Secret of Mana Challenges

[Sene]

Oh, neat! I'll be watching these =) Currently also watching Argonmatrix' blind LP, which is fun because it's like playing the game for the first time again, but I guess I can follow along here too.

Also, I realized I never posted another update after I told I got mauled by the Mana Beast. Well, I did manage to beat it on the second attempt, but it was no joke!

Edit: just finished watching the third episode. Those werewolves were painful, huh...

[Kassidy]

Yeah, they certainly were that.
My latest sticking point was Vampire. He was a paaaaaaaaain.

[Sene]

Just wait until the Gold Tower bosses. Those are tough.

The hardest ones in the entire challenge are probably Hydra and Dragon Viper. Thought Fire Gias was hard? Heh heh.

[Kassidy]

Oh dear, yes, that is going to be brutal...

It's certainly challenging. Vampire was just REALLY making me sour about life though compared to the lead up to him.

[Sene]

It's rather entertaining to see you get absolutely mauled by the bosses, but win by essentially the last point of life over and over (like Spring Beak. Good lord. And Jabberwocky). I mean, it's not supposed to be impossible, it's just really difficult, therefore intense, and therefore interesting.

[Sene]

It's certainly challenging. Vampire was just REALLY making me sour about life though compared to the lead up to him.

I think you were too passive against Vampire. You had a lot of missed opportunities to hit him, I assume because you wanted your main character to avoid his spells, but I don't think that was a good strategy. When I faced Vampire, I was much more aggressive, and I didn't have much problem with him.

[Kassidy]

Yeah, I think I was missing something on that fight. I think another problem was the wrong weapons set for the secondary characters, their hits weren't connecting at all. Looking at the video again I see what you mean about not being aggressive enough. Lessons learned the hard way, うはwwwwww.

Oh and also I need to improve switching out characters when the one I'm controlling is down instead of waiting around. I do it sometimes, but nowhere near as often as I should.

[Kassidy]

You know you were saying about those Gold Tower bosses... well I'm fighting them now... I'm not impressed. Two consecutive Lvl 8 Earthslides from Gorgon Bull across all three characters in pretty much a party insta-death. I'm very close to rage quitting for the night before I go off to do some more bloody grinding.

Sadness.

Blue Spike actually wasn't TOO bad the second time round, and I did remember to go out of the tower and save before I tried tackling Gorgon Bull, so you can be proud of me from that perspective at least. I am learning! ;p

Sadly Gorgon is kicking my arse right now... This may take me a while. Actually got him in a loop of attacking one character while the other attacked from behind, and it was working, until he decided that was enough of that and broke the loop. For a second I thought I was going to be able to get away with it too, he got to the point of pulling out his spiked hands. Oh well... The saga continues.

[Sene]

Yeah, Gorgon Bull is very hard. And you definitely can't run away from him - I think that his AI is set up so that when you go too far away from him, he starts casting Earth Slide. And since it's in our best interest to have him not cast Earth Slide, it's better to stay somewhat close to him, and heal whenever a character's health becomes lower than 400.

With other words, all the friggin time.

[Kassidy]

Yeah, that's what I had to do in the end. You're right on the AI triggering earth-slide if you move away, or at least that's the experience I had also. Was just a case of running circles around him and having him hit other characters hopefully, and healing at every hit.

I was about to ragequit last night trying that, but someone joined the livestream and I felt obligated to continue for another try. Luckily, that attempt was successful.

[Sene]

Ahhh, spoilers! (hadn't seen that part yet)

Remember that Lucid Barrier is allowed, and should be pretty useful for the test of true courage (or something, don't recall what it's officially called).

And man, just wait until Hydra. That boss is so insanely difficult.

[Kassidy]

Whoops, sorry!
Yeah, Lucid Barrier is going to get abused. I also take it that the use of saber magic is allowed (I mean, I had to in the case of Frost Gigas' fight since otherwise any hits would heal him), even though from what I could tell in one fight it doesn't actually help one iota.

[Sene]

Haha, no worries.

And in Secret of Mana, hitting enemies/bosses resistant to a type doesn't heal them, it just deals less damage. It's in Seiken Densetsu 3 (and possibly later installments, though I haven't played them so I don't know) that hitting earth enemies with stone saber and so on heals them.

Also I don't recommend using Energy Absorb on Beast Zombies like you did. They'll actually steal health from you, not the other way around - which is true for all undead enemies. Though when you did it, you cast Cure Water on yourself at the same time, so you weren't damaged.

[Kassidy]

Yeah, I learn the hard way at times.

Latest episodes are progressing nicely. Ish. Sorta. ARGH.
I also included at the end of the latest episode, after a failed boss battle, a quick "see, this is how easy it would be with magic spam". The difference is insane. I'd forgotten just how cheesy offensive magic is.

[Dr. Sheexy]

Dang I forget where I left off on these videos. Need to start watching them again. The main page hasn't caught up to where I got to yet. I was trying to comment on each one if I could. They're great fun to watch!