Battle 40: Boost 2 made this fight VERY easy. Though I began to worry as we closed in on Odd Eye, for in order to lure in the enemies behind him, you've gotta lure him out in the process. >_> Several people almost died because Boost ran wore off at the wrong time, however, Sheela saved the day by re-casting it and all Odd could do was chip damage to anyone at best. It was still a fun fight (since this is one of my faves), and it's always sad for me to see the death scene, for Odd Eye/Oddler was also one of my favorite allies/enemies. Why'd he have to die? T_T
Also, my GOD has Slade's defense skyrocketed without me knowing. It's only five points behind Peter, so he's no longer considered a fragile unit at this point. I realized it when his level up granted him +3 in both HP (again) and defense. xD
Battle 41: The only reason this was a little tough was because of those Demon Masters. Freeze 4 is such a pain to deal with while surrounded by other ?? Attack enemies. >_> But once those punks were out of the way, it was a breeze. However, a lot of interesting level ups happened stat-wise. But now onto King Galam, where I'm gonna use my 3 Egresses.
Also, I hate that little glitch that happens when you have a character in their upper 50s in level...Sheela's turn would get completely skipped at random and over the years, I've yet to find out why this happens. One of the many reasons why I don't like to have a crazy high level via spamming. Some of my units almost got killed in certain instances of this fight because Sheela's turn to re-Boost 2 never came and went straight to Sarah and everyone else. Has this ever happened to anyone? It has to be a glitch for the game itself because I'm playing on my PS3 via the Ultimate Genesis Collection and this used to happen on both the emulator and when I had it downloaded on the Wii.
Battle 42: Well...this wasn't "hard" aside from trying to avoid Galam, as the sneaky little bastard just loves to abuse his second turn movement to get into range and use his funky demon breath. Also, why does everything and it's mama here have some sort of status infliction in their attacks? If one idiot isn't putting us to sleep with it's tail, then another comes and paralyze you...let's not forget about Mr. Wannabe Grim Reaper with a Muddle effect in his normal attack...when he ALREADY HAS Muddle 2! Galam was fairly easy on the final run though. I baited him to Demon Breath Sheela so Rick and Slade could trap him in the corner. While they played ping pong with them, I sent the rest of the squad to destroy the four spawned enemies, May and Janet snipping Galam from a distance to lower his health down, and Sheela/Sarah also in a safe distance Boost 2ing/healing. Gave Slade the kill so he could get some help leveling to 32. But god, I hated those status effects. Seriously. Those were about the only grievous parts of this fight, otherwise it wasn't much of a problem and I grind here...until I made one fatal mistake that Proto warned me about, but since I was away from this draft for a stupid-long time, it slipped my mind and I forgot most of the specifics of what he told me. I don't even know why I didn't bother to look back on this thread either.
Those four spawning enemies at the top, I completely forgot about them, as they appeared on my final grind run. However, since Galam was messing us over, I couldn't fight them and I had to Egress anyway to prevent people from dying...that, and I'd already saved when I grinded the couple of times before that, so I couldn't go back...so yeah, gold from a grand total of 12 enemies slipped away from me, which will...put a serious dent in my endgame funds. I would have been better off grinding in the other map before, for that's more funds gone But we'll see soon. Next battle during the only Egress I can use against Zeon, I'll try my best to feed Slade all of the juicy experience so he can have Raijin 3 by the time we confront Zeon. Since that'd be the strongest spell I'll have access to, it'll be a necessity for keeping him spaced out. And the only people who will be able to even fight Zeon will be Bowie, Slade, Sheela, Rick (lol no) and Peter anyway since I've gotta pawn the equipment I can before ending the draft.
Battle 43: Well, this was pretty fun. I managed to get Slade to Level 32 at the nick of time before confronting Zeon, but the important thing was I got it before fighting him. Since everyone except Slade and Rick were stripped of their weaponry, I was forced to group the able fighters together and take out the enemies slowly, as I needed to conserve Sarah's MP for Zeon. Sheela has a crapton, so I didn't really care for rationalizing hers too much, plus I had a more important task for her.
Following the defeat of the other devils, we confronted Zeon. All the useless peeps remained at starting point while Slade, Sheela and Peter were the main attackers on Zeon. Sheela casted Boost 1 on all three of them (herself included) while Sarah was left out, since she was in the corner waiting for people to get hurt and heal. Sheela attacked Zeon directly with fist-fu (since her Brass Knuckles are gone, she still has the highest ?? attack), Peter gave him a haircut by striking from behind, and Slade Raijin 3'd about three times (each damaging between 70-80). Since Peter was going to die (even though it didn't matter to save him anyway. Just didn't want to expose Sarah to heal him up close to Zeon), I allowed him to retreat while Zeon's HP dropped to around 80. Sheela Blast 4'd him and Slade went in for the final hit, ending this draft in style.
Final Gold: 560,046
I feel like stat listing for the final bout is a bit pointless, so let's move onto my final thoughts.
I...obviously set myself up to drop my endgame funds. Since I got rather jumbled by the rules by the time I used my mithril , it was too late to turn back. I heavily regretted getting Rick that Holy Lance, as that and the Gisarme was a big drop in 20,000 gold alone...not to mention I likely missed over 12,000 gold for those extra spawned enemies in Galam's re-fights when I should have remembered what Proto told me. I also got unlucky and didn't get a Counter Sword drop from Odd Eye, as I'm pretty sure I've found every item and sold everything I could. But I never intended to win, as I just wanted another chance to play SFII with a different spin to it for a chance. And I even picked up AI pattern manipulations and other tricks along the way! Still don't like Janet though
This was a VERY fun draft. If you don't already know (chances are you don't), I'm fairly new to draft challenges in general, as I've only done one FE7 draft during my entire time here, and out of that and this one, I had the most fun! This was still a fairly new experience for me and I'm glad I've taken part in this, so thank you, Elieson! My apologies for finishing this draft soooooo late. I've had numerous life problems/work stacked upon me that I just didn't have time to dedicate to this like I wanted to. But what's important is that I've finally finished and that's what matters. I WILL do the optional boss battle, but I have no need to draft that here. It'll likely be just a Slade/Sheela duo for the most part anyways with Bowie sneaking in kills every once in a while. Now I'll do what Proto did below with a character analysis bit.
Again, thanks for the draft, guys. See y'all on the flip side!