 |
Cultists’ Tower - Enemies
Located in the midst of a small mountain range on the Serpent Trench, the Cultists’ Tower is one of the weirdest, and potentially toughest, dungeons in all of Final Fantasy VI. Occupied by a group of Kefka worshipers, the tower is a straight climb up to the roof, forcing you to loop flights of stairs over and over and over. The enemies get stronger as you climb the tower, starting at a very low level and becoming quite powerful near the top.
Sound normal enough? There’s a deadly caveat: You can only use the Magic and Item commands while climbing the Cultists' Tower. No Attack command and no special moves. Your MP is drained as you climb the tower, and the enemies have such weird attack patterns that you may be hard pressed to keep up. You also can’t run from fights, which is juuuuust peachy.
-240219-192016.png)
Here are some hints for reaching the top of the Cultists’ Tower the hard way:
- Bring along a buttload of Ethers, Hi-Ethers, and X-Ethers. There are no save points, so you won’t be able to use Tents or Sleeping Bags. Hi-Potions, X-Potions, and Elixirs can also be quite useful.
- Bring a team that’s powerful in magic. This not only means those who know a lot of spells, but characters with high magical stats (Terra, Celes and Relm are all good choices).
- Bring Umaro. He ignores the magic-only restriction and continues to fight as normal. Casting Berserk on your other party members can also prompt them to attack normally, though like Umaro you won't be able to control them.
- Use non-elemental spells. Most of the enemies in the Cultists' Tower range wildly in strengths and weaknesses, and it’s best to simply bypass these problems with neutral spells. Flare is good for single targets, and Ultima will take everybody down (and ignores Reflect, to boot, which is a common status for the higher-level enemies).
- Equip Reflect Rings and rely on items for healing over magic. Not only will this save you MP, many of your opponents may accidentally kill themselves by trying to bounce spells off of your Reflecting characters.
Too difficult? Too annoying? The easy way up is to put Mog in the party. Equip him with Molulu’s Charm, found in the wall he’s facing when you locate him in the World of Ruin, and you'll bypass all of the random battles you’d otherwise be forced to face. You’ll be in much better condition when you have to battle the area’s boss at the top of the tower, as well.
Along the way you’ll find several treasure rooms. They contain the following items:
- A Safety Bit - and if you investigate the wall to the right of the chest you’ll reveal a room directly below it, containing an Air Anchor
- A Genji Shield
- A Kagenui - this room also contains one of the Eight Dragons, the Holy Dragon
- Force Armor
At the top you’ll find a chest containing a Soul of Thamasa, a fantastic relic that allows you to cast two spells in one round. Grab it, though, and you’ll doom yourself to a battle before you can leave the Cultists’ Tower again.
Magic Master
HP: 50,000
Weakness: Varies (auto-Reflect)
Drop: Megalixir
A more-powerful remix of Number 024, the Magic Master is the penultimate challenge in the Cultists' Tower. He uses the following attacks:
- Normal melee attacks
- Fira / Firaga, Fire spells
- Blizzara / Blizzaga, Ice spells
- Thundara / Thundaga, Lightning spells
- Bio, a Poison spell that can inflict Poison
- Death, which can OHKO a single target
- Silence, which inflicts the Silence ailment and prevents spell use
- Barrier Change, which changes the Magic Master's elemental strengths and weaknesses
- Ultima, a powerful non-elemental spell against your whole party
Embodying the might of everything you’ve faced up to this point, the Magic Master is a cruel boss. He possesses a wide range of powerful magic attacks, all of which inflict large amounts of damage on anyone without a decent magic defense. True to his sprite, he also has a barrier-changing attack which shifts his current elemental weakness whenever he's hit by a spell. You’ll have to use Libra to puzzle out his current weakness.
You can fight the Magic Master the hard way, if you wish, targeting his weaknesses or using neutral spells (Flare, Ultima) to do damage. That said, there are two alternatives for bringing him down that are much easier:
- Equip Reflect Rings on everybody. Magic Master’s spells will fly right back at him, and eventually he’ll kill himself. Magic Master also won’t change his weakness if he hits himself with magic.
- Use Berserk on Magic Master. If / when it sticks Berserk forces the Magic Master to only use physical attacks, which in this case are much less painful than his magic. Combine this with Protect or Vanish and he won’t stand much of a chance.
Regardless of your approach, there’s a caveat to this fight: Magic Master always uses Ultima upon death. Ultima is a party-wide, non-elemental attack that does ridiculous amounts of damage. Unless you equipped the Force Armor you found on the way up on somebody with an already-high magic defencse, or unless your characters are just way overleveled, the best way to survive this spell is to use Reraise, learned from the Phoenix Magicite, on one or more of your characters. They’ll die, but the spell brings them back before the battle ends.
(Another option is to drain the Magic Master's MP with Osmose and Rasp. This takes a very long time, since he has 50,000 MP, but it'll prevent him from using Ultima.)
You'll receive a Megalixir for defeating the Magic Master. You're also rewarded with a walk back down the tower, since Teleport doesn’t work here. Consider this the final challenge of the Cultists' Tower. Have fun!