Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Week 85

[Nephrite]

"Ho ho ho... congratulations. It's been a while since I've been able to face someone directly. Let's see if you can manage to cross that final finish line. As for your other friends... I have some new surprises for them, too!"


Link to the Dungeon Wiki!

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**Full Heals reset limit and other types of gauges when teams pass through them.
Team Tide | Ramza, Cecilia ACF, Citan (BC), Seifer, Raynie
[Ramza: Priest/Time Magic/Auto Potion/Short Charge/Move MP Up] [Chemist, Wizard, Time Mage, Priest (Summoner)(Oracle)]
*Citan has been granted a Speed Ring S (+2 Speed)
*Cecilia has been granted FP Advance.
*Ramza has been granted Robe of Lords.
*Seifer has been granted Brothers GF and the Defend command.

"Ah, but this wouldn't be any fun if you just lost immediately, would it? Let's see your hopes dashed against the rocks!"

***The team gets two initiative turns against the first three bosses and the Ragus may not use One Trillion Degrees.
Team vs. Ragu O Ragola (WA:ACF)
*Full Heal
Team vs. Ragu O Ragola (WA4)
*Full Heal
Team vs. Ragu O Ragola (WA:XF)
*Full Heal
Team vs. Margaret (P4)
*Full Heal
Team vs. Nyarlathotep, Nyx Avatar and Izanami

Team Super | Miakis, Cristo, Angelo, DQ4 Hero, Brey (Status Symbol Law)
[Miakis: Mother Earth, Gale, Magic Absorb]
Floor 6b: Overachievers
Team vs. Myria 1 and Jade
*Full Heal*
Team vs. Katrina and Charlton Blunt (XF)
*Full Heal*
Team vs. Rhapthorne and Dhoulmagus
*Full Heal*
Team vs. Loki and Surt
*Full Heal*
Team vs. Apocrypha and Heiss

Team Snowfire | Fang, Vanille, Snow (Firefly), Lightning (Leader), Hope
[Floor 1: Starting off Again (Beginning of the game)]
Team Snowfire vs. Hrist (VP1), Evil Gaia, Big Joe, Snowe(S4) and Gorudo
Team Snowfire vs. Bronzog, Galleon, FFT Knight and Kwanda Rossman (S1)
Team Snowfire vs. Blissey, Axem Green, Augst and Lucius
Team Snowfire vs. Mist Dragon, Whelk, Wingraptor (FF5), Garland (FF1) and LORD OCHU (FFX)
Team Snowfire vs. Lich and Kraken

Team Magic | Deis1, Rydia (Life)+Rosa,Hilda, Jane, Nall
[Floor 1: Starting off Again (Beginning of the game)]
Team Magic vs. Hrist (VP1), Evil Gaia, Big Joe, Snowe(S4) and Gorudo
Team Magic vs. Bronzog, Galleon, FFT Knight and Kwanda Rossman (S1)
Team Magic vs. Blissey, Axem Green, Augst and Lucius
Team Magic vs. Mist Dragon, Whelk, Wingraptor (FF5), Garland (FF1) and LORD OCHU (FFX)
Team Magic vs. Lich and Kraken

Body Charge - Increases the health, damage and effective speed of a character by 1.3x and decreases damage to them to .7x.

Firefly - The first attack of each enemy will be redirected at the bearer of this sealstone. Multitarget moves are not affected.

Status Symbol Law - Team is fully status, debuff and ID immune, but has damage done to them increased by 1.1x and damage done by them decreased to .9x.

Life - One character's healing effects now also allows for revival, but reduces the final effect of any healing to 75%. (This means full healing is always 75%) The healing also only revives characters with 1 HP. The healing received from spells that hit more than one target may be used as revival once per battle.

[dude789]

Question about Snowfire's team. So if Lightning dies is that game over or does that just mean that she's the leader for TP purposes?

Also Tide fails, Margaret and WA ACF Ragu aren't too bad. But he has trouble damaging WA4 Ragu and that one is faster than Citan with haste.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I have no idea what kind of scaling are you using to give Ragu 40x PC HP. -Unscaled-, using 2.5x average damage convention and taking Tide's averages (which I'm eyeing and considering rather -low-, for starters), he sports something like 16x PC HP.

[dude789]

Oh you're right, I accidentally added in an extra zero when calculating his hp. Don't think it really changes that much though. Citan is still the crux of tides offense and he has trouble hitting Ragu.

[Nephrite]

Yes, if Lightning dies then the team loses.

[Random Consonant]

Also, Citan with a Speed Ring S and Body Charge *is* faster than Ragu4 after Haste (~702% to Ragu4's listed 674.6%).  Not that this helps him particularly much since Ragu4 can dodge Citan's attacks like it ain't no thang, but still.

at any rate, Tide fails, I think.  Not sure how he handles WAXF Ragu even if he has an argument for WA4 Ragu.

[superaielman]

Tide fails.  Izanami is difficult for a team to beat by themselves, let alone with two other bosses for support.

[SnowFire]

Okay, so some introductory notes on the FF13 team.  First off, a good shorthand for floors / chapters is 2 chapters a floor, and Chap 13 for F7...  except...  that isn't QUITE true.  Especially important here since obviously non-Fang characters are lol in Chapter 1/2.  Notably, Chapters 2 & 8 are really short, Chapter 7 is kind of long, and Chapter 11 is REALLY long (and possibly even longer if you sidequest a bit).  Thus, if we call all chapters not named 2 segments, 2/8 = 1 segment, Chap 7 = 3 segments, and Chap 11 = 5 segments, we end up with:
7*2 + 2*1 + 1*3 + 1*5 = 24 segments.
Or roughly something like:
Floor 1: 1-3
F2: 4-5
F3: 6- first half of 7
F4: 7-9
F5: 10- first third of C11
F6: C11
F7: C12-13

The point is the characters are l'Cie for Floor 1, and I'd recommend this as a patch anyway even if not true to not have FF13 be totally useless on F1.

Next, an interesting fact: no matter what crazy scalings you apply or what you think about role legality, since my team is 5/6 of the FF13 damage average, if the team just blasts away with their best single-target offense they're pretty well guaranteed to do .4*5 = 2PCHP damage, roughly.  It'll be a bit higher as a group - a bunch of Commandos buff each other with team bonuses, and while the self-buff is already factored into the damage averages, the team buff obviously isn't, so maybe a wee bit more.

dude: Yeah, I told Neph I'd rather have a double-edged sword for the frue FF13 experience.  So leader death = game over, but Summons become legal as well as the flip side of this.  This is why I also took Firefly so as to not instantly die.  Anyway, for fights that last until Turn 2, the idea is that Snow will already have Provoked / Challenged people who can kill the leader, so Firefly's 1-turn duration will be enough.

On that note, other figures to know...  Snow is 1.25 PCHP.  When he's Sentineling it up, though, he gets a big damage reduction bonus (And applies some to the rest of the party, too).  Starts at 35% reduction, eventually hits 50% reduction.  So he's something like 1.92 effective PCHP to break at the moment when going Sentinel.  Even more once he throws the Mediguard / Entrench / STEELGUARD / etc. up, of course, but that is usually secondary to getting the provoke on.

--
Okay after all that rambling.  Pass for me because dur, infinite healing vs. Floor 1.  Leaning pass for Magic as well unless someone can point out a way for the Dungeon team to neutralize Deis1.  Deis1 stomps stuff otherwise while being backed by Rydia/Rosa/Hilda healing.  (If Deis is somehow dealt with Magic is in big trouble of course, but don't see an easy way off hand, short of Lich's Hold, which will be too late because Deis1 will cast Fire magic first + Jane shoot.)

[dude789]

dude: Yeah, I told Neph I'd rather have a double-edged sword for the frue FF13 experience.  So leader death = game over, but Summons become legal as well as the flip side of this.  This is why I also took Firefly so as to not instantly die.  Anyway, for fights that last until Turn 2, the idea is that Snow will already have Provoked / Challenged people who can kill the leader, so Firefly's 1-turn duration will be enough.

On that note, other figures to know...  Snow is 1.25 PCHP.  When he's Sentineling it up, though, he gets a big damage reduction bonus (And applies some to the rest of the party, too).  Starts at 35% reduction, eventually hits 50% reduction.  So he's something like 1.92 effective PCHP to break at the moment when going Sentinel.

I don't know, it seems like a really big risk for not much payoff. Lightening has bad durability and with the Firefly changes it doesn't stop MT damage or status anymore. If the team runs into any sort of above average ID or petrify they're screwed off the bat. Fringeward helps with the MT damage, but it still seems really risky.

[SnowFire]

Well it's an FF13 team, so the goal is more to have fun with FF13 than win the dungeon really.

Lightning's durability is fine, not sure what you're getting at.  Hope's the one with bad durability.

Status moves?  ....oh.  Okay the team is screwed then.  This is a new change to Firefly, when the team was submitted it was obviously in the original version pre-nerf, but last I checked it the nerf was just multitarget that ignored Firefly.  (And MT OHKO damage through Fringeward means I've lost anyway, leader or no, so that's actually not a big deal.)  Yeah okay my team dies to the first above-average speed status slinger.   Guess FF got nerfed harder, which is fine because it's one of the most dominating Sealstones, just this particular nerf is trouble for me of course.

Edit: Well.  Cherub's Crown for ID protection is apparently Floor 6, so if the team can sneak that far, then maybe.  Still a problem for fatal non-ID statuses not in FF13 like Petrify, of course.  We'll see, I guess.

[Tide]

Neph: As a clarification, am I fighting form change Izanami/Nyx? Or specifically the specified form of Izanami/Nyx? (I don't think this matters because...see Random; I'm still thinking of a plausible way to get past Ragu XF, but Accelerate is cheap, Critical EXA is also cheap, and the damage blocking helps absolutely zilch. I'll take another look at it tomorrow, and try to BS something, but yeah! Pasta'd)

[Nephrite]

Tide: You're fighting the form chains.

Snowfire: If you want to make modifications, you're very welcome to do so. I buried the Firefly changes in the old topic so it's no wonder you didn't know. I suppose I can also lift that restriction for now since it's kind of harsh.

I'm personally happy to make it such that things that are "Fatal" status don't kill you unless you have no way to remove them.

EDIT: Actually, let me remove the status thing entirely. We'll see how it plays out.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Team Tide vs. Ragu O Ragula (WA:ACF)
*Full Heal
Team Tide vs. Ragu O Ragula (WA4)
*Full Heal
Team Tide vs. Ragu O Ragula (WA:XF)
*Full Heal
Team Tide vs. Margaret (P4)
*Full Heal
Team Tide vs. Nyarlathotep, Nyx Avatar and Izanami - :ragu:. Even if Team Tide made it through elsewhere, how would he handle Nyx of the "I get a guaranteed turn to Night Queen all week, everything is terrible~"?

Team Super | Miakis, Cristo, Angelo, DQ4 Hero, Brey (Status Symbol Law)
[Miakis: Mother Earth, Gale, Magic Absorb]
Floor 6b: Overachievers
Team aiel vs. Myria 1 and Jade - Um okay. First, Myria wants to OHKO Brey real bad because Acceleratle trivializes her. Miakis obviously opens with Canopy Defense to make Jade suck. Cristo Kabuffs, Angelo begins spamming revival and Solofia Fendspells to keep Jade in permanent low pressure mode. Myria can add -some- pressure with physicals until the second Kabuff, but I think things start falling in place as soon as a second Kabuff is up, and to make things worse, Myria is vulnerable to Surround (...). Given Miakis has infinite resources to boot, yeah, this works pretty well. It's pretty clear super picked Mother Earth+Gale -just for this fight-, but it was so worth it.
*Full Heal*
Team aiel vs. Katrina and Charlton Blunt (XF) - Charlton is faster than the team, but fails to OHKO Brey through SSL (...). Since Brey is -faster than Katrina at first-, Acceleratle drops in and Fendspell should handle Katrina's offense, at least. Past that, the team begins playing the buffing game and slowly handling the party. Ugly little attrition fight, but the team is pretty much -made- for those.
*Full Heal*
Team aiel vs. Rhapthorne and Dhoulmagus - Everybody but Solo is faster than the two losers and Miakis has 2HKO MT damage on Earthquake. Worst comes to worst, a combined assault of Miakis/Angelo/Brey handles Rhappy to me because Rule of Tim. Dhoulmagus by himself is endless trash.
*Full Heal*
Team aiel vs. Loki and Surt - Canopy Defense is kinda useless against Indiscriminate, but I doubt Loki and Surt can really threaten the team before Kabuff/Fendspell go up (Indiscriminate unfocusing has its issues), and Acceleratle is bad news for them.
*Full Heal*
Team aiel vs. Apocrypha and Heiss - Apocrypha is pretty much -worthless- against Canopy Defense and Heiss could use more durability. Kabuff also gives him problems because his good offense is very physical and telegraphed.

Team Snowfire - is FF13 and I can't vote. >_>

Team Magic | Deis1, Rydia (Life)+Rosa,Hilda, Jane, Nall
[Floor 1: Starting off Again (Beginning of the game)]
Team Magic vs. Hrist (VP1), Evil Gaia, Big Joe, Snowe(S4) and Gorudo - :hrist:
Team Magic vs. Bronzog, Galleon, FFT Knight and Kwanda Rossman (S1) - Mage-heavy party vs. this fight. Oh wowzers. Granted, Rydia and Rosa pretty much suck this early and Life is a -horrible- choice for the pairing, but well. Deis1 is basically carrying the team on its back like a winner.
Team Magic vs. Blissey, Axem Green, Augst and Lucius - ... wow, you actually manage to struggle on this fight... well, you -would-, but lol hilda essentially starts with grand slam so much for the fish. Axem Green takes physicals like Euram Barows, to boot, and he's the only one who doesn't die to GS. This fight is just way too unthreatening at base due to the egregious offense level outside Lucius and Axem Green (and only Axem has MT), but it's funny.
Team Magic vs. Mist Dragon, Whelk, Wingraptor (FF5), Garland (FF1) and LORD OCHU (FFX) - :deis1:
Team Magic vs. Lich and Kraken - And again.

[Nephrite]

Snow you forget that Dhoulmagus and Rhapthorne both fly, thus they are immune to Earthquake.

(no I am not really hyping this)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Snow you forget that Dhoulmagus and Rhapthorne both fly, thus they are immune to Earthquake.

(no I am not really hyping this)

No in-game mechanical evidence that this gives them any resistance to Earth, so yeah! I'm not sure I would see Rhappy surviving anyway, my credit for his HP is pretty much infinite. He should thank his lucky stars I give him PC HP.

[superaielman]

Pass to team Snowfire and Magic. Deis1 makes floor1 very, very sad. FF13 team has six fighters, all of whom are at least competent.  Abstain on my team for now, I need to look up the RH fight.

[Tide]

Aye, t'was a good run. For the record I do see my team managing to get to the last fight. But that last fight (mostly Izanami) does me in I think. My analysis...

**Full Heals reset limit and other types of gauges when teams pass through them.
Team Tide | Ramza, Cecilia ACF, Citan (BC), Seifer, Raynie
[Ramza: Priest/Time Magic/Auto Potion/Short Charge/Move MP Up] [Chemist, Wizard, Time Mage, Priest (Summoner)(Oracle)]
*Citan has been granted a Speed Ring S (+2 Speed)
*Cecilia has been granted FP Advance.
*Ramza has been granted Robe of Lords.
*Seifer has been granted Brothers GF and the Defend command.

***The team gets two initiative turns against the first three bosses and the Ragus may not use One Trillion Degrees.
Team vs. Ragu O Ragola (WA:ACF) - ACF Ragu's big gimmick is his ability to act at the end of his round for anywhere between 1 to 5 extra attacks. The trickiest part is that he has Dispel, which prevents any long term set up. So the team most likely goes with just Haste and then beat down. For a superboss, ACF Ragu's durability is merely "good", which with the level of damage pumping (especially via Command Replay off only one or two people), lets him be downed relatively quick.
*Full Heal

Team vs. Ragu O Ragola (WA4) - The only way I can really think of to win this is via the powers of SEIFER. Ramza/Raynie chip in, but this fight is largely about Seifer because he's the only who has a resourceless damage option and No Mercy arguably ignores Ragu's dangerous counters. The one upside to this fight is that there is no Dispel. So on the first two turns, Citan MUST set up Haste (at least on himself). It makes more sense to cast it MT, but at the very least, he needs to match Ragu's Speed, otherwise, he just repeatedly ST 2HKOs people until everyone is dead. With 700% average speed, Citan can match turn to turn with Ragu and heal off the damage. Incidentally, this also likely ties up a lot of Raynie's turns which will be spent regenerating Citan's MP. Cecilia definitely casts MT Permanance because this fight is LONG and either Reinforce (on herself mainly), MT Retaliate or Fragile on Ragu4. Ramza has the option of Slow/Holy/Meteor at his disposal, but he'll need to throw down Protect/Shell on people to keep Ragu4's assault manageable. With all this in place to keep Ragu4's offense in check, Seifer attacks/No Mercy with Ramza and Raynie chipping in. Thank god for MP restoration or this fight is likely not possible.
*Full Heal

Team vs. Ragu O Ragola (WA:XF) - Oh man, let's start with the epic here. First, Ragu has a MT 200 damage ITD attack that hits everyone on the field. FYI, average HP figures on XF teeter around maybe 300, possibly 350, so this is extremely bad news. Oh yeah, he's 512% average speed, so this causes loads and loads of problems. On top of that, he has Accelerate, which means his turns become unpredictable at points. Not cool. So how is this doable?

Well Slow can probably hit RaguXF; at least I think Slow Down hits him in-game. If not...well, the team wipes here. There's no way to know when he just double or worse insta-triples thanks to Accelerate bullshit and just wipe you to kingdom come. With Slow...this is manageable. Basically, the first two turns MUST be used to set up for defenses. Ramza has to cast Slow first, followed by Protect/Protect2 thanks to Ragu XF's physical, while Cecilia has to cast Anti-Elemental Barrier, followed by MT Permanance and Citan, MT Haste. Immediately after, Citan has to prepare another Renki, with Ramza getting a turn and passing it off at the most opportune moment to let Citan throw up Fire Shield. Subsequent Ramza turns are likely spent renewing Slow and the almighty FLOAT.

What does all this do? Well assuming it pans out (which I will), Ragu gets reduced to around 256% average, while the team gets much closer in speed. So this prevents the massive lapping constantly, and lets everyone else actually...y'know, get turns. This is important. Citan has to throw up Renki every now and then and heal because Ragu wants to spam that MT attack. However, with the barriers in play, its damage is greatly reduced. This leaves Ragu with a physical, which can be softened with Retaliate and Protect. Offense is actually not an issue here (especially since RaguXF is weak to Water and even if Citan is on healing duty 24/7, Ceci has Water). Again, it likely takes a while, but definitely doable.

If you don't think Slow hits...well, gg. At some point, RaguXF will get a consecutive series of turns (or relatively close consecutive series), and the combination of multiple physicals or that MT attack x3 times will probably kill enough people to prevent the battle from being winnable.

*Full Heal
Team vs. Margaret (P4) - Hilariously, Margaret is not an issue. Before the 75% mark, having only physicals as your offense is just a bad idea. So the team gets buffed up via Anti-Elemental Barrier, Protect/Shell, Haste, Command Replay and so on. During this phase, Citan also builds up to 28 AP as it will likely see use. Once the team is ready, they begin attacking. Margaret's elemental phases are handled by Anti-Elemental Barrier and Citan being faster so he can always prepare a MT Shield before hand to help soften the damage. Before Megidoloan, Citan also prepares Koga to boost everyone's defense some more, and everyone who can defend likely does so. This basically continues until all the way down to the 25% mark, at which point, she gains Hassou Tobi. The team aims to take her down to 25% right after Megidoloan, which should open up the door to attacking several turns in a row. Then before Margaret gets a chance to PC'd Hassou Tobi, everyone lobs something at her. There's no point in trying to stop Hassou Tobi (it just flat out MT OHKOs everyone sans Seifer) so there's absolutely no reason not to do this. By "lobs everything" I mean things like Dark Renegade, which will deal a massive amount of damage to Margaret since she also nulls all elements during that one particular turn, and on the turns before, Citan hitting Margaret with a full 28 AP Combo on an open turn (he'll likely get one thanks to the speed). This likely takes her out.

*Full Heal
Team vs. Nyarlathotep, Nyx Avatar and Izanami - Um...yeah. The only way to even beat this battle is to have lots of good ST because once you trigger one person's 2nd form (or in Nyx's case, last form), shit gets bad really fast. Thus, the ideal kill order is Nyarlie, then Nyx then Izanami. Nyx does nothing until form 2, so who cares. Izanami's damage can be walled, so that leaves Nyarlie, who more or less has to be killed ASAP thanks to his death spamming in form 1. This is thankfully possible! Form 2 even has a chance of being possible to kill as Haste/Protect/Anti-Elemental Barrier help to reduce a lot of tricks. Then we get to the other two bosses and um... yeah

Let's look at Nyx. Assuming I get all the way down to the 13th form (possible since all the other forms are pretty bad), Nyx gets this lovely little combo: PC at the end of one turn, and then PC Almighty Attack -> Almighty Attack the next. In case you're wondering, this deals MT OHKO damage. AND he can use it right off the bat. No limit whatsoever. "But Tide's PC in P3 is only x2! Not 2.5x!". Well guess what? 450 damage to a 489 HP average is 92%. If you considering that Izanami is STILL alive, she'll likely chip in the remaining 8% for free. Potentially, one of Shell/Protect could catch it, but Nyx can throw Marakunda to spoil that. Forget Night Queen. Night Queen gets potentially spoiled by Castle Wall spamming. Almighty Attack combo guts me dead before I get going to any degree. Oh and forget buffing. Nyx can Dispel those with Dekaja. So uh...yeah.

NOW, assuming from stroke of miracle, I make it past Nyx, we then have a lone Izanami! Sounds doable right? Nope. Guess what Izanami gets when gets down to 50%? Summons to Yomi. Kills anyone who is inflicted by a negative status. Guess what else she has? MT 100% Fear. g fucking g. About the only way to do it then, is to knock her down to around 50%, and then again, hope to blitz past her like Margaret. The trouble is that Izanami has physical resistance and that HP range is larger. Even before then, she has Terror Voice, and that MT 100% Fear gets old real fast as Cecilia has to constantly spam Castle Wall for Status Lock and that won't last forever.

Oh and just for trolling purposes, Izanami has to get killed last. Otherwise, she uses Thousand Curses and lolgg. Truly this battle is a bitch.

And thus Neph has given and Neph has taken away. Ah wells, it was fun while it lasted.

[Pyro]

I don't think anyone considers Thousand Curses for Izanami anyway? Would they?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Thousand Curses plot ID can fill a hole with acid and jump into it.

[Nephrite]

Indeed.

[SnowFire]

Neph, don't feel obligated to buff Firefly on my behalf, like I said this isn't exactly a win the Dungeon team anyway.  Only inflicting Game Over on actual Leader death rather than vanilla psuedo-fatal status sounds like it'd be pretty fair anyway.

I added to the Wiki a list of when various FF13 status blockers become legal.

super, Sazh will be piloting the airship transporting the team between floors this run, so it's only 5 people on my team.

Fail for team Tide.  Yeah when Tide isn't able to easily cheese with System Chronos locks, he doesn't really have defense buffing, so Izanami + Nyarlie probably blow the team up with MT.  Seifer can't set up some cool limit for blitzing without waking up Nyx from Fool.  Citan blitz and kill Nyarlie before he does anything is arguably his best bet, but seems chancy.  This is assuming Ragu XF doesn't kill him off an Accelerate chain and Tide doesn't run out of Hi-Ethers for Ragu4 or something.

Also, even if Thousand Curses was being enforced...  well, Ramza is a heroic young lad with a team of loyal followers ready to follow him to their graves if necessary, similar to Yu, so there's just a heartwarming scene as Raynie etc. all die, then they all come back to life after Ramza raises the Holy Stone up, and then text s c r o l l s  r e a l l y  s l o w  l  y   as the Chapter ends.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Beautiful things

You are a gentleman and a scholar.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I'm having a bad day. So all teams FAIL.


Okay, just Tide fails. gg

[dude789]

Other teams pass, although looking at Team Magic, he could be in for some trouble in the next two floors. Deis 1's starting magic set isn't spectacular (I think her strongest spell is Fry, the same one Bo starts with) and most of his team is frail or slow or both. 

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, do keep in mind that Fry -is- OHKO-level damage for a couple floors. It could be worse.