FFVIA LLNSNI Part VII: Flame Eater
16Second boss in the challenge, after Narshe Kefka, that turned out to be much harder than I'd expected.
I can remember disposing of Flame Eater very easily in practically every challenge I faced him in, but this time the tools that would make it easy were all unavailable.
Tossing Ice Rods? No sir, no items. Morph Terra? Uh-uh. No specials. Flame Shields to protect from fire-elemental magic, including the unreflectable Fireball? Nope, can't make use of Setzer's Slot command here. And on top of that, we can't use items to restore health.
The latter makes things even worse seeing how Reflect is needed to be safe from the Fire/a/aga spells constantly cast on us, Locke being the only character able to recover health by attacking with the Blood Sword on his hand. Espers can heal the party, of course, but the use is one-time only and there are other things we need more in this battle.
Strago, whom I nicknamed in a manner that still doesn't make sense to me, joins the party with no knowledge of magic and he can't use Lores or Items either. It's an idiotic idea to make him an attacker but it's the best we can do. He is given an Ice Rod and attacks from the front row, dealing decent damage every time the Blizzara spell kicks in, which doesn't happen all that often.
Silencing the bombs with Siren is a must, as we don't want them to blow up, as is increasing evasion and magic defence with Golem and Zona Seeker. If Fire Ball is cast, it is very well possible to survive it with critical health after ZS has been summoned.
Our way of attacking is casting Blizzara with Locke and Terra (who has a Gold Hairpin in order to be less reliant on Osmose) and attacking with Strago physically. When damaged 6 times, the boss will set up Protect and Reflect and you can say goodbye to your chances to win if you forget about it and happen to be casting a spell when he does that. Terra knows Dispel, so that is used.
Once Golem no longer aids us, we're fucked. The boss needs to be killed ASAP. This battle should give a good idea what it's like to be in a long battle with no easily accessible healing possibilities.
I have a really bad feeling for the next boss... So much HP and we're not allowed to use Sketch either.