LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

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LFT Monk SCC

Barius Hill:  Resets: lots.

I concluded pretty fast that this was not reasonably doable without grinding.  Elemental was dealing half my health, and that was bad.  Grinded from level 5 to level 9 in the end, and mastered most of the skillset plus picked up a reaction on everyone, then it was smooth sailing.  But I did make attempts at lesser grind amounts like level 7 and still got smashed.  So...I went from having Chakra on no one for Zaland Fort City, to having Chakra, Revive, Earth Slash, and a reaction on everyone, plus I hit the level 7 speed point.  Then it was relatively trivial.  I think the level 7 speed point was probably the part that really made it trivial--since the Archers are Geomancers in LFT, and the Lancers don't seem to jump, there was just no downside to being faster than the enemies, and it let me do things like kill one Geomancer before they could act, and spread out for elemental.

EDIT:

Zigolis Swamp: 0 resets.

I am very glad I had revive for this, as it was a sandbag slog, where the Malboro just couldn't figure out how to reach the party so hung out in the back and then gave itself protect and HP restored, meanwhile undead kept reviving and thunder soul from skeletons hits for 60.

Goug Machine City: 0 resets.

This was also a long sandbagging slog, could have gone bad if revive missed early on I guess, but I hit my first 7 or so revives so it never felt like I was at risk of losing.

Barius Valley: 0 resets

At this point I have Hammedo on everyone.  Slap it on so that I can run towards the knights and bait them to hit me instead of Agrias.  But this was fairly trivial.

Golgorand: 0 resets

At this point I have effectively mastered the class (everything except for Counter and Martial Arts).  Also, I have power sleeves cause it's LFT, which feels fairly busted right now.  Knights and sometimes Time Mages get baited with Hammedo.  Gaffy dies to three earth slashes, two of which kill an archer before she even gets a turn.  The longbow archer died pretty fast.  Which leaves very few threatening units.  The Elemental Knight was somewhat threatening cause he insisted on using elemental instead of physical attacks.  The Throw Knight was also decent about using throw.

Gate of Lionel: 1 reset

I went in not equipping rubber shoes, kind of out of arrogance, but I figured with hammedo I'd rather have the monks try to auto attack me.  Surprise, none of them ever use an auto-attack.  The monks, even without rubber shoes prioritize secret fist (which lands on both).  This probably would have been fine, if the Summoner wasn't also bad compatibility, survived two earth slashes, and front-evaded...either once or twice.  Anyway, went back in still without rubber shoes, cause I just am not that scared of the archers.  I did switch to HP restore, though it didn't matter very much.

Queklain: 0 resets

Probably should have switched in Rubber Shoes since a bunch of my characters hit a PA point.  Or set Hammedo instead of HP restore to negate the Knights, but whatever, I Secret Fisted both knights--first successful use of Secret Fist by me, by the way.  I've tried to use it in other fights, and it always missed, and then I always ended up just killing with damage before attempting a secret fist again.

---

Anyway, Chapter 2 done.  Heading into Chapter 3 I'm planning to use Feather Boots for a while since I just hit a PA point, and this will let me earth slash through my own party members (as well as giving a move bonus of course, cause LFT buffed Feather Boots that way).  I have no plans to buy Germinas boots.  LFT Monks have Jump+3, and I believe jump actually caps at 7 from the FFT engine.  Levels are around level 13--obviously I grinded to level 9 for Germinas Peak, but there were a number of long sandbag revive chain fights throughout the rest of Chapter 2.

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Chapter 3

Goland Coal City: 0 resets

Jump+3 lets me jump onto the roof and chakra Olan.  Hamedo beats Thieves (sometimes).

Zalmo: 0 resets

UBS2: 0 resets

All the lancers are pre-set with Defence Up, so they are quite hard to kill.  But...wore feather boots, and quintuple earth slashed one Lancer to kill one, killed time mages and chemist (Alex) as they came up.  And then almost lost anyway because Ramza died on the staircase where there's 2 height between panels.  Wouldn't have been as close as it was if I hadn't tried to secret fist.  Man...on paper secret fist is the answer to things with defence up, but in practice not really.

Izlude (UBS2): 0 resets

Just earth slash him a lot, and then stand next to him with hamedo.

Wiegraf 2 (UBS1): 5ish resets.

Needed to use this formation

0 . 0
_ . 0
0 . 0

There are other formations that only get hit by one lightning stab, but across several resets this seemed to do better at important stuff like not getting 3 people hit by Elemental.

Ramza, the only person with good compatibility needed to be in one of the far right corners (to avoid getting one-shot by lightning stab).  Earth Clothes are an option at this point, but they lower my damage and make it so that Wiegraf doesn't put into critical with lightning stab, so I don't like them.  Leather Mantles get pulled out over feather boots.  Honestly, it doesn't even matter if I kill my own teammates with earth slash--they aren't getting turn 2.  Wiegraf does need to have Lightning Stab--if he only has stasis sword that won't quite trigger HP restore and that's a reset.  Both HP restores from Wiegraf's Lightning Stab must trigger.  And none of the elementals can put people to sleep or don't act them.  Then, with five actions, it's possible to kill, although not with earth slashes alone, so I need to get through his evasion twice.

---

Well, I guess it was going to happen eventually--after getting power sleeves in Chapter 2, and feeling like I had godly offence for a bit, now my offence is back to being kinda unremarkable again, like not enough to confidently kill Wiegraf 2.  I wonder if I'm going to need to grind for Riovanes.  Seems...possible?

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Monk SCC chapter 3 continued.

Grog Hill: 0 resets.

Yardow Fort City: 1 reset.

The summoners are actually a problem as I am faster than them with no way of becoming slower, and they often have stuff like Odin.  Used smarter position the second time so that fewer people were getting hit by opening summons, and then prioritized killing them over the ninjas or malak (both of whom in theory could get their turn cancelled by hammedo).  We're well into the earth clothes part of the game now, so earth slash bad here, but charging forward towards summoners means that I use spin fist quite a bit actually.

Worth noting, it wasn't an option my first attempt, but jumping Ramza up onto the wall is actually a pretty good idea.  The summoners ignored him cause they couldn't catch him in an AoE with any other unit.  There's only one spot to jump up onto the wall near the starting location, though, and the ninjas can block it.

Yugo woods: 0 resets.

Bracers are out now.  They are heavily nerfed in LFT (+2 PA instead of +3 PA) but they will probably still get used quite a bit.

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At this point, I'm around levels 16-18, and I decide that there's a high likelihood that I will need to grind to higher levels for at least one of the fights in Riovanes, and I don't want to go through a few hours of attempts on some fight in that dungeon just to find out that, say, on the roof I need more levels due to the assassins absorbing earth or something.  (Turns out they don't absorb earth, but neither me nor Laggy could remember if they did).

So I grind up to level 23 (some of the party was level 22 for gate of riovanes, but everyone was 23 by velius).  That got me the 8 speed point, and also the next PA point (which is a bit more minor since it is an odd PA point).

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Gate of Riovanes: 1 reset

So a fight with Knights and Archers after grinding +6 levels and getting bracers, should be a stomp right?  Well...no not really, cause all of the knights are status spammers, and I can't easily get to the Archers (Jump+3 doesn't let me jump up from the gate--10 height jump; I have 7 jump).  Also, hitting the 8 speed point means the Archers are landing big charges on me.  The Knights...one of them's a talkskill knight, another one has elemental with nasty statuses on this map, and the third one has martial arts, which means they spam secret fist (stigma magic cures don't move but not death sentence).  It's non-trivial to meaningfully cut down on the enemy offence quickly--the Knights are knights, and the archers are out of reach.  First attempt, the battle was starting to get under control, then Ramza died on a panel that's not reachable with Revive, and couldn't finish the fight fast enough.

I won the second attempt cause two archers decided it would be a good idea to use their ignore height to jump down to ground level, and were thus easy kills.

The one other interesting note is that I did get good value out of Secret Fist this fight.  Like...normally I just pile on damage to knights, and they end up dead before secret fist kills them anyway, but in this fight, Secret Fisting the two knights in the water while the rest of the party was dealing with problems elsewhere worked reasonably well.

Inside Riovanes: 6-8 resets

So...weird surprise.  In vanilla, Velius is 8 speed, but in LFT, Velius is 7 speed.  Like...demons were actually acting before him.  I had previously grinded up to the level 8 speed point, which basically meant I just wasted my turn 1.

Anyway, strategy for wiegraf was to run forward, earth slash him, strip off MP switch, he lightning stabs, not quite enough to knock me to HP restore range, so I run away and chakra, then he screams once, and now his lightning stab will knock me into HP restore range (if I am at full, which I am not).  I chakra again to get back to full so I can take the hit.  HP restore.  Two Earth Slashes make him run.  But you know, stuff can still go wrong--HP restore can fail to go off.  Wiegraf can crit and kill.  Ramza can get zombied (which should get stigma magiced as it will shut down revive during Velius).

Velius...I was genuinely wondering if I didn't grind enough, but after enough attempts, yeah, 23 is high enough.  In LFT you basically always need to kill the demons, and I was roughly two-shotting demons with wave fist (133 wave fists) so...a doable level range.  A lot of my resets were due to revive failing.  89% success chance so maybe bad luck, but the fight does involve a lot of reviving, and pretty much any early revive miss is a fight loss.  Once the demons are dead it should be almost impossible to lose, but the demons do have collectively around 800 HP, and it can be easy to get stuck just reviving over and over.  Obviously multiple heights are highly encouraged so that only one person gets hit by giga flare.  The LFT buff on revive to have vert 1 was heavily exploited to keep everyone on different heights.

Earth Slash was quite bad in this fight--at least a couple of my early resets were because I was trying an earth clothes earth healing setup, but the staircase just has too much vertical.  Know what wasn't bad in this fight, though?  Spin Fist.  Charging forward isn't so bad when you have revival and it naturally spreads out the party and puts people on different heights.  Getting damage on Velius is absolutely fine for this SCC.  Like...I would much rather he be using Spark than Cyclops.

The fight I won I had one Monk just perfectly surviving Cyclops at HP restore range, and landing every HP restore, so that obviously helped too.  Velius was about to get a crystal and heal to full, but I probably would have still won even if he did--once all the demons are dead, chain revives are very good against him.

Roof of Riovanes: 0 resets

I thought there was going to be an issue where one assassin would be ultra tanky, and the other absorbed earth and had insane evade or something.  Yeah, no, none of that happened.  Assassins charged Ultima (on Ramza cause he has way less HP than Rafa).  I killed in two earth slashes--two of my characters didn't even get a turn, and I could have double redirected two Ultimas if necessary.  Just...way more damage than I actually needed.

Doguola Pass: 0 resets

Laggy was joking that he was ready for Doguola to be harder than any of the fights in Riovanes.  It was...pretty trivial honestly.  My big decision point was earth slashing a teammate on round 1 to get rid of confusion that was added by Elemental.  But like...both monks ran forward and died quite fast.  Priests and Samurai died pretty fast too.  Which only left two lancers with Protect and Defence Up.  I couldn't really kill them any time soon.  But like...I had five characters with revival, and they're singletarget.  Also, I forgot to take off Hammedo, and occasionally they walked into that.

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Miscellaneous equipment thoughts

Earth Clothes have not impressed me so far.  I tried to pull them out for Velius and they just seemed bad.  They're a notable damage loss, including making Earth Slash itself deal less damage (at least at this level).  I know from a recent LFT playthrough that there's lots of earth clothes in Chapter 4, so I'm not expecting to be spamming Earth Slash too often this chapter either.

Picked up Judo Outfits at the start of Chapter 4.  I'm at an odd PA point, so they do represent +30 HP for very little damage loss.  Used them in Dugola pass.  Despite all my grinding to higher levels, monk HP is still pretty bad (level 24 and 182 HP with power sleeve) so 30 HP is enticing.

Leather mantles still had some relevance even after bracer came out.  Used them in Gate of Riovanes since once again, I'm at an odd PA point.  And also gate of riovanes is an unusually good map for evasion, being nighttime with archers.  I do suspect that the odd PA point gear of choice will usually be Judo Outfits and not leather mantle in chapter 4, but maybe I'll pull them out again for some fight where evaison is good.

PA boosting accessories like Bracers, while heavily nerfed in LFT are probably still just correct outside of maybe status blocking for specific fights.  Bracer right now represents about a 40% damage boost.  Swapping it out for Leather Mantle is obviously possible when PA is odd, but I'm skeptical about swapping it out for, say, Angel Rings.

Bracer over something like angel ring also represents 3% more hitrate on Revive, which I do unironically care about.  Dropping from 88% to 85%...that's not nothing.  Thinking of it in terms of failure chances, 12% chance to fail, or 15% chance to fail.

Move+1 gear, so like feather boots, when it was a viable choice thanks to even PA did feel quite nice.  I don't think such luxuries can really be justified after Bracer, though.

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Monk SCC chapter 4 (continued)

Meliadoul/Bervennia Free City: 1 reset.

I had forgotten that Meliadoul's AI is changed in LFT, where she sometimes just retreats.  I also forgot to switch to HP Restore.  Not that Hammedo is completely useless in this fight (there are Ninjas) but archers and summoners are the problem.  Finally, because I expected Meliadoul to charge forward, I equipped for slightly higher damage with Power Sleeves and 13 PA, instead of more HP with Judo Outfits and 12 PA.

Attempt 2, hang as far back as possible to bait all the enemies off of the areas with height variation.  I mean, with Jump+3, technically monks can get up there, so maybe there's a viable strategy to fight on the roof, but regardless, one thing I learned on my first attempt is that fighting anywhere near the staricases is awful for monks.  But I suspect retreating and waiting for enemies to come down is better than running onto the roof anyway--having the enemies come down splits them up a bit better, so that I can fight the summoners and ninjas first, and then later fight Meliadoul.

Lost 3 judo outfits and a Bracer to Meliadoul, cause she's very physically tanky so she required several rounds of reviving two people, and having three other people attack, but I mean, money isn't too much of a concern.  I guess this money loss means I've dipped below the amount of money I would need if I wanted 5 angel rings, but oh well, bracers are fine for now.  (I am admittedly not as rich as I could be with my levels, cause when I fought randoms to gain levels I did it in a few long randoms were sat around and used chakra and punching teammates).

Finath River: 0 resets

I was wondering if this fight would be a problem cause my levels are not all that low (level 26) and...the potential was there.  Like Choco Meteor was dealing 160 damage, and it's a fight with enough vertical variation to cause problems, and a lot of places I wanted to position myself were depth 2.  However...only 1 Red Chocobo spawned on my first attempt (along with a Uribo who died to an earth slash before it could cause chaos).  Yellow Chocobo choco balls were only dealing 50-60.  So...yeah, still ended up being trivial.

Zalmo 2: 0 resets

He has like 1000 effective MP due to MP switch and 100 brave, but like...he doesn't do anything.  I'm also able to jump up onto the roof thanks to Jump+3, so I get to ignore the Samurai for a long time (the samurai proceed to murder Delita).

Balk 1: 3 resets

So...here's the first real fight where I decided Earth Clothes were both worth using and actually better than what I had been using.  I did switch back to Judo Outfits for one attempt when I was still losing with Earth Clothes, but switched back to Earth Clothes for the successful attempt.

The Mediators are absolutely must kill in this fight.  They attack for about 160 with book autos, and one of them (Richard's cameo I believe) has raise 2.  So the PBF should be everyone but Ramza clustered on the Mediator side of the PBF, and then round 1 should be the whole party running to that side to earth slash them (should be able to hit at least one; the winning attempt I was able to hit two with a couple earth slashes).

Earth clothes mean lower damage with earth slash (and with everything else obviously), but this is a fight where you end up chain reviving a lot, on relatively flat terrain, and then if you can earth slash one enemy while hitting all your freshly revived monks in a row, it's pretty good for you.

---

Laggy expressed surprise that a PA loss of 1 was less damage for Earth Slash, but...yep, it is.

For the earth clothes numbers strengthen earth goes 11*5/4 => 13.  Martial arts goes 13*3/2 => 19.  The second value is 11/2 => 5.  19*5 = 95.

For the judo outfit numbers martial arts goes 12*3/2 = 18.  The second value is 12/2 = 6.  18*6 = 108.  So because it's an odd PA point, +1 PA is about 14% more damage than strengthen.

Things will change somewhat at the next PA point.

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EDIT 2:

Speaking of which I just hit the next PA point (on most characters).  Something I just overlooked is that at this PA point, strengthen element is now an effective +3, taking me from 12 PA to 15 PA, so that's pretty nice for Earth Clothes setups.

South Wall of Bethla Garrison: 1 reset.

OK, so I went in thinking "I'll just slap on hammedo and beat a bunch of Knights and Ninjas".  Yeah, so in LFT, the knights are Samurais with Equip Bow.  There's only one Ninja.  There's multiple enemies with Talk Skill and death sentence lands on my whole party.  There's mediators with guns and attack up.  Yeah, fuck this fight I'm out.

North Wall of Bethla Garrison: 0 resets.

So...immediately after the first earth clothes fight, we have our second earth clothes fight.  Mostly because there's two monks in this fight, and I don't want to get murdered by earth slash.

Bethla Garrison: 0 resets

I did actually use earth clothes here too since it's known as a very slow long grindy fight, but IDK if it even mattered.  Probably was the slightly better setup choice cause 0 vert Chakra probably can't heal anyone in this fight.  Lining up for earth healing was admitedly really funny when I had a line of monks on the bridge blocking the enemy knights, and then one of the Knights used Kikuichimoji and hit the whole party.  Nobody died, but it was funny.  But for the most part, isolating enemies in this fight was fairly trivial.  Wizards ran forward and got hit while charging.  One archer had a crossbow and just bugged out as AI.  So I was mostly able to fight enemies one or two at a time.

Focusing on earth damage does seem to make for some very long fights, though.  Some knights had jade armlets, so they were knights who were halving earth damage.

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EDIT3:

Germinas Peak: 0 resets

And after 3 earth clothes fights in a row, it's back to a power sleeve fight cause uh yeah, these enemies need to die.  I stick with HP restore on this one--certainly a fight where Hammedo could be good, but throws, draw outs, bow hits, there's just a lot to be HP restored, and there's a decent chance the melee attackers just have low HP and die.  One of the thieves has equip katana and the weak to all elements katana, so you can imagine my surprise when I see a nearly 300 damage earth slash.

Poeskas Lake: 0 resets

This is also obviously a power sleeve fight since everything floats.  (And also obviously an HP restore fight).  I believe the Revnants are scaled to party level, so they're all around level 31 or so.  I'm not used to seeing Revenants take 147 damage and not die (well, except when they MP switch of course).

Long fight.  Good fight for stigma magic, good fight for spin fist.  But mostly just a very long fight--the revenants take a while to kill while I try to stigma magic the slow they're adding.  By the time they're dead, the mages are on top of me.  Kill summoner as a priority.  Stigma Magic cures a paralyze.  Spin Fist cures two party members of confusion (dealing 147 damage to them, but honestly I think that's worth).  And by around that time the enemies started reaching 0 and approximately half of them revived.  One of the revived revenants grabbed a crystal and re-activated its MP switch.  Meanwhile, I have a couple monks chasing down the archer who doesn't want to come forward.  Yeah, just a fight that takes a long time to clean up.

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Outside of Limberry: 0 resets.

Inside of Limberry: 2-3 resets.

I have the version of LFT where Elmdor does not have Teleport 2, so like...the intention seems to be to deal with the assassins first.

I first tried placing everyone in the back, and killing the assassins to get the fight under control.  Yeah, was not happening.

I next tried giving everyone earth clothes.  Yeah, still didn't seem to be that great of a plan.

Winning run I did earth slash my own party, but used power sleeve+bracer just kill Elmdor.

Zalera: (ongoing, 4 resets).

The Knights are a problem cause they OHKO me.

I can swap out HP Restore for Hammedo, but like...HP Restore is good in this fight too, and the one time I tried doing so, Hammedo failed 3/5 times.

I've tried blitzing Zalera, but normally this isn't a good plan thanks to speed save, and I think I only dealt about 600 damage to him when I tried (Laggy tells me he has like 1500 HP in this version).

If I go Power Sleeve he mostly uses Flare 2, which is alright.  I've also tried earth clothes, which causes him to use stop.  I've also tried black costume, which causes him to use Confuse 2.  In vanilla I do remember that black costume was a silver bullet here, but TBH, none of these equipment setups felt like they were getting me a big edge.

I could just hope for really good luck at this point--hope that none of the skeletons revive, equip Hammedo and hope it never fails against the knights.

But...I did expect to need to grind some levels in Chapter 4, probably makes sense to grind some levels now.  I'm around level 31-33, so like...IDK, probably 5 levels gets me 9 speed or something, 9 speed sounds pretty cool.

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EDIT: ok, well, level 38 on everyone now, which gets 9 speed, and 11 base PA.  11 base PA is also kinda nice for earth clothes, because if you wear bracer you have 13 PA, which strengthen raises to 16, and then martal arts raises to 24.  So...24*6 = 144.  It's still not amazing cause it's odd PA, but it's a rare case where being odd PA isn't the worst.


EDIT2:  Limberry complete

Outside Limberry (second time): 0 resets

Inside Limberry (second time): 0 resets

Zalera (second time): 0 resets

So...one of the reasons I wanted to go back to my save point and grind is that I had not bought feather mantles, didn't have a spare set of 5 in my inventory, and they seemed like they would be relatively good for this fight, since almost everything in this fight is evadable.  (Knight attacks are evadable, Flare 2 is evadeable, Skeleton Souls are evadable).  And since often the Monk SCC devolves into "spam revive chains" just needing to revive less frequently seemed good.  Of course the 9 speed point helps with revive spam too.  So my equipment was Power Sleeve + Feather Mantle.  My reaction was HP restore.

And yeah, this plan worked fairly well.

But what I didn't account for was that at some point Zalera used all his MP, and then his only legal action was Spell.  (Laggy removed his ability to use physical attacks) and of course I was not blocking Stop.  Combined with speed save he would often have 3 or 4 monks stopped at all times.  A Knight also used power break on one of my two characters who had good compatibility with Zalera, so I was dealing like 100 damage per hit with three of my characters.  Must have been like speed 24 by the end.

Weird fight.  Like I don't think there was a risk of him getting so fast that he could keep all 5 characters stopped forever, but on the other hand he wasn't that far off, often had 4 characters stopped.  And of course I needed to be careful to never move two monks adjacent to each other, so often when a character got a turn they just ended up passing turn.

I'm not sure if equipping Black Costumes would have been better, though.  Power Sleeves do help clean up the skeletons fast, and increase chakra healing, both of which were important for reaching that part of the fight.

EDIT3:

Adramelk: 2 resets.

So ok, waiting on the bottom for the knights and dycedarg to come down resulted in a fight against sing-buffed dycedarg and one remaining knight that took about an hour that I eventually lost due to failing a couple revives.  I decided that even if that was the highest winrate plan that something less time consuming would be better.

So I slapped Hammedo on everyone and used Jump+3 to get to the high section of the map early and try to bait knights into not singing.  This actually works quite well.

Adramelk...so I'm able to bait him with Hammedo as well.  The AI will prioritize attacking with a blood sword over using night sword if there's no compelling positioning reason to use night sword.

That said, first fight lasts a really long time, like I gain 3 levels in the fight as Hammedo keeps failing at bad times, and eventually I get a clump of people hit by charm and wipe.

Second attempt he just dies pretty much instantly (without even Critical Quick going off).

Laggy did bring up a good point that I was trying to just surround him on 3 sides, but secret fist adding don't move meant I didn't need to get three people into position right away, one or two people could sit in melee with secret fist and bait the physicals with Hammedo without getting the perfect surround.  This helped.

I would imagine that Power Sleeve+Bracer might work better on Adramelk, as the hits would come in bigger chunks, which handles critical quick a bit better, even if several people can't get meaningful turns without killing allies.  (Some people stand at point blank to bait melee attacks, and other people try to be out of range).  The gear I used was Earth Clothes+Bracer, which I think might be important for the first half of the fight, to go full offence with earth slash on singing knights and dycedarg without worrying about my HP getting too low.  The knights and dycedarg fight is definitely an earth slash kind of fight--bunch of high evade enemies none of whom are immune to earth, and I am at a PA point where earth clothes+bracer does okay compared to power sleeve+bracer for earth slash (power sleeve+bracer still a bit more, but we're talking 154 instead of 144).

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Monk SCC Chapter 4 continued.

Outside Murond: 0 resets

Fight was a little dicey getting everyone together and getting people revived, but it was fine.

Inside Murond: 1 resets

So...Ramza's position in this fight is such that he will always get hit round one.  So...Ramza gets an angel ring.  Everyone else goes Power Sleeve.  Rofel appears to be the squishiest target so I go after him.  Even with all that, it's still not enough to one-round Rofel, but I get him on round 2 losing two pieces of equipment.

Zalbag: 4 resets (so far)

So...several attempts were just getting completely flattened.  Using HP restore I seemed to be getting smashed.  Going after the enemies, after a couple of attempts I managed to kill two of them; I knew Zalbag had revival in LFT, but I was thinking like...I don't know, regular raise or something.  It's room-wide instant revival.  So that seems non-viable.

The winning strategy seemed to be set hammedo and as much as possible just keep everyone healed with earth slashes, catch Zalbag in the earth slash when feasible to do so.  This got him down to about 40% health before revive chains screwed up.

I could probably just repeat this strategy over and over till it works, but now that I have a strategy that looks semi viable I think I will back out of the dungeon, get to the level 43 PA point since it is a massive upgrade (even PA point) and try the strategy again, cause like...I'm at least now at a point where I have a strategy where one extra PA could make a difference.

EDIT:

Redo at level 43.

All three fights: 0 resets.

Outside was a bit dicey, cause Meeple loaded with some real mathskills.  But...was still fine.

Inside: now I only get one piece of equipment broken!

Zalbag: Honestly, things were going kind of rough, a lot of missed hammedos on Zalbag.  A lot of hit hammedos on archaic demons which activated their lifebreaks.  Zalbag was using bloodsuck, healing him.  (He did blood suck someone, but then stood on unique height panels so they did nothing).  But then the Ultima Demon decided to drop a hurricane that hit Zalbag, chunking off 270 of his HP, and I was able to blitz him down from there.

Did the extra levels matter?  Yeah, I think so--obviously Zalbag getting hit by Hurricane is a big deal that doesn't depend on my level, but I don't think I blitz him down that turn without the additional levels.  I also don't heal as much with earth slash throughout the rest of the fight, so less healing and less max HP might have caused the fight to just wipe earlier on.

EDIT:

UBS4: 0 resets

So...one thing I've noticed is that while earth clothes vs not earth clothes is sometimes an interesting discussion, any fight that has enemy monks is just a windmill slam on the earth clothes, cause it also blanks the enemies on top of doing itts normal good stuff.

Scariest enemy here is the same as the Time Mage SCC: Nitori.  Something like 16 effective speed, floats, has a feather mantle with abandon, so immune to earth slash, and 80% evade against everything else, and crazy high damage and speed.  That said he's not immune to secret fist, and the rest of the fight is pretty trivial.

UBS5/Rofel: 1 reset

I plan ahead for this fight, buy 10 copies of every piece of equipment I might possibly use in this fight so that I can get every piece of equipment broken and still advance past the fight.  Even with this plan, I still die once to just the raw damage output of the fight.

Kletian: 4 resets

OK, I will admit I was not expecting the "more weak to physical damage than magic damage" fight to be the problem fight, but here we are.  Laggy tells me I have an old version of LFT, and there's a new version where Robe of Lords does not have auto protect.  But...Robe of Lords does have auto protect on this version, and rushing Kletian down just seems like a non-starter.

Anyway, I was just getting smashed in this fight generally...until I got into a weird state where Kletian retreated and did nothing.  Ah, ok, so he has that style of AI.  I immediately exploit this by running everyone away on turn 1 to the far left corner (killing both Ninjas with earth slashes) and sure enough: Kletian just retreats and sits in a corner.  This makes a huge difference--hasted kletian would kill one or two people every turn through cover.  With this setup, now I can deal with enemies one or two at a time as they arrive in my corner.  I kill every enemy in the fight, and wait for them all to crystallize boxilize, except I didn't know how cursed ring works in LFT (cursed ring gives you immune to crystallization, so the one undead Ninja could never be fully neutralized).  Once every other unit was taken care of, I ran forward to corner Kletian.

On my winning run I also used Hammedo.  I think Hammedo is probably slightly better than HP restore for this fight, cause it's better against that one cursed ring Ninja who will never fully go away, but like...I think the fight can be won comfortably with either reaction.  The really important part of the strategy is bugging out Kletian's AI so that you're just fighting a battle against six normal enemies.

[metroid composite]

Monk SCC final update

Balk 2: About 3 resets?

Tried blitzing him with earth clothes, concluded that this was not enough damage.  Tried glitching out his AI and dealing with all the monsters and chemist first.  Got smoked.

Really made an effort to blitz him, like took off the earth clothes put on power sleeves, and earth slashed my own party members.  He lives with 3 HP as I have some bad compatibility.  I figure it's a reset, but the Chemist decides that shooting and killing ramza is a better use of his time than X-potion.  One monk is both alive and in range to get off one last earth slash.

Hashmallum: 0 resets.

Yeah, earth healing trivializes this fight.  I'm generally healing more to my party than I am taking from damage split.

Altima: 3 resets

Don't let the reset count fool you, this fight is still pretty awful, and I suspect I got fairly lucky.

Form 1, Altima cannot be blitzed, having more than double the effective HP of vanilla FFT.  So...I need to focus down the demons.  Anectodally this seems to be rough unless I can get at least two to line up for earth slash, so that three are dead by the end of turn 2. Once three are dead the fourth will follow soon enough.

Form 2, so there's several considerations here:

* Grand Cross is awful and she mostly spams it.  In general, getting two people hit by Grand Cross, if status lands on both of them is close to disaster territory, cause a third monk will need to wander into range to stigma magic and now you're probably getting three people hit by Grand Cross.
* Berserk and Confusion off of Grand Cross are especially awful, because they can't be cured by Stigma Magic.
* It's very important to babysit Alma.  Like...have a dedicated MP battery follow her around.  She can run out of MP.  She can get killed by damage, reraise, and then sit for three turns on a unique height panel where she can't be chakra'd.  But, worth noting, her status curing spell DOES cure berserk and confusion.

On my win I managed to spend most of the fight with all my characters spread in such a way that only one could be hit with grand cross, and she still was often using grand cross on one target anyway.  I think I still have problems if she uses some of her larger AoE moves.  The move with the un-truth formula is OHKOing some of my characters (they're like SCC faiths, so 40ish).  All Ultima is OHKOing some of my characters.

I suspect I got pretty lucky on the run I won.  Grand crosses frequently used on one target and missing.  The AoE gravity+dispel move being used and missing at some key moments.  Moments when three of my party members were clumped but got turns soon enough to spread out for grand cross.

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OK, so speculation time, what other classes do I think could beat Altima.

* Chemists.  Having ranged status curing helps.  And they would farm elemental guns from randoms so low damage isn't a concern either.  I suspect Chemists might hit some walls before they get elemental guns though.
* White Mages.  Also have ranged status curing.  In vanilla running out of MP was an issue on this fight, but like...if you grind as much as I did for the monk SCC the MP issue should be solved (ended the game around level 50, which yeah, should mean a good amount of MP).  Worth noting White Mages can not restore Alma's MP, though.
* Thieves unironically get four females and poach ribbons and chantages.  Hope either Ramza goes ignored, or just gets petrified by grand cross in form 2.  Now, I mean, can Thieves even get to Altima? Can thieves actually manage to poach all that stuff? I have no idea!

And then there are the classes that I have some faith in but seem a bit iffy.  Like...most of the mages.  (Iffy because Altima is where Summoners got walled, but at the same time a bunch of the other mages at least have some interesting property that summoners do not have--like Oracles have gravity effects that aren't darkness damage, and Altima halves dark.  Calculators have infinite range esuna, but they lack revival or damage).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Congrats!

On your final thoughts: Spell Absorb specifically is extra good against Altima (since it takes a higher percentage... I forget if it goes through Wall?) so I would be surprised if Oracles don't manage. And to be clear, I felt like Summoners could manage, just... would need more levels than I got (I think I was in the 30's? Would have to check), so that says good things for Time Mage as well.

[metroid composite]

Spell Absorb does indeed go through wall (and eats 40% of max MP instead of 25%, and of course the other thing with oracles is that neither Spell Absorb nor Life Drain are darkness damage so they do not get halved).

So yeah, Oracles definitely have the best blitz raw damage potential of the bunch.

The main thing with oracles in LFT that makes me hesitate from saying yeah, that'll just be a slam dunk is the range.

Life Drain and Spell Absorb have been nerfed to 3 range in LFT.  So I mean, Wave Fist range.  Slightly better because of infinite vert (which does come up even on graveyard of airships.  lol--Wave fist vert makes me sad sometimes).  But yeah, there will be some natural clumping, and some Oracles that can't get into range.  Might be Oracles kill fast enough that they can just clump up and reset until good grand cross RNG, though.