Final Fantasy VI All Enemies and Bosses

This is better. Phunbaba (1) will start the battle with a physical attack, be it either Battle or !Solar Plex. Then, he'll start using Bolt 2 and Bolt 3 spells; finally, he can use Blowfish, which will likely be ill received, as 1000 damage is nothing to laugh at when it's coming for you. Phunbaba (1)'s name, if you're wondering, comes from the old Babylonian heroic poem 'Gilgamesh'. He was a monster there. He got killed, too.

If you have a Celes/Sabin team, have Sabin use his dual Poison Claws for great damage. Don't bother going on the offensive with Celes due to her lower damage output; have her on Runic standby. Both should start the battle by calling up Golem's Earth Wall if they have him equipped. If Sabin is weak, you should break the Runic guard to cure him. Smack Phunbaba (1) with Sabin's fists until he runs off.

If you have a solo Celes party, summon Golem to start, and fill all other turns by casting Bio (or, if lacking Bio, Ice 2) as quickly as you can. Fighting this guy with Celes only is a risk as no matter what you do, Blowfish is very dangerous and Phunbaba (1) can kill you. If you're low at HP, sneak in an X-Potion or Elixir.

Any other team needs little guidance; you've obviously been around the world, collected at least four characters, and have better equipment than neccessary. Bio spells still come in handy. What else is there to say? Setzer can't spin Joker Doom here. The best Dance is Earth Blues, while the home dance, Wind Song is nigh worthless. Vaporite absorbs Bolt 2 and Bolt 3 while dealing acceptable damage, although a Mag Roader P. Rage with a Wall Ring is better. Expand Full Strategy

This isn't all that difficult, so I'll make it kinda quick. You rush out of the house to find Phunbaba (2) approaching. You do battle with him. The first round, he'll throw a Battle or !Solar Plex attack. The next round consists of Bolt 2 or Bolt 3, and the third round is Bolt 2, Blowfish, or Battle. It loops from this point. As soon as it reaches 15360 Hit Points, it'll counter the next attack you throw at him with a double BabaBreath attack. BabaBreath is a Phunbaba (2)-only attack that's exactly the same as Sneeze; it only looks different. Phunbaba (2) targets two random characters and blows them away. They will also be removed from your party and can be found at the Falcon later. Here, the battle ends.

If you somehow managed to completely circumvent this event by doing more than 15360 damage in one turn, he'll use BabaBreath only once and die. This is odd, as the thing going on here plot-wise is that you can't really handle Phunbaba (2). Sure, you pound on him for a while, then he disables two of your characters just like that.

On the offensive, Phunbaba (2) is temporarily resistant to the Sleep status, so that doesn't work. Focus on your strongest attacks; Sabin's Bum Rush, Mog and Edgar's Jump attacks, Setzer's GP Rain attack (his Fixed Dice are stronger if you have them), Cyan's Quadraslam technique, what have you. If you brought Gau to the scene, !Catscratch at decent level (30 and above) is the best bet versus Phunbaba (2) for Gau. If this isn't an option for Gau, Tyranosaur's Meteo is also decent, followed in usefulness by Harpiai's Aero and Trilium's Bio. Vaporite absorbs Bolt 2 and Bolt 3, which is a great defensive choice if you didn't bring Wall Rings or a Runic user. Keep in the back of your head that Vaporite is undead, though. Rhinox isn't, but that really kills Gau's offense in the matter. Woolly absorbs the Lightning-elemental spells and has superior offense in Ice 3, but chances are slim you chose to pick up Gogo before Terra. Your Mages and lesser-trained characters have the Bio spell to use, and if any character has learned Quake then it is pure magic here (don't forget to cast Float, obviously). Note that since this battle fades out rather than actually ends, Strago won't be able to learn any Lores (aka Blowfish) from this battle.

Anyway, despite your perfect set-up and the little amount of damage Phunbaba (2) will be able to do against your party, you still get your face handed to you on an IKEA faux-silver platter according to the storyline. No fair. So, Terra comes to save you! Sensing that her friends are in danger or something cheesy like that, she rushes to the rescue, unleashing the Esper within herself on her way. Round two: Fight!

There you stand, with one or two less characters than what you picked beforehand but with a permanently Morphed Terra as a replacement. Basically, just continue to attack Phunbaba (2) in the same fashion. If Terra knows the Bio spell, have her use it. Since Terra doesn't have a Wall Ring and likely lacks the Minerva as well, it might be a good idea to cast Shell or Rflect on her in this battle, even though she already takes half as much damage from the attacks due to her Morphed state. The Sleep status ailment works now, so have one of your characters cast it if possible and focus on using magical attacks only. Before long, Phunbaba (2) will fall. Interesting tidbit: This is actually the only battle in the entire game in which you can see the fallen Esper Terra sprite. In normal situations, Terra will automatically revert to human form when she is killed, but not so in this battle. Expand Full Strategy

Poltrgeist would have started out with inherent Image too, but since the game designers also gave her Image immunity, this status is never applied. Too bad for her. Poltrgeist is the least inventive Goddess of the bunch, as she shows us no new attacks. But we can forgive her, as she's so especially awesome. So, what will she try to do to us?

Her normal AI script has her use Battle, !Psygrip, Shrapnel (this one is kind of painful when it hits), and the Stop spell. You should immediately remove the Stop status with a Dispel spell if a character is affected, since, as soon a character suffers from the Stop status, Poltrgeist will use a Blaster attack to kill the person off. If the Stopped character isn't immune to instant death attacks, this will hit, so beware. A little note about !Psygrip: The Japanese game calls this Special attack 'Tyrfing', after a cursed sword from gothic folklore.

Poltrgeist becomes increasingly mean once you damage her beyond 32640 HP, as she will start the heavy artillery with the powerful multi-target attacks: Aero, S. Cross, Flare Star, and Meteo. At this point, you don't have to worry about any kind of physical attack or the Stop/Blaster combo anymore. Finally, every time Poltrgeist is damaged, she may cast a Fire 3 spell on the attacker. After she has been damaged eight/sixteen/etc. times, her next move will be WaveCannon.

You have two proverbial trump cards against her. First off, you're draped in equipment that absorbs and/or nullifies her elemental attacks. Make Fire-elemental protection a priority, as you'll see that element the most, especially with the existence of that Fire 3 omni-counter. Second, Poltrgeist is vulnerable to the Stop status, so what are we even worrying about? Do note that since Poltrgeist is inherently Hasted, the status won't stick around as long as you would usually expect, so barriers and Fire-elemental protection certainly aren't excessive luxuries.

Set Stop on Poltrgeist right away and make multi-target Shell your next priority by means of Big Guard, Wall, or individual Shell-casting. Haste 2 is grand as usual to keep up with Poltrgeist, and while buffs such as Regen and physical protection aren't really necessary or all that useful, it wouldn't hurt either. Now, start pounding Poltrgeist with everything you have! Make no mistake; the Poison-elemental weakness is nothing you can really work with, as a neutral level 3 spell is stronger than Bio even when the latter is hitting a weakness. You might even want to set a better elemental weakness with the Debilitator to speed things up.

Your Dragoons will have a hard time penetrating Poltrgeist's Defense and Safe status, so you might want to keep them around for utility shift this time. Shadow can throw Poison Rods for great (barrier-piercing) damage. Gau is great Raging certain monsters, including Woolly (Ice 3, absorbs every element but Fire which the Snow Muffler takes care of), Evil Oscar (same story, casts Bio), Uroburos (absorbs Fire-elemental attacks, casts Quake), or just an offensive Rage such as Stray Cat (care to give Gau a Poison Rod?), Prussian, Tyranosaur, or whatever. Locke, Sabin, Cyan, Setzer, and Strago shouldn't have any trouble penetrating Poltrgeist's defenses. For the pure Magic skillset characters, the Quake spell is the second-best option after Ultima. If you don't have it or Float isn't an option, it's all about Flare.

In the end, Poltrgeist is the easiest of the three Goddesses to defeat, and that's all due to the Stop status vulnerability. If it hadn't been for that, I would've ranked her in the middle. Poltrgeist is all about the multi-target violence, and, if you have the defenses and elemental resistances to keep up with that, you're basically in the clear even if you choose not to apply the Stop status. Expand Full Strategy

There are a few oddities about this thing. First off, it's supposed to be a scary Whelk upgrade, a task at which it fails. Second, notice how the shell is Floating but the head isn't? The tale of a creature whose head was too heavy to carry hasn't been new since Catoblepas, but I've never seen it applied to a snail before. Presenter also made an appearance in the 1996 Square game 'Bahamut Lagoon', which never hit the shores of America. Same name, same sprite, has a tendency to appear when you destroy buildings with Thunder-techs.

Also, the game designers made a little mistake we're going to exploit here; we were never supposed to obtain more than one Dragon Claw from this fight, but we're getting two. Just watch me.

The AI script of the head is simple. If you damage the head two times, it'll retract into its shell, disappearing from the battlefield. It'll remain there for 20 seconds, at which point is comes out again. It'll use Battle, !Petriblast, El Nino, and Mega Volt without causing itself any difficulties, so be ready for any of them at all times. The shell attacks by itself, and is no longer just an auto-counter dummy. Battle, Mega Volt, and Blowfish may appear at all times, of which Blowfish should be watched for especially. When the head has retracted, it'll stop using its normal attacks and switch over to Magnitude8. Whenever the shell is damaged, it has a 33% chance at retorting with Giga Volt.

The strategy we're aiming for is simple. If one of the parts dies, the other one dies as well, but will NOT give us the item. Thus, if we want both sets of Dragon Claw (and we certainly do, as Presenter is the only source for Dragon Claw in the game), we have to kill them both at the same time.

First, our defenses! If you didn't cast Float earlier, do so at the start of the battle. Zoneseek helps against Mega Volt, Giga Volt, and El Nino. Golem and/or Fenrir protect against Battle and !Petriblast. You could have Celes on Runic stand-by for Mega Volt and Giga Volt, but it's not worth it. Now, let's kill this snail.

Since both targets are susceptible to Instant Death attacks and Petrify, the two best strategies are using X-Zone and using Shoat's Demon Eye. However, we don't want to take any chances, do we? First, if you have the Vanish spell, cast it on the shell to ensure that X-Zone/Demon Eye will hit it. Remember, this is not a bug exploit; the shell is susceptible to instant death attacks, and setting Clear just makes sure the intended move hits, exactly what it was always supposed to do. Sadly, we can't apply Sleep or Stop to make sure X-Zone/Demon Eye works on the head, because both attacks check for the target's Stamina (in which case those steps are ignored). So, we'll just have to take our chances here. Since Demon Eye is more accurate than X-Zone, it takes precedence. If the head is missed, I suggest you reload the game. Expand Full Strategy