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freyayuki · 3 years

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Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia Lufenia Quests with Cloud Strife and Sephiroth

Lufenia Quests are currently the hardest kind of fight in the Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia (DFFOO) mobile game. They’re level 200. Aside from the usual gems and tickets, winning will give you 20 High Guard Tokens, which can be used to buy High Armor.

The battles featured in this post include either Cloud Strife (from Final Fantasy VII) or Sephiroth (from Final Fantasy VII) as part of the team lineup.

Lufenia Quests Table of Contents

The Lufenia fights featured in this post are the following:

The Terse Turk

Mechanized Sentry (Guard Scorpion Raid)

Roses of May

Thrall of Darkness

Storming the Citadel (Mission Dungeon)

Tree for the Void

Introduction

After I ended up having to pity the Burst or BT weapons of both Cloud and Sephiroth, I wanted to use them as much as possible, especially in Lufenia fights.

I talk more about this in another post, but it was a back-to-back pity. Spent a total of 240,000 gems. It would have been more if their banners didn’t come with a free multi-draw as part of the game’s winter holidays celebration.

Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII

My Cloud is Level 80 and Crystal Level 80. His 15cp, 35cp, Manikin weapon, World of Illusions weapon, Ex, and LD are fully MLB. His Ex is at Ex+ 3/3 or Purple. He’s currently equipped with his Burst weapon and his High Armor. All of his Boards have been completed. He has his Bloom Stone.

He has 3 Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 Artifacts and

3 Attack 108 with Debuff Attack Up★★ (Raises ATK by 5% when an enemy is debuffed) Artifacts.

My plan was to equip Cloud with triple 108/Debuff Attack Up★★ whenever I have him in a party with chars who are able to constantly inflict a lot of debuffs. However, I usually just end up equipping him with triple 108/330 anyway.

Cloud is equipped with the following Spheres:

Tifa Lockhart’s (from Final Fantasy VII) Critical Attack Up Longer A Sphere

Raises ATK by 10% for 6 turns when dealing critical hit

Sazh Katzroy’s (from Final Fantasy XIII) Critical Attack All Longer D Sphere

When dealing critical hit: • Raises party’s ATK by 5% for 6 turns

Faris Scherwiz’s (Sarisa Scherwil Tycoon from Final Fantasy V) Full HP Critical Poison All E Sphere

Grants effect for 6 turns that reduces enemy’s BRV by 30% of individual INT BRV at start of enemy’s turn when dealing critical hit while HP at MAX *Does not stack with same sphere

Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII

My Sephiroth is Level 80 and Crystal Level 80. His 15cp, 35cp, Ex, and LD are fully MLB. His Ex is at Ex+ 3/3 or Purple. He’s currently equipped with his Burst weapon and his High Armor. All of his Boards have been completed. He has his Bloom Stone.

He has 3 Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 Artifacts and

3 Attack 108 with One-Winged Angel Boost★★ (Raises INT BRV, MAX BRV, ATK, DEF by 5% if HP is MAX at start of last wave) Artifacts.

If the fight only has 1 wave, then I equip him with triple 108/One-Winged Angel Boost★★. Otherwise, I go for triple 108/330.

Sephiroth is equipped with the following Spheres:

Jecht’s (from Final Fantasy X) Critical Base Attack Up Shorter (RF) A Sphere

When dealing critical hit: • Raises INT BRV, ATK by 4% for 3 turns

Jack’s (from Final Fantasy Type-0) Critical Attack Up Shorter Power A Sphere

When dealing critical hit: • Raises BRV damage by 5%, ATK by 5% for 3 turns

Yuri’s (from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates) Full HP Attack Boost Up A Sphere

Raises own MAX BRV, ATK by 5% while HP is MAX

The Terse Turk Lufenia Quest

The The Terse Turk is the event that introduced Rude (from Final Fantasy VII) as a playable char in this game. Sephiroth's Burst was also featured on Rude's banner (this was where I ended up pitying said BT), which meant he was also synergy for all the The Terse Turk quests.

The The Terse Turk Lufenia Quest was the first Lufenia fight wherein I used Sephiroth. His team mates were Rude and Gladiolus Amicitia (from Final Fantasy XV). Both Rude and Gladio are fully MLB and Purple, including their LD. All of their Boards have been completed and they have their Bloom Stones. Gladio has triple Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 Artifacts while Rude has 1 Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 and 2 Attack 108 with Max Brave 200 Artifacts. Gladio is equipped with the following Spheres:

Oerba Yun Fang’s (from Final Fantasy XIII) Break Hit Attack Up Longer (RF) A Sphere

When inflicting Break or attacking target afflicted with Break: • Raises own ATK by 4% for 6 turns

Gabranth’s (Noah fon Ronsenburg from Final Fantasy XII) Critical Resist All Shorter (RF) B Sphere

After dealing critical hit: • Reduces party’s BRV damage taken by 4% for 3 turns

Garnet Til Alexandros XVII’s (from Final Fantasy IX) HP Heal Attack Up Longer (RF) C Sphere

When recovering own HP: • Self: Raises ATK by 4% for 6 turns

I talk more about this in another post, but am really very pleased to have been able to get the win with this team.

Mechanized Sentry (Guard Scorpion Raid) Lufenia Quest

The Mechanized Sentry (Guard Scorpion Raid) is the event that came with the introduction of Cloud’s LD and Burst. The second banner of this event was where I ended up pitying Cloud’s BT.

The Mechanized Sentry (Guard Scorpion Raid) Lufenia Quest is the first time I used Cloud in a Lufenia fight. This is Sephiroth’s second Lufenia battle. I brought Rude as my third char because the enemies here loved to HP attack. Rude heals, he batteries, and he even provides some good auras and buffs for the party.

I talk more about this in another post, but I’m super pleased that I was able to get the win by using both Sephiroth and Cloud in the same team. Even managed to bring in Rude for a full Final Fantasy VII (#ad) party.

Roses of May Lufenia Quest

The Roses of May is Beatrix’s (from Final Fantasy IX) Lost Chapter event. For the Lufenia Quest of this event, I saw a lot of clears that featured Cloud, but the only one with Sephiroth that I saw also included Beatrix. I couldn’t find any clears that included both Seph and Cloud in the same team. Since this is Beatrix’s event, she has synergy stats, but I couldn’t use her because I didn’t have any more resources to spare to pull for her LD.

After reading more info about this fight as well as watching a few vids, I decided to try it with a team comprised of Cloud, Sephiroth, and Lightning (Claire Farron from Final Fantasy XIII).

My Lightning is Level 80 and Crystal Level 80. Her 15cp, 35cp, Manikin weapon, Ex, and LD are fully MLB. Her Ex is at Ex+ 3/3 or Purple. She’s currently equipped with her Burst weapon and her High Armor. All of her Boards have been completed. She has her Bloom Stone.

She has triple Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 and triple Attack 108 with Initial Brave 170 Artifacts.

Lightning is equipped with the following Spheres:

Prishe’s (from Final Fantasy XI) Weak Attack Boost Up Shorter A Sphere

When attacking target’s weakness: • Raises own MAX BRV, ATK by 10% for 3 turns *Does not stack with same sphere

Ardyn Izunia’s (Ardyn Lucis Caelum from Final Fantasy XV) Break Raging Attack Boost Up A Sphere

When inflicting Break: • Raises MAX BRV, ATK by 2% up to 5 times, once per turn *Does not stack with same sphere

Hope Estheim’s (from Final Fantasy XIII) Buff Success Attack Boost All Shorter D Sphere

After granting buff: • Raises party’s MAX BRV, ATK by 5% for 3 turns *Does not stack with same sphere

Anyway, for this fight, I brought Penelo’s (from Final Fantasy XII) and Rude’s Calls for healing, in case things go wrong, as well as Reno’s (from Final Fantasy VII) for the debuffs. I chose Ifrit as my Summon because ideally, the bosses shouldn’t be getting any turns. I borrowed a friend support Amidatelion (from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers) for their ability to delete the turns of all enemies.

Right after Lightning's first move, I switched her out for the friend Amidatelion to delay the bosses as much as possible.

Cloud was so slow and his Ex charges fast so there were no issues with just spamming his skills every time he actually got a turn. What worried me was when the orbs were there and he needed to be able to move to dispel, but he was so freaking slow and Lightning just kept taking all the turns. His dispel and turn delay via LD helped a lot though. He also dealt lots of damage whenever he actually got the chance to move.

Sephiroth was... there. His damage was pretty meh. I guess the debuff from Scintilla and his speed down aura helped a bit. I mostly spammed his moves too although I used the occasional HP++, particularly when his Ex gauge was nearly full. Probably wouldn't have mattered much if I spammed his skills more though. He was faster than Cloud once he was at max Jenova stacks. Would have been better if Cloud was faster though so he could dispel more.

Lightning was the star of this team. She did most of the damage. She also took most of the turns so I had to use her HP++ a few times so as not to run out of skills. Also had to be super careful with her, particularly when the orbs were up because she just takes so many turns in a row, which causes the orbs to tick down, so it was necessary for Cloud to also be able to move to increase the count. Ended up having to summon Ifrit when one orb was at 1 because Cloud wasn't set to be able to move anytime soon.

The bosses only managed to take 2 turns. The first time - the boss got to move freely. I was debating Summoning to prevent her from moving, but I thought, surely it wouldn't be so bad since this would be her first turn since the fight started. So I let her have a turn. It was bad. She dealt so much brave damage that Lightning nearly got broken. As if that wasn't enough, she followed that up with an HP attack that nearly killed Lightning. Had Seph use Penelo's Call as soon as he could move. Since Lightning took so many turns, she was back to full HP before Penelo's Call effect ended.

The second time the boss got to move, I only let it happen because she was currently paralyzed. But - argh! She healed herself for like 250k. Eff! After that, I decided not to let them move anymore, especially if they weren't paralyzed.

Was debating which Burst to use - Cloud’s or Lightning’s. Didn't bother considering Sephiroth's because I didn't think his damage would be enough. Went with Cloud because both orb counts were low already, and I worried Lightning would take more turns after Burst.

Lightning and Seph didn't deal that much damage in the launches during Cloud's Burst mode due to not having any battery, and I had to brave attack for a few of the launches just to get more brave. So I opted to use Cross Slash+ instead of another Finishing Touch. Another Finishing Touch before Burst mode ended gave Cloud the option to use another Cross Slash+ after his Burst. Cloud managed to dispel all the buffs by the time his Burst mode ended so I really needed to finish the fight soon. Was also running out of turns for the turn count requirement.

Thankfully managed to win and get all the mission requirements.

Sephiroth was the one who dealt the killing blow on the last remaining boss.

Really glad I was able to make this team work.

Thrall of Darkness Lufenia Quest

The Thrall of Darkness is Xande’s (from Final Fantasy III) event. I was rather worried about the Lufenia Quest of this event because you needed dark damage in order to increase the count of the Lufenia orbs. The problem was that I didn’t have any dark chars built.

Xande would have been perfect since this is his event, so he even has synergy stats. He’s also apparently the only char (so far, at least) who can Imperil enemies and Enchant the party with the dark element. So he would have been a great addition to my roster. Actually, my plan had been to pull on the Thrall of Darkness banner. Aside from all of Xande’s weapons, Cloud’s Burst was also featured there.

Unfortunately, what happened was that I ended up pitying Cloud’s Burst on one of the banners that also featured his LD. So now I didn’t have any more resources to spare for Xande, especially since I followed that Cloud pity with another pity on the banner with Sephiroth’s Burst.

So I’ve been looking up vids and info about this Lufenia Quest, and thankfully, it looks like it’s possible to win without using a dark char. But aside from not having any dark char, I also wanted to use both Cloud and Sephiroth for this fight. I wasn’t able to find a vid featuring those 2 together, so I had to come up with my own team comp.

For this Lufenia Quest, I found myself trying Cloud, Lightning, and Sephiroth again. Well, since it worked so well last time on Beatrix’s Lufenia Quest, I was hoping that it would work just as well for this fight too.

For my Summon, I had no choice but to bring Diabolos for his dark damage so I had some way of dealing with the orbs. For Calls, I found myself bringing Rude’s and Penelo’s again for healing, just in case, and Reno’s for the debuffs. For my friend support, I was debating between Vivi Ornitier (from Final Fantasy IX) for more orb control and Cloud with LD and Burst for more damage. In the end, I decided to try with Vivi first.

The Thrall of Darkness Lufenia Quest has 2 waves. For the first wave, I spammed Cloud’s and Sephiroth’s skills. I used Lightning’s skills sparingly though, mostly using her HP+ unless it was a free skill. Used 1 Cloud LD, 2 Seph LD, and 0 Light LD. Lightning and Cloud only attacked the main boss. I had Sephiroth deal with the add-ons if they needed to be broken.

For the second wave, I had to reset once because I let one enemy attack. Things were actually going well although it was pretty nerve-wracking trying to hurry and get the enemies to below 80% to get rid of the orb. Managed it, but the red aura was annoying me because it was wasting my delays unless it was via break.

The in-game info didn't mention anything about how to get rid of them, so I thought letting them attack while paralyzed might be the way, but that didn't work. Maybe actually letting them attack might get the aura to disappear. I thought, how bad could one attack be? And I did have Rude’s and Penelo’s Calls for healing. So I let them attack. Big, big mistake. The attack killed Sephiroth and Lightning. Cloud survived, probably because of synergy stats. Note to self: find more info about the fight first before trying it.

So I reset and resolved never to let the enemies get a turn unless they were paralyzed. Like before, I managed to get the enemies below 80% to get rid of the orbs. A few turns after the orbs appeared for the second time, I switched out Sephiroth for the friend support Vivi that I borrowed.

I actually debated using Seph’s Burst just for the effect to help with delaying the enemies, but I didn't think the damage would be enough. Cloud moved right after Vivi so I had him use his Burst already because the enemies were moving after him. I didn't want to summon yet since Vivi was still there to help with the orbs. However, I did end up summoning a few turns after Cloud's Burst mode ended even though Vivi was still there since by then, the enemies were nearly dead anyway.

Vivi helped with the orbs. His damage was okay enough. With him there, I didn't have to worry about the orbs. I ended up worrying more about the health of my party. I had Lightning use Rude's Call, but it wasn't enough. Too bad I had Sephiroth equip Penelo's Call. Should have given it to Cloud instead. It didn't really matter though as long as the enemies didn't attack or were currently paralyzed if they did get a turn.

Lightning was really, really good, as always. Her being able to rebreak helped a lot when the enemies had the red aura since that was the only way to delay them. She dealt so much damage and took all the turns. Had to use her HP+ a few times so she won't run out of skills so soon. She still basically ended up running out anyway. Good thing the fight was nearly over by then.

Sephiroth dealt decent enough damage, I guess. Would I have been better off bringing either Kurasame Susaya (from Final Fantasy Type-0) or Amidatelion instead of him? Yeah, definitely, especially since Kurasame inflicts a debuff that increases HP damage taken. Even Amidatelion provides more utility than him since they can delete the turns of enemies. But Seph did help me save from having to use Lightning's skills on the first wave since I spammed his instead. And the debuff from his LD was useful enough, I suppose?

Cloud was so, so slow. I feel like he hardly got to move since he still had plenty of skills left over, and I wasn't even trying to save them. At least he got to deal a lot of damage every time he did get a turn. His paralysis helped a lot too. Should have spammed his LD more before the red aura showed up. At least it was also helpful in removing the shields since it dealt a lot of damage.

Super glad I was able to win without having my own dark char.

Wonder if I can do the next Lufenia Quest with this same team? Really want to use Seph and Cloud as much as possible since I pitied their Bursts, especially Sephiroth because at least I got to use Cloud on all his events, but for Seph, I literally only got his Burst right after pitying Cloud's, so by then I was done with his and Ciaran's (from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles) Lufenia Quests.

Storming the Citadel (Mission Dungeon) Lufenia Quest

I found this one of the worst Lufenia fights ever. I absolutely loathe this freaking quest. Oh, I have no doubt that I wouldn’t hate this battle half as much I do right now if I wasn’t trying to get the complete using both Sephiroth and Cloud in the same team. I’d seen plenty of clears featuring Cloud, but I couldn’t find any that included the both of them.

I wanted to try the Lightning, Cloud, and Sephiroth team again, but I worried that it wouldn’t work because of the Lufenia orb. The orb has a very short max count of only 8, and the only way to increase it is whenever your party receives direct healing. I doubted that I could finish the fight with Lightning, Sephiroth, and Cloud before the Lufenia orb got triggered. So I didn’t bother trying, but maybe I should have anyway. Who knows? It could have worked. It’s too late now though because at the time I’m writing this post, the Storming the Citadel (Mission Dungeon) event is long over.

Since I didn’t think I could get my usual team to work, I decided to try the fight using Rude, Cloud, and Sephiroth. Rude is one of the chars who can fulfill the orb’s condition. Unfortunately, things weren’t working out at all. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve tried this quest, but it was a lot. I kept trying and trying with this team, but I couldn’t win.

The orbs were a constant issue. Their count is really way too freaking low that I’d have runs wherein I couldn’t get Rude to keep up with increasing the number, especially since the enemies were really fast. They have high turn rates and they would sometimes get back-to-back turns, which was automatically minus 2 on the orb count.

There were a lot of tries wherein I’d end up using my Summon pretty early on just to help me deal with the orbs.

The enemies also love dealing group HP attacks so my team was often not at full health. There were so many runs wherein I worried that my party would die since the enemies often brought them down to very low HP.

As soon as one enemy gets down to 49% HP, both of them will “begin a powerful chant” and start floating. They’ll gain 4 buffs and an even stronger BRV damage reduction when compared to earlier in the fight. If one of the enemies was already floating when this happens, then only the one who wasn’t will get these buffs. So, ideally, you should only get one of them down to 49% while one of them is already levitating.

I’ve had numerous runs where I couldn’t do that though. There were so many times wherein I just couldn’t get the timing right. I’d end up getting one of them to 49% while they were both still on the ground, so they’d both levitate and get all the buffs. This made things even more difficult for me since my team’s damage really dropped when this happened. It wasn’t that high to begin with since I only really had Rude to provide party-wide buffs and auras. Cloud would have done better if I’d paired him with another support. As for Sephiroth - he’d need way more support to deal decent damage.

Anyway, there was one run wherein I actually managed to get things right in terms of only dropping the enemies down to 49% HP while one of them was already in the air. Was so pleased when this happened. I thought I actually had a chance to win. I Summoned, I activated my Cloud’s Burst mode, I used the friend support that I borrowed, I attacked and tried to deal as much damage as I could. But it wasn’t enough. I ended up running out of skills before the fight was over.

Using HP+ wasn’t cutting it because I needed more damage. I also needed to finish the fight ASAP, otherwise the orbs were going to kill me. After dropping the enemies down to 49% HP, the orbs will disappear. They will reappear after the enemies use their Globated Crush+ move. Sooner or later, my chars always ended up getting hit with this, so I had to deal with the orbs showing up again.

There was also the fact that once the enemies start floating, their turns can’t be delayed other than via break so Cloud’s LD was useless. I’d have to wait for them to get back on the ground before using Blade Beam.

Because of that, I even tried a run wherein I used Sephiroth’s Burst instead of Cloud’s, just so I could make use of his BT’s effect, which drops all the brave of all enemies down to 1 for 3 turns. This made it easy to keep delaying them even while they were floating. I couldn’t kill them though because my damage was lacking, so, eventually, Seph’s BT effect would end, and the enemies would soon be able to get a turn.

I kept trying and trying but, eventually, I got sick of doing this quest over and over again. I just wanted to get it over and done with already. Moreover, I was running out of time because the event was ending soon. I couldn’t keep doing this.

In the end, I decided to do this fight with Sephiroth, Rude, and Desch (from Final Fantasy III). This was inspired by a run I saw that featured this exact same team although we had different equipped Calls.

I had Sephiroth equipped with Rem Tokimiya’s (from Final Fantasy Type-0) Call, which heals the party, but I should have given him a Call that inflicts debuffs instead so that I could have used it when the bosses floated and gained their buffs at 49% HP. Thankfully, the friend support Cloud that I borrowed had his Deadly Rush passive equipped. This passive allows him to dispel buffs.

Desch is another char who can also increase the orb count in this quest. He works very well with Rude because Rude makes it so that any over healing is converted to brave. So whenever the party was at full health, Desch ends up batterying them with his moves aside from just dealing damage.

He also provides some pretty good buffs and auras, including resistance to physical or magical attacks (depending on his current stance). It’s RNG, but he can also paralyze enemies. It’s really freaking awesome whenever it gets to proc. More than that, he also makes enemies weak to the thunder element and he Enchants the party so they can hit for weakness damage. Thanks to him and Rude, Sephiroth actually dealt pretty decent damage in this fight.

Between Rude and Desch, the orbs became much more manageable. Anyway, Sephiroth was the one who finished off the last remaining boss. By then, he only had 2 uses of Fervent Blow left. He was all out of Octaslash and Scintilla.

I didn’t get the chance to use Rem’s Call earlier since Rude and Desch handled the healing very well on their own. So I found myself using it now. This gave Seph more brave, which was more than enough to finish off the last boss who only had 1% HP left. I could have just used Fervent Blow already, but I decided to use his Additional Ability (AA) first. This was actually the turn after he cast his Ex so he had a free skill use. I opted to use his AA for the attack up before finally casting Fervent Blow.

And it’s finally done. At long last, I’m finally done with this Lufenia Quest. It only took one run with this team to get the win, which is great, of course. I’m glad I was able to win.

But I still can’t help but feel rather disappointed anyway. I was really hoping I’d be able to use Cloud and Sephiroth together in this Lufenia Quest. Sigh. I suppose I could do another run of this fight with Cloud this time, but eh, I already know he can do it, and I’m really sick of this battle by now so meh. Never mind. Here’s to hoping the next quest will make it easy for me to use both Sephiroth and Cloud together. Gotta use the Bursts I pitied back-to-back, you know? LOL.

Tree for the Void Lufenia Quest

The Tree for the Void is Exdeath’s (from Final Fantasy V) Lost Chapter event. After the hell that was the last Lufenia Quest, this one was like a breath of fresh air. Super pleased that I was able to use both Cloud and Sephiroth here. In fact, I was able to get my team of Cloud, Lightning, and Sephiroth to work in this fight, which is just all kinds of awesome. Hell, yeah!

As usual, I ended up bringing Penelo’s and Rude’s Calls for healing, in case things go wrong, and Reno’s for the debuffs. I brought Ifrit as my Summon for his attack up and because the bosses shouldn’t be getting any turns at all. I borrowed a friend support Cloud for his paralysis, turn delay, and damage.

Anyway, as soon as it was Sephiroth’s turn, I had him use Reno’s Call to apply its debuffs then I immediately switched him out for the friend support Cloud. It took way too long, but I reset until I managed to get both Clouds to paralyze with their Cross Slash. At first, I started by using Finishing Touch with my Cloud then just reset until the friend Cloud paralyzed with his Cross Slash but it wasn't working out because Lightning ended up taking a lot of turns so the enemy who wasn't paralyzed yet would get their aura before Cloud could move again.

But once both enemies were paralyzed, it was pretty smooth sailing from there. Just needed to make sure the enemies never get to move. Used the friend Cloud's Burst then his LD for more turn delay.

Lightning took all the turns as usual. Mostly, I spammed her moves with the occasional HP+. Cloud dealt a lot of damage too. Ended up using his Burst for even more damage. I feel like he didn't get to move much though since he still had plenty of skills left over whereas Lightning was down to 1 use of Sparkstrike near the end.

Sephiroth was... there. He's faster than Cloud so he got to move more often. I guess the debuff from his LD helped too. His damage was... okay? Oh, and he was the one who finished off the last enemy. Surely, that counts for something, right? LOL. In all seriousness though, Seph was the weakest link in this team. Bringing Kurasame instead for his increase HP damage taken debuff would have been much better.

Super pleased I was able to win with this team.

Conclusion

So, what about you? Which chars did you use to complete these Lufenia Quests? Did you pull for either Sephiroth or Cloud Strife or both? Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below or by reblogging or replying to this post.

Notes:

screenshots are from my Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia game account

#cloud strife #sephiroth #final fantasy 7 #dissidia final fantasy opera omnia #dffoo #games #gacha games #dffoo sephiroth fights #dffoo cloud strife fights #dffoo lufenia fights series

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crankycoderblog · 3 years

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How to build a raspberry pi picture frame media pc

Happy PI Day!!!

A few years back… ok… like 9 years ago. I built an interesting piece of functional art in my living room. It was my media center pc, mounted in a double picture frame on my wall. This thing served me well for a long time. But now it’s time to upgrade it.

After all this time the ATOM board in there has gotten a little sluggish, the distro isn’t supported, the black lights have gone bad, I think there’s a demon in there. It’s legit struggling.

So how are we going to upgrade it now??!?

Oh good you, you have it under control…

Oh man… I thought you were gone…

You are not a meme…. Let me finish…

Where was I? Oh Yeah. What we are doing to upgrade… So here is the checklist.

Replace old ATOM board with new raspberry pi

Replace black light bulbs with RBG led strip.

Add simple to use RF remote

Flash PI with OSMC for a distro that will keep updated on a regular basis.

Add wemos D1 Mini to control LED in frame lighting

Flash wemos with WLED project for simple easy lighting control

Add wemos to home automation system to turn on/off lights on schedule

Not a ton of work, but there is some work to be done.. So lets get to it!

Woo do work fool!!!

Not helpful…

Materials List

2 Ribba Picture frameshttps://amzn.to/30IWvE4 or https://amzn.to/2OPuacoMisc wire / perf boardhttps://amzn.to/3lfiWtSRBG led striphttps://amzn.to/3rQ7gA8Hingeshttps://amzn.to/2PXjx7P1 3 port keystone wall platehttps://amzn.to/3vkwXuW1 hdmi keystone jack pass throughhttps://amzn.to/2Owwmph1 rj45 keystone jack pass throughhttps://amzn.to/3eyVgiH1 keystone jack blankhttps://amzn.to/3tuqf3Z1 5v 10amp power supply (barrel plug)https://amzn.to/30EYidj1 barrel plughttps://amzn.to/3qMx6nw1 usb adapterhttps://amzn.to/2PYoJbD1 small pc fanhttps://amzn.to/3rOgOvw1 raspberry pi 3/4pi3 – https://amzn.to/30FX7KH pi4 – https://amzn.to/2OoklCy1 usb cablehttps://amzn.to/3cx8ycP1 wemos d1 minihttps://amzn.to/3qLjkl1LED ribbon cablehttps://amzn.to/30JQ5EKmotherboard stand offshttps://amzn.to/3lh4phlLED connectorshttps://amzn.to/3rHbfixOSMC Remotehttps://osmc.tv/store/product/osmc-remote-control/

So, those picture frames don’t look like what you have….

Yes, I know, remember, I am upgrading from an older build. The goal of the picture frame is to be tall/wide enough to house your board and deep enough (why I suggest 2) that you can mount said board inside it with stand offs. The second important piece with the picture frames is to make sure that you have some matting to hide things behind.

How to create a wall mounted pi media player

Ok. So lets get started.

Lets take the 2 picture frames, and stack them, and add some hinges so we have a nice box to work with.

Take the 3 keystone plate and put the hdmi and network pass through it. Take the blank and drill out a hole to fit the barrel plug.

Arrange them however you best see fit. Now with a rotary tool cut around the keystone jacks so that what’s remaining can fit on the side of the frame. I cut around the existing screw holes so they could be reused to fasten to the frame.

As you can see from the first build you mount the board in the middle and start taking care of the wiring.

You take care of wiring.

*sigh*

Then add some lighting.

Here are few shots of the build back in the day.

So now, we move to the upgrades. We are removing the board and and replacing with a Raspberry Pi.

Upgrades to move to Raspberry Pi

Now since I have some LED strip, a wemos d1 and a raspberry pi to power, I am going to create a power distribution board.

Wire up our new LED strip instead of the old blacklights.

Ok. So now we have this beautiful beast all built out. Lets make it do a trick.

hehe… what kind of trick?

Are you 12? Seriously, what’s wrong with you?

Me? Im not the one talk to… you know what, nevermind. Continue.

Thank you.

So we have WLED installed on the Wemos D1 Mini. If you don’t know what WLED is, it is a beautifully written program for the d1 mini to do LED light control. HUGE shoutout to Aircookie for such a great piece of software! https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED

Supports most LED light strip, but also give you some really awesome control over the LEDS. I have worked with it on some other projects including my neo-pixel LED christmas tree decoration I did this past christmas.

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Aside from the really cool effects, the mobile apps (ios / android) but WLED also has support with tons of Home Automation Systems. I am currently using OpenHab so I will add a scheduled integration so it’s added as a “living room” light, in the group gLivingroomLights. This will automatically add it to the automation to turn on the LED’s with the rest of my living room lights which turn on 15 minutes after sunset each day. If we leave and turn off the lights, when we arrive back home, the lights automatically turn on when we pull in. The picture frame is now part of that. When it’s bedtime and the living room lights all turn off, so does the picture frame lights.

Since this is also a full color/dimmable type of light, it will automatically following follow the rest of the dimming controls for the livingroom lights, including integration into Kodi for the Cinema Vision home automation integration.

For Openhab you can integrate using the build in binding. Or via MQTT, http rest call.

For HomeAssistant you can integrate like this.

The Results

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There we go. An upgraded picture frame art PC on the wall. We have added some nicely controlled LED lighting and have integrated in with the home automation system.

So what else does it do?

What do you mean what else does it do? It’s a Kodi Media player integrated in to plex with plexkodiconnect to sync everything up. It can play back all the media on the network, receive casted data and airplay.. what do you mean what else can it do?!

Yeah, what else can it do?

Home automation on screen notices and surveillance camera pop ups on motion?

Ok… that’s pretty good.

TLDR

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How to build a raspberry pi picture frame media pc was originally published on Cranky Coder

#arduino #home automation #Home Automation Project #led #leds #media entertainment #plex media server #raspberry pi #rgb #wemos d1

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rapfornication · 7 years

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Rapfornication’s Reading List

A note from editor norm: writing what we feel and see and listen to is a great thing to be able to do. to articulate your thoughts that make sense to not just you but all of us is a fucking talent, pardon my french. But what we do with our written words is give voice to our thoughts on conversations that are being had or have happened. So this year every alternative week we here at RF base camp are going to put together some pieces from the internet that we read and thought would be cool to share from other sites and blogs that publish good content that made us stop and think. Because reading is the tits fam :)

1.How Freelancers Pay Rent: A Commoner’s Perspective by Ngoan'a Nts'oana

https://ntsoana.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/iwrite-how-freelancers-pay-rent-a-commoners-perspective/

From inside: “Do Not Settle. Isn’t the desire to not lead a mediocre life why you chose this path initially? Act like it then. Stop saying yes to slavish working conditions and little pay. Voice your dissatisfaction well ahead of time. Ask questions, especially where money is involved because motherfuckers can get shadeee!”

Read this if: If you’re a young up and coming but not altogether sure of how person. If you feel that you’re close to cracking this life hack but also feel that there are far too many compromises to that you are making. These are some words that provide a bit of guidance to the often self-admitted ambitious but clueless folk.

2. Art as Resistance: Sadie Barnette Turns Father’s Black Panther FBI File into a Social Narrative. By Hannah Morris.

http://saintheron.com/news/art-as-resistance-sadie-barnette-turns-fathers-black-panther-fbi-file-into-a-social-narrative/

From inside : “A perturbed family tree, these files allowed Sadie to build her own portrait of her father. “I’m so honored that my dad trusted me to tell this story. I was taught very early the significance of dedicating your life to something bigger than yourself. In one way, I feel this story does that.”

Read this if: If you’re interested about the intersection where art and black identity often meet when black artists have but themselves to bare. And if you’re interested in how the dialogue is continuously reshaping itself, not just about militancy but also about family, love and loss.

3. Meet Cool & Dre, The Miami Producers With The Keys To Longevity

http://www.thefader.com/2017/02/07/cool-and-dre-grammy-nomination-all-the-way-up-interview

From Inside: “Cool: One night, we were sitting in the parking lot of Taco Bell, and Dre was like, “Maybe it isn’t god’s plan for this group. Maybe the plan is for me and you to do this.” From that point on, we took the production seriously. We ended up moving back to Miami and diving into the production. It was 3 and 4 beats at a time, $200 here, $300 there, working with local artists in Miami and making a name for ourselves.”

Read this if: If you’re a fan of the stories that are often left unheard or that don’t carry as much rockstar glamour of the super stars. This is the story about what of hip hop’s greatest partnerships. It not only is the story of them but also the story of how hip hop evolved through them. If you’re more into producers and their styles then this might be right up your alley.

4. Migos' Wild World: One Night in the Studio With 'Bad and Boujee' Trio By Jonah Weiner

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/bad-and-boujee-inside-atlanta-rap-trio-migos-wild-world-w465205

From inside: “They spent much of their childhood in the same small house, raised in the northern Atlanta suburbs of Gwinnett County by Quavo's mother. "She was the father figure," says Offset. "She knew how to raise you as a man, tell you how niggas is. 'Homes right there is this.' 'This nigga right there is this – watch out.'" They all call her Mama and love her dearly. "She had a house full of niggas playing games, shoes off, eating all the food, and it's hard times – but she never complained," says Quavo.

Takeoff loved professional wrestling as a kid, and the three transformed a backyard trampoline into a makeshift ring. Quavo was alone in his love for "the National Geographic Channel," Offset recalls. "I used to cuss this nigga ass out 'cause he'd come into the room at 10:00 and wanted to watch the whales and the motherfucking ocean."

Read this if: If you’re interested in a very raw and intimate understanding not only of how Migos came to be but also what is it in totality that the trio come with. From their values, their faults, their creative process and their individuality. This is the feature that got the group in trouble for homophobic statements about iLoveMakonnen's sexual orientation, (which they have since made a public apology for, read here: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/migos-we-have-no-problem-with-anyones-sexual-preference-w465938)

5. Separating the Artist From Their Art by by Mercia Tucker

http://theplugmag.co/2017/01/09/separating-the-artist-from-their-art/

From inside: “the process is so self-exploratory that it seems difficult to imagine that the words dancing on the pages, that took flight to a progression of keys or the thumping of 808s, aren’t a representation of the artist at his core. And because the art itself is so untarnished, so perfect in its presentation and interpretation, people often see it as an incarnation of the artist and project that same perfection onto him. How could such amazing work be the product of a broken person?”

Read this if: This particular ironic placing of this article aside, read this if as a listener you are conflicted where the line stands between an artist and the music they make is blurry for you. If you have been struggling to understand when and where is the correct place to have the moral highground comes in and read this if you feel some sort of guilt for enjoying a well put together album by an artist found guilty for charges related to sexual assault. It won’t give you an answer but it does ease you into that very uncomfortable conversation we all are stuck having right now.

6. Of Resistance and Romance | Jazz as Heritage by Vuyiswa Xekatwane

http://10and5.com/2017/02/08/of-resistence-and-romance-jazz-as-heritage/

From Inside: “South African jazz is a marvelous dichotomy, it is resistant and romantic, full of tension and full of freedom, intentional yet improvised…the centre and the edge, all at once. Beyond auditoriums and academia, jazz became a street thing, a Black thing. It was no longer a discovery, it was a recollection, a very real and integral part of my upbringing as kid who grew up in a township. Jazz is documentary, is guidance, is heritage”.

Read this if: You are in love with when writers personalize and share their love of music, inserting themselves in its narrative whilst not overpowering the topic at hand. Read this if you’re a jazz lover and are curious about the role that jazz played in the history of South Africa. Also read this if you want to brush up on your Jazz knowledge.

7. Atlanta's R&B Underground Is Pushing to Make a New Pop Sound in Trap’s Capital by Xavier BLK

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/atlantas-randb-underground-is-pushing-to-make-a-new-pop-sound-in-traps-capital?utm_source=noiseytwitterus

From inside: “Yet while you may be hard pressed to find any new Atlanta-based R&B acts charting on Billboard, there are a select few finding grassroots success in the digital age. A new strand of Atlanta's R&B DNA has emerged. These artists are no longer are coming out of the industry's "How to Make an R&B star" manual. They are DIY rebels. They are punk skater kids with soul. They are shelved label signees who took matters into their own hands.”

Read this if: You’re not afraid of being a fan alone. This is easy to see as just a co-sign of new artists and easy to dismiss as just another publication trying to be on top of something that they most probably are jumping the gun with. Rather this is about the fight of a sound trying to grow at a time when it’s so much easier to just sound like what’s hot and expected. These are kids from Atlanta that don’t want you to take them just some dread haired no shirt wearing trap niggas. It’s about different types of a homogenized identity. If you’re into those narratives and keen on some new music this will make a good read for you.

#noisey #Pigeons and Planes #rolling stone #10and5 #the plugsa #saint heron #migos #okmalumkoolkat #atlanta trap #south african jazz #black panthers #black art

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mokatechgq-blog · 7 years

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Send Wi-Fi organizations floor arranges, get a definitive work organizing test At the point when Wi-Fi organizations have proposals, why not given them a chance to partake straightforwardly?.

The old showbiz proverb keeps on remaining constant (even in Wi-Fi testing): you can't please everybody. Soon after our last round of work Wi-Fi testing, in which a six-pack of Plume gadgets amazed the field, messages landed from both the Google Wifi and AmpliFi HD groups. The outcomes weren't illustrative of their gadgets, they stated, and maybe I set the gadgets severely. Both organizations proposed putting a get to point (AP) down the stairs rather than each of the three APs being upstairs.While I questioned this pretty firmly—such a setup would require a multi-jump "tree" topology, which neither one of the devices is truly planned well for—I put my own particular self image aside. In any event, these supplications highlighted a shortcoming basic to any three-piece work pack: they're misleadingly hard to place well.

However, aimlessly taking after Google's and AmpliFi's suggestions to move a get to point ground floor would have debilitated the gadgets' past scope design upstairs. That course of action means the upstairs and first floor get to indicates have cover half of the house from one area as opposed to each covering about 33% of the house the way I'd had them orchestrated.

Rather, I reacted to both organizations with a trade off. Why not leave situation to the specialists? I sent my floor arranges over to Google and AmpliFi—and also offering a similar chance to Eero, Orbi, and Plume—and enabled these organizations to make area proposals as itemized as they'd like. In the event that my part in testing was absolutely perusing the estimations, would the outcomes be distinctive?

Testing approach

In my progressing work with Wi-Fi at Ars, I've invested a considerable lot of energy in RF "warm maps" and just a little on throughput testing. When in doubt, I'm not going to do that any longer. For reasons unknown warmth maps aren't generally pertinent, and in some cases they're notwithstanding deceptive. As I specified in an extensive explainer on Wi-Fi, we've all been prepared to "chase for more bars," however that much of the time doesn't compare well to genuine execution.

So in our tests this time around (Mesh Showdown II: Return of the Wi-Fi?), we're taking a gander at iperf3 throughput—both transfer and download—in each of seven locales chosen all through the test house.

Test Sites

Upstairs, Bedroom 1 and Office 1 are both simple shots to the switch. For three-piece packs with ideal position, they're additionally simple shots to a satellite AP in Bedroom 2 or a satellite AP in the Kitchen, individually. Room 2 is a decently long-go shot to the switch, in which a customer can either make the long-go association with the switch straightforwardly or can interface locally to the AP in a similar room and let the AP deal with the long-run shot.

First floor has its own particular three test destinations: Office 2, Downstairs Bath on the left, and Bedroom 3 on the privilege. It doesn't resemble there's a great deal of distinction between Office 2 and Downstairs Bath (they're just a couple of feet separated), yet Downstairs Bath is in the most profound piece of the RF shadow the establishment chunk throws. A flag straight from the switch to the Downstairs Bath would need to overcome a solid establishment section and a few feet of earth.

At long last, there's the auto. This is an amazingly long-extend torment test, made while sitting in the auto with its entryways and windows shut, motor and ventilation system running, and its auto stereo playing music gushing from my telephone over Bluetooth. Besides, my better half's not really smaller than normal van is stopped in the garage, which means a shot to the switch needs to navigate an aggregate separation just shy of 50 feet including leaving the auto, experiencing the minivan, and entering one outside and two inside dividers en route.

The tests: Hard Mode and Easy Mode

On the off chance that those messages referenced up top aren't confirmation enough, realize that it's constantly extreme meeting desires for testing whether we're talking organizations or perusers. A few perusers need the thing that just works with no bother and couldn't care less about the greatest numbers you can get, however different perusers need to know the best execution you can wring out of the framework on the off chance that you tinker with it and hold your mouth perfectly. So this time out, I'm trying every gadget both ways. I emphatically prescribe giving careful consideration to Hard Mode. There's very little point in gloating about huge numbers on the off chance that you can't get consistency, as I would see it. The general purpose of Wi-Fi is hands-off comfort—in case you're going to tinker with it, you should simply run a wire.

For this go-round, I'm concentrating on single-gadget (the test tablet is the main gadget associated with the wLAN) throughput as measured by iperf3. Not at all like wired gadgets, Wi-Fi gadgets (get to focuses, switches, and customers) have a tendency to vary rather significantly in download versus transfer throughput, so I'm trying both ways. The customer gadget (an Acer C720 Chromebook running Ubuntu 16.04, utilizing a USB3-associated Archer T4U 802.11ac two-stream wNIC) is associated with the wLAN once, and afterward this customer is required to do its own particular band-controlling and AP-guiding ("wandering") as I stroll through the test destinations in a particular request: Office 2, Downstairs Bath, Bedroom 3, Bedroom 1, Bedroom 2, Office 1, Car. Positively no help is given to the customer gadget amid Hard Mode testing. On the off chance that it neglects to wander to the best get to point, extreme. On the off chance that it wanders without help to a superior get to point amid the three tests than the one it begun on, additionally intense. It still just gets three keeps running at the prize altogether, and the middle keep running of the three is chosen.

In the event that a gadget doesn't appear to have associated in the most ideal way it could have for any of its three keeps running at a specific test site amid Hard Mode testing, I'll come back to that site after the Hard Mode run is over and endeavor to finagle the setup into improving. This best exertion is normally confined to physically disengaging and reconnecting the test portable workstation from the wLAN a couple times to attempt to get a more sensible association, however at times (and I am taking a gander at AmpliFi HD, here) it may get more gallant.

Comes about

The greatest numbers for every one of the contenders gone ahead the downstream side (where your portable workstation or telephone is downloading an option that is, instead of transferring it). This is on account of the AP is by and large going to have a more intense transmitter than your versatile gadget does. On the upstream side, you'll tend to lower numbers because of the lower transmit control on your cell phone... be that as it may, there's still a considerable measure of space for variety, since the get to focuses can have shifting degrees of info affectability.

Be cautious perusing these charts. I intentionally discarded the "Mbps" from the names on the left pivot, since you can't generally include the majority of the hued pieces together and assert that Orbi has "1433 Mbps download." Each hued square speaks to an independently taken test perusing, and none of these gadgets would be equipped for anything like these rates if tests were being run at the same time from all test locales. I've included the real incentive in Mbps for Office 1 on each diagram. Office 1 is a straight shot to the base switch from around 25' away, so this is illustrative of a genuine "about best case" association. Yes, you could get considerably higher numbers stayed outdoors around 7 feet from the router‚—however let's be honest, that is a quite limit utilize case.Unfortunately, these numbers don't measure up to our past testing neatly. This is incompletely in light of the fact that I got more thorough with test areas since merchants were griping, and mostly on the grounds that the last article just ran iperf3 in one heading (which, to some degree shockingly, is upstream). The most straightforward summon—iperf3 - c ip.address.of.server—transfers information as opposed to downloading it. This pretty vigorously supported Plume, since Plume and AmpliFi HD are the main rivals with almost level with throughput in either bearing as tried.

More points of interest are coming, however one essential snappy takeaway is that "Simple Mode" implies diverse things for various contenders. Tuft didn't really get a "Simple Mode," since it wandered appropriately and quickly all around. Orbi's "Simple Mode" was the expansion of a moment satellite AP, which was ludicrous needless excess in the 3,500-square-foot test house. Google Wifi, AmpliFi HD, and Eero all got a considerable amount additionally coaxing in Easy Mode. This could mean running a couple of additional tests at a site where wandering happened late or physically unplugging and re-stopping my USB3 test wNIC when meandering went seriously. In AmpliFi HD's case, Easy Mode even included some somewhat gallant measures and a considerable measure of reviling.

Google Wifi and AmpliFi HD both unexpectedly hamstrung themselves with the organization proposals to put an AP first floor. Room 3, Office 2, and the auto are all about undetectable for both packs on Hard Mode—and situation is the real reason. First floor customers had a tendency to want to make their own particular association straightforwardly to an upstairs AP, notwithstanding when jabbed and nudged at. Keep in mind, that association was more distant away since, as opposed to having an upstairs AP straightforwardly above Office 2 and Bedroom 3, there was currently just a single upstairs AP more remote far from both. There were likewise a significant number associations from upstairs customers to the ground floor AP, which muddied things up even worse.Detailed breakdowns of our rivals

AmpliFi HD

Like the Google group, AmpliFi HD's group thought I ought to run multi-jump with an AP ground floor. AmpliFi's group likewise recommended that perhaps I ought to take a stab at pointing the work focuses, utilizing the attractive rotating appendage coupling them to their energy supply. This shocked me, since each shopper Wi-Fi switch I've tried so far has utilized omnidirectional radio wires. These members squirm around as much as you need, however there's next to zero contrast in flag quality toward any path when you do. They're fake treatments, fundamentally.

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freyayuki · 3 years

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Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia Lufenia Quests with Cloud Strife and Sephiroth Part 2

The battles featured in this post include either Cloud Strife (from Final Fantasy VII) or Sephiroth (from Final Fantasy VII) as part of the team lineup.

Lufenia Quests Table of Contents

The Lufenia fights featured in this post are the following:

Soaring Flames (Boss Rush)

Divine Diabolos (World of Illusions)

Abyss: A Lead to the Thick of It

Introduction

After I ended up having to pity the Burst or BT weapons of both Cloud and Sephiroth, I wanted to use them as much as possible, especially in Lufenia fights.

Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII

He has 3 Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 Artifacts and

3 Attack 108 with Debuff Attack Up★★ (Raises ATK by 5% when an enemy is debuffed) Artifacts.

Cloud is equipped with the following Spheres:

Tifa Lockhart’s (from Final Fantasy VII) Critical Attack Up Longer A Sphere

Raises ATK by 10% for 6 turns when dealing critical hit

Sazh Katzroy’s (from Final Fantasy XIII) Critical Attack All Longer D Sphere

When dealing critical hit: • Raises party’s ATK by 5% for 6 turns

Faris Scherwiz’s (Sarisa Scherwil Tycoon from Final Fantasy V) Full HP Critical Poison All E Sphere

Grants effect for 6 turns that reduces enemy’s BRV by 30% of individual INT BRV at start of enemy’s turn when dealing critical hit while HP at MAX *Does not stack with same sphere

Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII

He has 3 Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 Artifacts and

3 Attack 108 with One-Winged Angel Boost★★ (Raises INT BRV, MAX BRV, ATK, DEF by 5% if HP is MAX at start of last wave) Artifacts.

If the fight only has 1 wave, then I equip him with triple 108/One-Winged Angel Boost★★. Otherwise, I go for triple 108/330.

Sephiroth is equipped with the following Spheres:

Jecht’s (from Final Fantasy X) Critical Base Attack Up Shorter (RF) A Sphere

When dealing critical hit: • Raises INT BRV, ATK by 4% for 3 turns

Jack’s (from Final Fantasy Type-0) Critical Attack Up Shorter Power A Sphere

When dealing critical hit: • Raises BRV damage by 5%, ATK by 5% for 3 turns

Yuri’s (from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates) Full HP Attack Boost Up A Sphere

Raises own MAX BRV, ATK by 5% while HP is MAX

Lufenia Quests List

So far, I’ve been able to use Cloud Strife in the following Lufenia fights:

Mechanized Sentry (Guard Scorpion Raid)

Roses of May

Thrall of Darkness

Tree for the Void

So far, I’ve been able to use Sephiroth in the following Lufenia fights:

The Terse Turk

Mechanized Sentry (Guard Scorpion Raid)

Roses of May

Thrall of Darkness

Storming the Citadel (Mission Dungeon)

Tree for the Void

I talk more about these fights in other posts.

Soaring Flames (Boss Rush) Lufenia Quest

The Soaring Flames event is the very first Boss Rush Lufenia Quest in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia. In a Boss Rush type of fight, your party is limited to 50 turns. Once those turns are up, you’ll be forced to change or switch out your team to a different one. If you manage to clear the battle using 2 parties or less, then you’ll get all the rewards.

For my first party, I decided to go with the following characters:

Gladiolus Amicitia (from Final Fantasy XV) for his healing and counter capabilities

Kain Highwind (from Final Fantasy IV) since he provides synergy stats for the entire party due to being one of the featured chars in the banner that came with the Soaring Flames event

Sephiroth

Both Kain and Gladio are fully MLB and Purple. All of their Boards have been completed and they have their Bloom Stones. Gladiolus has the passive from his LD as well. Both he and Kain have triple Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 Artifacts. Gladio is equipped with the following Spheres:

Oerba Yun Fang’s (from Final Fantasy XIII) Break Hit Attack Up Longer (RF) A Sphere

When inflicting Break or attacking target afflicted with Break: • Raises own ATK by 4% for 6 turns

Gabranth’s (Noah fon Ronsenburg from Final Fantasy XII) Critical Resist All Shorter (RF) B Sphere

After dealing critical hit: • Reduces party’s BRV damage taken by 4% for 3 turns

Garnet Til Alexandros XVII’s (from Final Fantasy IX) HP Heal Attack Up Longer (RF) C Sphere

When recovering own HP: • Self: Raises ATK by 4% for 6 turns

For my Summon, I decided to go with Odin for his Defense Down and Attack Up Blessing. I equipped Sephiroth with Cloud’s Call Ability in order to deal with the second wave’s Lufenia orb.

For my second party, I decided to go with the following characters:

Dark Knight Cecil Harvey (from Final Fantasy IV) for the party-wide synergy stats boost, dark damage to deal with the last wave’s Lufenia orb, and launches for more damage

Lightning (Claire Farron from Final Fantasy XIII) for damage and enemy control via her rebreaks and turn delay

Cloud Strife. Aside from wanting to use him because I ended up pitying his Burst, he deals really good damage. He can also launch and turn delay

Like Kain, Dark Knight Cecil is also featured in the banner for this event. He’s actually the star of said banner since it introduced his LD weapon. I have copies of his 15cp, 35cp, and Ex from before although none were MLB. I was interested in acquiring his LD because I heard he combos pretty well with Cloud.

But after having to pity both Sephiroth and Cloud back-to-back, I couldn’t afford to use gems on Dark Knight Cecil’s banner. Thankfully, I was able to get his LD using tickets. I had 349 tickets on hand when I started pulling. By the time I got his LD, I was down to 252 tickets.

Because of that, I readily fully MLB’d all of his weapons, including his Manikin one. He’s now equipped with his Ex that’s been Purpled or at Ex+ 3/3. I completed all of his Boards and bought his Bloom Stone.

He has triple Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 and triple Attack 108 with Low HP Attack Up★★ (Raises ATK by 5% when HP is below 50%) Artifacts. For this fight, I equipped him with the latter.

Dark Knight Cecil is equipped with the following RF Spheres:

Jecht’s (from Final Fantasy X) Critical Base Attack Up Shorter (RF) A Sphere

When dealing critical hit: • Raises INT BRV, ATK by 4% for 3 turns

Alphinaud Leveilleur’s (from Final Fantasy XIV) Buff Success Base Attack All Shorter (RF) C Sphere

After granting buff: • Raises party's INT BRV, ATK by 2% for 3 turns

Seymour Guado’s (from Final Fantasy X) Debuff Success Raging Attack Up (RF) E Sphere

When inflicting debuff on target: • Raises own ATK by 3% up to 2 times, once per turn *Does not stack with same sphere

She has triple Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 and triple Attack 108 with Initial Brave 170 Artifacts.

Lightning is equipped with the following Spheres:

Prishe’s (from Final Fantasy XI) Weak Attack Boost Up Shorter A Sphere

When attacking target’s weakness: • Raises own MAX BRV, ATK by 10% for 3 turns *Does not stack with same sphere

Ardyn Izunia’s (Ardyn Lucis Caelum from Final Fantasy XV) Break Raging Attack Boost Up A Sphere

When inflicting Break: • Raises MAX BRV, ATK by 2% up to 5 times, once per turn *Does not stack with same sphere

Hope Estheim’s (from Final Fantasy XIII) Buff Success Attack Boost All Shorter D Sphere

After granting buff: • Raises party’s MAX BRV, ATK by 5% for 3 turns *Does not stack with same sphere

For this party’s Summon, I was debating between Pandemonium for the launches and Diabolos for the Lufenia orb. Decided to go with Pandeminium, believing that Cecil should be able to handle the orb by himself.

For Call Abilities, I brought Penelo’s (from Final Fantasy XII) and Rude’s (from Final Fantasy VII) for the healing, in case things go wrong, and Reno’s (from Final Fantasy VII) for the debuffs.

Initially, my first party was Cloud, Kain and Gladio. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working out. Cloud dealt really good damage, but his utility was useless here since the enemies in the first wave can't be paralyzed or turn delayed. And it was hard to time launches because of the turn order. He's also really slow so it felt like he didn't get to move that often. If I had gotten this team to work, then Sephiroth would have taken Cloud's place as part of my second party.

But since this wasn't working out, I switched out Cloud for Sephiroth and surprisingly, things worked out much better. Seph was faster than Cloud so he got to take more turns. The debuff from his LD (it’s called Cellular Erosion, and it “Raises BRV damage taken; effects a certain amount of BRV damage”) was pretty helpful too. And so is the fact that his Ex is AoE (there are 3 enemies in the first wave - a main boss and his add-ons that he tends to resummon every time they die). Getting synergy stats thanks to Kain actually ensured that he dealt pretty decent damage, especially when combined with the support buffs and auras from Gladio.

Kain dealt pretty good damage but the launch from his Ex was usually wasted since the turns weren't lining up properly and the delay from it is useless. Firion (from Final Fantasy II) (he also provides synergy stats for the party like Kain) would definitely be better for his counter damage, but unfortunately, I don't have him.

Gladio did super well with his healing, counters, and batteries. But it took such a long time before I managed to win that I actually thought this party wouldn't be able to make it to the second wave. I was down to 13 turns left before finally finishing off the first wave's boss.

So I started the second wave with 12 turns left. Sephiroth ended up taking a bit of HP damage, but he was quickly back to full health a few turns later thanks to Gladio’s HP Regen.

When I was down to 7 turns, I used Sephiroth's Burst. By the time I was ready to cast Heaven’s Light, one enemy was down to 81% HP while the other was at 77%.

A few turns after that, I Summoned Odin.

I had around 3 more turns left after the Summon ended. Surprisingly, I was able to get far enough to trigger the appearance of the Lufenia orbs.

By now, Kain only had 3 uses of Jump III and 1 use of Gungnir left. Sephiroth has 4 uses of Fervent Blow and 3 uses of Octaslash left. He has 0 uses of Scintilla left. Gladio has 5 uses of Tempest, 2 uses of Dawnhammer, and 0 uses of Impulse left.

One enemy was at 42% HP while the second was at 37% by the time I had to change my party.

Cloud, Lightning, and Dark Knight Cecil finished off the second wave with around 31 turns remaining.

Cloud and Cecil handled the orb in the second wave while Cecil took care of it in the third wave. None of the enemies in either the second or third wave ever got to move.

Lightning ended up taking so many turns that I worried I wouldn't be able to make it with this team before time ran out. I had to resort to using her HP+ so she would stop jumping up in the turn order and let Cecil and Cloud get a turn so they can launch. Her damage is fine, but the launches, especially from Cecil, who can battery right before a launch, deal more damage without taking so many turns. At least she was very helpful in making sure none of the enemies ever got to take a turn. I had around 13 turns left when the last boss healed himself.

I was down to 7 turns left by the time Cloud used his Burst. Before Cloud got to use his Omnislash Version 5, the enemy was down to 51% HP.

I Summoned Pandemonium with around 5 turns left. I spammed Cecil’s Valiant Blow+ for more launches with battery.

Thankfully, managed to make it before the Summon ended. Lightning could have dealt the killing blow.

But I decided to just BRV attack with her and let Cloud be the one to do it.

Phew. Super pleased I was able to win and get all the mission requirements.

Divine Diabolos (World of Illusions) Lufenia Quest

I decided to take on this fight with Cloud, Sephiroth, and Ramza Beoulve (from Final Fantasy Tactics).

Ramza is Level 80 and Crystal Level 80. I have the passives for his 15cp, 35cp, Ex, and LD. He’s currently equipped with his Ex that’s been Purpled or at Ex+ 3/3. I’m missing his Burst weapon and Bloom Stone. All of his Boards have been completed. He has 3 Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 and 3 Attack 108 with Mightiest Squire Boost★★ (Raises INT BRV, MAX BRV, ATK, DEF by 5% if HP is MAX at start of last wave) Artifacts. Since this fight only has 1 wave, I equipped him with the latter.

Ramza is equipped with 2 of Sazh Katzroy’s (from Final Fantasy XIII) Critical Attack All Longer (RF) D Sphere. Its effect is:

When dealing critical hit: • Raises party’s ATK by 2% for 6 turns

Also, I decided to remove Jecht’s RF Sphere from Sephiroth. I replaced it with

Cloud Strife’s (from Final Fantasy VII) Critical Power

Raises BRV damage dealt with critical hits by 10%

Anyway, I also had the following as part of my team:

Call Abilities: Reno’s for the debuffs, Rude’s and Penelo’s for healing

Summon: Odin for the Defense Down and Attack Up Blessing

Friend support: 5-turn Ramza with LD and Burst

Ramza is really good. So glad I was able to get his LD using my tickets. Too bad I missed out on his Burst, but just having his LD is more than good enough.

Heck, even before getting his new weapons, Ramza was already pretty good. So good, in fact, that I was able to lock him into Dimensions’ End Entropy Tier 10 at base Ex only alongside a Purple Leo Cristophe (from Final Fantasy VI) and an Ex+ 0/3 Hope Estheim (from Final Fantasy XIII). It was only after being able to get his LD that I decided to Purple him.

Ramza’s auras and buffs are great. He can even launch with his LD, complete with battery. For a support, he dealt decent enough damage. His Ex charges fairly fast enough and even batteries the party. He did a really good job supporting the party as well as taking care of the Lufenia orb. He wasn't much of a healer though, especially since I couldn't just spam his Galvanize. This meant having to spend more than a few turns with my team not being at full HP. I saved his LD for when Diabolos, the enemy, needed to be launched.

Sephiroth was just there, as usual. The debuff from his LD helped, I guess? I just gave him Cloud's Sphere, but I don't know if it really made a lot of difference. It didn’t seem that way since it still felt like his damage was still pretty meh, but he did well enough, I suppose?

Cloud did very well, as always. His damage was really good, especially thanks to the buffs and auras from Ramza. Plus he also provided some utility via his launches, turn delay, and paralysis.

When Diabolos was at like 42% HP left, I switched out Sephiroth for the friend Ramza that I borrowed. I made sure to activate the support Ramza's LD and Burst first before using Cloud's Burst.

Managed to deal a lot of damage and everyone ended up with a lot of brave. It was really awesome seeing my chars with so much brave. And being able to dump all that brave with a launch was fantastic, to say the least. By the time Cloud was about to cast Omnislash Version 5, Diabolos was down to 28% HP.

I Summoned Odin soon after Cloud's Burst mode ended then just spammed skills, especially Ramza's LD for lots of launches.

When the summon ended, Diabolos only had 1% HP left. My own Ramza was the one who finished him off.

Managed to get the score and all the other mission requirements.

Really super pleased I got to use both Cloud and Sephiroth on the same team again.

Abyss: A Lead to the Thick of It Lufenia Quest

The Abyss: A Lead to the Thick of It is the event that brought with it the banner featuring the first appearance of Balthier’s (Ffamran mied Bunansa from Final Fantasy XII) LD.

I wasn’t really interested in Balthier. I mean, obviously, I wouldn’t mind having him, but I didn’t really have any resources to spare for him, certainly not after having to pity both Sephiroth’s and Cloud’s Bursts back-to-back. So the plan was to not bother pulling, not even with tickets.

Yet somehow, that was what I ended up doing anyway. I found myself tossing a couple of tickets on the Abyss: A Lead to the Thick of It banner. In all honesty though, this wasn’t really a good banner for me. Aside from Balthier’s LD, I was only missing his Ex and Ramza’s Burst.

I already have Fran’s (from Final Fantasy XII) and King’s (from Final Fantasy Type-0) 15cp and 35cp fully MLB. I have a copy of their Ex weapons although neither are fully MLB.

Thankfully, my ticket pulling spree wasn’t a complete and total waste. Aside from the usual bronze and silver trash and a couple of free Power Stones in the form of dupes, I was able to get a copy of Balthier’s LD.

This prompted me to keep tossing more tickets on this banner in the hopes of snagging his Ex as well and possibly even Ramza’s Burst. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be. Aside from the usual dupes and trash, I just ended up with a second copy of Balthier’s LD. At least I had yet to MLB the copy I already have.

Still super vexing though. I was reminded of that time, way, way back when Balthier showed up on a double Ex banner with Cait Sith from Final Fantasy VII (#ad). I also ended up tossing a lot of tickets on that banner, especially because I thought I’d need to have Balthier in order to Perfect Dimensions’ End Entropy Tier 5.

That banner was where I ended up getting multiple copies of Balthier’s 15cp and 35cp. I also got a lot of Cait’s weapons, including dupes of his Ex. I think the only thing I failed to get there was a copy of Balthier’s Ex.

As it turns out though, I didn’t need it. I didn’t need Balthier since I was able to Perfect Tier 5 without him. Too bad I didn’t know that until after I’d already used hundreds of tickets on that banner.

It’s happening again now. But I really don’t have anything more to spare for Balthier. I’d already spent way more than I was supposed to. I really need to save for upcoming chars. So I’m just gonna have to make do with Balthier’s LD. Maybe someday his Ex will grace me with its presence. Until then, I’ll just equip him with his fully MLB’d LD.

In Abyss fights, we get Codes instead of the usual mission requirements. For this Lufenia Quest, the Codes that must be fulfilled are as follows:

1 character from Final Fantasy XII is required

2 characters that use Yellow Crystals is required

1 character that uses guns as a weapon is required

As can be expected, Balthier is one of the characters who fulfills these Codes. You could opt to use other chars, but what’s good with going for Balthier is the fact that he fulfills all of the Codes by himself so that you only need another Yellow Crystal char then you can use whoever you want as your third party member.

I’ve been hearing that even an unbuilt Balthier could be carried through this Level 200 battle. Nevertheless, I still found myself rather worried anyway because I also wanted to use Sephiroth here, and I was doubtful of his ability to carry anyone, certainly not when he usually needs to be carried himself.

Aside from missing his Ex, my Balthier also only has 4 Summon Boards completed. He does have his Bloom Stone, and he has 2 Attack 108 with Max Brave 200 and 1 Attack 108 with Initial Brave 170 Artifacts.

Although I was concerned, I decided to give it a try anyway. My first team was Sephiroth, Rude, and Balthier. Rude is fully MLB and Purple, including his LD. All of his Boards have been completed and he has his Bloom Stone. He has 1 Attack 108 with Max Brave 330 and 2 Attack 108 with Max Brave 200 Artifacts. He’s equipped with the following RF Spheres:

Firion’s (from Final Fantasy II) HP Heal Boost Up Longer (RF) A Sphere

When recovering own HP: • Raises MAX BRV by 4% for 6 turns

Maria’s (from Final Fantasy II) HP Heal Base Attack All Shorter (RF) C Sphere

After recovering HP: • Raises party's INT BRV, ATK by 2% for 3 turns

Sazh Katzroy’s (from Final Fantasy XIII) Critical Attack All Longer (RF) D Sphere

When dealing critical hit: • Raises party’s ATK by 2% for 6 turns

To my surprise, things were actually going pretty well. And then the recast bars of the enemies got filled to the max and they fired off their recast abilities, which killed all my chars. Welp, should have brought Setzer Gabbiani's (from Final Fantasy VI) Call Ability.

I was all set to try again, this time with Setzer's Call equipped to one of my chars, but then I saw a vid of this fight featuring Lightning, Balthier, and Sephiroth. The Balthier in that video is equipped with his Ex, but I still felt like trying this setup anyway. I thought, with Lightning as part of my team, there shouldn't be any need to worry about the recast abilities of the enemy since she could just keep on breaking and rebreaking them and delaying their turns.

Anyway, for Call Abilities, I decided to bring:

Ramza’s for the buffs, healing, and launching

Rude’s for the healing

Cloud’s for the launch and additional dispel for the Lufenia orb

I brought a Level 40 Diabolos as my Summon for Lightning although even Seph and Balthier could benefit from his INT BRV up Blessing. It’s just that only Lightning will really be able to benefit from his elemental weakness damage up Blessing.

Had to be a bit more conservative with Balthier’s skills since I don’t have his Ex. And since he wasn't fully built and didn’t even have all of his Summon Boards, his damage was pretty bad. He was only really there for the orb and codes requirement, but the party-wide buff from his LD was helpful too so that both Lightning and Sephiroth could deal more damage.

Let the enemies attack a few times during the first few turns since I was worried I might not have enough turn delay. They actually managed to take off a bit of Sephiroth’s HP. Other than being glad he didn’t die, I also found myself wishing they’d targeted Lightning instead. This would have been a great way to quickly trigger the activation of Diabolos’s Blessing. Plus Lightning can actually heal herself a bit after using her Ex.

As it was, Sephiroth had to spend more than a few turns not at max HP since I didn’t want to use any of my healing Calls yet. This did mean Yuri’s Sphere was currently off during that time. Ah, well. At least it was only 5% ATK and MAX BRV that he was missing. It was still vexing though.

Lightning did a really awesome job, dealing lots of damage and delaying the enemies. I mostly spammed her skills with the occasional HP Attack++ so she wouldn’t run out so soon.

Sephiroth dealt decent enough damage too, I guess. It didn’t feel like it was that much when compared to Lightning, but having Balthier’s party-wide buff from his LD was definitely helpful in boosting his DPS.

I actually ended up using his Burst instead of Lightning’s. I was debating which one to activate and ended up choosing his, primarily because of its effect so that I could keep on delaying the enemies. By this time, Lightning was running out of abilities, so I was worried I might not have enough turn delay.

Before activating Sephiroth’s Burst, I made sure to use Rude’s Call first to get everyone him back to full health. Thanks to all the delays from Lightning, the enemies never got to attack anymore so the only one they managed to hurt was Seph.

They also never got to use their recast abilities. With Sephiroth’s Burst effect active, it was easy for everyone to just keep on delaying the enemies. It wasn't long before one of them finally croaked it.

The remaining boss followed soon after. Balthier was the one who dealt the killing blow. Actually, I wanted to BRV Attack++ with him then have Sephiroth take the kill shot, but Lightning was next in the turn order and I was pretty sure she would jump turns even if I only used her BRV Attack++, especially since she’d be breaking the enemy.

Didn’t get to Summon Diabolos although this was really mostly because I was enjoying listening to Sephiroth’s Burst music.

Conclusion

Notes:

screenshots are from my Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia game account

#cloud strife #sephiroth #final fantasy 7 #dissidia final fantasy opera omnia #gacha games #dffoo #games #dffoo cloud strife fights #dffoo sephiroth fights #dffoo lufenia fights series

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ecotone99 · 5 years

Text

[FN] [RF] [SP] The Long Goodbye

I died on a Thursday, if I recall correctly. I could easily blame it on the weather, but it was a nice sunny day, not too bright, not too cold, and I just wasn’t paying attention. I just HAD to see who texted me… a telemarketing text. When I looked up, I was already into oncoming traffic. The last thing I remember seeing with my physical eyes was the word “Freightliner”, I heard a squeal of rubber on asphalt and then the flash.

I opened my eyes to see nothing but pavement. I stood up, dusted myself off and turned back to witness a grizzly scene. The entire front of my car was compacted, crushed by the massive frame of the semi that I collided with. I surveyed the damage and, I still shudder to this day when I saw myself. I was barely recognizable. Blood everywhere, bones protruding through skin, limbs mangled, I felt like I was going to throw up. But then I heard a voice behind me and I knew exactly who it was.

“Michael Aaron Kozlowski?” The voice was deep but not intimidating, not as fearful as I had imagined all these years and from all the movies I had seen. I turned around to see him. There was no robe, no scythe, just a skeleton in a plain black suit and overcoat studying a clipboard and checking his pocket watch. He looked up at me.

“Mr. Kozlowski, am I correct?” the vacuous sockets of his skull had the expression of weariness and employee burnout.

“Yeah, that’s me.” I responded.

“Good. For a moment, I thought I got lost on the way. You’d be surprised how many Michael Kozlowski’s there are in the world.” He was very matter of fact, not this hulking foreboding figure that I was expecting. My curiosity got the better of me. I walked from the wreckage and approached him.

“Wait a minute. If you’re death then where’s all the… the…” I lost my words for a moment, but he was happy to assist.

“The robe and sickle.” As he chuckled, his bones rattled under the suit. “Can I call you Mike?”

“Sure, that’s what everyone else called me.”

“Mike, name one person you know, aside from religious folk that wear robes nowadays?”

“You got a point. So… ” I lost my words again, but was quick to find them “..so how does this work?”

“How does what work?”

“Y’know.. the whole death thing?”

“Oh.. OH.” he chuckled again “…almost forgot to do my job again.” He quickly switched his focus back to his clipboard and flipped through several papers.

“Ah, here we are. Michael Aaron Kozlowski..” he trailed off in an indiscernible mumble for a moment and then rose back to audible clarity “…age 41…” I watched as his boney finger traced the information on the page, from line to line and section to section.

“…died July 27, Two Thousand….” I knew what day it was, but I guess he had to go through all of the particulars as part of his duty.

“…sudden fracture of the skull, succumbed to multiple internal injuries, hemorrhaging, blunt trauma, collapsed lung, DAMN… that was a nasty one, wasn’t it?” I grimly nodded, trying to be as patient as possible.

“…survived by Kathryn Avery, wife, and Jacob Thomas, son…”

“OH SHIT!” He stopped his read-through of his documentation and looked up at me.

“Excuse me?”

“I completely forgot about Katie and Jake”

“Well, you’ve been through quite a lot in the past 3 weeks.”

“Well I know but… wait a minute. Three weeks?”

“Yeah, the general processing and admittance takes about 4-6 weeks. We’ve been standing here for three.”

“But…”

“Yeah, I know. Only seemed like a few hours?”

“..I was going to say minutes, but… really? Three weeks?” He held up his pocket watch, pressed a tiny button on the side which allowed the cover to swing open and reveal the beautiful antique face. The face seemed to be normal, except there were many more numbers than the standard twelve.

“Time moves much slower in the afterlife, Mike.”

“How many numb…”

“42”

“Are you serious?” I smirked as if he were playing a joke on me.

“Douglas Adams had it right.” He said as he closed the watch pack up and placed it back in his left breast pocket. “Now where were we?”

“I was remembering my wife and son.”

“Oh yeah. What about them?”

“Well, if I figure it correctly, I’m a ghost right now, right?”

“Technically, but..” He turned up his clipboard to show me the lavender sheet of paper with his orders on it, “…I’ve got orders. Says here that..” He trailed off again, running through the items in another section of the paperwork, “…you’ve been pretty much of a good egg. Helped others when they needed it. Diligent worker, Loving Husband and father. You’re getting your wings, Mike.”

“Wait.. I’m going to be an angel?”

“What?! HA!” He snorted out a laugh. I didn’t even know a skeleton could snort “… no no no. That’s just a phrase we use to say that you’re going upstairs, and not… well, y’know.”

“Well that’s a relief, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, do I have to go now?”

“Mike, where else are you going to go?”

“Well, I’d like to say goodbye, if I can.”

“Sorry. That’s against the rules.”

“Eternity has rules?”

“Well, they’re more of guidelines than rules. You don’t want to get yourself tangled back up into the world of the living. It’ll only lead to anguish, Mike.”

“What do you mean?” He motioned for me to follow him. We began to walk down the road where the accident originally occurred. As I looked around, I noticed that the accident had been completely cleared away, and we were walking through streaks of red and white as we crossed the freeway. He put his hands behind his back and looked out towards the horizon.

“Mike,” he sighed “…when I died back in, oh… when was it… ugh.. I can’t even remember, I was confused and disoriented just like you were. The reaper that gave me his spiel was a lot less… personable. Y’know.. the whole black robe and all that jazz, like you thought. I was in my mid-twenties and I was killed in battle, riddled with arrows actually. And my first thoughts were of my bride back in our village. Since the reaper wasn’t as friendly, he just said NO.. IT IS FORBIDDEN. To which I said “Fuck that.” and I took off. I ran for eons to get back to my village. But, when I finally got there, I didn’t take into account the time change. Time moves differently here, and instead of a couple days for me to return, it was a couple decades. My wife had already remarried and had a new family of her own. I was devastated.”

I stood there enamored by his tale.

“Trust me, by the time you get back to your family, they’ll have moved on, and many years will have passed. If you truly love them, just wait a little longer, they’ll come around.”

“What ever happened to your bride? She had to have died. Did you two ever meet back up?”

“We’re not here to talk about me, Mike. This is your time.” With that, he took a small device out of his right hand coat pocket. It resembled a Game Boy with it’s green screen and a couple red buttons on the console. He slid his clipboard under his arm and typed in a few commands that were answered with a series of heavenly chimes and tones.

From above, above, a single ray of light bore down upon the two of us. He looked at me and smiled a skeletal grin.

“Going up?” The light got brighter and brighter until I was forced to close my eyes. I was curious to see what was waiting for me on the other side. I was excited to see all those who passed before me, but… but I just couldn’t get over the fact that I wouldn’t see my own funeral. I couldn’t get out of my mind that I would miss all of Jake’s milestone moments. He just started kindergarten, so I would miss teaching him how to ride a bike, helping him with his homework, teaching him how to drive, sending him off on his first date, watching him graduate high school and college, being there for his wedding, never meeting my grandkids.

At that moment, I dove out of the beam of light and back onto the freeway, the red and white streaks flew past me forwards and back, disorienting me and causing me to tumble over the guardrail and plummet the hundred feet below under the overpass.

I landed with a deadening thud. My vision was blurry and the ringing in my ears slowly ceased. I could see Him look over the edge and down at me. What was just incoherent sounds soon transformed to His voice bellowing down to me.

“HEY! Mike! Are you alright?”

Now was my chance. I was far enough away from Him that I could make a break for it. I calmly stood up, dusted myself off, and looked up to see Him looking down at me, leaning over the guardrail.

“How do I get back up?” I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled back up.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come down to you,” He answered. In a flash of white smoke, he was gone. I took this opportunity to run like Hell. I scurried away from where I was and headed in the direction of where I used to live. I darted through the trees and bushes that were underneath the freeway, frantically trying to make me way back home. I ran for about a minute before POOF He appeared through that same puff of white smoke and towered over me. I ran full force into his body and bounced back about six feet, and landed on my ass.

“What the HELL do you think you are doing, man?” He scolded. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? By the time you get back to your house, everyone will have moved on! You’ll be heartbroken because they will have moved on without you.”

“I don’t believe that for a second!” I shouted back. “I loved my family with all my heart. And they loved me. I refuse to believe that I will ever leave their thoughts.”

“Mike, I’m telling you, just wait and they’ll…”

“NO! I can’t wait. I need to…” a lump, the size of Montana rose up into my throat, and I was left speechless for a moment. I swallowed it back down, and with it, my eyes began to well up and overflow. I looked down at my shoes. I just now noticed that even though I had been running through the dirt and mud, they were still spotless as the day I bought them.

“…Did you have kids?” I asked Him.

“What?” He was puzzled. I did my best to compose myself, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Jake. The tears were now running down my cheeks.

“When you were alive, did you ever have kids?”I think he finally knew where I was going with this line of questioning.

“No,” He sighed. “I died before we were able to try.”

“Then you have NO idea the kind of pain I am going through right now. There are certain things that a father needs to do with his son so that he grows up right. I needed to be there for him, and now, I won’t be able to. I was robbed of that chance to make sure that I could raise him to be the man he needed to be. I was robbed to experiencing his successes, his failures, his joy and his sorrow. I can’t be there for him. And you just want me to WAIT?”

He stood there, silent.

“Fuck YOU! Fuck your guidelines. Fuck this bullshit that they’ll just move on. My son meant SO MUCH to me, and I’m just supposed to say, oh well, shit happens, he’ll be fine. NO! I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THAT!”

He nodded his head for a moment, took a deep breath and looked back at me, sternly.

“I know I can’t reverse time. I know I can’t just can’t come back to life. THIS I can accept. I just want to say goodbye, and that I’m sorry I’m not going to be able to be there for him. Sorry for everything I’m going to miss.”

He brought his boney hand to the bridge of his nose, and rubbed. Looked down again, and sighed.

“You just don’t get it, Mike.” He looked back up at me.

“But, you’re not the first. Some people just accept death and go with the flow. Others, like you, rebel from square one.” He took the device out again. “Gimme one second.”

A series of chimes and beeps emanated from the device as he pressed some buttons and waited for a response.

“OK, Mike. I can respect the fact that you want to see your son. That you want to at least tell him goodbye, and I know I’m not going to be able to change your mind about this. So, I’ve requested from the boys upstairs that you are granted a temporary free pass just to see this thing out.” I wiped the tears away from my eyes at the news that I was going to be able to see my son.

“There’s just a few conditions. First, I have to go with you. I have been assigned to your case, so I have to make sure you don’t go all poltergeist on me. That goes on my permanent record, and I’m not having that. Second, as soon as you say what you need to say to… Jake, was it,”he double checked his clipboard, “I make the call and we head upstairs, immediately. Do you understand?”

I giddily nodded my head and reached out to shake his hand. He immediately pulled it away and held it up to stop me from getting any closer.

“Whoa, whoa whoa. Don’t shake my hand just yet, Mike. You’re the one that wanted this, and you may not be happy with what you see.”

He turned away from me and pressed a button on the device. As it began to whirr and beep, he checked his clipboard once more. The device gave a tiny DING and he studied the screen.

“OK, your old house is roughly, 5 miles South, Southwest of our current location. I suggest we get back up to the freeway and walk from there. It’ll be much easier on flat ground, OK?”

I nodded and looked around. I had been running so fast that I completely lost track of where the freeway was. He pointed a skeletal finger to our right, and I headed in that direction. I started to smile. I was going to see my Jake again.

We were walking for about 3 miles amongst the red and white streaks along our sides when I finally decided to look up at the sky. It was night, and the stars shone so vividly, that I could easily see the Milky Way band across the deep indigo sea. I stopped walking. He continued.

“Hey, wait a minute!” I beckoned. He finally stopped and turned around.

“What?” He mumbled.

“OK, explain this to me. The streak to our left and right are obviously the cars passing back and forth along the freeway, going at their normal speed, but to us, time is moving so fast, that they just appear as these streaks, right?”

“What are you getting at, Mike?”

“What’s the deal with the sky?”

“What deal?”

“Why isn’t the sky and the sun and moon moving at the same speed? Shouldn’t it be light-dark-light-dark really fast, just like everything else.”

“Hmm, if I remember correctly, it has to do with the speed of light. You see, since we are moving so fast through time, the sun isn’t up long enough for it to hit your eyes, so it’s always night. For the same reason, you’ll never see the moon in the sky either.”

He was right. It was just all stars and clusters and nebula.

“Wait a minute?”

“What is it now, Mike?”

“How fast ARE we going?”

“That conversation we just had…”

“Yeah?”

“ A week.”

A week!! We’d been walking a couple hours and that conversation just took a minute or two. I didn’t like where this was going, but I HAD to see this through. I think He started to sense that I was finally starting to see things his way.

After about 4-5 hours, we finally reached my old house. It was still there. The paint was different, and there was a few different cars in the driveway, but the house still stood. I ran for the front door, but He stopped me, held me by the arm.

“Hold on there, Mike. Did you forget about the time difference?”

“What about it?”

“Well, if they’re going at the speed I told you about, how are you going to be able to sit down and say goodbye to your son?” I contemplated the situation, and turned to Him with an expression of worry.

“Don’t worry. I can slow things down a bit, but I can’t do it for long. Just long enough for you to get your goodbyes in and then we’re off, ok?” I waited for Him to bring out his device once more, press a couple buttons and then I felt and heard time slow down. It is one of the most unusual events a human being can ever experience. Imagine you are in the center of a record player, spinning at 77 rpms and suddenly, someone puts their finger on the record and slows down it down. The world simply lurched to a slower pace, and the sound was equally disturbing. A soft, high pitched whirr suddenly increased in volume and choked back the pitch until it was a low hum, a familiar hum – the hum of life. I could hear the wind, the traffic, the normal sounds of my old neighborhood. I was back and it was a glorious sound to behold.

“Alright, now you can go in.” He let go of my arm and I ran to the house. I thought about knocking, but I almost forgot, I was dead. So I just walked on through the door.

The house was different. It was mostly the same furniture, but there were somethings that were askew. The family portraits used to be on the far wall, that connected the livingroom to the kitchen. The kitchen table used to be rotated ninety degrees… little things.

The other strange thing was that all the lights were on, but there were no people. Why would Katie leave all the lights on if no one was going to be home? I began to walk around the house. I walked slowly down the hall to where the bedrooms were. First, on the left was Jake’s. The door was open so I didn’t need to pass through to peer in. The room was empty. Even the carpeting was gone. It looked like no one had used that room in years. A knot was beginning to form in the pit of my stomach. Something wasn’t right. I continued down the hall, and to the right was our old bedroom. The decor was certainly more… modern than how I remember it. The walls were a different color. As I panned across the room, my eyes finally reached the bed. Under the covers lay an old man, tucked in tight and looking like he was on his last legs.

What the shit?

Who the hell was this guy? And then I thought, Katie may have remarried and time had passed, this may be her new husband. I looked around the room for more clues. I didn’t see any pictures of Katie and me, or Katie and her new husband, so the identity of this man was still a mystery. His breathing became more forced and he began to cough. Whoever this guy was, his time was almost up. Suddenly I heard a clatter coming from the hallway. I turned to look as a group of people slowly walked down the hall and into the room, surrounding the bed. I looked at all of the people, and surprisingly didn’t recognize a single one. “HEY!” I shouted out. I turned around and He was right behind me, holding his device up and reading its display.

“Yeah?” He said, still studying the screen of the device, the glow lighting up his skull.

“What is this? Who are all these people?”

“This is your family, Mike.”

“What?!” I turned back and looked. I looked very hard at all of them. “This is not my family. I don’t recognize any of these people.”

“Think of the time, Mike.”

“Think of the time? The hell does THAT mean?”Then, I heard one of the children speak. They had approached the old man in the bed and held his hand. Tears began to roll down their cheeks, as they could barely get the words out. As the words left the child’s mouth, that knot in my stomach forced its way up into my throat and I immediately began to sob giant tears of regret.

“Goodbye Grandpa Jake.”

The old man turned his head to the child and I could finally see his face clearly. The eyes, the mouth, the one crooked eyebrow. It was my Jake. All grown up and now, at the end of his life. He was able to do it all without me. I looked around the room again and studied all the photos. There were pictures of him with his wife, and his kids, I saw the progression of them grow up, and Jake grow older. I saw a photograph of him, much younger than he is now sitting with an older woman. I looked closer. Katie. He was sitting with his mother. Her hands were clasped together on her lap with her left hand on top, wedding band absent. After all these years, she never remarried. I continued to look at the photos, and saw all the experiences he had that I missed.

“I missed it all.” I mumbled to myself. He came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.

“I tried to tell you, but you were too stubborn. I figured you had to learn for yourself. As soon as you get whisked away, we have a constant connection back down here, you could have watched it all, been there every step of the way. All you had to do was wait.”

The tears were uncontrollable running down my face now.

“What do you mean WAIT? How long? How long would I have had to wait?”

“Five minutes, tops.”

“FIVE MINUTES?”

“I had to find out the hard way too, Mike.”

Suddenly, Jake gasped, his eyes rolled back into his head and the color faded from his face. A loud sound blared from the device and He took notice of it. He pressed a few buttons and then put it back in his pocket.

“Well, looks like I have to take both of you.”

“What?” I spun around. It started low, but a wind began to blow inside the house. I couldn’t feel it, but I could definitely hear it. It grew louder and louder until it was as boisterous and roaring as a tornado. I plugged my ears and waited for it to pass. I was facing Him at the time, and he pointed behind me and slowly spun me around as the winds blew. Jake began to glow and as the wind blew more fierce the light grew brighter. It grew so bright that I was forced to cover my eyes the light penetrated my eyelids so I was forced to turn back around. The wind died and the light diminished. I opened my eyes and uncovered my ears. The people surrounding the bed were all crying. But Jake, old Jake stood in front of the bed looking at all the people. After looking upon on all of his family members that he would be leaving behind, he turned towards me and Him.

He instantly recognized Him and knew what was to follow.

“Jacob Thomas Kozlowski?” He said in the same tone in which he uttered my name to me. Jake nodded.

“You know who I am, right?” He asked the old man. Jake slowly nodded. Jake’s attention soon turned from the tall skeleton in the suit and overcoat to me. He looked at me and concentrated, studying every feature of my face. I couldn’t look away. It was the first time I saw my son’s face since I died. I did my best to compose myself, but it’s not easy when you have waiting to see someone just one more time.

“Well, because of this guy,” He gave me a friendly shove, “I will be taking both of you upstairs. You’ve had a good life, Jake. Both of you have. Come on, now. Kathryn is waiting.”

Both of us turned our focus to Him.

“Katie?” I blurted out, and at the same time “Mom?” The old man stuttered. It was at that moment, when it clicked for Jake. I slowly looked back and him and he returned my gaze. Tears began to well up in his eyes, his lip began to tremble and magically, the years started to melt away. Soon I was looking at the man Jake grew to be. And that’s when he said it, the one thing I missed from the moment this journey began.

“Dad?”

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