Phantasy Star 4 Raja Solo (part 3)

[ladyabaxa]

When last we left Raja he had just defeated Gy-Laguiah and cleared a major hurdle in the game.

He thus reached Krup at level 39. Of note with his stats Raja's Mental of 85 includes the +5 Mental from his Psy Circlet and the +3 Mental from the Frade Mantle. His actual Mental of 77 is still nearly twice any other stat but considering he needed every point of magic defense against Gy's Fire Breath I'm certainly not complaining.

To celebrate Raja ran over to Zio's Fort and (after a few more deaths to random encounters) beat Zio pretty easily. In the screenshot above Raja is going to select the Psycho Wand as his first action.

Just to demonstrate why, on the test fight - note the lack of android placeholders - Raja instead used Blessing first. Magic Barrier makes Black Wave an unresistable insta-kill, however, so the right thing to do considering Raja's low Agility was to Psycho Wand first then cast Blessing.

Corrosion is resisted by a character's Defense Stat and even with Blessing the two androids were 1-rounded on Zio's first attack. As a side note when using multiple characters like this I always position my active character in the leftmost position because the targeting cursor starts there and doing this cuts down on the number of button presses (and potential errors) I have to make.

Between Blessing and Raja's already high magic defense there wasn't much Zio could do.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd_I9_zeves

That victory brought Raja to level 40.

The saboteur Chaos Sorceror is never difficult to defeat but in this case one Holyword was all it took.

Raja picked up a Silver Mantle and Silver Circlet in Ryuon. He then talked with Gyuna to get into the tomb under Tyler.

Down in the tunnel to the hangar I got to laugh as the Helexes tried to Flame Bolt Raja and their attacks never dealt more then one damage.

Raja's high mental continued to make (most) attacks that checked against magic defense a non threat as illustrated the moment he reached Kuran. The first fight was an ambush into an immediate Charge Cannon combination attack... that did 1 damage. Raja couldn't do anything in retaliation to the robots (since all he could do to them was attack and C-Ray Tubes can spawn more minions) but he had no problem running away.

Raja didn't have too many deaths reaching Dark Force at level 41. The test fight went well but I decided Kuran was a good chance to add a couple more levels for a larger hit point buffer against Flare Shot. It would also make Raja a little bit stronger and faster to cope with the next dungeon. Kuran was still a very dangerous space station but 4xPiercer formations were great xp at that level. He was also able to beat Siren386s to make up for all the times their Warren286 brethren killed him.

At 43 Raja picked up his 7th charge of St. Fire and I decided it was time to to make a serious attempt at beating Dark Force.

Burst Rockets and Flare Shot hurt but were manageable. The first would be partially blocked by Blessing (along with Phononmaser) while the second had to get through Raja's magic defense.

The first Dark Force has 4540 hit points and St. Fire would take care of around half of that. Attacking with the Force Cane would have to suffice for the rest of that value.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvfScUClJlY

Raja could have beaten Dark Force when he first arrived on Kuran. Adding two more levels on top of that just shortened the fight by a few rounds. St. Fire racked up a nice total of 2409 damage.

With the Ice Digger Raja picked up a Phanta Robe, Flame Sword, and Tornado Dagger in Zosa then headed straight to the Climate Center.

He went there because, for a brief window, a second Gy-Laguiah will attack the party as soon as they enter the building.

Even with several more levels and the next equipment tier Gy-Laguiah was extremely dangerous. Never underestimate those damage multipliers!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHPXHxhX4Bs

Raja beat him once, however, and Fire Breath wasn't going to stop him on the second trip. Raja went ahead and ran his butt off to the Climate Center's command center and completed another optional dungeon. He then went to Meese for the whole "rescue Kyra" sequence. Afterwards he picked up the Laco Rod and Reflect Robe in the Esper Mansion, quickly ran the sequence in Gumbious, and at level 45 faced his biggest obstacle yet.

I am, of course, talking about the Air Castle or more precisely the random encounters inside the Air Castle. Raja's handling the bosses just fine but the random monsters are kicking him all over the place. It is quite a change from other characters but much of it is due to how slow Raja is. Low Agility is a killer here particularly against the speedy Dimension Worms. I made sure to pick up the Swift Helm for future use.

Bladerights, the upgrade to Rippers, appear in the Air Castle packing more Fire Breathing shoulders. The Frostsabers were the easiest enemies just like their Shadowsaber cousins - so long as Raja could live long enough to cast Blessing.

At level 47 and after a veritable symphony of dying Raja finally reached the trio. Each has only 1500 hit points but all of my solo characters have thus far had tremendous difficulty getting through even one of those life bars. Would Raja fare better?

The old priest cannot equip the Plasma Field but his innate factor 5 resistance plus high magic defense reduced all Giwats to 1 damage. Somewhere Gryz was cussing up a storm. (Even though I posted a fail video for Gryz against these three it still does little to demonstrate just how much he died to them. The situation is pretty bad when you Laco Rod a boss to death...)

Without the Plasma Field to block it their Thunderblast combo counter attack was actually the most dangerous thing they could do. Gizan was also a threat at 40 - 60 damage per cast and potentially three in one round. Blessing would thankfully neutralize all the physical attacks.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UieIN_01EAg

Raja beat the Xe-A-Thouls on the first try by being cautious. St. Fire was only used when I was confident he had plenty of health to absorb the counter attack. He had to have enough hit points such that he was unlikely to be killed by Gizan before Raja could heal himself. I made sure to spread Raja's physical attacks out evenly so the trio would die about the same time.

After the fight Raja healed up on the panel behind them then Escapiped back to the entrance.

That brought Raja to the Air Castle's master, Lashiec, and the reason he had brought a Flamesword with him. Lashiec is vulnerable to factor 3 and the Flamesword casts a weak version of Flaeli when used in battle. It has infinite charges and did more damage then attacking. I could have swapped to two shields for the fight but I didn't think of it until afterwards. Oh well. A Psy Shield would have helped against Lashiec's Possession but Raja did fine without it.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=barHLasn4fQ

Here's the video of the fight and below are a couple highlights.

When Lashiec's health drops to a quarter of his maximum 6383 he uses Reinforce to give himself a significant stat boost. It can be removed by the Psycho Wand. I was worried that Raja could be killed by a Reinforced Another Gate in the round he uses the Psycho Wand. I wasn't sure if Reinforce was used at 50% or 25% health so I made sure to keep his health high at all times for the middle part of the battle. Lashiec did get just such a boosted attack but it didn't deal enough damage.

With Lashiec one Flaeli away from a second death he used Possession and the sleep affect took hold! Raja then slept for three full rounds. Fortunately Lashiec wasted them on three Thunder Halberts which were harmless with Blessing up. (Thunder Halbert is a factor 7 attack with zero base power that is resisted by defense power and hits the entire opposing side using the user's, in this case Lashiec's, attack power as its damage modifier. It is essentially Lashiec's physical attack.)

Part Two | Index | Part Four

Comments

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

The Zio battle did not look hard, Chaos Sorcerer, I wondered what it would be like with Raja in it, looks easy, The Dark Force fight looked easy enough, the Dezolis Gy pretty easy and the trio easy also, along with Lashiec.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

Yeah Raja did well in this part of the game. High innate magic defense + Blessing + a mountain of self-healing = boss killer.