By the way, I've stepped away from playing for the moment, and completed the report writeup through this point. I don't know yet whether my assault on the Temple of Fiends Revisited will end in success. You're getting a report through to the bitter end either way.

So after restocking on potions and all, here's a look at all the statistics.

I realize I have no proof of this - those XP stats would be the same even if I'd died and reloaded at some point. I don't have a movie or emulator input recording; you'll all have to trust my integrity. :)

BTW, a neat trick for the Temple of Fiends: Make sure that you only have exactly one type of save item (TENT/CABIN/HOUSE). If you do, HEAL potions will be lined up on the left side of the screen and require only one keypress (up) to select and use each time. Yes, I micromanage EVERYTHING. :)

Anyway, it's time. As before, I burned an encounter to reset the clock by walking in the regular Temple of Fiends before entering the altar.

The first real fight didn't trigger until I reached the third floor. I carefully put the Aegis Shield on the Ribbonless fighter, to defend against Gas Ds, which showed up in the first fight! Thanks to that preparation, the POISONs bore no threat to kill anyone, but still cost almost 20 heal potions.

FIght two was against MAGEs whose RUBs bounced off my ProRings. PHANTOM died on the first round getting off only a STOP that hit only the Ribbonless fighter.

Back on floor 2, ZombieDs were no trouble, twice. Back on floor 1, I gave Biff the ice and fire resist items again, which rendered CHIMERAs no thread. And onto the relative safety of the Earth floor. Earths, MudGOLs, and RockGOLs were definitely no threat now, but did burn five to ten heal potions per fight.

I reached LICH. NUKE is not elemental, so Biff's resistance gear needs no adjustment. Fight fight fast fast... and both fighters went first, and each dealt over 250 damage with a crit. LICH died before I even got a screenshot. Ha!

The Fire level offered up very pleasing AGAMAs, who politely provided warmth to my party while they sat on the healing items. This level threw me only three fights before KARY.

She got off one FIR3 that was no threat at all with fire resistance all around, and died on round two.

Zeus and Thor blasted through the Water level as usual, and got me to KRAKEN. This guy was the scourge of the Berserkers, of course, and he surely poses danger here too. If he attacks and kills both Red Mages, I'm in serious trouble.

KRAKEN landed 280 damage on my fighter, but my fighters landed 700+ on round one. I believe this is a clinch; KRAKEN can't wipe both red mages now.

And Biff went first on round two, winning.

The Air floor, and its eternal question: to go for the Masmune? I say yes. It's a considerable damage boost for a fighter (which will be Biff), getting him a fifth hit, 15.5 more average damage for each of those hits, and more crit chance. (Go quadratics.) The one department this party lacks is White Magic; I have pitiful healing if the fight with CHAOS goes long. Gotta kill him before he reaches his infamous CUR4, and Masmune is the way to do it.

On the way there...

SORCERERS. Yikes. The first three characters tried to run, but Soul cast a LIT3. Before anybody got a turn, Tank got insta-killed and the next two characters got stunned. Uh oh.

Newfound formula knowledge from the Gamefaqs formula thread could prove absolutely key for this battle. First, running is definitely the correct strategy for the first three characters. The getaway is guaranteed for the first two characters if the latter two don't get killed, and likely (9/13 chance) for the third character.

However, the fourth character has a very slim chance of running, regardless of his class (Thief or not) or situation. His Luck is compared against a random number in the range of 0..128 or more, so he's got about a 20% chance to get away at best. Better for Soul to launch something on offense to kill one or more SORCERERs.

And that offense must be LIT3, his strongest spell. SORCERERs only have 112 hit points, so it might seem that ICE2's 40-160 damage will kill them more than half of the time, but that's absolutely not true. ICE2 actually does merely 40-80 damage, with a chance for double damage. But the hidden Magical Defense stat of SORCERERs is very high (172 out of 200), so that doubling won't happen.

LIT3 deals 60-120 damage before the doubling, so it has a decent chance to kill at least one SORCERER...

but that failed to happen. Still, it did deal upwards of 80 to each target, so a single action with any damage spell will get me out of it.

Another TRANCE nailed Soul, and I was trapped with no actions for several rounds. Soul then got insta-slain, but the SORCERERs kept trying to TRANCE already-stunned warriors.

Miraculously, Biff and Hart woke up together, and here's the current situation.

Either character getting an action will get me out of this, either by Zeus Gauntlet or Black Shirt. Who will go first?

HART GOES FIRST!

STILL ALIVE, BABY!

After one RockGol fight, I got Masmune. I then WARPed back to the entrance of the Air floor, and yet again pulled the trick of attracting a fight on the Water floor to reset the encounter clock for Air.

Since TIAMAT's first two special attacks are THUNDER and POISON, I gave those two resistances to Biff. (Hey, I forgot to swap in lightning resistance for the KRAKEN fight, good thing it didn't matter.)

TIAMAT led with Bane. Silly Fiend, that can't hurt me. 4x Ineffective.

TIAMAT's only action in round two was to hit Soul for 200 damage, and the FASTed fighters easily finished her off.

After one more bout with RockGOLs (phew, no SORCERERs), we proceed to the grand finale. I'd been reduced to 10 Heal potions, but of course the last floor has no random encounters.