Monday, March 28, 2011

Lich Dropped Out And Got Big

I did a lot of digging yesterday (ok, I googled "how much health does Lich have in Final Fantasy Origins" and clicked each link until I found one with the information I wanted) and I figured out why Lich didn't die when I did way more than his max health to him. It turns out the people at Square who put out the remakes of the game decided to buff his health along with that of some other bosses. (I did notice Vampire didn't die when he should have but since I just hit him again and he died I didn't pay much attention to it.) So while Lich has 400 health on the NES he has 800 health on the PS and actually has 1200 health on the GBA and PSP. I'm not aware of any changes to the game that would justify this so I assume they just wanted to make it harder. Damage dealt in the PS version is actually substantially lower than damage dealt on the NES as it is, so doubling the health of a monster drastically increases the difficulty of the fight. (Crit percentages were a lot higher on the NES due to a bug and crit damage was a lot higher due to what I believe was a design change and not a bug fix as they fundamentally changed the crit damage formula.)

I'm currently working on leveling to 39 to obtain my 4th attack. My hope is the extra magic defense will help make the slow spell miss and coupled with the 4th attack I should be able to beat him, but I'm running out of ways to get more powerful. There is no 5th attack coming until either I become a ninja (and get a much better weapon) or obtain masamune. There is never a 6th attack. The level cap of 50 means my damage gain from strength, evade from agility, and magic defense from leveling is going to run dry real soon. I was pretty sure I could win with the NES values but can I win with PS values? Who else fatted up? I went into the pages at this site and looked through all the bosses. Most seemed to change between the NES and PSP version but only 6 look to have changed between the NES and PS versions.

Vampire - 156 - 280 - 280

Lich - 400 - 800 - 1200
Kary - 600 - 1200 - 1440
Lich #2 - 500 - 1000 - 2800
Kary #2 - 700 - 1400 - 3200
Chaos - 2000 - 4000 - 20000

Vampire was no problem. Lich hurt but I think I can surmount it. The remaining 4 I'm not sure so sure of. An extra 700 health on the second Kary seems like it might be a real problem but I'm hoping it can be done. 4000 on Chaos is shattering my will to go on. Doing 2000 damage at all was pretty daunting. 4000 seems off the chart, especially with the nerfed crit damage. I'm going to press on, of course, but I no longer feel like this is something I can accomplish. I am now wishing my dead idiots were also thieves so I could kill him with 2 thieves. Instead all my buddies were squishy black mages.



Oh, and Warmech has 1000 health on the NES and 2000 health with a 100 health per round regen rate on the PS. Yikes!

4 comments:

Josh Bennett said...

YOU CAN DO IT!

Sky said...

Wow, we aren't playing the same game. With solo warrior I kill Lich in two rounds at level 20 or so. It isn't even a fight, nothing can go wrong. The trash packs, on the other hand, are actually kind of dangerous.

Of course, due to the Luck/running bug in the NES version I have a much higher chance to run from things than I should, so avoiding trash packs isn't as bad as it should be.

I have actually been trying a solo BB and am now at level 28. Clearly I can beat the NES game with this (I might be able to 1 round Chaos, but he is dead in 2 hits for sure) but your version would be much more brutal.

Honestly I really do wish all the endbosses were a ton tougher. I always found the final boss fights to be really pathetic since they normally died in 2-3 rounds and even casting spells like AFIR was hardly worth it. I want bosses with boatloads of health so they last awhile!

Sky said...

Oh, one other question for killing Chaos with 20k health... does he still regularly cast CUR4 and go to full? That would make him incredibly brutal even with a really overpowered party.

Ziggyny said...

A lot of things changed in the PSP version which has the huge health pool. I've never played it but they apparently added an entirely new 40 floor challenge dungeon with bosses from FFVI (ULTROS!) so I imagine you can gear up a lot relative to the normal game and just obliterate the 20k.

Josh: I will do it even if it takes all night long.