I've been playing this some more. I'm a bit curious what happens with Vargas if you don't have Blitz by then. I guess you could always kill him the regular way, but that could actually be a pretty serious challenge depending on what your Sabin looks like. As it happened, Edgar had Blitz in my game, so I finished him off without even waiting for Sabin to make an appearance.
So far I've collected a Flash and a Debilitator, but don't have anyone to use Tools. I also have the AutoCrossbow that Edgar sneaks into your inventory. It would be cool if that didn't happen until whomever has the Tools command joins. Not sure if that's practical, though.
I also just had another interesting monster-in-a-box encounter: Siegfried was hiding in a pot in the Returners' hideout. The weak one, fortunately. Even with just Terra, that was a manageable encounter. My Terra has Rage, by the way. She didn't start with anything particularly good. The most useful one is to put her in the front row and use Vector Pup for Haste and the occasional !Bite. Did you divide rages into tiers so that you don't start with anything too powerful, or did I just get unlucky?
At the risk of turning this thread into my own personal Let's Play (feel free to tell me to stfu if you think I'm hijacking it), here are my notes through the return to Narshe. The Sabin scenario was pretty easy, since my Sabin is a mimic with good stats. Shadow has Lore. He started with Pep Up, Roulette, and Step Mine, all of which are utterly useless at this point in the game (and two of which are actually worse than useless). My Cyan has Dance, which is actually really convenient because he can learn everything except Earth Blues just by playing through the imperial raid. Strangely, the area outside Doma where you fight the Leader is considered a cave, and you learn Dusk Requiem there. Oh, and he's also got Mog's palette. So basically he looks like someone exsanguinated him and he's borrowing Ragnar's pink plate mail. Also, the space between his legs is bright red. Gau is an engineer, so I can also now use all the dope tools I've been collecting.
I thought the work-around of having Locke steal clothes by defeating enemies in his scenario makes sense. I was wondering how that would work, since he has throw instead of steal. Celes has Swdtech and bad stats, so she's basically Cyan from the regular game. Too bad.
The Imperial Raid was uneventful, aside from getting to learn the Snowman Jazz in the WoB, which was cool. Finally, the Gigantos in Arvis' clock is now pushing up the daisies. Although he was still capable of one-shotting most of my characters with his !Throat Jab, he had no way of killing my Locke or Sabin once they each used an Inviz Edge. Defeating him caused both Sabin and Locke to instantly level from 13 to 15 and netted me a not-so-useful Hardened dirk.
Continuing on, the next problem I encountered is a lack of healing in Zozo. Between the SlamDancers and HadesGigases magic attacks, my Tonic supply from Sabin's scenario was quickly exhausted. None of my characters has healing magic (the only one who can heal at all is Cyan using an appropriate dance). Further, none of the shops in Jidoor, Kohlingen, or Figaro sells any healing items. Luckily, the armor shop in Narshe sells Dried Meat, so I stocked up on 99 of them and headed all... the... way... back. Dried Meat in tow, Zozo posed little difficulty.
Finally, Espers. What do we have here...? Well, Kirin is great, teaching Bio (x12), Osmose (x7), and Cure (x18) (finally, healing!). Stray gives me Bolt 2 (x5) and Stop (x8). Siren allows access to Life (x9). Also the game really wants me to learn Rasp and Slow, which each appear on multiple espers at high rates. Aside from their spells, it looks like the level-up bonuses for Espers haven't been randomized. Hopefully that gets added in a future version.
So far I've collected a Flash and a Debilitator, but don't have anyone to use Tools. I also have the AutoCrossbow that Edgar sneaks into your inventory. It would be cool if that didn't happen until whomever has the Tools command joins. Not sure if that's practical, though.
I also just had another interesting monster-in-a-box encounter: Siegfried was hiding in a pot in the Returners' hideout. The weak one, fortunately. Even with just Terra, that was a manageable encounter. My Terra has Rage, by the way. She didn't start with anything particularly good. The most useful one is to put her in the front row and use Vector Pup for Haste and the occasional !Bite. Did you divide rages into tiers so that you don't start with anything too powerful, or did I just get unlucky?
At the risk of turning this thread into my own personal Let's Play (feel free to tell me to stfu if you think I'm hijacking it), here are my notes through the return to Narshe. The Sabin scenario was pretty easy, since my Sabin is a mimic with good stats. Shadow has Lore. He started with Pep Up, Roulette, and Step Mine, all of which are utterly useless at this point in the game (and two of which are actually worse than useless). My Cyan has Dance, which is actually really convenient because he can learn everything except Earth Blues just by playing through the imperial raid. Strangely, the area outside Doma where you fight the Leader is considered a cave, and you learn Dusk Requiem there. Oh, and he's also got Mog's palette. So basically he looks like someone exsanguinated him and he's borrowing Ragnar's pink plate mail. Also, the space between his legs is bright red. Gau is an engineer, so I can also now use all the dope tools I've been collecting.
I thought the work-around of having Locke steal clothes by defeating enemies in his scenario makes sense. I was wondering how that would work, since he has throw instead of steal. Celes has Swdtech and bad stats, so she's basically Cyan from the regular game. Too bad.
The Imperial Raid was uneventful, aside from getting to learn the Snowman Jazz in the WoB, which was cool. Finally, the Gigantos in Arvis' clock is now pushing up the daisies. Although he was still capable of one-shotting most of my characters with his !Throat Jab, he had no way of killing my Locke or Sabin once they each used an Inviz Edge. Defeating him caused both Sabin and Locke to instantly level from 13 to 15 and netted me a not-so-useful Hardened dirk.
Continuing on, the next problem I encountered is a lack of healing in Zozo. Between the SlamDancers and HadesGigases magic attacks, my Tonic supply from Sabin's scenario was quickly exhausted. None of my characters has healing magic (the only one who can heal at all is Cyan using an appropriate dance). Further, none of the shops in Jidoor, Kohlingen, or Figaro sells any healing items. Luckily, the armor shop in Narshe sells Dried Meat, so I stocked up on 99 of them and headed all... the... way... back. Dried Meat in tow, Zozo posed little difficulty.
Finally, Espers. What do we have here...? Well, Kirin is great, teaching Bio (x12), Osmose (x7), and Cure (x18) (finally, healing!). Stray gives me Bolt 2 (x5) and Stop (x8). Siren allows access to Life (x9). Also the game really wants me to learn Rasp and Slow, which each appear on multiple espers at high rates. Aside from their spells, it looks like the level-up bonuses for Espers haven't been randomized. Hopefully that gets added in a future version.