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On my first time through the game, I've so far fought two battles against bosses using strategies that are probably pretty unconventional.

The first would be the Byurobolos, (the blue/purple Bomb guys), at

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the meteors when collecting the adamantite.

As most of you are aware, these things have an annoying habit of

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casting life2 every time you kill one

The walkthrough suggests you handle this by

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using attacks that hit all of them simultaneously.

Unfortunately, that only works if

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they all have approximately the same number of hit points left. Otherwise you kill some, who revive a different group

which creates a cycle that prevents that from working. This is what happened to me. I did however manage to pull off the win anyway without having to restart the battle by using the very simple technique of

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doing nothing but defending and casting cure spells. As long as I wasn't killing them, they wouldn't cast life2, but they did still cast explode on occassion, and I just waited for them to blow themselves up.

The other battle I managed to win, (again first time without having to reset), with unconventional techniques was with Atomos. I noticed that although this enemy looked big and bad and could do some serious damage...

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it had no physical attack at all.

I was in major trouble in the battle and having looked him up on the enemies list of this site and seen how massive his hit points were, and comparing that figure to the damage I could dish out, I knew I needed to do something unconvetional. So...

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I went after his magic. I cast the blue spell Magic Hammer with my one blue mage some 25 times while everyone else was being slowly muched by Atomos and managed to survive long enough to run him out of mana. Then, my blue mage slowly whittled away at him while he could do nothing but complain about not being able to cast his favorite spells.

It took a while, but it eventually won.

Anyone else got any war stories involving unique strategies they'd like to share?

I attacked myself with the Healing Staff in my Bare SSCC*. It's a nice alternative to using money on potions.

Killing Gilgy in X-Death's castle with a level one Galuf and the Doom Axe is a story many here can tell you, I'm sure.

And need we mention those wacky Berserker people?

Which I haven't played in a some time.

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OSonic Rave
/ \Last Arcanum
[ ]Strike Raid
XRagnarok

Byorobolos...killed it the 5th time...I mean it's too hard to beat. But I found the strategy. Hit them with spells that hit them all together. When they already casted cure2 5-6 times, they will have no real mana when you attempt to kill them. I can't remember the timings now.

Minotaurus: with Elf Cloak and Shields equipped to both Bartz and Krile, I tried to make Minotaurus to miss attacks as much as possible. Didn't use healing at all (magic is disabled, so no items used). Now that I'm thinking better...the only items I used in the game were: Ether, Phoenix down, Elixir, Maiden's kiss-Holy water mix!

Uhm, Gogo? I noticed that he says to be patient or something like that, but the most time that I waited for was 1 min, but he needs 2 min waiting...I always attacked him and thought how to kill him. Although I think it's possible, Flare-Ragnarok Excalibur-Sshot can make some mass amounts of damage!

Gargoyle: These things are really tough...When you kill one of two, after some secs it's auto-revived! And if you try to reduce both gargs HP to 1000 and then finish them with a summon, they remake themselves! It needs excellent timings, although it's not necessary once you have Uber chars.

Carbuncle: Got it with the 3rd try. I used the Wall magic to one char and once Carbuncs barrier was gone I attacked him with both magic and physical attacks. Too original eh?

Crystals: Now these guys are TOO HARD. Maybe the hardest boss on ffv (except the ulti-bosses and the final battle)...Got them the 6th-7th time. 1st, the thing is try to see which ones are Fire,Earth,Wind,Water so you can know their weaknesses. 2nd, do not attack with magic that hit all enemies...try to hit one crystal each time and reduce it to 1/4 and then use a powerful summon (Titan) to finish it. When you reduce their HP significally they use strong magic!

After all, the bosses are too easy...I mean, that Blessed kiss mix is TOO IMBALANCED. Killing X-death without letting him evolve to Neo? Killing Omega and Shinryu with too ridiculous chars?

Hm writing about my Shinryu-Omega strategies will be unfun...Too much hassle around those guys.

I think I got away from the subject...Sorry

This post has been edited by FireStorm on 13th August 2006 22:18

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Ask me ANY FFV question! PM me!
Sorry if I dissapoint you but I have nothing to do with hacking...

ive had no unconventional strategies exept for the byro....bombs in the meteor

i use lightning skills

not unconventional

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Aujourdhui a commence avec toi.

I can't think of anything at the moment besides two things:

Using 3 Berserkers with Mage Mashers against Omniscient. I don't recommend it. The fast forward key and I had some quality bonding time.

Using that one Chemist mix that casts Berserk in the final boss's first form. No Neo-Exdeath for me!

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Is PJ

How about Completely removing all equipment except accessory and weapon because of the speed advantage (love the strength shirt) very unconventional compared to other FFs.
but it worked fantastically.

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"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"

Uhm...sorry but didn't fully understand what "unconventional" means...were my strategies "unconventional"?

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Ask me ANY FFV question! PM me!
Sorry if I dissapoint you but I have nothing to do with hacking...

I wasn't really sure, either, so I just posted starts I was proud of...kinda. There were a lot more, such as unequiping all of my fighters during the Sol Cannon fight so I'd have more turns to beat him. I'd say your post is fine.

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Is PJ

hehe thanks i'm trying

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Ask me ANY FFV question! PM me!
Sorry if I dissapoint you but I have nothing to do with hacking...

If I ever had trouble with a specific fight, I used to make all my characters one class that the opponent took massive amounts of damage from and/or couldn't hurt as badly.

For the bomb fight I made them all red mages and nuked them with Ice 2 after Ice 2.

With the Sol Cannon I used the Sorceror with the Coral Sword (I think) over and over with w/e sword move the cannon was weak against.

Not sure if that could be deemed unconventional, but FF5 was great because it ultimately left strategy in your hands. I thought FF7 took away from that a little too much since you commands were selected via Materia and strategy was either Fight, Limit, Item or Magic. Fights were usually just "Fight" "Heal" "Fight" "Heal", boring typical fights everytime.

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"A little tight, but the price was right" - Locke
"Oh, what a Fuddy Duddy" - Relm
"..." - Shadow
"I'm a General, not some love starved twit" - Celes
"Although Edgar showers his attention on the ladies, most are smart enough to pay him no attention. Oh! King Edgar!" - Figaro Castle Inn Attendant

oh god, i hated those damn bomb things! it took me foooooorever!

Shiva: Slow on Shiva, Sleep on the support. Take out Shiva first while the other foes are in dreamland. Have exactly two in the front row and two in the back row to prevent single target Ice 2 damage. Perhaps not that unconventional but can be done as soon as the Water Crystal jobs are obtained instead of needing spells from Karnak.

Gilgame: Knight lockout plus a Chemist with Blue Magic. Drank a Giant Drink and used ??? when in critical for damage. It missed 5 times out of 6 which makes it an inferior means of damage to Ice 3 or Requiem Song (thanks to the CoN for pointing out the Requiem Song works on this enemy).

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oh god, i hated those damn bomb things! it took me foooooorever!

ok this is unconcventional, but they go down quicly if you use coin toss, tops it'll be three uses.

The most unconvetnional strategy i had for them was to kill them and hope they didn't explode, and that they would run out of MP

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Uhm, Gogo? I noticed that he says to be patient or something like that, but the most time that I waited for was 1 min, but he needs 2 min waiting...I always attacked him and thought how to kill him. Although I think it's possible, Flare-Ragnarok Excalibur-Sshot can make some mass amounts of damage!

You attack, Gog will attack for 9999 damage, you heal gogo heals for 9999, you would need Sshot, definately.
Chicken knife and Enhancer, flare sword
2 monks wtih mastered whit magic
and you'd have to revive somebody every round, but what a big waste of time. I think it's impossible to beat him in within 2 minutes, I don't even feel like testing this strategy out.

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Crystals: Now these guys are TOO HARD. Maybe the hardest boss on ffv (except the ulti-bosses and the final battle)...Got them the 6th-7th time. 1st, the thing is try to see which ones are Fire,Earth,Wind,Water so you can know their weaknesses. 2nd, do not attack with magic that hit all enemies...try to hit one crystal each time and reduce it to 1/4 and then use a powerful summon (Titan) to finish it. When you reduce their HP significally they use strong magic!

I don't think it's unconvetentional, but I've never heard this strategy elsewhaere, 4 hunters with killerbow and Sshot. that'll give you 12 chances to kill one every round.
or 4 zerkers with doom axe. i like Sshot huters, because you can abuse back row and Sshot's accuracy never falters (at elast when you're a hunter) even if an opponent casts dark.


here's a very unconvetnional strategy, that i like. Timed Elixers:
time Elixers well, keep a healthy stock. If you know how t time elixers you won't need a healer of any sort. just elixer when neccessary. A lot more damage dealing this way

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"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"

I still think that the easiest way to beat the crystals is to weaken the fire crystal to the point of Fire 3 and equip everybody with flame rings. Near impossible to lose after that. You could have a team of 4 white mages attacking with daggers and still not have a problem at all.

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Is PJ

Quote (Cloud_Strife510 @ 23rd August 2006 23:21)

I don't think it's unconvetentional, but I've never heard this strategy elsewhaere, 4 hunters with killerbow and Sshot. that'll give you 12 chances to kill one every round.
or 4 zerkers with doom axe. i like Sshot huters, because you can abuse back row and Sshot's accuracy never falters (at elast when you're a hunter) even if an opponent casts dark.

Doom Axes can be used from the back row as well, and since you're relying on the doom property of the weapon, the amount of damage doesn't matter. Two points though:

1 - the crystals don't attack physically, so your characters being in the front or back is pretty irrelevant.

2 - I recommend putting the Equip Bow or Equip Ax ability on a faster class - perhaps ninja. Berserkers are plenty slow, so the speed boost would do wonders for them.

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Oh sure, I don't have to get kicked in the junk to activate it, but I like it anyway. -- Thief commenting on the difference between Throw and Blue Magic.

The crystals were easy for me! All I had to do was cast Titan until they all died! Easy as pie!

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I'm finally back, everyone! It's been months, maybe even a year since I last visited this website!

Hurray for reviving an old topic, but im playing FFV, and i had to add my unconventional tactics...

I used 4 geomancers spamming Ignuus fatus on Byblos. (killed him in 2 / 3 turns)

I ran out of mana fighting the Soul Cannon, and ended fighting him for 20 mins - 30 mins attacking with my red mage Bartz, healing with white mage Lenna, using 50 hp potions to assist lenna with healing using red mage galuf (he was out of mana aswell, and his attacks were useless due to a bad weapon, besides that Lenna couldnt keep the party up otherwise), and using sylph with my summoner Faris, healing the party for 20 hp while dealing 80 dmg, boy that was tedious! -i also used like 3 elixirs to keep Lennas mana up, should've just used an elixir on barts to be honest, that would have ended it faster.

i could end up adding more as i progress,

im at the point where

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galuf dies

, so i still have plenty of bosses to go

This post has been edited by Ganolink on 11th July 2007 22:45

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All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Broccoli to die.

Another tactic I enjoy that I recently thought about was using Rapidfire and Osmose Sword to take out all of Exdeath's MP. It doesn't take long at all for his first form, and with Golem downright cripples him. For his second form, it will take a bit longer, so I usually have at least two people with the abilities and a Mime to make it go faster. It's all worth it to have the 'Not enough MP!' message pop up when he tries using Almagest.

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OSonic Rave
/ \Last Arcanum
[ ]Strike Raid
XRagnarok

on those bomb things that apparently everyone hates, i used zennigage with a samurai. it isn't the most efficient, but it worked out for me quite well.

on the boss melusine (can't remember name its the one that shows up from lenna when ExDeath uses the void to take out the library of ancients) i failed 3-4 times, so i had all three available party members in the red mage job ability.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

Caesar

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You could have a team of 4 white mages attacking with daggers and still not have a problem at all.

White mages can't equip daggers.
also, in the advance version, you couldn't berserk neo-ExDeath. Also, on the crystals, i just decided to widdle them away one by on.

Edit

miss-post, my fault. i was going to say that white mages can use daggers, but i was thinking about my red mage.

This post has been edited by Death Penalty on 12th July 2007 18:51

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

I think he meant something more along the lines of, even if white mages could weild the weakest weapon in the game, and you had four of them with that setup, you'd be fine.

Although a white mage with equip sword could do just that.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I think my favorite unconventional tactic rests in my Solo Blue Mage game:

Wand Breaking!

It may be commonplace for everyone else, but it wasn't until I started that game did I even try it.

And anything that lets a single low-level character decimate Sol Cannon in 7 turns is spiffy!

I think my second-favorite unconventional tactic is the Dark Shock / Lv 5 Death Combo.

If you want a really tedious battle, dark shock those stupid bombs that everyone hates until you can blink em out of existence simultaniously with a Lv 5 Death.

Who knows, some of those bosses are incremented in 5s to begin with.

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If internal struggles were as enjoyable and glamorous as the self conflicted wars within video game characters, we would all be statues, reveling in perpetual self war. -Me

Play me on Rock Band 2, GH-WT, or any other Xbox GH!
Xbox Gamertag-MeanJerry

Quote (Caesar)

Using 3 Berserkers with Mage Mashers against Omniscient. I don't recommend it. The fast forward key and I had some quality bonding time.

What're Mage Masher's special properties? Because, IIRC, Omniscient casts Reset as a counterattack against all physical attacks, and Reset resets all stat values to what they were at the start of the battle, right? So if you tried MP-draining Omniscient with physical attacks, wouldn't that be as useless as HP-draining with physical attacks? Or does it just counter with Reset only when physical attacks successfully deal damage (or nonzero or positive damage), or am I getting the picture all wrong?

Also,

Quote (Edge1337)

The crystals were easy for me! All I had to do was cast Titan until they all died! Easy as pie!

Isn't one of the crystals earth-element--in other words, doesn't it get healed by Titan?

As for my own interesting strategies, I've had none, other than frantically spamming Atomos with my nastiest magic and using savestates while fighting Neo-Exdeath, but I have seen a Youtube video of someone beating Shinryu with a single level 1 frog.

(Seriously, I've been realizing that FF5 is such a well-designed game in terms of gameplay challenge.)

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

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Mage Masher has a 33% chance to cast Mute on striking. He kept Resetting, but eventually I did land a Mute on the first strike. From there on was just pure luck. Also, I believe Reset will keep his current MP. I remember a strategy involving just using Berserkers and leaving the game running on fast forward for hours until he uses Reset 30k times or however many times it'll take to exhaust all of his MP. Or maybe I'm just delusional.

Also, yes, one of the Crystals absorbs Eatrh so there's no way to kill them all by using just Titan.

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Is PJ

Quote (Caesar @ 16th July 2007 21:12)

Mage Masher has a 33% chance to cast Mute on striking.  He kept Resetting, but eventually I did land a Mute on the first strike.  From there on was just pure luck.  Also, I believe Reset will keep his current MP.  I remember a strategy involving just using Berserkers and leaving the game running on fast forward for hours until he uses Reset 30k times or however many times it'll take to exhaust all of his MP.  Or maybe I'm just delusional.

That's actually what I did to Omniscient on my Thief Single Job Challenge. I kept having the whole gang attack with the Mage Masher until he was finally silenced. The danger was to have Chicken Knife and use it with !Capture and kill him before he reverts..

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Also, yes, one of the Crystals absorbs Eatrh so there's no way to kill them all by using just Titan.

Titan was always my number one spell/summon in Galuf's World, simply because other spells will go for 700 or less, and equipping the Gaia Gear helps please me with extra damage. I actually tried out a strategy where I made Butz a Ninja with !Image, Lenna a Chemist with !LV5 White, Galuf a Time Mage (to cast Float on everyone and for Haste2) with !LV5 Black, and Faris Knight with Double Grip.

So I had Galuf use Float on everybody to dodge one of the crystal's Earth Shaker move, which was the first one I had killed.

The strategy was to have Butz use !Image everytime he has no false clone, Lenna starts using first Speed Drink, then Protect Drink, and then Giant's Drink to boost her up. Then she would cast Armor and Shell on everybody else (Shell on her too), while Butz used two Double Lances to attack one crystal essence, Galuf first cast Haste2 on everyone then sticks to the Fire3 (until the Fire Crystal is alive and Faris does the honour by hacking away with IceBrand)

And this was all in level 23 on one of my numerous playthroughs, which I was pretty proud of. It was a bit annoying to have them cast those spells (Aqua Rake, Fire 3, Earth Shaker, and Aero3).

But Aero3 wasn't really too strong for my floaters to handle, I think it was around 400-500 damage which was painful at first but Cure 3 on all fixed the problem (800+ HP restored to everyone, yo) Fire 3 was tough as hell though, since I didn't have any Flame Rings equipped. I usually just equipped crap like Elf Cloak or anything to support defense/mag defense/power.

So I made sure to kill the Earth Crystal boss first since he was a weakling to me. Then I went after the Wind one, then the Water, and lastly the Fire. Because that's how I'd arranged them by easiest to hardest. I didn't get Flame Rings in the first world because I was speeding the game through and needed to get other stuff (weapons, armor, items, etc.)

But to be quite frank, that was a funner battle. I never really liked that fight too much before because I always used Titan without planning much, and ended getting game overs. And !Giltoss is so overpowered it hurts my pride to use it. So that fight with the crystals is actually not that hard if you focus on them one-by-one, and since you get Armor+Shell+Blink+Haste2 put on everyone.

It's now one of my memorable fights in the game, probably more memorable than the suceeding part where Galuf fights Exdeath one-on-one. Great scene, and imagine how challenging Exdeath would have been at the castle if he had the same stats and attack patterns as the forest one.. Heh.

My Final Fight in SCC Blue Mage (way underleveled) - Magic Hammered Tree Exdeath until he squeals, then went to town with weak weaponry. Then for Neo Exdeath, a few Dark Shocks (and a LOT of luck) and an Lv5 Death, and 3/4 of his arsenal is gone! But I still had to deal with grand cross, IIRC. Random zombie, doom, and death sucks. That's when my old friend the Hammer came back into play... gg NED, gg.

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My soul is bound to the Mistress of the Afterlife, and my fealty is to her always. So let's just hope she doesn't use it as one of her ten daily meals.

I think I've beaten those nasty bombs with AquaRake (or whatever it was called in FFV) with four blue mages.

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Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to
others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what
you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.