Final Fantasy VII community relay

OK folks, I'll be starting this in about two hours, at 9pm GMT. That's as American friendly as I can make it, because while I'll be going quick, I'm not going to speed run it and I have some more grinding to do in XIV so I'm not into the idea of taking this too far beyond midnight . I won't be stopping for extra shit either so it shouldn't take too long.

Anyway, I'll bump this with my twitch stream just before it starts.

Might be tough for me to make it, as I'm spending the evening with my family, but maybe I'll catch the tail end.

I'll look away for the last few minutes in case you want to give me a surprise when I load up the save file.

I'm out so I don't think I'll make it :/

Starting half an hour later due to unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances (something huge happened on Greys Anatomy and I had to process my feeling. NO SHAME).

One hour from now

Big fat donkey balls. I'm trying to log in but Twitch had to reset a load of shit 'last tuesday' and I never re verified and now it doesn't even want to send me a confirmation email. Clungebags. I may have to make a new account.

EDIT: disregard. seems to be sorted now.

Well, I for one am waiting patiently to watch your stream, Lex. VERY PATIENTLY!

My connection keeps crapping out every 5 mins

Well that was fun

I haven't streamed in a while and I got a few new followers (one of which was Octo). It's weird because I stream other stuff from the PS4 sometimes (XIV, Rayman etc.) but the one that always seems to pull in people is VII.

I should be able to play later today but because I'm on my old, slow laptop I won't be streaming it. And even if I did stream it I wouldn't have a way of providing commentary.

I had a right old laugh when I loaded up Lex's save. This is where I started:



Since the location was rather unusual, I decided to open the menu to see what other tricks he had played. This was the most obvious one:



Healing wasn't easy either - this was the state of our inventory, notably lacking any Phoenix Down:



How about Restore materia? Not here (notice that Lex trashed all three copies of our All materia):



But what's this? Sneaky, Lex, but not sneaky enough!



With Cloud healed up I headed back to Kalm, since the inn there is only 20 gil compared to 100 gil at the Chocobo Farm (our cash supply was running quite low as well). With all three characters on their feet again, I headed outside to learn Matra Magic and scrape a few gil together in the process.

One thing I've learnt about Custom Sweepers is that they never appear when you're looking for them. I must have escaped from a dozen battles before they showed up, while Lex's first encounter on the world map yesterday was with a pair of them. At least I managed to steal a pair of Atomic Scissors, which I sold for 700 gil. I bought one Phoenix Down and a few potions as emergency supplies for my journey to Fort Condor.

I stopped off at the Chocobo farm, not to catch a Chocobo but just to get the Choco/Mog materia. You know how I've said that I learn something new about the game every time I play? Today I learned you can run here:



Small pleasures. Anyway, I got over the marshes on foot, as always, but then I had to - gasp - do a bit of grinding for gil in the Mythril Mines, since I wanted to visit Fort Condor. I continued in the forests on the other side of the mine, and I managed to find Yuffie Force in my second encounter, which must be a record for me.

I visited Fort Condor a total of three times in this chapter, completing all the battles available to me. I had to sell some more things to pay for it. I can't make everyone else carry on the sidequest when it's their turn to play, but at least I won't be the one who gave up our chance of completing it 100%. Some of the battles have ridiculously short windows: I had to leave Junon twice with Cloud as my only party member, and that's not even the worst example (that would be battle 7).

Bottomswell was super easy with Choco/Mog and Flamethrower. Afterwards I bought three Tranquilizers just in case someone gets stuck on a boss later in the playthrough and needs to give everyone sadness. Or Force can use one of them to make Force feel better on the cargo ship.

Since there's no fighting at the beginning of the next chapter, I didn't think there was much point in trying to leave things in a precarious situation like Lex did for me. I did put in a couple of 'easter eggs', though. I'll PM you the memory card file shortly, Force.

I had fun, but it was too short. I'm looking forward to (hopefully) having another chapter later on.

I see this has gotten ugly...

I was planning on heading back to Fort Condor on my turn if I’m able to do so. I was planning to pay a visit to the Mythril guy if Dragonslayer Ornstein doesn’t do it on their go and depending on what materia we have left I may also do a few other things whilst I’m there. It’s difficult to plan ahead when I don’t know what the file is going to be like by the time it comes around to me. I'm excited to see what I'll be given to work with.

You're welcome Flint

ForceStealer said:

I see this has gotten ugly...

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I left a way out! I was actually kind of disappointed with myself because the first thing I do - even if its in perfect order - is go into the materia menu and hit arrange-arrange, so I knew if it was me the restore materia would have popped right back up XD.

I also found out I am physiologically incapable of turning a save file into a non-100%able file, it felt too wrong. Trashing a few all materia doesn't hurt anybody XD. Although I did waste 8000 gil by selling almost everything in the inventory and then buying and trashing earth materia. I now realise I didn't consider that you've got Jenova BIRTH with a fairly low level party, but there's an all materia on the ship so you'll be fine . I also thought about trashing enemy skill but you have knowledge of the game so I knew you'd just pick up the one in Junon. Also I didn't want to XD.

You should have been in the stream for when I was doing that stuff at the end. I couldn't stop giggling and laughing like an evil genius.

Teiocho said:

I was planning on heading back to Fort Condor on my turn if I’m able to do so. I was planning to pay a visit to the Mythril guy if Dragonslayer Ornstein doesn’t do it on their go and depending on what materia we have left I may also do a few other things whilst I’m there. It’s difficult to plan ahead when I don’t know what the file is going to be like by the time it comes around to me. I'm excited to see what I'll be given to work with.

Click to expand...

I have never bothered 100%ing the Fort Condor quest. The times you have to go back are super obscure. Night time in the City of the Ancients anyone? That's a fair level of backtracking when something fairly severe that should be time sensitive is happening to your party

I wasn't expecting to find the Restore materia, to be honest, but even if you had trashed that, sold absolutely everything you could and left me with less than 20 gil, I still think I would have survived, so it's probably best that you didn't. I would have laughed even more than I already did, but the other people in this challenge might have resented you a bit.

It's fine, better that people start filling up an Enemy Skill Materia, then sell on your chapter and leave an empty one.

All right...well, I'm giving this an attempt. Never done it before though:

So I didn't figure out the screenshot button until I was halfway through. But I started in my Shinra uniform with a Buster Sword, and the battle-tested materia combo Sense-Elemental equipped.

But there was no immediate combat. So I first played my part in the parade...actually did a little better than I usually do but still only got a "bomb" for my trouble. Went through all the buildings, found the Enemy Skill materia, bought a piece of equipment that we apparently already had for Tifa, found the guy jerking off in the hotel and made my way to the dock.

After a shaky start I performed well during the send-off and was rewarded with my beloved namesake.


Successfully stowed away, I remedied Lex's previous dickery.


Then I purchased some drugs from the sailors on board.


Found Flint who hadn't found his sea legs.


Then the alarm went off that someone had been spotted on board. It turned out not to be us so we went to investigate, found Sephiroth chillin in the engine room with some of his victims. He spoke in riddles and flew off leaving behind Jenova-BIRTH. Great song, though our team is a little unprepared for bosses in its current state. Further exacerbated by the fact that I had taken the time to steal the Shinra Beta armor from the troops in the hold and forgotten to equip it like an idiot. That battle started off pretty dicey, Tifa (with Cure) kept getting Stopped. And despite my finding a new All materia, it still meant I could only Cure-All once.

After Cloud jumped to the back row, however, I could keep up with the healing and just pounded her with magic.


We disembarked and could lose our disguises, which we were glad for. Lex was a bit disappointed though:


Fangu was unamused,


but, I suspect, quietly agreed:


Then I met Hojo tanning on the beach while still in his labcoat and he mumbled something about heading west. Onto Chapter 7!

These write ups are hilarious, kudos guys

And to Lex as well of course for setting up for Flint's run, I laughed all the way through that part of the stream

On their first playthrough, did anyone else sleep at the inn at Costa del Sol before talking to Hojo, thereby removing him from the beach and forever missing that opportunity -- then spent at least an hour running around trying to figure out where he was because the strategy guide said he'd be there? =P

Not on my first playthrough no, but I've done it every time since. And I mean every single time. I always forget about all the scenes you can have with your party members because I go to the inn too early. I usually miss the interesting scenes too because of my party choices. I'd like to see a video compilation of what each character is doing tbh, because there are some I've only gotten once or twice.

I've never done that, no. I didn't realize it disappeared if you slept...

Great write-up, Force. I think we've set a precedent that everyone else will have to follow now. Kudos to Doran for coming up with the idea of using our names for the characters; I don't think I realised how much comic potential it had until I saw Red, waddling around on the Cargo Ship deck, say "...It's me, Flintlock".

We're going to do more of these relays in the future, y/y?

Dragonslayer Ornstein is up next and I'll be sending the save file his way shortly as soon as I'm able to download it from the link Force gave me.

Flintlock said:

We're going to do more of these relays in the future, y/y?

Click to expand...

I'm all for it.