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Welcome to the Magitek Research Facility. As long as you're around level 20 or so this place should not cause you too many problems. The only enemies in this room are Garms and Commandos, and if you have Sabin and Edgar in your group, these enemies are very weak to fire dance and flash. In fact, ALL the enemies in the research facility are weak to these abilities. If you don't have them in your group, you're screwed...or just use your other most powerful attacks. |
| Walk left from the entrance and you'll come to a pipe infrastructure. Go into the pipe all the way left, and you'll come out on a ramp, where you'll come to a treasure chest with a Flame Sabre inside. |
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Hop onto this crane Indiana Jones style here to get back across to the other side. |
| Walk right and you'll come to two pipes. First, go in the right pipe to get a treasure chest with a Tincture. Then head into the left pipe (Mario style, yo). |
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You'll end up on a ramp which leads you to a new room. There are some other enemies in this room that are very good for gaining magic points (pipsqueaks give 3, and ProtoArmors give 4!). On the chest to your left is an X-potion. Take the ramp on your right, because there is nothing down the stairs. |
| The next chest you come to will contain a Thunderblade, a nice weapon for dealing with machinery enemies. |
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Once again, you'll come off a ramp into a new room (with the same enemies as the last room). Remember where this place is, because you'll be back a couple times. First, you are going to want to head left from here. |
| The first thing you will come to is a chest containing the relic "Dragon Boots". These a relic that let you use the ability jump (for you FF4 junkies, Kain-style. For you FFT junkies, lancer-style). Also, if you head up the stairs here, you will find a chest containing the Gold Shield. |
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Head down from the stairs where you will find two doors. Take the one on the right. The one on the left won't lead to any items. After passing through the door, if you head down from where Locke is standing you'll enter a room with a chest on the left side containing a Gold Helmet. |
| Head left from that room and you'll find another room which contains a Gold Suit on the far left (you can't see the chest in the room, but it's on the left side of the room). |
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Now head back to the place I told you to remember. Forgot where it is? Well, look up and find it you lazy bastard. Head up the stairs above the moving ramp, making sure not to get on the ramp just yet. You'll see an entrance to another pipe system. If you head into it, head down the pipes, you'll come to a room containing a Blizzard Sword and a ZephyrCape. |
| Now head back down and get on the moving ramp. You'll see a little cutscene involving Kefka abusing his espers (someone is a little repressed). After watching this, head down the ramp. |
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You'll see the espers lying here seemingly unconscious. If you need to heal, the room on the left contains a save spot. Else, talk to the red esper on the bottom left corner to initiate a fight. |
| These guys aren't too hard. Have Celes cast Runic, and use strong physical attacks. Don't use magic against these guys. After a bit of fighting, they will realize that Ramuh is with you and they will help you... |
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by turning into magicite! Yes, those shiny little crystals of joy. They're warm to the touch aren't they? Anyway, you now have the Ifrit esper, which teaches fire magic, and the Shiva esper, which teaches ice magic. After collecting your espers, head up into the room on the right. |
| After going up a long flight of stairs, you'll end up in a room filled with tubes. Kinda creepy, huh? If you head down from where Locke is standing here, then walk left a bit, you'll come to a hidden chest which contains the Break Blade, the most powerful sword you can get your grubby little hands on for a while. |
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Walk into the next room and you'll come to yet another pansy boss. Don't bother using magic on this guy. Just use strong physical attacks and he should fall within a minute or two. Recommended Level: 22 |
| In the next room you'll see more tubes, but this time there appear to be espers inside! Right about now you should be thinking to yourself "Crap, something big is going to happen." |
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Go up and push the lever, and a story sequence will happen where you introduced to Cid (yay for Cid!). I won't ruin any of what happens here, since it is a rather big story element and I'm a rather nice guy. |
| Looks like ol' Cid is repenting for his evil deeds. Too bad he didn't think of this a couple minutes earlier. |
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When you get to the bottom of the elevator you can save your game. Looks like someone is missing from the party, eh? Don't worry, she'll be back, black, and bad. Oh wait, that's Mr T. How silly of me. You'll also notice your esper list has extended to 12 espers now. Lots of magic to learn. Make sure everyone is equipped optimally and has espers equipped, because you won't be able to access the status screen in the next scene. |
| With Kefka approaching, there is only one way out. The train car, coming at you in pristine, state-of-the-art mode7 graphics. It almost brings a tear to my eye. |
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Once again, just use strong physical attacks to wipe out the enemies. Flash and fire dance work particularly well. |
| This boss is easier then the last one, if that is possible. First take out his two arms which only have like 500 HP each, then go after the body with strong physical attacks. A couple pummels and drills take em out. Cyan's dispatch also works well here if he is in your group. And after beating this guy, you are done with the Magitek Research Facility. And the peasents rejoiced. |
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