I'll deal with it in some way lol. I'm one of those people who usually prefers to over-level anyways.
So, I'm done with Edge finally. Once I got to the mid-30s, I actually started to like the team of 5 ninja, lol. They each have their own little specialty and it strangely works. But now I'm on Porom, and ugh. Yeah, Porom's CD sucks. Again, there's no place to decently levelup, and other than Kain, the whole group is weak (c'mon, the mages cap at Lv20!?) and the 15min time limit on each run is annoying. And of course..... Back Attack Back Attack Ambush Back Attack Back Attack Ambush Back Attack Back Attack Ambush constantly gets on my nerves. Sometimes you can't take more than 2 steps without running into another stupid fight, and 75% of the time it's a BA or Ambush. But, I've managed to get like 3 out of the 6 items I'm interested in, then I can kill off the two wimps and get double XP from all the battles and get Porom to 40 and be done with it, lol. Then it's Edward's... not looking forward to that either. After all of the player complaints about how weak Edward is... what possessed SE to make him wimpy AND give him yet another wimpy character as a partner? I really don't understand their design decisions. Would it have killed them to allow Edward to do more than 50-100 damage per attack? The problem with these "sucky" challenge dungeons is that they have adamantite (which you need) and some of the items (such as the Twin Stars, or the Treasure Hunter, Rapid Ring, etc) are just too valuable to pass up.
Yeah, I straight up gave up on Porom's dungeon, and cheated on Edward's... He's an awesome healer in the endgame though, as his heal ability allows him to throw 2000 HP to everyone without any casting time
Assuming he actually does his Heal Song and doesn't fail to play a song, or play Protect, Shell, or Haste instead. I have seen a death or two during his story when I was going "pleasepleaseplease play Cure Waltz..." and he wound up not doing anything at all. lol. Porom's dungeon, I can manage, it's just all colors of annoying, so I only do a little bit at a time. 2-3 runs tops to prevent me from running out of patience. But how do you "Cheat" with Edward's dungeon? lol.
Haha, Sing. Edward's SO much more valuable than that, and it's hard to realize until you get to the moon: Salve. In the original game it was next to useless, now it litterally multiplies your potions, meaning that using an X-Potion with salve would heal everyone for 2000 health c:
Ahh, you were talking about Salve.... meh, I suppose? Can you salve Elixirs? Probably not, lol. That'd been cool if you could.
Not far from it, lol But then the GBA re-release of FF4 had him absolutely broken (as in, overpowered) when you got his best harp.
Welp, Porom's Tale has all the items out of the CD, though she's only like 28. Ugh. Leveling her is SO SLOW because of how the CD works and the general crappiness of stuff that spawns there. Super annoying fights, meh XP, and counter-attack heavy enemies like lamia and coeurls.... I might just take her to 30 and stop. I'm sure once I find a decent place in the final dungeon to get XP, she'll rake in levelups fast and she's a white mage; not like it's life-or-death if the healer is a little behind in average fights. At least I have all the items out of her CD, lol. EDIT: even if I kill off the two mages right near the end of each fight, it still seems slow. That or I'll pick at it slowly here-and-there. meh. EDIT2: Might just be faster/easier to simply have Porom solo outside of Mysidia, lol. That'd be 800-1k XP per fight and the fights would be simpler/easier. EDIT3: Haha. Killer Bow + Holy Arrows + Mt Ordeals... hehehe. So easy xp. Just Porom herself killing everything in her path 'cept liliths. EDIT4: Curaga, get! Lol now she can kill entire enemy groups with a single spell (cept for souls). 4 levelups in 20 minutes. Yeah, that'll be easy. She's already 34. I'll finish her tomorrow and start on.. ugh.. Edward...
Simply put, Edward's CD is a set map with a lot of rooms with different gimmicks, and a ton of miniquests to get money (like go to A and find an item, and at B there's a npc willing to buy said item for 10000g; or a npc will ask you some money, and will later give you twice the amount). The final room is fairly easy to reach, and the boss isn't hard at all. But the thing is, instead of one chest, there's a dozen of them, and each costs a certain amount of money to be opened, the expensive ones dropping the best loot. Now, I tried to complete it legitimately once, and it too, me more than an hour to open the three best chests. So I just said nope, gave myself money and rushed to the final room. That's not how I am supposed to play, yes, but I found it far too long to be fun. I never cheated anywhere else in the game, it's only this part that bugs me like that.
A cheat software on my PSP, I don't know how to do it on an emulator (Though it's far from impossible)
Ahh. Well, I know for a fact that Cheat Engine works on emulators, because an emulator stores values in RAM same as any other program, lol. But eh, since the emulator already appears to 100% give rare items every time you open the final chest, I don't think I'd have to cheat -- I'm going to predict that the 50k chests will ALWAYS give you one of the "rare" items. In fact, remember Porom's tale? lol. I think the RNG on "More people you help = x% chance the chest will have a rare item" was also a fixed number, because I was routinely missing 3 or more NPCs because of them asking for Ethers, Gold Needles, couldn't find the white mage's spirits, etc, but yet I still always got a rare item if I did X number of NPCs, usually about 5-6 NPCs was enough to ensure 100% success, lol. I think what it's doing is rolling the same % on the chance each time and if you get enough NPCs to beat it you always win. lol. The more I play, the more I am 100% certain the RNG on that emulator is simply borked. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. Back in Palom's tale, I needed to level up some, right? I went down to the Tower of Trials, got to Floor 3 and crashed. Re-opened the game, opened up the save, and did the same thing. Guess what? The first 10 battles were exactly the same. Same enemies, same conditions (Back Attack, Preemptive, etc), same squares I ran into the fights on, etc. I was just ".....wow. This RNG sucks haha". But some of that isn't the emulator's fault; I found an FAQ on Gamefaqs that lists "Guaranteed Drops" how you can perform certain actions in certain fights to ensure the item will always drop.
So, I did Edward's Dungeon a couple times. It really isn't all that bad. Yes, the first time through the dungeon took me about an hour.... but that was me not knowing the dungeon, and my characters were under-leveled and not equipped with the best possible equipment. After the first dungeon run (I failed to get enough gil to open the best chest), I went to the cave near Kaipo and fought there until I had enough to outfit everybody with almost the best equipment. This didn't take as long as I thought it would, about 1.5h total or some-such, I split it up into two 45min-ish sessions. Now that the 3 guards are capped at 20 and have the best equipment from Kaipo, Harley has her Chain Whip (it's expensive but very worth it), and Edward has the Dark Harp, the fights are hilariously easy. I think I might grind some more, because I'm slowly running out of potions. Anyways, the 2nd dungeon run went much better. I found a strategy guide that said exactly what to do and I found that it does indeed work rather well. Even with bad conditions (I lost 10k to the Flamehound Guard, rather than 1k or 300) I ended the dungeon with 60k in about 20-25 minutes. It all comes down to knowing a good route through the dungeon, entering on Waning Moon for the bonus to physical attacks (since that's all you have to deal damage with), and not taking senseless risk (such as the guy who asks you to lend him money). Basically, the strategy guide said to do this: 1). Go to Floor 3 first thing, to the Flamehound Room. Hopefully on your way there, you've gotten at least 1,000 gil from random fights (it don't take long with each fight giving 300-600). That way, it's impossible to lose 10k from the guard. Kill the Flamehound, and then go over to the Chocobo Room, that way the Chocobos can't steal from you (because you gave the little you had to the guard). Get the chocobo that gives you 8,000 gil and then leave the pen. On your way up, lend money to the lady. 2). Go to Floor 4 and talk to the Old Lady who wants the Pig. If it's still Waning Moon, the Gil Bird should be in the 4th Floor Tower Hallway, kill it too. 3). Go back to Floor 2 and start hitting up the optional rooms, hopefully you find the Poet's Notebook in one of the chests, check the library, etc. Grab the pig, sell the Lyre, find the woman, etc. 4). Go back to Floor 1, knock off the bandits and the golem, loot all the chests you see (hopefully you get that notebook, lol), sell the Egg. 5). Finally, go to Floor 4, sell the Pig, kill the Belphegor, and you should have 50k+ easy. Gotta note, though, that the Gil Bird and the Bandits never run on the emulator. The strategy guide says that they will oftentimes run on the real PSP, so... lol. Yay for me? lol. That's exactly what I did on the 2nd run (except I visited the Chocobo Pen first and lost the 10k to the guard... future runs, I'm gonna go to the guard first so he CAN'T steal my 10k). Also, PSP version.... the Croaker can drop a Megalixir which will solve all of your money problems haha. I should see what Elixirs sell for, I got one off a Croaker, it'd be cool if it sold for 50k so I get 2 chests instead of just 1. Ah well. We'll see. etc. But main thing is... gotta level up some before trying the dungeon, and gotta have Kaipo equipment on, otherwise it takes forever to kill anything, but once Edward/Harley get to mid 20s, and the guards are on 20, you just mow everything down. The only danger is the Croaker, but that's why you take a few Maiden's kisses in, and kill the two snakes that come with the Croaker before hitting the Croaker itself, so the snakes don't kill your toaded group members.
