A good way to fund Siren purchases

[Zerro0713]

Greetings,

I have been working on farming the rare drops and the biggest issue usually involves running out of Sirens and gil to farm for Sirens.

My solution is to farm Red Dragons. They have a 12% (24% Treasure Hunter) chance of dropping Dragon Gloves which sells for 30,000gil (buys at least 10 Sirens). Red Dragons also has a 1% (2%) chance of dropping the Wyvern Lance which sells for 20,000gil.

So far I've been making a profit from farming Red Dragons as I usually will get at least 9 Dragon Gloves before extinguishing my supply of Sirens. In addition, buying in bulk will lower the overall cost of the Sirens so buying 99 Sirens is cheaper than buying 1+1+1...n99 Sirens.

Sadly the Red Dragon hasn't dropped what I wanted (The Tail) :(

[Calandril]

Yeah, finding one or two red tails generally takes long enough that you'll make a couple million gil. I know that personally, Red Dragon farming paid for all the sirens I needed for the rest of my item hunting. I still would reset if I didn't find anything, but I was able to do so less often, since I had a decent amount of money.

Good luck with the hunting!

[Zerro0713]

Originally posted by Calandril:

Yeah, finding one or two red tails generally takes long enough that you'll make a couple million gil. I know that personally, Red Dragon farming paid for all the sirens I needed for the rest of my item hunting. I still would reset if I didn't find anything, but I was able to do so less often, since I had a decent amount of money.

Good luck with the hunting!

I haven't had to reset at all with Red Dragons. Just stock pile on Cottages and backtrack to the Save Point on the previous floor with Safe Travel :D

Is there a way to auto-battle the Red Dragon fight? So far my strategy is:

Rosa> Dualcast (Beserk(RD)+Blink), Pray
Cecil> Attack
Kain> Cry, Attack (Using Wyvern Lance. Unsure if it is better than Holy Lance for this situation)
Rydia> Flare
Edge> Steal, Attack.

[Calandril]

Originally posted by Zerro:

I haven't had to reset at all with Red Dragons. Just stock pile on Cottages and backtrack to the Save Point on the previous floor with Safe Travel :D

Is there a way to auto-battle the Red Dragon fight? So far my strategy is:

Rosa> Dualcast (Beserk(RD)+Blink), Pray
Cecil> Attack
Kain> Cry, Attack (Using Wyvern Lance. Unsure if it is better than Holy Lance for this situation)
Rydia> Flare
Edge> Steal, Attack.

1. My mistake, I was unclear on that. I agree, resetting on Red Dragons is not needed at all. My point was, even with the millions I made farming them, while farming other Tails/Summons, I would still reset after 50 or so if I didn't find anything. This is especially true for Pink Tails, as Stardusts are very expensive. But no need to ever reset during the Red Dragons.

2. As a matter of fact, yes, there are some decent Auto-Battle ideas for Red Dragons. In fact, I used them to level to 99 on my third playthrough, when I was maxxing stats (not completely maxxed, actually, but close).

Basic armor setup is at least 3 Adamant Armors (Rydia, Edge, Rosa), and 5 Cursed Rings. With this and Crystal Helm (Cecil) and Dragon Helm (Kain), you will gain life from Thermal Rays instead of losing it. This frees you up from Berserk/Blink. However, physical attacks will still sting quite a bit.

Ultimately, ideal defensive needs are Adamant Armors, 5 Cursed Rings, and Mindflayer Summon (surprisingly good, it will paralyze these guys most of the time).

Rosa (with your best bow/arrows equipped) - Aim
Cecil - (with best non holy weapon.. an Axe or Onion Sword, probably) - Attack/????'s Love.
Kain - (ditto about non holy... Wyvern Lance or Onion Sword) - Attack/????'s Love.
Rydia - Mindflayer
Edge - Steal or Attack, depending on if you are farming Crystal Rings.. remember they don't carry over playthroughs!

Now, that will do decently for a full autobattle setup, although I was at the computer as it was running, to skip the summon animation. It's not perfect, as Rydia will likely cast Mindflayer more than needed, and you don't get a chance to use Cry, but that was the best I found for completely Auto-Battle, which worked well for stat maxxing. If you have ????'s Love for Cecil or Kain, and have leveled it up, it does more damage than Attack, though with a short usage animation.

If I were controlling the first part of the battle manually, I'd likely take the first round to manually use Cry/Mindflayer/Bless, then just have everyone Attack, with Rosa Aiming. If Rydia has the Dragon Whisker Whip, she'll do decent damage as well, and has a chance to paralyze on hit.

Although I never used it, I also have heard that the Eye Gouge augment works on Red Dragons, making them miss attacks more frequently. That may be worth using as well.

Anyway, hopes this helps, and gives you some ideas for these guys... I found them a good source of money and experience, and had to fight quite a lot of them getting two red tails, so I got pretty good at it. Good luck!

[Zerro0713]

Originally posted by Calandril:

Originally posted by Zerro:

I haven't had to reset at all with Red Dragons. Just stock pile on Cottages and backtrack to the Save Point on the previous floor with Safe Travel :D

Is there a way to auto-battle the Red Dragon fight? So far my strategy is:

Rosa> Dualcast (Beserk(RD)+Blink), Pray
Cecil> Attack
Kain> Cry, Attack (Using Wyvern Lance. Unsure if it is better than Holy Lance for this situation)
Rydia> Flare
Edge> Steal, Attack.

1. My mistake, I was unclear on that. I agree, resetting on Red Dragons is not needed at all. My point was, even with the millions I made farming them, while farming other Tails/Summons, I would still reset after 50 or so if I didn't find anything. This is especially true for Pink Tails, as Stardusts are very expensive. But no need to ever reset during the Red Dragons.

2. As a matter of fact, yes, there are some decent Auto-Battle ideas for Red Dragons. In fact, I used them to level to 99 on my third playthrough, when I was maxxing stats (not completely maxxed, actually, but close).

Basic armor setup is at least 3 Adamant Armors (Rydia, Edge, Rosa), and 5 Cursed Rings. With this and Crystal Helm (Cecil) and Dragon Helm (Kain), you will gain life from Thermal Rays instead of losing it. This frees you up from Berserk/Blink. However, physical attacks will still sting quite a bit.

Ultimately, ideal defensive needs are Adamant Armors, 5 Cursed Rings, and Mindflayer Summon (surprisingly good, it will paralyze these guys most of the time).

Rosa (with your best bow/arrows equipped) - Aim
Cecil - (with best non holy weapon.. an Axe or Onion Sword, probably) - Attack/????'s Love.
Kain - (ditto about non holy... Wyvern Lance or Onion Sword) - Attack/????'s Love.
Rydia - Mindflayer
Edge - Steal or Attack, depending on if you are farming Crystal Rings.. remember they don't carry over playthroughs!

Now, that will do decently for a full autobattle setup, although I was at the computer as it was running, to skip the summon animation. It's not perfect, as Rydia will likely cast Mindflayer more than needed, and you don't get a chance to use Cry, but that was the best I found for completely Auto-Battle, which worked well for stat maxxing. If you have ????'s Love for Cecil or Kain, and have leveled it up, it does more damage than Attack, though with a short usage animation.

If I were controlling the first part of the battle manually, I'd likely take the first round to manually use Cry/Mindflayer/Bless, then just have everyone Attack, with Rosa Aiming. If Rydia has the Dragon Whisker Whip, she'll do decent damage as well, and has a chance to paralyze on hit.

Although I never used it, I also have heard that the Eye Gouge augment works on Red Dragons, making them miss attacks more frequently. That may be worth using as well.

Anyway, hopes this helps, and gives you some ideas for these guys... I found them a good source of money and experience, and had to fight quite a lot of them getting two red tails, so I got pretty good at it. Good luck!

Whoa man, I'm not going for full sets of Onion & Adamant equipment for my party; just going for achievements :P

How does Thermal Ray heal you?
-------------------------------------------------------------

My strat for farming all this ♥♥♥♥ was:
Farm/Reset: Green, Yellow, Thunder Dragons (Very easy & quick to handle)
Farm/Level Up: Red Dragon
Farm/Reset: Armored Fiend (Need a battle strat for this one)
Farm/Reset: Flan Princesses
Farm/Reset: Goblin & Mindflayer Summons
Figure out how to farm Cockatrice & Bomb
Farm Silver Apples & Soma Drops

----------------------------

Btw, already at over +300 encounters with the Red Dragon and no Tail :( I did get 5x Crystal Rings though.

[Calandril]

No worries about the full set. I grabbed them all to make the two optional bosses and future playthroughs easier, but you can get by without it, of course. Ironically, I'm at the end of the game now and quit farming the Drops and Apples. No need for them now, really, though it might be nice to get, and I can always come back to it.

Thermal Rays... it isn't explained in game, but Cursed Rings have a unique property. If you have any gear on that gives you resistance to elemental damage, and also equip a Cursed Ring, you will now absorb that element, and be healed by it. Adamant Armors, as well as the Crystal/Dragon Helms, resist the main three element (Fire/Ice/Lightning), and Thermal Rays is actually fire based. So with the right equipment, you can absorb that damage, but it takes at least 3 Adamant Armors for the full party to benefit.

That being said, if you do already have Mindflayer, I recommend you start using it. It should speed things up somewhat, since you don't have to deal with Red Dragon counterattacks if it hits (which it will most of the time).

Armored Fiend: Can't really help you with this one. This was my luckiest drop, as I got it within 5 battles or so. I did fight some for their Axe in my third playthrough, but by then I had full gear and Limit Break, so it wasn't very difficult.

Cockatrice: No great place for this one. I used Sirens outside of Mysidia, but that won't give you a 100% encounter rate. It works, but you'll get other encounters as well.

Bomb: Ugh, even worse. You can't even Siren this one. Fight them in the second cave on the Moon on the way to the end game. It's called Lunar Tunnel East, I guess, the one with no treasure chests. Sirens will get you the wrong encounter, so walk around, looking for the Dark Grenade or Balloon enemies.

[Zerro0713]

Over 400 battles... still no Tail from this stupid Red Dragon :( I feel like I'm better off cheating this stupid thing in.

I'm curious as to what the true chance of the Tail dropping is because I doubt it's 1/125 with all the other factors involved.

[Zerro0713]

550 tries to get the Red Tail :(
Black Tail took like 25 attempts
Pink Tail 200-250 attempts (rather quick)
Goblin less than 50 attempts
Mindflayer less than 50 attempts

Time to farm Cockatrice and Bomb :(