Game:

Final Fantasy VI (1994)

Duration: 3:51

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3

Another optional dragon to drop, but with a couple people making their debut in combat.

First up...Strago. He's slow as hell, but considering one of his potential equippable espers is Shiva which he can take ELs in for +2 magic per level, he can make up for the slowness with extremely damaging magic and his unique skillset, Lore, allowing him to use some moves that enemies only had access to, provided he saw the move being used at least once and isn't incapacitated in some way.

However, Strago is going for a rather interesting build in this fight. He's the sole person who can equip Odin for a +5 boost to speed, but more importantly, grants him +2 stamina per EL invested into it. Strago hitting 100+ stamina as a result is quite possible and it does provide some interesting benefits. The regen effect scales off of stamina so he can get some real nice heals every time it activates. Goes nicely with his Holy Wind lore, healing everyone for an amount equal to Strago's current hp. Also, stamina helps lower the variance on magic damage, basically letting him tank magic hits better.

The real star though is one of my personal favorite characters in this hack, Shadow. He's quite reliant on his evasion to help him survive otherwise fatal blows at times, but give him a bunch of Phantom ELs (+1 vig & stamina per EL) and he can get extremely scary in the frontlines, especially with a couple personal weapons of his, the Kagenui & Orochi. The latter has a chance to be randomly thrown, similar to weapons like the Rising Sun or Wing Edge, and thusly do much higher damage, especially to flying targets. The former doesn't seem too interesting at first, but it can randomly inflict stop & slow and grants Shadow the ability to hit twice with the Fight command. Since he's wielding two weapons almost all the time, that means he hits four times. Yeah, awesome isn't it?

Shadow will get a chance to show off his unique skillset in a future boss fight, but for now, Silver-D.

Silver-D's element of choice is ice, manifested in skills like Ice 3, Absolute Zero, Blizzard, and Cold Dust (if it connects, freezes the character until either enough time has passed, a fire element skill is used on them, or the skill Sun Bath is used). Very very powerful though and you'll need either high magic defense, shell, or ice resistance/absorption/nullification to weather the storm.

The problem? He's weak to fire AND he's considered a flyer. Dragon, say hello to THREE people who can break your face wide open and kill you in record time. All this on a boss who has ~120k hp to boot as well!

Boss drops a nice reward in the form of a Snow Muffler. Very nice defenses, nulls ice & wind, and boosts max health by 25%. This is most likely Gau's best armor considering he would really like that hp boost for himself, but Mog & Gogo can also make use of it along with one other character who hasn't been recruited just yet for my team. The only downside is that it lowers speed by 3. Not too bad though.

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