Four New Espers

"Hey, aren't you...? You were with the Returners, right? Me, too! I thought everyone else had been wiped out! I don't know if there's anything I can do for you now, but I did hear something you might be interested to know... Apparently, four espers escaped from that Magitek Research Facility not long before you guys snuck in there. There's no way of knowing if they're still alive, but if you could find them, I bet they would lend you their power!"

When you return to Nikeah for the first time following the reshaping of the world, you'll likely notice a discolored citizen standing right where you entered. As soon as you move into the town, he'll approach you and give you that message regarding four new espers that have been hidden in the Game Boy Advance version of Final Fantasy 6. Three of the four espers boast powerful new spells, and two of them offer level up bonuses that can't be found on any other esper in the game. They're definitely worth tracking down. While Celes was off napping for a year after Kefka moved the statues on the Floating Continent, a few people, like this man, came out of the woodwork and are around towns for you to speak to. If you've played previous versions of the game, you'll probably notice them right away because they're either in a place where nobody was standing before or are a strangely-colored version of normal NPCs.

Three of the new espers can be sought immediately after getting the airship, Leviathan, Cactuar, and Gilgamesh. You're likely to not be able to win the battles that each of them requires, though, until you've done some sufficient leveling.

Cactuar

The first esper you're most likely to be able to acquire is Cactuar. It's recommended for each member in your party of four to have 3,001 HP or more, and a couple should have access to Curaga. Head to Maranda, and west of the entrance will be an oddly-colored thief. "Do you know what a Cactuar is? I'd been hunting the little varmints last time I was out in the desert, when all of a sudden, a huge one attacked me! A monster of that size has to have some good treasure. I'd bet my right eye on it!" Indeed, there is a large Cactuar in the desert south of Maranda, but in order to unlock it, you need to slay 10 of his tinier comrades. These are simple enough to defeat - bring along somebody like Edgar, Sabin, or Shadow who can use powerful specials that will always hit, and they'll die in one turn. After finishing off ten of them, move to the southwest area of the desert and step right in the middle and you'll face the Gigantuar.

Gigantuar Bestiary #345	Type	Level	HP	MP	Gil	EXP
	None	91	30000	4500	1111	0
	Strength	Magic Atk.	Evasion	Defense	Mag. Def.	Mag. Evade
	15	18	200	200	200	200
	Stolen Items			Dropped Items
	None			None
	Status Immunities			Elemental Immunities
	Elemental Absorb			Elemental Weakness
				None
	Lores			Command Immunities
	None			Control

The Gigantuar loves spraying members of your party with needles, doing exactly 1,000 damage a pop. If each member of your party has enough to survive three of these attacks, you're good to go. Keep hammering him with attacks - he has similar evasion techniques as the regular Cactuars, so use specials - and healing with Curaga each turn, so that you're prepared when he uses his final attack, which is 10 straight attacks of 1,000 damage each. If you're set up correctly and have full health at this point, it would take 16 attacks to annihilate your party, so there's nothing to worry about. He has 30,000 HP.

After your victory, you'll receive the Cactuar magicite, which doesn't teach any new spells, but gives a +2 bonus to speed at level up, which is a tremendous boost that no other esper can match. It can also be summoned to cast 1000 Needles or occasionally "10,000 Needles?"

Leviathan

Leviathan is your next target. Before getting the airship, you likely saw a new citizen lingering in South Figaro. Right next to the chocobo stable is a man standing idly next to two bushes. If you speak to him, he says, "Not too long ago when I was out sailing, I saw a huge shadow pass by beneath the water." The only thing you can make of this is that if you get on the water, you may encounter an enemy. You can hop on a boat either right here or from the Nikeah harbor, and either way, your party will enter a cutscene on the boat where they will spot the sea monster. He'll attack the boat, your party will fly overboard, and you'll immediately enter a battle. As an aside, this is the only battle in the World of Ruin in which Mog can acquire his Water Harmony dance, so if you missed getting it before the cataclysm, now's your last chance.

Leviathan Bestiary #346	Type	Level	HP	MP	Gil	EXP
	None	91	32000	7000	10000	0
	Strength	Magic Atk.	Evasion	Defense	Mag. Def.	Mag. Evade
	22	14	20	140	120	20
	Stolen Items			Dropped Items
	None			None
	Status Immunities			Elemental Immunities
				None
	Elemental Absorb			Elemental Weakness
				None
	Lores			Command Immunities
	Tsunami			Control

Leviathan is no laughing matter, as his Tsunami and El Niño attacks can do very high damage to everybody in your party. At around levels 45-50 you should have over 3,000 HP, and his Tsunami will deal around 1,000, though he will sometimes use it back-to-back. El Niño can do around 1,500 damage to everybody, and he also attacks many times consecutively for more than 1,000 a pop. He will occasionally throw out Aqua Breath, but it's less powerful than Tsunami and isn't much to worry about. Make sure you're at a high enough level where you can survive, and dedicate somebody with Curaga. If you don't have it, high magic power and Cura is a risky shot. Keep hammering him with powerful special techniques. He has 32,000 HP to whittle down.

After winning the battle, everybody will be back aboard the boat and you'll receive the Leviathan magicite, which teaches a new spell, Flood, at a 2x rate. At level up, the wearer will receive 2 bonus points to Stamina. Leviathan can also be summoned to use a Tidal Wave attack.

Gilgamesh

Also available immediately after getting the airship is the Gilgamesh esper. Though Gilgamesh is very strong, what will likely hold you back from getting him this early is the damage to your pocketbook. Travel to Jidoor and head to the Auction House, outside of which a new NPC will be standing. He says, "I heard they're going to put a rare sword up for auction. I can't decide if I should bid or not." Enter the Auction House and sit down for bidding, and if you're lucky, the item that will be for sale will be the Excalipoor sword. The bidding will go up in a hurry and you'll have to spend 500,000 gil if you want to buy it. If you have enough money, snatch it up, as it's your only path to getting this new esper.

Once you have this terrible sword, prepare a party around level 50 and head to the Colloseum. Wager the Excalipoor and you'll fight an Onion Dasher for an unknown item. The enemy is simple and you'll win a Merit Award, a nice relic. But after the battle's over, a voice will come out of nowhere. "Hey, that's quite a rare sword you've got there... I think... ...I'll take that sword for my own!" The battle will begin.

Gilgamesh Bestiary #347	Type	Level	HP	MP	Gil	EXP
	Humanoid	97	38000	3200	0	0
	Strength	Magic Atk.	Evasion	Defense	Mag. Def.	Mag. Evade
	51	8	45	173	212	30
	Stolen Items			Dropped Items
	Common: Genji Shield Rare: Genji Glove			Common: Genji Armor Rare: Genji Helm
	Status Immunities			Elemental Immunities
				None
	Elemental Absorb			Elemental Weakness
	None			None
	Lores			Command Immunities
	1000 Needles, Aero, Quasar			Control

Gilgamesh doesn't seem all that daunting at the beginning of the fight, using regular attacks and more or less hitting for around 1,000 damage. It's not until you do enough damage to him that he starts to get angry and fighting to his full potential. He'll use Protect, Shell, and Haste on himself, then begin jumping on party members, attacking for more damage, and throwing terribly powerful swords at your party that will deal immediate death. If you're not ready for this, he will waste you easily. Keep somebody casting Curaga every turn, and if you can spare it, have somebody backing them up as well with life magic if necessary. Keep a steady assault on him with highly damaging moves and he'll go down. He has 38,000 HP.

Gilgamesh also has fantastic Genji equipment to steal, and he'll drop either a Genji Helm or Genji Armor upon winning the battle, so it's even more important to save before this whole encounter to get the piece you want.

When you win the battle, he will express interest in helping you out, and you'll receive the Gilgamesh magicite, which teaches a new spell, "Valor," at a 5x rate, as well as Quick at 1x. At level up, the wearer will receive a +2 bonus to Strength. Gilgamesh can also be summoned to attack with either the Excalibur, Masamune, Excalipoor, or Enkidu.

Diabolos

The last of the four new espers, Diabolos, can be acquired once you've defeated all eight dragons. Then, you have access to the new dungeon, the Dragon's Den, where Diabolos can be found. The Dragon's Den is a large new dungeon, and while it's far too large to discuss here, the bottom line is that the only way to get to Diabolos is to reach Kaiser Dragon and defeat him.

Kaiser Dragon Bestiary #383	Type	Level	HP	MP	Gil	EXP
	None	97	65500	60000	0	0
	Strength	Magic Atk.	Evasion	Defense	Mag. Def.	Mag. Evade
	30	22	0	200	200	0
	Stolen Items			Dropped Items
	None			None
	Status Immunities			Elemental Immunities
				None
	Elemental Absorb			Elemental Weakness
				None
	Lores			Command Immunities
	None			Control
	Strategy
	Kaiser Dragon is the ultimate victory of Final Fantasy III (US!) junkies the world over. We knew this thing was lying dormant in the game's code for years. We figured out the highlights of this guy's speech when you could play but Tetris on handheld consoles. We invented this guy's HP loop trick, and all Square-Enix could do was copy it. But we're not smug. Well, not most of us, apparently. There's basically two phases in this battle. First, you'll have to survive Kaiser's first four lives, during which he'll use attacks according to a particular weakness. By survive, that's all I mean: his HP will replenish with each of these four shifts, so any damage you inflict doesn't count. Second, once he's down to his last life and won't replenish his HP again - this is the part where you attack and stuff - you'll have to stay alive, deal sufficient damage and survive Kaiser Dragon's final Ultima spell. At the start of the battle, Kaiser Dragon will use Barrier Change to assume an offensive skillset. Here's what he'll use; you can use the attacks listed to determine his weakness at the time: When weak to Fire-elemental attacks: Kaiser Dragon will randomly use Firaga, Meteor, Flare, Meltdown and will counter 66% of your attacks with Southern Cross on the entire party. When weak to Ice-elemental attacks: Kaiser Dragon will randomly use Blizzaga spells, Absolute Zero, Avalanche and Northern Cross, and will counter 66% of your attacks with Freezing Dust on a random party member. When weak to Lightning-elemental attacks: Kaiser Dragon will randomly use Thundaga, Plasma or Gigavolt, and will counter 66% of your attacks with Wave Cannon on the entire party. When weak to Poison-elemental attacks: Kaiser Dragon will use a combo of Scintillation, Venomist and a Doom attack on its first turn, use a combo of Lullaby, Crypt Dust and Disaster on the second turn and will use Cloudy Heaven on its third turn. It will counter 66% of your attacks with a Bio spell on a random party member. When weak to Wind-elemental attacks: Kaiser Dragon will randomly use physical attacks, Tornado spells, Aero and Cyclonic, and will counter 66% of your attacks with a Wind Slash attack. When weak to Holy-elemental attacks: The first time Kaiser Dragon gets a Holy shift, he'll cast Reflect on a single character and follow with the Reflect ??? attack. Its second turn will be used to cast Protect, Shell and (useless due to Slow immunity) Haste. When Kaiser Dragon has done these things earlier, he'll just attack with physical attacks, Holy spells and the Lv. ? Holy attack. Kaiser Dragon will counter 66% of your attacks with a Hyperdrive attack on a random party member. When weak to Earth-elemental attacks: Kaiser Dragon will attack ferociously with combinations of physical attacks, every third turn using !Last Breath twice, and will counter 66% of your attacks with a Quake spell. When weak to Water-elemental attacks: Kaiser Dragon will randomly use Aqua Breath, Tsunami, Flash Rain and El Niño in quick succession, and will counter 66% of your attacks with an Acid Rain attack on a single character. Some elemental skillsets are more dangerous than others. The Fire-elemental one is nasty because Meteor and Flare are both non-elemental and barrier-piercing; coming from Kaiser Dragon's bloated Magic stat they'll probably kill whatever they hit, so Magic Evasion is your only salvation. Kaiser Dragon's Ice-elemental shift is nasty because Freezing Dust is such a pain; you have no business attacking at this point though, so you shouldn't worry. Quake kills you if you're not floating, doing about 6000 damage to character without elemental affinities for it. Kaiser Dragon's Poison-elemental shift is the worst; if he manages to pull off Cloudy Heaven, your battle is over since, though you need Ribbons equipped, Ribbons will make it so that you can't cure the Zombie status (in this game, immunities work both ways; if you have it despite being immune to it, it's unremovable). Since Kaiser Dragon's attack pattern depends on its weakness in this phase, you can actually change its attack pattern with the Debilitator Tool. The game checks the elemental weaknesses in a certain order, and the first weakness it finds will be the one which defines Kaiser Dragon's attack type. Look at the elemental-based attack pattern table above; this is the order in which the game checks for elemental weakness. This means that the Fire element is the most dominant one – if Kaiser Dragon's Barrier Change has set a Fire weakness, it can't be changed no matter what weakness the Debilitator sets. On the other hand, Earth is a relatively submissive one, meaning that you have a large chance of changing it. There's hardly ever a guarantee, but the Debilitator might be able to change Kaiser Dragon's code of conduct if you smell Cloudy Heaven approaching, for instance. Thunder Shields are a blessing. In the elemental shift phase, it'll protect you against all Lightning-elemental attacks and Aqua Breath, and will halve damage done by Fire- and Ice-elemental ones. Afterwards, Lightning Shields will help you against Meltdown spells Kaiser Dragon may cast. Ribbons are also an absolute necessity; without them, Kaiser Dragon's Poison-elemental shift will spell your doom and every Mind Blast attack it's going to regularly use will just murder you. Too bad for set-ups that require both Relic slots (such as successful Dragoons); they have to go in favor of a Ribbon. Kaiser Dragon's first phase is relatively simple. You'll need to see Kaiser Dragon use Barrier Change five times before you can attack. Any damage you inflict in this first phase won't actually register in its fifth and meaningful life (all your damage will be reset) and it'll only get you nasty counterattacks. So far so good. If a character falls (likely due to Flare, Meteor, Doom or a particularly strong elemental attack on a character not protected from it), revive. Multi-targeted Shell is very important to absorb the multi-target attacks Kaiser Dragon possesses. Kaiser Dragon's last and true life, after its fifth elemental shift, is simple but brutal. Every 15 ATB intervals, regardless of its normal AI script, it'll have a 2/3 chance of using Heartless Angel, possibly followed by a 1/3 Mind Blast attack. This is where your Ribbons kick in. If you've got Ribbons (or White Capes) equipped, the attack will fail. If you don't, you've lost your battle right there, as you don't have the time to heal. Kaiser Dragon's normal AI script includes Meltdown spells, Quake spells, Hyperdrive attacks, relatively weak multi-target attacks such as Gale Cut, Flash Rain and Absolute Zero and physical attacks including !Last Breath. If you target Kaiser Dragon with anything, it may use !Last Breath or Revenge Blast as a counter-attack. If you're wrapped in Thunder Shields, Meltdown should only bother you if the attack also heals Kaiser Dragon (if so: too bad). The nastiness stems from the incredibly fast-paced Kaiser Dragon, Hyperdrive attacks which will kill a target, Revenge Blast attacks which will kill a target and the continuous usage of Heartless Angel, which you need to cure since anytime a Flash Rain or Absolute Zero attack may come around the corner. You will need Reraise for this fight. It's extremely difficult to track Kaiser Dragon's HP, especially since Libra will provoke counter-attacks. Always value revival over healing and healing over offense, since Kaiser's nastiest attacks are counter-attacks and the one big threat in its random AI script is only single-target. I've found that since you die so often due to Revenge Blast and Hyperdrive, applying things such as Mighty Guard and Hastega are often pointless, as you'll only see it quickly removed in most cases. Your offense may be a problem, since Kaiser Dragon will only have a single randomly decided weakness when things get serious, and will nullify or absorb the other seven. You can use Libra to check its current weakness; there's a good chance your mages will be able to nail it even when lacking the likes of Flare and Ultima. Kaiser Dragon has above-average Defense and Magic Defense, so barrier-piercing attacks work the best. Particularly damaging combinations are Locke with the Valiant Knife/Master's Scroll and Setzer with Fixed Dice/Master's Scroll, as both will ignore defenses. In the end, the fight versus Kaiser Dragon is a bit of a luck fight. Either way, you'll need to be tightly prepared with Ribbons, Thunder Shields, and all of the correct spells. But beyond that, if Kaiser Dragon decided to use Cloudy Heaven, or if Meteor connects on the entire party, or if you get the wrong counter at the wrong time, you're screwed. So even though specific potential scenarios might be nigh impossible, it's an entirely doable battle on the whole. Expand Full Strategy

Diabolos teaches Graviga at a faster rate than Midgardsormr, and is the only esper to teach Gravija. Please refer to the Dragon's Den guide for more information.