Final Fantasy V Walkthrough
Written by Djibriel
Contributor
2.13: Xezat of Ice; the Barrier Tower
Enemies: Neon, Magnetite, Reflect Knight, Traveler, Level Tricker, Gravitator, Ziggurat Gigas, Red Dragon, Yellow Dragon, Atomos
Treasures: 9000 Gil, 18000 Gil, 
Blood Sword, 
Gold Hairpin
Features: 
Flash, Time Slip, Level 2 Old, Level 3 Flare, Level 4 Graviga, Level 5 Death, Off-Guard
Twin Lances are powerful single-target damage dealers but sometimes miss. Reflect Knights take little damage from physical attacks and reflect magical ones. Bleh. Hey, at least there's a lot to find and learn here.The plan here is simple. The barrier tower itself, obviously, is also protected by a barrier. Not a magical one though; an electric barrier. Xezat attacks the generator so the antenna becomes vulnerable; when that happens, you destroy it. In the meantime, you can keep in contact through the Whisperweed. Now, Xezat takes off; you can return to the submarine at any given time if you so please (you get back to the flagship where you can find the Wind Drake, but there's really no reason for you to do so).
Neons are silly. They respond to physical attacks with the
Flash spell, so don't hit them with your limbs. They don't have an elemental weakness, but Titan has little problems with them and they don't have a lot of HP regardless.Magnetite are agile little critters which use the Magnet attack to pull any character into the Front Row. They're not too dangerous but just damn difficult to dispatch. They nullify Earth-elemental attacks so Titan's a no-go. They're weak to Lightning-elemental attacks; Ramuh's boosted Judgment Bolt works like a charm, as do Lightning Scrolls.
Reflect Knights are annoying; they're quite sturdy on the Defense and have an inherent Reflect ability. Gaia's Wrath is the key to their defeat. Other magical attacks which ignore Reflect (Drain Kiss, Judgement Bolt,
Aqua Breath) also work. Note that 
Comet and 
Drain ignore the Reflect status as well. They rarely drop 
Reflect Rings, which are grand to pick up. I suggest you get four of 'em if you can be bothered; in many challenges, getting four Reflect Rings is a must.Travelers are silly witches which float over Gaia's Wrath like it's nothing. They randomly use
Time Slip, a single-target attack which sets Old and Sleep on a target. Your Blue Mages can learn this attack; you could wait for a lucky hit from Traveler's random AI script or simply Control one. They rarely drop 
Dream Harps: awesome (kidding).Level Trickers will attack physically and use
Level 4 Graviga every turn. If you missed it earlier, pick it up here. Also, Level 5 Death and Level 2 Old are in its Control menu, so if you've got the levels to learn either, please do. You'll need to make the attack bounce off of Dragon Armor (Dragon Fang + Phoenix Down, sets Regen, Protect, Shell and Reflect), but then you're in business.Another example of Exdeath's monster horde, Gravitators are wizards which employ, you know, gravity-based attacks. Whoever came up with the idea that gravity equals percentage-based damage should be hit. Anyway, you'll want to kill them before their
Gravity and Graviga spells are becoming too much of a bother. Not interesting. Rarely drops 
Gaia Gear.Ziggurat Gigas are the most formidable opponents the Barrier Tower has to offer. They may use Hurricane whenever they feel like it, use
Off-Guard to lower your defenses and their physicals are quite brutal. You can rarely steal a Partisan from these guys. 
Confuse, Stop, Darkness, the works. It does the trick. If you never learned Off-Guard from Page 256 in the Library of the Ancients, you can do so here.The best thing about boosting Earth-elemental attacks? It's done by robes! So you can boost Gaia's Wrath and Ramuh's Judgement Bolt. You should do just that. Whenever Magnetites appear, summon Ramuh to kill them off, it's really the best thing to do about them. Gaia's Wrath to deal with Reflect Knights, Neon thingies and Level Trickers. All the rest you'll have to do with physicals. It's not that hard, just takes a little longer than you're used to.
The second floor houses a Save Point. Continue up. There are two chests here; one in your path and one you'll have to go around for. The latter contains a
Blood Sword but is protected by either a single Red Dragon or two Yellow Dragons, both of which are powerful enough to give specific strategies for.I'd personally go for the Red Dragon in order to learn
Level 3 Flare and get a guaranteed Flame Ring. Make sure one of your characters' levels is divisible by 3, otherwise trying to learn Level 3 Flare will be a wasted effort. Also note that you can run from these battles; you won't get the item from the chest, but you can steal items, run and fight the enemy again. This means unlimited Flame Rings if you so desire! You'll be forced to shoot for a 
Chicken Knife, but the thing can be powerful than the alternative anyway.Red Dragon: Not only is the Red Dragon a formidable foe, you'll also want to learn
Level 3 Flare from it and probably want to obtain a Flame Ring, meaning you'll have to get in there with !Mix, !Control and Learning for Level 3 Flare and !Time and !Steal for the Flame Ring. The Red Dragon can use Atomic Ray to do anywhere between 400 and 600 damage (around 1200 to a Bone Mail character) to all targets. It's got a lot of HP and its physicals are brutal. It's Undead, so the Requiem is very powerful, and it's weak to Ice-, Water- AND Earth-elemental attacks so Blizzara spellblade effects, Gaia's Wrath and the 
Gaia Hammer all deliver a lot of damage. You can Stop them as well. Control the Red Dragon. Steal and cast Reset until you've got the Flame Ring you want. Now, we'll want to learn Level 3 Flare. It will need to bounce back onto a Learning character from a Reflect barrier, which we can only be set at this stage of the game by the Mix outcome Dragon Armor (Phoenix Down + Dragon Fang), or !Release a Neon and have it use Reflect on a character with a Reflect Ring, thus setting Reflect on the Red Dragon. When Reflect is set on the Red Dragon, have it cast Level 3 Flare and revive the fallen. You may want to use !Jump or !Hide to have some character(s) survive if all characters could be hit by the attack; dealing over 2200 damage, it will kill.Yellow Dragons: They're easier for three reasons; they're not Undead, so the
Death Sickle can dispatch them. They're not Heavy, so Missile, Gravity and Death Claw all work. Also, you don't really want anything from them but death, so you don't need to fiddle around. You'll definitely want to bring Control into the battle. Romeo's Ballad can Stop both, which is very helpful. When Controlled, they can use Hurricane on one and other (which works). You'll want to work fast with Yellow Dragons; their successive Lightning attacks are very, very nasty. They'll use Lightning when Released too, so you'll want to Catch one or both for the boss at the end of the tower. You're lucky if you can take a Coral Ring from this fight as a rare drop, but don't count on it.The
Blood Sword is a Knightsword which drains HP, but it has an abysmal Hit Rate (25%). Knightswords can only be equipped by Knights, if you must know. You can combine it with !Aim to make in unblockable, which allows your Knight to restore around 500 HP every attack. !Rapid Fire also makes the blade get a perfect hit rate, though I'm not counting on you to have the ability yet. Mainly, the Blood Sword is just a novelty weapon.The
Flame Ring makes the wearer absorb Fire-elemental attacks, nullify Ice- elemental ones and take double damage from Water-elemental attacks. They grant superior Magic Defense than everything you have at this point and even superior Defense to the sissy Power Armlets your Mages were stuck with when it came to Defense. Flame Ring versus Elven Mantle is a tough one; I'd still go with Elven Mantle since I'm a sucker for physical evasion (especially on mages) but the Flame Ring certainly has its merits. Fira, for instance, becomes a superior form of healing to Cura when everybody is draped in Flame Rings; it's more powerful and a Bone Mail wearer is also healed (the Flame Ring's absorption overrides the weakness coming from the Bone Mail). In addition, Rangers with 
Flame Bows can now function as healers for themselves...Up you go! The monster formation packs change all the time, but nothing you'll really notice. Ziggurat Gigas' start appearing from the seventh floor and up. You'll go past a chest containing 18000 Gil, you can't miss it. On the ninth floor, take the left door before going through the right one. Here, another chest is guarded by either a Red Dragon or two Yellow Dragons. If you got everything you wanted from the Red Dragon earlier (four
Flame Rings and Level 3 Flare), try going for two Yellow Dragons here. Catch one or both, and maybe you'll get to take a Coral Ring home.Coral Rings are similar to Flame Rings, only their elemental properties differ. Coral Rings allow you to absorb Water-elemental attacks, nullify Fire-elemental ones and make the wearer weak to Lightning-elemental attacks. While overall less useful than the Flame Rings, there will be a fight in the future for which four Coral Rings nothing short of a necessity.The contents on the chest consist out of
Gold Hairpin. This helmet can only be worn by Mages. It adds no Defense and only 2 Magic Defense, but it has a rad special property: the MP cost of spells cast by a character with the Gold Hairpin equipped is cut by 50%. Especially Summoners can take advantage of this treat as Titan is rather heavy on the MP. There's a Save Point on the 10th Floor, use it to Save. When you arrive at the top floor, Xezat will contact you again. Things darken a little then."You think it'll be that easy? Think again! Now pay...with your blood!"
Atomos  Bestiary #276 |
Type |
Level |
HP |
MP |
Gil |
EXP |
Speed |
None | 41 | 19997 | 10000 | 0 | 0 | 36 | |
Strength |
Attack Mult. |
Magic Atk. |
Evasion |
Defense |
Mag. Def. |
Mag. Evade |
|
10 | 10 | 80 | 0 | 14 | 20 | 80 | |
Stolen Items |
Dropped Items |
||||||
Common: Dark Matter | |||||||
Command Immunities | Elemental Immunities | ||||||
Catch, Control | None | ||||||
Elemental Absorb | Elemental Weakness | ||||||
None | None | ||||||
Blue Magic | Status Immunities | ||||||
None |               | ||||||
Strategy | |||||||
Atomos will try to kill you with Comet and then try to remove the dead permanently from the battlefield. The best way to get around it is to stop it from getting that bad by using sleep-inducing attacks or simply by inflicting as much physical damage as possible right away. | |||||||
FlailAtomos is a bastard, but not too tough of a fight when you see past the fact he can kill two characters in a single round regardless of your defenses. But he won't do it very often. Honest.
Whenever all four characters are alive, he'll cast
Comet once or twice. Whenever a character is down (petrified works too, though there's no reason to cast it on yourself and Atomos certainly won't do it for you), he'll pull them in his direction. When directly in front of Atomos, he'll use an attack called Wormhole to remove them from the battlefield. In the meantime, he'll use some minor Time magic spells but none of them are too threatening (Old is annoying, quickly heal with Esuna).There are three things you can do. First off, Atomos is vulnerable to Sleep, so cast the
Sleep spell or utilize Sleep spellblade effects to take advantage of the fact. Since the magical attacks miss on occasion, the Spellblade strategy is best. In addition, pounding the ever-living crap out of Atomos works as well: you should be able to kill him off before he uses Wormhole once. If you don't think you're going to make it, revive the fallen character and hope Atomos kills another party member this time.A somewhat niche strategy that works is using
Dark Spark to lower Atomos' level to 20, then use Level 5 Death to kill the thing in a single hit. Dark Spark won't hit often, though.Bio spells are very powerful, as is Gaia's Wrath. Dual Twin Lances and a Two- Handed Berserker deals significant damage (might wanna give him a Poison Axe rather than a Gaia Hammer; the former doesn't have the annoying tendency to deal out that weak Earthquake attack). The Mix outcome Drain Kiss also deals a lot of damage (in the neighbourhood of 3000), so that's nice. Releasing a Yellow Dragon I told you about deals 4999 damage, which is enough to warrant the use of a Beastmaster. Barehanded helps the dominator out when he's made his first impact.Keep Atomos snoozing, deal your damage and you'll easily live through this fight. For a bit of trivia, Atomos made a re-appearance as a summon monster later in Final Fantasy IX and was even given an appearance in a CG video (it's massive and destroys windows).
Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy V
Version 6
©1997–2025 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.
Version 6
©1997–2025 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.