Final Fantasy VI Bosses

Yeeesh. First turn, he casts a level two spell. Then, he casts a level 3 spell. Then, he casts two level 3 spells. After that, it'll follow up with another double cast of two level 3 spells. On the fifth turn, it'll use a single level 3 spell, and, on his last turn before looping, Magic Master can make use of Death, Bio, or Silence. All of this is coupled with a spectacular 50 Magic Power, which means that if you don't absorb the attack or have the Reflect status, you'll likely die a painful death. If Magic Master has the Reflect status, he will bounce a level 3 spell off of himself every turn; Magic Master will never self-apply the status though, and there's no reason for you to cast it.

You may have noticed that every spell Magic Master uses is reflectable; yes, that they are. However, the thing about Magic Master is that not only is he the ultimate mage, he's also fiercely loyal to Kefka. Given this, it's only logical that Magic Master would be able to cast the strongest spell in the game: Ultima, and he won't let you go before casting it. As soon as you kill the Magic Master, he will cast Ultima. It will deal between 5400 to 6100 damage to all of your characters; unless you've overleveled (level 53 with Muscle Belt, 58 with Red Cap, 67 without any HP boosting equipment), that gonna kill you dead.

Let's go through a few potential situations now:

If you've followed the walkthrough, or know Reraise at the very least, keep yourself draped in Reflect Rings at all times, as this will essentially make you invincible. Do not attack Magic Master; as soon as you do this, he will use Barrier Change and he start countering all your attacks with Barrier Change, making him that much harder to take down. He will also counter to his own spells reflected back at him. If you just keep still, he won't start using Barrier Change, not even under the torment of his own attacks. Cast Reraise on all your characters, and just wait this one out. Eventually, when Magic Master has killed himself, he'll cast Ultima: everybody dies and is subsequently revived. You're free to go.

Without Reraise, this one's a tricky pony. You can cast Rasp over and over and over again until his 50000 MP are all gone; he won't be able to cast Ultima as a result. You'll have to keep him alive this way. This is easily done by casting the Berserk spell on Magic Master while casting Vanish or summoning Phantom to protect yourself. Now, Rasp away. It'll take a very long while. You can check his MP periodically with the Libra spell. When he has less than 80 MP, you can kill him. There you go.

Alternately, you could just damage the boss a lot and summon Quetzalli; the trick here is to kill Magic Master with one or more characters in the air. Ultima won't hit them, so you win. If you want to do this, carefully keep track of his HP with Libra; for optimal damage output, you'll want to equip barrier-piercing weapons where possible (Ultima Weapon on Terra/Celes/Edgar/Locke, Valiant Knife on Locke, Fixed Dice or Dice on Setzer) to try and circumvent Magic Master's crazy 250 Defense.

If you don't have Rasp... and you don't have Quetzalli either... eh... yeah. Last chance, honest. Equip a character (Terra, Celes, Edgar) with a Reflect Ring, Genji Glove, Rune Blade/ Ragnarok/Lightbringer, and the Soul Sabre. The MP-critical weapon in the Right Hand, the MP draining weapon in the Left Hand. Now, cast Berserk on Magic Master, vanish your party, and then cast Berserk and Haste on your magical weapon character. Every turn, he or she will attack and deal twelve to nineteen MP damage. If you're setting this up so you can go do something else in the meantime (I trust you have taken a liking to your sanity?), Berserk a Healing Rod character to make sure Magic Master doesn't die from the physical blows. Go take in a museum or something. Honestly, this is going to take ages. Expand Full Strategy

Master Tonberry is very mean. He'll start the battle off with a Battle attack, and after this the madness will begin. Every 15 seconds, Master Tonberry takes a step forward; after seven steps, he'll use !Knife on a random character and retreat halfway back, meaning that he'll have to take just four more steps after that to reach the !Knife position again. Every step is accompanied with the ever-frustrating Barrier Change attack. Master Tonberry casts spells of the type opposing his current weakness, not unlike Number 024 way back in the day. Each time he changes his weakness, he has a two in three chance of using a magical attack that will indicate what his new weakness is. This will give you a chance to load up on that weakness until it changes again.

Indicator Attack	New Weakness
Firaga	Ice
Blizzaga	Fire
Thundaga	Wind
Bio
Tornado	Lightning
Holy	Poison
Quake	Water
Tsunami	Earth

One of the worst parts of this battle, though, is Master Tonberry's Traveler counter to every damaging attack you perform. Depending on your actions and style of playing this game, this move can do a lot of damage.

The way to victory lies in the enemy's status ailment vulnerabilities. Cast Sleep on Master Tonberry, and pair it up with Slow as well. If you have enough people with control over the Rasp spell, you might try removing all his MP first; better safe than sorry, right? If you're done with that or simply don't want to bother, start attacking him with magical attacks. Physical attacks will wake him; stick to magical ones only. It's highly possible you may manage to kill him before he even wakes up once. If he does wake up, just cast Sleep again; Strago's Bad Breath Lore also works (sets Poison too, by the way). Expand Full Strategy

Curlax is the strongest of the three Dream Stooges, and also the most vital one to take down. He has a random shot at casting White Wind every now and again, which heals the other Stooges and himself. Even worse, he will cast Arise on a fallen comrade when he notices they're down. He'll attack with the status-inducing spells when all three brothers are alive, and with the Fire-elemental offensive spells when a comrade has been slain (which is a useless bit of the AI script, as Curlax will always immediately make sure this is never the case with Arise). When he's hit four times by a Magic spell, he'll cast Reflect on himself and start bouncing Fira and Firaga spells off himself. When all three Stooges are alive, he'll cast Delta Attack every 30 seconds; Delta Attack is an unblockable single-target attack that sets Petrify (doesn't work on targets immune to Petrify, obviously). He has a 33% chance of countering any of your attacks with a Fira spell.

Laragorn is the weakest of the three Dream Stooges; his amount of HP is the lowest and his status vulnerabilities are horrible; as if Death wasn't enough, he's an almost exclusive spell caster susceptible to Silence and Confuse. He's the Ice-elemental of the three. Like Curlax, he'll cast Delta Attack when all three Stooges are alive and 30 seconds have passed since the beginning of the battle/the last time Delta Attack appeared. He'll cast Reflect once he's been hit by Magic four times and start reflecting Blizzara and Blizzaga spells off himself. Laragorn will normally just attack with Battle; he'll start using Blizzara and Blizzaga spells when one Stooge is down. He'll counter 33% of the time with Blizzara. The interesting thing about Laragorn is that he may run away in the middle of a battle. When one of the Stooges is down and Laragorn has been hit by four Magic spells, he'll run away. After 30 seconds (if you haven't won the battle yet), he'll return; his HP will be back to maximum, but his MP won't have changed and any status ailments you might've set will still be there.

Moebius is the middle child, and the only one without an elemental weakness. His bane is the Berserk status, and he has the Lightning-element. Like his brethren, he casts Delta Attack after 30 seconds, will cast Reflect on himself after four Magic spells, and start casting Thundara and Thundaga on himself which bounce off; normally he uses support spells (Protect, Shell, Haste, and Cura), but he will start to cast offensive spells (Thundara and Thundaga) when one of the Stooges is down. He may counter any attack with a Thundara spell. Moebius is certainly the most boring of the three.

A note about Delta Attack: when the global battle timer reaches 30, the first Stooge to act will attack with Delta Attack. After that, the global timer is set to 0, so that neither of the other two Stooges can use it. In other words, every 30 seconds only one Delta Attack will appear, not three.

How to fight this battle? Set Mute on Laragorn (the Silence spell is obviously the most prominent way, but Strago's Bad Breath is also a highly acceptable means of setting the same effect (not to mention that it'll also set Confuse); and Berserk on Moebius (with the Berserk spell, possibly). Don't kill off Laragorn with a quick Death spell just yet; our main priority is Curlax. Cast a Sleep spell on him (once again, Bad Breath works there) and pound him with magical attacks, preferably Ice-elemental attacks. When he's dead, abuse Laragorn's vulnerability to instant death attacks and dispose of him quickly. What you have left is a Berserked Moebius who is no threat whatsoever.

So long as you know what you're doing, it's really an easy battle; barriers like Mighty Guard, Hastega, Moon Song, Earth Wall, and Life Guard are nice, but really not necessary. You don't get any items for beating the Dream Stooges, but you will receive 6 Magic Points. Expand Full Strategy

The big sparkle's name is Nelapa. He gets 10 out of 10 for style, but minus one billion for good thinking. I mean, here you are, with a timer quickening your pace, and he thinks it's a good idea to cast Doom on the party. A bit redundant, if not outright illogical.

Sillier yet, the battle with Nelapa (or a Naude) will automatically terminate as soon as the global timer hits 0:04 seconds; enough time to dive from the Floating Continent to "safety". What was the point of the timer in the first place? 0:04 isn't enough time to wait for that special someone, though...

Anyway, after the pompous chatter and casting Doom on the party, he will finally get around attacking you. He can use Attack, Fira, Firaga, and Fireball. Very spooky. Firaga actually hurts a bit. Now here's a hoot: If you hit Nelapa with six Attack commands, he'll use Roulette. Next to the fact that Roulette can actually take Nelapa himself down, the mere thought that Nelapa could even survive six Attacks is laughable in itself. You'd need a Healing Rod or a rat-flail in order to pull that off.

Anyway, back to not insulting this guy into submission (although you could). He's weak to Lightning and Ice and Holy. He's also Floating. Just make sure you keep in the back of your mind this guy is inherently Reflective, which means you'll need to resort to your skills and summon attacks. There are literally hundreds of ways to off this guy, and they're all very easy. Gau's Mu Rage can enSnare him for a one-hit KO, as can a fatal Chainsaw attack. Bouncing a few Rasp spells off yourself will kill him. Bouncing a Death spell off yourself will kill him. You can even confuse him; enemies don't get any more pathetic than that.

Just use your strongest attacks, be it Gigavolt, or Aura Cannon, or Diamond Dust, or what have you. Nelapa has 2800 HP. That's it. If you played your cards right, you were doing 2800 in one attack back there against Ultima Weapon. Pushover. Expand Full Strategy

Machines tend to have that crippling weakness to Lightning, and they also usually have some sort of Program ## move to dish out. This guy has neither. He uses spells and wields swords, so you'd almost assume he was a human if it wasn't for the 'System error!' message that goes off in the middle of the battle. A cyborg, then, like the Sergeant? We can only guess. The facts remain that Number 024, while no real challenge even if you forget about his status ailment weaknesses, is just so darn versatile we still love him anyway.

The guy's main move, Barrier Change, shuffles all the elemental properties of the caster and picks one element to set as its weakness. Then, it sets one element as the element it absorbs. First effects: You'll never know what exactly your elemental attacks will do: 75% chance they'll do nothing, 12.5% chance they'll heal him, 12.5% chance they'll do double damage. Conclusion: Waste of time, think of alternative means of violence. But this fellow adapts his fighting style according to his weakness. You can sort his weakness from what he hits you with, if you like. If his weakness is fire, you'll see ice attacks. Vice versa, too. If lightning, you'll see water. Again, vice versa. If it's wind, he'll use earth-based attacks like Magnitude 8 and Cave In, and if it's earth he'll go to wind attacks like Sonic Boom and Gale Cut. If he's weak to poison, he'll try to cure himself, and if he's weak to Holy-elemental, he'll try to attack you physically or use Reverse Polarity.

Here's what he'll do. He'll simply strike you physically for 30 seconds (this first round doesn't indicate Holy weakness). Then, he'll do his first Barrier Change. When you manage to strike his weakness (you can figure it out via Libra spell), he'll perform it again. If 30 seconds of action elapses first instead (are you taking a nap?), he'll perform another Barrier Change anyway. After he has performed a Barrier Change three times, he'll go haywire, even though you haven't destroyed him; the result of this 'System error' is apparently calling up Arctic Hares (the more successful branch of the Lagomorph family), enjoying Sunbaths, and finding his true self with the Libra spell. After 30 seconds of this, he'll snap out of it again, starting over as if he had cast his first Barrier Change of the battle. Weird stuff, man.

But you won't have to see all this madness. The Sleep spell, taught to you by Siren, works on the fiend, as does Cait Sith's Imp spell. Alone, they severely cripple him; together, they are an unstoppable force. Keep him sleeping and make sure you only cast Magic. If that blasted neutral Tapir shows up and awakens him, cast Sleep again as soon as possible. If Gau is among your forces, just have him relax. Try to steal with Locke; Rune Blade or Blood Sword, both are nice additions if nothing else. I'd especially go for the Blood Sword if you have any choice in the matter, as it's quite unique. In the end, Number 024's Hit Points will run out, and he will die. Victory dance, coffee break, et cetera. Expand Full Strategy

Number 128 is not so much a human with the cybernetic parts in him as a robot with flesh on it. To top it, he's stronger than anything you've ever encountered so far. There are three attacking parts here, and only three party members. The absolute worst part is the fact that he carries a very rare sword on him, a sword that will remain useful throughout the entire game, of which only two exist; one in a chest you'll find two dungeons from now, one as a rare steal on this very opponent. It's by no means horrible if you don't obtain it, but it's really nice if you do.

There are two blades. Left Blade and Right Blade. They're to the left and right of Number 128. Hence their names. They attack physically every round, and throw in a mean Special if you're in bad luck. If you kill them, they'll be back within 15 seconds. Left Blade knows Shamshir, which is especially dangerous as it reveals invisible characters.

The main body is the worst, as you could imagine. Physical strikes more powerful than those of the blades, a Special that drains HP, the ability to cast the Blizzard spell, and cast a Net over a character. The latter two reveal invisible characters. But when both blades are killed, he gets really mean. He will cast Haste on himself to increase his amount of turns and begin using almost exclusively magical attacks. Gale Cut and Atomic Ray are both multi-target attacks, and Atomic Ray hurts quite a bundle. Shockwave is an attack you saw earlier on Dadaluma, and Blaster is its most dangerous move; while inaccurate, it will simply kill any character it does hit. If you are under the influence of Invisible, you get a Game Over.

So here's the strategy if you don't have Phantom at your disposal and/or have summoned him earlier: Ignore the blades and try to focus on the main body. Locke should use Hi-Potions or Phoenix Downs when necessary, and spend all other turns trying to get that Kazekiri blade rare steal. He's also useful for casting Slow spells on the blades to dampen their aggression, if he has learned it. Edgar is reliable and powerful with Drill or Chainsaw, but his brother not so much. If Sabin doesn't know the Thundara spell, I suggest Rising Phoenix. Eventually it will take out the blades, but Phantom gave us a head start at the very least, and you can always summon him again if you entered the battle while invisible. With Cyan, it's the same, only with Fang. If you obtain the Kazekiri, give it to him and simply Attack the body. Gau can Rage Anguiform to be sure to hit the body every Aqua Breath, or Rage Aspiran if you're feeling lucky. Gigavolt is stronger, yet not always multi-target. A few additional tips:

1. If (most of) your party is revealed and you can still summon Phantom, do so. Invisibility is definitely a positive status as long as you can keep at least one blade around at all times.
2. Counter your adversary's Haste spell with a Slow spell from your side when possible.
3. If you find yourself in the rare position of having Catoblepas equipped but not Phantom, summon the piglet Esper right away. There's a rather large chance he'll take out both blades in one go.

Number 128 is one of the most dangerous opponents of the game given its relative setting, and if your luck is just really, really bad it's possible to die even if you're a rather experienced player, especially if you're trying to get the Kazekiri. Expand Full Strategy

The Phantom Train will start with the battle with either a physical attack, !Wheel, or Diabolic Whistle. The next four turns will be spent using normal physical attacks and his Special !Wheel; the fifth turn will be Diabolic Whistle, but only if there are at least two characters still alive.

After every 15 seconds of battle, Phantom Train will use either Acid Rain (2/3) or Saintly Beam, an attack that deals multi-target Holy-elemental damage to your party. Finally, if Phantom Train has been damaged, he has a one in three chance of using !Wheel.

For trivia, Saintly Beam used to be Phantom Train-exclusive until Holy Dragon Redux showed its pasty face for the Advance release. Given it's such a nasty move in that fight, its occurrence here at least shows the Phantom Train was on the right track.

The fight against Phantom Train can be real easy and real bad, and it all depends on his Diabolic Whistle attack. This sets one random status ailment on your party out of the following: Darkness, Poison, Imp, Doom, Berserk, Confused, Sap and Slow.

The ones you need to be concerned about are Imp, Berserk, and Confused. If one of your characters is Imped, you'll want to use Hi-Potions to damage Phantom Train. Hi-Potions inflict 250 worth of HP damage, which is superior to your crummy Imped Attack command. Smack your Confused characters, as there's nothing more fatal than Confused characters, especially when they have access to Rising Phoenix or barrier-piercing attacks.

The Phantom Train battle is very much like the Apparition battle in the sense that using a Phoenix Down is the coward's way out, and that the strategy revolves around allowing Cyan to start the battle with his third Bushido skill, Tiger. After this, have Sabin come in with an Aura Cannon and Shadow with Shuriken. A lot of people have dubbed it 'hilarious' to have Sabin use Meteor Strike on the Phantom Train. If you want to see a tiny sprite lift a huge train, be my guest. Expand Full Strategy

The Red Dragon is red and lives in a volcano. It may shock you to discover he's a Fire dragon! You'll be laughing by now, I assume; not only have you already spotted his weakness to the Confuse status, but the Fire element is the one most easily protected against. The Red Jacket, Ice Shield, Minerva Bustier, and Blizzard Orb all nullify it, the Flame Shield and Berserker Ring absorb it, and, if those resources aren't enough, the Force Shield, Thunder Shield, Cat-Ear Hood, Snow Scarf, and Force Armor all halve damage done by the element. Even though the Red Dragon tries to counter this by employing Flare spells and the Lv. 4 Flare attack, he's still fairly easy.

Every 40 seconds, Red Dragon will use a particularly powerful attack; either S. Cross, Flare Star, or Lv. 4 Flare. Flare Star still deals Fire-elemental damage based on your level, S. Cross is just a strong multi-target Fire-elemental attack and Lv. 4 Flare deals non-elemental, barrier-piercing damage to every character whose level is divisible by 4.

Normally, Red Dragon switches between Fira (66%) and Fire Ball (33%). When he reaches 10240 HP (after having absorbed 19760 HP damage), he'll switch to Firaga (66%) or a Flare spell (33%). All these spells (with the exception of Fire Ball) can be Reflected, but that may not be the wisest action to take; any character under the influence of Reflect will be targeted every second turn by !Eraser (from top character to bottom character), just like the living Behemoth King (1) and his !Devil Claw attack. !Eraser removes the Reflect status, though not when the status is inherent (through Reflect Rings or Rage). Like most bosses, the Red Dragon has a 33% Battle counter to every damaging attack he takes.

What to do? He has a fairly low amount of MP, and all his dangerous attacks need MP to function. In his less dangerous phase, throw up your barriers (summon Fenrir and/or Golem, Kirin's Life Guard is useful as always, Hastega, Mighty Guard, you name it). When you're done, start casting Rasp! You can check if he's out of MP with Libra if you can't keep track yourself. You should have him crippled before his first 40-second attack comes around. Now that Red Dragon is nothing but a big lizard of fire, attack him with all the standard repertoire. It doesn't really matter, as he's pretty much done by now, but the most effective attacks tend to be Ice-elemental ones: the Blizzaga spell, thrown Icebrand swords (or Water Scrolls), the usual Phantom Rush and Dragon Horn Jump attacks, whatever works. Note that Tri-Disaster is absorbed, though. You can toy around with Confuse if you want, but it's not necessary. Expand Full Strategy

As soon as Rhizopas comes, you're in trouble. This little guy has access to the El Niño spell, which will deal up to 250 damage to both characters. Your best bet is to go all-out offensive. While Rhizopas has very decent magical defense, Aura Cannon still out-damages Raging Fist (and Rising Phoenix, but that should be obvious). For Bushido, Tiger doesn't work, so just go with Fang. If you're really unlucky, Rhizopas kills you, and there's nothing you can do about that short of over-leveling. The odds aren't that high, though. Expand Full Strategy

First off, a note of warning: Samurai Soul is unique in the fact that he's a monster in a box you can run from. Doing so hurts your game though; you won't be able to fight him when you return to the chest, and thus you'll miss out on the Master's Scroll.

Samurai Soul is the perfect hybrid between a Samurai and a Ninja, as will become apparent by his AI script. Normally, his attacks will consist of Battle, any of the three offensive ninja scrolls (Flame Scroll, Water Scroll, or Lightning Scroll), and Gale Cut, 1000 Needles, or Shockwave. This isn't half bad for an opponent, but nothing spectacular either. It's when the enemy is aggravated that it becomes lethal. When you've battled him for longer than 40 seconds, he'll pump himself up. The message "Samurai Soul's power up!" will appear, and he will self-apply the Image and Reflect statuses, making him immune to every blockable Fight attack for the duration of Image and most Magic spells for the duration of Reflect. He'll also try to set Haste, but with inherent Slow immunity it will fail. Sad thing.

He may counter Fight, Magic, and Lore with a Battle, but that's not the purpose of his counter script there; when hit six times by Fight, he'll use !Assassin Blade on a random party member, which is a simple one-hit Wound attack with an admittedly poor Hit Rate of 100. When hit three times by any combination of Magic spells or Lore attacks, he'll chuck a weapon (either Kunai or Ashura) at a random party member, doing about 8000 damage to him/her. He'll then spend the next turn using Setzer's GP Rain, dealing exactly 915 HP worth of damage to four party members (1220 to three if one is still down from the thrown blade).

Samurai Soul's glaring weakness is the combination of vulnerability to the Confuse status and its own Special, !Assassin Blade. By setting Confuse with the Confuse spell, Strago's Bad Breath Lore, Cait Sith's Cat Rain, Edgar's Noiseblaster, or whathaveyou, Samurai Soul has a 50% chance of killing himself with !Assassin Blade. Sketching nets you a 25% shot at !Assassin Blade too. Exploit this weakness for a far easier battle.

If you're looking for more of a challenge or for some other reason don't want to muddle the poor warrior into defeat, here's what you'll want to do. First, throw up your barriers. Focus on the magical side; Mighty Guard (for Shell) or Zona Seeker's Wall, Hastega, Kirin's Life Guard, etc. Golem and Fenrir help against !Assassin Blade, but you shouldn't see it directed at you anyway.

Now, let loose with your characters. There's no reason to use Fight, Magic, or Lore on Samurai Soul. Terra, Celes, and Strago should really just wait out this battle. Attack with Phantom Rush Blitzes, Cyan's SwdTech skills (Tempest is nice), Jump attacks, the Drill Tool, etc. If you're really unlucky and brought all the wrong characters, just Fight (!Assassin Blade every sixth Fight attack isn't all that bad). When Samurai Soul powers up, Dispel removes all three positive statuses immediately. If you want to be evil, you can break the no-Lore rule one time and steal all three with Rippler (provided Strago's not prancing around with something like a Guard Bracelet or Miracle Shoes). Expand Full Strategy

Skull Dragon just isn't very assuming. It's a generally subpar dragon as-is, once you ignore the fact it has no status vulnerabilities to exploit, but, at the very end of the game, your party is a force to be reckoned with. It's kind of ridiculous and sad all at the same time.

Battle, Doom, Will o' the Wisp, and Apparition all show up on the boss' first three turns, Doom easily being the most popular one. Every fourth turn, Skull Dragon may use Disaster, which is clearly its most crippling attack. It will be randomly single or multi-targeted by the semi-Undead dragon, and it sets Dark, Imp, Doom, Mute, Muddle, and, oddly enough, the Float status. One interesting little tidbit about the Apparition move is that the graphic designers never expected any monster to use it, so, instead of a graphic of the caster (Skull Dragon in this case), you'll see a half-baked sprite of your leading party member instead. Every damaging attack it takes may be countered by Battle.

Throw on Ribbons where possible. You shouldn't need any special protection for Will o' the Wisp, as it's about as powerful as Fira, but you can equip Flame Shields, Ice Shields, Minerva Bustiers, or Berserker Rings to absorb or nullify the attack. On the offensive front, just do whatever you have learned works. Since it's possible you have Ragnarok's Metamorph at your disposal, you can try that for a quick win. Firaga spells are extremely powerful (more so than the Holy spell). Ragers can Rage Srbehemoth to cast Firaga and become immune to Doom (the eventual death trigger will heal him), and the Imp, Mute, and Confuse statuses that Disaster may set (the remaining Dark and Float statuses that will be set are nothing to worry about for obvious reasons). Gogo should Rage like Gau. If you bought Flametongues for Shadow, know that they are superior to other weapons Shadow can throw. Expand Full Strategy