10th April 2005, 4:28 PM
Yeah, isn't it weird how he can like... do that... over and over again?
The funny thing is, I was under the impression that this world was totally ficitional, and not exactly "Earth". It does however look totally awesome to see him just sitting there letting the solar explosion engulf him to get to us.
Final Fantasy 6, SECRET TIME EXPLOSIVO!
Ultima, you must know there is an alternate way, so I will tell thee!
You can learn Ultima from the Ragnarok Esper, this we all know. However, you can ALSO learn certain spells from equipment. For example, most of the imp equipment teaches the "imp" spell. What teaches Ultima? The Paladin Shield, that's what.
So, where do you get that shield? Well, in later half of the game, return to Narshe. There, all the doors will be locked tight, so you better bring a thief. Get that guy to unlock all the doors and explore the buildings until you find an old man (or 5, I dunno, there's a lot of people hiding in that ghost town). One of them will give you the "cursed shield". This is a TERRIBLE item that has negative stats and, during battle, afflicts you with most of the negative status effects in the game. If, however, you fight with it equipped for 255 battles, it will uncurse.
Here's all the little things you should know about uncursing.
1. If you equip the ribbon, you will negate almost all the status effects, making it a lot easier to uncurse it. You don't NEED the ribbon for it to work though. I learned that from testing it myself.
2. The only thing the ribbon won't remove is the "countdown to doom" status effect, which a safety bit won't remove either, so basically just make sure the battles are over quickly. Since the counter is pretty high, about a minute or so, that shouldn't be a problem.
3. Yes, you can unequip it and the battles will be saved. No problem, so if you have a tough boss battle ahead and you want yourself at full power, go ahead and remove it for that battle.
4. No, you can't equip it to another character. Apparently the code is set up so that each individual character has their own "uncurse battles" counter, so if you take it off of Terra and put it on Celes, it's her battle counter that will raise, not Terra's, so if she hasn't fought with the paladin shield at all, that's a 0 battle counter right there. Try and keep it on the same character the whole time.
5. 255 is a lot, it does take a while, but there's a pretty easy way to make it not boring. Basically, get it early on in the second half of the game, equip it, and go through the rest of the game with the shield equipped. By the time you reach the final location of the game, you should have uncursed it.
6. Yes, the game tells you when it is uncursed. A big message will appear at the end of a battle saying "Curse dispelled" or something like that.
The Paladin shield is awesome. It's the most powerful shield in the game in fact. It skyrockets almost all your stats, so say yay. Also, as I said, it teaches ultima, but only at a rate of x1. If you have both ragnarok and the shield, you can "stack" the effects to learn at x2, but it's not really worth it in my opinion considering you lose the raganarok sword.
Alright, let me teach you a few other things about this game.
The physical evade stat is glitched. It is glitched in EVERY version of the game. The glitch is, the physical evade stat is not used. Basically, when they were coding the formula for determining battle damage, when they got to the part where evasion is determined for physical stats, they accidently used the magical evade variable there instead of the physical evade variable. So, your magical evasion determines the chances of evading physical attacks too. Really, as far as the actual coding goes, it was an easy mistake to make, and if they still have the source code, most likely a VERY easy mistake that will take all of 30 seconds to fix, but it's there, and the debug team must not have noticed it. Heck, most players don't notice it.
This means a few things. One, any equipment designed to boost your physical evade stat specifically, are worthless. If it's an "overall" evade effect that is special and ignores stats, fine, if it's magical, fine, but if it directly boosts the physical evasion stat, you won't notice a thing. I forget if there's any equipment that ONLY does that, but all I'm saying is if you want evasion, don't bother raising the physical evasion stat.
This also means that the "blind" status effect has no effect on you whatsoever. Attack away, because enemies work the same way. You probably noticed you hit most of the time even when blinded anyway :D. That's what got people looking into the code regarding this to begin with.
Um, what else... Oh yes, you give up Polymorph if you give up the ragnarok esper. That changes enemies into items. Every enemy can be classified into a certain morph "catagory". Each catagory includes 4 items, with no weighting so it's 1/4 for each item in the catagory. Some enemies can be morphed into some pretty rare items. This allows you to get multiple copies of items that are normally just one time only affairs. Not EVERY item in the game can be morphed though, so the list of really rare items you can get from this is small. Oh yes, this is only for getting multiple copies. If that's not as important to you as having at least one of everything, then I don't recommend this skill.
The esper lets you get cursed rings by the way, something you can ONLY otherwise get if you trade in a cursed shield at the colloseum. Since there is only ONE cursed shield, and trading it in means you can't ever get the paladin shield, then forget that.
The cursed ring's curse can't be broken, ever. It's just a terrible item overall that has no pot at the end of the blood soaked rainbow. The only good thing about it is that it teaches the spell "x-zone" at a rate of x5. That's all well and good except that you can learn X-zone via another esper, one that you can get without giving up anything. So, in other words, the cursed ring is NOT worth giving up either the paladin shield or the ragnarok sword.
The ragnarok sword can be upgraded to the illumina sword at the colloseum. That sword is actually better than the ragnarok in every catagory. If you get the ragnarok, it's really only so you can take it straight to the colloseum and upgrade it, but that's still the only way to get that sword.
Okay, that's not ENTIRELY true. A thief can steal a ragnarok sword (and another atma weapon) from one of the parts of Kefka's giant monument of infinite doom in the final battle. Since it IS the final battle, it's beyond the point of being able to even save, much less get out of the tower, so it's sort of just there so you can equip it during the battle (via the item menu). Still, I'd rather have it earlier on where I can actually use it somewheres else.
Lastly, the ragnarok esper doesn't give you any sort of permanent stat bonus at level up that another esper doesn't have.
Anyway, point is, get the ragnarok sword, not the esper. The creature is dead anyway, it's not like forging it's crystalized remains into a weapon is cruel or anything.
The funny thing is, I was under the impression that this world was totally ficitional, and not exactly "Earth". It does however look totally awesome to see him just sitting there letting the solar explosion engulf him to get to us.
Final Fantasy 6, SECRET TIME EXPLOSIVO!
Ultima, you must know there is an alternate way, so I will tell thee!
You can learn Ultima from the Ragnarok Esper, this we all know. However, you can ALSO learn certain spells from equipment. For example, most of the imp equipment teaches the "imp" spell. What teaches Ultima? The Paladin Shield, that's what.
So, where do you get that shield? Well, in later half of the game, return to Narshe. There, all the doors will be locked tight, so you better bring a thief. Get that guy to unlock all the doors and explore the buildings until you find an old man (or 5, I dunno, there's a lot of people hiding in that ghost town). One of them will give you the "cursed shield". This is a TERRIBLE item that has negative stats and, during battle, afflicts you with most of the negative status effects in the game. If, however, you fight with it equipped for 255 battles, it will uncurse.
Here's all the little things you should know about uncursing.
1. If you equip the ribbon, you will negate almost all the status effects, making it a lot easier to uncurse it. You don't NEED the ribbon for it to work though. I learned that from testing it myself.
2. The only thing the ribbon won't remove is the "countdown to doom" status effect, which a safety bit won't remove either, so basically just make sure the battles are over quickly. Since the counter is pretty high, about a minute or so, that shouldn't be a problem.
3. Yes, you can unequip it and the battles will be saved. No problem, so if you have a tough boss battle ahead and you want yourself at full power, go ahead and remove it for that battle.
4. No, you can't equip it to another character. Apparently the code is set up so that each individual character has their own "uncurse battles" counter, so if you take it off of Terra and put it on Celes, it's her battle counter that will raise, not Terra's, so if she hasn't fought with the paladin shield at all, that's a 0 battle counter right there. Try and keep it on the same character the whole time.
5. 255 is a lot, it does take a while, but there's a pretty easy way to make it not boring. Basically, get it early on in the second half of the game, equip it, and go through the rest of the game with the shield equipped. By the time you reach the final location of the game, you should have uncursed it.
6. Yes, the game tells you when it is uncursed. A big message will appear at the end of a battle saying "Curse dispelled" or something like that.
The Paladin shield is awesome. It's the most powerful shield in the game in fact. It skyrockets almost all your stats, so say yay. Also, as I said, it teaches ultima, but only at a rate of x1. If you have both ragnarok and the shield, you can "stack" the effects to learn at x2, but it's not really worth it in my opinion considering you lose the raganarok sword.
Alright, let me teach you a few other things about this game.
The physical evade stat is glitched. It is glitched in EVERY version of the game. The glitch is, the physical evade stat is not used. Basically, when they were coding the formula for determining battle damage, when they got to the part where evasion is determined for physical stats, they accidently used the magical evade variable there instead of the physical evade variable. So, your magical evasion determines the chances of evading physical attacks too. Really, as far as the actual coding goes, it was an easy mistake to make, and if they still have the source code, most likely a VERY easy mistake that will take all of 30 seconds to fix, but it's there, and the debug team must not have noticed it. Heck, most players don't notice it.
This means a few things. One, any equipment designed to boost your physical evade stat specifically, are worthless. If it's an "overall" evade effect that is special and ignores stats, fine, if it's magical, fine, but if it directly boosts the physical evasion stat, you won't notice a thing. I forget if there's any equipment that ONLY does that, but all I'm saying is if you want evasion, don't bother raising the physical evasion stat.
This also means that the "blind" status effect has no effect on you whatsoever. Attack away, because enemies work the same way. You probably noticed you hit most of the time even when blinded anyway :D. That's what got people looking into the code regarding this to begin with.
Um, what else... Oh yes, you give up Polymorph if you give up the ragnarok esper. That changes enemies into items. Every enemy can be classified into a certain morph "catagory". Each catagory includes 4 items, with no weighting so it's 1/4 for each item in the catagory. Some enemies can be morphed into some pretty rare items. This allows you to get multiple copies of items that are normally just one time only affairs. Not EVERY item in the game can be morphed though, so the list of really rare items you can get from this is small. Oh yes, this is only for getting multiple copies. If that's not as important to you as having at least one of everything, then I don't recommend this skill.
The esper lets you get cursed rings by the way, something you can ONLY otherwise get if you trade in a cursed shield at the colloseum. Since there is only ONE cursed shield, and trading it in means you can't ever get the paladin shield, then forget that.
The cursed ring's curse can't be broken, ever. It's just a terrible item overall that has no pot at the end of the blood soaked rainbow. The only good thing about it is that it teaches the spell "x-zone" at a rate of x5. That's all well and good except that you can learn X-zone via another esper, one that you can get without giving up anything. So, in other words, the cursed ring is NOT worth giving up either the paladin shield or the ragnarok sword.
The ragnarok sword can be upgraded to the illumina sword at the colloseum. That sword is actually better than the ragnarok in every catagory. If you get the ragnarok, it's really only so you can take it straight to the colloseum and upgrade it, but that's still the only way to get that sword.
Okay, that's not ENTIRELY true. A thief can steal a ragnarok sword (and another atma weapon) from one of the parts of Kefka's giant monument of infinite doom in the final battle. Since it IS the final battle, it's beyond the point of being able to even save, much less get out of the tower, so it's sort of just there so you can equip it during the battle (via the item menu). Still, I'd rather have it earlier on where I can actually use it somewheres else.
Lastly, the ragnarok esper doesn't give you any sort of permanent stat bonus at level up that another esper doesn't have.
Anyway, point is, get the ragnarok sword, not the esper. The creature is dead anyway, it's not like forging it's crystalized remains into a weapon is cruel or anything.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)