Thursday, February 09, 2012

Final Fantasy IV: Land of the Summoned Monsters

I can remember having real trouble with both the Land of the Summoned Monsters and the Sylph Cave in previous playthroughs of Final Fantasy IV. Both dungeons have massive damage zones on the floors which can only be avoided with the float spell. If you're not high enough level for Rosa to know that spell you're in for a world of pain just walking through the dungeons. On top of that some of the monsters are actually pretty dangerous. Especially for a party that isn't high enough level to have float since they're hit by the double whammy of fewer maximum hitpoints and not being anywhere near that max because of the damage floors.

Both dungeons provide extra summoned monsters for Rydia to call in combat. The Sylph Cave has the Sylph spell but you need access to the overworld in order to get it. (You have to get a frying-pan from Bung's wife in Fabul so you can crack him over the head with it to convince him to stop being lazy...) The Land of the Summoned Monsters has both Asura and Leviathan in it (queen and king of the summoned monsters) but in the traditional manner of earning a summon you need to beat them up first.

Asura is a tricky one. The only actions she ever takes are to spam massive heals on herself. She never takes an offensive action unless you hit her first at which point she counterattacks for brutal damage. Ultimately she ends up being extremely trivial because of the wall spell. You cast it on her and then when she tries to heal herself she ends up healing you instead. Then it's a matter of controlling how frequently you attack so her heals will undo her counterattacks. Avenger turned out to be a real detriment here and I ended up just letting Cecil die so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore and slowly killed her with jump.

I remember having real problems with Asura in the past because I'd get to her without having the wall spell. I don't think she's impossible without it but she's certainly a lot trickier. I'd imagine you'd need to be high enough level to know wall in order to be powerful enough to kill her! I know I'd gotten down to her and had to leave before because I didn't know wall. But I just looked up the levels where Rosa learns spells and she learns wall 2 levels after she learns float. How could I not have had wall? I guess I must have gone there first and run from most of the random encounters? Or possibly plowed through the dungeon without float? (That does sound like me...)

Anyway, I killed her easily last night. I saved and decided to give Leviathan a try. I remember him being really hard. I've always had to wait for FuSoYa to join my party and for Rydia to learn lit3. Then I'd use them both spamming lit3 to burn him down before he obliterated me. I didn't have FuSoYa and Rydia certainly doesn't have lit3 but I figured I'd give him a try anyway. Avenger may have been bad against Asura but it was a complete beating against Leviathan. And the Asura summon made Rydia better than just an off-healer... She was healing everyone for double or triple their maximum health! This left Rosa without much to do so she just cast fast on Cecil over and over to make him berserk more often. (It turns out fast doesn't really stack all that well and 2 applications gets you to max speed. Good to know!) He ended up dying without really being much of a worry at all. His big spell almost killed everyone for sure but Asura just undid all that damage.

I wonder if I can take out Odin with this plan or if I really need lit3 for him...

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