kaie's journal

Some days I get the feeling that I have got to be the only one who names tags as if they were filenames or variables.

Anyway, I should be starting school on Monday. --insert minor freakout here--

However, Zack is now level 35, I have a mastered Hell Thundaga, I'm leveling up a Graviga and a Drainra, and I have a fully mastered Steal that I keep equipped so that I can rob monsters blind of their items. Most of it is junk, but I can fuse items into my materia now, so I'm hoping to collect enough stuff to eventually create disgustingly powerful materia (as if the HP Up+ with +170% HP wasn't bad enough). I have yet to summon Mog, sadly.

I'm eating a very strange food that is composed of white, fluffy, sweet filaments bundled into tiny logs. It's probably Chinese or Taiwanese in origin. The sugar rush is incredibly steep.

I made soup today! (It never fails to amaze me how little resemblance the food I cook has to any named dish any other person in the world has ever put together. I based this soup off of Chinese hot and sour soup, but the ingredient list took a left turn at Albuquerque and didn't look back.)

I also returned to Crisis Core. I have an HP Up+ (HP +70%) materia and a level 1 Curaga. I still haven't figured out how to get Hell Thundaga (which I really want because not only does it cause status ailments, if I equip a Status Ward materia, it'll protect me from the same ailments it inflicts), but given the rate at which regular Thundaga burns through my MP supply, this is probably a good thing for now. Basically, I win tough fights by flanking until I have enough space to get away with unleashing a couple of Thundagas. Zack routinely inflicts 4000 points of damage per Thundaga, while his stupid little sword only tops 1000 if he's doing a critical hit (a hit from behind, which I'm usually not dextrous enough to pull off). Plus, using said sword means he has to be closer to the enemy, which in turn means that they're close enough to hit him - and he doesn't have that many hit points, even with the fancy HP Up+ materia. I am possibly attempting missions that are too hard for me at the current stage of the game.

Dear Angeal,

Will you shut up about the stupid apples and just skip to the part where you patiently explain that people who normally play as support mages should NOT begin the game on hard mode? Oh, wait, never mind, you DON'T, you just let me die.

Zero hugs and I WILL plant a bomb in your bed tonight,
Your friend Zack.

On the plus side, normal mode seems like it will not be stupidly difficult. I suppose if I ever learned how to dodge or guard against attacks, hard mode could be employed right off the bat, but to date I have never, ever managed to use a dodge or guard successfully and on purpose during a real-time independent movement battle.