Specifically, on Atmaweapon. Pretty much everybody knows the trick of Rasping him to death. An old issue of Nintendo power I saw long before I played the game suggested it, and so I tried it the first time I played through the game, and pretty much every time since.
But something occurred to me recently. Is it actually that much easier than just killing him the conventional way? Does it take that much less time?
Same question toward Magi Master, who I’m told can be killed the same way, but I haven’t actually tried that.
I actually tried killing him the normal way last time I played. It actually took roughly the same amount of time. Maybe a little less. But I still prefer magic draining, since it seems more fitting in a story kinda way to drain the ancient beast of it’s very life essence rather than the usual “we hit it REALLY hard with our swords!”
I’ve never ever done the Rasping trick, myself. In fact, I don’t recall ever really intentionally using that spell, ever.
For Atma, when I wasn’t feeling lazy enough to use Vanish/Doom, I just fought him the old fashioned way. Lots of Blitzes, lots of Drilling, and lots of whatever skills of the other character I decided to bring at the time.
I haven’t tried Rasp on AtmaWeapon, but I have against the Magi Master and it does take forever. It’s much easier to have everyone equipped with Wall Rings and Life 3 applied and just walk away.
I think I Rasped him my first time through, back when I was still a green RPG noob and was afraid of anything that couldn’t be killed by just selecting “attack” repeatedly. I seem to recall it not being any faster.
Someone should try doing it both ways with the same party, and post the results on Youtube.
He can’t cast Ultima at 0 MP. He’ll try, fail, and explode.
Anyway, the reason to Rasp Atma Weapon is that he goes through phases in the battle. In the first phase, he only uses weak attacks, and as long as his HP never dips below a certain point, he’ll never go on to the second phase.
Originally Posted by Valkyrie Esker I remember using it on the Dullahan boss from Daryl’s TOmb a lot. he had significantly less MP than Atma. took him down hard.
It’ll go even faster if you just drop a tactical healing device onto his proximity.
The problem with Rasp is that it never exceeds 999MP worth of damage, and some bosses have far more MP than HP (like the Magi Master). It’s quicker just to nuke’em all with a steady stream of Ultimas instead. :mwahaha:
I always used to have trouble with Dullahan. Then I learned Celes with the Minerva and Wall Ring (and Ribbon if you don’t feel like being blinded by Reflect???) was invincible. That made it easier.
With Magimaster it makes more sense to rasp him, since if you put walls on everyone and just try to guess his weakness, it takes too much time, and if you berserk him he still attacks you.
Plus if you’re going for the Wall Trick then you’re best off not casting any spells on him. Because he doesn’t have elemental protection/absorption until he Wall Changes which in turn is only performed on a reactionary basis.
The first time I faced Magimaster, I’d saved my game (on an emulator) just outside his room. Then I found out that a) I had no spells that could damage him, except shields that I could break to cast Fire 3/Ice 3, and b) no one in my party could survive an Ultima. I actually had to summon Palidor to finish him off, so that the 1-2 characters left in midair avoided his final attack.
Rasping the magimaster might be better, make it hard for him to final-attack ultima.