FF8 Twink challenge - Disc 4 left only.
Squall is now up to level 24. Thanks to hunting freaking Anacondaurs/Toramas and misgauging my strength here and there causing a few lopsided kills. Also killed a pack of imps because of Berserk. Tonberry King/Cactuar King/Bahamut are all dead.
Bosses...
Abadon – Huge physical defense is problem one. Problem two was that I had no Confuse on my St-Def. And with Holy junctioned to my Elem-Atk, I couldn’t heal. So I dealt close to 3000+ damage to myself when I was stuck in a confuse loop. I walked in with full health, since I didn’t think I needed Renzokuken rush. Turned out to be a good decision thanks to the oversight >_>
Tonberry King - First killing tonberries are a pain. At 105 Strength, Squall doesn't have enough power to one shot them with Renzokuken unless I get a 7/8 hit Renzo or a Lionheart. Therefore, Strength+40% is a lock. HP strangely doesn't matter for this. Thanks to the fact that Squall has killed 480+ enemies, Everyone's Grudge deals a whopping 7800 damage. My max HP is around 8400 at this point, so going for a hit and then slash self to heal is very inefficient. Instead, I twinked my strength so that I have around 165 Strength. No HP requirements means I can equip other crap in my abilities slots. Made it such that Squall can down a Tonberry as long as he gets a 5 hit minimum Renzokuken. Saved really often (like every 5 minutes) so in case I do get a 4 hit Renzo and die to a counter, I don't lose too much process. The King himself is similar. At around level 15, thanks to 2 party members being level 8 and Squall himself at around 18 or so, Tonberry King's HP maxes out to 27500. A 7 hit Renzo+ finisher, 8 hit Renzo or a Lionheart kills the bastard in one shot. I got the 8 hit Renzo in my first go.
Cactuar King – Absolute Steve notes that 10,000 needles is used as a counter to every 5th action. So as long as you kill him within 5 Renzos, you win. 3 Renokukens at 165 Strength and level 18 take him down was all he could take. So victory is mine. On that note, this is probably the best Renzokuken animation in the game
Bahamut – The two ruby dragons are apparently NOT scaled to 100. So instead, they were relatively low leveled. The mistake I made here was that I gauged their HP incorrectly. On one case, I Lionheart’d one of them >_>. But the other one, I thought had enough HP to eat 2 Renzokukens. Apparently it did not! So I gained 4 levels as a result. Now I was worried, since I don’t know how strong a level 20ish Bahamut was like. Goal was to make sure he didn’t use Mega Flare at all. I was within limit range before the Ruby Dragons, so I only had around 2000 HP. In addition, I had Sleep junctioned to my St-Atk since I know Ruby Dragons were susceptible to it. This meant I had to bum rush Bahamut since I can’t heal myself without putting myself to sleep, and every hit of his is bad. Thankfully, 3 Renzokukens was all he could take. He got one physical in, which dealt around 300 damage or so? Something like that.
Fujin & Raijin – Two choices. Either Mug Raijin for the Power Wrist, which can refine itself into 10 Auras. Doing so frees up Meteor as a spell to junction to Elem-Def or something else of choice. Largely unnecessary, but it is there. The other choice is just to straight up kill him for 3 Strength Ups. Either case, battle is easy. Renzo Fujin until she dies (which should not take more than 2). Then hit Raijin with Blind, Renzo him to death.
Mobile Type 8 – Either junction yourself with some form of elemental defense to get healing since Corona’s HP-1 could spell death! Mug the side orbs to get some stat ups. Then Renzo the main body. HP should be above 2000 before hand since Twin Homing Laser deals a solid amount and on the off chance you get hit with Megido Flame, having 2000 HP allows you to survive instead of die. If you don’t mug, it does not matter since it will be long dead from Renzos before hand
Seifer 4 – Full heal before hand on Squall. If you had Bio junctioned to Elem Atk, you can’t heal but you also deal more damage. I had around 207 Strength here, so Squall was dealing around 3500 per hit. Still took a few hits. Seifer, to his credit, is pretty fast! Matched several of my turns 1 to 1 when I had Triple to speed and Auto Haste. Fails otherwise. Go 200 damage to my 8500 HP.
I’ve also concluded that Ultimas are probably not possible to get in this challenge. The only way to get them is through Card Mod Ultima Weapon on a 1:1 ratio. This means it takes AGES to get 100 Ultimas. I have 100 of pretty much everything else that I need sans Aura however. Anacondaurs drop Reflect at level 15ish around 4.5% of the time, so this took a huge portion of my afternoon >_>. Regen Rings can be mugged from Toramas, which give my Full Lifes. Meteors were gotten through way too much Triple Triad and Card modding. Thanks to Cactuar Island now open, GF AP requirements are much less of a hassle, although at this point Carbuncle + Cerberus covers every junction that I need more or less. Doomtrain and Cactuar will most likely be the final two in the last set of battles since one gives me Elem-Def x4 AND Auto Shell. The other gives me Evade junction and Luck junction, which can prove to be quite useful.
EDIT: Actually if a Rosetta Stone can be refined into Ultimas, then you can get 100 Ultimas! >_>
Squall’s End of Disc 3 stats at level 24 (some bonuses used):
HP: ~8544 (100 Full Lifes + HP+40%)
Str: 207 (Lionheart + 100 Meteors + Str+60%)
Vit: 95 (100 Meltdowns)
Spr: 88 (100 Reflects)
Spd: 130 (100 Triples + Spd+40%)
Elem Atk: POIZN 100% (100 Bios)
Elem Def: Absorb Ice 100%, Absorb Fire/Thunder 30%, Resist everything else 50% (100 Blizzagas + 100 Flares + 100 Lifes +100 Shells)
St-Atk: Blind 100% (100 Blinds)
St-Def: Resist Blind, POIZN, Silence, Curse, Death, Petrify, Confuse 100% (100 Pains + 100 Deaths + 100 Breaks + 100 Confuses)
