u/Koibu

This is my 4th SCC run on Tactician, and it was almost as fun a the Black Mage run that I did, and a lot more successful! I did make it all the way through, and had a great time doing so. Here's the full playlist for how it was done - although I really don't think anybody would need a guide, except for a select few battles.

Only at two points in the game did I intentionally level. Once for Riovanes Castle, where I jumped from level 17 to 35 and it was a mistake. I expected to need some speed to manage the battle, but in reality I wanted the lower speed so my summoners would move after Belius came down to say hello. The second time was right before the final run, when I leveled from 41 to 70. I didn't want to get part way down, get stuck, then grind at the top and try it again, so I just preemptively ground some levels. I think I could have done this on a much, much, lower level and it would have been fine.

The Good

Summoners are fuuuun. Sylph is a giant AoE silence with 25 speed and a hit rate roughly equal to the target's faith (because you made sure you have faith casters on your team). Golem is amazing at keeping your team alive, and really satisfying. Big heals in Faerie, or fast heals with Moogle, are amazing. Huge AOEs with Bahamut, Odin, and Leviathan feel like cheating almost. Percent damage spells vs late game bosses are a godsend. TIC letting you skip random battles means you can use Errands starting in chapter 2 to get all the JP you need without having to grind out battles, so you can get big epic spells early on and just coast.

The Bad

You need to grind out "Halve MP" super early. Like, before Dorter. You are a little slow, but honestly you want to be slow. You want them to all move before you cast, so they'll all be in the same place to be hit. Let them come to you. The game is so fast and simple that you don't end up grinding, and so there's a huge shortage of JP and Gil coming in... but that's what Errands are for. Just make sure you're not taking any of the ones where you lose money.

Things to Know

• Lich deals 35% of the target's max HP, so you need 3 Lich spells to kill someone, unless they have more than 3000 hp.
• Shiva is a great opener because it obliterates goblins, and it does extra damage in snow storms (so Argath can feel more pain).
• Bahamut, Odin, and Leviathan have bigger AOEs than all the other spells. These are your friends.
• Odin is your go to spell. It does less damage than Bahamut, but it is faster which is often important. If speed doesn't matter, then sure, go with Bahamut. Or if the size of the AOE doesn't matter, go with Cyclops. But most of the time you're going to want to reach for Odin.
• If you equip Japa Mala, all of a sudden Leviathan is the best spell. It deals almost as much damage as Cyclops, it has a bigger AOE, costs less MP, and is also speed 17.

Difficult Battles... but not actually that difficult.

1.3 Dorter Slums was looking real rough. Then I got Halve MP and it was a breeze.

4.7 Fort Besselate Sluice was a little rough. High ground archers, low faith knights in your face, lots of enemies spread out over a wide area... mana management became real, and I had to be pretty careful with decision making.

4.8 Mount Germinas was rough. Stupid charms. Stupid high speed ninjas. Stupid bows. Pretty annoying.

4.12 Limberry Keep: Undercroft was a problem for a while. The answer was to trade out Angel Rings for Hermes Shoes and forget about survivability. Just get some lucky Liches off. The video makes it look easy, but it took a bit.

4. 14 Mullond Front Gate which is not normally noteable was sort of a slog and surprisingly difficult. Speed was starting to become a real issue here, so we ended up equipping speed gear which meant not a ton of MP, so there had to be some careful mana management.

4.20 Necrohol: Lost Halidom, as it often is, was a pain. A lot of attempts went into this, a lot of different gear loadouts to make things fit, and in the end we had to deal with all the monsters and just tank the incoming damage with lots of heals.

Surprisingly Easy Battles

1.7 Windflat Mill. Did you know this was actually the easiest battle in the game?! Wild.

4.1 Dugeura Pass can be a often be a difficult battle. Not this time. No notes.

4.11 Limberry Castle Keep. 100% hit rate on spells, so just stack MA buffs and bam. He's gone.

4.16 Mullond Sanctuary can be one of the hardest battles in the game... but it was like nothing. I couldn't believe how easy it was.

4.19 Necrohol Capitoline can be pretty hit or miss with difficulty. Consider this a miss.

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Completed SCCs: Monk, Chemist, Summoner

Impossible SCCs: Black Mage

Below are the resources I leaned on to succeed. Huge shout out to the magnificent people who built these guides.

Yatola's Original SCC Rules - The only adjustment / deviation from the original rules is around grinding levels. If, and only if, the class I'm playing as can easily win random battles, I can equip other class abilities to speed grinding along. Gaining JP to equip these other abilities must be done via errands so that no extra levels are gained in other classes. I feel this fits well within the spirit of the SCC rules. I try to abide by the level caps, but I'll go over them if I need to.

Aerostar's Battle Mechanics Guide

Fritz Fraundorf's Full Walkthrough

MetroidComposite's Ivalice Chronicles differences guide

Like many of you, I've been playing FFT since the late 1900s, and I've been loving The Ivalice Chronicles. A few months ago I started doing SCC challenge runs for funzies. Most classes have been completed on the original game by other people a generation ago, but with the advent of Tactician difficulty I've decided to see which classes are doable in the new game. This is my report on the feasibility of a SCC Chemist run on Tactician difficulty. I recorded all the successful story battles and posted them on a playlist in case anyone else wants to try and is getting stuck.

Report

Chemist is very doable, but more difficult than I was expecting, especially in the early game. Elmdore is the hardest battle by far and needed special tactics to defeat. I started the final string of 6 missions at level 54.

Party Building: I went with an all male party with high brave, 2 low faith, 2 high faith. I felt I needed the higher HP and early game PA (after you get guns PA doesn't matter), but I think that was a bad call. Or at least by Chapter 4 I should have adjusted and had 3 high-faith female chemists for the magic gun synergy. Ramaza was made a Sagittarius to have bad alignment with Wiegraff, and I picked up 2 Pisces, 1 Taurus, and 1 Cancer - although I ended up with the cancer because I got tired of shopping for units and a cancer with the right brave/faith came along. In retrospect, I think the Pisces are a bad idea. Too much alignment with human Virgos leads to their early deaths, and piss poor damage vs monsterous Virgos (Velius / Belias & Ultima / Altima)

Chapter 1: was pretty difficult because the damage out is so low, that winning battles is quite difficult. I was spending more money on potions and phoenix downs early on than I was earning from battles. Not to mention monster damage started to scale pretty quickly while my own HP and damage was stagnant. Windflat Mill was rough. I had to grind to level 16 to get through, and it spawned the strategy of "kill all the minions first, then go after the bosses" which continues throughout much of the run.

Chapter 2: Things go much easier here. I let my guests do most of the heavy lifting in the first part of the chapter and then picked up guns for Goug Lowtown which make everything much easier. Golgollada Gallows was rough. I had forgotten the lesson from Windflat Mill and needed to relearn it. Lionel Castle Keep and Cuchulainn was surprisingly easy. With protect rings, you get to ping him with guns while he's charging his spells for extra damage and not even worry about it.

Chapter 3: Caaaaake walk for most of it. For Riovanes, we needed enough HP to survive 2 Hallowed Bolts with just a high-potion in between (which we get as loot from the last battle and can't drop -_-) which with bad alignment is around level 31. For part 2 of that battle, once again we stomp all the mobs before going after the big boss. Just spread out. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't impossible.

Chapter 4: Some easy stuff, and some really rough stuff. The Sluice battle was annoying, but what really started to be a problem was Limberry Castle Keep. Ohhhh man. It took weeks and required special tactics. There's a Glacial Gun an enemy chemist has in battle 2 (?) of the Beowolf storyline and you can loot it off their body. There's a 50% chance they turn into a chest, and 1/5 chance the chest has the gun... and this is where I decided to take an easy path. You could run the battle over and over again until they drop the right bit of gear, or you can scum the autosaves when his hearts reach 0 until you get a chest, and then scum autosaves as you go to pick up the chest until you get the gun. Considering the battle wasn't an actual challenge, I saved myself a lot of heart ache and did the save scumming. It's not a skill issue, it's a time issue. Similarly, I found an archer in Augury Woods (when approached from the south/east) that has a thief cap, and ground down some battles there until I had thief caps for the whole party. With that extra bit of speed, the extra damage from the Glacial Gun, and a Japa Mala on the Glacial Gun owner... and then some good luck... It was almost impossible, it took more than a month, but it was solved. We had to go after Elmdore first this time, no room to deal with the assassins. I almost gave up here.

Final Run: Grabbed extra magic guns from Midlight's Deep, but one of them ended up in the hands of a low faith chemist for lesser effect. Ended up leveling to 54 in the process and then go go go. It had its challenges, but wasn't crazy difficult. Elixirs are rewards for a lot of maps here, and you want to grab as many as you can - you're going to end up burning through a ton of potions and phoenix downs without the ability to replenish. Make good decisions to conserve your items. Don't forget to grab a bunch of High-Ethers to feed Alma at the end - her buffs are nice and you want to keep them going. The Capitoline battle was a challenge, as was the Lost Halidom. The final boss took about an hour on the successful run, but worked out all right!

Overall

Guns are surprisingly fun. They're simple, they're easy, there's not a lot of strategy, and eventually their damage is so small that they are kind of annoying, but the range and 100% hit rate are fun. Aside from Elmdore, I never felt truly stuck, and I did feel rewarded for good decision making and tactical movement.

Coming up next is Black Mage!

Completed SCCs: Monk.

Below are the resources I leaned on to succeed. Huge shout out to the magnificent people who built these guides.

Yatola's Original SCC Rules - The only adjustment / deviation from the original rules is around grinding levels. If, and only if, the class I'm playing as can easily win random battles, I can equip other class abilities to speed grinding along. Gaining JP to equip these other abilities must be done via errands so that no extra levels are gained in other classes. I feel this fits well within the spirit of the SCC rules. I try to abide by the level caps, but I'll go over them if I need to.

Aerostar's Battle Mechanics Guide

Fritz Fraundorf's Full Walkthrough

MetroidComposite's Ivalice Chronicles differences guide

Images: https://imgur.com/a/duZ087g

I've spent and unspecified amount of time that is totally not unreasonable building out some calculators to better do challenge runs for FFT: TIC.

The first image is the battle simulator designed for dealing with bosses. It will accurately predict your damage output and chance of hitting with any* attack, ability, or spell from a playable class.

The second image is for determining the actual stats of a character, and how they change over time / as they level. It works for any generic, Ramza, and whichever special characters I've added - but adding the rest isn't hard. This is nice for sorting out when you're going to get that next point of MA or PA or speed, if you've been changing classes a lot, or for predicting what your stats will be if you downlevel as one class and relevel as another. It also predicts enemy raw stats unless they're overridden.

The third image is the dedicated monster stat generator. Works for all normal monsters. Includes basic attack damage out based on zodiac alignment and whatever buffs/status effects are happening.

The fourth image is the errand calculator. It'll give you exact JP/Gil rewards if you want to min/max your JP from errands or see if you'll make or lose money on an errand. Some end up costing you 5 figures. Not that errands are easy to fail, but it'll tell if you the people you're planning on sending will succeed or not (you need 100+ work points to succeed). Includes bonuses for overtime deployments.

All of this is in service of being able to run Straight Character Challenges for the various classes in Tactician mode. I've done Monk so far, and I'm on the last section of Chemist right now. Both runs have suffered from lack of advanced planning, which is why this became necessary.

I'm not quite ready to call it 100% complete, so it's not available for sharing yet, but after putting in /a totally reasonable amount of time/ I thought this sub might appreciate it.

*There are a few edge cases that I didn't bother with. Weapons or abilities that do random damage, ninja throw, Worker 8, Cloud, Reis, Rapha, and Marach are not included. Nor are things that are flat, like the 50% for status effects from dancer / bard. Also blade grasp isn't accounted for /yet/.

FFT is one of my all time favorite games, and I'm so happy that it's finally had a PC port. Ivalice Chronicles is 10/10, no notes (except it's Sweegy Woods, not The Siedge Weald). I really appreciated the Tactician Difficulty, it was the first time in a long time that I felt challenged by the game. Once it was done, I needed to increase the difficulty again, so I started to explore some of the self imposed challenge modes when I remembered something a friend had said maybe 20 years ago about SCCs.

So I grabbed the easiest class I could think of for it, Monk, and took at stab at a SCC on Tactician difficulty. It was so much fun! In order to make it work, I had to delve deep into the game mechanics to find little edges. Many problems can be solved by over leveling, which is boring and I really avoided as much as possible.

In Riovanes I had to level enough so that I would be brought to critical (for critical HP up to proc).

Limberry Castle Undercroft was a nightmare that I just couldn't do. The damage was insane. The statuses were horrifying. The knights and skeletons, normally an interesting side quirk of the battlefield that can mostly be ignored, became a huge threat. The final battle took 45 minutes. I can't tell you how many attempts I made at this, but it was well over 40.

Mullond Sanctuary was the impossible one. The demons scale with player level, and their huge AOE nuked me down so fast that I couldn't get anywhere near Zalbag, and even when I did, he'd just heal off me. I tried everything. I looked into every mechanic, replicated all the awkward damage formulas in spreadsheets so I could better predict damage output, mixed and matched all sorts of gear. Zalbaag has Defense Up, so he takes half damage from monk abilities. The plan was to kill the demons, but it just wasn't working. In the end, it was a combination of luck, skill, and level that made it work. Knowing what I know now, it might have been possible at a lower level, and certainly would be possible at a lower level if I had picked my zodiac signs with this battle in mind.

Anyway, the point is I finally did it. And for posterity sake I recorded all the battles and threw them together in a youtube playlist in case anyone else is trying a Monk SCC and gets stuck and needs to see how it can be done: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAhFElHKW8zjN0Hzb2f9TIISzpH_YkUqE

This was super difficult, but super fun, and very rewarding. Next is chemist. I've already started and OH MY GODS, is it hard. The 30% damage debuff from Tactician difficulty means the already weak chemist damage is now pitiful. You've got some healing, but you're taking 20% more damage, so the effectiveness of potions is really minimalized. Trying to get enough gil to buy potions becomes difficult because you need to use so many in each battle that you barely make money. I think this run will need to be done at as low of a level as possible so that X-Potions can remain effective. If I over level, I'll die to anything that scales with level. Wish me luck.

Here are the resources I used to get me through this. Huge thanks to these creators. I couldn't have done it without them.

Yatola's SCC rules (I'm ignoring level caps because Tactician)

Aerostar's Battle Mechanics Guide

Fritz Fraundorf's Full Walkthrough

MetroidComposite's Ivalice Chronicles differences guide