Game Diaries – Final Fantasy VII New Threat Arrange Episode XXII

If you don’t know what my Diaries are, please go here. Spoilers ahoy!

Otherwise, let’s go!

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Two words I never want to read again:

Chocobo Male.

The Internet is a great resource, but there’s also a lot of old and/or misinformation out there. I remember some of the requirements for breeding (steal nuts from those dinosaur things near Bone Village and goblins on Goblin Island, wonderful chocobos only in the Icicle Inn area, etc.) but I still followed a guide. While I always thought you needed two pairs of parents to get the blue and green chocobos, I didn’t know you could do it with the same. I got a green male right away, but I could not get a frickin female if my life depended on it. Yes, I read all up on RNG freezing, but despite what some of them say, the only thing that changed was entering and exiting the farm. So save, enter and breed, not the right combo, reload, enter, exit, enter and breed, if not, reload, etc. The correct combo for me was exiting four times and on the fifth reentry, I got my blue female.

But before I started breeding, I got the Key to Sector 5. The item shop machine is still broken, but I did buy the Sneak Glove. I thought I was being pretty stingy with my money, but I was flat broke after buying this! Since I had already started catching chocobos, I had to grind for money at Mideel. 10,000 gil a fight with good AP plus a guaranteed Typhoon Ring (halves Water/Wind) for another 5,000 gil. So I ended up with a lot of Mastered and/or high level Materia.

So, my chocobo names:

Blue female: Aoi
Green male: ChocoG (was supposed to be Midori)
Black female: Shiori (because the mods I chose made the black look white on the field)
Gold female: Kana (because I didn’t like the name Kin)

Picked up some GP from racing (eventually for the Battle Square), and I got a nice package of like all the racing items from Ester for winning a number of races.

I wonder if the Kalm Traveler still gives a Gold Chocobo…? Or Master Materia?

Now that I have Kana, I had a choice: move on with the story or gather the Materia in the caves? On one hand, getting them means I’ll be overleveled for Junon and Midgar, but on the other, it’s more interesting since I don’t have Double Cut, Hades, or any Level 4 limits. Ultimately, since I’ve never done chocobo breeding on disc 2 before, I decided to do something new after all these years.

So, since I was near Corel anyway, I decided to go to that cave first. I expected a fight, but not like this:

Added Effect-Manipulate in the armor doesn’t seem to block Manipulate. That meant I had two accessories that prevented Manipulate, but one was always going to be susceptible. Those Cactuar Guns come fast. Tifa wasn’t a great choice for this fight, as the Kaktuar, like its cousins, have high evasion. A couple of battles in, I discovered they had another attack that was based on the time on the in-game clock. That meant an instant KO. (I spend a butt load of time in menus. Seriously, I have a file that is over an hour long just me rearranging my Materia.)

Not too bad though. Speed: 2x

So, which one should I go next. Well, how about Wutai? I decided to try something a little different. Tifa up with a bunch of Counter Attack Materia and Cover. She has less VIT, but with her high STR, she can go to town when she gets hit.

“Oh, this is Mime. I bet there’s going to be something to do with attacks like the party has or —”

“A bunch of Tonberry clones?!?!”

Speed: 2x

Yes, this fight is Status Effects R Us. They will counter everything, and they can get Wall from walking around.

Here’s the real tricky part that took me several battles to discover: they will inflict Resist on you. This means that any status effects you have are locked-in while you have Resist on. Resist does not show up on the status screens, and it must be removed by Dispel. So when they stab you, you first must cast Dispel before Esuna.

Ideally, for this fight, you would have Dispel and Esuna for everyone, but I only had two Destruct Materia. I thought about taking them on one by one, but it was just too slow. That meant I had to get hit six times for every Ultima/summon, and high chances of getting hit with Stop and Sleep. Plus, damage is fixed for the Goldberries, so that meant about 1,000 damage flat, and they can also shave off 200 MP.

Nasty, nasty, nasty!

I realized the only way I could do this fight was to use Aerith’s Planet Protector and hope to minimize the opening onslaught. I didn’t even know if was possible right now. Mideel is a good go-to place to get Limits quickly, and since I was there anyway, why not swing by that cave and see if I could do any better?

I’ll save those adventures for next time.

KO KOunter: 55