Gamer Corner Guides

Many of the characters in Final Fantasy VI have special abilities or mechanics that are outside the general scope of the guide. Those are detailed here.

Shadow

Interceptor

Shadow's dog Interceptor will randomly block half of the physical attacks sent his way (except on the Floating Continent). If Interceptor blocks an attack, there is a 50% chance he will counterattack with either Takedown or Wild Fang. These attacks cannot hit enemies with Float status.

Leaving the Party

At several points early in the game, you'll be given the opportunity to add Shadow to your party. He'll join for free during Sabin's scenario, but he'll charge a fee of 3,000 GP to join you in Kohlingen any time before you get the Blackjack. In both cases, he may decide to leave after any given battle. Once he leaves, he won't rejoin from the same location. He also won't leave while you're on the Phantom Train.

The chance of Shadow leaving after any given battle is 1/16. However, several conditions will prevent him from leaving. He won't leave after a combat with a nonstandard layout (a pincer, side, or back attack). He also won't leave if he is currently out of commission (e.g., he has Wound, Petrify, or Zombie status).

Shadow's Dreams

Shadow has four dreams that randomly occur when you stay at an inn with him in the party. There is a fifth dream sequence that occurs after rescuing him and returning to Thamasa in the World of Ruin. The four random dreams occur with 50% frequency when staying at any inn except the one in Thamasa after the price drops to 1 GP.

Strago

Although Gogo can use them, only Strago can learn Lores. In order to do so, he must be in the party when the ability is used. He does not need to be targeted by the ability, nor does he need to survive after the Lore is used. A number of status effects will prevent Strago from learning a Lore: Dark, Zombie, Petrify, Wound, Muddled, Psyche, Stop, and Freeze.

Gau

Gau learns new Rage abilities by using the Leap command on the Veldt. The mechanics that determine which encounters appear on the Veldt are worth studying if you are going to try to power up Gau. The basic rule of thumb is that no encounter will appear on the Veldt until you've fought that encounter at least once. You don't need to win; even escaping from an encounter will make it available on the Veldt.

Fighting Empty-Handed

Gau cannot equip any weapons (unless you give him the Merit Award) so he fights with his bare hands. These are treated like a weapon with 10 Bat.Pwr and a hit rate of 200. This is true if any other character attacks without a weapon as well.

Veldt Groups

Each encounter has an associated "Veldt group." The way the Veldt works is that you will fight one encounter in each group, and the next encounter will be from the next group. Groups with no valid encounters are skipped, and the sequence cycles back to group 1 after the last non-empty group. The sequence is generally preserved, though the current group is oddly incremented by 13 whenever you reload the game.

Setzer

Setzer's Slot command has a number of effects that can be found on the Slots page. In addition to the abilities listed there, a combination of 3 Bars will produce a random esper ability. (Hopefully it doesn't pick Crusader, who is liable to destroy your party earlier in the game.)

There are a number of strange restrictions on Slots. Only Chocobop and Lagomorph are guaranteed to be hittable at any given time. The game may help or hinder your ability to get certain combinations. There are ways to manipulate the random number generator to get the results you want, but those are outside the scope of this guide. The main thing to remember is that the first slot is always entirely under your control.

Umaro

Umaro is the one character in the party you never get to control at all. He attacks on his own, similar to having the Berserk status, and you can't even change his gear. You can, however, change his relics, and several of those change the way Umaro attacks.

Umaro has two basic attack abilities and one each provided by equipping him with the Rage Ring and Blizzard Orb relics. Depending on which are available, the chances of him using any particular attack vary as indicated in the chart to the right.

Battle

This is Umaro's basic attack, which is treated exactly like using the Fight command.

Charge

Umaro's default alternate attack is always available. It is similar to Battle except that Charge ignores defense, making it considerably stronger. There is no ability name associated with this attack in game, but it can be identified by Umaro bodily charging at an enemy.

Throw (Rage Ring)

Umaro's Throw attack, enabled by equipping the Rage Ring, looks similar to Charge, except that instead of barreling into an enemy himself, Umaro will bounce one of your own characters into an enemy. This is a very powerful physical attack with a number of nice side effects. Similar to Charge, it ignores defense, and in addition it will add the thrown character's Bat.Pwr to Umaro's own for the purposes of calculating damage.

In addition to the damage, Throw will wake up whichever character is thrown if they are suffering from Psyche or Muddled. Even better, Umaro will always Throw such a character if there's one in the party. What a thoughtful yeti!

Storm (Blizzard Orb)

Equipping the Blizzard Orb gives Umaro access to his only magic attack, Storm. This is an unblockable Ice-Elemental Ability that targets all foes and has 100 Bat.Pwr, putting it closer to Ice 3 than Ice 2 in terms of effect. Like most spells, its damage is halved if there are multiple targets.

Umaro's starting Mag.Pwr is actually pretty high at 37, though there's no way to upgrade it. You can forego the Rage Ring in favor of Earrings or a Hero Ring to increase Umaro's Storm damage, but he's still going to use it less than half the time.