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Quote (PaladinLight)

Speaking of Imp creatures..Is there anything special at all, aabout Tricker? It only uses Peep on itself, and just plain gives away its weakness.

It just seems like there's something paticular to it.

Instead of making a totally off-topic post about this in the other thread, I decided to start a new topic to answer your question.

Answer:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

It's a trickster, as its name suggests. If you ever hit it with even the weakest Lit/Bolt spell, it won't change weakness, but it will cast Fast on itself twice and then start spamming Lit-3/Bolt 3. Oh yeah, and it has a pretty darn strong magic power.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 11th January 2006 15:08

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Oh, thanks!! I didn't expect someone to do this. Hehe, I tried a Bolt 3 on it once, and did 9,999 damage for the win.

if you don't kill him, he will use bolt on your party after you hit him once with a bolt technique

This post has been edited by BobetteMaster on 12th October 2005 15:21

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Yeah, that's what I figured. Well, my party are in the 70's, so I doubt I'd really have to worry. Am i right, or not?

A little game you can play with one is simple. It's still not too hard at level 99 though.

Unequip all weapons and attack or use only level 1 spells (fire1, ice1, or lit1) against it.

Of course, you have to hit it with a bolt1/lit1 first or it still won't fight back at all.
With weapons and any magic, he's still fairly easy. But his bolt spells really do pack a punch.

This post has been edited by sartael138 on 12th October 2005 16:09

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"Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Study hard; be evil."

I always just killed him with the fight command. Always wondered about that though.

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Dead Winter. A nice comic.

I admire your self control, anyone who avoided using bolt. It was like forbidden fruit. Use lit on me, tricker says...it'll slay your enemy.

And dead I was. I did laugh though...just now, thirteen years later, remembering. I wonder if my self control is better than it was at age 8

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I hear the jury's still out on...science.

That's it, you people have stood in my way long enough! I'm going to clown college!

I never understood these guys.

They can cast all these spells of mass destruction. But they sit there and try to get you to hit them with their weakness before they'll do anything else. And will often lose most of their health to you before deciding to attack, as a result.

Then they exclaim your party was tricked.

I... see. Ingenious trick indeed.

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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."

If I recall correctly, casting Peep/Libra on it yourself shows that it is not, in fact, weak against thunder. If this is correct, then its Libra spell is, not surprisingly, lying.

It was always obviously a trick to me, so I have the party attack it instead of using magic of any kind. This makes it a pathetically easy monster to fight, since it will never harm the party if I don't fall for the painfully obvious trap.

Since I play in an emulator, I once got curious and decided I'd save state in the battle and then cast Bolt on it. It retaliated with Bolt 3 and the like, much to my lack of amazement.

It does show that it is weak against thunder.

(At least, the Advance scan does.)

Dying to trickster for the first time was a pretty fun experiance. Even as an easily frustrated child, I could appreciate the humor in falling for a "trick". It was worth testing out what happened just to watch that F'er go beserk and slaughter my party.

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If I recall correctly, casting Peep/Libra on it yourself shows that it is not, in fact, weak against thunder.

No, casting peep on it showed it was weak against thunder. And it IS weak against thunder, it just happens to react rather violently when hit with a thunder attack.

This post has been edited by The Ancient on 11th January 2006 14:18

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"That Light has bestowed upon me the greatest black magic!"

I could see the value of having a monster such as tricker a little more if he had a lot more HP and did some pretty powerful attacks/magic. Then it would really make you have to decide whether to take the bait or not. It would've also been pretty cool if they had one weak against fire, ice, earth, etc.

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"Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Study hard; be evil."

It was a clever monster, really one of the rarer breeds out there in the dark dungeons of FFIV. Also, it really throws you off first time through. You've been fighting KingRyus and other such abominations, and generally crossing your fingers every time you see a battle pop up.

And all of a sudden, there's this imp just, scanning itself. Over and over. It's half a break for your characters, and mostly taking advantage of your nerves on being in the final dungeon.

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I hear the jury's still out on...science.

That's it, you people have stood in my way long enough! I'm going to clown college!

What would've been awesome is if taking the bait and beating it the conventional way would've given you a reward. Something like different drops, better exp, whatever. Make it into an optional boss-type encounter.

My first encounter with it, I was horribly overlevelled and after hitting it once or twice, I took the bait. It died. I blinked, shrugged, and felt sorry for it. Subscequent encounters with a lower-levelled party left me floored when it went psycho, though. That was fun.

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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'm pretty sure that Tricker has always had 12,000 HP. And thus, your 9999 from a Bolt 3 would still result in your death...

Not after a few physical attacks before casting the bolt 3.

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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 always felt that the scanning itself part was quite annoying. Why? Because it would take forever, and mashing the A button (on the SNES, at least) wouldn't do a thing to speed it up. And it had pretty good speed, which meant that it would scan itself more often than my entire team could take one turn each.

Quote (sartael138)

I could see the value of having a monster such as tricker a little more if he had a lot more HP and did some pretty powerful attacks/magic. Then it would really make you have to decide whether to take the bait or not. It would've also been pretty cool if they had one weak against fire, ice, earth, etc.

That would have been interesting. Give it an even higher attack power, and even higher default speed (so it wouldn't have to Haste itself, at least not twice) and have it retaliate with Bolt 3. And then have other monsters also known as "Tricker" and look identical but have different weaknesses.

And of course, don't have them scan themselves; have them attack your party with low-level spells just to annoy you, and to more subtly tempt you into getting mad at it and blasting it with powerful elemental magic.

And oh yeah, have it retaliate with its weakness of third-order elemental spell (e.g. Fire 3 if it's weak to fire) against the entire party once it's hit with a third-order spell or higher (such as Flare/Nuke or Holy/White).

Quote (Silverlance)

What would've been awesome is if taking the bait and beating it the conventional way would've given you a reward. Something like different drops, better exp, whatever. Make it into an optional boss-type encounter.

INDEED. Especially if it had more HP.

Quote (Electricbassguy)

I'm pretty sure that Tricker has always had 12,000 HP. And thus, your 9999 from a Bolt 3 would still result in your death...

Quote (Silverlance)

Not after a few physical attacks before casting the bolt 3.

Hitting it for 9999 damage from your Lit-3 will leave it with only 2001 HP, which isn't much. Also, if your team is powerful enough (mine was in the 60s when I got to the final dungeon), you won't be taking that much damage--you'll have well more than enough to survive one or two castings of Lit-3 from that imp.

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

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I've always thought that Tricker was just in the wrong place (ie too easy compared to the other monsters of the area). Perhaps he'd be more appropriately placed if he was in the Cave of Summons or the Sylvan Cave. Either way, though, he's kind of a flop as a monster, since he's so easy to beat, and if you're in that much trouble, you can just Exit out of the battle.

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Cannis Rules: Balance of Power - My favourite Yuri's Revenge Mod

Quote (Matt)

since he's so easy to beat

If you take his bait, he's actually not that easy to beat, since he does attack VERY fast and has pretty good magic power. But then he doens't have that much HP. On the other hand, I did bait him using a measly Lit-1, and didn't really try hard enough...

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

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Just in my experiences though Cecil or Edge always get the first attack. With 3 powerful fighters in addition to the casting time of Lit3/Bolt3 it still won't last long. The only way I would think to make it a challenging battle is to give your characters a particular handicap and try it that way like I had said earlier. It seems to me that once you get that far in the game, you are already so grossly overlevelled to make him worthwhile. It'd almost be worth running just to save time.

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Perhaps he'd be more appropriately placed if he was in the Cave of Summons or the Sylvan Cave.

That's a good idea but I think your characters would still be a little strong. I was thinking maybe in the Tower of Bab-il with all those stupid Chimeras that cast blaze on you all the time or even the part right after you get Edge. I think he would be fairly challenging at that point in the game.

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"Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Study hard; be evil."

Easy. Have nobody but Edward on your team (Kill off everyone else) and have him use one of those insta-bolt1 items. How's that sound? >:)

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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."

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 12th January 2006 00:28)

If you take his bait, he's actually not that easy to beat, since he does attack VERY fast and has pretty good magic power.  But then he doens't have that much HP.  On the other hand, I did bait him using a measly Lit-1, and didn't really try hard enough...

I started him off with a Lit-1 on the J2E translation, and was definitely impressed with his speed and attack power. You certainly notice the speed more when you're getting 1000 HP per person taken off, compared to when he's casting Peep on himself quickly. So I agree with you that he's definitely no slouch when he's "enraged", provided that you resolve not to use a status-effecting spell afterwards.

I'd beat him using Solo Edward, as long as my next item used is a Lunar Curtain :>

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Cannis Rules: Balance of Power - My favourite Yuri's Revenge Mod

In FFIV Advance, he's known as Li'l Murderer. So a person knew to the game might not know that he'll trick you (Trikster is a bit more obvious of a name me thinks)

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Dead Winter. A nice comic.

Quote (Barrylocke @ 19th January 2006 05:30)

In FFIV Advance, he's known as Li'l Murderer. So a person knew to the game might not know that he'll trick you (Trikster is a bit more obvious of a name me thinks)

It is. J2e calls the critter "Rilmarder" (which does sound vaguely like "Li'l Murderer", now that I think about it). This doesn't really give away what it's trying to do, but its casting Libra on itself incessantly and revealing its own weakness made me suspicious.

And oh yeah, I got another idea for making the Tricker even harder:

Make an enemy formation of five, six, or even eight of them. Then hit them all with a Lit-1 split over all of them. Or use an item if you're doing a solo Edward against all eight of them.

Lol. That would so be classed as suicide.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 20th January 2006 19:35

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

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

If he'd absorb Lit then he'd really be a tricker...

Shame.

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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."

He's not meant to be some big secret boss, just a one-time gag. That's the nature of being a tricker.

Maybe if they had scripted in some extra tricks...but who cares? I got a kick out of him when we first met.

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"That Light has bestowed upon me the greatest black magic!"