FF12 TZA - Low Level Mandatory Battles Only Part 2: Dreadnought Leviathan

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MoogleBoss

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Published on July 17, 2020 5:37:19 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI-MMEbHwoo

Game:

Final Fantasy XII (2006)

Duration: 6:04

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In this video: the 2 Judge battle, Judge Magister Ghis.

By now, I have immensely enjoyed the freedom to reset a character's license board and start anew. About to start farming Quality Hides from Werewolves in Giza for a couple dozen thousand Gil? Give everybody light armour licenses for the best bulk. Want to farm Meteorites for future fights? Unlock the Diamond Armlet license and run around with it for a while, then reset everything again. The game keeps giving us new challenges, new resources, and the gradually increasing LP from mandatory fights makes the constant re-arrangement of LP important and perhaps central to the whole run and its complexity. It's as liberating as it is demanding to make the most out of it for each battle.

Dreadnought Leviathan is the next area that we can't return to the main world (Dalmasca et al.) until we escape captivity, beating the storyline bosses there. Vossler's present as a guest for the first fight and has superior stats compared to the permanent party members at this point. He has access to many hard-to-get techniques, including Traveler, meaning that, with enough patience, you could land a 9K+ damage nuke on an enemy of your choice. No point in that, though.

I was mildly apprehensive before the 2 Judge fight, considering there are 4 additional enemies supporting the judges. Mandatory Battles Only can be interpreted in different ways in FF12, but the way I understand my own challenge's rules (and in the end that's the only thing that matters) all optional enemies are left undefeated, even if we may steal from them and then escape. In vanilla FF12, or a Zodiac Age run where you do hunts, you have some Warp Motes available to you, and these can be employed to eliminate the four optional enemies out of the way, leaving just the judges. In TZA, Warp Motes aren't farmable until later into the storyline, so we have to cope with the four mooks contributing chip damage.

My plan was to have Fran function as a user of Slow/Immobilize again, this time as Red Battlemage, stunning the enemies and rendering them unable to move, then baiting the judges to a different part of the map. Fran is fragile and has terrible luck getting Immobilize to connect, it turns out, so in the end I did everything raw - target the judges and take the punishment. It's not that bad with lv. 2 gear playing at the slowest battle speed - attacks will be charged slowly while potions go off instantly (as do enemy skills like Lunge, so having safer healing matters).

My all-male strategy involves Shikari Vaan, Machinist Balthier and White Mage Basch (!). Vaan gets light armour 3 and Assassin's Dagger licenses, landing a lot of attack and getting a ton of enemy hate - because of how many hits he lands with daggers being a fast weapon type, foes will target him more, and light armour helps him tank the hits best. Everybody but Vossler has their Gambits set to heal whenever a threat is even close. Balthier had just got accumulated enough LP to learn his 2nd gun license, and that's all he can use LP on for now. Vega lets him shoot for over 200 damage, which would be great if he still weren't the slowest gun user. Basch's job choice seems zany, but somebody needs to apply Protect on everybody before this battle, and Basch is the only one with enough LP to do so.

Defensively, I use a Reflectga Mote on the party to neutralise the imperial magus (probably the most dangerous enemy here) and inflict Sap on the Judges with Meteorite (A) - by the time one Judge is defeated, the other one has had much of his health sapped.

Next up, we face Ghis, one of Emperor's Judge Magisters. Before this, Ashe and Penelo join permanently and the extent to which they beat the first four party members in starting LP is absurd. When Fran has, what, 50 LP right now, Penelo gets 172 to work with? It's pretty clear that the characters are NOT equal, but time should even them out, especially seeing how Golden Amulets become a thing soon.

There's lots we could do with 150/170+ LP the new girls have. However, Ashe's primary role is to use her superior magic power to inflict Immobilize reliably on the 3 swordsmen supporting Ghis. Penelo can do whatever, so I have some fun. She opts for Foebreaker, wielding an axe and Steel Gorget (Adrenaline available via accessory / 2x damage in critical HP), to deal randomized damage to the boss. If she combos in critical HP, her chain attack count is expected to be really high.

What ends up happening is Penelo unleashes a 10-hit combo on Ghis, basically depleting his entire HP bar. Things happen extremely fast in this game, and I even interrupt Ghis's Aero with a Reflectga Mote (farmed in this very dungeon for much of the rest of the game)... all while Penelo is delivering her 10 attacks. She procs some respectable damage each time, too. Simply stunning.

After Ghis, we get to enjoy free travel once more. Poach becomes available, which means it's time to hunt some Loot! Yay!

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