Tactics Run

[johannhowitzer]

Anyone else here still play Final Fantasy Tactics? I picked it up again, with the goal of running through the whole game without a single Game Over - a perfect game. It's something I haven't done before; this attempt, however, failed. I didn't want to go for the uber abilities either, just be efficient with my use of JP and focus each character on something specific, something they can do well. Here's my lineup:

Ramza 72br 70fa - Light Fighter (Chemist, Archer, Thief, Geomancer, Ninja)
Male Generic 70br 48fa - Heavy Fighter (Knight, Monk, Lancer, Samurai)
Female Generic 68br 68fa - Support Caster (Priest, Time Mage, Mediator)
Female Generic 56br 74fa - Attack Caster (Wizard, Oracle, Summoner, Dancer)

Here's how I approached each of the "trouble" fights:

Chapter One
Mandalia Plains - placed a Chemist with Battle Boots at the corner nearest him, to throw a potion his way ASAP.
Slums in Dorter - you can get caught unaware by the Wizards if you leave them alive for too long, so I rushed the one straight ahead with my Wizard.
Windmill Shed - took quite a while, even with only Wiegraf left... forgot to buy Phoenix Down so I had to be extra careful.
Fort Zeakden - Ramza had been working on his archery, so I used him to great effect on top of the nearest building; I used to underestimate Archers a lot.

Chapter Two
Zaland Fort City - put my Priest as close to Mustadio as possible, and it turned out to save his life; beyond that, Wave Fist and Ramza's archery.
Bariaus Hill - Ramza had Concentrate by now, so he was able to tear up even advancing Knights. Kept back and waited for them to come to me.
Golgorand Execution Site - for a long time I thought it might be the first time I'd run this battle without ever having a unit fall! My two heavy fighters were under the bridge and managed to make it out OK... my Oracle slapped a Knight with Paralyze and then went to town with Ice 3. Did I mention I love Wizards? Gafgarion finally dropped my Priest for a moment near the end.
At the gate of Lionel Castle - Ramza with the Auto-Potion trick of course, but I left him at the top of the wall and had him rain arrows. Dropped the enemy Summoner before he summoned, and no unit of mine ever fell.

Chapter Three
Goland Coal City - had some problems with Olan dying in the past, so I gave my Time Mage Teleport and had her jump up top to keep him healed. Turned out his Galaxy Stop was stopping EVERYTHING anyway. I don't think I got hit after the first round.
Underground Book Storage First Floor - Wiegraf has a nasty habit of using Lightning Stab on about three units right from the start, but this time he did ZERO damage. That's right, zero. My support caster had spent so long as a Time Mage that I was able to give nearly everyone the MP Switch ability, and all Wiegraf could do was drain my Summoner's MP.
Yardow Fort City - if you have never used Concentrate on a Ninja, you must. Ramza was unstoppable, dishing out 220 HP per attack at 100% accuracy. I hardly needed any other units to win, when Auto-Potion was factored in.
Inside of Riovanes Castle - Wiegraf never stood a chance against Ninja Ramza. Superior movement and speed, Auto-Potion using X-Potions, and on top of that... Concentrate + Throw. Wiegraf lasted four rounds. Even Velius' fate looked very grim, and I managed to take out TWO of his demons before anyone else even moved, but I wasted too much MP with Holy and couldn't get Ramza back up before he disintegrated. If I'd only saved MP, it would have been a cinch.

All in all, not a bad run, and I learned an important lesson - it wasn't as important to storm Velius as it was to outlast him. Barring Rafa dying too quickly, I anticipated no trouble in the next fight; between Ramza and Holy, I'd be able to get an enemy to critical HP in two rounds, tops. Some other things I learned this run:

1) I already knew this one, but Gained JP Up need not be on every unit in every battle. Other support abilities are amazing. My Wizard made great use of Magic AttackUP, my Priest fought long enough as a Priest to get everyone Magic DefendUP, and Concentrate works wonders for any physical class, allowing even Knights with high evasion to be hit at 100% accuracy.

2) MP Switch is about the best insurance JP can buy. Time Mages are useful anyway, so it's not a big issue to have someone stay a Time Mage for a while and splash everyone else that 400 JP. When hit with anything at all, MP is lost instead of HP, and there is no bleed-over into HP if you have even 1 MP remaining. That means that with 200 HP and 1 MP, even a 500 HP hit will only kill that 1 MP and leave you standing. For tanks who don't even use MP, that's a no-brainer; in fact, factoring in Chakra, it makes your Monk able to spread extra MP around for further insurance, and that's what I did.

3) The Mantles you can buy in shops are far better than the MA/PA augmenting equipment. Giving all your units +18% evasion against swords and magic can be lifesaving, you won't miss that extra damage in the least. Not when your Priest is evading every third side-shot and your uber Concentrating Ninja is evading half the blows that come his way, including arrows. On top of all that, they make a special Wizard Mantle for mages so you can keep a little of the power!

Sorry if it seems presumptuous to post this here, or if this post seems terribly long... FFT is one of my favorite games, and I needed to verbally analyze the quest I just undertook. I hope at least some of you enjoyed reading this, and maybe my fellow FFT players out there will gain some new tactical ideas!

[johannhowitzer]

Restarted today and got all the way through the Back Gate of Lesalia, on my way to the Book Storage tomorrow. Had some close scrapes in the first chapter and early in the second, then it got a lot easier. It's frustrating, it seems even when Steal Heart shows 54%, the enemy Thieves somehow manage to charm my characters every time. I think they missed twice; it caused a major headache in Goland Coal City - they charmed my Ninja Ramza twice and he dropped a unit or two... ironically, MP Switch worked against me because the first smack didn't knock him out of charm, it just drained his MP! I thought I was going to lose, but managed to get him back to his senses and then Olan finally used Galaxy Stop. He'd been attacking and generally being useless for the first half of the battle. The Execution Site and Gate of Lionel battles were even easier than before, and in the former battle this time around, they never managed to drop a single unit of mine. Of course, I did get to Ninja faster since I focused my heavy fighter on the Monk job much earlier. Not gonna use those Flails again though, they're not worth the price of admission.

With MP Switch I anticipate no problems even against Wiegraf in the book storage, it's the Velius fight that worries me, and later the Elmdor fight in Limberry. Hopefully Magic DefendUP works against his Samurai abilities, and I'll need the right accessories to avoid Blood Suck and Stop Bracelet. Not going to bother learning Ultima or stealing the Genji stuff.

Side note: if you're a Tactics and/or chess fan, you might like Tactics Arena Online. It's a cross between FFT and chess, and I'm hooked. You can play for free, but it's pay-to-play if you want to keep your rating intact and use all the units. I prefer the free account, as the strategy seems more tight and chess-like; note also that if you play on the Legends server, free accounts do not get wiped every month.

The commercial servers, free to play but free accounts get wiped regularly:
www.tacticsarena.com/
The Legends server, only major differences are that free accounts can avoid wipes AND win some of the "gold account" units in daily random drops:
www.digisonline.com/tactics/

[wnxhalfwingseen]

I love FFT i played through giving Ramza the Two Handed ability and made him a knight my first attack on wiegraf i critted for 999 and killed him then my next attack on velius did 400 damage and i quickly took him down that way I used equip gun Archers. its all fun do play the way you did i havent been through that game in forever i tried to go without death and i did up until before the final battles i went to the deep dungeon and died there

[johannhowitzer]

Well, part of what I'm doing is NOT uber-leveling. Sure, you can make two Calculators and two dual Chaos Blade wielding Knights, but I'm trying to keep the momentum of the game and only fight battles I have to, and be judicious with my JP. On top of that, I'm restricting each character to three or four classes based on their respective roles, and playing that way it's not really possible to crit on Wiegraf for 999. You were level 99 when you did that, weren't you? It's much tougher to avoid dying through the the whole game if you force yourself to keep the story moving and not power-grind in one spot. I think on my earlier run I was around 20-25 when I fought Wiegraf, that's pretty normal.

Another fun thing to do in FFT is single-class challenges. Pick a class, unlock it for everyone before Dorter, then make a whole party full of only that class, and only use abilities from that class. Some classes are tougher than others, and since only Chemists can use items, the classes that can't heal are a great challenge. I hear Geomancer is fun; Knight or Thief would be abominable. Samurai would be very easy, as would Priest, and Archer would be easy too... when you can get to the high ground, that is. Note that only Mediators (and Ramza's Squire) can tweak Brave and Faith scores, so for the non-magic classes you might want to earn some money and spend a few minutes buying a whole new party, all with low Faith to keep the magic pain at a minimum. Ramza's stuck at 70, so for those class challenges, keep him in the back until needed.

[wnxhalfwingseen]

johannhowitzer said:

Well, part of what I'm doing is NOT uber-leveling. Sure, you can make two Calculators and two dual Chaos Blade wielding Knights, but I'm trying to keep the momentum of the game and only fight battles I have to, and be judicious with my JP. On top of that, I'm restricting each character to three or four classes based on their respective roles, and playing that way it's not really possible to crit on Wiegraf for 999. You were level 99 when you did that, weren't you? It's much tougher to avoid dying through the the whole game if you force yourself to keep the story moving and not power-grind in one spot. I think on my earlier run I was around 20-25 when I fought Wiegraf, that's pretty normal.

Another fun thing to do in FFT is single-class challenges. Pick a class, unlock it for everyone before Dorter, then make a whole party full of only that class, and only use abilities from that class. Some classes are tougher than others, and since only Chemists can use items, the classes that can't heal are a great challenge. I hear Geomancer is fun; Knight or Thief would be abominable. Samurai would be very easy, as would Priest, and Archer would be easy too... when you can get to the high ground, that is. Note that only Mediators (and Ramza's Squire) can tweak Brave and Faith scores, so for the non-magic classes you might want to earn some money and spend a few minutes buying a whole new party, all with low Faith to keep the magic pain at a minimum. Ramza's stuck at 70, so for those class challenges, keep him in the back until needed.

was level 38 when i did that crit but ramzas brave was 99 and i tend to accumulate a ton pre attacking ^^

Also i tried the class thingy with ninja and Mimes ( exception being ramza was a Squire) and the mimes all mimicked ramza. was exceptionally tough