Phantasy Star 4 Raja Solo (part 4)

[ladyabaxa]

With the Air Castle out of the way Raja gained the Eclipse Torch, access to the Garuberk Tower, and a date with another wall in his solo quest.

That didn't mean he would stop dying all the time. Heck no! The Garuberk Tower would deliver a whole lot of that from the paralyzing ghouls to all the various things that could easily stomp on Raja if they ambushed him.

Like, for example, 4x Frostsaber formations. The screenshot above is a perfect illustration. Raja was ambushed by just such a formation and by the time he got to input a command he had gone from full health to five hit points left. Any action other then immediately running away would be instant death. Fortunately PS4 is one of those games that makes an escape check as soon as it is picked in the first command menu. Raja fled for his life and carried on.

By contrast here's an enemy in Garuberk Tower I don't usually pay much attention to. The figure on the left is a Radhin. They are casters, packing Shift, Deban, and Saner as well as Gisar, Seals and Forceflash. I usually just run away when they appear because their combination of buffs and group heals makes them difficult for most solo characters to kill. For Raja the opposite was true. Their buffs were dangerous (particularly Shift) but only because of any allies in the formation with them. They could be easily killed one by one via Holyword or they and their whole group could be wiped out in one St. Fire. Forceflash hasn't been a threat since ever (oh noes not another weak group attack that is resisted by magic defense, whatever shall Raja do... besides laugh his ass off?!)

Eventually Raja made it up to Dark Force 2. He didn't fare so well against Shadow Breath but I was expecting a grind for hit points. Said grinding involved staying on the second floor (there are 3x and 4x Ghoul formations that are common on the first floor that he wanted to avoid) using the Flamesword from behind dual wielded shields with Holyword and St. Fire sprinkled in as necessary.

At level 55 Raja hit the cap for Mental and it was satisfying see it overcap to 104 with all his gear. He still couldn't quite weather Shadow Breath with enough health left over to endure Light Shower so I ground on. At level 57 he broke 250 hp and had 10 St. Fires. I decided it was time to attack.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UabNG5kymEk

There's the video of the whole fight. DF2 has 7524 hit points and Raja was forced to use two shields to handle Shadow Breath so most of that damage had to come from item sources. In hindsight using the Tornado Dagger would have been slightly better then using the Flame Sword. Flaeli checks against magic defense (here 25) while the Tornado Dagger's Hewn checks against physical defense (here 15). (Note: the actual Hewn skill checks against magic defense.) The difference ultimately doesn't amount to much. In the end it took all 10 St. Fires and 42 Flamesword Flaeli's to put the giant spider crab out of commission.

Raja had little chance of running out of tech points for he had his secret weapon, Ataraxia, on hand. Ataraxia restores the party's tech points by an amount equal to Raja's Mental stat run through a slight randomizer. Knowing from experience how fast Nares can drain any character's tech points I was aggressive about keeping Raja at 200+ TP throughout the entire fight.

Dark Force 2 was simply unable to force Raja to burn that veritable mountain of tech points.

Afterwards it was time to open Vahal Fort. Usually this is easy since there's no actual boss at the end but the 3x Dominator battle that sort of replaces a boss encounter nearly killed Raja anyway. In the screenshot above it is the first round of battle and Raja was hit by a normal critical attack for the 161 damage shown. He won on the first try but just barely.

He also had quite a lot of trouble getting that far. It turns out he didn't have enough Agility to run away from Life Deleters and would just get a string of 'Can't Escape!' before they would inevitably hit him with a Stasis Ball. Raja had to equip two shields and use the Swift Helm for its Ner effect just to run away.

Raja defeated DF3 on the first try at level 57 (putting him at level 58) using 2xPsyShields. There was a rocky start due to me playing the battle early in the morning while still half-asleep but Raja was in no real danger. After seeing Mind Blast fail, which would put Raja to sleep and reset the Agility loss imposed by Shadowbind, I started using the Swift Helm to counteract the Agility loss directly.

As with Dark Force 2, St. Fire drained around half the boss's life. I've merged two screenshots together to produce the composite above so that the skill name and damage printout are seen together.

Blessing was vital for this fight. Without it Raja would have had to grind even more for the hit points to endure all those physical hits and Corrosions. With Blessing they hurt but were manageable.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYQQ0yQih_U

Raja then tackled the Strength Tower at 58. Besides the obligatory deaths to ambushes it was a simple matter of sprinting around collecting treasure and challenging the boss at the top.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1bK4I_hqA

De Vars doesn't get a screenshot because there's really not much to say about the fight with zir. De Vars is a purely physical fighter who responds to magical attacks by hitting the entire player party with Disrupt Arm. Zie is immune to factor 13 attacks so St. Fire was off the table. Instead Raja equipped the Guard Rod he had picked up on the planet and with a few buffs engaged in a slugging match healing as needed.

Next was the Courage Tower. The boss at the top of the Courage Tower is De Vars's opposite and uses all magical attacks. Oh, this will be fairly easy I say to myself. Raja has great magic defense!

Wait, Sa Lews just hit Raja for 274 damage which is more then his maximum life total. Oh, that's right, zie has Flaeli. Well, fuck.

So I sat and thought about the situation for some time. Raja's hit the Mental cap so leveling won't improve his magic defense. Sa Lews is programmed to counterattack physical attacks by casting Legeon but all of Raja's weapons are 2-handers. The loss of magic defense from not having two shields quickly proved to be too much compared to Sa Lews's beastly Mental of 178. All it took was one decent damage roll on Flaeli and Raja was straight up dead and that was without considering the storm of Hewn and Tandle spells Sa Lews would also be throwing out.

I poured over Raja's equipment setup to see how he could maximize his magic defense and realized I had forgotten to get him a Laconian Circlet. Where were those sold again? Oh, yeah, Reshel which I always forget about because the shop doesn't appear until after the Garuberk Tower is destroyed and Palmans start rebuilding the town. So I ran to Reshel to buy a Laconian Circlet, finally upgrading from his Silver Circlet. It wasn't much - 1 mental and 2 magic defense up from the Silver Circlet but every point would help. He combined that with a Guard Robe to upgrade from his Reflect Robe. At level 61 Raja tried again... and thoroughly got his ass kicked.

Here are Sa Lews's stats:

5499 hit points, 40 Strength (useless as Sa Lews will never attack), 178 Mental, 42 Agility, 52 Dexterity (also useless except for evasion), 240 attack power, 0 defense, 0 magic defense, immune to all factors except 2, 5, 6, and 7.

Raja needed to grind for what would probably be a long stretch. The best place to do that would be Vahal Fort where his special abilities were useless. However he could use a Thunderclaw to cast a weak single-target Tandle that all the machines inside were vulnerable to. It would take two to three such Tandles, at best, per enemy, per formation.

I cried uncle. Raja needed macros if I was going to do this without succumbing to boredom or my flaring arthritis.

So I put Chaz into the party, set up three macros - one for Blessing, one for the Thunderclaw, and a third for the Tornado Dagger. Then I got into one random encounter outside the fort to kill Chaz.

Despite dying for the team Chaz still managed to level up due to underflow bugs. Oh well Demi and Wren have been gaining experience ever since Zio killed them thanks to the same bug but none of them are ever going to put those levels to use so, whatever.

At level 80 Raja returned to challenge Sa Lews again. I opted to swap his Psy Shields for two Laser Barriers. The difference between them would barely be noticeable. Each Psy Shield gives +1 Mental and 10 magic defense while each Laser Barrier has no stat bonus but 12 magic defense. However, with how perilous things would be the overall increase of magic defense by two points was welcome.

The battle started with Raja using the Swift Helm to make sure he would go first every round for a stable turn order. It didn't take long for Sa Lews to demonstrate just why Raja needed to grind out 22 levels for hit points by busting out a 295 damage Flaeli. Yup, zie can kill Raja at pretty much any time. Obviously such a high damage roll is possible but is it likely? The answer to that is a solid 'no'. The damage on that Flaeli is highly variable but by healing aggressively and playing the averages Raja can win... with a little luck.

As for offense Raja's only real option was to use the Thunderclaw. I posted Sa Lews's stats earlier and the key point here are the resistance factors. Sa Lews will only take 1 damage from the Tornado Dagger's Hewn (factor 1 resistance is zero), the Flame Sword's Flaeli (factor 3 resistance is zero), and St. Fire (factor 13 resistance is zero). St. Fire and Efess share the same resistance type which is different from most of the anti-evil abilities in the game. Sa Lews and De Vars are one of the few times in the game this difference becomes important.

Raja will have to Thunderclaw Tandle zir 55 times to slowly chew through that 5499 health value.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3dBSAuyf04

There were several points where I opted to attack when Raja was below 240 hit points but by that point in the fight I hadn't seen many high damage rolls on Flaeli and it seemed better to play a little risky and try to shorten the fight.

I wasn't expecting to win. Sa Lews died, I blinked, and almost jumped up to dance a victory jig. Raja had to work damn hard for that 35k exp award.

Part Three | Index | Part Five

Comments

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

Wow, Sa-Lews looked depressing, 295 damage! I am in the Edge on a normal game, and My Raja is not at level 80, around level 50, and Sa-Lews has a Flaeli that can kill him in a hit, and a Gi-Le-Farg's Flaeli only did 88 damage, while a Imagio Mage only did 108, possibly Sa-Lews has a better attack ?
Also, I think 295 damage is the most damage I've seen a character take In Phantasy Star 4 (I do not count hell-mode or purgatory damage shown in Video's, I am sure a solo would be impossible).If he was at Level 1, Image the damage a Flaeli would do ... 350 maybe ? Level 1 in hell or purgatory with no equipment, just nothing ..... 400 ?

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly sure how much magic defense from gear Raja had total against Sa Lews but if you add that and his mental that was his total magic defense. Then just add that to that max 295 hit and you'd probably have a maximum possible damage somewhere around 400.

Sa Lews has 178 Mental and Raja takes x3 damage against fire attacks (which is what Flaeli is) which is why it did so much damage.