Penny and I have been playing a lot of FF12 this week and I think we’re past the halfway point now.
It’s a very good game, and I like it quite a bit. It’s surprisingly similar to the ps2 .hack game(s) in that it plays much more like an MMO than a more traditional console RPG.
The game’s been nicely designed. It plays smoothly, the writing is great, and the voice acting is incredible (better than FF10, which I really liked). I like how you can sneak around zones, avoid fights, etc… I like the chaining system and the LP board. It gets full marks for interest and innovation.
Now, normally you don’t have to really spend any time grinding. It’s mostly possible to play the game straight through with only minimal time spent actively carving your way through mobs for xp and loot. I’ve noticed that a good rule of thumb for suggested party size comes in the form of your guest members. When you get a 4th, note his level and match it before attempting the next boss. Elsewise, it will be… bothersome.
When on your way to Bur-Omisase to consult the Jedi oracle, you will encounter two boss fights essentially back to back. The first one, in the mines, will be straightforward mob pounding. Nothing fancy there. The second one is the spore dragon of toxitude and status effects. And unless you spent some time grinding, you will die horrible repetitive deaths and the dragon will call your mother names.
I encountered the dragon at lvl 18. This was not sufficient. My guest was 21, so I decided that a few more levels were in order. One massive grind session later, I tried again with nobody in the group under lvl 20. Closer, but still not really doable. Luck seems to play a big role in this, but I figured grinding felt better than rerolling several times in hopes of a lucky win.
After a bit over four hours and three failed attempts, I was finally able to take down the dragon with a lvl 22-23 party but it took some serious strategy – which I will now reveal. Muahahaha.
The most important thing to remember is that you can heal party members who are switched out to your reserve list. Switching people out is good.
step 0: preparation
Apart from the obvious advice of being sufficiently leveled and well equipped, I made sure I had a good stack of potions, hi-potions, and phoenix downs. Normally potions are too expensive for mundane healing and magic is the way to go, but this is not mundane healing. Magic is much slower and you’ll be better served if you save your mana for other things.
Those of my characters who could cast esuna were instructed to do so. Everyone was given at least one healing gambit and they were instructed also to cure status effects on impact. The boss’s big attack can potentially inflict every member of your party with each and every single stinking one of the the following effects:
- confuse – cure with smelling salts
- oil – cure with handkerchiefs (esuna does not work here)
- sleep – cure with alarm clocks
- sap – cure with esuna (regen also works but is more expensive)
- poison – cure with antidote
- blind – cure with eyedrops
- slow – cure with esuna (haste also works but you probably have more effects that would be cured faster by using esuna)
I came in with about 20 of everything and found that to be sufficient.
Esuna is nice in that it cures multiple effects at once. Remedies can potentially be even nicer, but they’re still at a premium at this point in the game and unless you’ve spent a lot of LP on upgrading them, you’re probably better off with cheaper items and esunas.
I didn’t wind up using any of my ethers or elixers, but this fight would be a good time to consider breaking the shrinkwrap on them. Try to save them for later but don’t hesitate to use them if you think they’ll make a difference.
Make sure you have ranged weapon options for a few of your party members. Always keep at least one person on ranged bombardment duty. The spore attack only hits those close to the dragon, so it’s entirely possible to keep one or two of your party members outside of the radius.
It would also be a good idea to make sure all of your characters are kitted out with at least a few ways to gain mana other than walking in circles. It’s not difficult to get augments that make you regen mana when both dealing and taking hits, especially by this point in the game.
step 1: crowd control
The dragon has two treant friends. They’re identical to the ones right outside of the Viera town, except aggro. They’ve got to go first because the dragon is just too nasty to fight with any distractions – and the treants aren’t a trivial distraction. They hit decently hard, have ~5000 hp, cast buffs, and inflict a few minor status effects.
They’re weak to wind damage. I outfitted my dagger-wielder with a gladius and my black mage with aero. The treants went down in seconds. A third member inflicting wind damage would have been nice, but I didn’t need it.
I then switched the wind damage chars out and changed all offensive gambits from “attack leader’s target” to “attack anything”, ie keep attacking the boss even if the leader loses their target. This saved me tons of downtime.
step 2: initial beatdown
After killing the treants, I switched in three party members capable of unloading with a quickening chain.
Quickens are probably the most confusing part of FF12 combat. They’re very similar to skill chains in FF11 with the caveat that they generally blow all of the participants’ mana. A few things that you should know if you’ve not played with them much before this point:
- There are 18 quickenings available on the LP board. Each one costs 50 points to buy, each slot can only be claimed by one character, and each character can only claim three (6×3=18).
- Your characters’ max mana is multiplied by the number of quickening slots (mist charges) they have opened. Thus, Penelo could be walking into this fight with almost 300 mana if you get her the charges, etc…
- The more mana you have, the longer your timer lasts when performing the chain.
- If you hit three or more times, you’ll generally proc a big aoe hit in addition to the normal hits. While nice, this isn’t really anything to get worked up about.
- The more characters participating in the chain, the easier it is to make wild and crazy things happen. My longest chain to date was 10 hits + the cataclysm effect at the end.
A good chain can do over ten thousand damage to the dragon. I think he has something in the neighborhood of 70-80 thousand health.
step 3: surviving the first spores
About now you’re probably going to get hit with your first aoe spore attack, and you’re probably not going to be prepared for it. There’s no way to prevent it from firing and you can’t switch out party members once he starts casting because it “targets” everyone.
You can, however, make sure that your party is scattered to minimize the damage. If you try to keep one party member on melee up with your guest and one on archery duty in the corner, you can control the third active member and run away from everyone when the spores fall. If you’re lucky, only one party member will become disabled.
If anyone gets confused, switch them out. If anyone dies, switch them out. The rest of the status effects aren’t so bad, unless you get hit with five of them at once. If that happens, switch them out.
Your first priority after spores is to remove as many of the negative effects as you can, starting with the members on the playing field. Once they’re back in shape, take somebody off of combat duty to cure the reserve members with esunas or something. If you can only afford to heal one condition, confusion gets priority, followed by oil. However, there’s not much of an excuse to run out of smelling salts or handkerchiefs, they’re quite inexpensive. Use them.
The oil effect is particularly nasty in that the dragon likes to follow his spores up with a fireball attack. The attack normally only does about 500 damage, but if you’re soaked in oil, it’s a guaranteed death for the unlucky victim.
When you have time, rez people. It’s important that all of your party members are alive in case you need to switch people back out again. After performing all of your recovery tasks, you should still have plenty of time to apply a bit more beatdown before the next wave of spores lands…
step 4: summon if you got em
Now would be a good time to consider pulling out your summon. He can do a good bit of damage, easily removing another ten or twenty percent of the dragon’s health.
I would, however, be cautious about when you summon. It’s too easy to blow your summoner’s entire mana charge with the spell only to have them get hit for 800 damage two seconds later and lose any potential benefit it might have had.
The summoner should spend their entire time avoiding attention and healing the pet. It is possible to pull off a full duration summon, but not if you draw aggro and get flattened.
step 5: repeat
After that, just keep up the pattern. Apply the constant beatdown, switch out confused and dead party members, heal them with an archer who’s staying out of range of the spores, recycle them back in, rez your guest, repeat.
The last third of the fight seems to be the hardest. At this point, it’s all about endurance, making sure you’ve brought enough phoenix downs with you, etc… The dragon doesn’t change tactics, so there’s no need to conserve your offense. Blowing your quickenings and summon at the beginning of the fight means you have the rest of the battle to regen mana – and throw off another quicken chain or summon if you’re incredibly lucky.
After this fight, the game reverts to easy mode, so you have something to look forward to. Well, except for the ice demons and aoe spewing zombies, but that’s another story. Enjoy.
