I'm glad I had my camera phone handy.
I put in a decent amount of time over the weekend. But, I probably only progressed in the story about maybe an hour.
You’re thinking, “huh?” or more likely, “Cripes, when is this blog series going to end?” Well. I spent too much time mastering materia and trying out some side-quests.
First, I mastered my Long Range materia, so it would create a new one, and gave it to Cid.
Now, Cloud, Yuffie, and Cid can all attack from the back row without penalty. And to bring the non-geeks up to speed, placing a character in the back row means they take less damage–but, unless they have a long range weapon (or the materia in question), they deal less damage.
Strategy. That is something I’m way more aware of at 29 versus 16.
Then, I decided to master Cloud’s Counter Attack materia to also generate a new one. Here was my plan: I would give Cloud both Counter Attacks, meaning he would attack twice for each hit he took.
Combine these with Cloud’s mastered Cover materia, and he’s blocking a lot of hits, thus leading to multiple counter attacks. Cloud can slaughter most random foes within a turn or two, all while leaving Cid and Yuffie for support.
Not a bad plan. It just took some time (even with it placed on Cid’s triple growth weapon).
After I got the sub in the main storyline, I decided to go for the Gelnika side-quest. This is a crashed airship filled with some helpful materia and weapons.
It is also where you can Morph a bunch of enemies into stat-boosting Source items. I probably spent an hour or so just Morphing critters to boost my characters stats. Having Yuffie’s Conformer weapon helped considerably.
A side note: I had to fight Reno and Rude in the airship, and I finally got to use Cloud’s Omnislash limit break.
Oh. My. Goodness.
Buying Omnislash was worth all the work in the Battle Arena. It took Reno and Rude out on the first turn. Granted, it helps that Cloud is near to level 70 and has a +30 strength bonus (thanks to my other Battle Arena buy, the Championship Belt), but still—it was a sight to witness.
End side note
After realizing Andrew and Gavin, my fellow players at The Idler, were ready to finish the game at any moment, I figured I should stop wasting time.
While arranging materia to fight Diamond Weapon, I realized I somehow got Cloud’s max HP to 7777.
Again, let’s back up for the non-geeks: In Final Fantasy VII, if a character’s HP gets to 7777, that character gets a serious attack bonus, called Lucky 7’s. The character in question keeps attacking, with each hit doing 7777 points of damage.
But here’s the thing—usually, your character has to have more than 7777 max hit points, and then be injured to reach the magic number. In my case, Cloud was already at the number—for every battle.
On a whim, I maxed his HP and went into a random battle. Cloud got the bonus and destroyed a cluster of small enemies.
Then, I had a thought: could I use this advantage to take on Emerald Weapon? It is an underwater creature and one of the strongest in the game (rumored to have 1 million HP). Defeating it would give a bunch of killer items.
I’ll cut to the chase and say that even with the Lucky 7 bonus, and Cloud’s near-never ending hits of 7777, I still couldn’t kill the dang thing. I did the math too—if Cloud actually attacked the rumored 64 times granted by the bonus, I’d barely cut Emerald Weapon’s HP in half.
And sadly, once Cloud leveled up after my fight with Diamond Weapon, he no longer had the automatic bonus.
Enough wasting time: I gotta finish this dang game.
Where you at?
Disc : 2
Cloud’s Level: 69 (“Sixty-nine, dude!”)
Location: Midgar coast
Timer: 70:20
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Read Gavin Craig’s week 11 post