Walkthrough:Final Fantasy IV: The After Years/Drake/Part 27

Part 27, we continue our quest to free the Eidolons.

Eblan - Ifrit

Fly to Eblan to find the castle engulfed in fire. Rydia immediately (and correctly, duh) surmises Ifrit is the cause. While running around the castle you may run into Ifrit a random encounter, run if you do, he can't be beaten. First we loot the castle, head to the left tower, inside take a couple steps back towards the door and right through the wall to an Elixir. On the next floor go through the pots down and around to the stairs, check one of the pots along the way for a Small Tail. At the third floor check the armor for a Small Tale, then speak to the robed figure to fight a Melt Golem, a couple Blizzagas from Rydia and Golbez will take care of him. With him dead half the flames blocking the path to the castle keep die out. Head over to the right tower now. Check behind the upper-left pillar for a passage to a Red Fang and then go upstairs. Fight the robed figure as another Melt Golem, and the flames blocking the keep will vanish. Now you can access the X-Potion and Bacchus's Wine, ducking down the stairs for a Cottage too. Head to the keep of the castle and go left to see a save point. Walk into the right wall from the save and find a passage around to the chest behind the counter, it has a Decoy. Up in the throne room to meet the refugee citizens. Ifrit approaches and Edge heads out to fight him alone.

Boss
Ifrit
HP	MP	Dangerous Attack
28,600	N/A	Hellfire
Steal	Morph	Drops
N/A	N/A	Nothing
Weakness	Resistance	Difficulty
Ice	Fire	2/5

First off, we can't win. Stay alive and eventually Ifrit will use Hellfire and kill us. As Edge lies on the castle turret wounded, a figure calls out to him and appears in the air overhead - Rubicante, Archfiend of Fire and Edge's old archnemesis! We enter battle now, Edge conveniently healing fully between fights, and Rydia comes in as well. Hack at Rubicante as he taunts us, and he'll show us "that true flame which has been etched into you". By that he means he uses Inferno, doing heavy damage. This strikes an epiphany with Edge - use an explosion to disperse the flames. In other words, we'll be fighting fire with fire. Edge and Rydia learn the Inferno Band, and we leap into the fray, using our new skill to stun Ifrit. Luca and Golbez come running to join us, and now the true battle begins.

Have Edge and Rydia continue to use their new Bands while Golbez casts Blizzaga and Luca attacks. It's pretty simple, during a Full Moon Golbez was doing 7000 damage or more with Blizzaga. Ifrit gets a 2/5 rating for Hellfire, which does around 1000 damage to the party and can catch you off-guard. Keep Rydia healed since she has the lowest HP and use the Recovery Rod or Sylph summon to heal your group. Once Ifrit is beaten on enough he'll come to his senses, the battle will end, the fires of Eblan disperse and Rydia regains the Ifrit summon. Now, because time moves at a relative speed of one second for every ten minutes in the Baron throne room, we go back to the Baron gang where we last left Ceodore protecting Kain from Cecil. We enter battle against him with the entire party, wail on him until Cecil once again invokes his cutscene power and summons Odin. And with that, we go back to our normal party.

Now we can loot the areas that were blocked by fire before. The left tower has a Boltslicer, check the left wall on the second floor to get downstairs. The Boltslicer's power is on-par with the Mage Masher, but the masher is strong against enemy spellcasters while the slicer is lightning-elemental. Use whichever you prefer. The right tower has a Remedy and Silent Bell.

Eblan Cave

This is one of the few optional locations in the tale, as you've probably noticed a lot of other caves have collapsed under landslides. There's something important here we need to get. Go right through the walls to a Remedy and Ether, then down to a Phoenix Down, left and up the ledges to a X-Potion, left to the exit, grabbing a Hi-Potion not far north of it. Second floor grab the Spider Silk and Phoenix Down, and move on. Take the Phoenix Down and go up to the stairs up and a Hi-Potion. Search the right rock here for a Small Tail. If you've actually been following my directions in order, this is the last one, we have 21 now. Head south through the hidden passage to find a Spider Silk, then back and up the stairs.

Here we see a man running around. He collects Small Tails, and will trade us any colored tail for 7, or a Rainbow Tail for 14. The Rainbow Tail flat cannot be gotten anywhere else so trade for it. Later we can trade it for the Limit Ring, which allows the wearer to break the damage limit. But what do we trade the other 7 for. I recommend a Green Tail, it can later be traded for a Rare Band V2. With the normal Rare Band from Golbez's Challenge Dungeon and the Rare Band V2 which improves the rare item drop rate even more than the normal one, we can farm all the normal colored tails we want later, or at least have a much easier time doing it. If you don't care for farming tails (bad decision but hey, I'm not your owner) then take the Blue or Red Tail. The Red Tail trades for a Level Band V2 which boosts the Exp the wearer receives, and the Blue Tail trades for the Blue Armor, a powerful armor, But I strongly suggest you take the Green Tail, as i said we'll have time later to get as many colored tails as we like and the Rare Band V2 makes it a lot easier. The other tails each trade for items that, while pretty good in their own right, aren't as useful as the Blue Armor or the Rare Band/Level Band.

From the man go left and up to an X-Potion, then right and up to Hermes Sandals. Head down, checking the wall for a hidden path to a chest with a Dry Ether on the right as you go. Lilith's Kiss, Vampire Fang and Bacchus's Wine await you right away, along with a path in the right wall to an Ether and Cottage. Go down and around back up, taking the Mallet, Potion and two Hi-Potions on the way. Save in the room up here and head right through the wall to a Kotetsu. If you have one from Edge's Tale he can use two of them now, if you don't then now you do. Go left and up the stairs to an Ether, then follow the path north. A barrier is preventing entry into the Tower of Babil, as Edge demonstrates by running into it at full-speed and receiving a migraine for his valor. Golbez recognizes the glow as the interdimensional elevator that connects the tower to the moon, so the Mysterious Girl must be planning to move the Crystals there. The party goes to leave when a robed figure appears. We fight a miniboss, Marquis Malboro. He likes to counter damage by buffing himself with Reflect and Protect, can use the normal Bad Breath, and heals himself for a couple thousand damage. A couple Flare Tornadoes will smoke him, use Golbez's Quake to help out and just toss a Remedy at anyone hit with Bad Breath. We win a Kiku-ichimonji, it has the same power as the Kotetsu and +5 Strength, equip it for sure. Check the left wall for a passage to a Black Cowl, and leave, use an Emergency Exit if you're impatient.

If you didn't save this area for last, be sure to return here when you've got more Small Tails to trade.

Heroes Unite

Now when you've got all the Eidolons back (or killed them, you cruel bastard) and the party members have been rescued, fly to Mist. The village is covered in a deep mist, but it's not what you think - the villages pooled their individually weak power to summon the Mist Dragon to protect the village, and in turn keep him from being controlled. If you come here before getting the other Eidolons you'll be told to get them back. Once you have them, the Mist Dragon will return to Rydia when we visit. The village has two Bomb Cranks and a Bomb Core to loot. Now fly to Baron. IMPORTANT, once we enter the castle we will never return to Earth. If you skipped the international looting on Page 25, do it now, along with anything else. Also fly to Kaipo and buy 99 Spider Silk and status-restoring items like Antidotes, Echo Herbs, etc. Where we're going the individual status items cannot be bought, we'll be able to buy Remedies but we may as well stock up on the cheap stuff now. Spider Silk will be plain unobtainable, so definitely have 99.

Head to Baron Castle and we'll see the barrier is gone. Golbez leads the party inside. Head up to the throne room, a cracking screen greeting us as the Baron crew is thrown into battle with Cecil and Odin. Have Rosa cast Slow on them and Edward use Bardsong. If he gets off Hastemarch, awesome, if not then have Kain, Ceodore and Rosa Haste the party the old-fashioned way. With everyone Hasted hit Select and let the Auto-Battle wail on Odin, turning it off to let Rosa heal if needed. Cecil doesn't hit too hard and Odin just stands there. Eventually Odin will come to his senses, since he's the spirit of Baron's former king and doesn't like attacking "[his] children of Baron". Odin will turn on Cecil and he'll collapse, the Mysterious Girl not liking this turn of events. The other group rushes in and Golbez runs to Cecil's side. Cecil calls out to him as brother to let the assembly know what we already do, that the Man in Black is Golbez. The Mysterious Girl steps forth as that kickass Archfiend battle music begins, and Golbez, now going by his name, speak to her. With that, it's time.

Boss
Mysterious Girl
HP	MP	Dangerous Attack
45,600	N/A	Mega Flare
Steal	Morph	Drops
N/A	N/A	Nothing
Weakness	Resistance	Difficulty
None	None	2/5

Our party for this fight is Edge, Rydia, Golbez, Ceodore and Rosa. Haste everyone with Ceodore and Rosa, then have Rydia attack with the Mist Dragon while Rosa heals and our fighters attack. If you want to try out a new Band, combine Rosa's White Magic with Rydia's Black Magic to blast the Mysterious Girl with Holy Burst, on my game it did 9,999 damage, very nice. The Mysterious Girl will hit hard with level three magic, but Ceodore and Rosa's Divine Heal (White Magic + Blessing if you haven't used it yet) will nullify all her damage, especially if we fight during the Waxing Moon so her Black Magic is weakened. The worst she has to dish out is Mega Flare (yeah, remember she has Bahamut too), but it missed two party members and only did a few hundred damage to the others. I'm not sure if the Moon Phase weakens it, but yeah. It shouldn't take too long to put the Mysterious Girl down.

Edge celebrates the victory but Golbez knows better. On cue, four more Girls appear and taunt us before vanishing with their fallen comrade. Now everyone is worried for Cecil, who is still collapsed. Everyone looks to Golbez for help, but he has no idea how to stop them from Colony Dropping the moon on us. All we can do now is fly to the moon to get the Crystals. Now that, Golbez can help with. The Lunar Whale appears over Baron, and we're now allowed to save our game. Along the way we get an NGE-inspired sequence of flashbacks, showing Cecil resisting in his own head as MG forces him to do things he doesn't like. I can just imagine him shouting "enemy! enemy! They're all my enemies!" during it all. Eventually we see a scene aboard the Lunar Whale where Cecil awakens, but isn't all there. Obviously something has damaged his spirit or whatever, so he's a drooling zombie. Golbez asks what the girl did to him, a good question they never answer. Meanwhile the rest of the group is using Whisperweed to communicate with the surface. The moon's approach is causing cataclysms, and at this rate the world may be destroyed before it actually hits.

Then, the gravity of the moon takes hold of the Lunar Whale and pulls us in. Next time, we begin the final dungeon!