Defeating the God of Destruction with My Bare Hands

I really tried to keep this blog from dying, but it happened nevertheless. I want to try and revive it.

My biggest problem was that anytime I had the choice in front of me whether to blog or to play, I chose to play. Playing time is precious these days, and I've taken as much as I can. Also, I have not been so involved in special challenges for a year, so perhaps haven't felt blogging my play would be as interesting.

But before I get into it in earnest, I need to finish the draft I had begun nearly a year ago. I found the following written here as a draft:

"As I mentioned in my last post, I have completed my challenge quest of completing the game with no equipment, while only using items absolutely required to beat the game.

It wasn't too hard, at least comparatively, to get through Rhone. The main difficulty was getting through Hargon's temple.

The second floor is short and the enemy set includes enemies from the road to Rhone as well as Rhone itself. It's nothing to worry about in any playthrough, as the enemies are generally less dangerous than they are outside the temple.

The third floor is brutal with no armor."

That's all I wrote. Unfortunately, a year later, I found that I cannot remember my final battle. It seems I remember it being epic, and I know I had really wanted to relate it, but any specifics are long since gone. This is another reason that I have delayed reviving my blog, unsatisfied with my last partial entry.

But a flash of inspiration hit me as I realized the solution was terribly simple. I simply loaded up my previous game file and did it again. It took an hour or so. Here it is.

The first order of business in the final approach is to get to the final boss set with as much HP and MP as possible. Of course, anyone who has played this knows there is a lot that can go wrong here. Any encounter where you fail to run can weaken you, and a few encounters can hurt you bad or kill you outright if you fail to run more than once. And there's always the Defeat and Sacrifice spells that can make you hate your day. Fortunately, on this effort, I didn't die from anyone that wasn't a boss, though I did come scarily close on a pair of Mace Mashers on the third floor of the temple when it took four rounds to run away (fortunately the third and fourth rounds they cast Defeat and Defense exclusively; my Prince of Cannock survived with less than 10 HP and was able to Revive my dead princess to bring everyone back.

Atlas didn't prove too difficult. My normal strategy worked just fine, just taking a little longer. Fortunately I actually got a pre-emptive strike, which allowed one successful cast of Defense before he started unloading on my Princess. But with her defending I was able to keep her healed while my hero attacked. I even managed to get a second Defense spell off midway through the fight, though I'm not sure how much that influenced things.

Bazuzu kindly didn't cast Sacrifice, though my Prince of Cannock succumbed to his Defeat spell before the fight was done. Other than that, Bazuzu didn't put up much of a fight.

Down a man, I lost to Zarlox, but worked my way back up to him with all my party. I successfully beat him and Hargon, with a critical hit from Cannock, before losing to Malroth just a few rounds. I realized belatedly that I forgot to heal after Hargon, and two breath attacks killed my hero.

It took me two more tries to beat Malroth. His breath attack is disasterous with no armor to defend against it. It does around 70 damage to each party member, forcing me to take a round and a half to heal. I had the princess cast Defense every time she could spare a round not healing. After three or four successful tries the two princes can deal enough damage to give you a real chance. However, between the breath attacks and Healall, it still comes down to a certain amount of luck. On my second try, I couldn't even get Defense to work until a few castings. I think at one point I was close to beating him, but my princess ran out of MP and it went south quickly from there.

But on my third attempt, I finished him off. I actually ended that with 110 MP for my princess, showing just how much chance can influence the battle.

This was an exciting accomplishment for me a year ago, and it was fun to recreate it now. I learned a lot about this game doing these playthroughs. I really enjoyed it.

I ended up finally finishing the solo challenge also, but it took much longer. I finished it just a few months ago, after a few times on and off. Assuming I can keep my revival going, I'll write more about that in my next entry.

I think I'm getting ready to begin a similar set of challenge efforts for Dragon Quest III. I've been putting a lot of thought into it lately. I think it's part of the reason I wanted to revive my old blog. It definitely adds a motivation. So here's hoping I'll be here again soon.