Advanced Tactics Quiz Enhanced (Answers) For Final Fantasy 3 (US) Version 1.1 (august 2003) by Mnrogar -------------------- Contents 1. Introduction 2. Before you start 3. The answers 4. Renumbering 5. Recognition 6. Terminology 7. Credits 8. Links 9. Copyright -------------------- Version history ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Version 1.1 (August 19, 2003): Corrected some spelling and grammar. Version history added. Changes to questions 117 and 150. - Version 1.0 (August 8, 2003): Original release. ############################################################################### # 1. INTRODUCTION # ############################################################################### Advanced Tactics Quiz (or ATQ as it has come to be known) started as a topic on the Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) message board of gamefaqs.com. It lasted from january 24th 2001 to april 6th 2002 and used 8 topics for a total of over 3500 posts. The goal of the topic was to challenge and inform players with in-depth game knowledge, the goal of this document is the same. The questions and answers found here are based on those of the ATQ but for the most part they have been heavily modified to be made harder and reflect new discoveries made over time. While the challenge was brought by the questions, the answers always were the most important to me since that's where the information lies and that's what I tried to preserve, while keeping the questions at least as challenging as they were, no matter how different they may be here. You may not find the questions exactly as they were in the threads but hopefully you'll find something new and challenging in its place. With that being said some sentences from the original threads may not have been modified and remain in the words of their original authors. The difficulty of the questions vary greatly, some are easy and mostly there to inform while others are hard and there to challenge, hopefully most will do both. There are some questions that were not included in this document for various reasons but whenever possible questions and especially their answers were integrated in this document in some fashion. Another goal of this document is to include as much of the gaming knowledge and discoveries that were brought to light with the ATQ as possible, to this end questions were merged, repositioned and modified while attempting to create a more pleasant reading experience than sorting through jumbled posts. Finally, the questions and their answers were renumbered to avoid the gaps and repetitions that come from numbering in a message board topic. Unknown fact but an easy guess; The name "Advanced Tactics Quiz" comes from the "Advanced Battle Tactics" room in the Narshe classroom, I removed "Battle" for it to be more inclusive. ############################################################################### # 2. BEFORE YOU START # ############################################################################### The questions were made, changed and rearranged to be answered in the order in which they are presented. This is so some questions won't be spoiled but also so you won't have to answer a simple question after having already answered it in a more complex one. Unless otherwise specified, every question and answer in this document assumes that only what can actually be done in the game is a valid answer, nothing that is only theoretically possible is. This means that, when applicable, only what is available in the time frame specified by the question can be used to answer that question, whether it be spells, items, location, statuses, enemy formations, Level, etc. For example, you can't have offering when fighting Dadaluma so the answer must not require you to have it, neither must the answer require you to be fighting a formation of 6 Intangirs since such a formation doesn't exist, nor can an answer require you to be at Level 1 since nobody starts at such a low level, etc. Also, as if not already obvious, answers will never require you to reset the game or the like. Everything in this quiz is accomplished without cheating devices or the sketch glitch, all other bugs/glitches can be used. The sketch glitch and any other non-reliable bug/glitch are the only bugs/glitches that are not acceptable for answers. Although most questions and answers can apply to most versions of the game, this document is meant for the north american release of FF3 (FF6 in Japan). A useful tip when it comes to casting spells and using abilities on a target they were not meant to be cast on is to cast Muddle on an ally and then having that ally select the command before Muddle hits, this will ensure the muddled ally will use the selected command while muddle when his/her turn comes. This can help you test a lot of things that can happen, but normally wouldn't, on a normal playthrough. Another thing, look through as many faqs, documents and programs as you want while going through the questions. Finally, the best tip I can give you is to try your answers for yourself, this might save you some time and confusion, and you just might discover something new along the way. ############################################################################### # 3. THE ANSWERS # ############################################################################### ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: The tags for the start and end of the ATQs is just to give you a general idea of the range of each one since some questions have been heavily modified and some others have been moved from one ATQ to another. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ATQ1 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================================================================== A1: Equipping a Black Belt or using interceptor would allow the user to deal more than 9999 damage total in one round if a counter is initiated. =============================================================================== A2: If you enter a battle with a character that is already petrified and has a Wall Ring equipped when you try to reflect a spell off of him it just won't but if you bring a character with a Wall Ring into battle, cast Vanish then Break, the character will retain it's "reflective" capability now cast a spell on him and it will be reflected to the enemies. =============================================================================== A3: Each character can summon an esper once per battle except the character with a Gem Box who can't summon any, so 3 summons. =============================================================================== A4: Fight 2 Punishers and 1 Scrapper, they should give 8000 GP. But I also succesfully stole from the 2 Punishers and they countered by successfully stealing 8980 GP each from me for a total of 17 960 GP. Now when the battle ends and I have defeated all the enemies I get back my stolen money plus the 8000 GP for defeating all the enemies for a total of 25 960 GP. Plus, since I had Relm in my party equipped with the Cat Hood that money is doubled to a grand total of 51 920 GP. The actual amount I earned from that battle is 33 960 GP; 51 920 GP minus the money stolen from me (i.e. that was already mine) 17 960 GP. It amounts to the game giving you back your stolen money at the end of the fight and the Cat Hood doubling that amount (it just checks the amount given at the end of the battle and doubles it without wondering where it came from) eventhough it was yours to begin with. Note that the money stolen from you is "taken out of your account" right away, so if 2000 GP is stolen from you, you get 4000 GP (if you have Cat Hood equipped) at the end of the fight but the gain is 2000 GP, if you don't have Cat Hood equipped you gain nothing. Also, if the monster runs away after he stole from you, you don't get your money back nor the GP you would have earned from defeating it, so you don't get the doubling effect of the Cat Hood on those 2 amounts. =============================================================================== A5: In the colosseum. If you have fewer spells there's more chance that your character will use the one you want him to use. =============================================================================== A6: Debilitator misses when the target is already weak against everything (the 8 elements). This is why Girl and Siegfried are immune to Debilitator. =============================================================================== A7: Tapir and Wild Bear. =============================================================================== A8: Cast an HP draining spell (that reverses damage on the undead, like Drain and Empowerer) on an undead enemy, and they'll drain the damage from you, use Fight with Heal Rod or use Lagomorph. =============================================================================== A9: Quadra Slam has more base power but Quadra Slice ignores defense (just like such spells as Ultima and Meteor) so it does more damage most of the time. =============================================================================== A10: Wrexsoul possesses one party member at random everytime he does Zinger but there's no visual indication of who he possesses, he'll reappear when that randomly chosen character dies (not just in near fatal), so kill and revive your characters (Life 3 works) one at a time until Wrexsoul reappears. =============================================================================== A11: If you bring Umaro he will be in magi-tek armor but he will always use Bolt Beam. =============================================================================== A12: Actually, if you have any less than 4 party members the dream (or nightmare) sequence just won't happen, you'll sleep normally. =============================================================================== A13: 4 times Hoovers give 5 magic points and Cactrots give 10, both give 10 000 GP without Cat Hood. Life 3 is learned at a X1 rate. It will take 20 fights with Hoovers to learn Life 3, multiply that by the 20 000 GP you get per fight with Cat Hood and you get 400 000 GP. It will take 10 fights with Cactrots to learn Life3, multiply that by the 10 000 GP you get per fight without Cat Hood and you get 100 000 GP. 400 000GP is 4 times more than 100 000 GP. =============================================================================== A14: Being bare-handed. Dice increases your Bat.Pwr by 1 but being bare-handed gives you a 10 point bonus in Bat.Pwr. This means that a character with a Bat.Pwr of 50 and equipped with no weapons has an actual base Bat.Pwr of 40, a weapon's Bat.Pwr stat is added to this value and not the bare-handed modified one. =============================================================================== A15: - Spells that take off a fraction of the target's HP, like Demi and Sonic Boom, may do 9999 if the enemy has enough HP. - Step Mine, with 319968 steps or more. - Fixed Dice, with triple 6s only. (6*6*6*6*2*6 = 15552 = 9999) - Using Elixir, X-Potion, Megalixir on an undead target may deal 9999 damage if it has at least 9999 HP. - A character with high base Mag.Pwr, like Terra, can deal 9999 by using Flame Shld, Thunder Shld or Ice Shld as an item on an enemy weak to the shield's element, while being morphed, equipped with 2 Earrings and equipment that boosts Mag.Pwr. Powerful spells like Ultima (150) and Purifier (190, Crusader summon) can't deal 9999 damage, they're not elemental and Mag.Pwr can't be high enough at Level 6 to compensate for it. Spiraler has a Spell Power of 200 but it'll bring instant death on the undead instead of doing damage. It's impossible to deal 9999 damage with physical attacks based on Bat.Pwr at Level 6. Rage specials are not affected by a number of damage multipliers including morph and critical hits, so even Catscratch can't do 9999 at such a low Level. All other weapons and commands will also stop short of 9999 even by hitting the enemy when it's facing away from you. Super Balls can't hit more than 4 times and can't do more than 2048 damage for each hit, so even if 4 hits were made on a single target damage still couldn't cumulate to anything above 8192. =============================================================================== A16: - You have Safety Bit and/or Memento Ring and you got condemend from the spell Disaster, Mind blast or Evil Toot. Safety Bit/Memento Ring will not block these spells so they may hit you and give you condemned status. When the counter reaches 0 your relic will block the reaper. Basically the condemned spell does 2 things: tries to put condemend status on you and when the counter reaches 0 it tries to put death status on you. The thing is that there is a "bit" set for the condemned spell that specifies that it will miss if the target has instant death protection eventhough it's condemend status it tries to inflict initially. The spell Break is similar, it tries to inflict petrify status but it will also miss if the target has instant death protection because of that same "bit" it has set. Since Safety Bit and Memento Ring will block instant death attempts condemned will not hit but Disaster/Evil Toot/Mind Blast will hit since they don't have the "miss if instant death protection" restriction. From there the condemned status will hit (it can be blocked only by status immunities provided by some rages since there's no equipment that offer that protection) and the death status will be blocked by the relic when the counter reaches 0. Safety Bit/Memento Ring will block 2 things actually: the death status carried by some spells and weapon (doom, condemned, soul sabre) and spells with the special "miss if death protection" bit set. - Another option is to be undead, either by using an undead rage or by having the Relic Ring equipped so that the reaper will restore your HP instead of killing you when the counter reaches 0. Stamina does not block the Condemned spell, the status or the reaper. =============================================================================== A17: You have the Economizer equipped thus reducing the spell cost to 1 MP or the game clock is maxed out, Step Mine's MP cost is determined as "minutes played / 2". The number of steps are used to determine the damage Step Mine does (steps / 32), it has nothing to do with this question. =============================================================================== A18: Sabin is a zombie. Zombies have a 1/16 chance of inflicting poison status and also a 1/16 chance of inflicting dark. =============================================================================== A19: -The enemy is zombified. There are very few ways to do it but it is possible to Zombify enemies. When an enemy becomes a Zombie it ''dies'' (dissapears from the screen) but will still attack enemies and allies. Muddling PowerDemon will not get it to use Soul Out but Exoray will be able to use its DoomPollen when muddled or controlled, for example. Note that if you zombify an enemy that is alone the battle will end, just like your party looses a battle when all it's members are zombies. -The enemy countered after having been "diced up" by Scimitar. The "dice up" Scimitar uses randomly affects the enemy's graphic, dicing it up and making it disppear but that doesn't prevent fight counter from happenning, so an enemy may counter eventhough it's not visible on screen. -The enemy was hit by Life 3/X-Zone. To put Life 3 on an enemy just muddle one of your characters after you've selected Life 3 and chose a target but before that character uses the spell, use Rippler to transfer the status to an enemy, etc. Then use X-Zone on the enemy. The enemy will disappear from the screen as it does normally but when Life 3 kicks in the enemy will be revived but it won't reappear. It will continue to act normally but you won't be able to target it manually, you'll have to use attacks like Blitzes and SwdTechs, for example, to hit it. This is what is referred to as the Life 3/X-Zone bug. =============================================================================== A20: Try to run away until Opinicus is dead. Running away won't work but while you're trying to do so you're not attacking Opinicus and therefore you're not restoring it's HP, so wait for his seizure status to kill him. Gogo will not steal indefinitely from a certain point on as one could believe since logic would dictate that once he uses Steal followed by Mimic all his commands would have him Steal, the little known fact here is that the colosseum adds a Fight command to each character's battle command prompt. You may have noticed that your characters used Fight more than 1/3 of the time, this is why. Since Gogo has a Fight command the odds that he'll use it before the Opinicus runs out of HP are overwhelming. =============================================================================== A21: They give a perfect Hit Rate to Fight/Jump, like Sniper Sight does. =============================================================================== A22: - Make your characters fight in the colosseum and make them loose their battles. Your status and HP/MP are restored when you enter a fight in the colosseum but not when the fight is over. - Loose a character because of the storyline while that character is the only one alive in your party. This won't work in most cases but it will work if Locke, Edgar and Sabin are dead when you go to the Returner's hideout the first time, these 3 will temporarily leave your party while you go on with Terra alone, if she was dead when you entered she will still be while wandering about the hideout. In most other cases where the game reduces the size of your party, like before the Narshe hills battle (you start with only Terra), after the banquet (Locke and Celes) and right before the mine cart ride (Celes leaves), the characters you are left with will have been revived and cured of statuses. In the early stages of the game when there is a possibility that Shadow will leave the party after a fight it seems that he can't leave if all the other characters in your party are dead. at least when you hire him at Kohlingen and in Sabin's scenario. - Have your last character alive exit a battle with Warp, Warp Sstone or Smoke Bomb just as he or she is dying. That character has to die while he/she is using Warp/Warp Stone/Smoke Bomb, while enemies or other characters can't act while a character is casting a spell or using an item and so they can't kill the character, condemned status and damage from poison, seizure and regen status can. With some timing, using Warp when condemned's counter is nearing 0 will result in Warp being cast, making the screen fade out with a little pause for condemned's reaper sound effect in the background. It's possible to do the same thing but by using Leap as a way to exit the battle instead of Warp/Warp Stone/Smoke Bomb. - When meeting Gau in battle after he's used Leap in a previous battle there is sometimes a short window of opportunity in which it's possible to act. When the gap after Gau's "Uwaoo~!!" line is big enough a character can act and use that time to hit and kill every target on screen at the same time with merton, W.Wind, Quake or Purifier (Crusader's summon). Instead of getting a "game Over" the "special battle event" of meeting Gau will continue (to do so the characters will get back up); Gau will run away and the battle will end like it normally does when you hit Gau. Outside of battle your characters will all be dead from the spell you used even if you saw them get back up. =============================================================================== A23: Suplex It does double damage when there is one enemy and the battle started with more than one enemy. When starting with a group of 4 enemies, for example, damage is not affected until only one enemy is left; i.e. damage is not affected after you kill only one enemy out of 6, for example. So if you start a battle with 3 Apokryphos and Suplex does 2000 damage it'll do 4000 damage only when there is only one Apokryphos left, if you enter a battle with only one Apokryphos, Suplex will do 2000 damage everytime. This is just one of Suplex's characteristics (from a special effect byte) that's less obvious. =============================================================================== A24: True Edge, it has the better Hit Rate of the two (140 vs 110 for Atom Edge). =============================================================================== A25: Gogo with Sword Breaker using the SwdTech Quadra Slice or Quadra Slam. The damage cap being at 9999 you'll need at least 4 hits to kill 2 Tyranosaurs who have more than 9999 HP each. The only way to do 4 hits in 1 round given the restrictions is with Gogo and SwdTech and for that Gogo will need the Sword Breaker since it's the only weapon out of the 4 that will allow SwdTech to be used. Gogo can't go "psycho" with Retort since he's alone and would need to input a command between Retort's "set up" and counter which would prevent the latter. =============================================================================== A26: As soon as you can rent a chocobo. There's a chocobo stable in the forest south of Figaro Castle, so the earliest you can hear the chocobo music is as soon as you leave Narshe with Locke and Terra the first time in WOB. =============================================================================== A27: The enemy dies. L.5 Doom doesn't recover the undead. =============================================================================== A28: I loose the fight, the battle ends without the victory music. It's as if I'd simply been sneezed away without killing the enemy. =============================================================================== A29: In both cases I loose the fight because Chupon has a special line in his script that makes the fight end when Chupon dies no matter what. If it weren't for that line: A. The fight continues since Ultros is alive and so is one of my characters, who'll land on Ultros. B: The fight ends and I win since one of my chars is alive, although in the air, and no enemies remain. =============================================================================== A30: Equip Gogo with Illumina, Paladin Shld, Bard's Hat, Force Armor, Merit Award and Safety Bit with anything but Magic, Blitz, Lore and Rage as his commands. Retainer may do Battle, Special (Tradeoff), Wind Slash or Condemned in the colosseum and nothing else. Battle and Special will be blocked by the equipment setup which gives Gogo over 128 MBlock%, Wind Slash is taken care of by Paladin Shld which nullifies wind and Safety Bit will take care of Condemned. Thus Retainer can't harm you and you can't harm yourself if you don't have Magic, Blitz, Lore or Rage as commands. Safety Bit is necessary because MBlock% won't block Condemend or the reaper. Paladin Shld is necessary since it's the only thing that allows wind protection and MBlock% of at least 128, the latter being the only thing capable of blocking battle and special everytime. =============================================================================== A31: You can kill Phunbaba the first time you fight him by using Vanish followed by Doom, winning has absolutely no effect on the storyline; you party arrives and has to beat him, Terra ends up in bed refusing to move and you still get Fenrir. --------------- - The Vanish/Doom bug - Doom kills targets that are vanished and immune to instant death because in the way the game determines whether spells hit or miss there is a separate step for instant death attacks that happens after the step that checks for vanish; if the target is vanished it tells the spell to hit and doesn't go through the check for instant death protection. There is another step that checks to see if it can inflict statuses carried by the spell, if the target is immune to sleep status the sleep spell will miss but since it's impossible to be immune to "wound" status (if you were you couldn't die) doom will hit. =============================================================================== A32: Summon the Ragnarok esper. Brachosaur only has a 28.6% Miss Rate as it relates to Metamorph. =============================================================================== A33: Muddle him. When muddled Katana Soul may use his Special (Slayer Edge) which will kill him instantly. Metamorph won't work since his Miss Rate is 100% =============================================================================== A34: Mantodea with 180. =============================================================================== A35: Damage resetted. Even though you can't do more than 9999 damage in one hit, the game still calculates damage up to 65535. When damage goes over 9999 the game truncates it to 9999 but when damage goes over 65535 the game can't track it and damage "resets", at 65536 damage damage done will be 0, at 65552 it will be 16 (65552 - 65536 = 16). Under the right circumstances it's possible to break the 65535 barrier. For example, a character at Level 99 with 139 Mag.Pwr will do 9999 damage with Ultima but at 140 Mag.Pwr he/she will do 15-16 damage. Magical damage modifiers other than Level, Mag.Pwr and Spell Power don't help go over 65535 since damage reset occurs after the very first step in the magical damage calculation, modifiers like morph, Mag.Def, Earrings, etc are calculated afterwards. Ultima can't do damage that low without damage resetting, even considering the lowest stats possible in the game and every damage modifier short of petrify. =============================================================================== A36: If there is only one enemy, GrandTrain will deal 2 x, to that single enemy, so 4000 damage, and Flare Star would deal 3 x, so 6000 damage GrandTrain like most spells divides damage by 2 when it has more than one target, no matter how many targets as long as there are more than one. Flare Star is an exception since it has it's own damage formula which will have the damage done divided by the number of targets. =============================================================================== A37: Suriander will be muted and asleep while Celes will have no statuses. Muddle will miss because Suriander is immune to muddle. Mute will hit Suriander. Break will miss since Suriander is immune to instant death. Reflect will hit Suriander. Dispel will hit Suriander and remove reflect but not mute. Sleep will hit Suriander. Break misses because it can be blocked by immunity to petrify or to instant death. =============================================================================== A38: Reflect Haste Dispel Stop After using Reflect on Madam, Haste will be reflected to Celes. Dispel will remove reflect from Madam so that Stop will hit her and won't be reflected. Celes has reflect and haste while Madam is stopped. Since Madam is always targetted, haste will have to be reflected off her in order for Celes to get the status. Since Madam doesn't end up with reflect it will have to be removed with Dispel and since Madam ends up with stop it will have to be used after Dispel since dispel removes stop. This leaves only one possibility for what spells can be used and in which order, although Haste could be replaced with Haste2. =============================================================================== A39: One is in Mt. Zozo, the other is hidden in Kefka's Tower. For the one in Kefka's Tower you can get to the Aegis Shld with the 3rd group (the one that lands on the far right of the tower). The shield is in the room with the conveyer belt you jump on to go to the room where Inferno and the save point are, instead of using the conveyer belt you have to find a path on the southern wall of the room, go down and circle around a little isolated room where the shield lies in a chest. =============================================================================== A40: Five; vanish, poison, float, imp and dark. There are 7 icons for out of battle statuses, zombie, petrify, imp, vanish, poison, float and dark. Petrify will remove poison, float, dark and vanish. Petrify will always remove vanish since it has to come from a magical attack (vanish would make a physical attack miss). Zombie will remove poison, dark and vanish. Zombie will always remove vanish since it has to come from a magical attack (vanish would make a physical attack miss). Whether the fact that you can't have more than 5 statuses outside of battle is dependant on the fact that only 5 status icons can fit in the main menu for one character or the other way around. You can be petrified and zombified at the same time but the target has to be zombified first. =============================================================================== A41: A. Get into battle and use a weapon that uses MP to do critical hits through Mimic or get into battle and use Soul Sabre on an undead through Mimic. Soul Sabre inverts damage on the undead so you can use it on L.10 Magic to loose some MP after it uses at least a spell; it must lack some MP for you to give it some. B. Equip Ribbon or White Cape to cure imp then use Float or Dispel. You can use Dispel only if you have a status that can be cured by it. You can't use Imp since the question specifies that you don't have the spell or any access to it. =============================================================================== A42: Imp Halberd and Ragnarok. Even if you took the esper instead of the sword you can still throw Ragnarok if you steal one from Girl in the 3rd tier of the final battle. Imp Halberd has a Bat.Pwr of 253 and ragnarok 255. You can't throw Atma Weapon. =============================================================================== A43: Cyan and Umaro. All other characters have weapons that will randomly cast a spell in the magic command spell list and Gau has plenty of rages than will. =============================================================================== A44: Behemoth and Outsider =============================================================================== A45: You must have image status (Mirage Vest, Fenrir or Shadow Edge), vanish status or rely on MBlock%. =============================================================================== A46: Condemned, muddle, bserk, seizure and mute. =============================================================================== A47: 10 times. If Ragnarok is successful and Gogo mimics it, then Ragnarok will not be summoned. Gogo will go through the animation for summoning an esper, but Ragnarok will not appear because the original target is no longer on screen (Metamorph doesn't retarget if the target is dead). The next time you do Mimic, it will randomly target one of the remaining enemies. So you need to do Mimic twice for each remaining enemy. =============================================================================== * End ATQ1 * =============================================================================== A48: One of my characters was zombified and an enemy used Sneeze on him/her, the remaining characters were then also zombified by the enemy. When my last character became a zombie I didn't get a "game over" because of the character that was thrown out of the battle by Sneeze. =============================================================================== <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ATQ2 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================================================================== A49: Your character is Gau or Gogo and he raged an enemy that is not immune to instant death. Rage immunities and vulnerabilities to instant death overwrite instant death protection from equipment, in this case Safety Bit. =============================================================================== A50: - Use Force Field to nullify an element until the spell does 0 damage on non-petrified targets. - Hit an enemy that has a counter to the element of the spell (Number 024 for example). =============================================================================== A51: Celes absorbs fire. When a character's elemental protection/weaknesses are mixed with Runic the MP gain/losses are inverted. So for the spell fire which has a 4 MP cost, fire absorption will have Celes loose 4 mp when she uses Runic, being weak vs fire will have her absorb 8 MP, cutting fire damage by 50% will have her absorb 2 MP and nullifying fire will have her absorb 0 MP. =============================================================================== A52: - While muddled but before he enters a rage Gau may use a regular Fight command. - While charmed but before he enters a rage Gau may use a regular Fight command. - While zombified but before he enters a rage Gau may use a regular Fight command. - While wearing a black belt Gau may counter with a regular Fight command. - In the colosseum characters have a Fight command added to the list of commands they may use so Gau has that possibility there. - Input a command Gau can't use while an imp (Magic for example) then if he isturned into an imp he'll use a regular Fight command instead. =============================================================================== Q53: Slot, Control, Item and Throw won't be used in the colosseum. Sketch may be used, Terra may use Morph, GP Rain may be used and Dance may also be used. =============================================================================== A54: Morph and Leap. =============================================================================== A55: Break will retarget to a random enemy. This is because Break retargets if it's target is not there anymore and it'll target the enemy because the spell targets the enemy party by default. =============================================================================== A56: Both will Runic and they will split the MP. =============================================================================== A57: Earth The fire, ice, bolt and poison elements are available through rods and swords, Kaiser is pearl elemental pearl, Tempest and Blossom provide wind and Trident water. The only earth elemental weapon is the Gravity Rod which is only available in the WOR. =============================================================================== A58: Every character can go into rage status. If an enemy uses Rippler on a raged Gau or Gogo it will carry rage status and can then give it to any other character if it uses Rippler again. Against an enemy that doesn't use Rippler it's still possible to transfer rage status but only to Strago (or Gogo if the raging character is Gau). Strago can enter a rage by using Rippler on a raged Gau or Gogo. Have someone select Muddle and target it at Strago, before that character finishes casting the spell have Strago select Rippler, this will insure that Strago will use Rippler on his next turn while muddled, you just have to hope he'll use it on Gau/Gogo. You can also lower Strago's M.Block% or cast Vanish on him beforehand to help the odds of Muddle hitting. Cast Vanish on Strago after he's muddled so that he won't loose the muddle status if an enemy hits him with a physical attack, you can cast Vanish after muddle and before Strago uses Rippler if you're fast enough. Equipping a Heal Rod on the raging character and choosing a rage with a physical Special will insure that he doesn't kill the enemy before you want the fight to end. You could also use elemental absorption, Vanish, etc. This method comes in handy when trying to cast spells on your party that were not meant to. Rage status, when acquired through Rippler, will have the newly raging character enter a random rage and not necessarily the same rage as the other character was using. Also note that rage status on enemies will not change the attacks they use, i.e. it doesn't change their attack script. Rage status will be transferred by Rippler but the statuses provided by a rage (like safe from templar) will be duplicated since they can't be removed, even if the character is no longer in rage status. Statuses acquired before going into a rage and that the rage provides immunity to, will also be duplicated but it will be possible to remove those once the character looses rage status. Statuses that the rage doesn't provide immunity towards and that don't come with the rage, will simply be transferred. Due to a bug, Rippler will exchange other statuses it wasn't meant to like morph and interceptor, for example. =============================================================================== A59: Equip Gau with an Imp Halberd and a Gauntlet, 2 Imp Halberds and a Genji Glove or an Imp Halberd and turn him into an imp. Since Gau's actual base Bat.Pwr is 99 (109 minus 10 for being bare-handed) equipping him with Imp Halberd will bring it to 100, Gauntlet and Genji Glove with another Imp Halberd will each double it to 200. Gauntlet doubles actual base Bat.Pwr and the equipped weapon's Bat.Pwr while Genji Glove doubles only actual base Bat.Pwr (the 2 weapon's Bat.Pwrs are simply added). Both relics modify Bat.Pwr only when a weapon is equipped. If Gau is an imp, the Imp Halberd's 1 Bat.Pwr will change to it's listed 253 Bat.Pwr. =============================================================================== A60: Having Edgar in the lead of your party at Figaro Castle's shops in WOB and WOR, and the shops of South Figaro in WOR will let you buy items for half price. This doesn't apply to the inn or the chocobo stable. Sabin doesn't get the half price discount whether he's in the lead or not. =============================================================================== A61: Oogyboog is physical so he'll hit 2 times if he has 2 weapons equipped, if he has only 1 or none he'll hit only once. Offering will allow 4 hits whether he has a weapon or not. With Genji Glove and Offering he'll hit 8 times with 2 weapons (2 Imp Halberds since it's the only weapon he can equip without a Merit Award) and 4 times with no weapons or only one weapon. Genji Glove will double the number of hits only with 2 weapons equipped. Gau will attack 4 times with Critical (Guard rage) for example. He'll do the same with all rages that have physical Specials as well as with every rage's Battle command. Spells will only be cast once even with Gem Box. =============================================================================== A62: Gau takes normal damage from Bio but cuts damage by 50% from fire. There are only 3 characters that can have 255 Mag.Def (Gau, Terra and Mog) and for all of them there is only one way to equip them which is with Force Shld, Titanium, Imp's Armor and 2 White Capes. Spells that rely on Mag.Def normally do 1 damage on characters with 255 Mag.Def if they are cast by enemies (cast by characters on characters they'll do 0 damage because of self-damage). If you mix elemental protections and weaknesses with this 1 damage, you'll get 2 damage if the character is weak vs that element and you'll get 0 damage if he/she reduces damage from that element by 50%. Since Gau has the Force Shld he reduces damage from Fire 3 by 50% but takes normal damage from Bio, so 0 damage from Fire 3 and 1 damage from Bio. =============================================================================== A63: Sketch a Garm (magi-tek factory) it may use Ice 3. You can level Celes up, she learns Ice 3 at Level 42. =============================================================================== A64: Equip all characters with a Wall Ring and cast Fire 3 on all your characters. The spell will bounce off your characters and may hit one enemy once and the other enemy 3 times. Damage done by reflected spells is lessened if the spell reflects off allies, on top of going through the regular modifications like split damage and self- damage (damage reduction when hitting allies). --------------- - Reflected spells - Damage for reflected spells is calculated based on the spell's caster vs the spell's final target. The damage the caster would do to the target (that ends up being hit by the spell), without reflect, is modified according to the following steps to determine damage done when a spell is reflected: - If the spell was reflected off of more than one target, divide damage by 2. Only if the spell splits damage.* - If the spell was reflected off of one or more allies, divide damage by 2. - If the spell ends up hitting an ally, divide damage by 2.* - If the target is hit more than once by the reflected spell, multiply damage by the number of times the target is hit. *Part of any regular spell cast but added for clarity. Just keep in mind that if you compare reflected vs unreflected damage you shouldn't go through these steps twice, i.e. if you observed Gogo doing 2000 damage on himself with Fire 2, then don't divide damage by 2 for a hit on an ally when calculating the damage Gogo would do to himself with Fire 2 reflected off of an enemy since it's "included" in the 2000 damage you observed. Note that the game might not take these steps and for these reasons but they can be applied accurately nonetheless. These steps are done for each ally and/or enemy that ends up hit by the spell, the result is the damage done to that particular target. The damage these steps start with is the damage the caster would do to the target that ends up getting hit if the spell hits ONLY that target. It's impossible to increase damage by reflecting spread spells off your own party, there can be more hits but not more total damage. It would be possible only if there were reflectable spells that didn't split damage. Spreading spells that split damage and reflecting off of allies will divide damage by 4 and since you can't have more than 4 characters in your party the best that can be done is as much damage. Spread spells that split damage divide damage by 2 whether there's 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 targets. =============================================================================== A65: Gogo used the Nightshade rage and used Charm. Sketch is not the enemy attacking itself. =============================================================================== A66: Morph, Leap, Control, X-Fight and Umaro's attacks provided by Rage Ring and Blizzard Orb (Umaro's tackle, Umaro's character throw and Storm), all of these will have Gogo use a regular Fight command instead. Although they're not really commands, Gogo will not mimic the 2 hits from Genji Glove without having a Genji Glove himself and he won't mimic the multiple hits from Dragon Horn without having a Dragon Horn himself but he will mimic Jump without DragoonBoots. When mimicking a Dragon Horn equipped jumping character, Gogo will use a single Jump command whether he has DragoonBoots or not. Gogo will mimic counter-attacks from characters, used because of Black Belt, with a regular Fight command. Gogo will mimic X-Magic, SwdTech and Runic even without a SswdTech or Runic compatible weapon. Gogo will also mimic Capture without a Thief Glove and GP Rain without a Coin Toss. =============================================================================== A67: There was the "Can't dive!!" message because Gau was alone or the only character that wasn't incapacitated (dead, petrified or zombified). =============================================================================== A68: - If a morphed character has sleep, stop or freeze status when the morph bar empties that character will be morphed "permanently". This also works if a character has "stopped" the other character's actions by using Quick, the morphed character's morph bar will continue to empty (contrary to the regular ATB bars which are "stopped" by Quick) and when it does the morphed character won't revert. - By using Rippler it's possible to transfer morph status which may result in the character being morphed "permanently". While transfering morph status directly from one character to the other is unpredictable, transferring it through an enemy can be more stable. --------------- - Permanent morph - When transferring morph from one character to the other directly, the transferred morphed status can provide a green morph bar that empties (meaning the character will revert eventually) or a regular yellow ATB bar (meaning the character won't revert). In both cases the character will be morphed but there doesn't seem to be any pattern to which bar a character will get. A reliable way to make characters retain their morph status through a "stuck" morph bar, or the lack of one, follows: 1- Terra morphs. 2- The enemy uses Rippler on Terra. 3- Terra morphs again. 4- Strago (or Gogo) uses Rippler on the enemy which gives him a regular morph bar (green) but Terra's morph bar (green) is stuck (it doesn't empty). At this point if Terra reverts and morphs again her morph bar will act normally. 5- Terra reverts. This will make Strago's morph bar (green) be stuck. You can repeat these steps by replacing Strago with Gogo. You could then have Terra morph again and put her to sleep just as her morph bar is about to empty to end up with 3 permanently* morphed characters. An alternate to the steps described above would be to have Strago use Rippler on the enemy before Terra morphs a second time (switch number 3 and 4). The only difference is that if Strago uses Rippler before Terra morphs the second time, she won't have a green bar when she morphs. In both cases Terra ends up morphed "permanently" on number 4. * "permanently" and "permanent" only apply to the revert that happens automatically when the morph bar empties, characters can still revert through Rippler or the Revert command. =============================================================================== A69: I used Charm on a Retainer. Retainer 1 is charmed, he uses Tradeoff on Retainer 2 which counters with Tradeoff on the attacker (Retainer 1), both are now dead. Retainer 1 then counters with Tradeoff but since he's dead (and his attacker (Retainer2) is dead) he lost his charmed status, so he targets the party and kills one of my characters. Retainer is immune to muddle so it can't replace Charm. The enemies are not strong enough to kill themselves in no more than 2 actions with Battle, Wind Slash or anything else besides Tradeoff. Control would work very well (I suggest you use that if you wanna try it) if the question allowed a second turn, Sketch would have the first Retainer use Tradeoff on the allies so neither of those work. =============================================================================== A70: There is a kid in Vector that says "And.CURE!" when you talk to him, he's actually healing 1 HP for each of your characters even the dead ones, so talking to him often enough can get you a dead character with 300 HP. He will even heal one HP for petrified and zombified characters. =============================================================================== A71: -With Illumina; since it has a perfect Hit Rate it will override Cactrot's 250 MBlock% and hit, if it casts Pearl (as it randomly does) it will retain the perfect Hit Rate and hit for 1 damage which is due to Cactrot's 255 MDef and the fact that Pearl is not defense ignoring. -Equip a Sniper Sight and a weapon that randomly casts Pearl, the effect will be the same as with Illumina. For the above 2 methods it's impossible to do it with offering since it doesn't allow addition effects like Pearl from Pearl Rod and Illumina. -Cast Pearl by using a Pearl Rod as an item. Spells from equipment used as items will be unblockbale as well as defense ignoring, among other things, so in this case Pearl's damage won't be reduced by Cactrot's high Mag.Def. Rods and shields used as items: When used as items some rods and shields will cast spells, those spells will have different properties than when used through the Magic command. They willignore reflect, the defense steps of the damage formula (Defense/Mag.Def, safe/shell, row, morph, self damage, bserk, etc), the random variance (which means no damage reduction due to a random number the game picks in normal circumstances, so no damage fluctuations from one cast to the other) and they will be unblockable. =============================================================================== A72: Lobo, Guard, Vommamoth, Marshal and M-TekArmor from Narshe, Soldier and Templar from the imperial camp and Ghost from the Phantom Train (the "No escape" fight). The Serpent Trench and Lete river battles are random, the Narshe "security check point" battle is not forced (you can "break" the chain of lights and thus avoid the battle, it depends on when you press "A"), the battle Cyan has with the Leader in front of Doma Castle is forced and non-random but Leader doesn't appear on the Veldt. =============================================================================== A73: Interceptor countered an attack by the Test Rider and killed it. =============================================================================== A74: The enemy threw a weapon. Besides Battle and Special (which are not defense ignoring) there are very few things an enemy can do that's physical one is Tentacle, which isn't defense ignoring, the other is Throw. =============================================================================== A75: Sabin's Aura Bolt Blitz. =============================================================================== A76: Scar Beam, by GhostTrain. =============================================================================== * End ATQ2 * <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ATQ3 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================================================================== A77: Equip him with Dice or Fixed Dice. When Gau enters a rage his Fight animation will reflect the rage, for example, when in Guard rage he'll use a Dirk and when in Templar rage he'll have a lance/halberd. All Specials use the same animation (Gau raises his hands). Battle and Special in rages will override all weapon animations (except Dice/Fixed dice) usually going along with the weapon actually equipped but not their effects. For example, when using Scimitar in Guard rage the weapon animation will not be that of the scimitar but that of a dirk but the Scimitar's scpecial effect of dicing up the enemy will remain. For Sniper/Hawk Eye the throw animation will be changed to reflect a throw of the weapon "used" by the rage, so in Guard rage a dirk will be thrown, in Templar rage a lance/halberd will be thrown, etc. For Dice/Fixed Dice, although the dice animation overrides the rage's weapon animation, the damage will still be multiplied by Specials. So a Level 10 Gau that rolls 1-2-3 with cat scratch will deal (1*2*3*2*10)*4= 480 damage. =============================================================================== A78: They ignore defense (Mag.Def). Meteo: non-elemental, blockable, unreflectable, unrunickable, doesn't split damage, def ignoring Cure3 : non-elemental, unblockable, reflectable, runickable, splits damage, def ignoring Merton : elemental, unblockable, unreflectable, unrunickable, splits damage, def ignoring =============================================================================== A79: The monster Hit (2nd tier of the final battle) will use his Special (10 hits) followed by 9 battle commands when it dies for a total of 10 hits. Make it 11 hits if you count a regular unprovoked battle command from his main script before the 10 hits. His Special doesn't actually do 10 hits, it's just the 9 battle commands following it that make it seem that way. Cactrot will use 10 Blow Fish in a row every 8th turn. =============================================================================== A80: Vanish was already cast on him once so Doom missed or was reflected. =============================================================================== * End ATQ3 * =============================================================================== A81: The higher the Stamina: -The more HP will be recovered by regen. -The more HP will be recovered by tintinabar. -The more damage will be dealt by the poison status. -The higher the chances of blocking Break, Doom, Demi, Quartr, X-Zone, W Wind, Shoat, Odin, Raiden, Antlion, Snare, X-Fer, Grav Bomb and Chain Saw's instant death variant. =============================================================================== <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ATQ4 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================================================================== A82: C. With 255 Defense and 255 Mag.Def, non-def ignoring magical and physical attacks used by the enemy will do 0 damage if the character is in the back row but in the front row non-def ignoring physical attacks will do 1 damage. Magical attacks ignore row so they will do 0 damage to the front and back row. In this case Gau's equipment gives him 255 Defense so if he's in the front row he can be hit for 1 damage which has the possibility of killing him in the long run. Leafers and Dark Wind use only Special (that don't give statuses) and Battle commands A. Celes has over 128 MBlock% and the enemies use only blockable physical attacks. B. Possible for the L.30 Magic to run out of MP on their own but if they do so they don't die when they get to 0 MP on their own, yo have to attack their MP for them to do so. D. The only spells L.30 Magic can use are Fire 2, Ice 2, Bolt 2, Osmose, Reflect and Imp. Mog has 255 Defense so the first 3 spells will do 0 damage to him and the last 3 spells are use by L.30 Magic only if it's attacked, since Mog does nothing for the whole battle and the L.30 Magics can't hit themselves they will never be used. E. Relm can keep Latimeria under the influence Control indefinitely if nothing breaks her control, which won't happen in this case since Latimeria and Relm are alone. =============================================================================== A83: By killing the head and shell of the Presenter, in Daryl's tomb, at the same time you will get 2 Dragon Claws; pearl elemental with a Bat.Pwr over 130, 188 to be exact. The head and shell are actually 2 different enemies that each drop a Dragon Claw when they die. The thing is that the fight is set up so that it will end when either one of the enemies are dead, so if the fight ends and you only killed one enemy you'll get only one Dragon Claw. To kill both the head and the shell at the same time thanks to an esper you can summon Shoat, Raiden or Odin, or you can use X-Zone which you learn from Fenrir. Both head and shell are not immune to instant death so these 4 spells can kill them both at the same time. It is possible to have Odin and Raiden when facing the Presenter since you don't have to face it the first time you go through Daryl's tomb. =============================================================================== A84: Gau and Gogo by using Intangir or Magic Urn rage. Both these rages absorb all 8 elements. All other characters can also use these 2 rages if they are lucky enough to pick them when rage status is transferred to them through Rippler. =============================================================================== A85: Phoenix recovers 1/4 of any dead or vanished character's max HP. =============================================================================== A86: The character was wearing Relic Ring and Cure Ring or Marvel Shoes. Relic Ring makes a character undead which means regen status from Marvel Shoes or Cure Ring will damage that character and eventually kill him/her. Thornlet (seizure) would work but you would need to go to Ebot's rock and do the Hidon side quest or Metamorph an enemy. Cursed Shld (seizure) would work but you would need to do the Pheonix cave side quest and get Locke to get the Cursed Shld. Phantasm is only used as a counter so it doesn't fit, that's the "trap" in the question. =============================================================================== A87: Equip Celes with Illumina, Force Shld, Bard's Hat, Force Armor and 2 White Capes. That's a 160 MBlock% bonus plus her natural 9 MBlock% and you get 169 MBlock% which is the highest attainable. This is trivial since 169 M.Block% is over the minimum amount necessary to block everything that can be blocked which is 128 MBlock%. =============================================================================== A88: A character was a zombie and jumped, he was in the air when L.? Pearl was used so he didn't take any damage from it. My character was able to do so because jumping is the "set up" to a Jump command, this combined with the fact that zombies input their commands automatically (they don't need a command prompt to appear before setting up their actions) allowed that character to act before Dullahan who normally attacks with L.? Pearl before the allies can do anything. Only zombie works since it can be carried over from a previous fight and the Cursed Shld (for muddle and bserk) is not accessible at that point in the game. Since the characters are vanished and unequipped, L.? Pearl couldn't have missed, healed or done 0 damage. A character that goes into rage doesn't do so until he performs an action from the rage, he doesn't go into rage as part of the rage "set up", so even if Gau or Gogo could have been in your party at the time you fought Dullahan this couldn't have been the answer. --------------- - Character setup - When inputting commands for characters the first thing they do is get ready to do the action you inputted, this is the "set up" to their action where they get into a "ready" pose. After a certain amount of time (longer when using Gem Box for example) the character will execute the previously selected action. This set up is also done by characters even when you don't input their commands yourself, i.e. when they are zombies, bserked, muddled, etc. A few enemies in the game have the "attack first" bit set, what that does basically is prevent the characters' command prompt from appearing until after the enemy's starts executing it's first attack, it also delays actions that were not inputted manually (zombie, bserk, etc.) until after the "first attack". Once the enemy starts doing it's "first attack" the command prompts appear, the first one to do so will be the prompt of the character whose ATB bar had last filled at the moment the enemy's started it's attack. "Attack first" prevents the command prompts from being brought up and actions from being executed but it doesn't prevent the set up to actions if the character is fast enough. This would be irrelevent if it weren't for jump from DragoonBoots. While most actions' "set up" consists of the character going into a "ready" pose (a "chanting" pose for spells), jump from DragoonBoots is different because the "pose"/"set up" consists of the character jumping in the air, there is no set up prior to the character jumping, the jump is the set up. --------------- It's impossible to get a preemtive attack on someone with "attack first" but it's possible to get a back attack. =============================================================================== A89: Gau has an Ice, Flame or Paladin Shld and either has 128 Stamina or is in Lunaris, Red Wolf, Cephaler or Poplium rage Gau needs to be incapable of hurting Allo Ver and he needs to be protected against everything Allo Ver can throw at him. He must do so with a physical rage that doesn't come with poison or seizure status for fear of ending up dead from these ailments, nor must he have reflect giventhe possibility that Allo Ver would reflect a spell off Gau and remove his vanish status. Since Gau doesn't have a weapon equipped Allo Ver must stay vanished. Allo Ver can only use Doom, Condemned and Atomic Ray if you don't Muddle/Charm/Control/etc him but since Gau uses a physical rage that isn't a problem. Here are the possibilities on how to protect yourself vs these attacks: -Doom: Safety Bit/Memento Ring, 128 Stamina, instant death immunity through rage, undead rage, 128 MBlock%, reflect. -Condemned: Safety Bit/Memento Ring, 128 Stamina, instant death immunity through rage, undead rage, 128 MBlock%. -Atomic Ray: fire resistant equipment (Flame Shld, Paladin Shld, Ice Shld), fire resistant rage, 255 Mag.Def, 128 M.Block%. Since Gau only has a shield equipped he can't have 255 Mag.Def or 128 MBlock% and since there are no physical rages that are fire resistant the only way to protect vs Atomic Ray is with a fire resistant shield; ice, flame or paladin. Safety Bit/Memento Ring can't be used since Gau only has a shield and can't equip Memento Ring. Reflect is useless since what will protect vs Condemned will also protect vs Doom, besides reflect could let Allo Ver un-vanish itself. That leaves 128 Stamina, instant death immunity through rage (Lunaris, Red Wolf and Cephaler) and undead rage (Poplium). =============================================================================== A90: Although Wind Slash is unblockable under normal circumstances it can still miss when cast by Tempest while the user is in rage. Wind Slash when cast by Tempest will carry the statuses of a rage's Special. If the Special does damage as well as inflict a status then it'll be impossible for Wind Slash to miss but if the Special does no damage and the target(s) of Wind Slash is/are immune to or already have the status of the special then Wind Slash will miss. So, for example, Gau equipped with Tempest and using Duster (poison status, no damage) from Beakor rage will see Wind Slash from Tempest miss if it targets a group of enemies immune to poison. =============================================================================== A91: Roulette from the Veteran rage is guaranteed to end up targetting only the enemies in normal circumstances. =============================================================================== A92: Zombie status doesn't prevent rage from being used, a zombie will use Fight or Rage randomly if it's available to him/her. In this case Gau or Gogo (if he has rage as one of his commands) entering Pipsqueak, Apparite, Neckhunter or Kiwok rage, at one point of the battle, can use imp 4 turns in a row while being a zombie with a little bit of luck. Unlike other commands rage can be randomly picked while muddled, bserk, charm or zombified. While you can input a command, then become a zombie (or get one of the statuses mentionned above) and still have the command you inputted be executed this will only work for one turn with regular commands. In such a case it's enough for rage since you'll stay in that rage for the following turns. What makes this unusual is that while a zombie a character will normally only use Fight but if that character has rage in his/her commands prompt it may be picked randomly instead of Fight. Just like characters are added a Fight command in the colosseum (see Q20) they are also given an extra Fight command while affected by the statuses mentionned above, which explains why Gogo may use Fight even if it's not one of his commands but that he will never mimic a spell for example, Gogo is picking the extra Fight command not Mimic when he's doing a regular Fight attack. =============================================================================== A93: The undead enemy had Life 3 and when Doom Darts was used it cast Doom. This prompted the "double death sequence" which is what happens when undead enemies have Life 3 and they are hit by an instant death attack; the instant death attack makes them restore themselves (they disappear and reappear right away with full HP/MP and restored status) then the "life part" of Life 3 kicks in since it detected the enemy's death and it kills the enemy definitely. This makes it impossible to do "Life 3/X-Zone" on an undead enemy since "Life" kills them. A note about the "double death sequence": When the enemy is undead and has Life 3 status but dies by "conventional means (by having it's HP dropped to 0) the life part of Life 3 kicks in but there is no animation for some reason, only the sound is heard; the enemy is not revived or.killed a second time it just seems to have no effect. =============================================================================== A94: Gau was equipped with Drainer and he used it with Catscratch on an undead enemy. Gau had 1000 HP or less when he entered the fight so the 1000 HP the enemy lost from Blow Fish was recovered at Gau's expense when he used Catscratch. =============================================================================== A95: Setzer used the Slot command and got 3 "Bars" which summoned either Kirin, Starlet, Sraphim or Phoenix. Setzer used Life Guard (Kirin), Group Hug (Starlet) or Reviver (Sraphim) on Gau who died since he was in an undead rage; or he used Rebirth (Phoenix) on an undead and vanished Gau. Gau must be the one to die since having an undead character in WOB is only available through rage. Setzer must be the one to cast the summon since Slot is the only way other than the Magicite item and the Magic command to use a summon. Other than Palidor and Crusader, every offensive esper summon will abort when tried to be used vs allies so it has to be an healing summon, thus why the target has to be undead. Normally Rebirth (Phoenix) will miss the living and only work on dead targets, vanish will bypass that restriction and allow Rebirth to hit. =============================================================================== A96: Gogo raged a monster that dies when it's MP reaches 0 and the enemy cast Osmose or Rasp which took the last of Gogo's MP. =============================================================================== A97: A: I used Life3 then X-Zone on the enemy. B: The enemy used Launcher while all my characters were in the air (jump). C: Dark Force, Lethal Wpn, ProtoArmor or PlutoArmor. The enemy must be able to do Launcher and it must not be immune to vanish or, if they are immune to vanish, they must not be immune to instant death, this is so you can do Life 3/X-Zone. This leaves only Dark force, Lethal Wpn, ProtoArmor and PlutoArmor. --------------- - The Launcher/Jump bug - If the enemy uses Launcher while the whole ally party is in the air a bug occurs where the allies disappear much like the enemy does for "Life3/X-Zone". The characters will remain in this "hidden" state until they jump/land again. If a character is still in the air when a second Launcher is used he/she will land and won't be affected by the bug. Once all characters are "hidden" they will not be able to use anything that targets the allies by default (i.e. cure spells, Warp, life spells, Pep Up, Morph, etc), you won't even be able to select these commands, you'll be brought back to the menu instantly if you try. This is because the game doesn't detect your characters as valid targets the same way you can't target somebody who has been sneezed out of battle. As long as the default targetting of the command detects a target this problem won't occur, i.e. although merton targets your party you'll be able to select it if the enemy is present. This will remain as long as all your characters are "hidden", as soon as one of your characters reappears you'll be able to input these commands (as long as the user isn't "hidden" and the command he/she is trying to use doesn't target the user exclusively), whether they'll be carried out depends on whether the enemy used Launcher a second time or not. While your characters are "hidden" after a first use of Launcher, you'll be able to select the commands that do not target your party by default but they won't be performed, if they have a name that is displayed at the top of the screen when they are used it will be displayed but the command won't happen. Once the enemy uses Launcher a second time the attacks you input will be carried out but you will remain "hidden", which will still prevent you from using spells that target your party by default, jump now and you will reappear. Keep in mind that when your attacks are carried out again so will the enemy's, starting after the second Launcher. Note that the second Launcher must be used on a subsequent turn, if done on the same turn commands won't be carried out and characters still in the air will still be affected by the bug. You can tell whether a character has landed after the first Launcher by watching the ATB bar, if it empties and start filling it means the character has landed. --------------- - The Launcher/Jump bug combined with Life 3/X-Zone bug - When you combine Launcher/Jump with Life 3/X-Zone your characters, on top of not being able to use anything targetting themselves, won't be able to use anything targetting the enemies either since they are also "hidden" due to Life 3/X-Zone. This means that if everybody is hidden your characters won't be able to jump manually (Palidor targets your party and jump targets the enemy) to undo the bug, you'll need to jump without targetting, a muddled character could do this for example. --------------- - The Super Ball/Jump bug - Although your characters can't use Launcher to create a reversed version of the Launcher/Jump bug, where it's the enemy jumping and the chracters using Launcher, they can use Super Ball which will create the same effect. Using Super Ball while the whole enemy party is in the air (the 4 Reach Frogs formation for example) will result in the enemy being "hidden" much as they are in the Life 3/X-Zone bug. Note that although Super Ball is very similar to Launcher it will not undo the part of the Launcher/Jump bug that the second Launcher does (allowing commands to be carried out again) if it could be used by the enemy, it would have no apparent effect and wouldn't display it's animation unlike Launcher. =============================================================================== A98: - Debilitator was used while muddled. - Switch weapons/shields or go into a rage that reduces by 50%, nullifies or absorbs the element you became weak to, so that it'll overwrite that weakness. Killing a character won't rid him/her of elemental properties but switching weapons/shields will. Changing equipment in the middle of battle will update your elemental properties (absorb, 50%, weak and nullify) to what your equipment currently provides even if it provides none. The game probably does this so that you won't be able to absorb fire after you replaced your Paladin Shld with a Buckler, for example. It also does this so you don't have a fire elemental Dirk after switching from Fire Knuckle to Dirk, for example. Since the game does not differentiate between weapons and shields (you can put then in any hand you want) it resets characteristics for both even if you change only one. =============================================================================== A99: Palidor. When you use Quick followed by Palidor, on your next turn you won't be the only one able to act, although your gauge will be full. =============================================================================== A100: - The spell was a shield or rod used as an item. One of their characteristics is that they don't remove vanish. - Vanishing Gau or Gogo and then having them use a rage that is immune to vanish will make it impossible to remove vanish status from them. Putting a status on somebody and adding immunity on top of it to make it permanent ("forced immunity") works with all statuses. - The enemy, who was also vanished, used Rippler. - The spell used was Reflect??? which does not remove vanish on targets that don't have reflect status. - The spell used was Fader (Phantom summon) which doesn't toggle the vanish status it inflicts on its targets. - The spell used was N.Cross. --------------- - N.Cross - N.Cross has a special way of determining whether it hits or not which also causes it to not remove vanish on the targets it picks not to be hit. N.Cross's first step is to check to see if it hits which it does just like every other spell. Once it's done that, but before it actually hits it's targets, it goes through a second step will select a random target or targets that it will not hit. Once those 2 steps are done it will freeze the characters that are still hit. Since vanished targets never get a miss message from N.Cross, it means that the part of the second step that causes characters not to be hit doesn't produce a miss message; otherwise they'd get a miss message once in a while when picked by the second step not to be hit since the second step is the only thing that prevents them from getting hit. Now when characters with 128 MBlock% are targetted by N.Cross (blockable) they might get a miss message or not, when they don't get a miss message it's because they were picked not to be hit and when they do get a miss message it's because they were not picked and that the miss message comes from the first step. It could be that the second step eliminates miss messages from the first step and produces it's own miss messages (no miss messages for characters that are picked and miss messages for characters not picked) if were not for the fact that vanished characters never get miss messages (they would have to once in a while when they are not picked not to be hit). "Characters chosen not to be hit" is meant quite literally, if they are picked it'll be as if the first step never happened, they won't be hit and they will remain vanished if they were when the spell was cast. =============================================================================== A101: There are at least 3, the colosseum owner, Cid and Gungho when you talk to them in the WOR. The colosseum owner will say either "He couldn't pay his debt, so I put him to work! I figure he'll be here about another 100 years." or "This is my colosseum. Finally, the whole world is at war! I'm so happy! And I owe it all to Kefka!". Gungho will say either "Everything okay?" or "Hidon's appeared at Ebot's Rock again!", the latter making Hidon reappear at Ebot's rock. When you're trying to nurse Cid back to health in the beginning of the WOR he may change dialogues if you stay in the cabin long enough, this is because Cid's health diminishes as time passed and with his failing health he will say different things. =============================================================================== A102: My party consists of Gau, Strago, Relm and Gogo who used Step Mine. Gau raged Mesosaur, Crawler or Tom Thumb. Strago used the Lore. Relm sketched (Control would take 2 turns) Mesosaur, Brachosaur, Crawler, Tomb Thumb or Intangir. Gogo did the same thing one of the other characters did or simply used Mimic. The fight was against Mesosaur, Brachosaur, Crawler, Tomb Thumb or Intangir. Relm will need to fight one of the enemies she can Sketch for Step Mine and Brachosaur is the only one of those with HP higher than 8501. The other characters do not require to fight a specific enemy to use Step Mine. Step Mine's damage is based on steps not time (as is it's MP cost) but it's impossible to reduce the amount of steps so it's damage will never decrease. No other chars can use/cause Step Mine without using Rippler in the same battle. Most spells do not work since they rely on Level to do damage and since Dischord can reduce Level it will also reduce damage. Super Ball is random so it can do less damage from one use to the other. Blow Fish doesn't work since there are no enemies with over 8501 that can be sketched for Blow Fish. =============================================================================== * End ATQ4 * =============================================================================== BonusA1: Gogo is equiped with Thief Glove, Merit Award and Dice (or Fixed Dice), and is attacking HadesGigas with Capture. --------------- - Capture/dice - When used with Capture, Dice and Fixed Dice have an Hit Rate equal to the number of dice the weapon throws, Dice will have an hit rate of 2 and Fixed Dice 3. This is caused by the fact that weapons have their Hit Rate stored at a specific location (byte22) which Dice and Fixed Dice don't use for that purpose in normal circumstances, instead they use that location to determine the number of dice they throw. Dice and Fixed Dice are unblockable because it's specified by their special effect which also determines the special formula by which they do damage. But since Capture disables that special effect (like it prevents Tempest from casting Wind Slash, Wing Edge from dispatching targets, etc.) the dice revert to their original way of determing their Hit Rate, by looking at byte22 which hold the value 2 for Dice and 3 for Fixed Dice. If they do manage to hit they will do damage according to a Bat.Pwr value of 1 since their special formula was disabled. =============================================================================== A103: Take Gogo into near fatal status then have him rage an enemy that is immune to near fatal. Now if you heal him he'll still be in near fatal status because of "forced immunity" (see Q100) and he'll be able to use X-Meteo at full HP. =============================================================================== <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ATQ5 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================================================================== A104: You can learn Love Sonata in the Ancient Castle, Figaro Castle's basement, Opera House, the monster-in-a-box in the Narshe classroom and Fanatic's Tower. You can indeed learn Love Sonata in all the places mentionned in the question. For Vector it's only possible at the banquet and not before or after. You can't learn Love Sonata at the imperial base at the sealed gate since you can't get Mog before Vector and the imperial base are emptied of soldiers. You can't enter Narshe through the side secret entrance to get Mog when you first get control of the airship, you can only go to the main entrance and have the guard take you to see the elder, after that point there will be no more soldiers in Vector and the Imperial Base at the Sealed Gate. =============================================================================== A105: Using the SwdTech Empowerer, while muddled for example. There is no rage that would allow MP transfer short of Osmose, furthermore the only MP attacking spells are Empowerer, Rasp and Osmose. =============================================================================== A106: Have a character use Palidor to make everybody jump. This won't use the turn of the other party members so they will jump and be able to do another action in the same turn when they land. =============================================================================== A107: She's in the colosseum. In the colosseum, Runic overrides the need for a compatible weapon as does SwdTech. =============================================================================== A108: Use Debilitator to make it weak vs wind. Evil Oscar is already weak vs fire. =============================================================================== A109: If your character has slow status. Equipping RunningShoes/Marvel Shoes prevents seize from grabbing your characters because it gives haste status which will prevent the Tentacles from putting slow status on you through their Seize special or Entwine. This is because haste and slow are "opposites", meaning you can't have both at the same time, and since haste is provided by equipement it can't be removed thus you can't have slow status. With no statuses Seize won't grab you, only with slow will it do so. =============================================================================== A110: 13. Everyone except Umaro can equip a Merit Award and a Thief Knife which has a chance of doing Capture. =============================================================================== A111: Heal Rod =============================================================================== A112: Soul Sabre. Although Osmose relies on Mag.Pwr and MagDef, Soul Sabre does rely on Vigor and Mag.Def. Drainer is a little more consistent since it relies on Vigor and Defense even if the regular spell Drain relies on Mag.Pwr and MagDef. =============================================================================== A113: Near fatal occurs at and below 1/8 of max HP as long as the character is alive. =============================================================================== A114: Apokryphos used L.5 Doom, L.3 Muddle and finished with L.4 Flare on my Level 8 party members. First thing to know is that it's impossible to get to WOR with Levels lower than 6, that means my characters are between Level 6 and 9 inclusively, which eliminates L.5 Doom as the last spell that was used. L.3 Muddle will not wipe out your party thus eliminating Levels 6 and 9, none of the spells can hit a Level 7 character, which leaves Level 8 characters dying from L.4 Flare, with L.5 Doom and L.3 Muddle being the first 2 spells used in any order. =============================================================================== A115: Inferno. When it looses Striker or Rough it'll start using Bolt 3 or Meteor, when it looses both it'll start with TekBarrier then keep using Bolt 3 or Meteor until Striker or Rough are restored. =============================================================================== A116: - Sniper can't be thrown on Prussian since it's not floating, it'll either do normal damage or 1.5 times more damage. - Strago's Pearl Rod won't cast Pearl if the hit missed. - Gau won't die when entering Magic Urn rage. Even if he already has 0 MP, Gau needs to have his MP attacked successfully for him to die; i.e. an attack on his MP must hit and do damage, not miss or do 0 damage. Running out of mp (going down to exactly 0 MP) through a weapon using MP to do critical hits won't kill Gau either. - Sniper won't do 1.5 damage on Harpy since it's a naturally floating enemy, it'll either do normal damage or be thrown. --------------- - Sniper/Hawk Eye special effect - Sniper and Hawk Eye have a unique replacement effect that allows them to do 3 or 1.5 times more damage than normal randomly. They will have the possibility to do 3 times more damage when the weapon is thrown which only happens vs floating targets, enemy or ally. The possibility to do 1.5 times more damage happens randomly on enemies and allies that are "grounded" (not floating). The throw animation is used when these weapons do 3 times more damage than normal but there is no change in animation when they do 1.5 times more damage. Note that hitting a floating enemy, that wasn't floating at the beginning of battle, with Sniper or Hawk Eye while wearing a Genji Glove and/or an Offering can result in the 2 types of damage. This can happen because Genji Glove and Offering allow for more than one strike in the same command. If you cast Float on a grounded enemy and you kill that enemy before you have used all your strikes, that enemy will revert to it's original statistics as far as float status is concerned, so if that enemy is now grounded it'll be possible for Sniper and Hawk Eye to deal 1.5 times more damage with the remaining strikes. This means that sniper could be thrown on the first strike of an Offering attack and do 1.5 times more damage with the 3 other strikes because the first strike killed the enemy. Throwing the weapon after a previous hit has done 1.5 times more damage is impossible since no enemy that comes into battle with float status can have it's float status removed. The throw done by Sniper and Hawk Eye is not the same as Shadow's Throw command. Contrary to the Throw command, Sniper and Hawk Eye's throw special effect doesn't ignore defense although it still ignores row like the regular hits do. Another characteristic of Sniper's and Hawk Eye's special replacement effect is that they allow critical hits to happen, both the throw and the "1.5" damage modifier can be critical hits although for the throw the screen won't flash. =============================================================================== A117: - I had 3 (or less) zombies in my party and acquired a new character. - I was in Kefka's Tower or the Phoenix Cave and I switched to another party for my next battle instead of using my party of zombies. =============================================================================== A118: Gogo and Locke entered a battle with 3 Areneids or 3 Brainpans. Gogo sketched an enemy and Numb (Areneid) or Smirk (Brainpan) was used which put stop status on an enemy allowing Locke to hit the enemy multiple times with dice through Capture despite the low Hit Rate. The only way to have Dice/Capture hit consistently is for the target to have stop, sleep, freeze or petrify status. When a target has any of these statuses it gives the attacker a perfect Hit Rate with magical as well as physical actions.* Since Locke and Gogo can't have any of these statuses (Locke doesn't use magic and Gogo can't put the statuses on allies with his commands) it means that Locke is hitting an enemy that has one of those statuses and therefore the status can't be petrify (petrified enemies dies). The only way for one or more enemies to gain sleep, stop or freeze status is for Gogo to use Sketch. Since there are no WOB enemies that use freeze when sketched it leaves only stop and sleep. Taking into consideration the restriction that the fight must be against 3 identical enemies from the WOB, Areneid with Numb (stop) and Brainpan with Smirk (stop) are the only enemies that will use sleep or stop when sketched while not being immune to the status their Specials cause. Gogo is unequipped so he can't use Stunner (or any other weapon) to stop an enemy and neither can Locke since on each of his turns he uses Dice through Capture which doesn't give him a spare round to switch and use another weapon. *As a side note, there is a difference between a perfect Hit Rate and unblockability. An action with a perfect Hit Rate can still be blocked by the target's Stamina while something that's unblockable will not. As an example, if you were to freeze Celes, with 129 MBlock%, 128 Stamina and with no immunity to instant death, Doom would miss because of Stamina and Dischord would hit since it ignores Stamina but both would ignore MBlock% since Celes is frozen. A perfect Hit Rate and unblockabiltiy will both ignore 128 MBlock% but unblockability will also ignore Stamina which a perfect Hit Rate does not. =============================================================================== * End ATQ5 * =============================================================================== A119: I equipped Locke with the Paladin Shld outside of battle, when going into battle the status was immediately removed since Paladin Shld's nullification of poison provides immunity to poison status and because of that immunity Feeler couldn't poison him. --------------- - Poison elemental properties on equipement - Equipment that nullifies poison will also provide immunity to the poison status. This is true only for nullification; 50%, absorb and weak do not have that property. Protection and weaknesses to the poison element also apply to the damage done by the poison status. When combining poison nullification with other protections/weaknesses to poison, damage done from poison elementals and poison status will function normally, i.e. the best protection will override the others, but nullification will override any other protection/weakness as far as immunity to poison status is concerned. This means that at a given time it would be possible, if such equipment were to exist, to be immune to poison status thanks to a shield that nullifies poison elementals and absorb poison elementals thanks to an armor that absorbs poison elementals. This means that it's possible to affect damage from the poison status while being immune to the status, such a situation would be impossible to witness in a normal game if it weren't for "forced immunity". As it's possible to do with rages, you can obtain a status in battle and "force" an immunity on top of it. Since poison nullifying equipment provide immunity to poison status, equipping a shield that nullifies poison in battle on a character that has poison status will make it impossible to remove poison status while that character still has the shield equipped, i.e. while that character is still immune to the status he or she is inflicted with. So, with equipment that nullifies and absorbs poison elementals it would be possible to have a character with poison status that can't be removed while absorbing poison elementals and the damage done by the status. Although equipment that provide nullification of poison elementals doesn't remove poison status when equipping them outside of battle (unlike Ribbon, Amulet, Fairy Ring and Star Pendant) or in the middle of a battle they do so upon entering battle. For example, if you equip the Paladin Shld on a poisoned character outside of battle, the status will be removed but only when you enter a fight. Other protections/weaknesses (50%, absorb and weak) do not remove poison status at all since they don't provide immunity to poison status. --------------- Elemental protections and weaknesses to poison from equipment doesn't affect the damage you take from steps taken outside of battle while poisonned. =============================================================================== <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ATQ6 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================================================================== A120: Gau or Gogo with a Tempest raged Insecare and used Wing Whisp, Wind Slash was cast and bserk from Wing Whisp was carried to all enemies. (see Q90) Insecare is the only rage with a special that inflicts bserk. Evil Toot, Megazerk and Mind Blast can cause bserk but can't be used by the party (at least not until WOR) and can't hit 6 enemies due to which enemy uses it. Bserk can't be spread. =============================================================================== A121: I used Pearl Rod in combination with Duster, the Special attack of the Beakor rage. Duster is a physical attack that does no damage and tries to put poison status on the target. When Duster was used the target was immune to or already had poison status, the physical hit did hit but the miss message came from the fact that the status missed. Since the physical hit did hit, it allowed for Pearl to be cast which missed I believe because the target already had poison status. Characters in rage can also be bserked, unless bserked is cast after a character has entered a rage immune to bserk. Characters that have access to the Rage command (Gau and Gogo) may use Rage when they are bserked, muddled, zombies, etc. See Q92 for more details. =============================================================================== A122: Gau used Life 3 before going into rage. He used a spell on the enemy then he was killed and revived (Life 3). After being revived he used the same spell but through his Magic command and targetted himself with it. Damage is done on both spell cast which eliminates Doom with Force Field. =============================================================================== A123: When Doom goes under 32 641 HP the text "Doom's aura is shaking" is displayed and she applies haste, image and reflect status on herself. =============================================================================== A124: If you cast Imp on some monsters they will always do critical hits when they attack. Dadaluma, Number 024 and Naughty, for example, will always do critical hits while imps. =============================================================================== A125: Strago had one of the statuses that prevent him from learning lores, those are: Death, petrify, zombie, blind, sleep, confuse, berserk, stop, hide, rage, and freeze. In this case only blind and petrify are a possibility (Strago was hit by Aqua Rake so he wasn't dead) since no statuses were inflicted during the fight only a status that can be carried over from a previous battle can be the cause. Strago's status when the spell is cast is what matters his status at the end of the battle doesn't, he can be dead and still learn lores. =============================================================================== A126: GP Rain. GP Rain takes the user's Level and multiplies it by 30 to determine the amount of money it uses to execute the attack, this amount is then multiplied by 2 and divided by the number of targets to determine the damage done to each target. This is the only way to get these damage results. When enemies use GP Rain, it's the GP they give when you defeat them that's used to "fuel" the damage. So every time the monster uses GP Rain the amount of money you'll get for defeating it decreases by the amount of GP used (user's Level X 30). The part that multiplies that amount by 2 and divides it by the number of targets does not influence the amount of GP that is used, the same is true for allies. When the user doesn't have enough GP, all that's available is used. The increase in damage between the first and second use of GP Rain is explained by the fact that there's one less target to spread the spell to. The drop in damage after the second use of GP Rain is caused by the monster not having enough GP to use the spell to it's full potential. The last time GP Rain is used by the enemy it does no damage because the monster has used it's last GP with the previous GP Rain. When Gogo uses GP Rain he has no problems dealing damage since the party's GP is used. What prevents this enemy from existing is the amount of GP Katana Soul has, he wouldn't spend enough on the first three turns for him not to have enough GP on the 4th turn. =============================================================================== * End ATQ6 * =============================================================================== BonusA2: That character is Cyan (or Gogo) who has input Retort and been turned into an imp before countering, from that point he counters every physical attack made on him with Fight instead of using Retort once. --------------- - Counter Imp - This bug, which I'll call "Counter Imp" for the purposes of this document, can be achieved by having Cyan select Retort and having him turn into an imp before he counters. He will then counter any physical attack made on himself and attack a random enemy, as long as he's an imp. He won't use Retort while he's an imp because imps can't use SwdTech so he'll default to Fight instead. Retort works so that once the Retort counter has been used (or the character does another action) it "resets" Retort so that it won't be used again (i.e. it stops looking for attacks made on Cyan) the problem in this case is that since Cyan is using Fight it doesn't "reset" Retort so it will keep looking over Cyan for physical attacks to counter. Once Cyan gets rid of his imp status the Retort counter can be used and when it does it will "reset" Retort. =============================================================================== A127: Soul Sabre. It can't absorb more MP than you can have and since you can't have more than 999 it can't absorb more than that. =============================================================================== A128: Life 3 Death counters (final attacks) such as Tradeoff do not activate when the target is killed with Life 3 status. =============================================================================== <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ATQ7 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================================================================== A129: Step Mine, let the game timer increase. The more time passes in the game the more MP it'll take to cast Step Mine. Reflect???, equip Economizer. Economizer brings all spell costs to 1 MP, since Reflect??? Normally costs 0 MP it'll bring it up to 1 MP. =============================================================================== A130: -You can't have 3 Force Shlds and the Paladin Shld. -You can't have 3 Red Caps. -Celes can't equip Ice Rod or Cotton Robe without Merit Award. -Terra can't equip Czarina Gown or Cat Hood even with Merit Award. -Shadow can't equip Czarina Ring and he can't equip Guardian or Force Armor without Merit Award. -Cyan can't equip Dirk or Gaia Gear without Merit Award. =============================================================================== A131: - Use Rasp on one of your party members with a character powerful enough to do at least 100 damage. - Use Osmose or Empowerer (learned at Level 24) on an undead target, make sure the enemy is missing at least 100 MP and that the user of Osmose/Empowerer has at least 100 MP. The question didn't specify that it was the amount of MP it cost to cast the spell but only the amount of MP lost by casting the spell. Phoenix, which is the only esper with an MP cost of 3 digits, can't be acquired until much after you meet Strago for the first time. =============================================================================== A132: Lagomorph, Pep Up, Dried Meat or Heal Rod (through Fight, Battle, etc) were used. These are the healing actions that will not invert damage on undead characters thus healing the character with the Relic Ring. Sun Bath, Pearl Wind, Spiraler and Mantra, for example, all hurt undead characters. Life 3 will hit a Relic Ring wearing party member but the Life part will miss when it is used to revive the character. There is nothing that would do 0 damage according to the restrictions in the question. There are no Mag.Def relying healing spells that hurt the undead without a special way of calculating damage preventing them from doing 0 damage. This means that you can't build Mag.Def so that a healing spell will do 0 damage on an undead. The few Mag.Def ignoring spells have special formula for calculating damage/healing that don't allow 0 damage (Phoenix, Life, etc). =============================================================================== A133: I'm fighting a group of 1 L.80 magic and 1 L.90 Magic. Here's what was done: - I cast Vanish on L.90 Magic. - L.80 Magic uses Ice 3, Fire 3 or Bolt 3 on L.90 Magic who counters by using Life 3 on L.80 Magic. - I deal 9564 damage to L.80 Magic (various ways; shields or rods used as items, Umaro, Super Ball, demi, etc).* - My hit killed L.80 Magic who was immediately revived by Life 3. - L.80 Magic uses a spell on my party.* * actions mentioned in the question L.80 Magic will never use Life 3 on the enemies since it's only used as a counter on the allies (FC 08 43 17). This in turn means that L.90 Magic will have to use Life 3 since it's the only other enemy to use it in the Fanatic's Tower and no enemies from random encounters in the Fanatic's Tower can withstand 9564 damage. In order for L.90 Magic to use Life 3 it has to be attacked, something L.80 Magic will have to do since L.90 Magic won't counter when it attacks itself. Since L.90 Magic has reflect status and L.80 Magic only uses reflectable spells I need to vanish L.90 Magic in order for L.80 Magic to hit it. Note that there must be nobody in my party with reflect status. This is because L.80 Magic's script tells her to use certain attacks if someone in my party has reflect status, if nobody does it will check the enemies for reflect status, if any of them do it will choose from a different set of attacks and finally it will choose from a 3rd set of attacks if nobody on both sides has reflect. For this question we need the second or third set of attacks since those are the ones that can hit L.90 Magic, it will be the second since L.90 Magic has reflect status and it can't be removed. An alternatively easier way would be to face a L.90 Magic and a L.60 Magic, the latter could hit L.90 Magic with Pearl by reflecting it off an ally to trigger L.90 Magic's Life 3 counter since in this case the allies can have reflect status. =============================================================================== A134: A. As soon as you can get to the colosseum so right after the fight with the Tentacles. Take Figaro Castle to Kohlingen, since it's on the same land mass as the colosseum you can go there on foot, you don't need to go to Daryl's Tomb and get the airship. Bet a Flame Sabre (buy, find, steal or win beforehand) at the colosseum and the winnings to eventually get an Ice Shld. The rest of Celes' equipement can be found and/or bougth before that. B. As soon as you get control of the airship the first time, i.e. after you get back to Terra in Zozo and go through the esper world flashback. To get a Flame Shld you'll need to have stolen a Magicite from a Flan in the Magitek factory or met a Flan and now go to the Veldt to steal a magicite from one of them. Once you have a magicite you need to go fight a Chimera or a Bomb, you could go fight a Balloon but you'd have to wait until the burning house. Chimeras, Bombs and Balloons can be Metamorphed (the Ragnarok esper's summon) into a Flame Shld so you'll need to use a Magicite item to summon Ragnarok which will be able to Metamorph one of those enemies into a Flame Shld. The odds of a Magicite item summoning Ragnarok and that Ragnarok will successfully Metamorph the enemy into into a Flame Shld instead of a Tonic are very slim but it is possible. The rest of Locke's equipement can be obtained before the Magitek factory. C. As soon you get control of the airship in the WOR. Mog can't equip a Mithril Mail without a Merit Award and Merit Award can only be obtained at the colosseum in WOR. The items you can bet at the colosseum to get a Merit Award immidiately or eventually through betting your winnings (Aegis Shld, Imp Halberd, Imp's Armor, Titanium, TortoiseShld and Cat Hood), can only be obtained once you have control of the airship in WOR. You can get the imp equipment from battles on the world map so there is no need to further the storyline. =============================================================================== A135: Guardian (Kefka's Tower). Before doing any of the actions mentionned in the question Guardian must acquire reflect status, then the following must happen: -Guardian uses TekBarrier on itself which is reflected to Gogo causing him to get reflect and safe status. -Gogo uses Quick, first casting Muddle on himself and then Reflect??? on himself since he's muddled. Reflect??? will cause him to get blind, mute and slow status. -Guardian uses an attack that drops Gogo in near fatal status which activates shell from the Barrier Ring/Czarina Ring he was wearing. =============================================================================== A136: Gogo must mimic the summon while muddled. To do so have someone cast Muddle on Gogo, before it hits have someone select Bolt Fist through the Magic command or Slot and select Mimic for Gogo. Muddle will hit Gogo, Bolt Fist will be used on the enemy and Gogo will mimic it. A character using a spell, that targets the enemy by default, while muddled will use it on his own party, what allows Gogo to use the same spell on the enemies while muddled is the fact that Mimic will mimic the spell as well as the way it's targetted, so that if the previous character used the spell on the enemy so will Gogo even if he's muddled. Similarly if you have Gogo mimic a character that used a spell (that targets the enemy by default) on your party while muddled, Gogo will also use the spell on your party even if he's not muddled. If the target dies or the spell aborted Gogo will mimic the spell but won't be able to mimic the targetting so he will use the spell's default targetting. For single target spells that can be spread the targetting will be mostly random, the side (enemy or ally) will be constant. Mimic will not mimic the targetting when the spell has the "randomize target" bit set though. For these spells the user that mimics it will use the spell according to default targetting and whether he's muddled or not, not according to the previous user's targetting. This is the only way I know of to determine whether a spell has the "randomize target" bit set without using an editor since the player can't select the targetting for any of the spells that do (Merton, El Nino, Surge, Spiraler, etc). =============================================================================== A137: Use Sonic Dive (Palidor's summon) on the enemy, while muddled for example. When using Palidor on the enemy all enemies will use a Jump command on their next turn, not immediately. Although the enemies from the last 3 tiers of the final battle won't do the Jump animation they'll still jump. The character that used Palidor will also jump but it's jump will abort and he/she will be hidden (disappears from the screen and can't be targetted manually), a situation much like Launcher/Jump (see Q97) after Launcher has been used a second time. Your other characters will not jump and will keep on functionning normally. =============================================================================== A138: Hawk Eye and Sniper will randomly be thrown when their target has float status and when they're thrown damage is triple that of a regular hit. See Q116 for more details on how Sniper and Hawk Eye work. =============================================================================== A139: If you can't run away and nobody can die the only other way to end the battle is to escape with Smoke Bomb, Warp or Warp Stone. Unfortunately you can't use these either since they target the user by default and these bugs (Life 3/X-Zone and Launcher/Jump) make your party hidden and therefore untargettable. (see Q97) =============================================================================== A140: Retort or Leap. Although Retort's counter attack will cause damage there's more to it than that. Retort is a magical attack and when Cyan activates it, meaning Retort is chosen and Cyan does the SwdTech animation not the sword attack for the counter itself, it must pick a random target and by doing so it will remove vanish on a vanished enemy. (To get a better idea vanish all the enemies then have Cyan use Retort.) Later when and if the actual counter is used it will be used against the target that attacked Cyan, this means that Retort could target 2 different enemies: once with the "preparation" move that does apparently nothing and once with the actual counter. Leap is a magical attack and when it's used it picks a random target in the enemy group. If Gau is alone he can't Leap; a random target will be picked, a "miss" message will appear, that enemy will be unvanished (if it was vanished) and you will get the message "Can't dive!!" =============================================================================== A141: - Use Drainer with the Throw command. - Use Drainer with the Capture command. Capture disables certain weapon's special effects, Drainer's HP draining ability being one of those. With Capture it'll do the damage a regular 121 BatPwr weapon would do. For these the target must have 9999 max HP: - Have a zombie be cured of the status by Tapir (Love Sonata dance), Rippler, etc.; this will make the character alive but at 0 HP, equip Drainer and a hit can do 9999 damage. - Have a character, equipped with Drainer, Jump. Make it so that this character dies while he's in the air (condemned, seizure, etc), when he lands it will be possible to do 9999 damage with Drainer since the character's HP is 0. - Have a character, equipped with Drainer, Jump. Make it so that this character dies while he's in the air (condemned, seizure, etc), then win the battle before he lands (have other characters kill the enemies while he's still in the air). This will get you a character alive at 0 HP who will therefore be able to use Drainer through fight to deal 9999 damage. =============================================================================== A142: It will heal more total HP if it's used on the enemies. Mantra heals by taking the user's HP and dividing it by the number of characters still standing (dead characters are not counted but petrify and zombie characters are) without counting the user. The amount it comes up with is distributed to each target of the spell but never the user. There is no damage reduction related to aiming, i.e. it doesn't split damage/healing. When there is only one character and he/she is the one using it, the spell is cast but has no effect, not even a miss message. When used on the enemy the amount of HP recovered is calculated the same way. Since it doesn't divide by the number of targets but by the number of characters (minus the user), when used on enemies it can heal more targets than it divides the user's HP by. This means that in this case it doesn't have the intended effect of taking the user's HP and spreading it between his allies. =============================================================================== A143: Unequipping everybody by talking to the guy on the airship won't unequip Umaro, so if he had a relic equipped it will not be removed and if you don't have more than one such relic it'll be missing from your inventory. =============================================================================== A144: - The character used Spiraler. - The character used PepUp. - The character was wearing a Relic Ring or was in an undead rage. When an undead character with Life 3 status dies the "Life" part of Life 3 is used but it misses, except when the enemy's death is from an instant death attack in which case "Life" will hit and kill the enemy after it has been restored by the instant death attack. See Q93 for more details. Dying as the battle ends won't prevent Life 3 from reviving it's target. For example, letting the counter from condemned reach 0 on a character with Life 3 just as you cast Warp will still allow the character to be revived; the screen will fade out and wait on a black screen for the reaper to kill the character and also wait for Life 3 to kick in. Even in timed events like the banquet the game will wait for Life 3 to activate. In this case (that can't even happen through regular gameplay since you can't have Life 3 at the banquet) the clock waits at 0:00 until all battle actions are carried out, the screen doesn't even fade out until everything is done. X-Zone, Metamorph and Roulette don't prevent Life 3. A character with Life 3 and condemned that jumps and has the condemned counter reach 0 while he's in the air doesn't technically die until he lands and lies down, as demonstrated by the fact that it's possible to have characters alive at 0 HP using this method. Life 3 doesn't activate in this case because the character's not dead yet. =============================================================================== A145: Interceptor status was switched with Rippler. Either have the enemy use Rippler on Shadow and then on Relm or have Strago/Gogo (while muddle for example) use it on Shadow and then on Relm. Interceptor is one of the statuses that Rippler switches but isn't supposed to. The status will be transferred and not copied like some others do, that means you can't have more than one character with interceptor status at a given time. Contrary to what some rumors say, interceptor will not defend Relm if you don't wait for Shadow at the end of the Floating Continent, Rippler is the only way. =============================================================================== A146: Sonic Boom is the only spell that takes off this fraction. =============================================================================== A147: - The target was vanished. - The target was a party member with 255 Defense and in the back row. - The target jumped before Fight was executed. - The target was a petrified character. - The Launcher/Jump bug was in effect but a 2nd Launcher spell hadn't been cast; Fight would execute but nothing would happen. See Q97 A zombified character being hit would take no damage but damage would be displayed so it's a matter of opinion whether the command causes damage or not. What doesn't work: - Ragnarok and Ogre Nix are not elemental so they can't do 0 damage from elemental nullification. - Offering gives perfect a Hit Rate so it didn't miss because of MBlock%. - Even if the enemy has 255 Defense damage will still be dealt (1 damage). - A perfect Hit Rate, in this case provided by Offering, will ignore image status. - Damage would be nullified vs Guardian/Vargas/Phunbaba immunity but you can't have Offering for the first 2 fights and for the 3rd you can't equip Terra before the battle. - "No damage" rage Specials are not used through Fight. =============================================================================== A148: My character was equipped with a Tempest and was in Crawly rage. When he attacked he used HeartBurn (Crawly's Special, causes seizure) and Tempest cast Wind Slash giving seizure status to Storm Drgn which killed him eventually. Crawly is the only rage that can cause seizure without also dealing damage and seizure is the only status that Storm Drgn isn't immune to that can kill him directly. Weapon's special effects like Tempest's Wind Slash can be used by rage's Specials. (See Q90) =============================================================================== A149: - Kefka was under the influence of Charm (Nightshade rage) so he hit himself with battle or Special (Havoc Wing). - Kefka was under the influence of Love Token (Barb-e rage) so when he tried to hit Gau/Gogo, who had used Love Token on him, he took the hit for them thus hitting himself. You can't Control or muddle "final Kefka". =============================================================================== A150: Control or Metamorph. Control will miss a vanished target but it will still remove vanish status since it's a magical attack. The second time it's used it will be able to hit since the target's not vanished. Where normal spells are guaranteed a hit on a vanished target, Metamorph may miss because it doesn't go through the steps regular spells do to determine whether they hit or not, instead it relies only on a Metamorph miss % each of the enemies have. So with Gogo mimicking, Metamorph may miss on a first try, remove vanish and then hit on a second try. Although it may not remove vanish, N.Cross doesn't give a miss message on a vanished target (See Q100) and Leap would still miss on the second try. Control removes vanish but Sketch does not. =============================================================================== A151: Gogo mimicked the Slot 3 BAR after it summoned Ragnarok. Mimic will not mimic the Slot command or 3 BAR with a random esper summon, it will mimic the same esper that was summoned. This way if you keep using Mimic and the other party members do nothing you'll summon the same esper over and over again. This makes using Metamorph much easier if you chose the Ragnarok sword instead of the esper (especially when playing on an emulator because of save states) since mimicking after a Magicite item has been used will result in Gogo mimicking the item and not the summon, so that you will use a random esper summon every time you mimic the item. This is much easier to take advantage of when playing on an emulator though. Once you're able to get 3 BAR save state before you confirm the action. Reload that state and confirm the action until the esper summoned is Ragnarok, once it is you can mimic repeatedly and Metamorph will be used every time. Keep in mind though that the slots are rigged, meaning that you won't have the chance to get the 3 symbols you want every turn and that on some turns some symbols are "forced" on you. You can easily notice that it doesn't always take the same amount of time for a slot to stop once you hit the "stop" button. =============================================================================== A152: Gau used Duster while equipped with Scimitar which used it's special ability to "dice up" the undead Ghost. A property of Scimitar's is that it's "dice up" ability doesn't restore the undead unlike weapons that may try to dispatch their targets like Assassin and Wing Edge. Rage specials, whether they do damage or only try to inflict statuses, allow weapon's special abilities to be used whether they're replacement effects (Wing Edge, Sniper, Tempest, etc.) or addition effects (Pearl Rod, Fire Knuckle, Blizzard, etc). In the case of replacement effects the rage Special retains it's name but it's effect is replaced (or supplemented in Tempest's case) by that of the weapon's, in this case Scimitar's "dice up". Tempest doesn't work since Wind Slash retains Duster's effect of doing no damage. =============================================================================== A153: 1. L.40 Magic vanished itself. L.40 Magic is not immune to petrify but it is immune to instant death, since Break can be blocked by either, the only way for break to hit is to use the Vanish/Doom bug (see Q31), Vanish/Break in this case, in order to bypass instant death immunity. This means L.40 Magic will have to vanish itself before Break will be able to hit. 2. Gau has high Stamina. Without equippement, high MBlock% or rages the only way to "block" Demi, Quartr, Break and X-Zone used by L.20 Magic is with high Stamina. 3. Gau used Flame Shld as an item. Equipment used as items ignore reflect. Enemies in the Fanatic's Tower don't use physical attacks like Battle or Special and L.40 Magic and L.20 Magic don't have death counters (final attacks), so these are things Gau doesn't need to defend against. =============================================================================== A154: 125 99 in your inventory and 2 on every character except Umaro since he can't equip DragoonBoots; 99 + (2*13) = 125. =============================================================================== A155: --------------- A155A: 162 995 HP of damage. The most HP that an enemy formation can loose is it's total amount of HP and the enemy formation that has the most HP is the 2nd tier of the last battle with 123 000 HP. As for characters, it would be 3 character's max HP plus 1 character's max HP minus 1 since there must be a survivor, that would amount to39 995 HP that the allies can loose. Adding enemies and allies, this makes a total of 162 995 HP. With Quick and Gem Box, one char can kill the tier on his/her own which leaves enough characters and actions to be used, before and/or after, to kill 3 characters and leave one at 1 HP. --------------- A155B: 186 hits. Against a group of 6 enemies and with a party of 4 characters that makes a total of 10 targets on screen. One character using Quick with Gem Box can score 50 hits with Merton. (Merton/Quick, Merton/Merton, Merton/Merton = 50 hits) Two other characters can do 20 hits each by casting Merton twice following Quick. Cyan equipped with Genji Glove, Offering and 2 Tempests has the possibility of doing 96 hits if Wind Slash is cast on everyone of his 8 strikes (8 strikes times 6 enemies and times 2 Quick "turns" will give 96 hits). Cyan will hit only the enemies but it's still the way to do the most hits. This makes for a total of 186 hits (50+20+20+96). Psychots come in groups of 6 and absorb fire so Merton won't kill them. Besides, the characters don't need to be at a very high Level since only hits matter, not damage. --------------- A155C: 52 hits. With one enemy vs 4 characters with reflect status it's possible to take advantage of reflected spells to score many hits. One character using Quick with Gem Box can reflect spread spells on the 4 allies to score a total 20 hits on the enemy. Fire/Quick, Fire/Fire, Fire/Fire, for example. Another character using Quick while equipped with Genji Glove and Offering can do a total of 16 hits. The 2 remaining characters, using Quick, can do 8 hits each by using Quadra Slam, Quadra Slice, Jump with DragoonBoots and Dragon Horn or by reflecting spread spells on the allies. This makes for a total of 52 hits. (20+16+8+8=52) --------------- A155D: 27 kills. Have Life 3 on all 4 allies and all enemies in a formation of 6 non-undead enemies before starting. Remember that killing a character before the end of it's turn (before it uses 2 spells with Gem Box for example) will end it's turn. The first character uses Quick followed by Merton to kill every target except himself (if he kills himself his turn is over so he equipped a shield that provides fire and/or wind protection) for a total of 9 kills. Every target that died is revived. On his second Quick turn he removes his shield that provides fire and/or wind protection and he uses Life 3 on an ally. Currently only 2 of the allies have Life 3 and none of the enemies do. The second character uses Quick followed by Life 3 twice so that now all the allies have Life 3. The third character is equipped with Gem Box and uses Life 3 followed by Quick. For his next 2 Quick "turns" this character uses Life 3 a total of 4 times. Now 5 of the 6 enemies have Life 3 and all allies do. The fourth character uses quick and equips a shield that provides immunity to fire and/or wind followed by Merton which kills every target except himself for a total of 9 kills. Every target that died is revived except one enemy. Currently there are 5 enemies remaining and all 4 allies with only the fourth character having Life 3. The fourth character unequips his shield, so that he is no longer immune to fire or wind which allowed him to survive Merton, and uses his second Quick "turn" by casting Merton which kills the remaining 5 enemies and 4 characters for a total of 9 kills. The fourth character is revived by Life 3 and wins the battle. This makes for a total of 27 kills. (9+9+9=27) Actions taken (condensed): Char1: Quick; Merton, (unequip shield) Life 3 Char2: Quick; Life 3, Life 3 Char3: Life 3/Quick, Life 3/Life 3, Life 3/Life 3 Char4: Quick; (equip shield) Merton, (unequip shield) Merton The character equipped with Gem Box can't be used to cast the last 2 Mertons since he/she won't be able to switch shields between the 2 spells which means he/she will survive both Mertons and thus you will get one less kill. Although undead enemies with Life 3 status will die, be revived (restored) and killed again (from Life 3's "Life") when they are hit with instant death attacks this is not enough to do more than 27 kills since it's impossible to revive them twice so that they can be killed a total of 3 times. =============================================================================== A156: The enemy was hit with Dispel or Rippler after Life 3 was cast and before I used Striker. Dispel removed Life 3 status and Striker just restored the enemy. =============================================================================== * End ATQ7 * =============================================================================== BonusA3: That character is Cyan (or Gogo) who has input Retort and been killed before countering. Upon being revived he will counter any physical attack used on anybody with the execution of Retort. --------------- - Retort anything - This bug, which I'll call "Retort anyhting" for the purposes of this document, can be achieved by having Cyan select Retort and having him die before he counters. When he is revived he will counter any physical attack made on anybody but he will do so only once. =============================================================================== A157: - Bserk. Gau cast bserk which increases damage by 1/3 and doesn't prevent Gau from using Rage, not even a rage's spell or Special. - Any damaging spell. Gau hit himself with a spell that made him loose HP, since he was equipped with Valiant Knife he was therefore able to deal more damage with battle the next round since Valiant Knife does more damage as the user's HP decreases. - Any spell that healed the enemy. On the second round Gau used Battle on a non-undead enemy while equipped with a Drainer, since the enemy had more HP the hit was able to drain more damage from the enemy to Gau. - Float. Gau used Float on the enemy which wasn't already floating. By doing so Gau was able to do triple damage with Battle since he was equipped with a Sniper or Hawk Eye and it was thrown. Although the spell Gau used could have been Imp, he couldn't have gone in rage on the second turn because of the limitations of the imp status and therefore couldn't have done more damage thanks to the imp equipement. Also, rages from enemies that do critical hits while imped don't allow characters to do so, meaning that even if Imp would have been a possibility critical hits while imp wouldn't. Even assuming MP damage instead of HP damage, Soul Sabre isn't a possibility since the first spell would have to be Rasp or Osmose (the only MP draining spells Gau can use without being in rage) used on an undead enemy to raise it's MP; if these spells heal the enemy's MP so will a hit from Soul Sabre and the more MP the target has the more it's possible to drain from it. Since it has to be the same target for comparison of the damage done on the second round it removes the possibility of Gau hitting a target with a weakness to do more damage and Gau hitting instead of missing. See Q116 for details on Hawk Eye/Sniper. =============================================================================== <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ATQ8 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================================================================== A158: They are the statuses that prevent Strago from learning lores. =============================================================================== A159: - Number 024 used Overflow, it's special, which "muddled" Sabin who used a Blitz and killed himself. - Sabin attacked Number 024 with a Blitz and Number 024 countered with Battle which killed Sabin. =============================================================================== A160: -Equipping the Thornlet will make you loose HP in battle. -Equipping Relic Ring along with Cure Ring or Marvel Shoes will make you loose HP in battle. -Stepping on the spikes in the Phoenix cave will make you loose HP outside of battle at a rate of 400 HP per step. Letting the condemned counter from Cursed Ring/Shld reach 0 and kill the wearer is an option depending on what your definition of damage is. The fire in the cave on the Veldt doesn't make you loose HP. =============================================================================== A161: The character is morphed. Regen, seizure, poison and phantasm's HP drain have their HP healing/draining effect values doubled when morphed. Since regen status doesn't have a "caster" everytime it heals, it takes the morphed character (the character that has regen status) as the "caster" and since morph doubles damage done by spells it does so for regen too. ==============