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Final Fantasy: Record Keeper |OT| The only ATB here is Active Time Battle.

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LucaMac

Member
Finished the classics and enough elites to get myself to 126 stamina so decided to switch to Beatrix bashing for a bit. 3 Greater Non Elementals out of 3 so far...no Majors, but can't really complain at all the big shiny orbs and gold. I'm tempted to drop some mythril on it while my streak lasts.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
From a mathematical standpoint, unless you're desperately hurting for a few NEs right now any Mythril would be better saved to blow on Orb Dungeon.
 

johnsmith

remember me
Took 3 attempts and 120 wasted stamina but finally beat the 3rd Beatrix form, and mastered at that. Might farm her for the gold. 120k for 60 stamina is competitive with the daily, right? Orbs are just icing on the cake.
 

Vorpal

Member
Yep, stocking up mythril for the Orb Fest at this point. Hoping to go in with about 100. I'll probably do some single pulls on banners along the way, but Bartz/Gilgamesh is the only upcoming banner I'm really excited about.
 

Balphon

Member
Took 3 attempts and 120 wasted stamina but finally beat the 3rd Beatrix form, and mastered at that. Might farm her for the gold. 120k for 60 stamina is competitive with the daily, right? Orbs are just icing on the cake.

The daily averages around that amount per run, so no. But you're really trying for the orb anyway.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Daily gives 5k per mob, usually 4-6 drops. Sometimes you get the jackpot mob. Overall it averages around 100-105k for me, for 45stam.

Depends what your definition of competitive is, I guess.
 

Red Mage

Member
I wasted a couple of mythril to beat Odin. I could've beat him without them, but not quick enough to get mastery. I had to use a second one because I picked DEF the first time. SMH.
 

LucaMac

Member
From a mathematical standpoint, unless you're desperately hurting for a few NEs right now any Mythril would be better saved to blow on Orb Dungeon.

I know yea...tempted is the key word. I am trying to hone Valefor to R3 and they are all I need, but a patience is all that's needed. It's not going anywhere for a while.

Edit: I lie. I had enough Non Elementals after my first of those three runs by the looks of it. It's Greater Winds that I need. 18 of them...f*** that. I ain't fraternising with that Humbaba prick again any time soon. The stamina thieving ****. On the bright side I battered Beatrix one more time and she gave me a Major. The temptation returns. Thats a damn fine orb streak.
 

Vorpal

Member
Set my party up for AE only to learn that Cave of the Veldt elite has exclusively single-monster battles

CNAKA4E.jpg
 
Also Soul Cannon is pretty much a Crunkworthy DPS race. Ignore the launchers (since they only do % damage and can't kill you) and blow up the main baddy within 5 turns.
The launchers can also be cheesed with Runic (missile counts as magic, I imagine carbuncle works too) and couldn't a Kirin thrown down after the first wave cannon in a launcher ignoring situation mean you will barely survive the second (provided you went in @100% HP, wave canon does 50% fixed and may give sap, regen will take you to >50%) give you a bit more time.

Edit: It seems the new UI update breaks the blind functionality (something like some sort of text to voice software would read the graphic elements out making the game somewhat navigateable, you have to turn the functionality off in battle though)
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Haste increases your DPS by a shit ton, and you can't slow Soul Cannon. For this reason alone Runic is far inferior to Boon or Lunatic High. (Doesn't matter which one, nothing mitigates missile damage) Everything else is irrelevant.

There's some misinformation that launchers do half max HP and thus take 2 hits to kill a character. That's incorrect. They do half current HP and therefore the boss is 100% nonlethal before Wave Cannon. Therefore if you subscribe to wanting to kill the thing before Wave Cannon for stars, healing is pointless, casting Death on the launchers are pointless, AOE is pointless. Power Breakdown/Magic Breakdown is pointless useless. All about getting Haste up on your party then hammering Soul Cannon for 9999s. (With Mental Breakdown even a 4* non RS rod can hit this with all the DPS RMs like Attunement II, Devotion, Impetuous Youth, Rod Master, etc)
 

elty

Member
The FFV elite is pretty tough, trash mob needs a few hit to die and some absorb earth.

Wonder how is everyone planning on mythril. Tellah and the FF XIV banner both seems good, but the orb festival and super soul break is not far behind either.
 
I'll probably do 100 gem and 3-pulls on each day of the Soul Break festival and an 11-pull on Golbez/Tellah. I should have well over 100 mythril by the time that the orb festival drops and I'd be willing to spend it all on stamina refreshes if the drop rates are good enough. As much as I like having shiny new 5* items, I've got decent enough gear that well honed abilities will take me much further than 20-30 random new items.
 

johnsmith

remember me
Clearing out my friends list from people I never summon. Somehow I ended up with a Cloud with his default SB on there. He has a Tyrfing equipped.
1.0
 

Nohar

Member
All Classic paintings completed, Luneth's Crystal get, Snow's Crystal get. Time to complete the elites one after the other.

PSA: Paralyze works against Brynhildr, in both Classic and Elite paintings.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
All Classic paintings completed, Luneth's Crystal get, Snow's Crystal get. Time to complete the elites one after the other.

PSA: Paralyze works against Brynhildr, in both Classic and Elite paintings.

You know how Tarzan's motto is "always check for squirrels first"?

In FFRK the motto is "always check for paralyze vulnerability first".

(p.s. Garuda in FFIII can be paralyzed)
 

Razmos

Member
Finally caved and bought FFIX on PSP. Got tired of waiting for a steam release.

It will be stealth released on Steam tomorrow, watch this space
 
Set my party up for AE only to learn that Cave of the Veldt elite has exclusively single-monster battles

CNAKA4E.jpg
In similar news I just did Chaos Shrine of Yore, Part 1 (elite) having Quake and Break as my black magic and having no healing at all. Most the enemies are immune to earth and break was only R1.

I didn't need the healing it turns out as enough potions dropped along the way the enemies were weak compare to difficulty and I found the bosses were easy (one get petrified the other paralyzed). In fact I also nearly forgot to use my RW as well. But that initial "Oh no. should I reset? have I just wasted all this stamina?" feeling is bad.

I hope the Cave of the Veldt treated you in a similar way.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Done with these Elites.

Game is in an interesting place right now. Bosses of the Elite paintings are really challenging and interesting in terms of prepping and executing, but good Lord the trash is awful. It literally is savescum till your Quake or summon guy goes first.

The II, III and V paintings suffer from a severe lack of offensive synergy barring Judgement Staff on V, unless you pulled Josef or Luneth's weapon(s). That being said, with any two rods to do a proper mage meta it's not -too- bad. Light Rod also helps a ton as a summon stick in III (Was rocking r4 Ramuh, r3 Valefor)

I think eventually as the dungeon levels creep higher I'm going to have to hone Quake to r3 or r4 and then forego BM RM2 in favor of Rod Mastery since Quake is barely 1-shotting mobs now. Bosses are pretty much a careful balancing act of assuming it'll take ~10 turns hence planning to have 10 ability uses, or 8 staggered breakdowns, and then using the surplus to do trash. In conjunction with that, napkin maths to make sure all the abilities kind of add up to ~200k damage (which seems about where most of the hard bosses are hovering) definitely helps.

Quake (r2), Valefor (r3), Ramuh (r4) or Phoenix (r2), and Waterja (r3) and Comet (r4) have pretty much been MVPs, along with the double r4 -agas on vulnerable bosses.. Diaga (r1) is also nice to have, and is 'enough casts' considering half the time you actually have to heal instead ouf using Diaga. Nice part is none of those abilities fight for the same orbs (outside of vs. Breakdowns), so the copious amounts of medium term planning is paying off.

Definitely would have had a much rougher time and probably burning Mythril to farm some Elite bosses for 4* orbs on the JP service though. They've been far, far stingier with event rewards.
 

SunGod

Member
I've just got Ronka Ruins 2 left now but I've literally breezed through everything with Retaliate. I do have a 7* Zanteksuken but it's not much better than my 5* Blazefire Saber, anyone with any sword or katana around that level shouldn't have too much problem with these. Cloud aside I haven't even been using a Lv65 team (mostly 50-60)

With Ronka Ruins 1 of course knowing that it's ideal to use Lunatic High/Boon RW and not worrying about the launchers helped, but that's obvious from playing the classic dungeon.

Out of interest have the classic dungeons gone up to a difficulty of 80+ in Japan yet?
 

LucaMac

Member
...that initial "Oh no. should I reset? have I just wasted all this stamina?" feeling is bad.

Just did the first round of the dungeon with Garuda as the final boss. Just realised I haven't any wind element with me. Extra annoyed that I couldn't decide what to put as snows second ability as he's quite restricted. Pretty sure he can use that ranged wind attack. Got so distracted trying to fit in intimidate somewhere as somebody here said Garuda no likey. Bollocks anyway.

Now it's a case of do I waste 20 stamina or gamble at wasting 60+. With intimadate I shouldnt lose any more medals right? It would be wasting a shot at beatrix's nice shiny orbs, and they're lovely :/

Edit: Gambled and regret it immensely.
 

Nohar

Member
All FFIII and FFXIII elites completed. Time to deal with the FFII and FFV ones. I'm a little scared by the last two FFV elites. I'll see. Worst case scenario I'll skip them and come back after pulling some banners.
 
Finally caved and bought FFIX on PSP. Got tired of waiting for a steam release.

It will be stealth released on Steam tomorrow, watch this space
I honestly don't think that's in the pipeline.

They had existing PC versions of VII and VIII to use and polish for the PC/mobile/etc. releases, porting IX from scratch would take some level of effort.

I would love to have it on my iPad though, with some tweaks to ease up the excruciatingly glacial pacing, of course.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Well, if games like Grandia II can get ported...

Also lest we forget, FFVIII Steam did get a handy dandy fast forward feature. That'd actually make FFIX tolerable to play.
 

LucaMac

Member
Just use an emulator for your phone? I played through IV, VI, VIII and currently finishing up disc 2 of VII during the last few months. IX is next on the list. Have V downloaded somewhere too. VII onwards need a psx emulator rhe others need a gameboy advance one. Its possible to speed up emulators too for the tedious bits and grinding. I destroyed FFVIII with speeding up and drawing magic until I was full.

ePSXe and myboy are the ones I use. Can get the isos from various places.

Being able to save state is handy too. Used it a lot in the battle arena in VII. Save state, roll the handicap. Too nasty? Reload state. Stupid ship knock you out of the combat without even fighting you in the last round? Load state etc etc.
 
Depending on how many more elite dungeons I clear today (looking at one, possibly two more shard refreshes), I could hit four hundred Mythril today.

Seeing as I have not pulled many times (thinking four x11s, a few singles near launch to get started and one each $1 pull), I am really excited to get a massive shot in the arm in terms of gear. Up until the XIII event, I only had one soul break, Kain's, which wasn't immensely useful (powerful for sure, but compared to the utility of Sazh's, my second, it didn't do me many favors). That's mostly just a tip that 3★ and 4★ isn't "trash" if used properly (expand inventory, keep it all, combine when possible, abuse synergy).

My current plan (as posted before) is one x11 on each celebration banner, which will leave me with one-fifty. From here I guess I could pull multiples on something, out of the banner list the one with Tyro and Firion's items would be the one I would throw the dice at. Or I could just save for future event banners. My only good MAG weapon is a 4★ (or a 3★+?).

Seeing as I'll need space for all them 3★ and 4★, I'll probably pump my inventory to 300 with the next event Mytril (been doing one +5 each fifth day "daily bonus" Mythril since launch, so I'm at 255 now).

I'm also thinking of making sure I have enough to do five or ten refreshes on the orb event, but there's enough time from here to there that I shouldn't need to bank anything today.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Consider an order of magnitude more for Orb Dungeon if you're in good shape after soul break banner!

Honestly speaking though, if it actually still is 10% on those banners without the stacking bonus, consider waiting till that drops. 400 Mythril worth of pulls is nothing to sneeze at for a % adjustment.
 
Consider an order of magnitude more for Orb Dungeon if you're in good shape after soul break banner!

Honestly speaking though, if it actually still is 10% on those banners without the stacking bonus, consider waiting till that drops. 400 Mythril worth of pulls is nothing to sneeze at for a % adjustment.
Oooh, by the way I meant five to ten refills for each Orb Dungeon (there's four, right?). I'm leaning to ten. More than that might be excessive? I could probably convince myself to double that for ice/wind (those seem to be my holes at the moment).

And the percentage increase is what, 10% to 12%? With hidden jump if you get zero 5★? That's an improvement, sure, but I don't know if it's worth continuing to wait on it, especially seeing as the big bonus is to pull more than once on a single banner.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Think everyone and their mom will be going for Summon and Wind for Valefor. I'm not sure how many Mythril it's gonna take but I'm erring on the high side just in case. If it takes less than I anticipated, cool, I'm on my way for more 11 pulls on the next worthwhile banner.

If I'm not walking out of that dungeon with 2x Valefor r5, I've done something very wrong. Gacha can be luck based. Having The Burninator with 10 Non-Elemental AOE summon uses to throw at content is not luck based and useful for every realm, even ones that haven't been released yet. If I have to sink 150 Mythril to get there, so be it.

Also possibly Lightning since we know in advance about Full Break.

edit@above
 

Nohar

Member
Well, the orb dungeon certainly is a very good excuse to spend Mythril. Depending on how often Big Cactuars pop and drop Major orbs, it may be a very good idea to spend dozens if not hundreds of Mythril into it. The event itself will give 12 Mythril in total in rewards.
 

LucaMac

Member
Cheers. I've reached 100 for the first time today and intend to keep it climbing. The soul break celebrations could tempt me to pull though. I've only ever done one 11 pull before and it was very disappointing. Might just stick to my policy of one pull per banner and pray to the gatcha gods. Golbez/Tellah looks nice too mind you. Orbs are far more concrete and dependable that gear though, so I'll try to stay strong.

Edit: Was looking online but using the wrong search terms clearly as it kept insisting on showing me info on dailies. Found some of the details here, but no rough estimate of when:
http://ffrk.kongbakpao.com/orb-dungeon/
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Don't get me wrong - it's not so cut and dry. It may be worth it to pull to beef up your gear. As PixyJunket said, a deep pool of 3++s and 4s will help with whatever realms they're from. Anything more, be it 4+s, 4++s or 5s or whatever are gravy.

As RNG as the gacha is, the relative value of gacha pulls vs stam refreshes are based on two things:

- How saturated your equipment is. If you're getting 10 out of 11 significant RS upgrades from 4 or duplicate 3 for combining, it's worth far more than when you're saturating on dupes and only getting upgrades from 5*s or triple 4s for 4++.

- How much max stamina you have. If you're stam refreshing on 70 stamina, it's literally 1/2 less effective than if you're refreshing on ~135 stamina (more or less how much it should be with all cleared content on the orb dungeon). To get to that point, you're going to need at least reasonable amounts of gear.
 

LucaMac

Member
I'm ok gear wise I think. Two unique soul break weapons Lightning/Rydia, but they are both quite versatile. No shared soul break items but a few natural 5 armours and a few weapons. I have saved most of my 3 stars and have a decent amount of 3++ 3+ and even 4+'s. I've mastered everything bar Parade Float like most people. No real problems bar Schizno (health bars saved me). Scared of the last V elite this time around though. Definitely not desperate for gear. Might do a few sneaky 3 pulls on the celbration banners rather than full 11 pulls. Especially if the rate increases.

Have a 200 inventory and I have reached a point where I'm getting my 4th or more copy of some items which can frustrate sometimes. (6 Black Cowls including my farmed ones)
 

Vorpal

Member
In similar news I just did Chaos Shrine of Yore, Part 1 (elite) having Quake and Break as my black magic and having no healing at all. Most the enemies are immune to earth and break was only R1.

I didn't need the healing it turns out as enough potions dropped along the way the enemies were weak compare to difficulty and I found the bosses were easy (one get petrified the other paralyzed). In fact I also nearly forgot to use my RW as well. But that initial "Oh no. should I reset? have I just wasted all this stamina?" feeling is bad.

I hope the Cave of the Veldt treated you in a similar way.

Haha, I think I made the same mistake with Chaos Shrine of Yore too! I should've learned my lesson then. Glad it worked out for you though. Cave of Veldt wasn't too bad either. Although when I got to the Behemoth King I realized that I forgot a Poison attack (and subsequently missed out on Master), so it was a blunderous attempt all around. whuddyagunnado

Well, if games like Grandia II can get ported...

Also lest we forget, FFVIII Steam did get a handy dandy fast forward feature. That'd actually make FFIX tolerable to play.

By the way, does the FFVIII fast-forward feature speed up the music at all? That's what bums me out when I play emulators. If I could run a game at 2 or 3x speed while magically keeping the music and sound effects from sounding like a sped up garble of computer noises, that would be goddamned amazing
 

Falk

that puzzling face
By the way, does the FFVIII fast-forward feature speed up the music at all? That's what bums me out when I play emulators. If I could run a game at 2 or 3x speed while magically keeping the music and sound effects from sounding like a sped up garble of computer noises, that would be goddamned amazing

You know, I actually don't know!

By the time this feature was introduced, FFVIII was pretty much run-in-the-background material for steam achievements while working. And my work happens to be audio/music so it's all muted.

Should reinstall it and find out.
 
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