Monday 15 January, 2007

TRICKSTER HUNT IS POSIBLE!

I started my first 3-hour session with a positive outlook as I have now vanquished three level 5 monsters and was ready for the next one the Trickster. It took me half an hour of searching for the trickster until I figured out how to get him to come out and I will not spoil trying to do this for others. Once I started fighting the Trickster, I used my usual strategy of having Vaan equipped with reflect armor and my mage that has an equipped item to pass through reflect spells constantly cast decoy/reverse. I took trickster to less than a quarter HP and than the nightmare began. If I have ever felt like your enemy was invincible, it was than. It was immune to all physical damage most spells heal it instead of damage it and once you finally figure out what can hurt it, the Trickster changes it weaknesses. To add to this it is also doing an attack that drops huge rocks on my whole team. Though my tank is healed by this because it has reverse on it, it forces my mages to have to heal each other and as they heal each other, they cannot continue to cast reverse and decoy on Vaan nor try spells to figure out weaknesses of the Trickster. Quickenings are useless against it for they are considered physical damage. After an hour and a half, I died thrice and tried again but with a different strategy. This time I tried to use my Espers, which failed badly as even though one of them took Trickster down to a quarter of it health once Trickster became immune to physical attacks my Espers healed it to almost half-life. I restarted at crystal. This time I planned to try to take it down with quickenings it failed. I took it down to 1/10 of his health and it went immune. I continued to attempt to take it down in this way. It took about five tries, but on the fifth try, I managed to land a 16 quickenings 32465 HP attacks that killed it before it could go immune.
It is a very interesting idea that FFXII is trying to toy with, a unit that is immune to most spells, all physical damage and changes weaknesses. It seems as if the only way to kill it is get lucky, figure out what spell is not going to heal it quickly, and have all your characters cast that type of spell many times before it changes weakness. I do not believe that the makers expected someone to manage to kill it the way that I did with an insanely strong quickening that took it down a third of its life point. This side quest was way too hard to finish as far as I am concerned. When my 13 quickenings in a row took, it down to critical HP and it went immune and with Critical HP, it still managed to not die but heal as I was trying different magic spells to try to harm it. It made me want to quit this side quest and just go to fight some monster that actually can be killed. I think that if the Trickster was immune to Physical damage I should at least know what spell can hurt it I think that as a creator they should not make someone too powerful. If such a creature exists on a side quest, the player will usually quit that side quest, if it is part of a main story tale they may quit the game. This happened to me when I was playing finial fantasy X and Sin was simply too powerful so I had to quit the game and I consider that a very bad thing. Maybe making the Trickster with just a physical immunity and an immunity to spells is fine, but having it change weaknesses is simply too much for it means that you must constantly try to figure out what is its weaknesses are.

I haven't played FFXII, so I don't know anything about how hard Trickster is, but I find enemies changing weaknesses to be interesting at times. The one example I'm thinking of is fighting Magus, and to some extent Lavos, in Chrono Trigger. The change of vulnerability there was most likely more overt, but I just wanted to throw my two cents in on the varying vulnerability thing.

like i stated i thought that the Idea was interesting but it completly overpowered the creature when it combined weakness changes with phyisical damage immunity and it changes weaknesses wich makes you have to continue using your spells to heal it until you find what spell type doesn't heal it just to have it change weaknesses again.

When I was fighting him, I ended up doing the same thing with the quickenings reducing him down to HP critical, but I never casted magic on him so I didn't even know about the fact that he changed weakness. If you managed to survive long enough, Paling, the ability he casts that makes him immune to physical attacks falls, he recasts it, but I just swapped in another character and rechained quickening with a few mist charges to my people who were out of mana killing him before he use Paling again.