Final Fantasy VI Bosses

Remember when some scholar-type guy told you there were two so-called Atma Weapons? Strangely enough, you ought to own one and have defeated the other, so what's the deal with this guy? Clearly, now that Kefka has control over the Goddesses, he's made them craft an even stronger version of the legendary beast of mass destruction we destroyed a year ago. Or something.

I am the one known as Ultima...Forged an eternity ago and left here...Forgotten in the mists of time...Long have I pondered what I should do...Long, long have I pondered...But now it seems I have an answer...

Ultima Buster isn't as interesting as it hypes itself up to be. Normally, he uses the level 3 spells, switching to a Northern Cross or Southern Cross attack every now and then. When he hits 32640 HP, he'll revert to Firaga, Quake, Meteor spells, Tsunami, and Flare Star. When you hurt the fiend, he may counter with Battle, but what Ultima Buster is actually doing here is storing the hate he develops from your blows into the ultimate attack: whenever he is hurt 12 times, he will stop acting and start storing energy: "A strange light surrounds Ultima Buster" The boss will proceed to glow yellow and do nothing for two turns before unleashing the strongest attack known to man: Ultima. It hurts really bad (count on around 2400 HP worth of damage), and you don't want that.

Ultima Buster's unique elemental coverage makes Holy Lance Dragoons useless, so give them Partisans at the start of the battle. Summon your barriers: Mighty Guard, Hastega, Zona Seeker's Wall, Earth Wall, Moon Song, Life Guard, you know what works. Don't forget to set Slow on Ultima Buster, and you might try Stealing too, although there's nothing especially grand to obtain in this fight.

Keep yourself healed and make sure you only execute the strongest attacks. Ideally, if you don't have Runic, you want to take out Ultima Buster in twelve hits or less, which makes for a needed average of around 4600 damage a hit. That shouldn't be too much of a problem, right? If it is, there's a few ways around the situation:

• The Reraise spell;
• Have a character summon Quetzalli around the time Ultima Buster flashes yellow for the second time, causing Ultima to miss all your characters.
• Don't attack Ultima Buster - just set Reflect and keep yourself healed with Healing Rods, Hi-Potions, and White Wind until his own level 3 spells have damaged him enough to lower him into his 'dangerous phase'. Debilitator might help to speed things up there. Now that he's already fairly damaged, you should be able to kill him before he gets to Ultima.

Obviously, if you do have Runic at your side, there's nothing to worry about as, when Ultima Buster starts glowing, you can just initiate the Runic skill and watch the attack be absorbed by the blade. Expand Full Strategy

Ultima Weapon is quite a challenge. Not quite as disgustingly horrible as Air Force, but you don't have the ability to divide and conquer that made the Air Force battle palatable. Ultima Weapon starts like a rather tough monster, and as he has the most HP of any normal monster so far (Intangir excluded), he'll be quite the little troublemaker.

His normal battle script starts with a pretty rockin' speech, and then it continues to simply pound your character into submission with Attack, Flare, and Blaze. Flare is a snazzy new spell you're probably not familiar with yet. Flare is non-elemental and barrier-piercing, though you can protect yourself with Reflect Rings and the like. This is, until he reaches 12800 HP, at which point he'll start casting Bio, Quake, or the enemy version of Meteor, use either Attack or !Full Power, use an multi-target Fira spell, and end with Mind Blast.

Mind Blast is a multi-target attack that randomly selects a character four times and sets one randomly selected status ailments out of the following possibilities: Darkness, Zombie, Poison, Imp, Petrify, Doom, Silence, Berserk, Confuse, Sap, Sleep, Slow, and Stop. If a character is never chosen, he won't be affected by the spell; if a character was randomly selected three times, he'll get three randomly selected status ailments set on him. As you can imagine, you can come away from this attack with relatively minor damage, or with some fairly severe damage. It might be a good idea to summon Unicorn if you have it after Mind Blast has been used.Due to a GBA-exclusive bug, you can circumvent all effects from the attack in this version by equipping a Relic which – under normal circumstances – only protects against Imp (such as the White Cape). Gaining Imp immunity with a Rage will work as well.

After Mind Blast, Ultima Weapon will get even stronger. The message "Focusing energy" will appear, and Ultima Weapon will give himself Protect, Shell, and Haste status and glow an eerie yellow. He'll wait for his next turn and glow yellow again. That next turn, he'll glow yellow for a long time, some cogwheels will spin (as a hobby assembly enthusiast, I wonder how the heck they did that), and Ultima Weapon will use the move Flare Star.

Flare Star is a neat attack. It's fire-elemental and its damage depends on your level. It multiplies the level of a random party member by 80 and splits the damage by the amount of characters you have. So, if you have a four-headed party, all level 25, the damage will be 500 per party member. After Flare Star, he basically starts over again with Bio/Quake/(enemy) Meteor, etc.

When you knock him below 6144 HP, he'll start using another set of spells: Attack, Graviga, Tornado, Rasp, and Blaze. Every time he is damaged in this stage, he'll have a 33% chance of countering the attack with Flare. He'll keep this up until he dies.

You can basically do two things here. In both scenarios you'll want your party covered in Reflect Rings. Celes shouldn't need to use Runic until the final stage of Ultima Weapon, when he gains the ability to cast Graviga, as this can be absorbed by Celes' Runic blade yet flies past Reflect Rings.

If a lot of your characters know the Rasp spell (say, three or four), you could try to Rasp his 5000 MP down to 0 and kill him that way. It will take longer than HP violence will, but if you just stick with attacking his MP, he'll never leave the 'safe' offensive scheme (Attack, Flare, and Blaze), against which Zona Seeker and Reflect Rings result in easy victory. Even without those two, it'll still be easier on you to handle it than the standard HP-depletion method will.

If you decide to just smack him to death with your ouchies, beware. Start the battle off with Zona Seeker to soften the blow of his magical attacks. Make staying alive priority one: Flare can do over 600 damage, so be prepared for a Flare spell at all times if you're not covered in Reflect Rings. Cast Slow on him to slow him down.

Try to steal a Ribbon with Locke; you'll thank yourself for the effort later. If Edgar is in your party and can use a Debilitator, use it until you've nailed a nice weakness to exploit. Then exploit it (as if you needed me to say that!).

If he uses Mind Blast, cure the most dangerous status ailments and proceed. If the message "Vast energy focused" appears, use Dispel to remove your adversary's positive status effects (and don't forget to cast Slow again).

Basically, it's a story of heal first and damage later. Terra, Celes, and Relm should just use their level 2 spells (Blizzara is, by a very slight margin, the strongest of the three – unless, of course, you've Debilitator'd him to have a weakness). Have Locke steal until he has acquired either an Elixir or a Ribbon, and use Hawkeyes to fight with for the duration of the battle. Edgar can use Drill and Sabin Aura Cannon for superior damage.

Mog's Dance is up for debate. The Earth Blues is the home Dance, so it will never fail, and it also has the most damaging attack of all Mog's attacks: Rock Slide. The Water Harmony, on the other hand, has a more constant damage output, as both El Niño (most common attack) and Plasma (2nd most common attack) will work. In contrast, Earth Blues' Sonic Boom will fail whenever it's used. I'm leaning toward Earth Blues myself, but it's more a matter of personal preference.

Setzer will probably want to stick to Gil Toss. Even with double Earring, his level 2 spells are inferior to Gil Toss and his Slots aren't very useful in this fight. Prismatic Flash can't compare to Gil Toss, Chocobo Stampede misses entirely due to Ultima Weapon's inherent Float and the other attacks are too rare to consider an option.

Cyan's Flurry out-damages Fang, so try to have other characters attack while you wait for Flurry to load. It might be safer, if you're less experienced, to simply stick to Fang and have him run utility work if that's necessary. If you seriously brought Cyan for some reason I expect you to have taught him at least one level 2 spell; with one pair of Earring, a level 2 spell will outdamage Fang.

Strago's Aqua Breath attack is the strongest he'll be able to do. If you equipped Reflect Rings, his White Wind move will be very nice to have around. Traveler might be stronger than Aqua Breath, but it should also be much more troublesome on your MP. Try it out and see what works for you. An added benefit of Aqua Breath, by the way, is its dual-elemental nature; if you brought Edgar, there's a double chance Strago can exploit the Debilitator-induced weakness with the attack.

Gau's best choices are probably Ninja (Water Scroll), Chimera (Aqua Breath), Bomb (Blaze) or Outcast (Lifeshaver). Ninja is the strongest offensively, but you probably didn't go back to pick it up. Outcast is very defensive; since it makes Gau absorb Fire-elemental attacks, is inherently Floating, and gives the Undead property, Outcast will protect against Fira, Bio, Quake, Blaze, Flare Star and (due to a bug) all the effects of Mind Blast. If you have level 2 spells on Gau, I'd advise you to use Magic rather than Rages in this battle, as the level of control will be nice to have. And, with all the Attacks Gau uses, damage output will be higher overall. Expand Full Strategy