- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hell of a trick there, dimension hopping Cloud.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Pronouns
- Him/He
Weapon upgrades are a bit of a scavenger hunt, and considering the many many many types of items, it can be a bit thankless if you're doing it blind. These magazines (should you find them) help out, but ten hours in, you might be looking at the upgrade screen going 'I need 2 steel pipes... but I only have one. And I have absolutely no clue where I got it'.
One thing to note about the 'crafting system' (which I'm going to use to refer to as the entire item/magic/ability complex) is that items are so rarely used for what they're allegedly for.
The pinwheel says it's made with three m-stone pieces, an item you probably have multiple copies of. It, technically, is classified as a crafting item, with no use in the menu.
But what it's really for is used to refine low-level spells. Almost Every GF ability to refine spells uses it to make their most basic standard spell, the thunder/blizzard/fire stuff, with magic stone being the next tier up. Its use as a crafting material is almost entirely pointless, because characters all start with their most basic weapon. But it's use to top off your magic stocks after spamming a bunch of spells is infinitely more useful.
Likewise, the steel pipes you're missing? There are items that teach GFs skills. In the steel pipe's case, it's summon magic damage +10%. A skill you might have noticed literally every GF you own can already learn for 40 AP, meaning it's actual use is extremely limited
Because it's actual value is upgrading weapons.
Every item has multiple uses, and the value of an item is probably not going to be apparent, and since GF's all have different refinement skills, you may not even be able to check what an item can do, and use it for something that is less useful because you haven't found that particular GF yet.
So there are items that are weapon crafting materials, there are items that teach GF's skills, items that you use with the Item command, items that are tied to a character's particular 'thing' (Like Quistis blue magic items), items that raise GF compatibility, and even items that are 'Miscellaneous' because they don't fit in any of those. And each item individually may or may not be refined by any GF skill into items or magic, and items that are created can then possibly be refined into other items or magic.
The pinwheel says it's made with three m-stone pieces, an item you probably have multiple copies of. It, technically, is classified as a crafting item, with no use in the menu.
But what it's really for is used to refine low-level spells. Almost Every GF ability to refine spells uses it to make their most basic standard spell, the thunder/blizzard/fire stuff, with magic stone being the next tier up. Its use as a crafting material is almost entirely pointless, because characters all start with their most basic weapon. But it's use to top off your magic stocks after spamming a bunch of spells is infinitely more useful.
Likewise, the steel pipes you're missing? There are items that teach GFs skills. In the steel pipe's case, it's summon magic damage +10%. A skill you might have noticed literally every GF you own can already learn for 40 AP, meaning it's actual use is extremely limited
Because it's actual value is upgrading weapons.
Every item has multiple uses, and the value of an item is probably not going to be apparent, and since GF's all have different refinement skills, you may not even be able to check what an item can do, and use it for something that is less useful because you haven't found that particular GF yet.
So there are items that are weapon crafting materials, there are items that teach GF's skills, items that you use with the Item command, items that are tied to a character's particular 'thing' (Like Quistis blue magic items), items that raise GF compatibility, and even items that are 'Miscellaneous' because they don't fit in any of those. And each item individually may or may not be refined by any GF skill into items or magic, and items that are created can then possibly be refined into other items or magic.
Have fun!
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
Our point of contact with The Resistance:Omicron said:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshU58nI0Ts
I mean, if he gives the evil Genie Lamp to an edgy teenager and go 'If you're a bad enough dude, this will give you even more power', Cid should know exactly what's going to happen.
I haven't played the game but...
GFs causing memory loss has already been mentioned multiple times, and I thought that Chekhov's Gun would be used later, but are they really using it almost immediately to give Squall a forgotten childhood friend?! A rich childhood friend with bodyguards?!
This really is a high school anime video game.
GFs causing memory loss has already been mentioned multiple times, and I thought that Chekhov's Gun would be used later, but are they really using it almost immediately to give Squall a forgotten childhood friend?! A rich childhood friend with bodyguards?!
This really is a high school anime video game.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
You can do it in Balamb. It's relatively easy, too, if you haven't found out how yet that means you haven't visited every building in town, so I suggest canvassing it properly until you find the right place before you go leave for Timber.
Incidentally, you might not have seen Steel Pipes and Screws yet, but you did mention getting M-Stone Pieces (and I think Fish Fins?) as drops, right? So, you know, maybe you just haven't met the right enemies yet.
Well...
That. It's honestly the best implementation of status magic in Final Fantasy ever, and it works fine even against bosses - those are immune to most status, but very few are immune to all of them.
I mean, Anime Rules dictate that no two characters have the same hairdo; Selphie could be recognized from other students despite the uniform because of that. Just confront the hairdos and see if they correspond or not.
Given the extensive discussion there's been of how easy the game is to break, of course Diablos can be obtained immediately. That said, he's far from unbeatable even at a normal power level; with proper strategy and a couple attempts (to learn his patterns and find out his weaknesses), Omicron could probably win with his current team, although it'd not be exactly easy. Still, it's doable; defeating X-ATMO92 is substantially harder.
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- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Gravi...ja??Everything goes dark.
We fade to a sunless place of endless clouds under the dark.
And…
…
so that's a thing.
I'm fascinated; you see, I'm vaguely aware of the plot of FF8 in very distant strokes- I believe I read a low level run LP or something at some point? But I recall like, basically no details, and little of the gameplay, I'm mostly blind here and sure as hell don't recall this thing.
But I am more broadly aware of general final fantasy things.
And spells typically go basic, -ra, -ga... and then -ja. (though there's been other variations on Extra High Level Magic and of course variable translations of spell names and such in general)
So this is, unless I'm forgetting something from a prior game, the first time of the use of what would at least eventually settle into fourth tier magic, right?
Or maybe it's just the usual inconsistent translation and this is just second or third tier, fuck if I know.
But it's fascinating to see, especially from something you can pop so early in the game... even if the warning and outcome imply you're not really supposed to, yet.
What the game wants me to think: Ooh a shooting star, is that a good sign or are these two star-crossed lovers or some such
What I actually thought: HOLY SHIT A LUNAR CRY IS STARTING, EVERYONE TAKE COVER
I feel like this is not a universe where shooting stars are thought of as auspicious.
Moving up in the world? A world-class, superpowered professional mercenary gets given a tiny prison-cell sized dorm room?
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Man, I love Selphie in all her enthusiastic second-tier player character glory. Like, I'm not expecting her to be nearly as important to the plot as Squall, but she's just a lovely bundle of energy to be around.
Ahahaha oh man, never made that connection, but somehow it fits perfectly.Oh my god.
He's literally this meme:
Squall, as someone who has been the kid standing in the corner watching people dance and thinking I'm above these trivialities, nobody thinks you're cool. C'mon. Relax a little.
And as for "nobody thinks you're cool"... well, Blue Girl came up and wanted a dance, didn't she? Clearly at least one person is into the brooding loner archetype.
Game keeps so much track that I got an entirely different dialogue tree for this - I had initially refused with "I'll think about it" or whatever the option was back at the beginning of the game, so here Selphie once again went "please join" and I had the yes or no options.
Squall said yes this time, because I wanna torment him with festivities and Selphie energy.
Alright, FFVII wasn't nearly as stuffed with AMVs as FFVIII has been, was it? Because I swear we're getting multiple cutscenes for every plot point.
Not that I'm complaining, mind you, it's a nice development especially since the characters look more like actual people rather than deformed legos or off-brand claymations.
Both of these two are just absolute bundles of issues, two prodigies of different types shoved in a room together with no idea how to deal with it.
Isn't Balamb Garden great?
Fun fact, you can totally just run over in your uniform instead of changing, which results in Quistis telling you off and going "bro can't you even follow basic orders? Get your casuals."
I'd say they can be decently useful? Some are better used as spells since you might not need them as often, but on the other hand things like shoving 100 Blind spells on an attacker means you have super easy blind rates on enemies, which absolutely cripples anything that lacks non-physical attacks. Even works on some bosses.
Speaking of statuses, oh hey what if you... you know, put T-Rexaur to sleep with the sleep spells you just sucked out of Grats?
There are alternative methods of getting to 100 of your spells, and often methods that are more effective than "hold down the X button and take a nap while everyone gathers 100 copies of Fire/Blizzard/Thunder/Cure". I recommend checking out the skills your GFs can learn a bit more, and maybe checking out the Tutorial sections on abilities (because holy shit the Tutorial tab explains basically everything in FFVIII, it's nuts).
As for things like sleeping the T-Rexaur... really, you can just cast the spell instead of junctioning it. Sure, 100 Sleeps on your sword for that 100% inflict rate (minus any resistance enemies might have) is nice, but if you don't have enough copies for a good inflict rate might as well cast spells like spells instead. Then you can just pummel the sleepy dino with Blizzard spells and Shiva.
I don't know if that's a tutorial issue or something, but double-checking with my save file status attack/defend junctions are generally just a straight "1 spell = 1% inflict/resist rate", at least for specific status spells.
Wow, turn out child prodigies turned child soldiers and instructors aren't the greatest at all those roles realistically, who knew?
Much like Quistis is one big bag of insecurity issues, Squall is a whole other bag of... Idunno at this point but probably "lost people he cares about" issues.
At the least, he certainly slots into the "brooding emo loner" stereotype people like to throw at him a lot better than Cloud ever did.
Now just imagine what FFVIII: Advent Children would do to Squall's character
Yeah, can confirm I was also confused on these two characters when I was a kid.
Yup, there is in fact not an easy option to multi-target enemies or allies alike outside of GF casting. Heck, iirc the best multi-heal option for the party? Is actually items since there's a couple of potion variants that are things like "restore 1000 HP to the entire party", while even Curaga can't be multicast - you would first need your spellcaster buffed up with Double and willing to use extra spells.
At least some enemies do drop these items, pretty sure. At the least, I can confirm the Geezards that first showed up in Dollet drop them because I got a fair amount farming for Rank.
SQUALL
IT'S ME, THE DEVIL
Understandable, have a nice day.
(I absolutely had Diablos specifically in mind when I wrote that, and you know it)
Yeah, Diablos can hit like a truck with his gravity spam and high physical attack.
To be fair, it is 100% possible to beat Diablos at this point in the game... if you know how.
I will, of course, not be telling Omi how!
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
The trick is that while it looks like he's doing a shitton of damage, most of Diablos' damage are from reducing your HP with Gravity magic and then cherry tapping you if you get sloppy, you can counter it by making sure you have one person reasonably healed who has your revive stuff ready to go, and let the others just tank the gravity hits in the face.
- Pronouns
- Him/He
One thing I've noticed as an adult playing now is the ATB system makes no sense to me. I can draw with a full party a couple times in a row, but other times enemies will attack two or three times while my ATB bars are filling up.
I have no clue why this is happening, and I'm min/maxed and character-grinded enough to laugh anything off, but it's still some sort of mechanism that I don't understand.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
I did, in fact, consider the Lamp Trap a personal offense back when I first played, and made my (momentary) goal to ruin that man Diablos' career before I left Balamb.
I think it took me about 5 tries. Very tricky, and I might have been grinding some, but not that hard once you figure it out.
I think it took me about 5 tries. Very tricky, and I might have been grinding some, but not that hard once you figure it out.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And here it is.
For everyone who spent several pages baffled as to the weird and random use of the 'chicken-wuss" insult-
Our fistfighter for the game is a light-haired young man in a red vest who rides a hoverboard and hates being called "chicken."
Where have I heard that before...
(Note that to the best of my knowledge this has never been officially confirmed. But it has been a longstanding observation by fans that there are a number of passing similarities between Zell and Marty McFly.)
For everyone who spent several pages baffled as to the weird and random use of the 'chicken-wuss" insult-
Our fistfighter for the game is a light-haired young man in a red vest who rides a hoverboard and hates being called "chicken."
Where have I heard that before...
(Note that to the best of my knowledge this has never been officially confirmed. But it has been a longstanding observation by fans that there are a number of passing similarities between Zell and Marty McFly.)
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
That DOES explain the bit where Zell went back in time and almost became his own father so much better, I'd been wonderingAnd here it is.
For everyone who spent several pages baffled as to the weird and random use of the 'chicken-wuss" insult-
Our fistfighter for the game is a light-haired young man in a red vest who rides a hoverboard and hates being called "chicken."
Where have I heard that before...
(Note that to the best of my knowledge this has never been officially confirmed. But it has been a longstanding observation by fans that there are a number of similarities - if superficial - between Zell and Marty McFly.)
FFVIII Bestiary: Balamb Garden
Personally, after the Solo Seifer Grind in Dollet, I suspect it's an old ATB trick of giving enemies the option to randomly do nothing on their turn (thus wasting it and padding out time between their attacks). In particular, some enemies like the G-Soldiers would often sit around for multiple rounds doing nothing, while the Anacondours were a genuinely huge threat because they always got an attack in between Seifer's turns.
Anyways, this update's bestiary bits:
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You don't have to match pace, if you wanted to blast through at a faster pace to avoid losing interest you'd only need to keep a folder of screencaps to parcel out at pace of thread. Only if you were comitted to posting the Beastary as it goes along, that is.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
EL DIABLO, NOOOOOOO
Funniest random serve in this game so far. Close second is the fact that you have to fight a T-rex just to get to first base here - them motherfuckers built Different at Balamb Garden.
Funniest random serve in this game so far. Close second is the fact that you have to fight a T-rex just to get to first base here - them motherfuckers built Different at Balamb Garden.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Another incredibly cunning scheme by Cid, making horny teenagers powerlevel about it
Oh, that's pretty much what I'm doing to be fair, and I'm enjoying myself enough reliving FFVIII that I should be fine. Heck, I expected the last two updates to be one update and Omi to already be on the way to posting about Timber by now, so I've already cleared that part of the game and am on to [Redacted].
Just an observation that came to mind, really. I've accidentally invested myself in being "that guy" who's posting useful threadmarks material for the game because I find it fun.
It's a good thing you took out the Raldos first. If you kill the Granaldo first, the Raldos attack in full fury, and they're surprisingly fast.
If you access Squall's Study Panel, you can check out Selphie's Garden Festival Committee web page, which features her diary and other things she has written.
Credit to the animation team on this one: Squall is actually terrible at dancing.
Squall may be terrible at dancing, but thankfully the animators seem to know what they're doing. I ballroom dance as a hobby and it absolutely blows my mind how often I see the hand positions reversed in media.
The location in question is not very easy to spot, so I suspect many players will overlook it, which further compounds the "guide dang it" of upgrading weapons.
As for Diabolos, he's really not that hard when you've got him figured out.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
I imagine this is the kind of dancing Gog-Agog had to put up with from the protagonist of Kill6BillionDemons.
Timber's not that odd for a town name, I imagine they were founded as a lumber town.
somewhatLazy
Serial Procrastinator
- Location
- lurking
Selphie truly is Best Girl. Love her, 100%, no notes.
Also, as for telling apart the Blue Girls… like other comments have mentioned, this is anime and having the same hairstyle as another major character is punishable by beheading. Zooming in on the sprites should be majorly helpful.
On that note, you may want to look at the screenshots of the logo and FMV again.
The blue girl with the green fabric who looked at Squall in the infirmary and whom he just saved from monsters has short brown hair.
The blue girl who danced at Squall in the party and who is featured in the FMV and logo has shoulder-length brown hair.
Very clear and easy to distinguish, I know!
The blue girl who danced at Squall in the party and who is featured in the FMV and logo has shoulder-length brown hair.
Very clear and easy to distinguish, I know!
SeaSirocco
Formerly 'Sanae Aran' / Aspiring Artist
- Location
- The Seaside
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Gotta say, I love how FF series seized upon the theme of "oh, so you like this awoof moody lone wolf swordsman, do you? You fool! Watch him get OBLITERATED by genuine human connection in one minute tops!"
Really creates a brand identity.
"...But succeed or fail, the mission is likely to destabilize the region enough to create plenty more work for us. Be ready to withdraw at once the moment Galbadia makes ys a good offer."
Really creates a brand identity.
"...But succeed or fail, the mission is likely to destabilize the region enough to create plenty more work for us. Be ready to withdraw at once the moment Galbadia makes ys a good offer."