World 3: Stingray Harbor

The only reason to sail the sea in this area is to encounter the elusive Stingray. This Corbett palette swap can teach you the sought after blue magic Mighty Guard. In addition, he sometimes carries a rare sword: the Rune Blade. If that weren’t enough, he drops the strongest whip in the game, the Dragon Whip.

The most difficult part of the battle is encountering the Stingray at all. Fly to the Phoenix Tower (that obelisk jutting from the desert on the northeastern continent). Directly south of it is a large enclosed body of water. The optimal spot to encounter a Stingray lies in the northeastern quadrant. A peninsula juts out from the north shore. Your hunting ground is the region to the east of it and roughly south where the east river pours into the sea.

You’re in the right place when you encounter a plethora of easy monsters left over from the first world. You should be seeing Sahagins, Sea Ibis, Thunder Anemones, and Nix. If you encounter Sea Devils you’re in the wrong spot.

Stingray encounter

Once you do encounter the Stingray you have a few tasks. First off, you need to control him to learn Big Guard. Just controlling the beast can take several attempts. Whatever you do, don’t test Tidal Wave, his other control attack. He absorbs the damage—about 5,000 points of it. After you have successfully tricked the ugly blue skeleton into casting Mighty Guard, you can begin your second task: stealing a Rune Blade. It’s not technically a necessary steal. You can find one at Istory Falls. It’s not that great of a sword, although it does have a bonus. It consumes mp to inflict critical damage.

What you really want is the Dragon’s Whisker that he drops. My theory was that if you stole the rare steal—the Rune Blade—by casting Return several times, you got the whip. Unfortunately my theory has gone all to pot. So it may take you a few horrible hours to encounter a Stingray and have him drop a Dragon’s Whisker. Your alternative is to steal the whip off of Shinryu. I’d rather sail around for a few hours.

The only attack you have to worry about from the Stingray is Fin, which poisons its target. Bring along some antidotes or a hardy white mage to heal your ailing comrades and you should be fine. He just smacks you around a bit when he’s not poisoning you.

User Submitted Strategies

Encountering the Stingray is a piece of cake if you're playing V Advance. Just Quicksave, and the second encounter will always be a Stingray.

Posted at 3:09 PM on August 13, 2008 by Loozar

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