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so...has anyone ever killed this thing? ive double jumped, used like ten grimoires, and berserked cecil, and i cannot kill it.

has anyone else killed it, and, how did you? (like, what levels were your team at, what strategy you used, etc.)

im starting to hate this insane, difficult, fugly dragon...


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OSonic Rave
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XRagnarok

As Silverlance alluded to in the Opinions topic, Kain's Abel Lance will randomly cast Weak on it and kill it immediately. I'm not sure if it's random, since it happened on Kain's first turn of the battle. That's how I beat it. It seems that you can increase your chances of winning if you don't use magic against him, which will avoid his nasty Globe99 counter.

I've yet to try the 'manly' way of beating him, but he's by far the most difficult enemy in the game. Here's some relevant stats from the bestiary (don't look if you don't want to be spoiled):

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Magic Power 212(!) HP 180,000, and by the way, the old man on the floor doesn't say anything different after beating him (ungrateful old fart).

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

okay, i just killed it, using abel's lance...and i tried out the grimoire glitch with zeromus EG. it was very weird. (he wasnt toad the whole battle though, just for awhile, then he untoaded and took 9999 damage. very freaky.

other grimoires did nothing, did the toad/piggy smoke effect(with no toad/pig), or had the death spell graphics and then cast blitz..

was that intentional or an accidental glitch?

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OSonic Rave
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I've beaten him twice, without Tornado. Basically, you want to exert most of your energy in keeping people alive, not necessarily healed, and you want to just beat the ever-living crap out of him in as little time as possible. Cast slow in the beginning, but after that, just wail on him. Have Porom or Rosa casting Holy, not supportive magics, and if you have Edge make him throw all the Fuma Shurikens you should have bought in the Town of the Moon.

It's totally worth the fight, by the way -- especially since the Hero Shield makes it much easier to beat him a second (and third, and fourth, etc) time.

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Some ghost of me might greet my son
the day he is delivered.


Eternal Sleep, Track 1-1: The Blue Planet

Quote (Zeromus_X @ 3rd January 2006 01:19)

other grimoires did nothing, did the toad/piggy smoke effect(with no toad/pig), or had the death spell graphics and then cast blitz..  

was that intentional or an accidental glitch? 

I'm not sure if the use of the Grimoires and their unusual effects against EG is the result of a glitch or not. The storytelling gets kind of sparse towards the end of the Lunar Ruins, leading you to guess about how to use the Grimoires (or not). You might remember that at the start of the Lunar Ruins, that voice explained that you could not complete the final trial until you've collected all 9 of them, yet it's seems theoretically possible to go right to the end without even entering any of the trials. I went right to the end after having collected 5 on my first run through, and felt that I was "left out of the dark" by Square-Enix after this. The whole Lunar Ruins felt kind of pointless, aside from being an awesome extra dungeon. Even a small text message saying "Congratulations, you have mastered your fears" or something to that effect would have given it a sense of closure.

Some have theorized that there's more to the ending than we're seeing. Someone over at gamefaqs discovered that you can use the Grimoires to defeat the first Zeromus, which they say lets you keep the Crystal (but don't you keep the Crystal anyway in your item slot after using it?). They claim that they're "walking around the world with a Crystal", but others claim that the Crystal doesn't get saved after the ending. I'd try it out myself, but I don't really feel like watching the ending for the fifth time in a week. My gut feeling, though, is that we've seen all there is to see in this game.

Update:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

You CAN use the Grimoires to defeat Zeromus' first form (the blue-coloured one), and you DO keep the crystal in your inventory after saving. It's interesting to note that although it disappears after you use it, it's theoretically possible to acquire an infinite amount of them by re-acquiring the Grimoires and beating Zeromus again. Is this a glitch, or is there really something else that can be done? Can the crystal be used on another enemy to trigger something else? Maybe they meant to add more to this game, but ran out of time and/or memory; after all, it happens frequently in the gaming world.

This post has been edited by Matt on 5th January 2006 00:07

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

Unless there's an order to the grimoirs. The game hasn't been out that long yet, so who knows. Though I would be a little surprised at this point.

My first run through the ruins, I had the frog grimoire and ended up toading Z-man. Quite an easy fight that was. The second time around, I waited until having all 9 grimoirs and, well, nothing special happened.

Well, hey. That secret room in Zelda LttP (forgot the kid's name) wasn't discovered until years after the SNES had died out, so who knows.

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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."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_link_to_the...s_Houlihan_room

theres that one room...just sos ya know.

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Quote

...by re-acquiring the Grimoires

What? You can re-acquire them? I only have Grimoire LD, but i haven't used it. Do you have to use it before you can get a second one, because when i go to Rydia's challenge it says something like "It's locked...".
As for Brachioraidos, i fought him once. Before reading this topic that is, and being a bit too arrogant, i ignored the man's words. I barely survived. I had Cecil use Teleport to get me out, because running wasn't working.

You can use a grimoire in battle and redo the challenge again. I screwed up Rosa's trial the first time around (took me too long) so I redid it and got her ring the second time around.

Without the Abel lance, this guy's a big pussycat until he starts using heavy-duty spells. A fun challenge, but with a high enough level (75+) he goes down easily enough. Especially once you've collected a few hero shields. Then, his magic attacks are actually beneficial.

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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."

Ah, so does this mean you can get both the Lightbringer and the Flandango in Cecil's challenge? Excellent!

Yep. At least, I think so. I never tried, as such, and I don't know if it's scripted to only give you one sword, or one of each only, or whatever. But I did get both the megalixir and the white ring from Rosa's quest, so probably.

Of course, that means fighting Lunar Odin again. Which is a fun fight.

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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."

No, i am now the proud owner of the Lightbringer and the Flandango (And some Scrap Metal). Lunar Odin is easy when you know what to do.

Can I get a reminder of which Grimoire corresponds to which trial?

I completed the game weeks ago - and I want to see what the flandango is...

Now wait just a second. I've done Cecil's scenario at least three times and been a perfect gentlemen throughout. I got the Lightbringer, but never the Flandango (which I assume is effective against puddings and the like); I get Lunar Curtains instead. What up?

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Some ghost of me might greet my son
the day he is delivered.


Eternal Sleep, Track 1-1: The Blue Planet

To get the Flandango, among other items (The Scrap Metal i was talking about), you must fail at least one of the tasks. Failing one gives you the Flandango, failing all of them gives the Scrap Metal. I have not experimented further however.

Failing all of them gave me the Dark Sword (or something to that end.)

What's the scrap metal do?

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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."

To answer the post a few spaces up, the flandago can be acquired in Cecil's trial, which can be re-opened by using the Lunar Odin Grimoire. I suppose you could save before his trial to see what swords you get for passing different numbers of challenges, and I might just try that.

I can't help but notice how close the dragon's name comes to "Brachioradio", which would refer to the radial (thumb) side of the forearm. The brachioradialis muscle stretches along this path. The name doesn't seem to have any significance, though, especially for a dragon.

That reminds me of a tragi-comic story last night, starting at the save point before Brachio:

Game 1: Beat Brachio on Kain's first hit, then got a Ribbon on the next floor. Woohoo, good luck I say, now everyone has a Ribbon. Next room is the puppet room, and I said to myself "I know that the chest in this room sometimes freezes your game, but I'll go and open it anyway". I spend an eternity beating all of the puppets, then the blue one, and get my prize. Freeze game! I knew it! No Hero Shield, no Ribbon, no item from chest which I don't want to spoil for everyone.

Game 2: Skip Brachio, open chest on 2nd floor...another Ribbon! Cool, maybe this save is set up so that I always get the Ribbon. Reset.

Game 3: Beat Brachio, and naturally Kain doesn't cast even one Tornado, open chest...Megalixir! D'oh!

Game 4: Beat Brachio...then Golden Apple! And if you didn't know, this Golden Apple doesn't even appear in your inventory, making this item pickup a "fakie".

Game 5: Beat Brachio...finally the Ribbon! This time I head straight past the puppets and save game! I can laugh about all of this now, but I did waste at least half an hour on it.

P.S. I haven't minded any of the small bugs in this game, but overlooking a freeze like this, after having to beat all of those puppets is just cruel...

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

Those puppets are hateful. I'm compiling a list of the things I hate most in FFIV after this most recent playthrough, and puppets are pretty high up there. (The frogs in the... Cave of Summons? Sylph Cave? are number one, I think.)

Thanks for the Flandango info, fellas.

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Some ghost of me might greet my son
the day he is delivered.


Eternal Sleep, Track 1-1: The Blue Planet

Quote (footbigmike @ 8th January 2006 17:00)

To get the Flandango, among other items (The Scrap Metal i was talking about), you must fail at least one of the tasks. Failing one gives you the Flandango, failing all of them gives the Scrap Metal. I have not experimented further however.

For what it's worth, here are the items obtained in Cecil's challenge:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Fail all = scrap metal (Appears as a shuriken that did 124 points of damage against Lunar Odin)
Pass 1 = Dark Sword
Pass 2 = Shadow Blade
Pass 3 = Caliburn (A "legendary holy sword" with an attack power of 40)
Pass 4 = Flandago
Pass 5 = Lightbringer

I just learned about the existence of the Caliburn right now, so that's kind of cool. I already had the Lightbringer before entering the trial and got a Lunar Curtain when I passed all 5 challenges

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

Tough boss? I think so. Has anyone managed to beat it? I did my first time, but only by the skin of my teeth.

I had my 2 medics (Porom and Rosa) in my party when I took it on, and I think the third and fourth time he did that Reflect/Firaga/Blizzaga/Thundaga thing, I was lucky because all three of the spells hit one person (usually Palom) and all he was doing was casting Meteor. But since three of my people were either dead or healing, the fight took kind of a while. I think the bestiary said he had 180,000 HP, so you can imagine.

Anybody else fight it? How'd it go?

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Mustard?! Don't let's be silly!

I didn't think it was that hard. Granted, Kain was at level 75 or so and I had already completed every single character's trial. The trick is to keep your HP above 2000 or so for the first half, and to never do any healing other than Life/Phoenix Down once the mofo starts counting down. Having Kain DblJump offscreen is also helpful.

The second and third times I fought them, I decided to gamble and have Kain just attack. Sure enough, both times, four or five rounds in the Abel Lance had successfully cast Weak on him, and he was a goner. It's much riskier, though, because I think it has something like a 1/16 chance of activating, and Kain does far less damage and is much more vulnerable. But hey, now I have three Hero's Shields and all of my characters are in their 90s, all in two car trips.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Oh, they got merged. Now I understand..

Anyway, yeah, I didn't know that Abel's Lance had such a low activation rate. I always use it to kill Brachy. (Then again, I've only killed it twice.) I don't think I'll ever have the courage to fight it normally:p

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