Final Fantasy II: Party Setup

My arms have been hurting the last few days so I haven't really been able to do any playing of Final Fantasy II. I have had plenty of time to think about it though! I've been trying to figure out how I want to setup my characters so that I know what I need to grind and what I want to buy from each town when I get to them.

To start, the odds of getting a sneak attack or getting sneak attacked is based on the evade percentage of specifically Firion. This means my top priority is making sure he's maxed out. Maria starts with 15 intelligence versus 10 for the other two characters which means she should be the black mage if I want to have one. 5% extra chance to land a toad cast is pretty big! Everyone starts with the same spirit so they're all equivalent for being a white mage. Firion is going to have to have a shield on so he's going to have a massive spell accuracy penalty so he's really not going to be setup to kill undead with the life spell. Having Maria do both is a reasonable choice, but having Guy do the white magic is probably a better bet.

Then I need to decide how I'm going to win fights fast. On my last casual run I killed things by making use of the berserk spell along with basic attacks. It's way better than any other spell for doing damage, though it has the downside that it's forced to be single target. I said next time I played I'd want to use even more berserk along with maybe haste to just rip through enemies. But that was playing without power leveling with the cancel trick which is certainly in the cards for a speedrun. I guess all the bosses are going to be single target fights anyway, so a good plan could be to run from most fights, use level 16 toad to one shot things I can't run from, maybe life on undead. Then burn down a boss with berserk. That involves leveling a fair number of things though, and squeezing out more speed is probably going to come down to minimizing the time spent cancel grinding.

There's also a weapon called the blood sword. It looks terrible on the surface since it has no attack, no accuracy, no evade, and a massive spell accuracy penalty. But it has the upside that every hit drains 1/16th of the enemy's life. No matter how much life they have, and even if my strength adds no damage at all, they're guaranteed dead in 16 hits as long as they aren't undead. You can max out your sword skill at level 16, which I believe gives 16 swings in a round but might give 17. Those aren't all going to hit, but it really feels like half of them should and therefore any non-undead monster in the game should be dead in two attacks. Oh, and there are two of these swords in the game. And in the PSX version I'm pretty sure you swing with both hands. So one person with 16 sword skill and 2 blood swords will swing 32 (or 34) times per round. Which should be a round one kill... So all I actually need is someone with 16 sword skill and either enough agility to go first or enough health to survive one round from the boss and bosses will be no problem at all.

Which means it's going to come down to random encounters. Which ones can I not run from? What do I need to deal with them? Those are things I'm only really going to find out by trying things out in the game itself.

But one thing the blood sword does point out is I don't necessarily need more than one character. Power leveling health and mana on multiple people will take extra time. It's entirely possible that one character with max sword/shield skill can just straight up beat the early bosses with regular swords and then switch to a blood sword when you get them to trivialize the rest of the bosses. There is certainly the issue of dealing with the fights you can't run from since shields have such ludicrous spell accuracy penalties (-70% for all shields). One possibility is to use elemental damage spells where the enemy is weak to that element. Those spells are guaranteed to hit regardless of your accuracy and hit for double damage. Every undead monster in the game except one has a weakness to fire, for example. So I could quite reasonably wear a shield and still kill them with a high level fire spell. And if I can't run from non-undead there's always the option of killing them off one at a time with a regular sword. That's slow, but depending on how often it comes up it might be faster than powering up three times as many characters. I also save on inputs in combat if I get to kill off most of my party and only need to control one person.

I wonder... The site I've been reading says it's Firion's stats that matter for ambushes, but it doesn't mention if he has to be alive or not. It's possible I want to level just his shield skill to the point where he has 99% evade with two of the starter shields and then murder him. And then probably use Guy since he starts with the highest strength and stamina and therefore will be better in the early game with a sword and will need less time to twink out his health to the same level. His agility sucks, which is unfortunate since agility is the best stat, but if he still uses one shield and has 16 shield skill he'll have a near max evade anyway. (The sword will give 17%, a base shield will give 68%, his base agility of 5 will give 5% for a total of 90%. So he needs 9 extra agility ups or to to use the second shield in the game to max out.)

Actually, I can only use the cancel trick with Guy once I get a 4th character. And since I think I want to get the toad spell before I get a 4th member he's probably out. Which would mean Maria if I end up casting spells that need int for accuracy, or just running with Firion regardless. He'll be running with 99% evade in his standard setup anyway so I guess I don't really gain an edge by not using him.

It's all theory for now, but I think a single character setup might be viable. And if it is viable it's probably going to be the fastest unless it involves jumping through too many hoops just by virtue of saving so much time not grinding the other characters. So I think I'm going to head down that road and see where it leads.

A single character is going to need to level:

Sword - 16
Shield - 16?
Health - 2000?
Mana - 300?
Toad - 16
Cure - ???
Osmose - ???
Life - ???
Fire - ??? (And maybe other elemental spells too? Thunder/blizzard/scourge.)
Warp - 1
Esuna - 3??? (Probably not needed if a ribbon is obtained early via toad 16.)
Swap - 1???
Teleport - 1

As far as gear goes, they don't need much. A starter shield, the best sword I can get at any stage in the game, 2 blood swords, and a ribbon. As I get better shields and exceed the evade cap it becomes possible to use gear with evade penalties too, so maybe I want a power sash and thief gloves or black garb and power armlet. (Either combo will give 10 extra strength and 10 extra agility which has to be good.) I also need to get enough gold to buy the spells I want and I have no idea right now how easy that will be. It's possible killing captains for a toad scroll will give me all the money I need for the entire run!

It's also possible that this whole toad minigame plan isn't needed. The early ribbon might be critical, but with only one character I won't need the 2 extra ones and could therefore eventually use the 1 you find in a chest. Same with the aegis shield. If toad isn't useful for killing fights I can't run from then grinding it all the way to 16 has a lot less value, but to start I want to run that strategy and see what happens.

Bridge Match 3 - Board 35

Board 35 - Dealer South - EW Vul

Opponents convention card: Standard American Yellow Card
Opponents playing strength: Advanced

My hand: ♠ A J 4 ♥ A J 8 ♦ A K J 7 4 ♣ 5 3

I open 1 diamond and partner responds 1NT. My 18 points plus his 6-9 points means we may well have a game. He also doesn't have 4 cards in either major, so he has at least 7 cards in the minors. This makes my diamond suit a real likely source of tricks in NT, and he should have clubs covered so they can't run them. I have the majors too. I feel like even his minimums can get us 3NT. So while I could invite I think we might end up missing quite a few games that we can make. The other thing to consider I guess is that at most tables my hand opens 1NT. So they're already going to get to game whenever West has more than a minimum and probably won't get there if he does have a minimum. So inviting means we stay with the pack, going to 3NT right now opens up a possible min/max result. And that's why I play weak no trump. Run it.

East leads the 5 of spades.

	NORTH ♠ K 2 ♥ K 9 7 ♦ T 6 3 ♣ K 9 8 4 2
		EAST ♠ 5
	SOUTH ♠ A J 4 ♥ A J 8 ♦ A K J 7 4 ♣ 5 3

West	North	East	South
			1♦
Pass	1NT	Pass	3NT
Pass	Pass	Pass

Well, partner sure doesn't have a minimum. I have 2 spade tricks, 2 heart tricks, and 2 diamond tricks. I have finesses in both majors for extra tricks. They can win some high clubs but if they do I should get a length trick or two there. And for diamonds I'm guaranteed to brute force at least one extra trick and reasonably expect to get 2. So I have 8 tricks and tons of options for a 9th. I don't think I want to give up any of my tenaces in the majors in the hopes West gets in and has to lead into one of them. So I duck this trick. 5-4-7-K. Time to set up diamonds. T-5-4-Q. Now West is forced to shift to a club. 7-8-J-3. East now leads a diamond...

Ok, this needs some consideration. Why would he switch to a diamond and not keep attacking a major? Or a club? I'd guess he has the AQ of clubs and at least one major Q. Anyway, I guess I get to run diamonds? Ooh, that will actually end up squeezing myself out of potential extra club tricks. I guess the thing is if I give up 2 clubs they'll have taken 4 tricks and then the most I can take is 9. I have 8 in the bank whenever I want them, so I just need one more. I can safely pitch a club and a heart here, and maybe they'll have to pitch some critical cards too. Ok. I run diamonds.

East pitches the 3 of spades. Then West pitches the 3 of hearts as I pitch a club and East pitches the 2 of hearts. Then West pitches the 6 of hearts... And now I see a line I could take. I can pitch an extra club and keep 3 hearts. Then I can lead a heart from dummy and cover if West covers and duck otherwise. Only East can win that trick, so leaving Kx of clubs is a stopper. Sure. I pitch a club and East pitches the 6 of spades. From the pitches and the opening lead I know East has 2 of the 89TQ of spades, so there's no help there in terms of knowing which finesse to take. So I'm going to make my heart play. 8-5-9-T. East cashes the A of clubs and now I'm up. Making 3.

	NORTH ♠ K 2 ♥ K 9 7 ♦ T 6 3 ♣ K 9 8 4 2
WEST ♠ 9 8 7 ♥ 6 5 4 3 ♦ Q 9 8 ♣ T 7 6		EAST ♠ Q T 6 5 3 ♥ Q T 2 ♦ 5 2 ♣ A Q J
	SOUTH ♠ A J 4 ♥ A J 8 ♦ A K J 7 4 ♣ 5 3

4 tables played 3NT making 4. 3 tables played 3NT making 3. 1 table played 2NT making 2. So we get a mere 4 MPs. Just blindly taking every finesse gets you the overtrick but it risks the contract to do so. Maybe it was right to try for it... I'm sure my line was right at IMPs, but maybe not at MPs?


Jack disagrees with my heart duck. He wants me to rise with the K. Doing so forces me to guess which major Q East has as the finesse failing is game over. It doesn't even have a chance of taking 10 tricks if both finesses work so I really don't like it.

Ranking after board 35/60: 5/16 with 54.08%

Talking To Strangers

I was streaming some Binding of Isaac runs earlier today when a random dude started watching. He chatted a bit, and I used IRC to chat back. I'd muted my mic after testing that it worked the other day and didn't feel like turning it back on. The random dude eventually lamented the fact that I didn't have a mic and when I didn't turn my mic on he unfollowed me and left.

I could have just turned on my mic and talked to the dude. Frankly, it sort of seems like the whole point of the setup. But it was hard enough just bringing myself to type to the guy. The idea of straight up talking to him, especially by needing to take an extra step and turn on my mic, freaked me out.

It probably doesn't help that I have no idea how this guy found me or why he wanted to talk to me of all people. Looking at the main Twitch site now I see that The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is actually the 7th most popular game being watched, at almost double StarCraft 2. That's crazy! Though I guess I did buy the game by watching someone streaming it on Twitch, so maybe it's just a viral effect going on.

I know nothing bad will happen if I talk to people. I know it's a good idea to socialize even a little bit. But knowing it and doing it are very different things. I guess I'll just keep at it and see what happens.

Final Fantasy II: Fight or Flight?

I've been trying to decide if the right idea is to set myself up to run from every fight or if I want to set myself up to smash every fight. Both are doable within the confines of the system I think, but they do require different gear setups and things to power level.

Fighting every fight has the advantage of getting lots of money/loot drops. In a normal game it would also give more experience, but that's not the case here. It does give more chances to gain agility.

Running from every fight has the advantage of not needing nearly as much mana to beat a dungeon. It lets you build just for boss fights instead of needing to be able to kill a variety of trash mobs. (Ribbons may not actually be needed if you never actually fight anything that casts a brutal spell on you.) Running from fights is typically also faster than fighting them, at least in a game with a high success rate on running.

I loaded up my save file from my marathon playthrough and did some brief testing on running away. I tested by running with some with 99% evade, someone with 0% evade, and then I lowered the 99% guy down (to something like 15%) and tried again. Every time I tried to run at 99% evade it worked. Every other time it failed. This makes me think it isn't agility that matters for running away. It's just evade percentage. And if I want to I can get that up to 99% pretty trivially by dual wielding shields and power leveling the shield skill.

The real question is going to be if many fights are set up with a "can't run" flag. The database I've been using to pull data for the game doesn't list that anywhere that I can find, so it's going to be a trial and error kind of thing. I think I read somewhere that you can't run from undead, which could be problematic.

In terms of the fight plan I'd probably need to find a way to reliably kill all the monsters in one action. Autoattacking them all to death with berserk buffs will certainly work, but it isn't especially fast. There are instant death spells in the game, in particular the toad spell. Toad has the best accuracy of all the instant death spells and it's also needed for getting ribbons super early in the game. Convenient! Some enemies are going to be resistant to toad though, so I guess those fights are the autoattack fights. Or maybe I want to level up an attack spell like fire? Undead are also immune to toad I think, but those you can kill off with a life spell if you have enough accuracy.

I think the flight plan is superior to the fight plan, if it will work on most fights. I guess the way to find out is do a run with a 99% evasion character from the start and see! And probably level up a life spell to deal with undead fights if it turns out you can't run from those.

Final Fantasy II: Match Game

One of the things Square added to Final Fantasy II in the Origins edition is a little minigame where you have to match 8 pairs of cards by flipping them 2 at a time. You can get some money and consumables out of it pretty early on if you can perfect the board. Perfecting the board is extremely unlikely (it's a little worse than 1 in 2 million) so it feels like this can't be faster than just grinding mobs or whatever. There's a catch though. Apparently the game will only generate 32 boards and will loop around them. So if you're willing to write down the first few boards you'll be guaranteed to get some perfects on board 33 and on...

When I read about this I thought they meant there were only 32 possible boards so I went in and wrote them all down. The idea being I could then go in, flip a couple cards, and know where I was in the sequence. Unfortunately this turns out to not be the case. After writing them all down I did confirm that they cycled back for board 33. But then when I left the minigame and then went back in the board that came up had a pattern that didn't match any of the 32 I'd written down. Playing the game 33+ times just to get some gold has to be wrong.

There's a twist to the game... If you happen to have leveled the toad spell up to max level (for reference I have never maxed out a spell or skill in this game) the game changes and the rewards get significantly better. We're talking end game quality gear here... Aegis shield, ribbon, genji helm, genji armour, genji glove, and possibly some one shot consumables too. So if that gear makes the game significantly faster it could be worth the time and effort of writing down some patterns and plowing through the minigame a few times. You'd have to grind up a toad spell, which would also add on a fair amount of time. On the plus side toad is the best instant death spell in the game so maxing it out might actually be optimal even if you weren't going to abuse this minigame.

So the question is... How good are these items? Is it feasible that spending time getting them early will save more time over the course of the entire game?

Ribbon - Probably the best helmet in the game. It has no evasion penalty, so you can wear it without screwing up your agility gains. It has no magic penalty, so you can cast spells at full power. It has the highest magic defense of a helmet. It provides resistance to every element, which means you're immune to all negative status conditions from spells. That part is the one that could be huge... Not having to worry about dying to confuse or stone might save a lot of time. You get one ribbon out of a chest and can fight enemies that drop ribbons so eventually you'll get them that way, but all of these sources are only found in the final dungeon.

Genji Helm - The highest defense helmet in the game, but it comes with massive evasion and magic penalties. If you're happy going last, being unable to run, and getting hit by every attack then you want to wear this helmet. I don't want to do those things, except maybe on my 4th character who isn't going to get agility power leveled.

Aegis Shield - The best shield in the game. It has the highest evasion and provides resistance to 4 of the 8 elements. The evasion boost isn't very big, and since I'm planning on scumming a high shield level it probably wouldn't matter. You get one normally and can farm more off of the optional superboss of the game. All in the final dungeon.

Genji Armour - Same as the helm. Highest defense, but massive evasion and magic penalties. Do not want.

Genji Glove - Same as the other two.

Ok, so the genji gear is all terrible for the way I play, and the aegis shield is probably redundant. But getting my hands on 3 ribbons early on in the game is awesome. And maybe worth the time spent... I need to figure out what that would be. I also need to actually get the toad spell in the early game, which is not a trivial task...

There's a scroll in a treasure chest in Castle Fynn, but that place doesn't open up until near the end of the game. A long time after you get the snowmobile which opens up the minigame, so that's probably out. It's also a drop from a monster that appears on the world map at the same time as Castle Fynn opens, so that's no help. It also drops from a second monster that appears on the world map at the same time as the first one. But they also exist as a trap encounter in the first town. You can walk up to them and talk to them to start a fight. They're brutally powerful for the start of the game, but by the time I can get the snowmobile I'll have twinked out more than enough to kill one of these guys I would think. The toad scroll is only a 5% drop so I'll need to kill lots of them, but the bottom line is it is actually feasible to have toad really early in the game.

Which means I should investigate how long it takes to beat the minigame with 1 miss three times over.

Final Fantasy Month

One of the people I'm following on Twitch started up a long race with another guy where they're going to play 21 Final Fantasy games one after another and see who can beat them all first. They're pausing their times when they're sleeping so you can compare the different games between the two of them. Cereth, who I watch with some regularity, actively speedruns 5 of the games on the list. Crumps only speedruns 2 of them. So he should be at a big disadvantage... But apparently Cereth hasn't ever played some of the games and is likely to lose a fair amount of time on those. Especially since one of them is Tactics and a lot of people I know have to completely scrap their first run of that game because it encourages you to save the game right before a brutally hard fight. This means there's no way to go power up... So if you can't win with what you have, and if you don't have a backup save... You're screwed!

They're playing Final Fantasy II now, which neither of them have played much in the past, though at least Crumps is casting berserk to be awesome. One of the things mentioned on the stream is how the game actually has no RTA record time... No one speed runs this thing. Not even once just to get their name in lights... And the split software I use has a lot of game names preprogrammed into it. A _lot_ of game names. Including every single Final Fantasy game, except FFII. Poor FFII.

When I played this game in my marathon, way back in 2011, I didn't know what to do to make the game interesting so I decided to try to beat it as fast as I could. I got done in a little under 16 hours, but I spent a lot of time actually learning how the game works. And given that my raising agility post is one of the few that actually gets hits from outside people I know I think I actually have a pretty high level of knowledge about this game. I also didn't abuse the cancel trick in my last playthrough and that's certainly kosher in a speedrun.

What I'm saying is, I think I could really shave the time down to the level where it would be 'easy' to play the game in one sitting. And seeing all these people tuning in to watch these guys play the game makes me think there may be interest from other people in seeing it done.

I set up my PS2 today, and hooked it up to my USB capture card, and tried setting up a stream from it. I think it's pretty obvious from the quality that I'm using just composite cables instead of s-video since I don't have that wire for my PS2. If I actually get anywhere with doing this I'll have to track a better wire down. But what I do have seemed to be fairly clear regardless, so the technical setup is in place. The next step would be planning out a path through the game (including what chests are worth picking up) and then figuring out how twinked out I have to be to plow through that path. And then grind it up!

It feels a little bad to be deviating from my marathon to go do something else, but whatever! Tactics Advance is not the best so I'm in a bit of a rut anyway.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

I've been watching a lot of streams over the past month what with my hands hurting sporadically. One of the games that cropped up recently among people I follow on Twitch and on people who stream through SpeedRunsLive is The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. It's an action RPG roguelike game with a bunch of challenge modes built into it. It looked pretty fun, and it looked like the sort of thing I could be reasonably good at, and since it's so new it's also something that people are racing a lot. Getting a stream listed on the SRL stream list requires having done some races on their site, so picking up a shorter game with an active userbase seemed like a decent thing to do. So when it went on sale this past weekend I picked it up to give it a spin.

The game has a 'bit' of a sacrilegious theme going on. You play the role of Isaac, a small child whose mother hears the voice of God command her to sacrifice Isaac. Rather than allow yourself to be murdered you escape through a trap door into the basement which is a randomly generated dungeon crawl. Your method of attacking is to cry at the enemies, which shoots little projectile tears at them. The game controls like Robotron with a double joystick setup. One joystick for moving, one for aiming your attack.

The key to the game is the wide array of items you can pick up which modify the way the game plays out. The items can combine in weird and crazy ways and a good part of the fun, so far at least, has been in seeing the changes to the character as you stack on more and more weird modifications. One of the ways to get new items, including most of the powerful ones, is to meet with Satan and exchange maximum health for power. He can teach you how to fly, or turn your tears into molten lava, or maybe just sell you a headless baby corpse which will follow you round leaking blood in a trail behind you. He's a good guy who just wants to give you the tools you need to survive!

The enemies are pretty silly, too. Flies, and spiders, and sentient piles of poop. Lots of the items center around poop, actually. There's definitely some juvenile humour going on, but if you take the theme away you're still left with a fairly short dungeon crawler that controls fantastically and has a lot of interesting decisions when it comes to what items you want to buy.

I'm having a lot of fun with it, and I'm throwing it up on stream when I can. It's worth checking out if the theme doesn't bother you too much. I have to unlock a lot of stuff before I can think about racing the game (typical races go to a level of the dungeon I can't play) but that's definitely still a relatively short term goal.

Bridge Match 3 - Board 34

Board 34 - Dealer East - NS Vul

Opponents convention card: Standard American Yellow Card
Opponents playing strength: Advanced

My hand: ♠ A K 7 2 ♥ K Q T 8 6 ♦ J 3 ♣ 8 5

East opens 1 diamond. I decide I have a safe bid if partner chooses clubs over a takeout double because my heart suit is pretty good. West redoubles and partner bids 1 spade. This is a free bid since I get to pull from 1 diamond redoubled so I assumed it shows something interesting. And since partner is pretty much capped at 4 points from the opponents bidding I assert that has to mean good spades. Queen fifth, that sort of thing. So after East makes a cuebid of 2 spades I go to 3 spades which gets passed out.

East leads the ace of hearts.

	NORTH ♠ 6 5 4 3 ♥ 9 5 3 ♦ Q 8 ♣ T 7 6 4
		EAST ♥ A
	SOUTH ♠ A K 7 2 ♥ K Q T 8 6 ♦ J 3 ♣ 8 5

West	North	East	South
		1♦	Double
Redouble1	1♠	2♠2	3♠
Pass	Pass	Pass
110+ points
2Unassuming cuebid

Four spades to the 6 with decent support for every suit is not what partner should show up with here. He's happy no matter what suit I choose so he needs to stay silent here. As far as the hand is going to go it isn't terribly interesting. I'm going to lose 2 diamonds, 2 clubs, 1 heart, and at least 1 spade. I might lose more if they ruff hearts in the short spade hand. They decide to cash their high cards and take the first 5 tricks. I don't see any play other than draw 2 rounds of trump and then run hearts and hope trump splits 3-2.

It does, so I just lose one spade. Down 2.

	NORTH ♠ 6 5 4 3 ♥ 9 5 3 ♦ Q 8 ♣ T 7 6 4
WEST ♠ J T 8 ♥ J 7 4 ♦ K T 5 ♣ A J 3 2		EAST ♠ Q 9 ♥ A 2 ♦ A 9 7 6 4 2 ♣ K Q 9
	SOUTH ♠ A K 7 2 ♥ K Q T 8 6 ♦ J 3 ♣ 8 5

The other 7 tables all played in game from the East-West side and they all made either 5 diamonds or 3NT with overtricks. So our -200 for down 2 undoubled is a top board. If they'd doubled us it would have been a bottom board though, so I'm not celebrating our aggression too much.


Jack disagrees with my double because he thinks double should be takeout and my hand isn't a takeout double. I really think it is. With my majors it's hard to get into trouble here. Even 2 hearts is fine support so partner would need to have 2 little spades and 1 heart to not have a decent major partscore. And that gives him 10 minor cards, so we'll have a fit there. Absolute worst case is he's 2-1-5-5 and we get stuck playing 3 clubs and that's still fine. And the upside of finding a major partscore is worth that risk I think. He also disagrees with my 3 spade bid. Hey, Jack, if you had your 1 spade bid the 3 spade bid is a standout winner. Qxxxx of spades and nothing else and we're probably only down 1. And down 1 when they have a game is awesome.

Ranking after board 34/60: 4/16 with 54.83%