Road to Moonflow
-Hey, it’s Belgemine. She’s here to help train Yuna with another friendly aeon contest. Her voice actress is top notch.
-She calls Ixion, but I am not allowed to do so. I bring out Valefor.
-Valefor’s hurting. Overdrive gauge filled just in time to obliterate Ixion.
-She gives me 2x Dragon’s Scale, a Summoner’s Soul… ah, mini-tutorial time. A summoner’s Soul allows aeons to learn abilities by expending items.
-Neat system. It seems closest to the weapon upgrade system in FFVIII, using items for upgrades.
-Valefor learned Watera, but I didn’t buy any other abilities yet. At least now I know why I get so many more spheres than I need for the sphere grid.
-Weird start to a fight:
WAKKA: “Hehehe…”
LULU: “What?”
WAKKA: “I wanna show you something, down by the river.”
-Is… is he being flirty/bawdy? Nah, that’s not really his style. Probably foreshadowing some coming plot.
-Pretty wooded area of the road.
-Reached the Moonflow. It’s stunning.
-It’s apparently especially beautiful in the night, with fireflies swarming around the lilies of the river. Tidus wants to stay until night, but Auron says no. So of course Tidus wants to come back here after we beat Sin.
I wonder if that’ll come true, if whatever party members survive will be back at this river in the epilogue.
-Shoopuf? A type of boat?
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Moonflow Wharf
-OH THAT’s A SHOOPUF – SO CUTE!
Lololol – Yuna relates an adorable story where she and Kimahri rode a shoopuf a while ago. Yuna fell in the water, and the shoopuf picked her up with its trunk. So Yuna jumped in three more times. XD
-Kimahri doesn’t change his tone, but he says that seeing Yuna have fun made him happy. I’m glad to hear that Kimahri seems to genuinely care for Yuna, and isn’t just guarding her out of some penance related to his lost horn.
-Yuna lived in Bevelle until 10 years ago. Biggest city in Spira, main temple of Yevon’s home.
-Smells like oil?
-Jecht saw his first shoopuf here 10 years ago. Jecht struck it because he was drunk and mistook it for a fiend. (Fucking Jecht.) And… that incident made him quit drinking?
I mean, good he stopped and all, but it was the wounded shoopuf that did it, not all his son’s pleading?
-Auron comments that Spira resists change. Would take something unusual for it to change. Perhaps Sin’s demise.
-There are machina here, but good machina. Not forbidden.
-God, so much stuff here that I want to buy! I have very little gil. Going to grind up a bit before I leave.
-what the heck is that? An insect-fish-person?
-The chocobo knights are here. They’re upset that the driver won’t let the chocobo on the shoopuf.
PRESENT-DAY TIDUS: “I wonder how Captain Lucil is doing.” Perhaps current Tidus isn’t at the end of the game.
-Maechen is here. Gives me a little history lesson on the Shoopuf. It eats nothing. Lol that voice acting.
-Also tells us about the… ah, the Hypello are the insectoids. Fast in the water, slow on land. But they are lackadaisical in nature, and so don’t play blitzball.
-Hey, is this Shuu from the blitzball tournament?
Love the shoopuf art.
She’s trying to get back to Bevelle but the Crusaders blocked the way.
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On the Grind
-Farming time.
-Kimahri got “Comrade” overdrive mode as well. Charges when allies take damage. Sounds awesome!
-Wakka now learned “Slayer,” which probably fills his gauge when he gets kills.
-Kimahri is the first character venturing over to another character’s starting sphere grid area. Wakka’s.
-Tidus learned “Slice n Dice…” ah! A new overdrive ability, a group attack rather than the single target Spiral Cut.
-Trying out Ixion, and the summon animation looks phenomenal. Also awesome is how Yuna says “My name is Yuna! Pleased to meet you” when first summoning.
-I think I finally understand how to best use Lulu’s “rotate the right stick” overdrive: I have to put my palm on top of it and rotate my full hand as fast as possible.
-Ixion’s Aerospark does great damage, but better than that is that it negates an enemy’s magical effects. So if I run into enemies that buff themselves with Protect and Shell and the like, Ixion is the aeon.
-The animation on Tidus’ Slice n Dice is neat! Runs back and forth cutting enemies.
Not a ton of damage, but great against a swarm of lower health enemies. Reminds me a bit of one of Cyan’s attacks from FFVI where he moves between four different enemies, though I can’t remember its name.
-This grinding is great practice for using Aeons. Much more comfortable with them now.
[Non-rhetorical question for y’all: does using an aeon in a fight reduce the total experience or gil earned at all?]
-Ixion’s overdrive, “Thor’s Hammer,” rocks.
Builds this electrical tether to the enemy, floating it up in the air, and then WHAM! Zaps it with a thingy.
-I keep fighting to exhaustion and then returning to town to buy stuff. This next run out is going much smoother. I get a hit in with everyone on the Ochu, and then it’s AEON TIME. Doesn’t even much matter which – all of them do massive damage and ignore Ochu Dance.
-Got the “Power Strike” achievement for hitting someone for 9,999. It was Valefor’s Energy Blast.
-There’s a particular kind of FFVIII or FFIX creature that Ixion reminds me of strongly. I can’t remember its name, but it had a scythe-like horn that would come off if you attacked it sometimes.
-SO MUCH GRINDING. Falling asleep. And just as I thought I was finished, I found another vendor with one more thing I want… but that thing is 15k gil! It’s a Cait Sith for Lulu that has Deathtouch. Clearly not as good as if it were a weapon for, say, Kimahri or Auron, but Rydia in FFIV had a similar deathtouch weapon iirc that was very handy in a pinch (despite the high miss rate).
Yes please.
-I’ll time myself. Curious how long it’ll take to get 15k.
-Noticed myself starting to hit the sphere cap, so spending some of those spheres to buy abilities for my aeons.
-Ooh, I learned a thing! Auron’s Bushido overdrive does more damage when I input the commands faster. Good to know. Seems to be the same thing for Tidus’ overdrives.
Hm. Or not. Hard to say. Need to test this more.
-Valefor has the lowest HP of my aeons, but her Sonic Wings can take so many turns away from the enemy that it gives her more survivability in the long run.
-omg lulu XD Just tried Blizzara with her, and she said: “Let me break the ice.”
-Tidus got the “Victor” overdrive mode, charging when the party wins a battle. Let’s try that! It must charge a lot per victory to make it worthwhile.
-Victor doesn’t charge Tidus’ gauge when he’s not in the party at the end of combat, including when an aeon wins it, so I’ll have to be selective when to use that.
-I’m surprised that even though I’ve been fighting the same monster packs for a while, I keep finding new cool stuff. I just got a Dream Team ball for Wakka with Sleeptouch.
-Kimahri got a new overdrive mode, “Ally.”
-Swapped to the shortened aeon animations for now. Thankfully, it still lets me see my favorite part: where Valefor comes down and kind of purrs as she nuzzles Yuna.
-Ifrit’s Meteor Strike doesn’t do appreciably more damage against Ochus than his regular attacks. I wonder why, since Ochus take 1.5x fire damage. Maybe Meteor Strike is non-elemental, or maybe Ifrit’s regular attacks are fire too.
-Done! Got all the gil I need. Took me 58 minutes. Got my “Fatal Cait Sith.”
-So that was a ton of grinding, but it was still pretty fun and taught me a lot. I didn’t even buy everything I could. There was so much, across 3-4 vendors! I wanted to have all the elemental and status options. So for example, if I already had a weapon with poisontouch and a vendor sells a weapon with poisontouch AND 5% strength, I don’t buy it. (I don’t care as much about the 3-5% modifiers.)
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Next time: shoopuf!
