Summary:
The first cactuar gatekeeper. Death on Gagazet that causes me to go
back to the drawing board around garment grid and dressphere
pros/cons/choices.
Bikanel Desert
-Apparently, the Central Expanse is just too vast to survey so far. They need something better than a hover. I’m putting my money on some sort of desert submarine thing.
-Went to the Oasis to find the first cactuar. He’s there, along with a hypello and a shoopuf.
-OH! It’s the caravan I heard about. Really awesome accessories, but I just don’t have the money to buy the good stuff for 15k a pop.
-Oh no. A mini-game, and one that seems twitch-reaction-based. “Everything’s Coming Up Cactuars.” I lost every single one of those cactuar mini-games back in FFX.
-I love that they are bringing back the cactuar descriptions. XD
-This is better. I can take my time before I shoot.
The screen flips quickly between the hypello, shoopuf, and cactuar. I have to only shoot when Lobivia comes onto my screen, and if she counterattacks I have to dodge.
-VICTORY!
-I return Lobivia to his mother. Though he never really left his home at all.
-Next is Toumeya, cactuar #2. Toumeya wanted to see waters vaster than the Oasis. So… an ocean somewhere?
“Sands whiter than the desert, a gentle breeze, glistening sunlight, and more water than can be imagined!”
-Probably either Besaid or Kilika. Betting on Besaid – specifically the beach/pier.
-And yet… I don’t really want to start exploring the hotspots until I’ve explored the non-hotspots. So I’ll table the cactuar hunt for now until I’ve checked out Bevelle, Calm Lands, Mt. Gagazet, and Zanarkand Ruins.
---
Bevelle
-Without Baralai, Bevelle is angry and suspicious.
-Rumors of aeons reappearaing.
-Can’t get into the city.
-Not in a mini-game mood this instant, so I’ll do Mt. Gagazet, then Zanarkand Ruins, then Calm Lands.
---
Mt. Gagazet
-Garik is leading the Ronso up the peak to prepare for vengeance against the Guado.
-Kimahri hopes that the mountain will change Garik’s mind.
-Mission time. “Battle Blockade.” We have to stop Garik.
-As I climb the mountain, I see non-hostile Ronso walking up to meet garik.
-The Ronso walking up aren’t settled on vengeance. They want to see how the mountain reacts to Garik.
-Well… some at least are taking a wait and see approach. Not all.
Bikanel Desert
-Apparently, the Central Expanse is just too vast to survey so far. They need something better than a hover. I’m putting my money on some sort of desert submarine thing.
-Went to the Oasis to find the first cactuar. He’s there, along with a hypello and a shoopuf.
-OH! It’s the caravan I heard about. Really awesome accessories, but I just don’t have the money to buy the good stuff for 15k a pop.
-Oh no. A mini-game, and one that seems twitch-reaction-based. “Everything’s Coming Up Cactuars.” I lost every single one of those cactuar mini-games back in FFX.
-I love that they are bringing back the cactuar descriptions. XD
-This is better. I can take my time before I shoot.
The screen flips quickly between the hypello, shoopuf, and cactuar. I have to only shoot when Lobivia comes onto my screen, and if she counterattacks I have to dodge.
-VICTORY!
-I return Lobivia to his mother. Though he never really left his home at all.
-Next is Toumeya, cactuar #2. Toumeya wanted to see waters vaster than the Oasis. So… an ocean somewhere?
“Sands whiter than the desert, a gentle breeze, glistening sunlight, and more water than can be imagined!”
-Probably either Besaid or Kilika. Betting on Besaid – specifically the beach/pier.
-And yet… I don’t really want to start exploring the hotspots until I’ve explored the non-hotspots. So I’ll table the cactuar hunt for now until I’ve checked out Bevelle, Calm Lands, Mt. Gagazet, and Zanarkand Ruins.
---
Bevelle
-Without Baralai, Bevelle is angry and suspicious.
-Rumors of aeons reappearaing.
-Can’t get into the city.
-Not in a mini-game mood this instant, so I’ll do Mt. Gagazet, then Zanarkand Ruins, then Calm Lands.
---
Mt. Gagazet
-Garik is leading the Ronso up the peak to prepare for vengeance against the Guado.
-Kimahri hopes that the mountain will change Garik’s mind.
-Mission time. “Battle Blockade.” We have to stop Garik.
-As I climb the mountain, I see non-hostile Ronso walking up to meet garik.
-The Ronso walking up aren’t settled on vengeance. They want to see how the mountain reacts to Garik.
-Well… some at least are taking a wait and see approach. Not all.
-A fork. Not sure whether I’m supposed to go towards Zanarkand or up to
the hot springs and windy summit, but I’ll try up first.
-Damn, the monsters here (Killer Lupus) keep auto-killing me. Gotta use those anti-death accessories.
-Found a sphere in the hotsprings but I can’t interact with it. Maybe it’s a commsphere that Shinra laid down.
-I literally have to pick my poison. The fiends here use confusion, death, and poison regularly. I choose to equip anti-death/confuse, and just antidote the poison after battle.
-Died. Just to random enemies. I think that was my first time. Ow.
-OH!! These are the ruins where my first mission took place. Cool.
-Okay, I died again to different random enemies. I’m finding a major spike in difficulty in this area, and am not sure exactly what I’m doing wrong. Enemies are hitting much harder, and taking way more hits.
I’m actually glad of this. I was feeling a bit on autopilot for combat outside a few main bosses. This will force me to revisit how I use my grids and dresspheres. Taking a break for now and coming back later with fresh eyes.
---
Dresspheres and Gridspheres
-My initial approach to these was haphazard. Whatever a character looked cool in, do that.
-My next approach was better. Have characters specialize. Yuna would take the magic dresspheres, Paine the most physical, and Rikku the middle group. Picked a few dresspheres to focus on for each, with a single garment grid.
-And now I feel that second approach is still too limited. I want instead to look at the value of each dressphere and garment grid as best I can and try to maintain wide flexibility in how to mix and match each to meet the needs of each zone, each set of enemies. I intend to update these notes as I progress through X-2.
My goal here is to summarize why and when I might use a given garment grid and dressphere.
---
Garment Grids – Inactive
First Steps: Useless. Ignore.
Bum Rush: Strength and magic. Strictly worse than Undying Storm.
Healing Light: Backup healing. Not reliable enough for primary healing because it takes too long to build up and lacks support magic like protect and shell.
Protection Halo: Defense and magic defense. Strictly worse than Hour of Need.
-Damn, the monsters here (Killer Lupus) keep auto-killing me. Gotta use those anti-death accessories.
-Found a sphere in the hotsprings but I can’t interact with it. Maybe it’s a commsphere that Shinra laid down.
-I literally have to pick my poison. The fiends here use confusion, death, and poison regularly. I choose to equip anti-death/confuse, and just antidote the poison after battle.
-Died. Just to random enemies. I think that was my first time. Ow.
-OH!! These are the ruins where my first mission took place. Cool.
-Okay, I died again to different random enemies. I’m finding a major spike in difficulty in this area, and am not sure exactly what I’m doing wrong. Enemies are hitting much harder, and taking way more hits.
I’m actually glad of this. I was feeling a bit on autopilot for combat outside a few main bosses. This will force me to revisit how I use my grids and dresspheres. Taking a break for now and coming back later with fresh eyes.
---
Dresspheres and Gridspheres
-My initial approach to these was haphazard. Whatever a character looked cool in, do that.
-My next approach was better. Have characters specialize. Yuna would take the magic dresspheres, Paine the most physical, and Rikku the middle group. Picked a few dresspheres to focus on for each, with a single garment grid.
-And now I feel that second approach is still too limited. I want instead to look at the value of each dressphere and garment grid as best I can and try to maintain wide flexibility in how to mix and match each to meet the needs of each zone, each set of enemies. I intend to update these notes as I progress through X-2.
My goal here is to summarize why and when I might use a given garment grid and dressphere.
---
Garment Grids – Inactive
First Steps: Useless. Ignore.
Bum Rush: Strength and magic. Strictly worse than Undying Storm.
Healing Light: Backup healing. Not reliable enough for primary healing because it takes too long to build up and lacks support magic like protect and shell.
Protection Halo: Defense and magic defense. Strictly worse than Hour of Need.
---
Garment Grids – General Use
Undying Storm: Medium strength and magic boosts. Decent all around, but usually better options.
Selene Guard: Easy access to Shell against strong magic users.
Pride of the Sword: Access to the wide variety of Swordplay abilities without needing Warrior.
Garment Grids – Specific/Niche Use
Thunder Spawn: Nullifies thunder attacks, and can grant powerful thunder magic. Only three slots.
Downtrodder: Nullifies gravity attacks, and great for enemies with high health pools who are vulnerable to gravity. Also useful when I have the luxury of hitting all three nodes and need a huge health pool, for double HP.
Bitter Farewell: One dress swap can grant deathproof OR doomproof. Also strong for enemies weak to death or doom. Five slots, but no bonus for hitting all five.
Covetous: Not great, but if I really need access to a mana drain, it has Osmose.
Seething Cauldron: Pure magic power. Four slots, and each swap grants +15 magic on top of +10 base magic. When fully charged, can be +70 magic.
Stonehewn: Pure physical defense. Same bonus stats and slots as Seething Cauldron, but for defense instead of magic.
Enigma Plate: Pure magic defense. See Stonehewn/Seething Cauldron.
Treasure Hunt: Mug and easy swap for double items. I think I’ll mostly just use this if I want to farm something specific.
Unerring Path: Only two slots, no bonuses. Use for when I want to rank up my special dresspheres.
Garment Grids – General Use
Undying Storm: Medium strength and magic boosts. Decent all around, but usually better options.
Selene Guard: Easy access to Shell against strong magic users.
Pride of the Sword: Access to the wide variety of Swordplay abilities without needing Warrior.
Garment Grids – Specific/Niche Use
Thunder Spawn: Nullifies thunder attacks, and can grant powerful thunder magic. Only three slots.
Downtrodder: Nullifies gravity attacks, and great for enemies with high health pools who are vulnerable to gravity. Also useful when I have the luxury of hitting all three nodes and need a huge health pool, for double HP.
Bitter Farewell: One dress swap can grant deathproof OR doomproof. Also strong for enemies weak to death or doom. Five slots, but no bonus for hitting all five.
Covetous: Not great, but if I really need access to a mana drain, it has Osmose.
Seething Cauldron: Pure magic power. Four slots, and each swap grants +15 magic on top of +10 base magic. When fully charged, can be +70 magic.
Stonehewn: Pure physical defense. Same bonus stats and slots as Seething Cauldron, but for defense instead of magic.
Enigma Plate: Pure magic defense. See Stonehewn/Seething Cauldron.
Treasure Hunt: Mug and easy swap for double items. I think I’ll mostly just use this if I want to farm something specific.
Unerring Path: Only two slots, no bonuses. Use for when I want to rank up my special dresspheres.
---
-Now to look at some dresspheres. Again, my main thing is to try looking at them in new ways. I’ve used them for basic attacks often, but I want to think more strategically. I have to assume each job is useful for different things, strong at times and weak at times. When will a job be strong?
Dresspheres – Primarily Physical
Gunner: Best against low defense enemies, but flexible. DARKPROOF, SLEEPPROOF.
Berserker: Debuffer, notably can remove Protect/Shell/Reflect. ITCHPROOF.
Thief: Stealing. First Strike + Stop for crowd control. SLOWPROOF, STOPPROOF.
Dresspheres – Primarily Magic
Black Mage: …come on.
Festivalist: Many single-target debuffs. Many SOS skills. SLOWPROOF, STOPPROOF.
Current stats, in case anyone wants to see.
Dresspheres – Flex
Gun Mage: Heavy damage against wide variety of enemy types. Scan especially useful against new enemies.
Warrior: Debuffer, with mix of varied magic attacks.
Songstress: Crowd control (e.g. group blind, slow, stop.) Wide array of buffs and debuffs.
White Mage: But I often forget Protect and Shell, and especially in long fights, those are amazing.
Lady Luck: Group confuse.
One last group I want to look at: which dresspheres have survivability, self-healing, self-MP recovery?
Dresspheres – Sustain
Warrior: Sentinel to survive high burst damage.
Berserker: Howl can double the caster’s max HP.
Songstress: Carnival Cancan doubles party’s max HP.
Black Mage: MP absorb.
Thief: Steal MP, steal HP.
Festivalist: Self-heal and self-status cure.
---
-Good enough for now. I’ll complete the mission next time.
-Whew. Just looked at the Mt. Gagazet difficulty star rating, and it is rated one out of five stars. Either the ruins above Gagazet don’t count towards those, or the game has some serious problems with the star system. Next time, I’ll try the other direction (not to the Ruins) and see if I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.
However, I don’t think I was. Mainly because the wind that stopped me from climbing higher in chapter 2 is gone now and allows me to push up there.
-One last thing: as much as I love the dressphere system, I can’t help but think how much more I would’ve enjoyed FFX-2 if it used the FFX turn-based combat system.
---
Next time: Back to Gagazet.
-Now to look at some dresspheres. Again, my main thing is to try looking at them in new ways. I’ve used them for basic attacks often, but I want to think more strategically. I have to assume each job is useful for different things, strong at times and weak at times. When will a job be strong?
Dresspheres – Primarily Physical
Gunner: Best against low defense enemies, but flexible. DARKPROOF, SLEEPPROOF.
Berserker: Debuffer, notably can remove Protect/Shell/Reflect. ITCHPROOF.
Thief: Stealing. First Strike + Stop for crowd control. SLOWPROOF, STOPPROOF.
Dresspheres – Primarily Magic
Black Mage: …come on.
Festivalist: Many single-target debuffs. Many SOS skills. SLOWPROOF, STOPPROOF.
Current stats, in case anyone wants to see.
Dresspheres – Flex
Gun Mage: Heavy damage against wide variety of enemy types. Scan especially useful against new enemies.
Warrior: Debuffer, with mix of varied magic attacks.
Songstress: Crowd control (e.g. group blind, slow, stop.) Wide array of buffs and debuffs.
White Mage: But I often forget Protect and Shell, and especially in long fights, those are amazing.
Lady Luck: Group confuse.
One last group I want to look at: which dresspheres have survivability, self-healing, self-MP recovery?
Dresspheres – Sustain
Warrior: Sentinel to survive high burst damage.
Berserker: Howl can double the caster’s max HP.
Songstress: Carnival Cancan doubles party’s max HP.
Black Mage: MP absorb.
Thief: Steal MP, steal HP.
Festivalist: Self-heal and self-status cure.
---
-Good enough for now. I’ll complete the mission next time.
-Whew. Just looked at the Mt. Gagazet difficulty star rating, and it is rated one out of five stars. Either the ruins above Gagazet don’t count towards those, or the game has some serious problems with the star system. Next time, I’ll try the other direction (not to the Ruins) and see if I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.
However, I don’t think I was. Mainly because the wind that stopped me from climbing higher in chapter 2 is gone now and allows me to push up there.
-One last thing: as much as I love the dressphere system, I can’t help but think how much more I would’ve enjoyed FFX-2 if it used the FFX turn-based combat system.
---
Next time: Back to Gagazet.
