing him outright. We figure it's the best we could do on short notice to give him a death as awesome as his life. Next comes the charge, with Cyril slapping a Reraise on Fargus (still our only source of Revival since Shaker, while not Diplo-Knight anymore has Steal set instead). This is revealed to be a Bad Idea as one of the Mediators takes a shot at Fargus, killing him outright. At this point the other Mediator also comes online and we realise exactly how bad our position really is. Cid dives forward, Stasis Swording the Squire into Critical as the rest of us dive for cover. A Kiyomori is shattered for the cause, and an X-Potion spent as we try and get to a good attacking position and Cid gets shot once and badly hurt. Cyril breaks cover first, killing a Samurai before getting gunned down. Cid gets in one more hit of his own before getting shot down by the hasted Mediator. Fargus goes on PD patrol as Shaker charges forth, twin blades ready to strike! And he whiffs. Twice. Jasmin follows up and shows Shaker how it's done as she and a revived Cid take down the hasted Mediator before Cid gets shot down again. Unfortunatly, Cid misses his next couple of turns as the mediator shoots him, and with Shaker continueing to whiff, Jasmin has a few issues finishing the other Mediator.
At this point, three things happen. Cyril's revived, the remaining Samurai wakes up, and the Bard remembers it's in the battle (until this point it has been ignoring it's Fairy Harp of 50WP in order to spend three turns a pop on Nameless Song). The Samurai never gets a turn as Cyril runs behind it and shanks it. The Bard, for his part charges a lethal attack on Jasmin. But Shaker intervines, as the Bard slowly rathchets it's hand back for the mother of all power chordes, attention focused on how rocking this killer note will be, Shaker simply plucks the harp from his hands. Somehow, when it comes time to resolve the charge, the Wile E Coyote laws of physics prevail, and his innattention allows him to hit Jasmin at Range 3 with his fist. Fortunatly, internal FFT calculations remain intact, and his Charge +5 does 4 damage. From this point on, it's all cleanup, and Shaker takes one last steal attempt before we crush the remainder.
And now comes the fated battle, and Cyril and his stalwart heros face off against Laggy and his nefarious crew. The battle starts with Ciato being splattered. She gets a chance to use Hi-Potion, but that's it before she's done. Cyril then unloads a Haste that targets three PCs and Excal, cause who can resist being nice to the guy. Two PCs and Excal get hit. Excal retaliates by dropping a Confuse on Cyril, the ungrateful bastard. In another amusing battle, Fargus runs off to enter an epic duel with Elfboy. This becomes even more amusing when we realise that despite having a female sprite, the dread Elf in fact counts as a male zodiac wise due to having worst compatability with Fargus. This leaves Fargus with bad odds to hit Laggy and Elfboy, not able to effect anyone else, and utterly incapable of doing anything notable even if he does hit. Elfboy, for his part, MBarriers himself, allowing Laggy to join in on that. Jasmin then hops up to Kiyomori herself and Fargus. It's important to note now that Jasmin's turn was after Laggy went and after Excal locked his Confuse on Cyril, as when that Confuse resolved, not only was Cyril hit, but Laggy also slapped one on Jasmin, leaving us with 40% of our party confuzzled. Cyril was no real threat as he started singing, while Fargus had to waste his turn unconfuzzling Jasmin. This led to Cyril double turning Jasmin and using his shiny new Fairy Harp to kill Jasmin. On the other side, Shaker reaches Excal, and the bloody git starts trying to strip him and then leave him for dead in the frozen wastes! (Really, who'd do that to a nice guy like Excal?) Fortunatly, Excal and his Feather Mantle are too much for the cocky knight. Which is why they call in TG Cid and his Stasis Sword which effectively stops Excal. He then gets MP busted, as Shaker continues indulging his kleptomania. By this point the Elf has hit Fargus twice with Dark Holy for 70 some damage each time which would have been impressive if Auto Potion hadn't automatically kicked in. But, with Jasmin back on her feet, and TG Cid saying hi (Auto-Haste really helps that hopping about) the Elf goes down. And, mc has been favouring her physical over Math Skill, which means she's not been very effective at all. And the battle continues with an Ether tossed by Laggy at Excal whose awesomeness has managed to stop all steal attempts even while stopped. He then comes out of stop, targets Shaker with some status and... Stasis Sword stops him in the middle of his casting.
At this point, it looks like a rout and a general steamrolling. Sure, Laggy is unkillable and has Range 4 Phoenix Down, but what's that going to do? And the best MC has been able to do is Slow TG Cid, and take down low HP units. It's at this point that he gets the Elf back up as Cyril whiffs the shot on him, leading to Cyril falling. Fargus brings him back, before Fargus gets killed. Notably, gets killed without a Reraise in effect. We now have a timer.
We quickly waste a turn with Cyril trying to Haste TG Cid. That fails. Cid gets a turn regardless and waxes Excal, while Shaker runs off to start hacking down MC. MC pulls out his Math Mojo to off Cyril, but both she and her Laggy support fail to hit through Abandon. Jasmin cuts down the Elf, but that counts for very little as Laggy brings him back, and the Elf takes down Jasmin. Cyril then Slows Laggy as Cid gets his groove back and cuts down the Elf then Laggy and Shaker finishes MC in what was a slightly hectic finish. And, in all of this, Excal claims the moral victory, having kept Shaker from stealing any of his gear despite half a dozen attempts.
Some quick notes. The first three optional battles worked very well. They should provide a decent challenge even on replays where we know what to expect and can prepare accordingly. The only real issue with the second battle is the Bard. He was utterly useless outside of Hasting the Mediator because he chose to waste all of his turns singing when if all he had done was attack us with that utterly freaking insane weapon of his, we almost certainly would have lost. Using the AI flags to disable Sing is the recommendation we have for you there if it is possible. As for the third battle, Ciato was a non factor. We looked at her funny, she went squish, and Laggy never had a chance to get close enough to revive her so she was an utter non-factor in the fight. The balance on the rest is funny enough that there's nothing I can say off the top of my head, and nothing the group really felt needed discussion. Though it was noted that while Dark Holy's damage was fairly mockable for us, it was in large part because the period in which it was meant to be used the only target was Worst Compatability and Shelled, leading to 70 damage being pretty damn scary. MC also feels like she could be better if she actually used more Math Skill as opposed to attacking. But, nothing you can do there.
And here is where the log ends for this week. Tune in next time, True Believers!
