Well, I've finally finished my summary of my recent gaming activity. It's time to start this thing in earnest.
The subject of this entry is going to be the most enjoyable experience in gaming I've had since starting the blog: my victory over the Shadow Lord in Final Fantasy XI.
It was a bit of a challenge easing back into Final Fantasy XI. Although on the surface the game looks the same, the experience bears little resemblance to the game experience I had twelve years ago. Low level players and low rank players are very rare, and leveling up is so quick and easy that low level players don't stay that way long. Experience parties are a thing of the past. It is rare to encounter other players in any of the game's original areas outside of the cities.
After I had spent a few days getting my bearings back, I went to Jeuno to shout for a party that would accompany me to finish mission 5-1 to Fei' Yin. After a while, I finally got a single response. After a short conversation, he told me about the new Trust system. I had seen the name floating around, but hadn't yet looked into what it was. It turned out to be the answer to all my partying problems. It was a way to form a party composed of Non-Player Characters, guided by their own AI, which would let a player get through areas that were originally meant for partying, without the help of another player. I quickly gathered a few Trust NPC's to help me out, and easily finished the fight at the end of mission 5-1 at the original level cap of 50.
Upon finishing the mission, I was finally given the mission that marked the end of the original, unexpanded game's storyline. I was sent to Castle Zvahl to investigate the seal that had been placed there 20 years earlier in the game's history. Knowing that this mission was originally available when the level cap was still 50, I opted to try it before completing the game's first limit break quest, so that I could experience it at level 50.
It took me nearly a week to explore Castle Zvahl far enough to get to the Throne Room. At level 50, as a warrior without spells like Invisible and Sneak, it is impossible to explore without a party. But with my NPC allies, I was able to push through. Unfortunately, the Playstation 2 suffers serious performance issues in Castle Zvahl, causing battles to lag heavily for much of the dungeon. The enemies are closely packed, and fighting more than two at a time usually resulted in death (or even just two at a time if they both started attacking at the same time). I had to restart the dungeon many times. Fortunately, it is much easier to get to the dungeon than it used to be, due to a new warping system connected to Survival Guides positioned at certain locations (i.e. the entrances to some dungeons, including this one). I usually earned enough gil from the beastmen inside to fund a new warp from the Survival Guide. Once I passed a certain point, it got easier to explore. Although the enemies got harder, and had to be fought one at a time, their density decreased, and the system lag issues disappeared. Also, from that point, it was a mostly linear path to the Throne Room. And just outside there was a Home Point, which, from new game mechanics, I could teleport directly to once I had reached it.
Up until this point I hadn't been sure that this was, in fact, the Shadow Lord mission. I had suspected, wrongly, that the final mission would be the third rank 5 mission, and that this was an intermediate mission building up to that. But the cutscene in the throne room began playing out, the Shadow Lord appeared, my hair stood on end and I got a chill as his true nature was revealed, and the fight began.
Of course, at level 50 with three NPC allies, the fight ended pretty quickly. I don't think I even got a third of his HP removed. I had been aware that in the early history of this game, no full party of player characters had defeated him until after the level cap was raised to 55. So the battle went as expected. I decided now was the time to do the first limit break quest, and I also decided to change my job from Warrior to Paladin and make the latter my new main job. When I got my Paladin to level 50, I tried again, and almost every level thereafter. Of course I did slightly better each time, but still got beaten up to and past level 55.
As I was surviving longer I began to notice that the boss was consistently winning with around the same HP level, despite a few level-ups on my part. Where I had mostly been focusing on my actions and his HP, I began to pay more attention to the actual fight. I suddenly began to realize that there was a point in the fight where he had begun to be immune to physical damage, and his HP stopped going down. It was an alarming realization, and I began to question whether I would beat him before level 60, as I had hoped I would. I decided to look up the boss online to find out whether I had any options to fight him in earnest without leveling up considerably more.
I learned that once his HP drops to a certain point, he begins to alternate between immunity to physical damage and immunity to magic, depending on his stance and whether he is using physical attacks or magic. He would alternate from one to the other once he had taken enough damage. I realized that for several tries I had consistently been fighting through a magic immunity stage without even realizing it, before being stumped by the physical immunity.
I was initially somewhat dismayed. The problem is, before rank 6, the only Trust NPC that does magic damage at all is Adelheid, whom I was using in my party, but he was always out of MP by the time I got to this stage. And as a Paladin I had little hope of dealing the magic damage myself.
Then I finally found it, on only one website out of several describing how to fight this boss: even if you don't do enough damage, the boss will switch between physical and magic immunity on his own after about five minutes! Once I read that, I resolved on a new strategy.
By this time, I was a level 58 Paladin. I went into battle summoning Kupipi, a white mage, Tenzen, a samurai, and Adelheid (I read he's a scholar, but I don't think I've ever partied with a PC scholar, so I didn't know his class until I read it more recently).
I had decided to handle my magic consumption differently. Instead of trying to save Kupipi's magic by curing myself, I conserved my own MP and let Kupipi keep me at full health. The battle was going well, and I held out clear to the point of difficulty when the boss raised his sword and stopped taking damage. By that point, both my magic users were out of MP, but I was at full health and MP. Then I did something I had never tried in any battle. I disengaged from the fight, and started using my magic to keep myself alive and keep the boss attacking only me.
The plan worked better than I expected. Since my NPC's weren't fighting or being attacked, they behaved as if resting. So their MP began to regenerate. I was losing nothing, since neither they nor I could do anything useful while engaged in battle. All I needed to do was stay alive for about five minutes. If I could stay alive long enough for Kupipi to recover enough MP, I figured I had a chance.
At level 58, as a Paladin, equipped with the Iron Musketeer's armor set available from the Bastok conquest guards, the damage the Shadow Lord does is somewhat manageable. As long as I had MP to spare, I could keep my HP up. As I recall, I could get away with using Cure II for awhile to conserve MP before needing to do a stronger Cure here and there. I could take a beating for a good amount of time.
One of my favorite parts of the fight, though I ended up not executing it as well as it should have been, was using Invincible and then proceeding to start resting to recover my own MP. It lasts long enough to recover a little bit, but I fumbled a bit and didn't get very much from it. But it was awesome to watch the Shadow Lord hitting me for 0 damage for a while as my whole party was recovering.
I had wanted to blog sooner, and in the time that's passed some of the details have faded. At some point I ran low on MP, but Kupipi had recovered hers, so I reengaged to allow Kupipi to start healing me again. I think it was very near this time that the Shadow Lord finally sheathed his sword and started taking physical damage again. I was ecstatic to see it, realizing that my strategy worked and I had a fighting chance. But my thrill was shorter-lived than I had hoped--when the boss had just a few slivers left on his HP bar, his sword went up again.
At first I was dismayed, but I wondered if between me and Adelheid we could get those last few slivers. I threw off a Holy spell, but when his bar didn't seem to move after that I decided it might be more prudent to use my MP to try lasting out another five minutes. I didn't have Invincible available, but my party was in decent shape, so I went for it.
One strategy I used that seemed to work well was to run lengthwise back and forth across the room. I didn't take damage while running; it was only when I stopped to turn around that the boss would get a few hits on me. It helped me to last longer.
Again, some of the specifics are fuzzy, but I think it went something like this. Because I didn't have full MP at the start of the second round, I couldn't last as long. When I was in danger, I had to reengage to let Kupipi heal me, and when he started running low again, I had to disengage again. At some point, I believe it was around here, I noticed that I had lost hate, and the boss was attacking my allies, alternating between them. If I remember right, I decided to take advantage of it by resting myself for a short while. I believe he started attacking Tenzen, which allowed both me and Kupipi to heal. I know that by the time his sword came down, all four of us were at less than half HP, though I was healed back to full almost immediately after reengaging.
As it turned out, I probably would have been better off to use Holy and Banish instead of waiting the second five minutes. He went down almost immediately after lowering his sword. I don't think he took much more than 200 damage before going down. Oh, well.
Of course, as I had previously read, like many a Final Fantasy final boss, the Shadow Lord has more than one incarnation to fight. I watched the cut scene and braced myself for the next portion. Seeing how battered my party was at that moment, and knowing second-form boss fights are usually at least as tough as the first form, I wasn't really expecting to survive, though I was hoping to gain insight into tactics I could use.
When the fight started, it went by so quickly I hardly knew what had happened. I led off with the weaponskill "The Spirits Within," which, at full TP from tanking the physically immune section, and full HP from NPC healing, dealt a little over a thousand damage. It was about a quarter of his HP bar. I concentrated on healing myself, not really getting much chance to see what was happening. But I swear, every time I looked at my log window, it indicated a skillchain from Tenzen off of himself, or a magic burst from Adelheid. The Shadowlord's HP was going down quickly, I realized, and before I knew it, his HP was gone.
It's hard to describe just how I felt right then. An enormous feeling of rising elation was kept in check only by wondering if that was really all there was to the fight. As I watched the game's final pre-expansion cut scene (which in true Final Fantasy fashion probably made me shed a tear or two for its emotional impact) it became increasingly clear that this was it; I had done it. At some point I let out a cry of triumph, possibly alarming my wife upstairs. It was a moment I had waited for for quite a few years, and it did not disappoint. From what I'd read, I hadn't expected to win the fight before level 60, (though knowing what I learned in the fight, I think I could have done it a level or two earlier). But there it was, the main story "beaten," after nearly twelve years of owning the game and playing it on and off.
For reflection's sake, and because it seemed right, I decided to go back to my home nation without using any warps. I can't remember if I walked all the way or just to San d'Oria, but I'm pretty sure I did not arrive in Bastok by airship. In any case, it was very cathartic to return to my home nation and have rank 6 pronounced upon me. It's a badge I proudly wear in game, and it feels great to me that I finally accomplished it.
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