Final Fantasy Dimensions - Of drunken paladins
This chapter actually picks up in the middle of the dungeon where Dusk fought Argy-2. There are a few fights on the way out, against the same enemies from before. Nothing too new and since the escape is quite short I can go all out on resources, so I don't have any specific trouble even though the fights aren't trivial.
After that I arrive in Berth, restock on items, and head to Mt. Wells. Notably there's a mantis random on the plains here which doubleacts for like 600 to the back row per hit, 100% accuracy. Um, ow.
Mt. Wells: A difficult dungeon! I experiment with a few setups including Summoner (not great but it means a lot of starting MP, can use Deep Freeze is I desperately need ST), Dragoon (can outslug some enemies but really doesn't work well as we'll see), and Red Mage (either using Dragon Arts for good MT or Black Magic... the latter ends up being more useful).
-Caladrius: Birds. Holy hell they hit like trucks, even with Protect Bangle + back row they can do 600 with Dive, or inflict blind. They can be confused and will do like 1100 to themselves, that's fun at least. A quick MT blitz can let me win slugfests (two summons, four dragon arts) but it's not a given.
-Floating Death: Hits decently hard but not as hard. Casts Confuse. Block that with Gold-Spun Robe so they waste some turns.
-Juggernaut: Vanilla enemy. Weak to fire but decent HP. Fira spam can take them out before they kill me usually since they're not super-damaging, but if necessary various status (sleep/stop) slows 'em down too.
-Purobolos: Unfortunately puts a lid on Fira spam since they absorb it! They also use Firaga which hits quite hard (600-700) or weak physicals. Weak to ice for MT spam there, or vulnerable to Break.
-Coeurl: Douchebags. They have Blaster. Remember Blaster? Nothing I can do about its instant death. If it inflicts paralysis... well, Gold-Spun Hat can stop that. Vulnerable to various status so hit them with one immediately. I usually use Sleep first since it's fast then Confuse so they can't wake up and get a Blaster immediately.
-Mythril Dragon: When they're at full HP, their Blight Wing does 1200-1300 damage. Um, ow. They also use rather nasty physicals or a MT Blizzard Breath which is their least scary thing. Confuse works; they hit themselves for 1600! Stop works. Tornado works.
Stop + Confuse or Sleep + Confuse are very safe lockdown strategies for a single enemy. With Black Level 5 I can then cast Osmose repeatedly to regain all my MP. Definitely nice! Ethers are still kinda expensive (I'd need one per battle at least at this point).
Vata 3 (1 reset) - Oh look, he's back again. Anyway he once again doesn't have Tornado so no worries about cheap deaths. At high HP, Vata can use physical x2 (about 300 per swing to back row + Protect) or Thunder Breath (500), sometimes mixing in Jump (1300) which keeps me honest. He's quite fast and I do lose once to consecutive Jumps, so I have to be a bit more conservative with my Sylph use. He can use Howling Gale for 500 damage and Sap, as usual.
Later in the fight he mixes in Lancet (drins resources a little, generally a breather though), Wild Dance (does around as much as Jump roughly), and Buffet (his scariest move since it can stun sometimes, and does 900 damage). This is all basically the exact same skillset as his previous fight, just scaled up.
I run Red Mage with Int+20 and Summon and the Memorial Ring for +3 to all stats, Protect / -ara / Sylph strategy applies. The biggest issue I have here is that I run out of MP and... I don't have any Dry Ethers or Elixirs! Right, I used them all up on the previous Vata and Argy-2. So I scramble around late in the fight and use two regular Ethers and two X-Potions for emergency healing and then mercifully am able to win. Definitely wish I'd saved at least a Dry Ether; I was sub-optimal in the previous Vata fight for sure and kinda paid for it a bit here. Then again, only one reset so everything turned out fine I suppose.
There's a flashback sequence with solo Gawain; not much to say about it, Charge spam for the win.
Back to Berth and then we get a solo Sarah section. Fortunately she's still Level 21 from the section in the Memorist chapter and this proves adequate; I run Red Mage and use Teleport every fight. There's a healing pot halfway through Mount Burtgang (the short dungeon she has to do) so no worries there. I die once but only due to some gross stupidity involving Auto-Battle expecting to teleport but realising I'd actually defended instead in the previous fight to save some MP, whoops. Totally my bad though, this is manageable enough otherwise. The enemies are generally 1-2 at a time from the previous chapter, the one that scares me most is a Gevaudan since I don't have a paralysis blocker on at the time and they can rarely inflict that.
Back to Dusk and company and they get a short (but slightly longer) dungeon of their own, which of course I do normally as Dusk + corpses.
Underwater Cave: The Leach Squid, the multi-acting physical monster from the Gardenia sewers, makes a return here. Uh yeah they're scary; I try to run Summoner for Ramuh but this mostly scares me out of that, Red Mage with HP+20 and Dragon Arts/Black it is! Break works on 'em. The other enemies can be taken out via Thundara spam or Thunder Breath spam takes 'em out. Hoanes can use Silence and that's kinda annoying, Sea Flowers can use sleep. Good thing I can block 'em all!
I reach Burtgang. I buy Level 6 spells, the Wizard Rod, and the Black Robe (yay Int). There's another Sarah solo fight which I die in, but this proves okay as it just causes Gawain to show up, use an Elixir on her, and then they easily take the enemies out. Sarah jumps from 21 to 23. Party re-unifies at this point. I also get Gawain. Gawain wins the award for the most annoying character in the game to kill off. His (good) armour is all locked in place on him, he has high defensive stats all-around, and his own techs can't self-target so only his physical can self-damage, and not for all that much. Fortunately I only have to do this once and thereafter can abuse the local white chocobo to restore my MP between dungeons, and Osmose on stopped targets lets me recover MP mid-dungeon nicely.
Divine Forest: I try to run Summoner and/or Black Mage here but have trouble doing so because they tend to lose slugfests (Summoner can Sylph but can get into obnoxious heal-locks) due to lower HP/def/speed. Which tells you that this is another competent dungeon. Gorgias hits incredibly hard, doing nearly 1000 with its ST moves. Goblin Mage has some rather nasty damage too. Katipos (spiders) are jerks because they can use Slow which makes battles much harder to win. Other enemies pack some status like confuse which I block. The good news here is that every enemy except Gorgias can be hit with petrify, so Break spam is the order of the day. Gorgias can be stopped, Tornadoed, and abused for Osmose MP at least. I get Unicorn, which heals almost as much as Sylph for over triple the MP! I guess maybe it's more useful on a non-solo or something. No boss fight here, rather unusually, since unicorns only care about your X chromosomes and possibly your sex life.
Castle Burtgang: There are a huge variety of enemies here and again they can be pretty tough, I can win many fights with Black Mage/Summoner but I lose often enogh to get annoyed and retreat to using Red (with Black Magic) yet again.
I won't try to list all the enemies, but some notable ones are Midnight Mages (Dark hits for around 800 and they almost always use it, also they immune Stop/Break so I have to use the shorter-lasting Sleep/Confuse), Fused Organs (undead and quite bulky, they can use Pandemonium does 600 MT and can inflict paralysis, poison, curse, and probably confuse but I'm blocking that; Gold-Spun Hat + Robe makes a return), Iron Knights (1000 damage axes), Katipos (back again to use Web and make my life miserable, I often have to run if they use it immediately), Snipers (have decent long-range damage and confuse).
Unlike the last dungeon almost nothing here can be petrified (just the Katipo) but Stop works on most, as does Confuse (Confuse on hard-hitting physical enemies like the Iron Knight and Archlancer is quite useful, I often stop all but one enemy and confuse the last one).
There are two mini-bosses who are quite legit.
Ghost Rider (2 resets) - At 19000 HP he's not actually that much lower than the previous boss, although a fire weakness helps. Fira and Sylph do their thing. Mostly uses physicals so I run Protect. Wild Dance, which it uses often, is even stronger than Vata's, doing ~1500 if it rolls five hits. Ow! Since he can use it on consecutive turns I almost have to use Sylph is a double is potentially coming. Below half HP he'll start using Pandemonium which is messy. I block confuse and paralysis (... eventually) but curse will weaken the subsequent Sylph and toxify is surprisingly obnoxious too since my HP is high. (It does over 500.) Anyway one reset here is just because I didn't restore my MP before the fight, not expecting this guy to be so respectable, the other is just an execution failure on when to heal during the Pandemonium phase.
Ghost Knight - Worse than Ghost Rider in most ways, has the same HP and fire weakness and physical focus but can only hit for around 1000 and doesn't use Pandemonium. He's got more MT at high health (he uses Sweep often) but here he's just easier.
Later stages of Castle Burtgang feature one rather notable new enemy, the Super Grenade. Despite the bizarre name, she's just a female humanoid mage (the wiki claims it's a mistranslation of "High Nereid"). Regardless of nomenclature, they hit for 1000 with Blizzaga and can use Temptation (MT confuse). Blocking confuse makes them less bad of course. They also are immune to everything except Tornado, so disabling's not really an option; the two-turn kill with Tornado is the best bet since they have enough HP. I don't die but they're pretty scary, especially two at once.
Styx 2 (4 resets) - Styx is highly damaging at full HP and has a nasty limit phase on top of that, and can inflict five different status effects. Once you account for all that she's not that bad, really!
She's actually rather unusual for a FFD boss in that she's totally patterned, using the exact same attacks in a fixed cycle, so let's talk about her that way:
1. Water. Does around 800 to my Level 73 Red Mage's 4000 HP. Unfocuses against the party and always kills them off first turn, which is nice since they revive to 1 HP in a cutscene before the battle starts.
2. Temptation. MT confuse.
3. Waterga. Around 1600.
4. Undine Cry. Around 900 MT and adds Sap. Probably ignores at least some of the factors which reduce magic damage normally.
5. Doublecast Mini + Toad.
Sap can not be blocked and lasts at least five of her turns and thus once it is used the first time I am never free of it for the rest of the fight due to how the fight works. Sap takes about 15% of my health over that interval, so ~600.
In total she does around my max HP once every cycle. During that time I need to cast Sylph twice and can use Thundara on any other turns I get. If I'm not blocking confuse that's a potential wipe, if I'm not blocking toad that's an annoying turn spent on a Maiden's Kiss. I end up blocking both. She still counters lightning attacks (her weakness) with Discharge which is MT stun, and this still doesn't matter on a solo.
Once she falls below about 14000 of her 32000 HP she "upgrades" several of her moves:
1. Water -> Lorelei's Tears. 1800 MT. This move is monstrous for a party and not much better for a solo.
2. Temptation -> Siren Song. Can randomly add any of Toad, Mini, Silence, or Confuse, MT. Silence is the one new one.
3-4. Unchanged (Waterga, Undine Cry)
5. Mini/Toad -> Haste. You don't have Dispel. She's immune to Slow. Once she uses this the first time she'll never not be hasted.
So now her offensive output is roughly 125% of my max HP every five of her turns which really works out to about every three of mine. Any of the non-Mini statuses of Siren Song landing is absolutely fatal now. Fortunately, the combination of Lamia's Tiara (confuse), Scholar's Gown (silence), and Diamond Bangle (frog/mini) blocks everything as long as you have access to light armour... guess what Red Mage has! Anyway with Int+20% and Summon on my Red Mage, Sylph restores just over half my HP. If you do the math that's just enough to keep up with her level of offence! So uh once she's hasted I hardly do anything but Sylph Sylph Sylph all day long. I can occasionally squeeze out a Thundara, I do so... like twice i believe. Maybe three times. At one point I use an X-Potion instead of Sylph because I anticipate a fatal blow coming mid-charge; X-Potions restore around the same. At another point I use my one remaining Elixir to get all my MP back because taking a turn not restoring HP is risky. Anyway the Thundaras (as opposed to Deep Freezes or Darks, etc.) are MP-efficient enough that fortuantely one Elixir is all I need.
Fun note here, the main FAQ for the game as well as the wiki (which is presumably either written by the same person or copied from the FAQ) talk about how Vata 3 is much harder than this fight. Hahaha good one.
After, the game freaks me out by making me walk out of the dungeon without saving but there are no encounters. Instead I get to watch the THIRD plot fight of the game in which some badass older dude character beats up a boss while surviving at 0 HP through willpower. Come on FFD, you're better than this. (You're not better than this.) Paladin chapter complete!
Dusk Level 73
Red Mage L13
Black Mage L12
Dragoon L6
Summoner L4
Warrior L3
Bard L2
Monk L1
