ROTDS STRATEGY GUIDE, by LunaticScreamer

Link to the video playthrough (being played on v2.0 Insane difficulty): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvYqm04RNHU&list=PLe5Usj-orEjRm9zhugyaH7lfK28xdtoE3

Check out the updated online version here: https://www.ff6hacking.com/rotds/guide.html

FRAUST:

We've arrived at Fraust in control of three party members. One is the wayward sorceress the Blackthorn Empire cherishes so much while the others are staple FF standbys Biggs & Wedge.

Our first challenge is the lone Dire Wolf. Its normal attacks are no slouch and it has quite a bit more hp. Luckily the Magitek Armors of all three characters come equipped with some strong attacks via the Magitek command. Being weak to fire, the wolf gets dropped in two or three Magma Beams. Less if you put the Magitek Armors in the frontline since the beams are effected by row.

Regarding the Magitek Armor skills, they have six unique skills shared between them. Three elemental beams in fire, thunder, or ice varieties, Revitalize (Greatly heals a target and cures most negative ailments), Life Force (Revives a ko'd target), and M-Tek Barrier (Grants safe & shell statuses to a target. Safe raises physical defense, shell boosts magical defense).

The other two skills are different. For Biggs & Wedge, they have Poison Storm (AoE poison elemental attack, inflicts poison) & Search Scope (Gives data on the enemy's level/hp/mp/elemental weaknesses). Our wayward sorceress replaces those two skills with Aerods (Wind/thunder elemental AoE attack) and M-Tek Missile (Single target, non-elemental, VERY powerful for the early game).

That all being said, despite the much bulkier and nastier enemies, the fixed encounters aren't that vicious. The random Guard enemies can be dropped with a couple Poison Storms and the pincer attack can be cleaned up pretty easily so long as the sorceress doesn't get focus fired hard.

The real danger? The final fixed battle before the mine entrance. You face off against four Prinnies from the Disgaea series. Their appearance best not fool you because they are extremely dangerous. Snowball, if it hits, halves a target's current hp while Prinny Barrage is just a standard strong physical strike. The real danger? They can self destruct, killing themselves while dealing damage equal to their remaining hp to a single target. Worse yet, they're immune to Poison Storm and Magma Beam seems very apt to causing them to self destruct.

Once they're out of the way, the mine entry is refreshingly calm. You'll probably need to spend one fight just to get everyone back into tip top shape though before the boss, Fireweaver.

Fireweaver is basically a fire themed Whelk, but can potentially act twice in a turn. Given some of its powerful fire based attacks like Blaze & Wildfire, you are going to need M-Tek Barriers up quickly and stay as close to full as possible. 

Thankfully, you're pretty safe just having everyone fire off an attack on their first turn. After that, get the M-Tek Barriers up because Fireweaver will retreat inside its abdomen. Hit the abdomen AT ALL and your team gets a Meltdown in the face (on Insane difficulty), liking wiping everyone unless you grinded everyone to 500+ hp max. Thankfully it only seems to use Web Shot (Damage + slow status to a target) while inside the abdomen.

All things considered, this isn't too rough of a first boss. Don't get greedy with the attacks and you'll pull through without too much issue.


THE ESCAPE:

Since the last segment, our wayward sorceress did some solo grinding. Seems crazy that I'd do that even before getting out of the intro area, but there's one fight upcoming that's going to be a nightmare if I don't bulk up now.

Speaking of levels, they have a chance to grant +1 to any of the four main stats (Might which governs physical damage, Speed which determines how fast the user's atb gauge fills, Stamina which lets the user have a better chance to resist some spells as well as influencing hp growth slightly, and Mag. Pwr which governs magical damage). You may get no stat increases or possibly get every stat increased. It can be gamed if you're into some saving/reloading business. Nothing that you have to do though to survive.

That being said, our intrepid trio of soldiers finally make it to the esper they were tasked by crazy loony lunatic Kefka to locate. Unfortunately for them it decided to wake up from its siesta while frozen in ice, seems to be interested in the sorceress, then attacks.

Vaalsparda, while having some decent physical power, including its stronger physical strike called Psychic Beam, is more notable for its elemental assault. It can cast tier 1 & 2 basic elemental spells that shouldn't be horrendously damaging, but you'll want to keep your hp topped off regardless. It can cast Rippler too which swaps its status buffs & ailments with another chosen target. May need to reapply your M-Tek Barrier once here, but otherwise shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Sometime after the battle has been underway, Vaalsparda will use Reverse Polarity, switching the rows of all characters. Even in the front row, its physicals aren't too painful to endure, especially with M-Tek Barriers up. However, this is the point where you need to heal up because on the next turn it gets, Vaalsparda will launch a tier 3 elemental spell, likely at everyone, and do ~150-160 damage with shields up.

Honestly, this fight isn't too bad, maybe even a pinch easier than Fireweaver since you don't have to worry about a random Meltdown counter due to bad attack timing. Just keep topped off and have Biggs & Wedge spam Poison Storm, the boss's weakness, while the sorceress spams her missiles.

After dealing enough damage, a cutscene begins. Vaalsparda emits some serious light, enough to make Biggs & Wedge go poof. As for the sorceress? She apparently resonates with the esper, then her Magitek Armor explodes. Capital!

Luckily for her, someone decided to come exploring the cavern and took her back to his house. When you gain control again, you can check around the house to find an Elixir in the clock and an Iron Sword in the suit of armor before talking to this man, Arvis.

As it turns out, our wayward sorceress was being controlled by something called a Slave Crown, basically making the wearer a soulless being that can be ordered around by anyone. It is here that we finally get a name for our sorceress, Aurora.

Aurora's respite is short lived as some guards come knocking for her. Arvis is going to attempt to keep them at bay while Aurora escapes through the mines. Alone. Without her godlike Magitek Armor skills. At the very least she manages to make it to the save point and grab some protection in the form of a Buckler on the way. Don't forget that you can sprint (move faster) by holding down the B Button.

As for the chests strewn about, 2.0 does away with the whole concept of chests that have better loot in them the longer you refrain from opening them so open away at every one you see.

Eventually, Aurora gets cornered by several guards, but somehow manages to find the one spot in the cavern with a weak floor and falls through it to the floor below and passes out. That's twice now she's done this. If she's trying to make a bid for the most times oneself gets his or her ass kicked in a cutscene, she's starting out very strong, heh.

While she's passed out, she has a vision of how she became a puppet for Kefka. Nevermind the fact that the crown could be taken off and her senses returned relatively to normal.

There's also the matter of Project Genesis, all headed by one Professor Oak. No longer interested in the field of pokemon, he now makes a living studying magic and trying to get a big lead in the mechanical business.

Once the dream ends, the scene returns to Arvis's house and one special individual making a very classy entrance via the roof. It's none other than Final Fantasy 7's buster sword wielding Cloud Strife. As it turns out, he's a mercenary doing work for profit. His target is one Arvis requested...to rescue Aurora and keep her safe. Seems simple, right?

Well, once Cloud gets to the still unconscious Aurora, a very determined elite guard decides to send out the Prinny army to deal with things. However, they're KINDA invading on the turf of the local moogle clan, causing one of their own, Mog, along with a bunch of other moogles to help Cloud fend off the ensuing penguin horde.

The entire reason I went through the trouble to level Aurora to 10 is to make Cloud begin at the level he does here, allowing him access to the third of his trademark Limit command skills.

The Limit command is exactly like Cyan's SwdTech command from vanilla. Select it and a meter appears. Hit the confirm button again when the bar hits the desired level to unleash a special attack. Lv1 is just a strong single target strike (Braver) while his lv2 skill activates a stance that will stay charged. Any enemy with a physical strike that targets Cloud will trigger the attack Climhazzard.

As for the lv3 skill, it's Blade Beam which does damage to one target and inflicts seizure to do some minor damage to the enemy every so often. Best of all, it's a ranged attack.

Strategy here for the assault? Focus on the Prinnies first and foremost. Without the Magitek Armors, you need to go FAST on either killing them or lowering their health enough so the self destruct doesn't murder someone. In this hack, while in battle you can hold the X Button down instead of pressing it to switch between the 'Steal' and 'Throw' commands. Keep this in mind for later characters with Steal/Throw as well.

Healing may be an issue here, but some of the moogle come packing unique commands, one of them being Miracle. This casts Cure, Cura, or Curaga at random to the whole party.

As for the one unique moogle of the bunch...Mog's capable of some mad dance moves, having access to eight dance moves, each of which have their own unique skills that are chosen at random when you select them. Air Guitar can potentially dish out some nice AoE damage while Cavern Strut can be learned fighting in caverns and isn't quite as useful right now.

The most important thing to keep in mind as you thin the horde...try to limit your item usage. You'll need everything for the boss, Marshal.

Marshal brings some serious physical power to the table with his strong physical strike, Slayer Edge, capable of doing 150+ damage to back row characters. He can also use Energy Web to inflict stop on a target.

As you do damage to the elite guard, he can start tossing in heals and even using a one time buff to apply haste to himself and his wolflike Ravager buddies. His cohorts do decent damage and have Bloodfest, healing them for the amount of damage inflicted.

This fight is not easy at all. Not necessarily due to the high damage Marshal can dish out with Slayer Edge, but because the fight can drag on for a long time, especially with the random heals. Do not be afraid to use that Elixir if you find yourself in a pickle and need emergency healing.


DURANDAL CASTLE:

Having finally made it out of the hellhole that was Fraust, the danger factor is going to be quite a bit less severe for our duo.

Before continuing on, there's a lovely cat merchant from Secret of Mana by the name of Neko at Fraust's entrance. He sells some unique equipment, but at higher than usual prices. Regardless, I picked up a Thief Knife from him. When attacking normally, there's a chance to perform a steal alongside the physical strike.

Enough of that though, time to take the walk to our next destination. We're to head to Durandal Castle and meet with the king. Getting there is done simply by going south, then east, then north while hugging the edge of the mountains and eventually the ocean. You should spot Durandal Castle just as you begin hugging some mountains going north.

Enemy wise, I got really lucky and only ran into weak sauce enemies like Slimes & Blue Scouts.

Upon entering Durandal Castle, there's lots to check out and it's where the remainder of this segment takes place. At first, there's not many places you can go. You're basically railroaded into heading towards the throne room, but there's some shops to browse too. You'll want to pickup some Potions and a couple Karma Jolts from the item shop before the next dungeon.

Once you've looted everything you can, head up into the throne room to find the king. He introduces himself as Serin and his not pleased about the empire's actions, especially considering what Aurora went through.

Once he & Cloud leave the room, you'll gain control again. Two guards that were blocking some doors outside now move, letting you explore the west & east wings. Make damn sure to check every suit of armor, box, and even bookshelf you run across.

First stop you'll want to make is in the west wing. In the king's bedroom, there's the matriarch of the royal family, Elenor. She mentions that Serin has a half brother by the name of Ronan who presumably left to pursue his own path after some family issues came up.

After that scene, there's a chest behind Elenor, but it's locked. Presumably only Serin can open it. Luckily he's back in the throne room so go have a chat with him...only to find out Kefka's decided to make a surprise visit, prompting Serin to go out and more or less brush him off. Clearly there's no magical death sorceress here, no way!

Also, Serin is a new party member. Put him in the front row before talking to Cloud. He's gonna devise a plan with his captain while Cloud takes Aurora to the eastern wing to rest up. Make sure Aurora is in the front row too when you get to the bedroom.

After a short rest, Serin awakens to find his castle is on fire. It wasn't his chef juggling firebombs, but it was Kefka pulling more shenanigans. However, Serin one-ups him on the shenanigans by calling in some chocobos so he, Aurora, and Cloud can book it out of dodge while the castle submerges under the desert. Kefka does not take this lightly and sics a pair of Magitek Armors on the party.

Compared to what Fraust had in store, the Magitek Armors don't pull off anything nearly as vicious. Magitek Laser & Metal Kick both can do triple digit damage, but nothing that Potions can't fix. Other then that and a very bulky hp total (1620), not too bad...at first glance.

You see, the strategy here is to weaken both Magitek Armors equally. Once one goes down, it unlocks the Sand Storm skill for the other which hits for close to 300 damage on all party members and inflicts blind.

Despite the bulky hp totals, Serin is going to make things much easier for me to manage and it's all due to his unique Aether command. Think Edgar's tools from vanilla more or less. Sonic Shot hits all enemies for some decent damage while Cosmic Fang also hits all enemies, but does no damage in exchange for inflicting confusion. His whole task here is to keep the Magitek Armors locked down with confusion while Cloud & Aurora chip away with Blade Beam & Spark respectively.

Once the Magitek Armors are dismantled and Kefka shamed for his poor planning, the next goal is set. Serin's actually working together with the Crimson Blades, a resistance group that opposes the empire. Cloud is his contact with that group and the trio is going there to enlist help from a skilled wizard, Astral.

When the world map appears again, ride south until you hit the coastline. There'll be a cave to your east which is where the journey will continue next time.


JOURNEY TO SEASCAPE TOWN:

Time to make our trek to Seascape Town via a small cave. The guard at the entrance takes his leave to go inform everyone at the castle that the king has made his escape from Kefka's clutches relatively unscathed. Right after he leaves, his relief comes in, apparently allergic to chocobos. Poor guy.

What's interesting though? This guard is known as Hector and he joins for this run through the cave. He's nothing special stat or skill wise, but he's another target for the enemies to waste attacks on.

Besides random Killer Bees skulking about (which you could have run into outside of Fraust), there's Wallmasters & Cursed Dolls. Both pack a fairly decent punch with their attacks with the former having a skill that can inflict sleep (Sleep Scratch) while the latter has a move that can petrify (Dread Gaze). Cursed Dolls are susceptible to confusion so Serin popping a quick use of his Cosmic Fang can control the fight pretty easily, especially if a Dread Gaze gets aimed at an enemy.

The cave is very small with only five rooms to it, but the first room contains a healing spring to fully refresh everyone, making it a great place to grind if you need it. The second room is the largest and houses all the treasure in this place. Remember that chests with upgraded loot as the game progresses are no more so loot away. You'll find an Elixir, Ether, and Shelter in total.

Once you reach the last room of the cave, Hector leaves to return to his guard duties, but he left a bit too early because there's a Zombie (weak to Fire) for the others to contend with. It hits rather hard, over 200 damage on a frontliner, but that's all it does damage wise so keeping one person on standby to use a Potion if needed will keep you afloat...at least for a while. The Zombie also can use Bite to inflict the aptly named zombie status to a target. The afflicted drops to 0 hp and will attack ally or enemy. Karma Jolts will reverse the effects, but it'll be as if they were resurrected via a Recharge so be ready with a Potion to bring the character out of critical.

With 1400 hp and an innate hp regen of roughly 35-40+ health per tick, Cloud & Aurora should pile on the offense with Braver/Blade Beam & Cure respectively. Serin can't really do much so leave him on standby to toss heals or Karma Jolts as it's required.

Once you exit the cave, there's some new enemies skulking about like Cerathos, Moblins, and Lurkers. Moblins can be annoying via inflicting stop with Energy Web and Cerathos can hit hard with Mega Volt, but otherwise nothing that you can't handle by throwing all your offensive might out each battle. Really nice gil gains from battles here too with a pack of four Moblins dishing out over 1k gil for a relatively easy kill.


SEASCAPE TOWN:

To reach Seascape Town, head east from the cave exit until you hit the ocean. From there, the town is to the south.

Seascape Town is more or less a rest point to stock up on items, search for treasure, and gather intel. The main selling point is not an old Mortal Kombat loonie being a major drunkard, but someone by the name of Master Oyama taking two of his disciples to Mt. Zephyr in the north for some meditation & training. One of them just so happens to be Ronan, but the other? Legendary DBZ mockery idol Raditz. That's going to blow up in his face somehow, right?

As for the shops, there's some interesting stuff in the armory for Aurora. There's a Diffusal Rod, Wizard's Hat, and Vanish Cloak. The hat & cloak provide boosts to her magic stat, but all three items teach her a spell. Diffusal Rod teaches Dispel (strips beneficial status effects from a target) at a x3 rate, Wizard's Hat teaches Teleport (warps you out of a dungeon or battle) at a x5 rate, and Vanish Cloak teaches Vanish (makes the target invisible and able to dodge all physical strikes, but magic will always hit) at a x2 rate.

As for the relic shop, there's the Paladin's Icon & Star Pendant. The former grants 100% hit rate with the Attack command and the ability to take blows for party members in critical status while the latter grants immunity to poison & petrify.

When you're all ready to go, you can exit town and go north to Mt. Zephyr. You can take a small detour to a hut on the way though to find out it's where Ronan lives. He's not in though because, shock and awe, Raditz killed Oyama so he went into the mountain to take revenge.


MT. ZEPHYR:

With that out of the way...Mt.Zephyr is located directly north of Seascape Town.

Most of the enemies of Mt.Zephyr are relatively docile in terms of their attacks. Cockatrices are an exception only because they can petrify which is the main reason everyone has a Star Pendant equipped. Hunters (from the Resident Evil universe) are probably the most dangerous just because they can counter certain commands with an attack that inflicts berserk.

The dungeon overall's pretty linear with some detours here and there. The detours are well worth it though for some of the loot.

Some of the good things include the following...

Magic Tab - Something I haven't really touched on yet, but there's stat boosting items sprinkled throughout the game. Each tab boosts a stat by 1. This one boosts magic power.

4k gil - Pretty beastly considering Neko is going to show up near the boss of this area and have some nice gear worth picking up.

Power Glove - Atlas Armlet from vanilla basically, raising the physical damage the wearer does. Serin can make very good use of this alongside his Sonic Shot. Speaking of Serin....

Poison Nova - He gets a new Aether here! This does magical lightning & wind damage to all enemies.

X-Potion - Betcha you wouldn't have guessed this is hidden due south from the save point. May need to do an off screen search of dungeons at some point to make sure I didn't miss any other spots like this.

The opening to the north leads to a big, ugly-looking plant that's blocking a treasure chest. Go ahead and choose to cut it down and you'll proceed to strike it repeatedly until it is no more. Now you can take the Soma Drop that's inside the chest.

Neko will be right along your walking path after the save point. Besides some assorted items, the cat has a few new pieces of gear available. The Mystic Sword only is useful to Aurora right now simply because it uses mp to fuel guaranteed crit hits, but the Fighter Hat & Ninja Gear are both solid upgrades for Cloud.

Soon after the cat, you'll find some jerk blocking the entrance into the final cave passage. That jerk is none other than local Dragonball Z's bumbling idiot saiyan Raditz. Claiming that Ronan sent the trio, he decides to be lazy and send a couple of Saibamen out to fight first.

For being what amounts to sacrificial pawns in the DBZ universe, these Saibamen can pull off some rather annoying moves. Primal Rage (berserk), Vanish to make themselves invisible until struck by magical attacks, and even one move never used here called Rock Barrage (inflicts confusion and deals damage...oh, and it hits the entire party) are just a few examples.

Oh, and they aren't Saibamen without their trademark ability to self destruct. While they won't do this until they get to low hp, it's very possible to see someone take a dirt nap since they both have a touch more than 3k hp.

Best thing you can do here is damage both equally until they get to around 1000-1500 hp, then focus one down. That way, you don't have to risk eating two suicidal green monster bombs back to back.

As for steals, while both have Potions available, they have a rare steal of a Titan Fist.

Once both have been vaporized, Raditz finally decides to get his lazy ass into gear and attacks himself.

For all his implied cowardice, Raditz shows just how fierce saiyan pride is. He regularly attacks twice per turn and has some powerful attacks thrown into the mix. He's got magical moves (Gale Cut, Saintly Beam, and Shock Wave), gravity based moves (Energy Blade, Sonic Boom), and even a move he never used here, Fists of Thunder. That hits one target VERY hard, roughly 550+ damage or so.

Cloud should be on full blown offense here spamming Braver or Blade Beam. The others should attempt to steal Raditz's Titan Fist, then focus on healing, attacking only when there's an opening.

Once enough damage has been dealt, Ronan comes in to save the day. Even after the rest of the team gets blown away, he manages to stick around and promptly kick Raditz's ass via his Ki Blast move from his Combo command.

After Raditz escapes like a pansy, Ronan offers his services to the team as they continue towards the Crimson Blades' hideout. Luckily the mountain tour ends shortly after he joins, then it's just a short trip northeast, then east across a bridge to the resistance hideout.

At this point you can also return to Seascape Town and visit Oyama's wife, Mitsu, to see a special little scene with Ronan. You'll receive a variety pack of status tabs for doing so.


SIR ASTRAL & THE MEANDERING RIVER:

Time to see if Astral can offer some support to deal with the Blackthorn Empire. First though, let's talk a bit about our newly acquired character, Ronan.

Ronan is all about elemental damage as evidenced by his Combo command. Same concept as Sabin from vanilla with inputting commands for the desired attack, but with a twist...each attack has an element to it. Fists of Thunder is lightning, Ki Blast is holy, and Meteor Smash is earth.

Also new to 2.0 is something he did during his scuffle with Raditz last segment. He has a chance to pull an Umaro while attacking normally and instead just plain body check his target. This strike will ignore the enemy's defense.

As for the hideout entry, there's not much to really say at first. There's some supplies to purchase at the item shop, an inn if you want to do some grinding outside still, and a couple random items to collect. The main goal though is to speak to the wizard in the room the with save point, Astral.

Astral's whole schtick is that he wants Aurora's assistance in dealing with the Blackthorn Empire. It's not an easy decision to make on the fly so he gives her some time to think about it. When control's back to you, have Aurora find and talk with Cloud, Ronan, and Serin. That'll make the guard blocking the entrance move, allowing Aurora to chat with Astral outside.

Before doing that, check the treasure room to the north. There's a bunch of goodies like a White Cape (relic that makes the wearer immune to pig, berserk, and silence) and, in a hidden area, a Fire Rod + Magic Tab. The rod casts the Scorch spell as an item before breaking, but also can randomly cast said weapon if used as a weapon (which only Aurora can equip at the moment). There's also a Bolt Scroll which can easily be missed, inside the cave to the river.

After conversing with Astral as solo Aurora, you have a choice. Either agree to help or say no three times. You'll get a relic depending on which path you take. If you say no thrice, you get a Mystic Ring. Agreeing to help nets a Mithril Glove. Both are relics with a perma effect as long as it's equipped. The Mystic Ring grants shell while the Mithril Glove grants safe.

Regardless of your decision, it seems the empire is hot on the trail of the heroes. A full blown assault is not something that can be done right now so Cloud is going to head back to Seascape Town to try slowing down the empire while the rest take a raft on the Meandering River to get back to Fraust.

Taking over Cloud's spot in the party for the time being is the esteemed wizard Astral. His main strength lies in the fact he has the Miracle command some of the moogle squad members displayed at the start of the adventure. Given his much higher level and magic strength, he can make a fine healer.

As for the raft ride, the battles on the river get their own battle theme (and what a rocking tune it is from FF Mystic Quest). I only ever ran into two enemies, Pterodons & Thanopods. Neither should be underestimated, but they at least don't utilize mad status trickery.

Only one treasure to pickup along the way, but it's a nice sum of gil. The choice you can make right after this money chest can let you loop around on the second portion of the river and grind if you want. 
Shortly after the save point, the team gets stopped by the best octopus in the river, Ultros. He just wants to cause mayhem as per usual.

Compared to Raditz, Ultros is a fair bit more easy to handle, especially with Astral on dedicated healer duty. He uses a new spell, the water based Splash, that hits everyone for 200-250 damage. Probably the worst thing he can do really besides using Tentacle which can really sting for a frontliner. I suppose Ultros can also inflict the pig status via Hex, but that's easily negated with a Tulaberry.

With Astral on full blown healing duties, the rest can pile on the damage, especially Ronan & Aurora. 

After losing enough hp, Ultros bails, but tries one last time to take Aurora with him, prompting Ronan to try jumping into the river to deal with the octopus...with predictable results that makes him take a river ride to his own scenario.

Yes, there's the famed scenario split still in full force here. Three scenarios (Aurora, Serin, and Astral heading to Fraust, Cloud's business in Seascape Town, and wherever the hell Ronan's going to end up). All must be completed for the story to proceed.


SCENARIO SPLIT - AURORA'S RETURN TO FRAUST:

it's time for the fabled scenario split. Aurora, Ronan, and Cloud each have their own route they'll be taking to return to Fraust. Aurora's is the shortest, Ronan's by far the longest, and Cloud's falls in the middle of the two.

For this part, I'll be dealing with Aurora's scenario. Herself, Serin, and Astral are going to have the quickest return to Fraust. They just have to finish the raft ride on the Meandering River. Might be a touch trickier since Ronan isn't around, but Aurora's Break spell can neutralize pretty much any major threat while Serin can trip up multiple enemies with Cosmic Fang.

I did happen to run into the other two enemies of the river right at the end, Piranhas & Killamaris. Nothing super special besides Piranhas being able to hit rather hard, given how many appear at a time.

Once you're off the raft and back on the world map, it's an easy trip back to Fraust. The problem though? Going in the front door of town is a no go. Luckily there's one other path...the cave passage from when Cloud saved Aurora all the way to the west of the developer's house. Linear path after going in so all seem's fine, right?

Well, upon entering the second cave, there's a bridge. You're going to want to throw everyone into the frontlines and heal up before attempting to cross that bridge. Having Aurora with Dispel or a spare Diffusal Rod is advised too. Why? Because it's a big bridge and some kooky swordsman from Final Fantasy V wants a boss fight in this scenario. Yup, it's none other than Gilgamesh, complete with his trademark killer battle theme!

Gilgamesh does not play around, hitting like a truck with his physicals. His opening move is four physical strikes on random targets, each one doing 130-160 to back row characters. Not something anyone wants to get smacked by at the start, especially Astral and his lower hp pool.

The rest of his attack loadout includes a stronger physical strike, the aptly named Strongest Sword, jumping up and landing on someone (although the damage is nothing special), ailment inflicting moves like Hex & Confuse, and his sole AoE move Aquatic Breath.

Finally, after doing enough damage, Gilgamesh claims he can't fight everyone at once....or so he says. Right after saying that, he buffs himself with Protect & Shell, then chucks a Silver Spear at someone. I am VERY lucky he decided to toss it at Aurora because she was the only one who could take the 750+ damage hit and not die instantly. Dispel those buffs immediately, then take your time whittling him down.

During the long fight, try to get Serin or Aurora to use the Thief Knife and swipe Gilgamesh's Iaito. It's a weapon for someone Ronan will meet fairly early on in his scenario.

Once Gilgamesh actually has had enough, he'll flee, leaving behind a nice chunk of exp and a Might Tab.

The rest of the scenario is pretty uneventful as the team is just making their way back to Arvis's house. There's a minor puzzle which requires you to follow the path a light traverses, but that can be cheesed a little if you have good timing tagging the light when you go out of bounds.

If you want, you can visit the moogle's abode just outside of where you first protected an unconscious Aurora. Nothing real special talking to any of them, but there is a chest with a Vendetta, a weapon for Cloud that doubles the damage he deals to humans & plants. He'll appreciate this quite a bit as he's going to be dealing with lots of human enemies in his scenario.

Just before you enter Arvis's house, unequip Serin & Aurora so you can use their gear in other scenarios.

Thought that scenario was short? Don't worry because next time is the longest scenario by a landslide, Ronan's.


RONAN'S WILDLIFE ADVENTURE:

First order of business is to check out the house to the northeast. It's an orphanage of sorts with all kinds of kids inside and a random Neko merchant with some interesting stuff on sale, namely Shurikens, Ninja Scrolls, and Mist Scrolls. Get a bunch of Shurikens and a few of the scrolls as they'll be useful for a character Ronan's going to meet soon.

Of all the people here, the interesting one is the nun, Teresa. Talking to her reveals that one of the kids left on a journey, one who's past we get to see in a flashback cutscene.

Long story short? Don't anger the kid, ESPECIALLY when someone murders his mom during a robbery attempt. This kid is known as Arc, someone I'm sure we'll be running into before this scenario is all over with.

Once you're done chatting with Teresa, the next goal is clear. Ronan needs to leave the orphanage and head east to an imperial camp. Make damn sure to save after every encounter you don't die instantly in on the way there.


IMPERIAL BASE:

Ronan begins his foray into an imperial base. Obviously he's screwed if caught so while he attempts to devise a plan, two enemy soldiers are basically forced to go into battle at a mysterious castle enshrouded in mist. This might have been a more thoughtful plan had one of the key figures of the place, a man known as Avalon, not been around and is ready to drive the imperials away from the castle.

Avalon is the next major playable character and he brings some interesting tools to the table. He's got some basic magic spells to start out with like Cure, Purify (heals poison), Frenzy (inflicts berserk on the target), and Expel (damages the target's mp). He can also equip two weapons if he so chooses. Might be a bit of a risky prospect right now on this difficulty setting, but luckily Avalon has one more trick up his sleeve, his Havoc Sword command.

Havoc Sword (or Havoc for short) lets Avalon launch an attack at the enemy, doing damage equal to his current hp. He can opt to multi target it, but the damage gets divided equally amongst all enemies. Can also inflict a random status ailment.

Avalon gets to test his Havoc Sword skill against one of the empire's Mage Knights. The Mage Knight can cast Spark for a bit over 110 damage or use physicals that do about the same, maybe a pinch higher if Blade Rush is used. He can also cast Cura on himself and uses an Elixir one time after his hp falls low.

For Avalon, I have him open with a Havoc Sword, then just resort to Cure spam in between rounds of normal strikes. Takes while, but it's not a super hard fight.

After the Mage Knight gets dispatched (and a much appreciated Speed Tab drops), the scene switches back to Ronan. I quickly exit the base, save up, then do a timeskip. Why? Because I'm an idiot that got caught by imperial soldiers & roasted by an imperial dog trying to kick open a chest.

Ronan's task is to simply not ram into that soldier outside the nearby tent as he sneaks through the place while looking for loot. Some of the boxes around the area contain Scrap Metal, good for 2k gil per piece obtained when sold at a store.

Also at the start is a chest in the eastern tent whose top won't open. Choosing to hit it when the choices come up will let you open the chest to get an X-Potion.

Moving south starts a bunch of cutscenes. Some cyborg named Leo seems to be the one trying to get an upper hand at Mist Castle, but he gets called back to the imperial city, leaving wacky clown man Kefka in charge to deal with business there.

The problem with that? Ronan tries to stop him, but not alone. There's been a ninja skulking around and he shows up now to lend Ronan a hand in kicking Kefka's behind.

This ninja is known as Oboro and he's the guy to go to when stealing business is required. For now, he just tosses Shuriken while Ronan chips in when possible until a cutscene starts.

Three more tents in the area to examine. The one Leo came out of has a message on the table inside. It's a warning regarding a certain Dreadwood Forest. Perhaps we'll visit there later?

The other tent? Couple of chests inside. One has 5200 gil, the other a surprise Telstar enemy inside. Likes to counter Ronan's combos with Bloodlust which inflicts berserk. Wouldn't be so bad if it didn't also summon Soldiers on to the field. Telstar needs to drop quickly or your just going to get overwhelmed by the Soldier lackeys. Do steal the T'ai Chi Cap though since it's a nice helmet with a 12.5% increase to max hp.

After that's dealt with, you can jump behind the tent to the final tent. There's a chest with an extremely rare Quicksilver inside. It's an item than, when used, grants the user two consecutive turns.

After chasing Kefka for a bit, he sics a pair of Soldiers and a brand new pair of enemies, Defenders, on the duo. All physical attackers, but can get overwhelmed like with the Telstar. Luckily a Mist Scroll on Oboro lets him clean house easily.

More cutscenes ensue where somehow poisoning the water supply makes Mist Castle fall faster than you can say "goddamn!". Unfortunately that didn't kill Avalon and he basically flies into a furious rage, charging into the imperial base with his sidekick Eldrin in tow.

What follows is a series of battles where you just hack down everything in a three mile radius, even as you make your escape from the imperial base.


DREADWOOD FOREST:

Ronan and his comrades are all done raising hell in the imperial base. The next task is to get back to Fraust, but the only option available is to head through Dreadwood Forest. I'm sure THAT'S going to be ending well!

Joining for this run is Avalon's ally Eldrin. He's like our first soldier buddy right after the events at Durandal Castle. Only the Fight & Item commands, but he brings along the Elven Beads in one of his relic slots which grants a nice boost to physical evade.

As for reaching Dreadwood Forest, just keep walking north & east until you cross a bridge. Right after crossing it, go north to find the entrance.

This forest does throw a few oddballs at you. First, at the healing spring, you'd expect to go south to proceed deeper in. Instead, you need to go east. It's all vanilla routing from here, but you barrel right into the second oddball....a group of elite imperial soldiers wants some revenge for the imperial camp.

These elite soldiers are called Dark Elites. Despite the big group of them, they're nowhere NEAR as threatening as the damned eyes in the forest. Granted I only have Ronan in the front, but he can tank all the physicals and the enhanced physical skill (Shadowblade) easily. They might try some poison magic in Virus too, but it's not too severe for single target damage, maybe 200 at worst.

Once the soldiers drop, it's very clear the crew is being hunted if there's elite soldiers being sent out. Trying to fight them AND the ghosts? Not good at all. Nor is fighting all of them and a horde of zombies....which the corpses of the previous slain enemies become and attack the party. Zombies still have their biting capabilities to produce more of their kind. With four of them around, things can turn sour very fast if several of them all try to bite your team early on.

The solution? A new item I've got in the bag, Holy Water. Use this on an undead enemy and they die instantly. Using two here makes managing them so much easier.

After the battle, go back to the healing spring to refresh if needed, otherwise take the northeastern exit to find a kid in the forest. Ronan puts two and two together to realize that it's none other than the kid that left the orphanage on a quest for revenge, Arc. Logical thing to do is to go help the kid, right?

Well, someone's stopping the party and it's a ghost of sorts who calls himself Reaper. He claims that the party will die if they head forward. Arc apparently is safe due to a talisman he carries with him.

How's the team going to proceed then? So long as Reaper can collect their souls when they die, he'll guide them through the death zone. Doubly so when he takes a keen interest in Avalon's soul as he's not a pure bred human, that's for sure.

As for Eldrin? He's gonna run off and try to slow down the imperial guard as long as possible, death be damned. Will we actually see him again though? Only time will tell.


SKULL TRAIN:

Got a spooky train to hop on today, but first, let's talk a bit about our guide through this train, Reaper.

Like Astral and all the NPC guards, Reaper's sadly a temporary party member for this run, but damn can he get the job done. His defensive stats allow him to sit in the front row without getting pasted instantly by physicals. Not quite as defensively bulky as Ronan, but it gets the job done.

Reaper's gear is pretty solid too. His Soul Harvest weapon has a good kick to it and can randomly cleave an enemy in two (aka instant death), his Exodus Token relic blocks instant death moves, and his Serpent Mask allows him to pull some massive shenanigans with the poison ailment. The Serpent Mask absorbs poison, but only the element and NOT the ailment. This means inflicting poison on him actually grants a slowly rising hp regen that can stack with normal regen.

Besides that, Reaper has two unique commands. Force is just a simple damage move that hits all enemies and does split damage like when you multi target spells, meaning it hits harder if only one enemy is alive since I believe you can't switch off its initial AoE targeting.

The other? The source of why he's so good, his Souls command. Basically Gau's Rage command from vanilla, but without losing control when selecting what enemy's soul he wants to mimic. What that means is that he can, say, use a soul like Sentry to provide a little early battle support, then switch to a more offensive soul like Geemer or Defender.

With so many souls at his fingertips, mentioning every good one for Reaper would take too long. Some of the best ones right now are as follows...

Defender - Scorch, gain shell
Executor - Storm, gain float
FungiBeast - Freeze
Geemer - Skewer (Physical strike that's roughly 3x as powerful as a regular attack)
M-TekArmor - Magitek Laser, gain protect

All in all, Reaper is a very good character that's able to change his soul using tactics on the fly depending on the situation. He can utilize more souls by killing new enemies. No more leaping on random enemies to get skilled!

As for the undead enemies skulking around the train, take every fight seriously. Several enemies pack damaging AoEs if left alone for too long and it's the kind of damage Avalon is going to struggle to keep up with if too many AoE the team instantly. Luckily, you should have some Holy Water kicking around you can use to thin the undead horde if you feel you're going to get overwhelmed.

One new thing added to this train is a compartment on top of the train car right before a ghost filled interior. If you fall through it, it'll open a hidden wall outside the room with the first save point. Behind this wall is a Ghost Medal, making the wearer undead like the rest of the rabble, but grants a 12.5% boost to max hp + three buffs when low on hp (protect/shell/reflect or something like that.

More bum rushing through this spooky train. Most of the encounters are relatively smooth sailing in this segment, especially since I had Reaper settle on a constant enemy's soul to spam for the battles, Overseer. Its special skill is Pitfall Trap, an instant death move against an enemy.

Starting out on the train car I'm on, triggering the ghost to block your way back outside requires you to head west past a bunch of wandering spooks who can initiate combat with you if they feel like it. Speak to the purple ghost and it'll warp back to the door where you can talk to it once more to make it fight you.

What follows in the cutscene after is a case where some simple word changes really drives home the creepy factor here. The myriad of ghosts chanting "DIE..." as they lurch closer drives home the fear factor...as does another ghost in the same garb as Reaper.

Once the team does some train car hopping and detaches one of them to lose the ghost horde, Reaper mentions the other black clothed ghost is his direct soultaker rival Mr. Grimm. Turns out he too wants the team's souls, but good luck while Reaper is around.

Shortly after exiting outside, someone else shows up...Arc. Clearly someone in our party killed his mother because he calls someone a murderer before initiating combat. You'll find Arc literally only attacks Oboro.

Once Arc get his ass kicked, he runs off and you can move west into the diner car. Free healing here so it makes the train a good spot to do some grinding. Do make sure to enter the diner car from the western entrance so you can grab the Oracle Ring relic which raises magic damage and has a more powerful effect if paired up.

Soon after picking that ring up, Ronan hits level 17 and picks up a new Combo skill, the fire based Rising Phoenix. Easy to enter set of inputs (right, up, left, down) and it hits all enemies.

In the train car with the hyper fast spooks skulking around, the eastern room has a chest, but someone interrupts shortly before you can open it. He wants to kill your team to get the treasure, but lord knows if that's going to help him.

This so called demon goes by the name Olbohn and he's a credible threat as evidenced by his opener, Chaotic Disaster. This targets everyone and if anyone gets hit, they'll be inflicted with a ton of status ailments. Muddle & condemned are a couple ugly ones as is pig.

Once that passes, Olbohn starts busting out some actual damaging moves. He can use Lifeshaver to do a good 400-500 damage or so and add it back to his own hp pool, Surge Breaker for a typical strong physical strike, and some elemental AoE attacks like Razor Leaf. No other ailment trickery besides sometimes using Entwine to inflict slow on everyone.

Your initial strategy is going to be to run damage control on anyone struck by the opener. If you have a Remedy or two kicking around, that's the best way to rid anyone of all the nasty ailments aside from condemned.

As for dealing damage, Ronan gets to front all the work by spamming Meteor Smash while the rest of the team throws Potions and only attacks if a chance presents itself. Oboro can swipe a Magic Tab from Olbohn so he should do that as quickly as possible.

Once Olbohn has had enough, he flees and takes a supposed Jade Skull with him, but he does drop his other item, an AngelPendant relic which grants the wearer a permanent float & regen effect.

Moving west, Arc pops up again for another round of ass kicking, then there's a room in a train car with several chests. One of them has a monster inside that's easily killed (but drops a Bolt Scroll) while another holds a Necronomicon, an item that revives a character to full health.

After running into Arc for a third time, Oboro steps forward to confront the kid. Before a fight can really break out, someone intervenes by the name of Charlotte, Arc's mother.

Charlotte drops a very important piece of information...it wasn't Oboro who killed her, but rather Oboro's accomplice. She begs Arc not to go on this quest for revenge, then willingly gives up her soul to Reaper in exchange for Arc's safety in getting off the train. Reaper accepts, then states he can't directly interfere with the Skull Train. Arc's relic though will keep everyone safe.

With a bit more chatter, Arc somewhat reluctantly joins the team.

Almost off this train finally, but first, let's talk about the kid who PROBABLY wants to be a maverick hunter when he grows up, Arc.

Arc right now has two things going for him. Firstly, he can equip a huge range of gear as befitting of an Onion Knight. That means he can equip the same stuff that Aurora only could before and, as such, learn a few valuable spells in Dispel, Teleport, and Vanish.

Secondly, he has the Runic command. This lets him absorb the next spell sent at the party and gain hp back equal to 4x the spell's mp cost.

That being said, Neko is in the save point room and has some interesting gear. If you can pick up a pair of the new weapons for Ronan, it'll help out immensely.

The goal for the team is to head to the lead train car, hit the first and third switches inside, then head to the smoke stack up front and hit a switch. This does cause everyone to tell Arc to hide inside cause lol he must be protected.

Though to be fair, the Skull Train comes alive, ready and raring to kick ass, but it's not alone. Mr. Grimm comes floating on in to join the battle too.

The duo of Mr. Grimm & the Skull Train seems like it'd be fierce, but in reality it's only the Skull Train that poses any major threat. Mr. Grimm throws some weak magic and his physicals aren't much better, even his named physical attack Burial Blade. His regular hits do carry a chance of instantly killing the target though.

Mr. Grimm also starts with the image status active. While image is going strong, your physical strikes are not going to connect, but they carry a chance of breaking the images.

As for the Skull Train, it fronts all the actual combat presence here. Carries the same Chaotic Disaster move as Olbohn, but also tosses in Poltergasm to hit everyone with some kind of annoying status ailment.

On the damage side of things, it has Nighmare Wheel (standard enhanced physical strike move), seemingly random Mega Volt counters, and a few AoEs in Frost Bite (weakest), Acid Rain (stronger), and Saintly Beam (strongest).

First thing's first...Mr. Grimm needs to be knocked out since he can and will revive the Skull Train if it dies first. You'll have to use moves that bypass the image status early on like Shuriken. After he goes down, he activates a reraise, but isn't getting enough hp back most likely before the finishing blow comes.

For the Skull Train, holy based moves work best on it. With the Oracle Ring, Ronan was hitting very close to or just over 1000 damage per Ki Blast used. So long as you got Avalon on full blown healing duties, Oboro shouldn't have to interrupt his offense much to toss an extra Poison or two.

Before the train crashes, steal some Scrap Metal from it.

After the fight, Mr. Grimm decides he's gonna paralyze and absorb everyone's souls. He completely forgot about Arc inside who tries to fend off Mr. Grimm with flying colors....the kind of flying colors that indicate a person's getting their ass kicked that is. However, Arc isn't alone. Reaper decides to warp in, clearly having enough of Mr. Grimm's shenanigans, and the second showdown with evil soul taking spirit commences.

For this fight, you only have Arc & Reaper to deal with the transformed Mr. Grimm. This fight is a big Runic spamming ground for Arc to thrive in. You'll notice that Mr. Grimm once again starts with Image status, so all physical attacks will miss. If you have a spare Diffusal Rod lying around you could toss it at him to remove the status instantly, or even better if you've learned Dispel with Arc just cast the spell.

While Mr. Grimm's damaging attacks other than his physical are few & far between, he can very seldomly cast Freeze. If you're not expecting this like I was, it can do close to 500 damage.

Should you equip Arc with a Thief Knife and find an opportune time to use it, Mr. Grimm has a Quicksilver on his person, though it is a rare steal so it could prove a bit challenging to take.

With Arc on Runic bot duty, it falls to Reaper to get all the damage in. He should open with Sentry until he gets himself & Arc buffed up, then switch to M-TekArmor (for the auto protect) and Defender (for the auto shell). Once those buffs are, spam the Geemer soul until healing is required. You'll also want to make sure that Arc is alive at the end as he'll earn a nice chunk of EXP. You could ALSO KO Reaper and finish the battle with Arc to get even more EXP. Just be careful because we don't want to have to fight the Skull Train again!

Once Mr. Grimm finally gives up, he'll drop a Magic Tab and presumably be gone forever. The scenes end after the fight with the train acknowledging their victory and agrees to let them off at the next stop....right as Avalon's wife & child hop on for their ride to the farplane. Dude just can NOT catch a break eh?

Ronan's trials & tribulations in the Skull Train are done, but there's one last obstacle between his party and the next town, Eternity Falls. They'll have to jump down the falls to land on the Beast Plains, then travel to Ruta Village to figure out what to do next.

After the short cutscene, I run outside to save once more, then a minor timeskip cause of a trolling boss fight. This boss? Hope you like Pokemon references because there's a bunch of star shaped ones attacking the team.

The yellow stars are known as Staryus while the big purple mama star in the middle is a Starmie. The Staryus have Splash which can be rather nasty if multiple instances of it are cast since you're looking at roughly 400 or more damage if it's aimed at a single target. Combined with the fact there's five of the Staryus can easily mean death if they get trigger happy with Splash over several turns.

The Starmie also has some dangerous attacks. Thunderbolt sounds like it should be thunder damage, but in reality it happens to be its physical skill. The magic side of things includes basic spells like Spark & Storm, Frozen Beam, and its worst move, El Nino. That one can nail the entire party for over 400 damage.

My strat here is just to destroy the damned Starmie as fast as possible. The two Bolt Scrolls I picked up so far are pivotal for Oboro because he's gonna throw both right away which will very nearly kill off all the Staryus on their own. One multi target Havoc Sword from Avalon will ensure they die by that second Bolt Scroll. Bonus if the Havoc Sword confuses some of the Starmies like it did here because that means a better chance of surviving past the second salvo of attacks.

Once the Staryus are gone, I go into all hands on offense mode. I need that Starmie dead before it can bring back its cohorts. To that end, I've been having Ronan focus damage on the Starmie from the word go. Once the Staryus are gone, Avalon casts Frenzy on Ronan to boost his damage. That's generally enough for me to get to the end, but Avalon was in critical for his last action of the battle and he pulled off his desperation attack, Sublime Eclipse, to smack the Starmie for 2.4k damage and kill it.

After the battle, the team finds themselves on the Beast Plains minus Oboro who shuffled off to wherever. Ruta Village is to the north, but you're going to want to go south first. At the edge of the continent is an island that looks like you can't reach at first, but the water is shallow enough around here that you can walk across it to the other side. To the west is a cave, but save before going in because the enemies inside are insanely strong. Too strong for you to handle right now actually. Run from any fights you get inside the cave.

Inside this cave? A single chest with a Cael Hammer. Nice attack power and can randomly cast Break. Arc will appreciate this once he's done learning Dispel.

After some random saving & timeskipping because I did not feel like fending off four Dark Elites in a random battle, I reach Ruta Village.

At Ruta Village, there's two important things to do. One of them is to visit an injured soldier just southwest of the relic shop. He wants to write back to his girlfriend in another town, but his injuries make it too hard for him. You'll need to read him a letter, then head to the postman in the house to the east, pay 500g, go check out any shop's wares, then return to the soldier's house. Rinse & repeat until you've spent 2500 gil. The soldier will then hand over a Spooky Record, an item that'll have some use later on.

The other important figure is the kid standing just outside of said soldier's house. This initiates a game of hide and seek with five kids and you're tasked with finding all five of them. Their locations are as follows...

- Behind the relic shop
- Behind the postman's house
- Hiding in trees to the east of the postman's house
- Hiding slightly to the south of the item shop.
- Hiding in trees to the west of the weapon & armor shops

For finding all five, you get a hide & seek badge plus a big hint about some kind of underwater breathing apparatus located in the next destination you'll have to go to.

RONAN'S FINAL PUSH TO FRAUST:

Picked up everything I wanted from the relic shop off screen. Grabbed three sets of Speed Boots which grants auto haste along with a Ninja Sight which grants a higher chance of preemptive strikes as well as preventing back & pincer attacks (except for scripted fights of course).

In the armory, I pick up a Mystic Sword, Hawk Cleaver (weapon that Arc or Cloud can use), and a spare Wizard's Cap.

Once those purchases are made, it's time to go grab that underwater helmet. From Ruta Village, just go west all the way, then follow the mountainside south until you can go west again. You should be able to spot the cave entrance soon afterwards.

Inside the cave, the helmet is in the same spot as it was in vanilla, but you need to cross over it yourself and you need to have completed the hide & seek minigame in Ruta Village to be told its location. Just head straight south after getting off the bridge in the northeast and you'll barrel into it, pick it up, and go off to the Zolom Trench.

The Zolom Trench doesn't have giant snakes that want to eat you or roast your entire team alive, but it does have a couple new enemies in the Sahagin & Hydromage which you'll fight in the underwater sections. Sahagins have a pretty potent Splash spell and make it impossible to run until all on screen ones are killed.

The Hydromage though is the most dangerous enemy by far. Water Bolt inflicts stop, but the real danger is Giga Volt. If it casts this, you are basically losing a party member unless they've got at least 900+ hp. Even better when it uses this as a counter as Avalon found out from the second one encountered.

Best strategy for this area is to only fight when the game forces it upon you due to Sahagins. Due to how it's setup, you can't open the menu when you're in the underwater sections. Thankfully, if you go right at the two forks during the trip, you'll only get into a total of three battles. Two during the trip to the first cave and one heading to the second cave.

The cave sections are small, but both have a good treasure in them (5k gil in the first cave, Soma Drop which raises one target's max mp in the second cave). There's also two enemies in here not seen in the underwater sections, Vineshrooms & Golden Flans. While the latter is best run from due to low rewards and powerful AoE skills, the shrooms can be dropped fairly quickly with fire based moves. Just be careful if one's left because it likes to use Magnitude Eight for 300+ damage to the team. It's an earth attack though so the Angel Pendant relic's auto float can keep one team member safe.

Be sure and take note of the mermaid in the second cave... later on in the game you can actually come back here and speak with her to receive a powerful relic!

Once you make it through in one piece (which for me was my third attempt to get through, damned Hydromages), you'll arrive in Kaldor Trade City.

In this town, while you can take the ship to head back towards Fraust, you'll want to look around first. There's lots of hidden goodies to pick up and new shops to peruse. The weapon shop has buyable Titan Claws while the armor shop has, among other things, White Dresses (good armor for Aurora with a big boost to magic power) & Ashen Cowls (Fire resistance! Get three of these pronto).

The relic shop though? The main reason I farmed up so much extra gil because there's buyable Mystic Rings & Mithril Gloves. Didn't farm up enough gil because I couldn't get a full set of four for each, but even having at least two of each will make your life MUCH easier.

There's a fortune teller as well to the southeast who appears to be none other than Cait Sith from FF7. You can have him read your fortune for the small price of 50 gil. Most of the time his fortunes will be generic, but there's a small chance you can get 1,000 gil back, and an even smaller chance the party will receive a level up. But that can happen just once, so don't waste your hard earned gil trying to gain more than one level from him.

Be sure to search the trees around the northwest of town, next to the fisherman, as it seems he likes to practice his Shuriken-throwing skills at them. There's also another well-hidden treasure in the trees next to the fisherman on the other side of the river, which I doubt most players would ever find. Looots of obscure treasures to be found in this mod!

Speaking of obscure, if you sleep in the inn, there's a chance you will encounter a seemingly random event where a ghost shows up in the middle of the night. Spooky~ If you search the exact spot on the ground where he disappears, you'll find a Magic Tab. You don't need to trigger this event for it to be findable, but I suppose without this cryptic hint nobody would ever attempt to search there at all.

Also of interest is a curious NPC in the southwest by the name of Jerry. He's selling Machine Oil for 500 gil. Pick up one because clearly it's involved in some kind of sidequest later. Not quite sure where yet though.

One more scenario to blast through and it'll be much shorter than this one.


CLOUD'S INFILTRATION MISSION:

Time for the final scenario. This one has us in control of Cloud as he searches for a way to get out of Seascape Town and back to Fraust.

The basic premise is the same as it was in vanilla...get into the rich man's house. With all the imperial soldiers around though, he's going to have to take a few extra steps to get in safely.

First, you're technically supposed to go into soul sucking sorcerer-turned-drunkard Shang Tsung's house and speak to the kid downstairs, then head to the item shop and talk to the merchant right next to the clock and beat him up in combat. Me? I just barrel through the Prototype guarding the only other viable way forward. Throw Cloud in the back row with auto shell & protect relics, equip his initial Buster Sword, then fish for that cleave proc.

Either way you take, there's a guard blocking your way to the southwestern portion of town. He wants you to grab his wallet back from the jerk officer on the balcony just north of the chocobo rental house. On the way to him, stop by the armor shop and chat with a woman next to the counter. She's selling a dress for very cheap that you'll need to break in to the mansion.

After the wallet is collected by beating up the rogue soldier and returning it to its owner, the rest of this first portion is just like vanilla. Beat up a merchant in the pub's basement, take the rum to Shang Tsung, then go to the child at the bottom of the nearby staircase and choose the third option, "Clock", to have him open the secret passage.

From there, things are the same (with a bonus of Cloud saddling into his iconic dress from his native game). Once you get into the rich man's basement, one of the doors has a very familiar face, both for Cloud and for us. It's none other than Tifa who's been imprisoned for her traitorous ways, likely to have been executed had Cloud not come along and rescued her.

Tifa is much like Ronan in the sense that she can equip two fist weapons, but where she diverges is the fact she has magic at her command. Whereas Aurora was focused more on offense, Tifa's starting spell set lends her to a more support focused role. Having Protect & Shell at the ready is going to be so very useful to cover any gaps.

Her unique command is Reels. Setzer's slots from vanilla in essence, just Tifa themed with some of her well known limit breaks from her native game such as Beat Rush (three gloves) and Waterkick (three fishies). A failed combo results in a minor heal for the entire party on top of curing some basic ailments which is really handy.

After gearing Tifa up, check the sleeping soldier for a Clock Key, then try to leave. Turns out there's competent soldiers in the empire as they attack the duo in a pincer attack after waking up the sleepy soldier. Despite this, my Cloud & Tifa have enough power between them to knock out a Lieutenant in one attack each, meaning I don't have to worry about healing.

After the fight, Tifa will instruct you to locate a couple Crimson Blade members who were taken prisoner. There's a hidden switch next to the bookcases to the west of Tifa's cell that opens the way to the basement. Kill the soldier down here, claim the key, then open the two cells to get two new party members in Warren & Gus.

Unlike the previous minor NPC soldiers seen, these two have secondary commands. Gus has Jump which is always nice, but Warren has the highly useful Mimic command. Yes, he can mimic Cloud's Climhazzard wind-up and counter if you want. Can even double down on MT Cure spells from Tifa.

The rest of the escape through the basement area is pretty uneventful. There's a couple new enemies, but neither one pose much of a threat.

Before leaving this area, make sure to find the hidden passage leading to a staircase down a level for some goodies to grab, namely the very good Griffin Eye relic which blocks a bunch of nasty status ailments. If you did this scenario before Ronan's, it'll be a very good relic for the Skull Train section.

Once you've finally made it out of town, you just need to hoof it back to Fraust. Should be easy...hopefully.

Getting close to the end of the scenario and it's a relatively simple trip to the end. There's no new treasures in the cave, just new enemies that are more annoying than the ones in Seascape Town's basement area, but still nothing that should be difficult for you to handle if you wish.

When you get to the healing spring though, best to prepare by equipping any auto shell relics to Cloud & Tifa if you have them. Otherwise, just go with whatever, especially the two relics from the cells the Crimson Blades were in (Dwarf Bracer which boosts might by 50% and the always awesome Speed Boots).

As you try to exit, whatever's been making some rumbling noises decides to come out and play...and what do you know, it happens to be a machine Cloud & Tifa are quite familiar with from their native game, the classic Guard Scorpion.

Guard Scorpion is the wake up call for anyone thinking they're getting off free with an easy scenario. Even then though, it pales compared to Ronan's scenario. While its physical strikes can do around 300 or so damage before buffs are up, it doesn't go gun crazy with AoEs like some previous bosses have.

Among the named attacks, most are single target affairs like Missile (Seizure + damage based on target's current hp), Smokescreen (blind), and Magitek Laser. 

The AoE moves are few and far between here with a couple new moves in Nether Shot (Light damage, inflicts poison) & Anti-Magic Field (Should really be anti-buffs field because this move will rip off any non perma buffs a character has if it connects on them). 

There's precisely two attacks that are very dangerous in the fight. One of them is the AoE attack Magnitude Eight. Without shell active, you're looking at 400-450 damage per character. So long as those shell buffs are up, a multi target Cure from Tifa + Warren mimicing that should get everyone out of the danger zone.

The other dangerous move comes after Guard Scorpion uses Search Scope. That means the targeted character is getting blasted by Orb of Travel next turn. This move does damage based on how many steps you've taken in your quest thus far. If you come here as your first or second scenario tackled, it shouldn't be too nasty, but for me? It nearly one shot my Cloud due to all that gil grinding I did on the Beast Plains.

Best strategy here is to have Cloud on nearly full time offense, only stopping to dispense Potions or other items if the situation requires it. 

Tifa sets up buffs for the majority of the battle. Protect is the most important since you'll see more physical strikes then anything else, but don't forget about Shell to take some of the sting off of Magnitude Eight.

As for the Crimson Blade duo, they can contribute nicely to the battle as well. Gus can jump like a madman or dispense Potions while Warren waits to mimic whatever move you want to double up on, be it Cloud's limits, Tifa's reels, or even item usage.

Before you dismantle the mecha scorpion for good, steal its Plate Mail with a Thief Knife equipped Cloud.

Once the mecha is down for good, the two Crimson Blade member go on ahead to Fraust with Cloud & Tifa right behind after a short conversation.

With that, scenario #3 is done, meaning the scene now switches over to Fraust. Aurora, Serin, Astral, and Arvis are trying to get the thick headed buffoons of Fraust to realize there's a war coming to their doorsteps, but of course said buffoons think they're just coming for the esper.

As the rest of the crew comes pouring in with their own stories, it becomes obvious...KINDA can't ignore a big wave of soldiers that want the esper and will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means killing townspeople. Only one thing they can do and that's to protect the esper who's been moved up into the snowy mountain...even if Avalon's got some rightly deserved hesitation to trust Tifa right now.

When you gain control of Aurora, there's a familiar fellow by the save point, Oboro. Turns out he caught wind of the battle to be starting soon and decided to come out and offer his services. For 2000 gil, he'll be a party member you can deploy for the upcoming battle.

Next time...the gun barrel of battle begins to keep the esper out of Kefka's hands.


THREE PARTIES UNITED, FRAUST BATTLEFIELD - PROTECT THE ESPER!:

Everyone's gathered to protect the esper so let's get cracking shall we?

With Oboro's help secured for the upcoming battle, one more person offers his services as well. It's none other than our friendly neighborhood prinny hater Mog and he'll be most welcomed here simply because I can run two full parties and pick a person to essentially sit out this upcoming battle.

Also I do all my equipping once the battle has begun. Primarily due to Mog being in my primary party, but also because Lost Odyssey's normal battle theme plays for the entirety here except for the boss.

The regular enemies for the most part are all Dark Elites from Dreadwood Forest. With my primary team of Aurora, Serin, Ronan, and Mog, the fights get cleared out rather quickly and Aurora can heal up the team between battles. Mp for Aurora isn't an issue since I'm packing plenty of Ethers.

Part of the reason I employed Mog in my primary team is so he can learn his ice themed dance, Arctic Slide. All the moves on it are very good here. Snowball helps knock down some of the bulky hp totals on the enemies here while Avalanche & Absolute Zero are solid AoE damage moves. Mog can easily break 500+ damage with them at his current level if he equips an Oracle Ring.

On the new enemy front, there's Netherhounds, MageKnights, and Nightraids. Netherhounds aren't too bad besides some poison shenanigans, Nightraids like to use Shadowmeld to make themselves invisible (but since all my AoE attacks are magic aligned...heh) while also having some decent single target magic attacks, and MageKnights have a permanent reflect up so you'll need to use attacks that won't bounce off of it.

Once all the pawns have died, my secondary team of Cloud, Tifa, Oboro, and Arc step up to the plate. They get to deal with a Disciple and his pet Tuturis. While the Disciple has some strong single target moves, the Tuturis is the real threat with its Magnitude Eight doing close to 400 damage to the entire team. Its single target strikes are no jokes either.

The Tuturis does have one weakness...being able to slow it. Doing that gives you a huge advantage, making it much easier to heal with Potions to keep up with Magnitude Eight's damage.

Probably a good idea to drop that Disciple first. Got a hunch he'd summon more of his pets if his current one gets killed. After that, the soldier's partner should be fairly simple enough to drop so long as you slow it and make sure your team is hasted. Everyone with shell helps too to curb Magnitude Eight's damage.

Once those two are dealt with, heal up and go check out Neko's wares in the northwest. Besides some assorted consumables, there's couple new weapons in the Morning Star & Ocean Spear. The former is a ranged weapon while the latter is a water elemental weapon. When you're done here, go give Kefka a visit so his clowny behind can be kicked back to where he belongs.

Kefka's not really much different in his approach compared to the minor scuffle Ronan & Oboro had in the imperial camp area. His physical have a bit of a kick to them, but he's more adept with magical combat. Scorch/Freeze/Storm can all do 500-600 damage if it strikes someone without shell up, but honestly? That's about the worst he can pull out. He has some ailment moves like Toxic Bomb & Sleep or potentially halving a character's level via Black Shock, but he's certainly not like the Disciple and his beast buddy protecting him.

I suppose Kefka's own buddies are supposed to be threatening, but they're not. The dual Clockwerks focus on ripping off your character's buffs, but don't really do much otherwise.

After some time has passed, Kefka will swap out the Clockwerks for a singular Skuldier. It doesn't do a damned thing worth mentioning.

Strategy here is to just ignore the small fry and aim all of your strong attacks at Kefka. Arc can provided some insurance from the tier 2 spells via Runic, but it's hardly a requirement unless you're going into this fight at a lower level than me.

Before offing the clown face, make sure to steal his Elixir. He'll drop a Psycho Blade which is a really nice new Aether for Serin. Hits all enemies, does good damage, and can inflict blind and/or berserk.


THE NEW JOURNEY BEGINS:

The team has just finished driving away clown man Kefka and his imperial army. Now there should be nothing left to distract everyone as they inspect the esper. Little did they know Aurora had a rather volatile reaction the last time she got close to the esper. Aurora decides to do a repeat volatile reaction, though this time the end result is a little different as her physical form changes, then she flies off into the world.

The next morning, the task is clear...chase after Aurora. Seems like she was reported to be going east. Luckily, Durandal Castle has come back above ground and can shuttle the party past the mountains to the east.

As for deciding on a team, Ronan & Serin tag along plus a couple other randoms just to see some bonus scenes at Durandal Castle. There's plenty to pickup around Fraust now that you can walk around in town though. Lots of miscellaneous items in random spots, including a Reflect Ring that grants auto-reflect found in the storage house south of Arvis's abode.

Store wise, I make sure to get enough Mithril Gloves & Mystic Rings that I can kit out a full party if I need to. There's also Frost Gloves at the weapon shop and I'm going to grind out some gil to pick up a pair of those before the next segment.

Also of interest...someone mentioning that a figure of interest is selling something at the moogle's home in the caves. One timeskip after looting the mayor's house and we find a random pig selling a Golden Apple. This item permanently boosts a character's hp by 100. Not bad at all for an asking price of 3k gil.

One more timeskip later and we're at Durandal Castle. If you take the first set of stairs down to the west, you'll find a guy responsible for making the castle submerge and resurface. Evidently that last submerge damaged the mechanical workings and only some Machine Oil will fix it. Turns out it was a very good thing I bought that back in Kaldor Trade City eh?

There's also a special cutscene you can view if you rest in the guest bedroom area with Ronan & Serin in your party that details how their father passed away and shops that have nothing new in them....but there's a catch. If you put Serin as your on screen character, you'll get a 50% discount on all items. Stock up on all of your important consumables here from now on if possible.


IN SEARCH OF AURORA:

After getting shuttled to the east via Durandal Castle, the first destination is Quartz Village. When you exit the castle, just go northeast through the desert and you'll find the village next to a big forest.

Quartz Village is a completely optional town to explore for the usual goodies hidden everywhere. Nothing real noteworthy in the shop, but Oboro's chilling out in the inn and can be recruited to your team for 3k gil which I pay instantly.

In the southwest part of town is a kid that wants to play rock-paper-scissors. Choose correctly and you win 100 gil. Do so FIVE times in a row and you'll get the RPS Badge. Hello Xenogears reference! You'll also be instantly granted a level up to all the current party members for your efforts. Be sure to re-visit Ruta Village later on and talk to the boy running around the flowers as he notices the party has the RPS Badge and gives you a 'Rare Candy', which gives the party another level up!

In the northwest part of town is a vacant house, one that just so happens to be related to Cloud. Bringing him inside triggers a cutscene showing how his closest friend got killed. Yes, his closest friend is Aerith and she did indeed get taken down by clown man Kefka. She put up a hell of a fight though.

Speaking of Aerith, there's a man by the name of Jasper in the northeastern house. His specialty? Preserving corpses. His current corpse like figure is none other than Aerith, done at the request of Cloud. Clearly he's got a plan, but good luck seeing that one play out right now.

Finally, there's a hidden path behind Jasper's house. There's a dog guarding the only other exit out and he's not gonna budge from his spot just yet. We'll be back here soon though.

When you're done exploring the area, head back to the overworld. The Hermit's Hideaway is to the southeast of town, but all that's there is a few scattered items and an old guy who says to come back later.

Back on the overworld, stick to the ocean to the east as you go north. You'll run into two destinations of note with the first being the Colosseum. Normally only seen in the late game, you can bet items for prizes, but not worthless ones. Otherwise, Majin Buu shows up to take the item and kick your ass.

Neko's also here and has a shop loadout similar to what he had at the start of Ronan's scenario. That includes the interesting First Strike relic and it does what you expect a relic with the name First Strike does which is to instantly fill the wearer's ATB gauge at the start of battle.

Not much farther north from the Colosseum is Sunfall City. I save outside because my first destination is a house to the northwest of the armor shop. Inside is a woman on the floor and a lovely little Metroid that's invaded the woman's home and needs to be taught a lesson.

The Metroid only seems to do single target strikes, but it's done some serious training in its native universe because the physical strike basically one shot my frontliners WITH buffs up. It can also drain hp and transfer it back to itself via Feed or Drain.

The problem? Metroids absolutely hate being struck by ice. Tifa just so happens to be packing two weapons attuned to that element. As such, she's full on attacking every turn she gets. The Metroid's got a pretty beefy 10k hp pool to chew through.

Cloud likewise is in the front row. He just spams his level 4 limit Omnislash over and over. The others are in the back row and get Safe cast on them.

This fight went way better than I was expecting simply because Tifa put in some serious damage work. Double weapon procs on her first turn, then the Metroid using Drain to just barely not take out Tifa. She was queued up to attack and launched her desperation move Atomic Drop for a massive 3k damage.

Once the Metroid goes down (not before Oboro swiped a valuable Tincture from it though), the woman hands over a Mermaid Rod. Another elemental rod affair, this one being attuned to water with a water based proc as well.

As for the shops in town, the relic shop finally has buyable Oracle Rings & Power Gloves which is where most of my gil goes to. 

There's also an odd fellow that will offer to sell you an 'Insanity Pepper' towards the north-west part of town, for just one gil. If you are brave enough to accept this deal, your character will begin to trip out and enter a dream-like desert maze of sorts. Just follow the sound of the 'chime' from screen to screen until you figure out the pattern and break the seal, where you will encounter...an Alakazam! Who is apparently your spirit guide... Still with me? At the end of this hallucination the party will wake up back in town and be granted a level up for their spiritual journey. The strange NPC however is now nowhere to be seen... huh.

Other than that, there's nothing jaw dropping except for a beach area to the east of the chocobo hut with a hidden giant sum of gil in the rock in the middle of the area.

When you're done, Rogue City is due west of town, but you'll have to detour north to get around the mountains and reach it.


ROGUE CITY:

As for exploring Rogue City, the enemies do force you to be on your toes. Gremlins can come in packs of four and potentially use Acid Rain, Archdaemons tend to be accompanied by a pair of Zombies, and Tormentors can hit rather hard just to name a few. On the plus side, there's some nice rare steals from a few enemies. Archdaemons have Monk's Belts (allows the wearer to randomly counterattack) while Tormentors have Power Gloves.

This area is pretty linear, but there's a few detours at the start. There's a building next to a tonberry in the north with a clock puzzle. If you enter the time of 4:20:10, you'll gain access to a chest with a new Aether for Serin, Nanoflare. Only single target, but it's fire elemental and quite potent on the damage front.

To the west of the tonberry you'll find a sentient magitek armor running about. Run into it now and you'll likely die instantly (and the same if you interact with the tonberry). More importantly is a building with a music player of sorts and a red skeleton blocking a chest. When you place the Spooky Record on the player, the skeleton comes to life, two ghosts show up and an epic dance battle ensues, followed by an actual battle.

This skeleton is known as Meat and can actually be a little on the scary side. Its physicals pack a punch and it has some annoying attacks to watch for. Dread Gaze petrifies, but the real annoyance comes from its level based attacks which connect if the target's level is a multiple of whatever skill is used. This pile of bones has Level 3 Confuse, Level 4 Flare, and Level 5 Death. This is why I needed Oboro up one level before I started doing things here because he'd be killed instantly by Lv4 Flare & Lv5 Death. The Ghosts, while rather benign by this point, should be killed first because they can confuse party members with their Wild Touch special attack.

Upon destroying the skeletal figure, you'll get one of its femur bones and the Blunderbuss from the chest it was guarding. The Blunderbuss is a nice ranged weapon that Serin can utilize, but that bone can be used right away.

After a timeskip upon exploring the rest of Rogue City's northwest zone, I'm back at Quartz Village. That dog blocking an exit behind Jasper's house can be persuaded to move with the bone, allowing you to reach a barrel that has another Aether for Serin, Catastrophe. Another single target attack affair, but is as strong as Nanoflare and non-elemental. This would make it almost always superior, but there's a chance the attack is replaced with one that either kills the target instantly or misses. Still very nice to use for normal battles though.

Back in Rogue City, there's not much to mention besides a couple chests, but one of them near the boss of the area contains something very nice, a Blazing Claw. Strong weapon, fire elemental, and can cast Fireball for a bit of extra damage. This goes to Tifa who had one from colosseum betting earlier and...let's just say the next boss isn't going to like fire.


NEW POWER:

Time to reach the top of this area, but there's a problem...a giant hulking beast known as Sasquatch guarding the last door.

Sasquatch hits hard and probably has some dangerous skills, but here's the problem with that...it's weak to fire. I have three people who can hit that weakness in Tifa's dual Blazing Claws, Serin's Nanoflare, and Oboro tossing Fire Scrolls. Even with its healing & defensive buff granting after losing some health, it's not enough to save the beast from getting pasted very very quickly.

Inside the next room, there's a Golden Apple, Magic Tab, and Aurora lying in bed. Interacting with her triggers an appearance by an esper, Ramuh. Long story short, there is a way to help Aurora come to grips with her newfound form and that's to free some of Ramuh's kind from the empire's Magitek Research Facility.

To assist in that endeavor, Ramuh turns himself into magicite and brings out a few others to assist as well. Those three are a King Tonberry, Spikey Tiger (from Secret of Mana), and even vanilla FF6's own Terra.

One major change with espers...in a similar vein to another FF6 hack Brave New World, characters can only equip specific espers. It'll make forming strategies in the late game more interesting for me, that's for sure.

When you're ready to go, head south to find your other party members. As you go back down the stairs during a cutscene, the next issue arises...how to get to the mainland where the empire's capital, Ornyx, lies. We'll have to go over to Sunfall City and see if we can find any clues for that.


THE OPERA HOUSE:

Did a round of grinding to get my team whatever spells they could learn. The most important one goes to Tifa because at lv25, she learns Cura, something nobody else will have access to for quite a while yet.

First though, we're starting out on the overworld at the Hermit's Hideaway. Having Ramuh in our possession ekes out a response from the old man within. Turns out he was an esper taking human form, but isn't ready or willing to sacrifice his life. He is willing to hand over one of three elemental weapons though. You can pick from a Molten Axe (fire), Taser Mace (lightning), or Icebrand (ice). I took the Icebrand to put on Serin for the boost to his magic stat.

Sunfall City is where the action picks up after the timeskip. We're here to look for a way to get to the empire's mainland and, luckily, there's a way in the form of the art museum in the northern end of town. In here is the Impresario from the local Opera House running around all crazy like. He seems to think Tifa is someone by the name of Isabella, then runs off. He drops a letter though that, when picked up, has a message from someone who basically claims he wants to kidnap Isabelle.

This someone just happens to be a rather notorious pirate by the name of Otis. Considering we get to name him, that means he's going to join at some point. Me though? I take a page from a Fire Emblem hack called The Last Promise and name this guy after my favorite character from that game, Rex.

Otis has one major thing we're going to want...an airship to provide passage to the empire. Maybe this Impresario can help us out eh?

From Sunfall City, head northwest. The Opera House is not far away.

Upon speaking with the Impresario inside, it takes a little...classy persuasion from Cloud to put his smart plan into motion. Basically, since Tifa looks so much like Isabella, she's gonna play the role of Maria in the upcoming show.

When you get control of Cloud, head to where Tifa is (eastern most door from the Opera House entrance). You can opt to have Tifa review her lines, but the choices for the upcoming show are the same as in the vanilla game. Pick the 1st, 2nd, and 1st options when prompted, then the rest should be easy street.

As Cloud's leaving the room, he finds a message by local wacky octopus artist Ultros claiming he's gonna cause shenanigans soon. Run back to the Impresario to inform him of this to set in motion a series of events culminating in your goal...get up to Ultros in 5 minutes to stop him from dropping a weight down on Tifa's head. You do this by running to the northeast exit, speaking to the guy inside, and flipping the switch he instructs you to hit.

Next, you head back to your seats, but this time head northwest. This leads to the rafters and some really annoying rats, fights can take up to a minute to clear out unless you can output high damage. Because I had bad luck and ran into four sets of rats, I ran out of time on my first attempt.

Attempt #2 though? Despite getting into four battles again, the second battle went insanely quickly. So much so that I had plenty of time left to reach Ultros, knock him down to the opera stage, and start a fight to the tune of a goofy theme from the Kirby series. Basically vintage Ultros, am I right?

Ultros doesn't change up too terribly much from his first battle. He's replaced Hex with Swine Song for a multi-target pig inflicting bonanza and added Tsunami (400-500 damage to the party) to his water attack choices. The strategy remains the same though. Hit him with fire attacks and don't be afraid to bust out high end consumables like X-Potions, Elixirs, or Necronomicons here.

Once the octopus leaves, Otis comes in, kidnaps Tifa (or Maria as he sees it), then takes her back to his airship. That just opens the door for Tifa to let her friends in which doesn't sit well with Otis.

Basically, Otis is the last surviving member of the Dragoon Knights who served under Gestahl. He decided to have them all killed because empire things, but Otis escaped, now confined to the life of a pirate and all pirate related shenanigans.

However, Tifa pulls some shenanigans of her own and wins a bet with Otis to take her and the party to the empire's mainland. What will they find out there? We shall see next time!


THE EMPIRE'S MAINLAND:

We're down on the empire's mainland with Tifa all geared up again (she had everything unequipped from the Opera House sequence). Let's see what we can do around here shall we?

There's a total of four towns spread out across this continent. The closest one is Alvantes, but I'm ignoring that for the moment to head northwest to Ornyx, home of the Magitek Research Facility we're to break into.

Enemy wise, the overworld has some enemies packing a little punch, but Serin's insane AoE damage helps soften up foes for kills long before I get into any major danger hp wise.

At Ornyx, I'm here for two things...the armor shop which has Omni Gear vests that are good upgrades for Cloud & Tifa and one of the huts in the south that lets you switch party members for the low price of 300 gil. I take out Ronan and walk back to Alvantes (and swat aside a couple groups of enemies in the process).

Alvantes's best shops are the weapon shop with Shuriken & the three elemental AoE scrolls for Oboro to throw and the relic shop which has Holy Amulets (wearer is immune to petrify, blind, and zombie) and Reflect Rings. Both will be cheaper in future stores so you don't need to grab them now.

In the pub is a familiar face, Oboro. He's willing to help the team with the Magitek Research Facility operation, but it'll cost 5k gil to hire him. Do so because it's going to be very beneficial before this whole episode is fully complete.

When you're ready to leave, return to Ornyx, but head west. Look for a break in the mountains to your south and head through it. You'll eventually find the town of Taured. Not much to see here besides a timeskip at the inn (we'll see why later). Shops have ok stuff, but nothing you really need right this moment if you're tight on gil.

When you're done looking around, head into the big forest south of town. There's a Chocobo Stable nestled in the trees and you can pickup a chocobo to hoof it to the final town on the mainland. Head back to where the mountains separated to the north and keep going west this time. You'll eventually reach the town of Ravaryn surrounded by forests.

Ravaryn has a couple interesting things to check out. The relic shop has Holy Amulets, but at a much cheaper price. You do not want to go into the next dungeon without at least three of these in your inventory, trust me.

There's also a guy wandering around in the trees to the relic shop's northeast. Talk to him five times to get a total of 2500 gil if you want.

Next time...the Magitek Research Facility.


MAGITEK RESEARCH FACILITY:

All set to invade the Magitek Research Facility and it begins in Ornyx. To the northeast of the entrance is someone closely aligned with the Crimson Blades. When you're ready to put the plan into action, say yes to him and he'll go create a distraction while you take a sneaky detour to get behind the guards. The Magitek Research Facility is straight north afterwards.

First thing you're going to notice is that the music for this area is rockin', Flash in the Dark from Megaman 9. Second, that Vanguard blocking the entrance. He's only solo, but he can output some high damage, especially if he focus fires a Giga Volt on a target which can break 1000 damage. With everyone on offense though, even that shouldn't become an issue.

New to this version are multiple NPCs sprinkled around the Magitek Research Facility which I really like. It gives off that vibe of being an active and important area that the empire is putting in all of its manpower into. So much so that the random battles here get a battle theme, something that's rarely been done before in this adventure.

Speaking of the randoms, the damage they do is starting to rise to noticeable levels. Be careful if you decide to have multiple people in the front row since they can easily lose 500-600 health in an instant if a physical skill gets aimed at them.

Of the new enemies, the War Golem is one to watch for since it has Magnitude Eight and loves to counter with Black Shock, crippling the target's damage output if it connects.

As for Oboro, there's two big reasons I brought him along. One won't be apparent until a couple vids from now, but the other reason is that there's lots of nice steals. Nothing better than what you have, but they have good selling value at the shops so it's worth it to gear him up with his Thief Gloves & Speed Boots so he can get in as many steal attempts as possible per battle.

The loot in the chests around the area are pretty good too. You'll get a copy of each of the elemental weapons that the esper disguised as a human offered (Molten Axe, Taser Mace, and Icebrand) and a lovely piece of armor, Aqua Gear, hidden off in a room accessed via a pipe. That armor, while making you weak to thunder, makes the wearer absorb water.

When you've looted everything (and picked up a bunch of exp, gil, and potentially stolen items too), there's a conveyor belt in the second area that leads to a cutscene with Kefka doing Kefka things and booting a couple espers, Ifrit & Shiva, onto a conveyor belt depositing them into the basement.

Once that scene ends, you can follow the two espers down and check out a door that isn't blocked first. Behind that door is a save point and a merchant with some useful items in tow like those Tinctures that heal the team's mp. More importantly though, Reflect Rings for 7k a pop. If you can pick up at least two or three, do so and equip them before interacting with Ifrit because it triggers a boss fight with him & Shiva.

Unlike vanilla, Ifrit & Shiva attack you at the same time rather than one at a time with the other tagging in after some time has passed. Both use spells attuned to their element, namely the tier 1-3 castable spells. Yes, tier 3 magic. That's why Reflect Rings do so well here as that'll keep those from landing.

Other than that, what moves they have which can get through reflect shenanigans are things like Ifrit's X-Strike & Dancing Flame along with Shiva's Frost Bite & Frozen Kiss (inflicts the freeze status).

To end this fight, you just need to deplete the hp of either esper. They're almost even with Ifrit having a slight edge in the stat (9600 hp vs Shiva's 9300). Pick whichever one you want and go all out, but watch it with elemental usage because each esper is weak to the other's element, absorbs their own element, and nullifies all others. Decent steals too with a Blazing Claw on Ifrit and an Ice Rod on Shiva.

Once you do enough damage, they come to their senses and the battle ends. Talking to both makes them turn into magicite which you can pick up. Both teach tier 2 magic of their respective element and have some secondary spells on top of it. Shiva's are the best simply because those secondary spells are Expel (mp busting) and Osmose (mp draining).

Time to keep pressing forward. Luckily, we're almost at the end of this area as the rest of it is linear until the last boss of the area. The new enemies en route aren't much to really talk about. Some hit hard, but no more so than what you've been hacking through already.

One thing to keep an eye out for...when you reach the Laboratory with all the capsules, you're going to want to go south when you reach the last one. Hidden away is a chest with a Hyper-Fist inside. Good power, grants a 3 point speed boost, but more importantly is non-elemental, something the majority of weapons Tifa & Ronan have used to up to this point aren't.

When you reach the next save point, you'll see a Panzer tank, your next boss. Save & prepare before engaging.

The Panzer's main gimmick revolves around using Barrier Change which modifies what it's weak to while making itself absorb or nullify all other elements. Too bad non-elemental attacks do well enough that I can bypass this lovely gimmick, heh.

Attack wise, Gatling Gun can nail a frontliner for over 1000 damage, but my Tifa is setup in such a way that a focused Cura can reverse all of that easily. There's also the elemental beams the Magitek Armors possessed, but those are a touch weaker than Gatling Gun.

On the AoE side of things, it'll glow at some point, then unleash Wave Storm which nails everyone for around 600-700 damage. If it used this more, it might have been a more credible threat. As is though, it only used it right at the tail end of the fight. Feel free to throw up Shell on people if you want for this & the beams though.

Before you dismantle it, make damn sure to steal its Rubber Shield. VERY nice shield for the sole reason that it absorbs thunder, making it the perfect companion for anyone that can wear the Aqua Gear to cover its thunder weakness. The Panzer drops a Mjollnir Hammer which can proc Storm on attacks. Not bad at all!

Before going into the next room, make a separate save. You don't want to be screwed if you can't get past the next boss.

In the next room, the team flips a switch and a bunch of espers are released. They all turn into magicite and adds their powers to the team. In total, you get Unicorn, Ymir, Search Ghost, Carbuncle, and Sylph. Of course, that comes with the price of Prof. Oak coming in and basically claiming Tifa was a spy which seems to get further evidenced when clown man Kefka waltzes in and says the same thing.

Cloud, being the idiot he is, immediately seems to assume they're telling the truth and almost full on doubts his CLOSEST ally. He and the rest of his team get bulldozed by some Magitek Armors before Tifa activates her shenanigans spell and teleports everyone but Cloud's team & Oak out of there.

Before Cloud gets a chance to lament on his decision to doubt Tifa, the Magitek Research Facility is about to go belly up in an explosion. The team hops on an elevator along with Prof. Oak to escape.

Prof. Oak realizes he too is a big idiot for going along with the empire, even going as far as to say he's going to try to talk reason with Gestahl and tell him this war is stupid. Maybe then he'll go back to pokemon related shenanigans. Maybe.

At the bottom of the elevator is Neko & a save point. Neko's shop doesn't have anything you need to must buy right now unless your consumables are running low. Talking to Prof. Oak will set in motion the next step to getting out of dodge.

Before that, let's talk about the new espers. Most of them have some very nice attack or support spells to learn, but the big reward goes to Sylph. Heals the entire party and grants float when summoned, but it teaches Cure & Cura at very good rates along with a couple other spells. Better yet, Cloud can equip it. Have him do so before saving up.


BLOODTHIRSTY ASSASSIN:

Time to start making our way out of Ornyx. Before speaking to Prof. Oak, you're going to want to equip any Holy Amulets you have. If you have three, great. Equip ALL of them, trust me. Also, make sure Sylph is set to Cloud. The others can go with whatever they prefer.

Upon talking to Oak, it seems he had a hand in Tifa's Mage Knight transformation process. Clearly his work is going off with flying colors.

When Kefka's usual laugh is heard, Oak tells everyone to get on the mine cart, but your trio is not alone. Resident merchant Neko joins up for this sequence. Nothing more than the fight & item commands, but a ranged weapon coupled with a nice relic that halves several elements make him a primary candidate to toss items around when needed.

As for the mine cart ride, you can run into a singular MagRoader, two MagRoaders, or four MagWheelers. They can do some good damage with their physicals and potentially tier 2 magic. Worse yet is the fact you can't heal between battles so try to end every fight as close to full health as you can. Don't be afraid to bust out high end consumables to make this work because there's a real pain in the ass waiting as the final guardian of this mine cart ride.

Back in the previous segment I mentioned that someone brought up in the flashbacks would be making an appearance...and as it stands, he does so here along with two elemental crystals, one fire aligned and one ice aligned.

This individual is an assassin who goes by the name Shijima and he is probably the hardest fight in this entire area. Partly because losing to him means having to repeat the entire ride over and partly because there's some very nasty attacks on tap for the fight.

The elemental crystals mainly focus on using tier 1 & 2 magics of their respective element. Only the tier 2 ones really do any lasting damage. If you take one out, it will eventually come back, but usually takes a while to do so.

As for Shijima, he's mostly a single target skill user. Chaos Breaker is roughly as strong as his normal strike and heals himself for the amount of damage inflicted. May even be used as a counter I believe.

His other move? Soulshatter. I hope you equipped those Holy Amulets because this move inflicts zombie. Yet...that's not the worst move on tap. No, that goes to Delta Attack, a move the blue crystal seems to use when all targets are alive. Normally, it petrifies the target. Here, it just does straight damage...a good 1400+ damage I might add. Even with all my grinding I've done, that's basically a one hit kill or very very close to it.

The strategy here is simple...try to knock out one of the crystals to keep yourself safe from Delta Attack spam, then dogpile Shijima before the crystal respawns and causes trouble. Shijima has a weakness to water which can be exploited by things like the Ocean Spear or Water Scrolls.

Also, have Oboro steal from Shijima because he has his Chaos Breaker skill available in the form of a weapon, Blooddrinker.

Once the assassin gets put down, the mine cart ride ends with a violent collision that takes out a Magitek Armor. At this point, Oboro tries to leave, but he instead decides to stick around because he's just that much of a good guy.


THE ESCAPE:

Almost out of Ornyx, but you'll want to sub out those Holy Amulets for a Mystic Ring each to help with the upcoming last boss fight in this sequence of events.

Upon reaching the point where the guards once were, Otis comes rushing on it, wonders where Tifa is, then instructs everyone to haul ass onto his airship. Too bad Kefka is a sore loser and doesn't want any escape shenanigans to occur. He sends a Flameskull & Shockskull duo to attack the party.

The two colored Lost Souls of Doom fame catch the party in a pincer attack, meaning any physicals targeting a character's back do additional damage. 400-500 is nothing to sneeze at here.

Besides that, they focus on a heavy elemental assault favoring the tier 2 spells of their respective element. The catch? If enough time passes, they can and will start using tier 3 spells which really sting. A focused tier 3 spell + one targeted at the whole party might just take someone out from full health.

Also of note...they like to use Magnitude Eight from time to time. This is easily countered with casting Levitate on everyone as quickly as possible though.

When one skull goes down, it'll counter with a single target Chaotic Disaster. Not the worst thing that can happen, especially when you can pop a Remedy on the afflicted character and lift most of the ailments off.

You'll want to stick to non-elemental attacks unless you're Oboro or someone who can use the Ocean Spear. Both skulls are weak to water as well as holy.

For Oboro, he's going to want to pull off some stealing. Flameskull (left skull) has a Diamond Helm while Shockskull (right skull) has Diamond Armor. Both nice defensive pieces of gear to use for sure.

Finally, Neko is not participating in this fight, but local dragoon turned pirate Otis is. He comes with some basic magic to utilize, namely Cure & Cura, if he so wishes. He also does some decent physical damage thanks to a killer relic he has, the Slayer Glove. This relic allows the bearer to equip two weapons at once. Kills your defense which could be very fatal in the endgame, but the sheer damage potential more than makes up for it.

Once the skulls are no more, the team finally escapes from Ornyx and have one simple goal...to hoof it back to Aurora at Rogue City and see how she's doing. As it turns out, freeing all those espers seemed to kickstart something in Aurora...a flashback depicting how she was born.

Basically, an esper & human fell in love and produced her, a half human, half esper being. There's also Gestahl invading and causing shenanigans because why not.

Once Aurora's flashback ends, the next goal becomes clear...hoof it back to Fraust to see how everyone's faring. Thankfully, Aurora rejoins the party and pick up a new ability in the process, Morph. This takes a huge chunk of her mp, 99 points to be precise, to change into her esper form and have boosted damage and I believe some damage resistance too. This is only temporarily though so best to use it during boss fights.

Back at Fraust, the team meets with the mayor and a potentially insane idea sprouts forward...to combat the empire, the team is going to find that gateway to the esper world and force it open to have the espers invade the human world. Only Aurora can do this so if even though she's not exactly forced into your team, you will need to make sure she's in your team before going on.


CLEANUP TOUR:

While we could go run straight to the next major dungeon, there's a bunch of little detours we can go check out now that the airship is in our hands.

Starting out, there's a peculiar triangle shaped island in the center of the world map. Playing around a bit in the desert and you may run into the creature that kicks off this segment, a Cute UFO. Seems innocent enough until it starts launching powerful AoE attacks like Atomic Ray & Aerods. It can also blast someone with Magitek Missile which can do 1500+ damage. My characters are JUST starting to climb over that threshold.

So, why fight them? 10 spell points a kill is always nice. So are the steals (Tincture in the common slot, Elixir in the rare slot) as well as the drops (Scrap Metal common, Atomic Ball as the rare drop).

Next up, back in Sunfall City. There's a very holy aligned auction house in the northeast part of town and there's plenty of goodies to buy. Two espers (Vysage for 20k gil, Yu Yevon for 10k gil) and two awesome relics. Angel Pendants are pretty nice, but I ended up getting those with some off screen arena betting. The real reward are the Pod Bracelets at 10k each. They mix in the effects of the Mystic Ring & Mithril Glove, meaning you'll no longer need those two relics once you've picked up four of these, something I'll be doing before the next segment.

Next up, there's a town in the northeast part of the world that doesn't reveal its name when you enter. The townsfolk are not very friendly either. So much so that the merchants refuse service to you and the innkeeper charge 1.5k gil for a night's rest. Still, there's a few items scatted around, most notably a Stone Axe in the northern part of town. Earth elemental weapon that does double damage to humans & plants.

Also worth noting is a locked door to the southwest of the inn and a chain chomp from the mario series blocking passage to a door in the northwest. Both of these will have to wait a while before anything can be done about them.

Finally, back in Fraust, the shops have updated wares. The relic shop has nothing new of value, but the weapon shop has buyable Stone Axes and Glacial Maces. The latter is a nice weapon with water & ice elements, making it a bit less of a hassle to switch weapons around if an enemy nullifies or absorbs one of the elements.

As for the item shop...Fire/Water/Bolt Scrolls, but at cheaper prices than what you're used to (500 here vs 750 everywhere else thus far). You're going to want to pick up a bunch of Water Scrolls before the next dungeon if you don't want to pay the higher price for them later though.

Finally, there's the treasure house in the southeast part of town. Inside there now is a rogue werewolf thief that somehow manages to open the locked chest. When he makes his escape and you check the chest to find it's indeed looted, head outside to find he's making a grand escape....into the mines. Sir, if you were smart, you would have gone SOUTH and booked it out of town.

As such, you'll be following him north into the mines and heading towards the esper on the snowy cliffs. When you get there, you'll find the thief pulling an even dumber move...trying to take a moogle captive. This moogle does not take kindly to the advance and frees himself, forcing you to make a choice. Both are in danger of falling off the cliff, but you can only save one. Make it the moogle. Why? The relic the thief claims to have can be found in the next dungeon.

As for the moogle? It's our favorite prinny hater Mog and he finally joins the crew permanently.


THE UNDERWORLD:

Now then, let's dive into a mysteriously empty imperial base. Clearly a sign something's up. Exit on the eastern side of the base, then head across the bridge and go straight south to enter the Underworld.

Enemy wise, the worst ones are the Meats & Fiends. The former was fought at Rogue City and is no less dangerous here while the latter has a penchant for using Lifeshaver and chaining that right into Acid Rain. Considering Lifeshaver can do over 1000 damage if the Fiend is heavily damaged, that can leave a full health character very near death if Acid Rain is used right after.

The dungeon itself is pretty linear overall with some detours here & there. The treasure's really good though like the first two chests containing an Eviscerator (knife that randomly kills its target) and a Justifier (gun with high attack power and nice boosts to speed & stamina).

Once you enter the fourth room of the dungeon, you'll want to keep an eye out for a switch over a wooden bridge. Hitting it makes the bridge break, but you should be able to grab a chest in the northwest holding a valuable Void Stone relic. With this equipped, the wearer consumes 50% less mp. 

Shortly after the bridge switch are two more switches before a second switch over a bridge. The switch on the right makes a solo Ninja drop down to challenge the team. Can toss the elemental scrolls for a fair chunk of damage, but it'll likely die before it can register any kills on the party. The other switch opposite to the Ninja trap one opens up a save point.

Past the second bridge switch, there's a bunch of hidden treasure you can find by examining four hidden squares. Exact same locations as they were from vanilla too. You'll get a Golden Apple, Might Tab, Soma Drop, and Atomic Ball in total.

After that, the rest of the loot is easily grabbed and not hidden. Make damn sure to open the cave by all the bridges though because four chests are inside. A Speed Tab, Magic Tab, and 10k gil are nice, but the real treat is Serin's seventh Aether, Psionic Wave. With this, if he successfully connects with it, he forces a weakness onto the enemy.

Also, make sure to grab the Slayer Glove before finally exiting this dungeon...in essence. In reality, a Cerebus decides to be a jerk and attack your party mere steps before you can reach the save point. Didn't seem to do much though.

After saving, the gate to the esper world is in the next room. Too bad also coming in is Kefka and a pair of Vanguards. Aurora will have to open the gate while the rest of the team deals with Kefka.

Kefka hasn't really changed much since the last time at Fraust. He's more of a supporter here though via throwing out ailments. His two Vanguard buddies can be annoying if they focus fire their Giga Volts on the same target, but otherwise they're not much to write home about. Cast either the Death or Break spell if you have it to make short work of them.

While this is more or less a "survival battle", where the party needs only to survive for a certain amount of time, it is possible to win. Serin's Catastrophe is good for consistent damage against Kefka, and of course Avalon's Havoc, though it may miss more than not due to Kefka's high magic evade. Besides this, you can easily exploit this battle by using Stop on Kefka, which will render him useless for three turns.

What is to write home about though is the other enemy Kefka swaps in, an Evil Weapon. It can hit hard on frontliners (600-700 damage), but the real danger is the fact it can chain cast Scorch, Freeze, and Storm back to back. Will probably kill a target unless they've been buffed with Shell. This monster is susceptible to Imp, but once so it will dish out critical attacks which can be just as lethal. Thankfully for me Aurora got that gate opened soon after that triad of pain.

Once the ensuing horde of espers pours out of the gate and Kefka's nowhere to be seen, you can head out of the gate area and save up.


IMPERIAL FEAST:

Time to get out of the Underworld, but as you probably can see, the usual shortcut exit isn't there. Luckily, Teleport works so cast that to get out and make your way back to the airship.

On the airship, the rowdy espers decide to straight up attack it, causing it to crash on the empire's mainland. After a timeskip since I ended up doing a little wandering to grab a couple things, I'm sitting in front of Ornyx with a different team setup. Cloud & Mog are still around with Arc & Avalon joining them. Everyone but Mog can dual wield weapons, a fact that'll help me with a little task very shortly.

If you step into Ornyx, you'll see the espers have done quite the number on it. With the Magitek Research Facility in shambles, that leaves only one last place to go, Blackthorn Palace. The entrance to it is in the northwestern part of town.

Shortly after entering, you'll find some curious Reptites who lead you to Gestahl. As he claims, he's done with the whole war business (Totally not a bold faced lie!). He wants to talk it over a banquet, but you'll first get five minutes to talk to some soldiers who'd rather prefer to keep on fighting.

In total, there's 27 soldiers to talk to around the palace. In the original there were 24, but 3 more were added in this hack. Some just say a few words, but others would rather fight you first. Most are just singular Commandos which I can drop in one or two actions. The one fight outside the palace though has a pair of Riot Mechas. If you can get to this fight with roughly 1:15 or so left on the clock, you should be fine to clear it before the timer runs out.

Any time you have left after all 27 soldiers have been talked to can be used to collect treasure around the palace. Mostly consumables, but the good kind of consumables really. You can also just opt to get these treasures after the banquet. And you should probably stay away from Kefka's cell for now as well, as an event will trigger that takes up precious time.

After the timer's up, the banquet takes place. The answers you select here do make a difference for some rewards after it's all done. The choices are no different than vanilla so you can answer, assuming the top choice is #1...

1. #3
2. #1
3. #2
4. #2
5. Ask each question once
6. #1
7. Repeat the first question you asked up on the 5th set of choices
8. Take a break, then go kick some Reptite behinds. They have some powerful tier 2 magic as well as some nasty status ailments like Primal Rage (berserk) and Rock Barrage (confusion).
9. #2
10. #1

With all those answers in place, the next major story task is clear...we're to assist the empire in locating these rogue espers and utilizing Aurora to broker a sign of peace between human & esper. Aurora's going, but not alone as Cloud's joining her. Everyone else is going to get ready for Gestahl's inevitable betrayal because no way this is going off smoothly without a hitch.

As Cloud & Aurora try to leave, a Reptite comes up and sounds off all the perks you get for doing so well at the banquet. In total, Seascape Town & Mist Castle will be liberated, you can loot the imperial base near the Underworld, and get two items, a Golden Apple and the very good Prism Cape relic (halves damage from fire, ice, lightning, earth, wind, and water and gives a small boost to defenses).

Be sure to go back into the banquet room and search the spot of the table where Gestahl was sitting for a Lich Ring, which raises magic damage by a considerable amount, but turns the character undead...which can be either good or bad, but mostly bad.


JOURNEY TO LEMURIA:

The journey to explore Lemuria in greater fashion begins today, but first, Cloud & Aurora take a detour to the Imperial Base. With the basement floor of the building unlocked, they can loot all the treasure there. Lots of high end consumables, a nice chunk of gil, and a Blooddrinker. It could be very possible to win some arena fights that were previously impossible if you setup someone to dual wield this one and the one stolen from Shijima.

You can also return to the airship to view a relatively obscure scene with Otis and Prof. Oak.

For now though, the timeskip takes us over to Alvantes where the duo gets some water resistant gear equipped before heading to Alvantes's docks. There, they'll find a hidden Speed Tab in the southeast before chatting with Leo. He's getting some final preparations in place, including the help of two people, Oboro and Tifa. He then implores you to go rest up before the voyage so head to the inn to get a good night's sleep.

As for Cloud? Well, he realizes that he MIGHT have stepped a bit out of bounds with blindly calling Tifa a traitor, but she just runs away. Perhaps later he might have a better chance at apologizing.

After the night's rest, go back to the docks and tell Leo you're ready to set sail. The journey seems peaceful enough with Aurora talking to Leo about how it feels funny to be working with the same people that once controlled her. Luckily, Leo's not like all of them, even going as far as to say he regrets not doing anything about it all this time.

Oh, and Leo's not exactly full on human. He's gotten some cybernetic implants which are going to be put to the test right away because no boat ride is complete without something wanting to capsize it. Enter the esper Leviathan who's not about to let some pesky humans cross the waters. Not on its watch!

At the very least, you get the chance to modify your gear before starting the battle. Evidently Leviathan also has a sense of honor.

First thing's first...Tifa's joining back up for this fight. If you have any spare equips to give her water resistance or absorption, throw it on her. Otherwise, she'll do fine with a Pod Bracelet to bolster her defenses.

When you're ready to rock, challenge Leviathan (and get to hear the always awesome Final Fantasy X normal battle theme during the entirety of the fight).

As is tradition for the aquatic lord of the seas, Leviathan opens with Tsunami for some good water AoE damage. Aqua Gears turn it into a heal though so Cloud's pretty safe sitting in the front row for now.

Its other AoE moves consist of Magnitude Eight & Avalanche. Both are as potent as Tsunami, maybe even a bit more. If you devote at least two people to Cura spam duties, you should be able to heal all or most of the damage up each time they're used.

Finally, Leviathan's physical is nothing special, but Tail Whip can sting quite a bit, especially on frontliners, and it also can be used as a counter.

Tifa's main job is just to spam Cura on the entire party to keep Leviathan's AoE damage at bay. Cloud can help her out with that or go on the offensive.

As for the other two?

First up, Leo's got two unique commands at his disposal. Blaster lets him either do damage to a target or instantly kill them.

Leo's other command plays into his cybernetic implants, Magitek. He's got all the same abilities that Biggs & Wedge had, meaning solid single target elemental damage, dual safe/shell buffs, healing, and revival. He can also use physicals with a weapon not seen thus far, the Lightsaber. This does more damage the more hp the user has remaining. For this fight though, he can just spam Thunder Beam for damage and buff up anyone that needs safe/shell with Magitek Barrier.

Finally, we have Aurora. She's had a new command since her time out of the party that she actually gets to put to use here, Morph. This takes a sizable chunk of her mp, but in exchange she takes lower magic damage and deals more damage herself. This is only a temporary transformation though so you'll want to make sure she's attacking every turn while morphed to make the most of it.

After Leviathan's gotten a big enough beatdown, a cutscene follows between Aurora and the esper. It's not long before Leviathan turns into magicite so the team can make use of its powers.

Right after that, the prediction seen a mile away comes true as Gestahl lets Kefka out of jail and they go to inevitably cause terror once the espers are found.


THE FORGOTTEN TOWN:

The team's landed on the shores of Lemuria. Tifa's out of the party and recently awakened from his slumber Oboro is in. They merely have to go a short distance northeast to reach a town, one we've visited in the past to collect some items.

First thing to do is to check the shops in town. Somehow now you can start buying stuff from them. Considering the team's still essentially strangers, it seems a little odd, but I'm not complaining.

The weapon shop has buyable elemental staves in fire, ice, and thunder varieties and a few other weapons. Nothing you absolutely need right now except maybe an Ice Rod or two.

The armor shop though has far more desirable pickups. Buyable Rubber Shields & Aqua Gears for one which means you should try to get enough of each to fit a team of four. Tiaras, Galaxy Scarves, and Arcane Robes aren't half bad either with some good magic boosts on them.

The item shop has buyable Tinctures. Being able to quickly refresh 125 mp for the whole team is pretty damn solid so if you can, buy a few for emergencies.

The relic shop sells nothing new that you haven't seen before, but they're all good pickups if you have any spare funds.

When you're ready to advance the story, check out the house north of the town square. Inside is a rather...familiar old man. If you've played Final Fantasy IV extensively, then you'll know this old man is FuSoYa. He doesn't seem to know much about the espers, but I'd reckon Eiko does as that's exactly who comes barging into the room during the convo, but quickly gets kicked out by whom she calls grandpa.

Once it's realized this lead isn't going anywhere, the party has to decide on a new plan of action. You'll have to rest up at the inn to advance the story, but luckily it now only costs 1 gp to do so. Make sure Oboro gets an Ashen Cowl and a pair of Oracle Rings at a bare minimum. Maybe one Oracle Ring & a Pod Bracelet if you want to play it safe.

During the inn stay, Aurora & Leo have another one on one chat talking about love...complete with Aurora's bad feeling senses about Gestahl going off. Turns out she's gonna be right about those, but there's also another problem that's arisen...Eiko's gone to play in the eastern house and it's caught fire. FuSoYa comes rushing over to the team requesting help. While you can follow him, go save outside real quick.


DEMONIC BLAZE:

Time to go help FuSoYa. He's trying to douse the flames, but is not having any luck. Even with the help of the other townsfolk, the flames will not die down. Folks, this is why you don't stash ALL of your Fire Rods in one place!

With no other option available, FuSoYa decides to charge into the house to save Eiko, but he's also getting help from Cloud, Aurora, and Leo.

FuSoYa, as you'd probably expect, is at his prime when casting spells. With a spell selection that rivals Aurora, he can dish out the magical damage like nobody's business. His Arcane command is Strago's Lore from vanilla basically. He does get to begin with a few select moves in it, the most important being Tsunami which everything in this area is going to be weak to.

While you could fight every Bomb you see, you're on a timer. You'll have 9 minutes and 15 seconds to reach the boss of this area and start the fight with it. Thankfully, the Bombs fall to a casting of Tsunami with Aurora backing it up via summoning Leviathan. If they need further beatdowns, Cloud & Leo can mop up no problem.

Only a couple items to grab here, but both are good (Mermaid Rod & Magic Tab). You won't be able to enter this area after finishing it though so make sure you get both items before you head up a set of stairs since the boss of the area is up said stairs.

This boss? Allegedly an evolved form of the Bomb, a Lava Demon. Hell if I know how that works, but we may as well expel the demon.

Lava Demon is basically FlameEater from vanilla. It opens by summoning four Bombs, all easily dispatched with a Tsunami & Leviathan combo. It can resummon these Bombs though so you may need a little extra help to drop the buggers in one round.

When it's not summoning, Lava Damon is hitting the team with Fireball & Scorch. Nothing to worry about on either end, but it also has Flare. This can nail a single target for 1400-1500 damage while ignoring defenses. Pretty nasty, but since it's single target, you can just devote or one two people to getting the targeted character back in shape.

With all the damage the team can dish out, the demon doesn't last long. Eiko's in the back, but apparently rogue Bombs decide to sneak attack the party, leaving Leo the only one that can still fight. Luckily, Oboro snaps out of his second siesta to crash the party and try taking down the flames...but even he is having issues. That's when Eiko's protector Moggie steps on to the scene and joins Leo & Oboro for a battle gauntlet that's five fights long.

First fight...hope you didn't miss Lava Demon's presence because it's back for an encore battle. While not having Aurora or FuSoYa hurts in dealing with the summoned enemies, Oboro having dual Oracle Rings means he can drop them all in two Water Scrolls.

As for Moggie, Inverse still isn't very good, but its Mermaid Rod is. Get a proc with that and it can easily rip 3-4k hp off the Lava Demon. If the message pops up saying that its flames are growing stronger, it will begin to regen HP. You can remove this effect by using an Aqualin on it. It won't take that long to put the demon down once more.

The next four battles being with two Bombs & Hellspawns. The latter like to use Toxic Bomb quite a bit which is really annoying, but they're weak to water all the same.

The next fight after that is one of the worst here...a battle against six bombs that pincer attack the party. Since you can't heal between these fight, you need to end the previous one with close to full health and hope that Oboro doesn't get focused hard. As long as that happens, he can drop all the Bombs with a pair of Water Scrolls.

Battles #4 & 5 are a repeat of the above two (Bombs/Hellspawns & six Bombs pincer attacking the party). Just repeat the same strategies to pull out a win.

After the battle gauntlet, it turns out even Leo & Oboro collapse from the intense heat. Moggie's still alive and kicking though and is able to warp everyone out of the house.


ANCIENT HISTORY:

The team has made it back safely to FuSoYa's house with Eiko coming to. She then spills the beans about the Lava Demon. Turns out she KINDA accidentally summoned it. Clearly she needs more points into her summoning skill, heh.

FuSoYa then spills the beans about the town's secret. As it turns out, this town is known as Lunaris, home of the Lunarians who are basically guardians of the planet. The Lunarians fled to the planet this game takes place in after some lovely experiences with the planet called "Earth".

The bad news...they may have never settled here if they knew about the hellish wars to follow, namely the Magi Wars. Turns out the Lunarians sided with the espers against the humans wanting the power of the espers for the sake of the planet, but the damage had been done. Too much negative energy released during the war released the archdemon known as Zuriel from the Void.

Despite the Lunarians being able to quell Zuriel's wrath and defeat him, it was done without the assistance of the espers who fled to a secret realm beyond the Dimensional Gateway. Turns out the humans didn't take kindly to the Lunarians helping the espers out either. Couple that with the Lunarians being adept at magic and you have a bunch of idiot humans deciding to hunt down the Lunarians. Only a few survived and fled to what is now Lunaris.

Also of note...Moggie. Turns out its really an esper, Madeen, who wanted to stay by Eiko's side without scaring her, hence the Moggie alter ego. He then tells FuSoYa it's time to lend our team their powers which triggers a flashback.

This flashback takes place back when Zuriel was on a rampage, destroying anything and everything he came across. FuSoYa was trying to mount a counter offensive to push back his armies, but he's not alone. FuSoYa had his trusty partner in crime Golbez alongside him to defend the castle.

Deeper in the castle, it seems as though many espers fled the castle in fear of Zuriel turning them into Magicite. His end goal was to locate some mysterious statues, break their seal, and bring in an apocalypse.

Only one notable esper stayed behind to combat Zuriel's army, Odin. Even his power was no match when Zuriel himself showed up and basically kicked his rear by beginning the conversion to magicite.

Where were FuSoYa & Golbez during all this? Coming in to do some demon cleansing of the castle. Despite this being a flashback, you get to control the duo in a pair of battles. The first are against Hell Barons which, if it doesn't ring a bell...Doom is getting representation here. Decent kick to their attacks, but nothing the duo can't handle.

The second battle? Basically hard confirming the Doom representation with a pair of Cacodemons. Again, nothing too threatening, but Golbez makes use of his unique command Torment to take control of one Cacodemon. This allows him to select an action from the controlled enemy which is usually a normal attack, their special move, and one or two other attacks. In this case, Cacodemons have Life Purge which they can be hit by. One casting will put them in range to be killed by a couple spells from FuSoYa.

After the fights, they reach Odin, but it's too late. The magicite transformation process is too advanced and Zuriel's basically going down to kill the king and everyone in the area. There's still hope though if the duo survives so Madeen warps them and the other survivors to safety, ending the flashback.

Back in the present time, everyone's outside of FuSoYa's house ready to go find the espers. Leo's heading back to the ship to report to the others while the rest go investigate a place called the Solace Cavern which is rumored to have strong ties to magic. Perhaps the espers have retreated there?

Before this segment ends...that flashback also apparently kickstarted FuSoYa's magical prowess. He now unlocks a ton of new spells, most of which the party won't have access to for quite some time like tier 3 spells and Hastega/Slowga.


SOLACE CAVERN:

Time to check out the Solace Cavern. If you exit Lunaris, you'll see the entrance just to your north, but you'll have to circle around the mountains to reach it.

The enemies aren't too nasty in the caves save for two exceptions, both of whom are seen in the few areas outside, Hotheads and Kablooms.

Hotheads always seem to show up in pairs along with a pair of Bombs and can't be run from which makes their gimmick all the more nasty. They do have some good personal damage, but they also love to use White Wind which heals the party for an amount of hp equal to the caster's current hp. Since they have 4k+ hp and the Self-Destruct the Bombs use does damage based on their remaining hp...yeah, you can see where this is going. This is why there was a timeskip before I entered the caverns because this formation kicked my ass hard the first time.

This time though? I found my trump card...Hotheads can be struck by Hex. Do this and they become sitting ducks who can't ply any annoying moves. You do want to get one to use at least one White Wind since that's a new Arcane spell for FuSoYa.

Kablooms aren't bad...until they start countering with Giga Volt for 1500+ damage.

The dungeon is pretty linear until you reach a few golden idols. These depict the Statues that house immense magical power and would destroy the world if an evil hearted person got their hands on it. The espers could have very well been attracted to the power even the lowly gold idols radiate so more exploration is at hand.

The problem? Octopus royalty comes charging in out of nowhere! Ultros wants the statues for a very silly reason...to get Majin Buu's attention and rule over the world with him. Sir, I think Majin Buu would sooner blow the planet up then rule over it. Just saying!

But of course, are our heroes going to let him get away? Of course not!

As per usual, Ultros gets a rather silly battle theme. Unlike the last two battles though, he's got some dangerous attacks to watch out for. Not at the start though since other than his physical strikes, he doesn't do much of anything.

However, after dealing enough damage, he glows red. When this happens, his next turn is going to consist of buffing himself with Haste & Protect, then deciding someone needs to die because his next attack skill is Rock Slide which deletes someone for 2300+ damage.

His post rage power up also gives him Cursed Breath. This targets a single character, but you wouldn't expect that due to the animation implying it oughta hit everyone...and thank god it doesn't because the target gets nailed with multiple status ailments like poison, sleep, and pig.

Finally...he can counter with Inferno. Without protection, this can rival Rock Slide in damage.

After beating on Ultros for a while, someone interrupts the battle, though it should be no surprise who it is considering she's been following behind the team since they've entered the area. It's none other than Eiko and she wants to...ahem..."play" with Ultros. He rejects at first, but gets shown up by a piggified Aurora and told to get his ass kicked because that's what will happen to him after.

So, what does he do to me? Double attack Eiko before she can do anything and knock her out. Lousy octopus jerk! It takes a bit before I can get her up, healed, and sent to the back row. Ultros is sent packing before she has a chance to do anything after that though.

After the battle, she basically outfoxes FuSoYa and gets to join the party. Partly because sending her back alone with the monsters about isn't the brightest of ideas and partly because she's one of the best characters in the game. Why? Her Summon command. With it, she summons whatever esper she has equipped. Seems plain at first, right? It is...until you realize Eiko can summon the esper an infinite amount of times so long as she has the mp available to summon it.

For now, Eiko's gonna hold on to her initial esper, Madeen. Teaches the tier 2 fire/ice/lightning spells along with two new spells, Quake & Gravity.

The rest of this dungeon involves falling down holes and collecting treasure. Don't take the hole nearest the save point since that leads to the end of the dungeon, but do take the other two to reach an Omni Elixir, Skelly Suit, and Ghost Suit.


CHAOS REIGNS:

The team does find espers and they seem poised to attack at first, but local earth esper Titan stops anything from actually happening and instantly recognizes Aurora as being Olorin's daughter. Everyone, esper & all, eventually return to Lunaris and a peace treaty is formed between Leo & the espers so all's good, right?

Wrong. Kefka's clown act comes rolling into town and Kefka himself starts ordering explosions and backstabbing friends & foes alike, up to and including Leo himself. Leo does not take this kindly though because after waking up from being knocked out, he goes on the offensive to stop Kefka. Unfortunately Kefka manages to outfox Leo and gravely injure him. Not enough for Leo to do a Self-Destruct styled final blow. That's it, game's over for Leo!

Kefka just gets up like nothing has happened to him, then proceeds to start turning every esper in the area to magicite. Even the horde of espers coming from the Dimensional Gateway get turned into magicite. Unlike vanilla where he was implied to just be collecting magicite, he's actually absorbing it all into his body. He then laughs as the screen fades to black.

The next scene involves everyone in a moment of silence at Leo's grave, then Oboro's dog Ace comes in very wounded, but not dead. Eiko vows to patch him up since it seems very likely that Oboro is now dead too. Could this day get any worse?

Thankfully, there are some survivors....Otis and the gang. They arrive in Lunaris to tell everyone what we all saw coming from the opposite side of the universe...Gestahl betrayed everyone and now he's gonna be able to go into the Dimensional Gateway to the esper world and find what he's been looking for...those statues mentioned last segment.

Also...the day gets worse. Gestahl's not the one to be fearing, but rather Kefka. FuSoYa was knocked out pretty fierce, but not enough to hear Kefka's laugh...except for the fact it's a laugh FuSoYa is all too familiar with. Considering this is his first time encountering Kefka, it's becomes painfully obvious what this means.

Kefka is none other than the reincarnation of the demon the Heroes of Light sealed away 1000 years ago, Zuriel. Things have just hit rock bottom...and it's about to get much worse sadly.

After hopping back on the airship, the world moans in pain because a portion of the planet gets ripped out of the ground to become what will be the next major dungeon. Gestahl & Zuriel (but Gestahl doesn't know Kefka is really a resurrected demon from the past) are on the continent with the three magical statues of lore and no doubt plan to use them to cause trouble.

Something else interesting to note about the statues...in earlier versions of the hack, the three statues were those of Exdeath from Final Fantasy V, Cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy III, and Zeromus from Final Fantasy IV.

In this version? Zeromus as a statue doesn't exist, but in its place is the one winged angel from Final Fantasy VII himself, Sephiroth. Just great!

Regardless of Sephiroth coming back as a statue, the danger is certain. If those statues get moved out of alignment, one of them is going to divide the new alignment by zero and cause a magical outpouring that's going to completely annihilate the planet. We're going to have to haul ass up to where Gestahl & Kefka are fast.


SIDEQUEST TOUR:

The world's in grave danger of taking an earth shattering kaboom so what do we do? Cleaning up some loose ends for two segments and training to prepare for the inevitable massive battle to come, that's what!

First up on the loose end cleanup project is the Hermit's Hideaway. The esper turned old man here realizes the world may be doomed, but he's going to do one last act of kindness to help the team turn this around. He turns himself into the same weapon Leo wielded, the Lightsaber. This weapon seems to have max attack power, but its damage is actually dependent on the user's current hp level.

Next, back to Mist Castle, Avalon's home. We haven't been here since the imperial army vacated the area and there's some good treasure to pickup. There's a Quick Ring (+7 speed, +20 evasion) in the storage room, but the real treat is the chest in Avalon's room containing a Masamune for him. It's a wind elemental katana with +2 to might & stamina, +10 to evasion, and can randomly replace the physical strike with the AoE wind-aligned attack Wind Slash. Really nice for softening up randoms...and it'll be possible to bet for a second one without too much hassle to boot.

Next up on the cleanup tour is a return to Lunaris. There's a curious stump to the south of Leo's grave that can be interacted with, but nothing of interest happens. There is a fellow by the name of KlaTu by the inn who seems to know a secret FuSoYa's hiding. Evidently dealing with Zuriel wasn't all he was doing. He was also searching for a very special beast who felt like roaring on occasion and asking for a meal of Super Missiles. FuSoYa's hunt was none other than Super Metroid's own Kraid. The beast lives on Zebes Isle which has been submerged for quite some time.

...You know, I'm not sure what's more crazy here...FuSoYa hunting down a beast from a different game or the fact its implied Kraid's alive, but underwater. Soon enough FuSoYa is going to have to realm hop into the Megaman X universe and blow up a maverick just to keep up his image, heh.

Anyways, the next stop on the world tour is the triangular island in the middle of the world. The mountains have now opened to reveal an entrance into the Pirate's Hideout, a short four screen dungeon where the only loot is at the end. You do want to come prepared for battle though since there's some enemies about. Pack some Holy Amulets when you're inside since there's Steelpions who can petrify a target and love to open by doing just that on a target.

Outside? Red Beasts hit MUCH harder than anything else encountered thus far and Klarrgas have a new Arcane spell for FuSoYa to learn, Aero. Wind damage to all which is quite nice since that element is rather rare to find in a spell or even weapon right now.

Just before another cave entrance is a dwarven Quizmaster who, if you choose to, will test your knowledge. Should you answer his questions correctly, the party will receive a level up. Should you fail just one, you will loose. Either way he will be gone forever after this, so answer wisely.

At the end of the dungeon is a room with a save point. There's a journal talking about the Cute UFO in the small patch of desert along with four items. One is in the pot, two are in the cabinet, and the last in the chest. In total, you'll walk away with 17.2k gil, a Golden Apple, a Necronomicon, and Otis's personal relic, the Shipwrecker. This changes his Jump command into Cannon which lets him deal damage based on his level (I think) to one or to all targets. Bear in mind the damage will be divided for each enemy targeted beyond the first.

Finally for this segment, Otis is going to go a round in the colosseum and bet the Skelly Suit as he goes up against a Malpixie. He'll need a Reflect Ring to bounce back the fatal Blizzard casts from the enemy as well as a Blooddrinker to keep his hp high. With a Slayer Glove, a Blooddrinker & Lightsaber make for a most vicious combo. The former heals up Otis as he takes damage which synergizes perfectly with him wanting to stay as close to full health as possible to get the most out of his Lightsaber.

The Malpixie, besides Blizzard, can use Frenzy Eye to inflict berserk which is fine since that helps Otis hit even harder. It can use Gravity though and that bypasses reflect to do very heavy damage based on the target's remaining hp. It can't kill, but it'll leave the target low enough to be easily finished by a physical right after.


OPTIONAL BOSS BEATDOWN & ARENA SHENANIGANS:

Back to Rogue City, two things left that I can do are here and both are boss fights of the optional variety.

First up, there's the Master Tonberry. If you don't have four Reflect Rings, go buy them and equip them all on your team. Hell, bring along Eiko too and give her Sylph. Water resistance or absorption is critical too which you can get from Aqua Gears (absorption) or Elite Armors/Prism Capes (resistance).

Master Tonberry has a pretty simple to understand attack pattern. It'll begin by using Barrier Change to switch around its elemental resists & weaknesses, then start using a spell attuned to the element it switched to like Inferno/Blizzard/Nova for fire, ice, and lightning respectively. Sometimes it'll use a physical strike instead of a spell which, while painful, isn't hard to heal up.

Also, as per usual Tonberry tradition, it'll waddle ever so close to your team. Once it's right up next to your team, it'll use Cleaver and basically one shot whomever is targeted before returning to the back of the battlefield. This can be survived if the user is in the back row defending with a Protect spell cast on him/her.

The worst elements for the M. Tonberry to swap to are wind, earth, holy, or water. Wind brings along Gravity, earth has Quake, holy has Saintly Beam, and water has El Nino.

While Scan does help in figuring out what element its weak to, there's another way that doesn't involve it. Master Tonberry will be weak to the opposite element it switches to. Fire & ice oppose each other as does holy & poison. The other elements...managed to throw me for a loop as to what opposed what for a while. 

If you don't have an attack available for an element, just hit the bugger once and it'll switch it up.

Eiko's pretty much the only reason I can do this fight now. With Reflect Rings on everyone, she's my only source of mass healing via Sylph summon spam. FuSoYa has White Wind if you need to double up on healing (which I would have taken had I remembered that I had it, heh).

Steal wise, there's an Omni Elixir up for grabs. Nice, but hardly worst risking your life for unless it's the very start of battle. The drop though is very nice, a Demon Killer. No special attributes, but it has the highest attack of any weapon to date.

Next up on the optional boss docket is a mechanical monstrosity hailing from Bioshock, the aptly named Big Daddy who decided to jump me before I was ready to show my setup for the fight.

Big Daddy opens with Scintillation to blind the party, but honestly, nobody should be in the front row because despite being sixteen levels lower than Master Tonberry, the robot hits MUCH harder on the physical front. Drill Stab is basically fatal to any low defense targets.

On the non physical skill side of things, it has Scatter Missiles (multiple % based damage strikes against randomly chosen targets), Wave Storm (AoE, but Rubber Shields nullify this easily), Toxic Bomb (Annoying, but it doesn't one shot anyone at least), Atomic Ray (Heavy AoE fire damage. Brining Prism Capes and/or Ashen Cowls helps immensely), and Shrapnel Blades (Basically fatal if it's focused on a single target).

Healing at least is much easier here since you don't need Reflect Rings equipped. Just need to be ready to revive since the robot can and will instantly slay a target if it chooses, especially with Shrapnel Blades.

Serin has one task to do in this fight, and that is to use Psionic Wave to force a weakness. Fire, ice, or lightning are the best ones to get.

The rest? Heal as needed, but throw out attacks if they've got any spare room.

The drops here are a Scrap Metal, then a key item that's called Incinerate! after the battle concludes.

The Incinerate! can be used on that stump in Lunaris to clear the way. Several graves have items to grab, but the real reward is a relic hidden behind a door, the Lavos Shard. Tons of stat boosts and also raises max hp & mp by 25% each. You'll also find Reaper pacing around the area and can choose whether or not to recruit him into the party! Bring him on over to the Beast Plains for a while to do some easy Souls-farming.

Finally, a couple random colosseum fights for kicks. The first one I was NOT expecting to win honestly as I was intending to "trade" my Quick Ring for the enemy's rare steal, a War Machete. The second one shows how powerful sustain is if you rock a Blooddrinker against an enemy that can't one hit kill you.


EAGLE'S PLIGHT:

Training & preparations complete so it's time to fly to the Floating Continent. You can only bring three people to the dungeon and FuSoYa must be one of those three. Luckily FuSoYa's stellar magic list and two new Arcane spells I picked up for him in Aero (Wind AoE, learned from Klarrgas) & Mighty Guard (Safe & shell for the entire party, learned from Commandoes) make him very combat capable.

The other two don't really matter too much since everyone has something they can contribute to the team. For me, I took the lovebird duo of Cloud & Tifa, both whom picked up some valuable moves from their training. Cloud got his sixth Limit, Meteor Sword (AoE damage, can randomly inflict stop) while Tifa picked up Slowga & Hastega.

The journey to the Floating Continent won't be hassle free sadly. The airship gets attacked by the empire's air squadron which consists of M-Tek Robots & Power Suits. Since every fight you get into here with the exception of the boss fight is a pincer, the damage they do can stack up very quickly. Rather weak to lightning though.

After clearing out a bunch of the metal scrap, something pink approaches. A couple battles later, that pink thing drops off a friend...Ultros. Check your gear (fire & thunder resistance will help), heal up, then approach the octopus artist for what hopefully is the final battle with him.

You know an Ultros battle has gone full shenanigans when the song is actually serious...and the octopus himself brings the silliness. That's cause, somehow, someway, he's gone super saiyan. Doesn't help him fire Kamehamehas though. He just does his usual stuff like Tentacle spam & Splash. No massive tier 3 elemental spam or Rock Slide though. Hell, his defenses are god awful here.

After beating up on him, he decides to even the odds by bringing in a couple extra partners. One of them should be quite familiar to you, Olbohn. Has most of his moves from the Skull Train, just with higher stats.

The other partner? I guess Ultros found some way to be buddy buddy with Majin Buu cause that's who brought him up here. While his magical assault is pretty godawful, he's adept with physical strikes, attacking two or three times, sometimes with a more powerful strike, Tayoken.

Two items to steal here in Ultros's Soma Drop and Majin Buu's Golden Apple. Fire attacks work best on Ultros & Olbohn while you'll want to switch over to poison attacks for Buu.

Once the fight ends, all's good right? Not if the leader of the whole mecha army wants a word first, although I'm in FULL approval if it means a kickass series gets represented in this hack.

The leader is none other than Megaman X's venerable Storm Eagle, but here he's pulled a pokemon and evolved to Flame Eagle. That's one reference. Second is his backup, a pair of Thunder Slimers, the mid boss from Spark Mandrill's stage. That's two in total.

Finally, the song. This gets TWO reference points because it's a mix of Storm Eagle's own stage theme as well as resident fire maverick Flame Mammoth's stage theme. X shenanigans in FULL force here cause that's four references in a single fight, heh.

So, what does Flame Eagle bring to the table? A dangerous fight surprisingly. Flame Eagle's no slouch in dealing 700-800 damage like nobody's business and has some fairly strong AoEs in Whirlwind and, much more threatening, Cyclonic.

As for the Thunder Slimers, they're somewhat docile...until they use one of their worst moves, Delta Attack. That rips off a good 1600-1700 health from a target. Aerods is similarly nasty, ESPECIALLY if you get what happened here where Cyclonic was used right before it. That's why you want Rubber Shields on everyone so you can prevent that one-two punch from wiping you.

Oh, and they have Atomic Ray too. You REALLY don't want to see that after a Cyclonic, trust me.

Steal wise, there's X-Ethers from the Thunder Slimers and a Stamina Tab from Flame Eagle.

Since Flame Eagle will bring back the Thunder Slimers if they're both taken out, best to drop one, then focus on Flame Eagle. He's weak to ice & water, something FuSoYa can take advantage of very nicely with Blizzard. Tifa can do likewise with a pair of Frost Gloves or, if she's lv40, can spam Blizzard.

Once Eagle gets iced, you get a very nice relic drop, the Eaglehorn. Grants a two point boost to stamina & magic as well as auto haste, safe, and shell.


FLOATING CONTINENT:

Bit of an equipment switchup before the trio takes off on the Floating Continent. After a pair of Ninjas are swatted away, they find Oboro who's still alive and kicking. Clearly the empire failed hard in trying to off him and now they're about to have him come knocking back on their doorsteps. He can use Leviathan so toss that onto him to begin teaching him Flood.

As for the Floating Continent enemy wise, they hit rather hard as you'd probably expect. Make sure to enter every fight at full hp because lots of enemies can easily lop off 800+ health without warning.

Dungeon is pretty linear. There's a couple detours you have to make to hit a switch and lower a platform, but nothing too special otherwise.

Treasure wise, there's an interesting one just southeast of the first warp. It's a monster in a chest, but with one that gets the boss theme, Colossus.

Colossus is best described as a much more vicious version of Majin Buu. It drops any pretense of magic aptitude in favor of walloping people really hard with physicals. A critical normal hit can easily break 2k while Hammer Smash can likewise do that, but without the crit requirement. Couple that with the fact it can perform multiple attacks each time it acts and you can very easily get overwhelmed if you're caught off guard like I was at the start. Luckily I didn't game over, heh.

Other than that, Colossus has access to Revenge which may as well be instant death if it connects since it's packing 17840 hp and you'll be well past the one hit kill threshold before the demon expires.

Thankfully, Colossus is weak to ice & holy. Ronan's Ki Blast can hit the holy weakness while there's a plethora of options for ice. FuSoYa has Blizzard as does a lv40 Tifa, Frost Gloves, Glacial Maces, and so on. It hits really hard, but it dies rather fast too.

Colossus has an Elixir to steal and drops the Crystal Ball relic. Boosts magic by 5 and max mp by 50%. Probably the go to relic for FuSoYa right now if the Void Stone is taken up by someone else.

Eventually, you'll reach the part of the dungeon where you can hop back on to the airship if you want to go pickup supplies or, in my case, change the team around. One timeskip later has Cloud & Tifa tagging out for Serin & Ronan, then everyone going forward to find that Zuriel left a guard in place to make sure nobody passes, Ultima Weapon.

Ultima Weapon packs a rockin' boss theme (You Will Know Our Names from Xenoblade Chronicles) as well as a viable threat. It attacks twice every time it's up to act, hits about as hard as Colossus on the physical front, and has a bunch of fire magic like Blaze, Wildfire, and Inferno. Worse yet, it has Flare which does ~1500-1700 damage. That can easily knock out a frontliner if a physical hits them beforehand.

Just to annoy you as well, it has Anti-Magic Field & Mute to rip off buffs and seal magic respectively. The former is more dangerous since you don't want to spend very long without defensive buffs up.

Steal wise, there's an Omni Elixir up for grabs.

With Serin here, you can probably guess what my strategy is. Have him spam Psionic Wave until he gets a fire, ice, or thunder weakness applied, then he goes into support mode with Cura spam.

The rest? Dogpile the demon with whatever element weakness gets applied. With FuSoYa doing ~7k per tier 3 elemental weakness hit and Oboro ~4k per elemental scroll on a weakness hit, killing Ultima Weapon does not take long (even if the jerk wallops Serin right before it dies, classy).


ZURIEL'S EARTH SHATTERING KABOOM:

Oboro decided to leave cause he supposedly works better alone. Considering Zuriel's literally right up the stairs, that might not have been the best play at first glance.

The encounter with Zuriel goes amazingly well with FuSoYa's allies getting neutralized, then himself getting faceplanted into the ground. Gestahl doesn't believe FuSoYa's claims that Kefka is really Zuriel, but he also doesn't want "Kefka" to cause an earth shattering kaboom to end the world. His life gets snuffed out, but not by a bolt of godly lightning...well, unless you consider Golbez that bolt of godly lightning, then yes, that did happen to him.

Zuriel gets up, then decides out of the blue to try persuading Golbez to join his side. It works about as well for him as it did for Sigma in Megaman X Mavericks Final trying to persuade X. Basically, Golbez takes orders from nobody and he's kicking Zuriel's ass alongside FuSoYa, simple as that.

Zuriel honestly has gotten one too many ass kickings because his damage is pretty damn pathetic. Toxic Bomb is the only move that'll do any giant chunk of damage. To make things even easier, Kefka/Zuriel is still susceptible to Stop.

On the plus side? FuSoYa & Golbez have access to Meteor. Pretty expensive at 112 mp a cost, but it punches through Zuriel's hefty defensive bulk nicely. Three or four casts will put him down once, if not very close to it. He has auto-life active so you'll likely need to put one more Meteor casting down to end the fight...or so you think.

Zuriel barely felt the pain from that and decides to put Gestahl's corpse to good use as a sacrifice to bring back a demon FuSoYa & Golbez know all too well, Zemus. Unfortunately FuSoYa & Golbez also get some help from an interesting source...Oboro. Turns out Zuriel REALLY should have killed him because now it's a three on two fight.

While Zuriel hasn't changed from the first scuffle, Zemus is a more credible threat. His magic can give Oboro a bit of a beating, but Golbez is pretty damn tanky and a Prism Cape on FuSoYa makes him able to likewise survive anything tossed at him. Zemus does have a magic barrier, but if you spam Meteor like you did in the first battle, Zuriel gets hit hard and it breaks Zemus' barrier.

The only concern from Zemus is when he flashes. On his next turn, he's going to unleash Crossfire, a powerful fire AoE that can easily do 2000 or more damage on low mdef targets.

Zemus does have a Lich Ring to steal so if the opportunity comes up, have Oboro swipe it while equipped with a Thief Knife or Bone Shank.

Once enough damage has been dealt, Zemus decides to cheap shot the good guys with Heartless Angel before expiring.

Zuriel thinks he's a cheeky bastard by moving the statues to kickstart the apocalypse, but once again he FAILED to kill Oboro and he's gonna buy time so the rest of the crew can escape. Cue the escape sequence which gives you a pretty lofty 18 minute timer to make it to the airship.

At the very least, throw a couple relics onto Golbez. I give him the Talisman which doesn't seem to do much in lowering the enemy encounter rate along with a Cosmos Ring.

Basic strategy here...cast Teleport on ANY fight you get into. The exception is if you run into any enemies called Meg. They prevent running so you'll want Golbez & FuSoYa spamming Meteor while the others should focus on the Megs. Serin in particular works nicely here with spamming Psycho Blade for additional AoE damage.

Eventually, you'll see a second treasure that seems all too easy to go directly to. Don't take the bait because the ground will give way and prevent you from getting it. Take the long way around and you can claim the Stamina Tab.

As for why you've got an 18 minute timer? Turns out SOMEONE wants a chance at redemption...and no, it's not Ultros for a fifth time. Rather, it's the crazy loony saiyan Raditz.

Raditz is much like Zemus...able to output some decent damage, especially if he goes super saiyan. He's got a couple moves in Hyper Drive & Giga Volt that can easily do 2k damage or so. That's about it though.

One thing to note is that he has a Speed Tab you can steal while he's a super saiyan.

His drop is the Tekken Claw. Boost might by 5, high attack power, and randomly evades attacks.

After the fight, the airship is just beyond. Unfortunately Golbez goes back to kick some Zuriel behind, but he's flown the coop and the earth shattering kaboom goes off.


RUINED WORLD:

World's gone to hell folks and Zuriel's LOVING it. He's going as far as to absorb energy from the statues on a regular basis.

Despite all this, there's a couple survivors on a lone island...Professor Oak & Tifa. The rest of the survivors couldn't take it anymore and offed themselves by jumping off a nearby cliff.

Tifa's been knocked out cold for a full year and Oak's been watching over her. It's come with a price...Oak getting sick. He needs a healthy dose of fish. Lots of it actually. As such, Tifa's going to be running from the house to the ocean shore collecting only the speediest fishies. Anything less likely hastens Oak's death.

After a timeskip because nobody wants to watch me collect fish for a good 5 minutes or so, Oak has been fed enough fish to become healthy again. The goal is clear...there's no way they're the only survivors left in the whole world. Tifa is going to take a raft to the nearest continent and begin her search to find all of her friends, then find a way to reach Zuriel and kick his ass once and for all.


SEARCHING FOR FRIENDS:

Tifa begins her quest to locate her friends, but it won't be easy. Battles may seem innocent enough, but remember that Tifa will be eating 2-3 attacks every turn and she'll likely need 2 or 3 Blizzards to drop non-ice weak targets. Use your best judgement and bail out with Teleport if you think it'll be too rough for her to handle.

Most of the enemies just do straight damage, but Scavengers are dangerous mainly due to Soulshatter. Keep a Holy Amulet on at all times or Teleport out instantly if any show up.

The World of Ruin has a fairly linear path of progression to start with. You're going to have to make it to Kaldor Trade City to advance the story, but there's a couple detours you can make. One of them is the town of Alvantes which is just a small walk to the northeast from where Tifa came ashore.

There's a few very interesting things in town. One NPC mentions a strong muscular man that headed for Ravaryn to the northwest. Very likely that's Ronan which would be a huge boon for Tifa.

Also, there's a couple interesting NPCs you've likely seen a few times throughout your adventure, Jake & Finn. It seems their buddy BMO has gone missing and wonder if he's still around. We'll have to see if we run across him in our journey.

Finally, there's an old man at the pub who wants to drink all of his worries away. You'll get presented with three options. Take the last option where you tell him drinking won't help one damn bit and he'll hand over a nice relic, the Mermaid Tear. Bestows divine favors which I believe is one or two auto buffs (not sure which ones precisely though), has resistance to ice, nulls fire, absorbs water, and makes the wearer weak to thunder (but a Rubber Shield can reverse that).

When you're ready to rock, exit Alvantes and look at your map. There's a dot far far away to the northwest on the large continent you start on. That's Ravaryn so get walking (and listen to the rockin' new battle theme and victory theme on the way).

When you enter Ravaryn, make sure your relics are sorted out. A Holy Amulet & Talisman will be great for what Tifa has to do next cause some intense rumbling occurs after taking a few steps into town. The source comes from a home to the west of the relic shop that's about to collapse, but luckily Ronan's here to save the day and keep the house from collapsing. Tifa is going to have to go in solo to the house though and rescue a child, then escape.

You'll have six minutes for this task. Teleport out of every battle you get into because you don't have time for dawdling around. The Holy Amulet is there since Steelpions can petrify and love opening combat with Rock Sting to inflict it.

There is treasure around and it's all worth collecting. Some gil and a bunch of good consumables, but there's two chests that have a group of four Banished inside. If Tifa has Blizzard, she can nuke them all with two multi targeted castings. You don't get anything besides the exp & gil though so only open the chests (First one by the stairs going down on the first screen and the chest to the east of the child) if you're sure you can destroy them and get out in time.

Once you find the child and escape (I had 2 1/2 minutes left on escape...and that was with opening both monster trapped chests too), the goal is clear...take Ronan, go find the rest of the crew while punching the crap out of anything in the duo's way. Works for me!

ANNEY'S PLIGHT:

Time to make the long walk to Kaldor Trade City. North of Alvantes just so happens to be Zuriel's Fortress, but you'll need some aerial form of transportation to get inside.

East of Zuriel's Fortress is the Zolom Trench. Once an underwater vista of life, it has now dried up and become nothing more than extra land you can walk on.

Eventually, you'll have a choice to go north or south once you reach the trench. To the immediate south is Kaldor Trade City, but I'm going to take a long detour north. Lots of battles, but luckily Tifa & Ronan can handle the majority of them so long as one focuses on pure offense while the other supports with heals or the occasional spell/skill.

Eventually, the detour leads to two things...a hidden Chocobo Ranch in a huge forest, meaning a much less battle ridden journey back towards Kaldor Trade City, and a ruined town to the east of that ranch, Ruta Village.

Ruta Village has basically gotten all but completely wiped off the map. There's only a few buildings left and there appears to be snow everywhere. Hell, there's several tombstones to the south. Some have items, but one apparently claims Link got destroyed. Maybe, but he's probably in the light world and finding a way to get back to this world.

Anyways, there's a couple guard hounds to greet the duo at the entrance with a kid coming out of a house. If you go into that house (the one with the mailman from long ago), there's a cave down in the basement where the survivors are. As it turns out, the majority of the survivors are kids with one important exception...Aurora's alive and well.

For our magic slinging sorceress, there's a big problem....with the children's parents killed when Zuriel decided to laser the hell out of Ruta Village, she feels that she needs to stay here and protect the kids while trying to sort her newfound feelings out. Soulless when we first met her, but now she might be feeling what one could very well describe as "love" like a mother protecting her kin.

When you're done chatting with Aurora, exit the cave. Right after that, a rumbling occurs...and it's not Zuriel's giant laser of doom again. It is one of the ancient demons released when the world got earth shattering kaboom'd, Proto Babil. Aurora rushes out to confront it, but only succeeds in getting another point in the "getting one's own ass kicked in a cutscene or battle" column.

Thankfully, Tifa & Ronan have been slow to get out of town and hear the commotion and rush to her aid. Proto Babil isn't too vicious, but be aware that Shrapnel Blades can hit close to 2000 damage if it gets focused on a single target.

After the hulking beast takes enough damage, it runs and Aurora finds herself resting up in bed. Clearly these feelings she's never really experienced before are interfering with her fighting potential and she needs some time to sort them all out. A shame, but at the very least we know that she's alive (assuming Proto Babil doesn't return while we're away).

So, why bother coming up to Ruta Village for what basically amounts to a few random items and finding an ally that needs to do some soul searching? One of the kids hands over a magicite that Proto Babil dropped, Fenrir. Teaches a spell not available to anyone before, Vortex. That's fine and all, but summoning the esper in battle grants everyone the image status. This buff makes all normal attacks and most special physical attacks fail to connect until the buff breaks (which can occur after said above mentioned attacks are used).

The downside? Eiko will never be able to equip this esper. A shame, but she'd be SO busted if she could.


SNAKES & THE RADICAL DREAMERS:

Time to look around Kaldor Trade City.

Not much to see at first glance except for a new weapon available for purchase, the Arcane Sword. Expensive, but as I learned very quickly at the next town, that's because the prices are higher than normal. Not a bad pickup in any case because it gives a huge seven point boost to magic.

At the pub, there's some interesting fellows. Most are from the so called Radical Dreamers gang, but one particular guy in the northwest seems very familiar if you remember Oboro's flashbacks. Could just be a random NPC, but who knows. Might have to swing back here after finding Oboro.

Anyways, talking to all the Radical Dreamers reveals that their leader wants to get into Durandal Castle and reclaim their treasure from the storage room there. They leave the pub once all of them have said their piece. Rather than follow them to the docks, head back into town to find a curious new individual, Snakes. Totally Serin, but he's denying it...and probably for good reason. 

Follow Serin to the docks and you can get on the boat that technically should bring you to Seascape Town. It doesn't, placing you on a continent where you'll have to do some walking around the mountains. A few new enemies around, some that can be surprisingly dangerous if you're not paying attention, but otherwise can be handled with timely healing and letting Tifa or Ronan, whomever is handling all the damage dealing, wreck house.

Once you reach Seascape Town, there's an interesting NPC at the entrance who offers his services to you. His name is Zeke and he's got the Steal command available and doesn't do half bad damage with his physicals honestly. He's another person to take hits which helps out immensely.

Your only main task in Seascape Town is to locate Snakes. He's in the inn which you can access via the relic shop or the pub. Talk to him and he'll head out along with his gang.

Make sure to check everywhere around town. Spots that had an item in the World of Balance may now have another item here. You'll also want to check out the southwestern most house. Besides a guy claiming he's still error, there's a hidden staircase behind him. At the end of it is a familiar fellow, BMO. Jake & Finn in Alvantes will be happy to have him back...and you can do it now if you really want since you can take a ship back outside Kaldor Trade City. I'm gonna hold on to this now though since I'll have a much more flexible form of transportation soon enough.

When you're ready to leave, grab a chocobo to find this particular portion of the world goes into the twilight zone. Just north of where the Kaldor Trade City boat deposited you is a familiar cave entrance.


BIG POE:

Time to see what our foray into the Den of Evil (The cave that linked the giant desert region where Durandal Castle was to Seascape Town) brings as we keep up with Snakes & his gang.

Two of the enemies are the same as that one small cave near the Beast Plains that had the Cael Hammer chest. Those are the EvilWeapon & Mochi. The former hits hard and can confuse a target, but should die before it has a chance to launch several powerful tier 2 elemental spells back to back. The latter tends to come in groups of four and are more annoying than threatening.

Then, you have the new enemies not seen from that little cave. Gitrogs are frail, not much else, but one enemy shows up alone and gets the FFMQ battle theme whenever you run into one. That enemy is another entry into the long line of dragons being jerks, the Elder Dragon.

Elder Dragons have powerful physicals and even more powerful thunder attacks. Nova can easily kill anyone not packing thunder resistance or a shell buff, Giga Volt hurts slightly less, Twin Plasma likely hurts like hell (but it only used it once in this time), and Flash Rain can easily lop off 1000 or more health from everyone. Rubber Shields will greatly help out Tifa & Ronan survive while Zeke had best pray a Nova, Giga Volt, or Twin Plasma isn't sent his way. The only attack not likely to kill anyone is 1000 Needles for obvious reasons (Does a flat 1k damage to its target).

Loot wise, Elder Dragons have a common Remedy steal, a rare Dragon Rod steal, and may rarely drop Golden Apples. Decent exp & gil too so it may not be a bad grinding zone when you get the necessary gear to easily soak their attacks.

As for the cave itself, the chests have new loot in them much like how certain barrels/bushes/whatnot in towns had new items to uncover. You'll walk away with 20k gil, a X-Potion, and a Cosmos Ring.

As you catch up to Snakes & the gang, they go into a new part of the cave via turtle hopping. Follow suit and you'll find a bunch of opened chests in the first room, then a fork in the second room where you can keep on heading west or detour north. If you head north, you'll find resident wolfman thief Lone Wolf. Apparently he's looking for something, then runs off, dropping a sparkly in the process. Lucky for us we can pick that up...after dealing with a ghost that also wants the sparkly, the Big Poe.

Back in my previous playthrough, I didn't go after the Big Poe until I got more characters into my team. Here though, I have Zeke. That one extra person makes a world of a difference in letting me win the fight now instead of later.

In any case...the Big Poe has the hilariously named Fartillery which inflicts sleep. It also has strong physical strikes it likes to chain combo with up to four times in a row, can cast Death to instantly slay a target, or can cast Ninth Dimension for ~2k damage to a target.

My strategy here is more or less what I've been doing for random battles to this point...let Ronan handle all the damage dealing and keep Tifa on standby to drop a Cura or Raise if it's needed (and for Zeke, those Raise castings were very much needed). Zeke can attempt to steal a Necronomicon, but otherwise try to have him defend and only pop an item when it's desperately needed.

If you want to use specific elements, stay away from poison as it can absorb it. Fire & holy are its weaknesses.

After the battle, you get a nice Prism Cape drop and can pick up the treasure chest key that Lone Wolf dropped.


DURANDAL CASTLE RISES AGAIN:

Tifa & the gang make it out of the cave and into a very welcome place...Durandal Castle. Sounds like Serin might have gotten help from the Radical Dreamers in order to find his precious castle. Makes sense considering how upside down the world's become.

Since the castle's submerged, you can only head down to Basement 2. Trying to talk to the guy that usually shuttles you to a new desert zone reveals he KINDA needs air. Sounds like the castle's been submerged for quite some time. Must be a reason why it hasn't done so at all. That reason lies down the staircase to the east leading to a new portion of the castle. Monster ridden, but new loot and all that.

Of the new loot in this area, the most significant is the Kaiser Crown. Decent defenses and gives a 1 point boost to might/speed/stamina/magic.

When you're all done looting, head back to the room with three exits and four chests. The middle door goes straight north to the engine room. You'll want Tifa & Ronan to equip a Holy Amulet and maybe Speed Boots or the Eaglehorn before entering said engine room.

Inside, there appears to be zombie-like tentacles messing with the engines that let Durandal Castle submerge & move around. Snakes tells the gang to go grab the treasure while he deals with the undead dirtbags. Once they leave, he immediately drops his whole Snakes persona and goes back to regular 'ol Serin and requests the trio's help in the undead cleansing. Works for me!

The fight is against Corpser, two Zombie Heads, and two Zombie Arms. Despite the volume of enemies, it's not too bad. The damage is respectable, but nothing that Tifa or Ronan should have an issue healing up. They can use moves that, predictably, inflict zombify. With Tifa & Ronan protected, you only need to run damage control if the others get zombified. For damage, AoE attacks work best so use moves like Ronan's Rising Phoenix or Wolf Wind Attack alongside Serin's Psycho Blade. Shouldn't take long to drop all of them.

After the battle, Serin tells the story of why he kept up the Snakes ruse for so long. He heard the castle was in trouble, but had no idea where to look, hence the Radical Dreamers and their "secret cave". Simple enough really.

With Serin back and the zombie crisis dealt with, Durandal Castle can move again. Before doing that, there's a couple things to do.

First, the so called storage room where the Radical Dreamers went (and exited from only to assume their leader became zombie food). While the treasure chests have been looted, nobody thought to check the suit of armor. There's a Wraith Blade on it. If you wanted to pull off some odd Soul Reaver kind of cosplay, here ya go because the Wraith Blade deals mp damage and randomly casts Death.

The other thing to do is after Durandal Castle has surfaced. Remember that locked chest in Serin's bedroom? I believe that key from the post-Big Poe fight can unlock it. Inside is a...questionable magazine, but it'll serve a purpose later. There's also a Psionic Wave if you missed the one back in the Underworld.

When you're ready to depart, have the guy responsible for submerging/surfacing the castle take you to the continent in the far south. From there, it's a long walk northeast upon exiting the castle and you'll find the next town, Quartz Village.


INTO THE TOMB:

The team enters Quartz Village where someone very important is waiting. If Zeke is in your party, he leaves...and not a moment too soon because in the pub is our favorite pirate dragoon Otis. He's in a bit of a depression, but Tifa is a hell of a mediator and gets him to snap out of it (and really, if she's calling you a godsdamn captain, you know she has the utmost faith in you).

Otis's first sign of awesomeness? He knows where a new fangled airship is. The team will need to travel to Evonne's grave, but there's a couple things to check out in town first, both at Jasper's abode in the northeast.

First, there's a valuable Golden Apple in one of the barrels outside. Secondly, Jasper mentions that Cloud's searching the world for a treasure that restores life. He just can't give up on Aerith, can he? At the very least we know he's alive.

When you're ready to head to Evonne's grave, head directly south from Quartz Village and you'll run into it. Before diving in too deep, make sure at least one or two people are given Holy Amulets.

The overall enemy theme here is lots of zombie inflicting jerks....at least that's what you'd expect to see in this segment. In reality, I just bulldoze through a Phantom as I go into a room in the southeast from the main hallway. After switching my equipment around so three of my four people have pig immunity, I open a chest to find a monster inside...a boss monster that is.

This boss monster is Fireweaver's cousin from the beginning of the game, Broodfiend. Broodfiend tends to lean towards some mass poison inflicting with the likes of Nether Shot. Doesn't seem like much, but that poison damage can really add up if you ignore it for an extended amount of time.

Besides that, there's not much else to worry about. Psychokinesis is its physical skill and it can sting quite a bit for frontliners, but it shouldn't be too hard to heal that up. There's also Swine Song which is why I have White Capes on most of my team. Ronan's the only vulnerable one there and I can easily reverse that.

All in all, not a really hard fight, but it is very long. You see, only the head can be targeted at first. After depleting the head's hp, it retreats into the carapace and said carapace will spaz out. Namely, it'll start performing multiple attacks per turn. Dish out as much damage to the carapace until the head shows up and repeat the process.

For dealing with the long fight, you get a very nice armor in the Chaos Plate.


RETURNING TO THE SKIES:

Time to actually explore the catacombs and get all the sweet loot inside.

First up, we've got the armor picked up at the end of the last segment, the Chaos Plate. Has a speed penalty, but makes up for it tenfold with very good defenses, 10 point boosts to evade & magic evade, absorbs holy, and nullifies wind.

The dungeon is pretty simplistic overall. Just involves some minor switch hitting in order to raise some water levels enough to hitch a ride on some turtles.

There is one minor detour you can make....after taking a ride on the first turtle, there's a room with four tombstones to your south. Each tombstone has a word etched on it, but spelled backwards. Once you've checked all four, hop back on the first turtle, then exit the room and check out the northwestern door. Another tombstone inside, but this one you can do your own message etching. Arrange the four backwards spelled words to spell out the saying that true love never dies (and it doesn't!).

With that settled, exit the room, head south through the door and down the stairs. There's a hidden passage that's now open to let you reach a curious relic, the Birdo Egg. Very useful since it doubles exp gained for the wearer.

When you hit the save point room, make sure to grab the two chests as both have nice equipment inside (Dragon Helm and the Eiko only Fairy Robe). Proceed north into the next room and, when you hit the very decorated tombstone, make sure everyone is floating. Upon examining it, there's a rumbling and the next boss comes waddling in, Epitaph.

The reason for everyone floating gets made apparent right away with Epitaph opening the fight by using Magnitude Eight. It also has Quake available which float helps you avoid.

Besides that, it mostly sticks to single target strikes like its powerful physical skill Earth Crusher or magical variant Holy. Its normal strikes are no slouch either so you'll want to cast Protect on any frontliners.

Other than that? Rather easy fight. Serin got a water weakness onto the boss which meant Otis could swap to a pair of Ocean Spears and completely wreck the boss alongside Ronan.

The giant hulking tablet ends up handing over an Exodus Token relic (blocks instant death magic), then a door opens behind the tombstone. Head through the door when you're ready.

What follows is a bunch of cutscenes showing Otis and his relationship to fellow sky pirate Evonne. When the wreckage of her ship was found in a distant land, Otis restored it and somehow managed to store it under the ocean. This ship, the Starsail Eclipse, rises once more to help the team get another shot at Zuriel to kick his rear once and for all.

Before we charge headlong to Zuriel's hideout though, it'd be a very good idea to locate all the missing party members. Aurora's hopefully had enough time to process her emotions so it'd be best to return there as quickly as possible.


GOLBEZ GONNA GIVE IT TO YA!:

Everyone's all geared up and with nearly the same relic loadout shared between them. Serin gets the Eaglehorn since he's going to have a very important task to perform in this segment and everyone sans Otis has fire resistant gear on (Serin's Elite Armor and Ashen Cowls on Ronan & Tifa).

My destination is the landmass in the northeastern part of the world. The town of Lunaris is here with updated wares in all the shops minus the item store. I grab a few extra Mermaid Rods from the weapon shop just to be safe.

If you explore town, you're going to notice a curious fellow in the northwest barring your way to accessing the elder's house...at first glance. In reality, this fellow is actually the only one standing between us and gaining access to that portal the chain chomp guarded in the World of Balance.

This beast? He's known as Guardian and he requires your party to beat him in combat if you're to access the Dimensional Gateway. Beat him we shall!

Guardian is a prime example of how the right equipment choices can turn a fight from being damn near impossible to a very winnable one. Those Reflect Rings are the only reason I don't have a full team of corpses from its initial salvo of tier 2 elemental spells. Its next set of turns focuses more on ailments like Slowga, Frenzy, and so on. Reflect Rings nullify all of those attempts.

What does get through? Physical strikes and Guardian's physical skill, Redemption. The latter can easily do 3000 or so damage to a backrow target without buffs active. With buffs though, it's quite survivable, though you may have to burn a X-Potion or Elixir to heal the target.

So, how to do damage? Guardian nullifies a ton of elements, but one he doesn't nullify is earth which he's weak to. As such, Ronan & Tifa get to do some decent damage at the start.

However, Serin is the main reason I wanted him to use the Eaglehorn. His task is going to be spamming Psionic Wave to force a weakness. It may take a while, but he ideally wants to land a weakness in fire, ice, lightning, or water. I have tons of rods in all four of those elements. Each one broken can easily do 6-7k+ damage. Guardian doesn't survive long under that kind of pressure.

Once Guardian acknowledges your superior combat capabilities, he disappears and you can advance to the Dimensional Gateway without any distractions.

This Dimensional Gateway, by going straight south when you enter it, will lead to the Esper World, created with the assistance of the Lunarians who helped built a new gateway to reimagine their past world into reality. But first, be sure to go south of the gateway to get into the room the locked door... Serin's final Aether, Nightsever, is in there.

Scatted around the Esper World are several items, some of which are very nice like the elemental essence shields, a new esper (Soul Calibur), and some assorted tabs. There's also a forest in the southwestern part of the area with a hidden maze in it. Find your way through it and you'll find Santa's secret shop with a bunch of expensive, but very very good weapons & armor. One such armor I pickup is this Majin Vest, an armor Tifa & Ronan will make very good use of due to good defenses and a built in Cosmos Ring effect.

However, the real reason I came here is next to the cave with a bed to rest in and a save point. To the north of it is another cave entrance with an exit at its end. Blocking that exit is none other than our favorite armored titan clad in darkness, Golbez. Unlike his previous appearances, you can now name him and he will join the party for good.


MINOR QUEST CLEANUP:

Golbez is in my team so I can start clearing out whatever I want really. May as well let him show off a bit in the colosseum to kick things off.

First thing's first...Stamina Tabs can be bet for Might Tabs, Speed for Magic, and vice versa for both. Only bet all my Stamina Tabs so Golbez has tons of might and good speed & magic, perfect for a black magic fighter.

Next...betting a Mjollnir to fight a Harbinger. Golbez's massive defensive bulk using a Daedric Shield, Dragon Helm, and Chaos Plate means that the Harbinger has no damn chance of killing Golbez before dying itself. Just make sure to equip a Reflect Ring to bounce back the Harbinger's Scorch, Inferno, and Flare spells. Reward here is a nice weapon, the Dream Sphere. Good attack power and can randomly cast Sleep. Ranged weapon too.

Next, betting a Fairy Robe. The opponent is a Decepticon who spams Null-Ray (inflicts stop) like its going out of style. Not particularly bulky, but extremely annoying cause of the stop spam. Persevere though and the reward is well worth the hassle, the Shaman Dress. Increases mp by 25% magic by 4, speed by 2, might & stamina by 1, high defenses, resists water/earth/holy, and nullifies fire/ice/thunder.

One of Avalon's Masamunes gets bet next with the opponent being a Xenomorph. Can hit hard, especially with Meteor, but the real danger is Cinderizer. If that hits, it's instant death. At the least the reward for getting past this is good, the Uchigatana. High power and can randomly cleave an enemy in half.

Finally for betting, there's the Hyper-Fist which pits Golbez against an Auroch. Spams Headbutt & Meteor for some pretty brutal damage, but it's not enough to out damage Golbez wielding a Blooddrinker. The reward is a Shatterhand, a fist weapon that can randomly cast Stop.

That's all for arena betting now so let's take care of a couple minor tasks around the world. Starting out, there's an island in the southeast with a singular hut. This is the Orphanage from Ronan's scenario and, as luck would have it, Arc's there. He seems reluctant to want to rejoin the team because he feels he's needed for the kids here. The nun, Teresa, says he should go with the team once more, saying he has a chance to brighten the future for all the children. He does just that and boy is he welcomed because he can equip Soul Calibur and start learning Curaga.

Next, to the island Tifa woke up on. With Oak alive, you can talk to him and have him relocate to the airship.

Right after that, I fly to Alvantes to the north. Since we picked up BMO in Seascape Town, we can return him to Jake & Finn to get the Midgar Zolom esper in return.

Finally to close out the segment, the team returns to where the carrier pigeon flew after acquiring the new airship, the town of Taured on the western strip of land on the world map.

Taured has an interesting armor up for sale among other things, the Misty Coat. Absorbs wind I believe which is really nice. I'll need to get some of these since a couple of bosses will really benefit from absorbing or nullifying wind in the future.

Weapon shop has Angrists (high evade knife), Dual Breakers (sword that randomly casts Energy Blade), and all of the throwable scrolls.

The main reason to come to Taured though is the house on the northeastern end of town. Lily is in the house and she's been getting letters from her boyfriend in Ruta Village. Yeah, the Ruta Village that's been leveled more or less. That means someone has to be sending letters in the injured soldier's name...and as it turns out by examining the letter on the desk, it seems to be Avalon. Luckily, Lily provides a way to track him down by asking you to attach a reply to the carrier pigeon outside her house. Do so and the bird flies to Rogue City, your next destination.


MT. ETLICH:

Just a little to the southeast of Taured is Rogue City. The carrier pigeon is waiting inside the area and flies to the north. We'll follow it shortly, but first there's a curious individual walking around outside the building that the Master Tonberry sat next to. He's selling some Rust-Aid for 3k gil, an amount you can easily farm up on the enemies around the area if needed. Take the Rust-Aid to the top of the building with the pub sign and you can unlock a door up there leading into a new dungeon, Mt. Etlich.

The new enemies in Mt. Etlich can very definitely give you a run for your money in the right formations, namely when dual Ultima Demons show up. They have strong tier 3 elemental nukes, love to chain cast Inferno & Nova back to back, maybe even toss in Blizzard there, and can toss Rune Blades at a character for around 3500 damage. Cute!

Long story short...keep your hp levels topped off before each fight since nothing should be taken lightly, even if they can get blown up very quickly.

The dungeon's pretty linear overall, but the treasure's very good. There's one each of the three elemental essence shields (red, blue, gold) along with three new pieces of equipment and all of them are very nice pickups. Those three are as follows:

Vitality Cap - Helmet that provides a 25% boost to max hp

Star Shield - Shield with high defenses and high magic evasion

Dragon Horn - Relic for Otis that changes his Jump command to X-Jump, letting him perform 2-3 consecutive attacks

Not much else to mention until the save point. There's a chest that's out of reach to the northeast of it as well as a switch. Stepping on the switch releases an angry dragon that flies around which happens to be one of the eight dragons released when the world was torn apart.

A few rooms after the save point, you'll find a Golden Apple in a chest, then find Avalon on the nearby cliff. As it turns out, he heard about Lily passing through Taured and felt really bad, hence the reason he'd been sending letters in the fallen soldier's name. He had been planning to send a letter telling her the truth very soon too.

Regardless, Avalon's back on our team and getting some use for the next area I want to visit. I need to grind out 100k gil though which isn't hard, given the gil payouts from Mt. Etlich.


GURU'S MANSION:

Got my 100k gil farmed up so I take flight and head to the southwestern continent. Where I stop first is the town of Fraust. There's some important work to do in there, but I want to pickup a couple more easy to get characters first.

However, I do want to visit the green tower to the southeast of Fraust. This is the Tyrano Tower and there's two important NPCs at the base of the tower to interact with. First one's in the northeast and sells a bunch of elemental rods + Reaper's Soul Harvest scythe.

The other NPC is the red robed one in the northwest. He's selling some secret information for a hefty 100k gil price. Pay it and he will give you a hint...the Phoenix Cave is hidden in the head of the humanoid looking mountains. This is referring to the mountain formation near the Orphanage with a tiny plain looking mountain which could be interpreted as a head of sorts. If Cloud's looking for something to help Aerith, it'd be a good bet he's there.

For now though, I exit the tower and head back to the continent I just left. Besides Rogue City & Taured, there's the Opera House and one other town, Sunfall City. The latter is the focus of this segment for one very important reason.

At first, nothing's really changed about Sunfall City besides the shops and what's being sold at the holy auction. There's a pretty big change though if you head into the mansion in the north. Seems someone turned off the lights inside, but you can turn them back on.

Of all the paintings, one is interesting...that Cactuar in the southwest. Examining it causes it to come alive and attack the party. Not really dangerous, but has massive physical defense.

The door that opens after the Cactuar's fall leads to the lower levels of the mansion which someone houses a bunch of monsters. Much like Mt. Etlich, you don't want to run into fights at anything less than full health.

The treasure starts out simple enough with an always useful Elite Armor and a hidden Soma Drop, then you'll reach a room with four floating chests. Each one forces a fight for the team to cleanup. In total, you'll get 10k gil, an Atomic Ball, Speed Tab, and Might Tab. You can then proceed from there by checking out the middle portait who comes alive an attack you.

This hulking titan of plate armor hails from Dark Souls and his name is Havel. As expected, his physical strength is pretty damn high, especially if he uses his physical special Stonebreaker. He's also got Shrapnel Blades which can potentially one hit kill some low mdef targets.

Worst of all, he's got Death Sentence and counters everything with it. He can even target people that didn't trigger the counterattack with it which is great. 

Despite all this, not a particularly nasty fight. Havel has a Cosmos Ring to steal and drops a Wraith Blade upon his defeat.

Like the Cactuar, defeating the monster in the painting causes a door to appear behind it. Take it to reach the save point. After some equipment shuffling on my end, the team runs into the next room to find Guru...or Super Kami Guru, whichever you want to go with.

Anyways, Guru's got a problem...his prized painting of the esteemed Mario has been possessed by an evil spirit, that of Mr. "D'oh I missed!" Wario. The exorcist he hired to help oust the spirits? Eiko. She needs a little help though.

Alongside Evil Mario is Wario. The former focuses on using fire based attacks while the latter uses mainly earth based attacks. Both utilize physical attacks as well as jump at times, Evil Mario being the quicker one and having a high chance to cast Dispel beforehand, Wario being slower but stronger and having a lesser chance to cast Magnitude Eight after landing.

Not much needs to be said here for strategy, pick one of the two to take down and go for him first. I usually go after Evil Mario since he's more prone to launching AoE attacks. Wario's not too much of an issue to deal with afterwards, just be prepared for a possible Cursed Breath attack once he's under a certain amount of HP, as well as the ever dangerous Death spell.

Didn't get Evil Mario's steal, but it's only a Shatterhand. Wario's First Strike though is a nice steal.

After the battle...Guru tells you to take the cursed gem that brought his misfortune, the esper Hades. Eiko also returns to the party.


AURORA'S RETURN:

Now with my badass black magic fighter in the party, I can start checking out areas either for characters to get back in my party or loot to grab. May as well start everything off with wrapping up Aurora's plotline.

Back at Ruta Village, head into the southwestern house. Provided you've done the first visit here, there should be a dog that heads behind the bookcases. Follow it and you'll find Aurora & Roxanne. After a brief conversation, our buddy Proto Babil comes knocking on Ruta Village's doorsteps once more. Head outside and you'll engage the titan in battle once more. Nothing seems different besides it using Scatter Missiles which is pretty nasty actually and requires a Cura or two to get back to safe hp totals.

After dealing enough damage, it glows, then uses Hell Wind twice to knock out two people from your party and back to the airship. Clearly the jerk did not want any shenanigans because he blew away my Golbez & Otis. Luckily I brought four people I was confident in dealing damage so Eiko & Serin get to see the jerk power up.

As if on cue, Terry & Aurora come out. Aurora's clearly not going to let this jerk destroy hope around here so she instantly transforms as the real fight begins.

Proto Babil EX actually absorbs lightning now (it didn't before powering up), but it retains its weaknesses to earth & water. It also retains all of its attacks from the first half of the fight which includes the deadly Scatter Missiles. Considering it loves to follow up with a physical strike, it could easily spell death if the individual takes enough missiles to go down to 200-300 hp.

New attacks from Proto Babil EX include lots of thunder based moves like Wave Storm & Giga Volt and earth based moves like Magnitude Eight (not super damaging) & Quake (very damaging. Can easily do 1500 or more damage without earth resistance). It also has some strong single target nukes in Delta Attack and its special attack Object 199.

The most surprising attack goes to Flare Star. Not because we haven't seen the attack, but because it does something no other boss has actually done...focus an attack that's typically only ever aimed at the entire party. Suffice it to say anyone without fire resistance is going to die instantly, but luckily it doesn't seem too keen on spamming this.

Strategy here would be to get Aurora into the back row and toss a Rubber Shield onto her to block all the lightning attacks she'll no doubt be taking. Also, it's a good idea to get everyone floating if there's a chance during your damage dealing. The less you have to worry about Quake's damage, the better.

As for Terry, he's a temporary party member for just this battle, but he can handle himself just fine on the frontlines due to good defenses and lightning immunity. Delta Attack & Object 199 might do a fair bit of damage to him, but he has more than enough hp to take at least one, maybe two hits from those moves.

Steal wise, Proto Babil EX has a valuable Void Stone to grab. It'll drop the Daedric Shield upon its death.

After the battle, Aurora comes to grips with her feelings, realizing her devotion to taking care of the children and protecting them is what's called "love". Love doesn't always have to mean a relationship with a significant other. It can be what Aurora's doing...and to keep that promise close, she's joining back up with the party to ensure the kids have a future to look forward to. Great cause more sources of being able to cast Curaga in the future will be extremely vital.


UNDERGROUND CAVERNS:

With Aurora back in action finally, the next task I want to deal with is returning to Fraust. There's lots of stuff to check out there, but I'm going to need to do one thing first and that lies on the island north of Quartz Village. There's a small patch of desert which, if you wandered around there in the World of Balance, had a rare Cute UFO encounter. Here though, that Cute UFO has been replaced by a Sarlacc.

Sarlaccs seem threatening with their repeated Quake spam and their special move Flatten doing a ton of damage, but the reason I'm here is their third move, Inhale. This sucks a character into the Sarlacc's body. If all four of your characters get sucked in, you actually get whisked to a new cavern to explore.

The new enemies in this cave are not to be taken lightly. They have a fair chunk of hp and can hit really hard. Fire, water, and thunder resistance would be a great asset for as many of your characters to have, especially if you run into Shinobis. Good magic casters would be a great idea for them since Shinobis love countering everything with Jitsu of Fushin to makes themselves invisible.

Thankfully, this cavern isn't too big. The first major room you'll see has several bridges with some mole guards. If any of them ram into you, you'll be knocked to the level below. The treasure on the bridges are good with a Quick Ring, Shatterhand, and a new Mark V Armor with good defensive stats, stat boosts, and auto regen.

As for getting knocked down...you'll actually want that to happen at least once since there's a few things you can get that you'd otherwise be unable to grab. Those things are a Tank Shield, Varia Suit (Bit lacking on the magic defense side, but grants resistance to ice along with nullfying poison & fire), and Otis's parrot. If you bring him in your party, he'll rejoin his captain on the ship.

After getting through the bridge room, it's all linear to the end. Smooth sailing though is another story...and it's not because of the rampant appearance of Warts from Super Mario 2 on the nes. Your vision gets extremely hampered which makes the room after the small connecting one all the more dangerous. That room has a ceiling that rises, then comes crashing down. Say hello to a game over if you're under one of those falling ceilings.

The good news? The dungeon hasn't changed up in terms of its design from vanilla. Even with the massively reduced vision, if you played vanilla enough, then you should know that the first two chests have safespots on their immediate south. I don't believe the third does, but you can always duck south to get out of the falling ceiling zone, then duck back in to claim the loot after it begins to rise again.

Once you're past that room, it's smooth sailing with one final chest that holds the Moon Pearl. This amazing relic increases Otis's Jump skill damage by 50%. Now we can make our way into the final room and the true prize...Mog. He rejoins the team, but not before mentioning that there's a Heartless that loves mimicking in Fraust's mines. This unique entity will only respond to Mog...and boy is it going to be awesome when he does, believe me. That means I have everything I need to get what I want from Fraust.


GARUDA & THE HOLY LANCE:

I did say I was going to check out Fraust, but I wanted to get one more problem out of the way and it awaits in the skies. While flying around, you may have a rude run-in with a beast known as Garuda.

Garuda can be extremely dangerous. Omega Claw basically murderers frontliners without high defenses & protect while Giga Volt & Aero along with tier 3 elemental spells will wreck anyone not packing good magical resistances.

Despite all this, it's very possible to kill Garuda right after you get the airship. If you pickup four Misty Coats from Taured, that'll keep you safe from Aero. Rubber Shields will nullify Giga Volt and Reflect Rings will take care of the rest. It does mean you'll have to burn a bunch of Recharges to deal with anyone taken out by its physicals, but it just goes to show how a proper gear setup can let you tussle with a boss far more dangerous and skilled than you.

Garuda's other interesting gimmick is to run away after a set amount of time has passed. If you run into it again though, it'll keep whatever damage you dealt to it from the previous battle. With that, you can whittle down the beast over several battles, healing & saving after each fight you make it out of alive.

The boss only drops one thing, but it's an extremely important key item, the Time Egg. If you were to bring this back to the new Esper World, there's an NPC that'll let you start the game from the very beginning, but with your inventory intact. A new game plus if you will. Other than that, there's one more important feature of the egg we'll be seeing later on.

Finally, I make one detour to the colosseum to bet one of the Uchigatanas I got earlier on. The enemy in question is a Weirdling who's not super nasty, but you'll need to pack an Exodus Token or some other instant death repelling item if your character's level is a multiple of 5. You'll also want as much defense as you can muster since Power Word is a ludicrously strong special move to be hit by.

Prevail against the skeletal serpent and you'll get a Holy Lance. Small boost to magic, but tons of attack power, holy elemental, and randomly casts Holy. This is going to be the perfect weapon for Otis to utilize, especially if he can get Serin to back him up by applying a holy weakness to the enemy he's targeting.


RETURN TO FRAUST:

Time to see what's become of Fraust since the earth shattering kaboom.

Upon entering, the music implies the town's fine. Move north and that theory gets tossed out the windows as a singular Bleeder attacks. Fraust has basically become a ghost town for the undead to prowl in.

Enemy wise, Red Beasts still being very capable of dishing out high damage aside, most enemies aren't supremely threatening. Makes for a great place to visit and gain exp & gil if you need a boost.

Despite the town being empty at first glance, there are some survivors, namely those in the developer's house. Of interest is Lord Envoy, who if your party is level 60 or above will say you might be up to a real fight of sorts. The Tonberry that was previous guarding a door will now move, allowing you to access a dark room with a Master Star & Necronomicon in the cabinet and a Quicksilver in the northeastern pot. The chest in the room has a boss fight in it, one that's allegedly immune to all damage, but one spell will break that barrier. Not that it matters at present since I want to get all my characters back before even thinking about attempting the fight.

My entry into town isn't through the front gates, but rather the secret passage once more. That's done because there's a snowman you can interact with once you get out on the cliffs. With the Incinerate! key item, you can melt the snowman and free the soldier inside. He rewards you with a key item, the Arkenstone. This greatly boosts your vision range in areas where it gets reduced like the caverns where Mog was.

The rest of the old mines is pretty uneventful until you head back to the old moogle den. There's some...peculiar folks who've taken over the den, but the chest in the area has repopulated and contains a nice weapon in the Cross Radius. Good attack power and randomly cleaves an enemy.

Once you've cleaned out the mines, there's one last place to go and that's back up to the snowy cliffs where everyone defended the esper. On the save point screen, take note of the dragon that's buzzing around everywhere. It's one of the eight optional dragons of the game and, while I could definitely take it down now, I want to get all my characters back first.

At the esper, make sure you have at least one or two good sources of damage dealing available. When you interact with our old buddy Vaalsparda, it decides to attack the party.

Vaalsparda's mostly an elemental spell using boss. By this time you should have plenty of armor options available that resist fire, ice, thunder, and/or a combination of them. That leaves only a few dangerous moves to keep an eye out for, Megazerk and Lullaby, which can more or less incapacitate the party if the proper relics are not equipped. If a party member does become berserked, then Vaalsparda will cast vanish on itself. And should a party member fall asleep, you ask? Well, Vaal will counter with its special attack, Frostbolt, which will Freeze the character solid. This boss is one smart cookie! If a character has Wall status, not only will it use Reflect on itself as well, but has a chance every now and then to use Anti-Reflect, which will remove Wall and give bad statuses to said character. Vaalsparda will also occasionally counter any character skill with Confuse, and after receiving some punishment can use Curara or Curaga to regain some HP.

Vaalsparda is capable of using a few higher-tier spells, however these will only trigger if you use either fire, ice, or thunder-based spells/skills against him. While he is weak to fire, the safest bet is to just launch any magic attacks that don't align with those elements and use defense-ignoring physical attacks (Lightsaber mainly). Vaalsparda should calm down without too much hassle.

The reward for the fight? Vaalsparda as a new esper and it's a solid one with Inferno, Nova, and Blizzard available. More importantly is the portion of the cliff where Vaalsparda stood disappearing, allowing you to access a new area that you need Mog for.


HEARTLESS CHRONICLES:

Eiko's stepped out and Mog's come in to take her place for the next cave adventure...and it's a reduced vision zone. If you have the Arkenstone from helping the soldier trapped in a snowman, you'll see its effects in action here.

Enemy wise, you need to be extremely careful of the Headcrabs since they love opening with Orb of Travel which can be extremely deadly by this point in the game. Considering they appear in groups of at least 3-4, it may not be a bad idea to Teleport out if you don't have enough AoE damage to burn them down quick.

Only a few treasure chests to grab here, but two of them have useful things (Omni Elixir & Misty Coat) while the third is monster trapped, pitting you against a trio of Tonberries. They can hit extremely hard and love countering with Death & Holy. Pick one person to do all the damage, ideally Golbez, and give them the Exodus Token (to block instant death) & Chaos Plate (to absorb holy, but anything that nullifies holy works too).

The Tonberries have the same steal & drop, Shaman Dresses. If you can get any here, great. Not a big deal if you can't though.

Eventually, you'll reach the last room that has a save point. After healing & saving, you can try to take the northern exit, but a Heartless stops you before that can happen and a fight with it begins.

Heartless...honestly doesn't do too much. It can hit fairly hard with its physical attack or special move Shadow Strike, but didn't seem to throw out any AoE damage. To be fair though, it is weak to holy and my Otis has a Holy Lance, Vambrace, and Dragon Horn equipped. Suffice it to say 9999 x2 or x3 damage adds up really fast, heh.

After the fight, you can talk to this special little creature. If Mog's in the team, he'll convince the creature, the hilariously named Shadow, to join the team.

Shadow is an instant hit due to having access to the Mimic command, meaning he could mimic Eiko's summons for some pretty bonkers AoE damage. He's a pretty capable frontline fighter with some good weapon options and even a solid mage by having a spell list that contains every spell the others in his team know. Having access to moves like Curaga, Arise, and a bevy of high end offensive spells is insanely good.

What truly makes Shadow shine is that he can open the sealed doors in Fraust. Two of them are worth checking out which is the weapons shop and the house up the stairs directly north of the weapon shop.

In the weapon shop, there's an old man in a bed who hands over what is pretty much one of the best offensive weapons in the game, the Zodiac Sword. Powerful, good stat boosts, uses mp for automatic crits, and can proc Flare. Golbez is going to LOVE this weapon, believe me.

As for that house, it turns out an old friend of ours survived the zombie apocalypse, Astral. Talking to him will make him come on to the airship and...do nothing really. However, he still wants to help the team and does so via an item he hands over, the Astral Doll. If you have a spare slot in your team and use this, it'll add Astral into the team. He doesn't have his outdated gear from early in the game, but rather a loadout that can very well let him brave the frontlines with little to no trouble at all.

Next time, we'll take Astral for a spin as we go to find one of the last three characters missing from our army.


ORC CAVE:

Since I picked up that Astral Doll last time, I say we use it and see how our old buddy Astral holds up in combat now. Just need to make sure you have an open 4th slot on your team and he'll pop up when you use the doll.

Astral's commands haven't changed so he still has the rather shaky Inverse skill. Miracle though is really nice since he has crazy high magic so even a lowly Cure can heal 700 or more health.

On the offensive side of things, his Magus Rod is interesting. Big 7 point boost to magic, but more importantly has a chance to proc Ninth Dimension which does some pretty solid damage. Given that magic stat though, he's probably best off breaking the various elemental rods when he doesn't need to heal.

Thankfully, Astral's defensive stats don't lag behind in the slightest. Acceptable physical defense & evade, very high magic defense, insane magic evasion, and having multiple status ailment immunities thanks to his Aeon Crystal relic.

Now then, for the dungeon we'll be exploring today, we'll have to head to the Beast Plains on the east central part of the world map. There should be a singular cave entrance you can spot so save up before heading into the Orc Cave.

This place is basically orc country as you'll only ever see two enemies aside from a rare encounter, Uruk-hai and Great Orcs. Uruk-hai aren't too nasty aside from having a penchant to use Shock Wave on whomever kills them, but Great Orcs can hit extremely hard. The rare encounter mentioned is an Abyss Dragon and is far more dangerous, so be ready should it show up. Golbez has 150 defense due to dual wielding, but one NORMAL attack from the Great Orc can lop off well over 3000 health from him. You'll want to focus down the Great Orcs first before they can start causing big problems with that damage.

The dungeon itself is pretty linear for the most part. There's a few chests, the first of which is well hidden off to the upper left area of the map and is a monster in a chest: Pazuzu. He uses a lot of lightning and wind spells, with the occasional Death and Freezing Dust. After a certain amount of time he will spam Atomic Ray, which can be quite lethal if not prepared. He is weak to holy elemental. Defeating him will give you a unique weapon for Cloud, the Apocalypse. Has good attack power, gets stronger as his hp falls, and randomly casts Meteor. The chest you absolutely need to grab is the one in the room with a switch you need to hit. That chest holds the Shinobi. A decent weapon with a chance to instantly kill, but its true use will come into play after this dungeon's complete.

On your way to the save point, you'll see Oboro who's getting to know the floor quite well while his trusty dog sidekick is at his side. After reaching the save point and heading out to check on him, the reason he's on the ground comes out of hiding and jumps the party.

Drakkaul's a Behemoth that gets a back attack on your party. Likes to spam Freeze & Blizzard, but neither does enough damage to be of any major concern. Drakkaul's only real dangerous move is Ninth Dimension for roughly 2000 damage to a target. Loves to counter with it too so if you make the cavern your first place to visit after acquiring the airship, you'll want to pick one character to deal all the damage and let the others support.

Drakkaul falls like a ton of bricks, but not before a Bizen Boat is stolen from him. He drops a new armor, the Yeti Suit, upon his defeat. Interesting armor with good defenses and, as the name implies, changes your wearer's sprite to that of Umaro.

After the fight, the team takes Oboro to Lunaris. One flashback scene with Oboro later where it's heavy implied that he is Eiko's father, you gain control again and can leave the town.

Before the segment ends, we're going to take that Shinobi to the coliseum and bet it. It's a shame the killer boss theme from Treasure of the Rudras called The Flame and the Arrow only gets to play for a few seconds cause somehow Oboro made his way here ahead of us. Golbez kindly bitchslaps him into reality to get the Shinobi back...as well as Oboro rejoining the party.

Only two more party members to locate now. We'll be getting both of them first before tackling the remaining optional dungeons in the world so stay tuned.


ANCIENT CASTLE:

Sitting in Durandal Castle with the team I'm taking into the next dungeon. Golbez obviously because Golbez things, Oboro deserves a chance to show off having just rejoined the party, and most importantly, Eiko's here because she's needed for something very important. Said important thing is the reason I'm only going in with three characters.

Also worth noting...beat up Garuda and get the Time Egg if you haven't done so yet. It'll save you an extra trip later.

Durandal Castle can do its usual dive under the sand shenanigans, but if it's done this time, you're told that the castle hit something and are asked if you want to check out. Say yes, then head to the jail cells to begin exploring the new dungeon.

All the battles here take place with the ocean background. This means that, should you have missed picking up Mog's water dance due to saving the werewolf thief and taking his Void Stone relic or some other reason, you can pick it up here.

Not much to really say about these caverns besides the pair of new weapons available, the Conformer & Naruto Kunai. Both are ranged weapons, but the Conformer has some good stat boosts and can randomly kill an enemy. The new enemies can be a touch annoying, but not too bad.

As I proceed down the stairs to the save point, it's best to note that I left two chests here. No real reason, I just felt like waiting until I have business done in the actual optional dungeon coming up. There is an optional dragon mulling about the save point area though. I could take it with my trio no problem, but for now I just give it the slip and head on to a familiar place....the Ancient Castle.

If the castle looks familiar to you, it's because this is the place Zuriel launched an assault with his demon army from the Doom series. Last we had seen from that flashback long ago, he was heading into the room east of the throne room. Probably a good bet everyone hiding down there got killed sadly, given Zuriel's power.

Know who didn't get killed though? The guy waiting just inside the castle entrance, FuSoYa. Eiko's needed to snap him out of his trance.

With FuSoYa back in the team, you can very well duck out now if you wanted. Would be a good idea to explore first though and see if there's any loot that can be uncovered.

New enemies in the castle, but only the Mimic Boxes & MK4 Walkers are worth mentioning. The former loves countering any spells you cast at it with the same spell. If you're utilizing a spell that hits everyone like Quake or Flood, make sure your team has the necessary gear to nullify or resist them.

The MK4 Walker is dangerous only because its Magitek Missile can nail a target for 2500 or more damage.

The loot in this place is extremely good and well worth the detour to grab. Take the chest that can be found outside the castle gates and in the room to the east. It contains a new relic, the Wrath Band. It grants +7 to Might and inherent Berserk status, which should help out with those pesky colosseum battles.

Also of note is Odin's prized spear Gungnir in a hidden room to the east of the thrones. No special effects, but it boasts very high attack power, 7 point boosts to stamina & magic, and is a non elemental weapon on top of it.

Speaking of Odin, his magicite is still sitting in the throne room. No harm in us taking it for assistance in the battles ahead. Teaches three spells and all of them (Holy, Arise, Curaga) are very nice to have.

Finally in the throne room, look at the western side of the room. There's a pillar with crossed swords and a statue to its immediate west. If you approach the statue from behind and examine the crossed swords, a staircase opens up in the eastern room. Down those stairs is the queen of the castle. If you have the Time Egg in your possession, her soul will be set free and you'll get a new magicite, Doomtrain. While Death is nothing exciting and new at this point, Meltdown is.

With this, everything's looted from the castle so I head back to the save point in the caverns, then go get the two chests I passed up. One has our old buddy Master Tonberry. Besides a fight that lasted longer than it should have because I was bull headed enough to try stealing its Omni Elixir (failed, heh), the other chest has a Speed Tab.

Only one more thing to do in these caverns!


AQUESTOS:

Almost done with this area, but that dragon looks mighty tempting to kill. Better to deal with it now than have to walk back here later for it.

This dragon is one of the famed eight dragons unleashed when the world went into apocalypse mode, Aquestos. As the name implies, Aquestos is heavily attuned to water and opens with one such water based move, Tsunami. The way I'm geared up for this, Eiko absorbs water, Golbez & FuSoYa nullify it, and Oboro halves it. Basically, it and the other major water move it has, El Nino, pose zero risk to me.

Besides that, Aquestos like to "lower its strength". That's code for inflicting a bunch of ailments on itself, then attempting to transfer them to someone via Rippler. Nothing a Remedy & a casting of Dispel can't fix if it connects.

Aquestos really only has two potentially nasty moves in Lv3 Confuse & Lv? Holy (Hits anyone who's level is a multiple of the last digit in your gil total). Magnitude Eight seems like it hurts here, but that's only because FuSoYa's shield makes him weak to earth. Even then, he tanked that at full health.

Since Aquestos hates thunder, spamming Nova and other thunder based moves is best. If you come here at a low level, possibly right after getting the airship, it's best to equip as many people as possible with Aqua Coats to stave off all the water attacks and keep everyone in the back row. Very doable fight right after getting that airship though.

Aquestos has a Magic Tab to steal and drops another copy of the great Mermaid Tear relic.

Only Cloud's left to get back on our team and we know exactly where he is.


PHOENIX CAVE:

Time to go get Cloud who's searching the world for a way to bring Aerith back to life.

Finding the entrance to where he is can prove to be annoying due to the modified world map. However, the merchant at the base of Tyrano Tower dropped the clue to find that cave.

On the world map, head to the Orphanage where Arc was. When you arrive there, take a look at the nearby mountain. Seems peculiar...and it's made more apparent when you see a tiny portion of the mountain that looks different than the rest. This portion of the mountain is where you need to enter with the airship.

This dungeon, the Phoenix Cave, is easily one of the more dangerous dungeons to explore for two reasons. One, you have to split up into two teams. Two, the enemies are actually a fair bit more dangerous than the previous couple of areas.

The main gimmick of this dungeon revolves around standing on a switch with one party so the other team can progress. Not much more complicated than that.

As for the treasure chests, unlike vanilla where very few chests actually had anything in them, every single one now has some kind of treasure. That includes the chest that you have to step on to a spike for in the lowest level of the cave. I knew this was coming and had my best team in mind just for this moment. Why? Because it's another boss monster in a chest, this time against Spiky Tiger's angry cousin Blue Spike.

Blue Spike keeps up with the theme of this dungeon being nastier than the last few by being a real threat itself. It opens with its special move Wreck 'n' Roll. This does very very high damage...and it uses it FOUR times to open the fight too.

Blue Spike's other moves are all water themed with Aquatic Breath & El Nino being its main attacks. Can do decent damage without water resistance, but not to the extent of his special move.

As long as you can get your defensive buffs up quickly after the initial rush, you should be able to weather the storm and drain away the tiger's only life. It does have a Blue Essence up for stealing if you find a chance to pull it off.

Once the boss is in its dying animation, I decide that everyone needs to select the Row command. After the boss fades out, it decides that it's going to pull off the quickest form change ever and attacks as Hell Spike

Hell Spike starts this fight as a back attack. Thanks to having everyone use the Row command before it appeared, there was no chance for it to capitalize on the ambush.

Hell Spike doesn't get to last too long, but its normal attacks are only slightly less powerful than Blue Spike's special move. Luckily, it trades out the brutal Wreck 'n' Roll for Acid Breath which does damage and poisons the target.

Hell Spike also has its own stealable, a Red Essence. Didn't get a chance to grab it because I killed it so quickly, but its drop makes it all the worthwhile to do this fight, Ronan's Tiger Claw weapon. Notable for having a sizable 5 point boost to his magic.

The rest of the cavern is pretty uneventful with both teams doing more standing on switches to let the other team proceed. At least there's a couple good items to pick up along the way.

After having both teams stand on the switches to open the final room, take note of the dragon guarding a chest. I could probably take it down now, but I have to come back here again anyways.

In the final room is, as expected, Cloud. He's found what will hopefully revive Aerith, then the team offers to take him back to her and doesn't let me CHECK OUT THE CHEST TO THE EAST DANGIT!!!

On the plus side, the treasure brings Aerith back to life. On the minus side, it's only for a short while. Enough though for her to say thanks for protecting her when she needed it the most. Before she goes away for good, she wishes for the esper Phoenix to be reborn once more and give its power to Cloud.

After the scene, Cloud exits with Tifa, his mind at much greater ease. Of course, he decides to give it to Jasper one final time by stealing a bunch of items from him. Lots of high end consumables along with an extra Red Essence & Prism Cape.

With everyone back in the squad, there's just sidequests and some other dungeons to explore!


AVALON'S SOUL SEARCHING:

Starting off with something I should have done right after getting the airship. On the island Tifa awakens on, there's the Cliff of Despair to the northeast on the world map. At the northern end upon entering, there's a magicite just sitting there for the taking, Ark. Notable because it teaches Hastega among some other spells which is very nice.

Next, I decide to bet a Majin Vest at the coliseum to fight a Beelzebub. All you need to survive is a Flame Cloak to absorb Flare Star's damage, Reflect Ring to bounce back its Flare spells, and praying to god Blaster doesn't decide to randomly ruin your life since it can either instantly kill, do ~6000 damage (which still kills here), or miss completely.

The reward for winning that fight is something that was well worth using the funds I got from my off screen grinding to buy a few extra Majin Vests for betting off, the Dragon Soul relic. Boosts vigor by 50%, boosts max hp by 50%, and increases defense by 18. Only certain people can equip it.

Enough about that though, time to do today's dungeon romp. For this, Avalon needs to be in the party since we're heading back to Mist Castle which is located south of Taured. There's a few new items to grab, but the real reason to come here is to take a rest in the guest bedrooms. Everyone wakes up after the rest...except for Avalon. He just gets three random jerks deciding to invade his soul and we somehow have to jump in after them.

When your vision clears, whomever was in the third position of your team finds a very familiar buddy waiting to greet them, Reaper. People trying to swipe his souls? Not on his watch! He joins up for this duration of this journey to save Avalon.

Equipment wise, Reaper keeps his trusty Soul Harvest, Serpent Mask, and Exodus Token. His armor's been traded out for a Chaos Plate and he's added a Dragon Soul to his 2nd relic slot. Overall, his magic defense might be a little concerning, but the Dragon Soul's massive hp boost makes up for it.

The enemies here aren't too much of an issue. Harpies & their Banshee Scream can do a decent chunk of damage, but it's only going to be a concern for those who came here immediately after getting the airship and getting Avalon back into the party. More importantly, Reaper gets new souls to call upon with new enemy defeats. The previously mentioned Harpy gets special move that hits insanely hard. So much so that Reaper can reliably hit 9999 or close to it if the move goes off.

The gimmick of this first leg of the dungeon is simple. Several doors that lead you to other portions of the area. You'll need to get your other two party members back, then make your way to the door in the southwest that has a diamond shaped set of tiles around it. Head inside, then head to the door to find the three loony jerks waiting for a beatdown.

This boss fight is against three targets, K. Crimson (in the very back), K. Queen (top of the screen), and ZA WARUDO (on the right). Honestly, I feel like this dungeon was meant to be tackled at a lower level than I'm at currently because none of them can do any lasting damage.

There is a big threat though and it's K. Crimson. Partially because the jerk will cast Arise on fallen allies or use White Wind for healing, but moreso due to having Blaster available. Once that jerk falls though, the others will follow suit very quickly.

No drops, but there are a few tabs to steal. K. Crimson has a Might Tab, K. Queen a Magic Tab, and a Stamina Tab from The World.

After passing through the door, you'll be on the Skull Train from long ago. A few of the rooms are different, but the enemies sure took a hike. Only got into a few battles the whole way through.

There is one important item you don't want to forget though and it's called the Lump of Coal. This will be needed for something once we get back to the real world.

After fumbling with a few switches in the front of the train (and killing an annoying speedbump on the way), the next dream zone is a mine of sorts. Easy enough to get out of here. Head south and you'll go outside. Go to the entrance on the eastern side of the pass, then head in and right back out. This brings you to a completely different cliff room where you run west across a bridge and it just so happens to collapse. Great isn't it?


AVALON'S SOUL SEARCHING II:

Time to wrap up this sidequest. It's not as easy as walking right into the throne room though as you need to view three cutscenes. One's in Avalon's family bedroom to the northeast of the throne room and the other two are outside. 

Do be sure to check everywhere because there's some new items lying around...and most importantly make damn sure you check out the storage room you can access from the castle walls in the southeast. There's a very important key item in here, the Dream Stone. This is going to unlock what I'm going to guess is a 2 hour marathon once more on my end, heh. You'll see when I get there.

Once the throne room is unsealed, go in to find a very angry Soul Eater....and also very dumb. Trying to outfox Reaper is like trying to get the upper hand on my man Megaman X. You're either going to fail hard at first base or get vaporized a minute after you think you've gotten the upper hand. May as well kick Soul Eater's ass and see how the jerk manages to hit both of those failure conditions.

Soul Eater comes with a pair of Shadow Boos to assist it. They use moves like Nova & Tsunami for damage or Magic Drain to try siphoning someone's mp. Reaper's the only one who's likely to get roughed up even remotely by the magic attacks...and even then, 1000-1500 damage isn't very much when he's rocking a max hp total four times as large. The Shadow Boos are dodgy though so you may need the Nightvision helmet or Paladin Icons to deal with this if you're physically aligned.

Soul Eater doesn't sit back and do nothing though. It opens the fight with Level 5 Death, then throws out its own magical assault which once again isn't much to speak of. Quasar looks scary, but it only does ~1500 to everyone, meaning it's only going to be something to watch out for if you came here right after picking up Avalon. Soul Eater does have access to instant death spells in the form of Death for single targets and the far more nail biting AoE variant Vortex though so the jerk isn't entirely a snoozefest.

Besides the usual extra lives gimmick, Soul Eater also employs a tactic where it makes itself immune to all damage taken. Only Haste or Slow will work and it's randomly determined after its glows white. When you hit it with the right spell, it'll flash red and be vulnerable again.

Before sending the Soul Eater packing, make sure to steal its Necronomicon. It'll drop a very nice relic I'll be showing off in the future too, the Soul Booster. Nullifying all elements? Well worth it!

After the fight, Soul Eater gets destroyed on two fronts...first, trying to steal another Soultaker's bounty is a huge no no. Obviously this means the jerk's dying...but Reaper can't do it himself since that goes against some pact too. That's where the actual execution comes in because Avalon wakes up and gets a point on his kill count to dispel Soul Eater once and for all.

After Avalon comes to grips with his family once and for all, he gets a bunch of rewards. His Havoc Sword command gets an upgrade that removes the split hp damage for each enemy targeted beyond the first, he gets one of his best weapons in the Onimusha, and he gets the Reaper Doll. Reaper now gets to strut his stuff out in a more vast world which I am in full approval of!

Finally, returning to the throne room reveals a new magicite on the throne, Anima. Only teaches one spell, but it's Ultima....and Golbez is one of the lucky guys that can equip the esper. That can only mean GOOD things later, heh.


BRINSTAR BLUES

Just showing off that beautiful Soul Booster relic and my current team before entering back into Lunaris. FuSoYa & Eiko are very important here because a cutscene triggers if both are present in the party. Turns out KlaTu tried to deal with Kraid...and didn't exactly do so well. FuSoYa decides enough is enough and wants to put and end to this Kraid hunt once and for all.

The aptly named Kraid's Lair can be found on a small island just west of Lunaris. It's a small dungeon, but with an annoying gimmick to make up for its size. It's not the enemies who aren't particularly threatening, but rather one annoying gremlin that wants you to bring tons of Dark Matter to it if you want to pass.

To get that Dark Matter, you'll have to take teleports that whisk you to a random portion of the cave. There's not that many different rooms though so you can memorize where the chests are and run to them pretty quickly. Some of these cave outlets have Metroids skulking about too, but they're easy to kill by now.

There is one important item to grab though. Two of the chests never close up when opened, but only one contains anything of value, Eiko's Starry Hood. Besides the solid defenses and granting 2x the amount of gil from battles, it grants resistance to fire, ice, and thunder, nullifies wind, and absorbs holy. Pair this up with a Shaman Dress and you can cover for the hood's weakness to earth. Safe to say Eiko's sitting in a very good position right now with her defenses.

After giving enough Dark Matter to the gremlin to make him move, there's a timeskip. I decided to go take out Avalon and put Reaper in his slot, then go pickup a few new souls for him to utilize and finish learning Ultima with Golbez.

As for the main reason to come here...Kraid has four Metroid buddies assisting it. Only going to be a threat if they confuse someone via Crimson Moon, but otherwise a couple decent AoE attacks will wipe them all out easily.

After nuking Kraid's minions, the beast flashes, then decides everyone's gonna die because it busts out an extremely painful spell, Shadow Flare. Considering its normal attacks don't do all that much damage, Shadow Flare's 3500-4000 damage to each party member is a huge slap in the face. Amazed I didn't wipe after the initial cast. Reaper ain't having none of this nearly dying bullcrap...unless he gets hit by Kraid's special move Belly Spikes, then maybe he's going to care.

Aside from Shadow Flare though? Kraid doesn't have much else that you need to worry about. Quake's the only other issue as is the fact the Metroids will respawn whenever they damn well feel like it.

Kraid has a Golden Apple for stealing and drops a Nightvision helmet. Only Arc & Shadow can equip this, but it's notable due to granting 100% hit rate using the Fight command, similar to what the Paladin Icon provides. Really nice, but pales next to the fact that Shadow Flare is an Arcane spell that FuSoYa can learn. Really expensive mp wise and would benefit from a Void Stone or Celestriad relic to curb the cost, but does insanely good damage to all enemies.

After the fight, FuSoYa goes back to tell KlaTu of his success, but falls asleep during the sermon. Too bad for him KlaTu was faking his injuries the whole time just to force FuSoYa to man up and deal with Kraid.

Getting ever so closer to the point where the final dungeon is a valid destination, but there's several bosses left in the field and one more dungeon to explore. We'll get cracking on some of the optional dragons roaming about next time.


FROSTFANG:

Now's a good time to go around the world and trim down some of the optional dragons that can be dealt with. We'll be starting out with the one high up in the cliffs of Fraust, but on the way there, I ran into a monster that, if you ever played the original Kingdom Hearts, would have gotten quite used to seeing if you were grinding out levels, the Ice Titan. Not really a threat at this point sadly.

What is a threat? The dragon flying around on the cliffs, Frostfang.

If the name didn't clue you in, Frostfang goes all in with ice elemental attacks like Avalanche & Absolute Zero. If you have at least ice resistant gear on everyone, you shouldn't have too much trouble withstanding the damage. If needed, cast Shell on everyone to further bolster your magical defenses.

Frostfang's worst attacks are threefold. First, there's the special move Tail Whip which is absurdly strong. Tifa & Ronan have 190 or more physical defense and still get rocked for 3500-4000 damage in the front row after Protect's been cast on them. Not a move you can ignore, that's for sure.

Then, you have the dragon's two ailment moves. Frozen Tomb can quite literally freeze party members solid. Freezing all four party members is rare, but it is a possibility. Luckily there's an easy way to free any frozen characters and that's to cast any fire spell at them. MT Fireball is the simplest way to go about that. The ailment can wear off on its own too, but it takes an awful long time.

The real danger? Charm. This is a majorly souped up Confuse that, should it hit its target, will cause them to attack their allies indefinitely. It does wear off I believe, but you're much better off killing the afflicted character and reviving him/her rather than waiting it out.

Frostfang has two "lives" you'll have to burn through before you can actually proceed to killing him. Seems like he gets quite counter happy on the final life and can counter with Tail Whip so be careful there. On the plus side though, being weak to fire means Ronan & Tifa absolutely dominate with dual Blazing Claws equipped.

Frostfang has a Crystal Ball to steal and drops a brand new shield, the Sublime Shield. Interesting piece of equipment that's designed only to defend against magic as it has no physical defenses to speak of. Also has resistance to every element except holy & poison. Ronan & Tifa can make surprisingly good use of this shield considering they can hit 190 or more defense dual wielding. Ronan moreso since he doesn't have an armor like the Shaman Dress for his own use.


GUILLOTINE FLASH & FELLBEAST:

One quick thing to get out of the way first and that's to visit a big forest just outside of Seascape Town. There's a bare patch of land in the southwest portion of the forest and you'll have to walk all the way to the northeast part. Make sure Ronan's in your team before you do this though and that you have the Lump of Coal from Avalon's dream.

In the northeast, assuming the local Xenomorphs & T-Rexaurs don't mess you up hard, is a rather familiar looking hut. The winds are howling fierce, but having the Lump of Coal in your inventory will save you from getting blasted back out to the world map. Your reward is meeting a familiar face...at least for Ronan. It's his master Oyama and he's not dead. Turns out Raditz was lying out of his teeth when he said he murdered him. Somehow I knew he wasn't cut out for the job, heh.

Oyama teaches Ronan his final skill, the fabled Guillotine Flash. Didn't get a chance to show it off, but there'll be a dragon fight I can have him demonstrate the move in.

With that out of the way, the timeskip takes my party to Mt. Etlich. There was a chest I skipped opening on my first visit here. That's because inside is a rampaging dragon....or would be if it wasn't being ridden by some damn fool Nazgul from the Lord of the Rings universe. The dragon still has to die though.

This dragon is the wind aligned Fellbeast. As such, moves like Air Blast, Whirlwind, Aero, and Cyclonic are on tap here. Cyclonic can be very nasty if it follows up with something else afterwards so hopefully you can pack wind nullifying gear. The Misty Coats are the best option due to wind absorption and having good defense so you may want to stock up on them in Taured for this fight.

Besides that, there's its physical strike, a special skill called Ultrasonic Blast (Just a stronger physical strike), and Primal Rage for inflicting berserk. Painful for sure, but if you're hovering around 160-170+ defense, you can survive an Ultrasonic Blast in the back row with a casting of Protect no problem. It'll do 1500-2000 damage, but there's been far worse to deal with.

Finally, the Fellbeast takes a page from its Dragon's Den of FFVI Advance counterpart and raises its own speed & evasion after a while. The speed difference doesn't seem all that noticeable and the evasion boost can be sidestepped by having a Paladin's Icon on your melee attacker (Arc & Shadow can opt for the Nightvision helmet instead if they so choose).

Magic's also a viable option for dealing damage here, but watch out for Fellbeast's Drain & Osmose counters. The former doesn't do that much, but the latter basically makes siphoning your lost mp back a risky affair. One Osmose counter and Fellbeast can easily get back all the mp you just took and then some. Best to rely on Tinctures to refresh mp as needed.

Steal wise, there's an Uchigatana up for grabs. If you get this early, it can prove to be a solid weapon for Avalon to lean on due to the enemy cleaving chance.

On the drop side of things, there's a Solar Guard. Don't think I talked about this before, but it has good defenses, a nice magic evade boost, and halves five elements (fire, ice, lightning, wind, earth).


GLAURUNG:

Next up on the dragon slaying world tour is the Phoenix Cave. Towards the end of it there was a fire dragon who was pacing around a chest. I believe my two major dragon slaying experts need to give it to the dragon and claim that chest, am I right?

Well, there's really going to have to put in the work because this dragon, Glaurung, is one of the hardest optional dragons available. Like Fellbeast, its gimmick is based off its elemental counterpart from FFVI Advance. 

Basically, it fuels its incredible power with its own lifeforce. Glaurung can attack multiple times per turn...and not just twice like most previous bosses. It can easily attack 4+ times if it wants with physicals that are roughly on par with Fellbeast or attack with various fire themed spells, two of which bear merit in mentioning.

One of those spells is Meltdown. Without any fire or wind protection, you're looking at 4k damage to the entire party. Not something you're likely to survive unless you have the aformentioned fire or wind resistance gear equipped. With it, a MT Cura spell should be enough to repair the sustained damage or close to it.

The other concerning move is Soulfire. The damage isn't going to amount to much if you're bringing along fire resistance, but the worst part is that it inflicts death sentence too. My Oboro & Shadow have relics on to block that status, but the others are not so lucky. Thankfully, Otis having the Eaglehorn on makes his counter tick down quicker, meaning I just need to off Golbez when the timers are low, res him, then wait for the death sentence to resolve on Otis to bring him back.

Of course, just because there's fire spells in play doesn't mean Glaurung has other methods of dishing out pain. Flare & Rock Slide can do a hefty 3500-4500 damage to a target. Normally that's survivable, but considering how many attacks the dragon puts out, it's very likely one of those attacks is going to hit an already damaged character.

Eventually, Glaurung will do a last gasp kind of combo when its lifeforce runs out. I never see it because, unlike the FFVI Advance counterpart, you can actually do damage to the dragon. This is why I have my Golbez & Otis geared the way they are since they're gonna do 90% of the damage in the fight.

Oboro & Shadow...when neither one is getting lit up by Flare or Rock Slide, they're running support (Oboro gets a chance to steal a Flame Cloak though, which protects against Frozen status). Very very rarely do they attack since there's so much damage incoming that I need them ready to heal when their turns come up.

If you manage to slay the dragon yourself, you'll be rewarded with another Uchigatana and access to the chest behind Glaurung containing a Conformer.

Only one more thing to do in this cavern!


GILGAMESH'S RETURN:

Dragon's dead, but there's one last so called elephant in the closet to address...a chest we couldn't get to due to a cutscene the first time. My secondary team gets to check it out, but Eiko levels up to 60 first since she learns Curaga to greatly bolster her support capabilities.

While I wish I could get what's in the chest, someone else has other ideas. That someone is none other than our favorite goofball Gilgamesh. Turns out that something is a sword and he calls dibs on it first. Not on our team's watch so cue Gilgamesh's theme...then him pulling a stupid.

That stupid? Well sir, your plans for gaining power should not have come from Megaman X Mavericks Final. The evil energy plan didn't do a lick of good for every single boss that used it to grow huge and it won't be any different for you here.

Gilgamesh's giant form, to be fair, does have a pretty potent special skill in Blade Dance. Doing 2300 or more damage to a frontliner that has close to 210 defense would be no small feat at this point. The problem? Evidently he didn't buy in to the multiple lives schtick most other optional bosses utilize. As such, he falls in just a few minutes, but drops a solid weapon in the Eternity. Good attack power & stat boosts, but we can do better.

After the timeskip, local boy turned legend Arc decides to scarf down a bunch of Golden Apples before betting said Eternity at the arena. Turns out Gilgamesh is the opponent and, to drive home how dumb his evil energy plan was, he ends up being a huge pain in the ass to deal with here.

Gilgamesh keeps a majority of what he had in the previous fight like Blade Dance and, much more worryingly, Black Shock. Too many of the latter means you may as well restart because your damage is going to tank too heavily to finish him off.

In terms of new moves he didn't show last time, he's got Meteor, Meltdown, and Aquatic Breath. Meteor does a good 2500-3000 damage with Meltdown hitting higher (but also damaging Gilga himself in the process) and Aquatic Breath hitting below that. Luckily, a Misty Coat will absorb both Meltdown & Aquatic Breath, providing Arc with the healing he needs to blow through Gilga's two lives. Yes, he gets a second wind after his hp goes poof the first time.

After an hour of attempting this fight before this winning run came out, Gilga drops the real prize, Destiny. Better attack power and stat boosts compared to Eternity and also confers 20% evade, something very very few other weapons are capable of. No mp crit property is a bit of a downer, but it's so strong that it's not a huge deal.


NIDHOGG:

Just one more loose dragon to deal with now. The rest are in areas I haven't visited yet.

For this dragon, you''ll have to visit the Opera House just a short distance to the west of Sunfall City. In the room with all the switches, the third switch from the left will deposit you onto the front stage with one jerk dragon by the name of Nidhogg waiting to be slain.

Nidhogg is the earth aligned dragon of the squadron as seen by its opener, Quake. This can sting something fierce, doing at least 3500+ damage to anyone without earth resistance. Thankfully, Cloud has the Soul Booster relic, Ronan & Arc have Prism Capes, and Reaper just has a gigantic mass of hp to tank the hit.

On the physical side of things, Nidhogg's no slouch. Can attack 3-4+ times when a message stating it's enraged appears and has the usual boss mandated named physical strike, Honed Tusk.

Not much else to the dragon besides that. Cursed Breath might cause a bit of an issue for a target, but a Remedy will reverse its effects easily.

Not a hard fight for me since everyone's got good gear and can dish out 9999s or close to it. Arc's the exception to the 9999s, but he keeps the rest of the team healthy with Curaga spam.

Nidhogg has a Dragon Helm up for stealing and drops a Magus Rod upon defeat.

One final note...everyone had Serpent Masks on just to show off that being poisoned with them on translates to a steadily rising hp regen. Not the most effective since bosses are regularly outpacing that healing, but it's still hilarious to see in action.

Now then, I could go into the next dungeon, but there's something to take care of back in Fraust.


THE SEALED GUARDIAN:

Back in Fraust this time to wrap up one of the loose ends. The room that the tonberry was guarding has a monster in a chest, but not just any standard monster. This one is Ultimecia's right hand guardian force Griever.

Griever starts out the fight taking 0 damage from all sources. The only way to break this damage immunity barrier is to drop an Ultima on it, basically requiring that you complete Avalon's sidequest if you want to win this fight at all... Be ready to recast it periodically during the fight whenever a message saying Griever's invulnerable pops up.

That's not the only shield to worry about though. There's one that locks Griever's hp to max at first. Only thing that'll break this is attacking, reviving units, and so on. Once Griever glows twice, this shield is gone for good and you can finally start killing the beast...though this comes with its own baggage which I'll get to later.

On the offensive side of things, Griever is adept with both physical & magical attacks as it shifts its elemental affinities around via Barrier Change. You're going to need to bring resistance to as many elements as possible. Hell, nullifying multiple elements is much better since Griever very frequently attacks twice per turn and some of the attacks are powerful like Meltdown, Aero, and so on.

On the physical side of things, there's three moves to watch for. Pulsar Bolt is its stronger physical strike. Can hurt for sure, but the Hyper Drive counters that can happen during its holy phase are far more devastating. Seeing Hyper Drive hit for 4500 or more damage is very likely (and as you can probably tell, half of my team can't take a hit of that).

The worst move though is Ultros's old Tentacle move. This does roughly 600-1000 or so damage to all dependent on physical defense and row. Doesn't seem threatening, but sometimes Griever becomes imbalanced. If you see that, Griever's gonna Tentacle the whole team FOUR times in a row. If you're not close to full health without Protect up on the team, you can very easily wipe here.

With that, Griever seems vicious enough, especially if it chains something like Gravity into Whirlwind or Aero. However, once Griever glows twice, the gloves come off as it very frequently swaps its elemental affinities around and can chain together some brutal attacks. Quicksilvers are amazing here as a panic button if the fight suddenly spikes south as it did here because Heartless Angel followed up by Quake ain't pretty at all. Nor is sweating some bullets when the boss attempts to freeze the last person standing.

You'll also want to make sure you steal from this boss, there's an extremely valuable Celestriad to pick up.

It's a long and difficult fight for sure, but if you persevere to the end, you'll be well rewarded with one of the best shields in the game, the Paladin Shield. It does sport a weakness to poison, but there's really no high end poison nuke to let the element match up with the likes of Nova, Inferno, and Blizzard.

On the plus side though, it absorbs four elements (fire, ice, lightning, and holy), has great defensive stats, boosts might/stamina/speed/magic power by 7, and teaches Ultima at a x1 rate.


TYRANO TOWER:

Time to climb the Tyrano Tower. This dungeon's located southeast of Fraust if you've forgotten.

Team wise, Tifa & FuSoYa are here because there are some rewards in the tower that both can use. The rest is just a focus on magical offense since the enemies either have high physical evasion, high physical defense, or a combination of the two.

As for the enemy threat level, there's lots of magic being tossed around so make sure your magic defense is good amongst your party members. Toss fire/ice/thunder resistant gear on top of that and the only major threat, if any, is random Flare spells nailing a target for roughly 3k damage.

The dungeon's design is pretty dang plain though. Just one very long climb up several screens worth of stairs with some treasure rooms sprinkled along the way. A couple don't have much more than a tab or a high end buyable shield, but there's two optional bosses that you'd do very well to take out as you climb up.

First one up to bat is an upgraded version of Colossus, Melzalgald. Focuses on multiple single target attacks with Obliterate being a very powerful physical strike. That's all the boss does though so if everyone gets Protect cast on them and there's one or two people attacking at a time to minimize counters messing things up, you should have no issue destroying the boss.

While there's a Might Tab up for stealing, the real prize is the drop, Tifa's ultimate weapon which is called Godhand. Good stats all around and uses mp for automatic criticals with a random chance to cast Confuse. The spell proc isn't the most useful in many cases, but mp fueled criticals are always good.

Second boss is the 6th optional dragon, the holy aligned Alduin. Attacks multiple times like Melzalgald, but has more options than physicals for dealing high damage. There's Flare which can nail a target for close to 5k damage, Holy, Aero, Giga Volt, and so on. More troubling is Alduin's access to Heartless Angel. Not quite as adept at chaining it into some kind of AoE attack like Griever, but it's still very threatening regardless.

After a surprisingly quick battle where Alduin chose a death by Golbez, the dragon drops a second Godhand. A bonus Holy Lance doesn't hurt either.

Finally, there's the top of the tower with a most appreciated added save point. Make sure as many people as possible have immunity to confusion and good elemental resistances (fire or wind especially!) across the board before you enter the door. Inside is a new relic, the Zohar Shard. This turns the Magic command into X-Magic, allowing the wearer to cast two spells back to back.

The problem? Azala of the Chrono Trigger universe wants the relic back and she's brought a pet snake, Asmodeus, to help her out.

Asmodeus is the more offensive of the two, sporting tier 3 spells, Plague, and good physical damage. It can also cast Vertigo which attempts to confuse the entire party.

As for the queen of the Reptite race herself, Azala takes a slightly less offensive role with moves like Flare Star and support via Curaga, Reflect, and Hastega. She does have Gravity though so you may want to take her out first or bring along Arc to spam Runic.

Azala has two moves that are worth noting besides the above. One is the only reason I brought FuSoYa along as she's the source of a new Arcane spell called Force Field. This picks a random element and nullifies all sources of damage that deal it for enemy & ally alike.

Azala's other move is about as close as she's gonna get to Lavos causing an earth shattering kaboom in her time, Meltdown. She only uses this when she runs out of health, but the damage is severe at 6k or so before resistances.

While the steals aren't much to write home about (Atomic Ball from Asmodeus, Chrono Helm from Azala), the drops are. The Magus Rod is nice if you haven't dabbled too much in the arena, but the real reward is another new relic, the Divine Gift. Basically the physical equivalent of the Zohar Shard, changing a character's Fight command to X-Fight, allowing for 2-4 consecutive attacks. You'll also acquire the esper Bahamut. Appropriate for the king of dragons, Bahamut teaches the Flare spell and Golbez can equip the esper along with some others.

While I would say it's about time to tackle Zuriel's Tower, there happens to be one final optional dungeon to blast through. One that Arc may very well be saving my life in.


SPELLBOUND CASTLE:

The team's back in the new esper world via Lunaris's Dimensional Gateway. Behind where Golbez once was is one of the final optional dungeons to explore, the Spellbound Castle.

Spellbound Castle's design is exactly like Mist Castle, just without any venturing indoors. All the doors and teleports take you to various spots outside, but luckily the path is linear as all hell so there's no getting lost. There is the issue of a rogue skeleton that attacks you by the storage room in the southeast. Not your bog standard would die in one hit type of skeleton, but a...ahem..."boss" skeleton, Golgotha.

Granted, Golgotha has a powerful Hyper Drive attack and has Zombie Twister to inflict exactly the ailment you're thinking of on a target among other moves, but Golgotha is still undead.

Golgotha has a valuable Necronomicon to steal, but my Arc & Aurora failed to get it in time before I had to end the fight cause Soulfire shenanigans. He did drop a new helmet though, the Undead Crown. Not as good as a Dragon Helm defensively, but it does raise the success rate of Golbez's Torment skill.

Inside the storage room is actually the treasure room from Durandal Castle's basement. The suit of armor has a Gamma Sword on it though. Holy elemental and randomly casts Expel.

Also in the room is a ghost who mentions the eight optional dragons having a fatal weakness to mp draining. If any of them hit 0 mp, they die instantly.

Moving onwards, there's a save point where I switch some gear around. Arc & Aurora get White Cape relics, everyone nulls/absorbs fire or wind, and then the team heads to the higher levels of the castle to find the real boss of this area coming in for a visit.

This boss is none other than Dragonball Z's wish giving dragon Shenron. He's Griever 2.0 basically, just without the need to break an all damage immunity barrier first. You do have to force him to glow yellow for hp damage to start counting up though.

While Shenron's attacks are the same as Griever's, one move in particular stands out and that's his physical skill Giga Nova. Tifa with 234 defense in the front row takes roughly 2k damage from it. That alone should tell you how horrifyingly strong this attack is. If you brought along Oboro, his Ninja Scrolls are practically a requirement for anyone around 160-180 defense to survive the attack.

The fight drags on for a hell of a long time on my end and had some oh crap moments that Quicksilvers let me reverse (Heartless Angel followed up by ANYTHING anyone?), and to top it all off uses an Ultima at the very end before crapping out... so make sure at least one of your characters has reraise applied to them!

Shenron drops an incredible relic, the Celestriad. Reduces all mp costs by a pretty insane 75%. You can also steal a Goddess Ring from him, which can only be used by the girls & Arc, but it grants holy absorption and teaches the Holy spell.

Killing Shenron removes all random battles from the area, but there's a big crystal that he was guarding behind him. Welcome to oh crap round #infinity because out of the crystal pops Necron from FF9 who attacks the party. Has a couple annoying moves such as Vertigo (full party confusion), and a few powerful spells as well as status ailments, but should fall rather quickly. Tell that to me when I was panicking and actually burned a Quicksilver the moment I saw things going south.

Once Necron goes poof, you get an Aeon Crystal relic. Confers immunity to almost every ailment in the game.


INTO ZURIEL'S LAIR:

Time to finally break into Zuriel's Lair and proceed towards the end of the game.

Much like the Phoenix Cave, you'll be splitting up into multiple teams, only here it's three separate teams. Each team has their own route through the dungeon to take, but will need help from other teams when an obstacle impedes their progress and requires hitting a switch of some kind on another route.

The enemies for a final dungeon are definitely a few steps up from what you're used to. Nothing insanely painful, but enough that it'll force you to pay attention during battles.

Only one team gets into any action in this segment and it's team #3. FuSoYa & Shadow comprise the magical side of the team with Arc using the always brutal Slayer Glove alongside dual Zodiac Swords. Reaper fills up the last slot so he has a chance to collect some more souls for his collection.

Most of the treasure team #3 finds is relegated to stat boosters, but another Vitality Cap is nice for those that want boosted hp, but can't equip a Dragon Soul relic or would rather use that relic slot for something else.

Once the team hits their save point (there's at least one for each team on their respective routes), you may notice a familiar sight waiting to jump down on you as you attempt to go down the stairs. Evidently if Raditz got two boss fights, then Majin Buu gets a second fight.

Unlike his initial boss fight, Majin Buu flies solo here. Also unlike his first battle, Majin Buu focuses more on magical attacks. Kinda hurts him here because most of those aren't going to register for much damage besides Gravity. He does have a physical skill in Megapunch that'll basically destroy any frontliner under 200 defense with Protect active though. Doesn't use it all that much luckily.

Finally, when Majin Buu decides to glow, not only does he get Protect & Shell buffs, he'll fire off a non elemental nuke on his next turn. On his first life, it's Quasar which can hit everyone for roughly 2k or more damage. On his second life? Everyone is getting zapped for 3.5k damage or so from Ultima. This is where Arc can be a huge boon because on that second life, he can pop Runic at the right time and nullify Ultima. Me though, I have him Runic, then Shadow follows up with a Mimic, allowing him to activate Runic and let Arc go right back on the offensive.

After the pink puff bringer falls (and Arc hitting the floor cause Megapunch), you'll get a Majin Vest. They've got one more boss they can presently access, but they'll be taking a rest while team #2 starts their trek through the dungeon.


VEGNAGUN:

Team 1 still sits on the sidelines as there's a boss I want only my best units to tackle, hence my Team 2 party. Golbez & Otis shell out massive damage while Aurora & Serin are primarily here for their support capabilities, but can dish out some insane AoE damage to help clean out randoms quickly.

Speaking of randoms, there's a new enemy Team 2 runs into that's worth some chuckles. The real fun though begins when the team hits their first save point. In the jail cell next to it is an optional boss, Vegnagun.

Vegnagun gets three lives to play with, but unlike most other bosses with extra lives, there's no message telling you when the boss extends its own life force. Rather, Vegnagun announces its own life extension with a one time move (and casting Protect & Shell at the same time).

As for its non charge up moves, it's nothing you should be worried about for the first wave unless you see it charge up vast amounts of energy. That's when it'll launch Shadow Flare on its next turn. Can easily nail everyone for ~3500 or more damage, but I did so much damage that it just skipped that and went on to the 2nd phase. 

The transition from its initial phase to the 2nd phase brings about a casting of Anti-Magic Field. Buff removal is annoying, but it's the only time it happens so rebuffing will be easy.

What won't be pleasant is Vegnagun using some stronger attacks in this phase, up to and including the new charge up move Mind Blast. Annoying, but those Missile counters are dangerous. Not for the damage, but the third phase transition.

The third phase transition has Vegnagun cast the always dangerous Heartless Angel at the start. If anyone is under the effects of seizure, there's a very good chance the person will go down before you have a chance to heal up.

The final phase has Vegnagun throw out damn near every high end attack you can think of, sometimes even chaining them in back to back attacks (like Magnitude Eight into Quake). There's also Blaster to be very worried about here. The charge up move for this phase is Devil's Flash which is single target and is basically going to one hit kill whomever gets struck due to it hitting for 6500 or so damage.

You can steal an Omni Elixir, but the drop is much more useful, an Omega Shield. Stats that are almost on par with the Paladin Shield, but with some different resists (absorbs water & wind, immune to earth, halves poison, and is weak vs holy). Also, you will receive a Dream Stone (rare item) after the battle, but only if you missed the one inside Avalon's Soul.


THE BLACK WALTZ APPROACHES:

Time to delve deeper into Zuriel's Lair. Today, there's two dragons that need to be put down. Teams 2 & 3 get to do the deed after both advance a little further in their dungeon sections. Team 1 STILL isn't seeing any action....at least in this segment.

Team 3's dragon is Shen-lung.

Shen-lung's sole dangerous move is his special skill Heartstopper. This physical strike is on par with the likes of Shenron's special skill, namely it's going to one hit kill a majority of frontliners unless you have extremely high physical defense and a Protect buff active.

Shen-lung uses thunder attacks, the occasional Death spell, Lifeshaver, and will also counter any water-elemental attacks with either Dispel, or Reverse Polarity. After some time, he can use Mute on the entire party.

Other then that, you do want to steal here as another Omni Elixir is always nice to have. Shen-lung drops a Serpent Mask as well.

As for Team 2? They get to deal with Abraxas...and is the karmic counterbalance to Shen-lung being somewhat of a pushover. In fact, he's the hardest dragon to fight.

Elemental attack wise, Abraxas uses a mix of thunder & water moves such as Flash Rain, El Nino, and Giga Volt. There's also some non-elemental attacks like Delta Attack, Gravity, and the always scary Blaster as well. Considering the boss can follow up most moves with some extra physicals, something like Gravity coming out first can be extremely nasty. After some time he will use the always dangerous Flare spell.

Yet despite all of that, Abraxas's most annoying & potentially dangerous move is his special skill Embolism. It inflicts stop, and has a high hit rate percentage to do so. He can then use Dread on one of his upcoming turns to petrify the stopped character.

Oh, and the best part of it all? Abraxas gets angry after you burn one of his lives (He's got two extra lives on top of his initial starting one). He'll Ninth Dimension someone, then throw out 3-4 physical strikes. Not the worst, but random Revenge counters that start after the initial life gets snuffed out until the fight's end is.

If there ever was a fight you'd want to employ Oboro, this would be it. Ninja Scroll spammage is the best you can do to minimize Embolism's stop shenanigans. Fenrir & Vysage are also highly valuable summons to have equipped for emergency full party protection from Embolism, albeit one time only for each.

While Abraxas does have an Quick Ring for stealing, if you don't get it by the time the Revenge counters begin, you're better off forgetting about it unless you're damn sure you can deal with reviving the dedicated stealer on top of everything else.

Once the dragon expires, you get its Dragon Soul relic drop.

With all 8 dragons defeated, the seal on the Black Waltzes of FF9 fame is released and they join as the final esper of the game. Insane damage when summoned (and it doesn't hit your own party too unlike vanilla's Crusader) and also teaches the final spell in the game, Meteo, which hits four times. Pretty nice, but it can be inaccurate at times.


DEEPER INTO THE LAIR:

Team 1's way forward was cleared up by the others via switches, but they aren't getting out completely free of battling bosses. On their way through an old Magitek Research Facility hallway, they run into a dragon, Doomkaiser, who's decided to park its ass right in front of the door going further in.

Doomkaiser opens the fight with Level 5 Death like Omega Weapon in Final Fantasy VIII. There's no Terra Break during the fight to worry about thank god, heh.

Ailments are Doomkaiser's main strength with moves like Plague (poison), Soulshatter (zombie), and Mind Blast. Throwing the Aeon Crystal relic onto your primary support unit is going to be a very good idea here.

Doomkaiser's damage also isn't to be taken lightly. Physicals can hit frontliners with roughly 190 defense and no buffs for around 3000 or so damage and it has access to Blaster which can break 4k damage on the party if it feels like it.

As if all that wasn't worth watching out for on its own, Doomkaiser's very lifeforce is fueled by magic, Basically, if it has ANY mp left when its hp hits 0, it'll instantly revive. Luckily it has a weakness to holy and Expel is holy elemental. One Expel typically rips off 700-1200 mp, making it easy to burn its 9k mp pool away. Once that mp's gone, it's more or less a sitting duck. A Wrath Band is the drop here.

Once team 1 makes it inside the doors the other two teams opened up, you'll have a choice to go west or east to reach another switch and a weight outside which can be used to hit the switch the party on that side is standing on, creating a staircase for them to climb up to the center path and repeat the process for the other team.

After all the switch hitting shenanigans end, the teams have a big fight ahead of them. Each team gets to fight one of the magic statues Zuriel decided to drain power out of for kicks. The team that gets to go up the center path though gets another fight on top beforehand as some random tank by the name of Crusher stands guard before reaching the statue.

Crusher has only one real notable ailment inflicting move in Toxic Bomb. Otherwise, it's all damage with strong physicals & Aeon Cannon. Loves to counter with Missile & Delta Attack too. Just pray it uses Scatter Missiles rarely because that very likely puts anyone slammed by at least one or two of the hits in range to be deleted by Delta Attack.

Finally, when a message pops up saying Crusher's preparing to fire, heal up fast. Crusher's next turn will have it using Aeon Cannon four times in a row which can easily delete one or two people if you're unlucky.

Once the bucket of bolts gets dismantled, you'll get a Golden Apple and a much appreciated save point to rest up at.

While I would dive right in to dealing with the statues, there just so happens to be one final task out in the World of Ruin to take care of.


DREAM SHRINE:

Way back in Avalon's Soul, there was a Dream Stone that was picked up in the dream version of Mist Castle. Taking it to Angelo in Fraust will allow you to challenge the Dream Shrine.

The Dream Shrine is basically one massive sized boss rush. Not every single boss in the game is featured, but there's enough fights that you're going to be at it for a VERY long time. Taking at least 2 hours to get through it all might be under estimating the typical amount of time you'll need to full clear it. You only get one shot to full clear it too.

So, why even go through the trouble of attempting this? You'll be able to double up on boss drops & steals. Can be rather nice to get some very rare supplies for the last stretch of the game.

As for equip loadouts, you're going to want that Aeon Crystal relic from the Spellbound Castle equipped to someone. If you can manage to bet the Soul Booster successfully, you can potentially have a second Aeon Crystal to play with. Otherwise, make sure everyone has something equipped that can resist or otherwise nullify multiple elements. The Paladin & Omega Shields are great as are Prism Capes.

As for the team, obviously I had to bring my two buddies Golbez & Otis. Golbez can dish out impressive physical or magical damage and has access to Arise if emergencies arise. Otis can hit 2-3 times with his Jump command thanks to the Dragon Horn and is quite bulky, especially with a Dragon Soul equipped. The final two slots are taken up by Eiko (resists/nullifies a TON of elements with a Starry Hood & Shaman Dress, acts as the main support via the Zohar Shard relic) and Serin (Has all the important white magic spells like Curaga & Arise, helps with quickly clearing out the early sections of the boss rush).

This first part of the gigantic boss rush covers bosses from the WoB. Maybe one or two minor annoyances, but this just serves as the warm up before some of the more dangerous and annoying fights crop up. Can't complain about a second copy of Flame Eagle's Eaglehorn relic though.

Part 2 of the Dream Shrine features just about every non optional boss in the WoR pre-Zuriel's Keep. It's no cakewalk since some of the fights have gimmicks that take a bit of time to deal with or have a decent chunk of health to blast through.

Third leg of this boss rush is another long one, but with quite a few less bosses. That's because the bosses in this segment are of all the optional dragons (and Doomkaiser I suppose too to kick things off).

Not much to mention here aside from a few things. First, Golbez replaces one of his Zodiac Swords with a shield since the optional dragons have some pretty potent and frequent physical strikes for the most part. There's also a time skip after Nidhogg since I took a small break to get up from my chair and stretch before continuing.

Finally...Abraxas actually going amazingly well despite Embolism hitting a couple of my characters.

Only two fights left in this marathon...and the first one is NOT Shenron as you'd probably guess based on my old segment. So, who takes Shenron's spot? Majin Buu from Zuriel's Lair. Not the worst fight...unless he feels like busting out Ultima as seen here. Considering most high end defense-ignoring nukes have peaked at 3.5-4k damage, Buu's almost 5k from Ultima was a surprise and nearly resulted in a run ender.

Also, as I learned, apparently being poisoned and going to 0 hp while in the air means you are not coming back down to earth...or at least take way longer than usual.

The final fight though is the one I was concerned about, Vegnagun. That transition into the third phase is even more of a potential run ender if you're not prepared. Somehow though, my plan this time worked which was to have Otis summon Ark just before heading into the 3rd phase and hope one of the first couple of people to land trigger the 3rd phase, letting me take a full health or nearly full health character into it. Despite being zombified, my man Golbez went on a beautiful rampage with his landing proc'ing a Flare, triggering the 3rd phase transition, then whacking the beast twice more with another Flare proc for good measure.

Once Vegnagun falls (and getting another Omega Shield in the process!), you'll get a bunch of rewards, all of them quite good. You get five each of every tab (might, speed, stamina, magic), one Golden Apple & Soma Drop, and the Jade Skull relic which makes you get no random encounters at all compared to the Talisman's halving of encounters.

Back to Zuriel's Lair next time!


ZURIEL'S GUARDIANS:

Not much left to the game aside from the three guardians standing between the crew and Zuriel's throne. If you can beat Vegnagun, then none of these fights should pose much threat, if any.

First up to fight is Final Fantasy 3's Cloud of Darkness/Dark Cloud. Her expertise is ailments with moves like Lullaby and Particle Beam. The latter is her single target physical strike which can inflict petrify. She's not afraid to use it multiple times in a turn too so you'll want to bring petrification protection for the whole team.

After her one and only extra life gets vaporized, she'll hit someone with Charm. Nuke whomever gets hit by it as quickly as possible to break her control, then revive them.

All things considered, Dark Cloud's probably one of the easier of the three guardians to deal with. She drops a Goddess Ring upon her defeat.

Next up is Exdeath, Final Fantasy V's main villain. That's fine and all...until you realize he's going up against my main A-team alongside Reaper. Not much hope for him sadly, heh.

Golbez is dual wielding Zodiac Swords as per usual, but now he's got a solid relic to boost up his bulk in the form of the Lavos Shard. Coming from betting the Jade Skull, it provides a 25% boost to hp & mp, a 7 point boost to might/magic/stamina/speed, 10 to evasion/magic evade, and 16 magic defense. Even dual wielding, Golbez has a pretty solid 170 def/189 magic def spread. Coupled with a 9.1k hp pool, he's not gonna be easy to topple.

Also of note here is Reaper spending a couple turns trying to get Mighty Guard from using Yoalk before deciding to completely deny Exdeath's elemental attacks by invoking his ultimate defensive soul Omnigear. This enemy found in the Tyrano Tower can let Reaper cast Magitek Barrier on a character. Reflect can be annoying, but Eiko with Sylph equipped can cover for healing until it wears off. More importantly though, using Omnigear grants Reaper absorption for every element in the game. Only non-elemental and physical attacks harm him while the soul's active.

Back to Exdeath...he's more offensive with a wide array of magical attacks. Most aren't going to amount to much, but he's got a nasty habit of using Gravity, then following up with a physical strike. If he hits someone that was struck by the spell, they're most likely dead.

As for his phase changes, he doesn't seem to do anything jaw dropping...but he does grant himself the image status. Either your physical attackers will have to spend a couple turns knocking that off or you can opt to cast Dispel.

Exdeath's only other really dangerous moves are Reverse Polarity and his physical skill Neo Almagest. Shouldn't kill anyone that's on the frontlines as long as they have around 5k-5.5k hp max with 190 or more defense and a casting of Protect placed on them.

Exdeath's drop is the strongest katana Avalon can pair with his Onimusha, the Zanmato. Basically a much stronger Uchigatana.

Finally, there's Final Fantasy 7's venerable Sephiroth. It only made sense that Cloud & Tifa get to come to this fight. Joining them are Shadow and Sephiroth's worst nightmare, Arc.

First off...while most of the rest of my team got grinded to 67-69, Cloud got taken up to lv70. That's where his final Limit, Omnislash V5, is unlocked. When it says it's an insanely powerful 4-hit combo, it means it. Cloud can easily dish out 30-40k without needing to dual wield, allowing him to sit on the frontline with a shield for some solid defenses.

Sephiroth leans on his magical attacks for the bulk of his damage like Exdeath. Unfortunately those magical attacks can be Runic'd by Arc and even Shadow if he mimics right after Arc sets up Runic.

Still, Sephiroth has a couple high end spells you don't want to see go off. Besides Meltdown which Arc denied him to do anything with, I believe he's got Shadow Flare. Unlike with every other boss that had either Ultima or Shadow Flare, Sephiroth can break this out whenever he feels like it with no telltale sign beforehand so you want to keep your hps around the 5k zone at all times.

Once Sephiroth runs out of all his extra lives and hp, he throws out one parting Meteor before accepting his defeat. Just have at least 3k hp on a character to survive it. Sephiroth drops a Lavos Shard on his defeat.


ZURIEL'S FINAL SPEECH:

Everyone finally stands on the switches at the ends of their routes. That gives them a warp right to Zuriel's throne where he gives a long winded typical final boss speech. Nevermind the fact he could have likely nuked everything in the time it took everyone to get here.

In any case, the final battle is massive enough that you get to select the order in which your 12 party members (or less!) get to fight. We'll see what that all means when the final battle commences next time.


FINAL BATTLE:

Everyone's suited up to throw down with Zuriel once and for all. To get to him though, there's a tower of bosses from various Final Fantasy games to blast through.

First up is FFX's Jecht seen in his final aeon form. Out of three tiers here, he's the most dangerous with multiple turns and damage that's not to be underestimated. He also borrowed Dark Cloud's Particle Beam for himself and renamed it to Jecht Beam. He's not afraid to use it twice in a row either so petrification immunity on at least two party members is highly advised.

Oh, and his hands can randomly grab people to disable them.

Once two of the parts fall, I get everyone buffed up. Not really necessary, but I had no idea how the next two tiers were gonna go.

As the team heads to the second tier, keep in mind that any KO'd party members get replaced by the next character on your list. I wasn't planning on anyone in my A-team being KO'd, but I had Aurora & Serin as my main backup should Eiko fall at a bad time.

For the second tier, there's no less than six targets. If the targets had damage anywhere near Jecht's, this would be a fair bit more concerning for losing someone at a bad time. Sadly that is not the case as all of them do pretty bad damage. They also get nuked quickly by repeated Ultima castings (and a random Meteo thrown in for shenanigans too).

The third tier is none other than FFVIII's Seifer & Edea. Nothing real threatening here either. Just make sure everyone's alive before ending this tier.

Zuriel takes his sweet ass time floating down to challenge the party. At least he gets the rocking battle theme that Seymour had in FFX!

Zuriel means business right off the bat when he opens with Heartless Angel on the party. That alone means you have to be very careful with how hard you want to push your offense. This at a bad time could spell a wipe if everyone's committed to an attack, hence why Arc & Eiko for me are on standby this entire fight, maybe tossing out the odd Flare on Eiko's end if I feel like it.

Zuriel seemed to go for a lot of physical strikes during the early parts of the fight. Too bad Golbez summoning Fenrir put a real damper on that plan. 

Once Zuriel decides that pain comes before darkness and does a powerup flash, he becomes immune to all damage for a bit, something I didn't notice right away. Once he glows red and does Dark Force + Dark Matter, he laughs, signifying you can go back on the offensive.

Zuriel finally gets the lead out and starts unleashing some rather painful attacks once his little damage immunity moment is over with. Remember when Sephiroth summoned Terrato? Zuriel does the same, but with Hades here. Damage is low, but Hades can inflict a random ailment on everyone. Too bad Otis was in the air and Arc & Eiko had Aeon Crystals equipped. Golbez? Well, Black Cauldron hit him with berserk. Sir, you just signed your own death warrant. Granted Golbez was doing max damage beforehand, but that's besides the point.

Zuriel's painful attacks include moves like Flare & Hyper Drive, both of which can easily break 3500 damage or more on the target hit. He still has Heartless Angel and can even chain it into Anti-magic Field to rip off your buffs.

Sadly for Zuriel, that Heartless Angel & Anti-magic Field combo got met with almost 50k damage between Golbez & Otis, bringing him down once and for all.


THE END:

Zuriel's dead, magic's going kaput from the world, and everyone has to hoof it out on foot from the now collapsing keep. Everyone except Golbez that is. After he helps clear a path, he teleports out. As if he didn't put in enough X shenanigans this playthrough already, heh.

With that, another run of this fine hack comes to an end. Insane difficulty definitely started out vicious with a brutal early game that didn't start letting up a bit until after the scenario split. The WoR had it's own share of nasty moments, but nothing like the early game. Reminded me a bunch of the Trails in the Sky trilogy where each game's early game was nasty on their hardest difficulty setting, Nightmare (ESPECIALLY the second game), then eased up as more options became available.

Until next time!