Gau totally sucks a bag of dicks

[dnl2ba]

Did anyone ever find anything useful to do with Gau? There's a couple monsters who'll attack twice, so that can be sorta okay useful. I remember that with a Game Genie, I could put a Paladin Shield in every inventory slot. With a shield in each hand, Gau would always attack twice.

There's gotta be some crazy awesome monster that always confuses you / puts you to sleep / beats the crap out of you, and will actually work if Gau uses it.

[Rhys]

I've learned that Gau is actually one of the better characters in the game. You just need to get the proper rages, which might be more bother than you want to go through. It's certainly more bother than I ever wanted to go through when you've got powerhouses like Terra, Edgar, etc.

Still, there are some notable things that Gau can do. Giving him a Merit Award and Tempest is one. If you use Stray Cat with this setup you've got a decent chance of hitting all enemies with catscratch, which does ridiculous damage. Giving him an Offering or Gengi Glove might even make it possible to do multiple times in one attack.

The Nightshade rage does an unevadable confusion type attack. I haven't played around with it much, but I get the sense that the confusion doesn't wear off after one hit either. Magic Pot gives Gau a number of positive status effects and resistance to pretty much everything, along with a Cure3 casting ability, making it the ultimate Gau-can't-die rage. I think Intangir might give more pluses, but there's a 50% chance Gau will Pep-up himself to death, so it's kind of worthless. The Retainer rage is also fun since it uses Leo's Shock ability, but it's not too strong.

There are also a bunch of situational rages you can use at various points. They're mostly to dodge a status effect or to use some strong attack you're not supposed to have yet. So yeah, Gau is pretty good if you take the time to hunt down his rages.

[schally]

I always used the catscratch/merit award trick.

I tried to get all of his rages just 'cuz but I think I still ended up missing a few on my master game file of powah.

[dnl2ba]

Magic Pot gives Gau a number of positive status effects and resistance to pretty much everything, along with a Cure3 casting ability, making it the ultimate Gau-can't-die rage.
"Not die" isn't enough to make a party member useful. :p

Rage would be so much better if you could change Rages each turn. (I guess you probably can if you kill him or something.)

I always gave my Merit Award to Gogo. You can only get one, right? I'm not playing now, but I don't recall anyone else having one.

Gogo sucks too, because his starting stats just blow. You have to focus some serious magicite on him before he's any good.

I always gave my Offering to Locke because he can use two weapons that ignore target defense: Atma Weapon and Valiant Knife. With enough vigor in one game, I got him up to 9,500 damage per hit with the Valiant Knife even with full health when he was level 99. Does the speed stat help your stealing skill? If so, I might just load up on speed the next time I play and let someone else use the Offering.

Rhys, who did you say you can steal an extra Atma Weapon from?

[schally]

You can steal an atma weapon from the chick in Kefka's tower o' badness.

[dnl2ba]

The chick? Can you be any more unspecific?

[Rhys]

I always gave my Merit Award to Gogo. You can only get one, right? I'm not playing now, but I don't recall anyone else having one.
You get them from the colosseum, so number is unlimited. I don't remember how you got them though. I think you bet an Imp Halberd and just keep betting what you get as a reward.


Gogo sucks too, because his starting stats just blow. You have to focus some serious magicite on him before he's any good.
Gogo can't even equip magicite. He also gets kind of lousy equip options. But he is good for being an extra whatever you need.


I always gave my Offering to Locke because he can use two weapons that ignore target defense: Atma Weapon and Valiant Knife. With enough vigor in one game, I got him up to 9,500 damage per hit with the Valiant Knife even with full health when he was level 99. Does the speed stat help your stealing skill? If so, I might just load up on speed the next time I play and let someone else use the Offering.
I generally give the Offering to Setzer. Fixed Dice x4 can do absolutely sexy damage, and at reasonable levels. I think speed does help with stealing, but by the end of the game there isn't much left to steal.


Rhys, who did you say you can steal an extra Atma Weapon from?
You can get it and an extra Ragnarok from the third tier of the last Kefka fight. Which means that you can realistically only use them against Kefka. So don't factor them into your plans.

Speaking of Ragnarok, sword or esper?

edit: By the way, I looked up some Gau stuff. Nightshade's charm attack is unblockable, uncurable, has an 80% hit rate, and WORKS ON BOSSES. You can make Kefka kill himself if you so desire. So it seems Gau is kind of so-so unless you use this rage, in which case he actually breaks the game.

[dnl2ba]

You get them from the colosseum, so number is unlimited. I don't remember how you got them though. I think you bet an Imp Halberd and just keep betting what you get as a reward.
Oh yeah...


Gogo can't even equip magicite.
I don't remember that. Man, that sucks. So where does his magic set come from? Is it based on other people in the party? Or does he always just have to mimic people?


Speaking of Ragnarok, sword or esper?
I usually went with the magicite because I figured there were enough weapons to go around in end-game (I think the only party member I had using general-purpose swords in the endgame was Locke, since so many other characters had really useful character-specific items). I often made Mog a jumper for reasons I can't remember, so I recall at least once giving Mog the best spear and giving Edgar Illumina. List of Ragnarok enemy-to-item conversions (http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/snes/ff6/ragnarok.shtml) - extra Genji Gloves! Nice!

Aura Lance or Sky Render? I always went with Sky Render and gave Edgar (or Mog) a Pearl Lance.

Why ever use Merton if you have Ultima?

Celes (http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff6/characters.php?character=Celes) - she's 18!? I always figured her for late 20s or early 30s.

I like how some characters will learn magic on their own at certain levels. The whole thing with all characters being able to learn any magic hurt the game for me. It'd've been nice if some spells couldn't be learned from magicite and could only be learned by leveling (or quests, a la Lore spells).

[Rhys]

I remember Gogo's magic set being derived from everyone else's in the current party. So if Terra has Fire and Celes has Ice, Gogo will have both.

I go Ragnarok sword myself. The Illumina is just too good to pass up. 50% mblock, auto criticals, ignores rows, and randomly casts what is essentially a double strength Pearl (the critical hit carries over to the spell). Much better than a small chance at an extra Genji Glove. I really only use those things on Locke anyway. Ultima is never an issue for me since 1) I can learn it from the Paladin Shield and 2) I stopped using it a long time ago.

Aura Lance and Sky Render aren't quite mutually exclusive since you get both from bosses in Kefka's Tower. Still, Aura Lance. Cyan's equipped weapon doesn't factor into his sword tech power at all. I always have him equip a Tempest for the hit all chance, or the Scimitar for the instant death chance. Or, more likely, I leave him on the airship because he's not that good.

I suppose if you have everyone with fire absorbtion, Merton could be used to heal yourself and damage the enemy at the same time. I never bothered with it. Something I've always wondered was why would anyone summon the Crusader esper?

[dnl2ba]

Hm, I don't think I paid enough attention to individual item properties when I played in high school.

I've never played without saving Shadow, I think because I'd already read spoilers saying to wait for him either in a magazine or on Prodigy. So I'd never seen Relm's dream (http://www.highervoltage.net/mb/showthread.php?t=6572). "Shadow is Relm's father" seems to be the most popular theory, but for some reason, when I played the game for the first time, I guessed they were siblings. But there's talk that "Shadow knew he had a daughter when he left Thamasa." (http://p073.ezboard.com/fthemooglecafefrm2.showMessageRange?topicID=255.to pic&start=21&stop=40) When does that tidbit get revealed? Oh, wait... (http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:KSlwVVTGPQgJ:forums.ffonline.com/printthread.php%3Ft%3D21931+relm%27s+dream&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6&client=firefox-a)


(RELM's dream. In STRAGOS's home. STRAGOS, RELM and the dog are there. STRAGOS is upset, and jumping around.)
RELM: Where is father? Will he ever come back?
(STRAGOS sends the dog out to get RELM's father. Dream ends.)
Now that I've seen lots of cheesy movies, I can also say dream 4 says "make a baby with that woman" to me:

(Dream Four. Clyde is in a strange town. A woman approaches him with a large dog.)
(Woman) Hey...HEY! Stay with me now!
CLYDE: Where...am...?
(Woman) A small village called Thama... Hang in there!
(Clyde follows the woman. Dream ends.)

Edit: I may've thought they were siblings because of the description on the Memento Ring: it says something about "mother's love," not "Relm's mother's love."

[dnl2ba]

Bugs and glitches (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FF6:_Bugs_and_Glitches)

You know, I remember thinking Blind wasn't very helpful.

[Rhys]

A somewhat more comprehensive bugs and glitches listing (http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/snes/file/final_fantasy_iii_bug.txt)

I hear tell that this game has some of the sloppiest programming Square has ever shat out. Personally I think that's what gives it its charm. Could you imagine a Final Fantasy VI where the evade stat actually worked? Or where 99% of the bosses couldn't be killed in a two spell combo that you get halfway through the WoB? Or where you could actually use Sketch without it figuratively bending your cartridge over and fucking it straight up the ass?

I have imagined these things, my friends, and it left me a broken man.

[dnl2ba]

Blocked link. You're supposed to link to GameFAQs HTML pages.

[Rhys]

When did they change that?:confused:

You'll have to dig for it yourself if you're really interested I guess. It's mostly small stuff anyway, like certain actions in battle causing minor sprite glitches (enemies disappearing, weapons showing up weirdly, etc.).

[ohvermie]

Are they supposed to be fixing all the glitches for the FFVI Advance release? I've given up on FFIV (the moon is raping my ass and then I got to Zeromus and he raped my ass even harder :()

[Rhys]

I don't know if any bugs will be fixed in FFVI. Sad that you gave up on FFIV, the bonus dungeon has some nifty parts.

Anyway, this topic has made me start playing this game again. It's also making me use Gau more. And what luck, I had a save right after you get Gau. So far I've discovered that a level 13 Gau using the Brawler rage can do almost 3,000 damage to pretty much everything in the multi-party battle at Narshe. By comparison, Sabin had the next highest damage at around 400 with Aurabolt. Of course both are OHKO's, so the difference doesn't mean much. I just thought it was amusing.