Burmecia

The first order of business upon approaching Burmecia is to set up for the last Type A battle. The strategy is pretty much the same as the first one. The difference here is that Vivi now has access to a much more powerful spell (Bio), so I don't need to remove everyone's headgear, thus making it easier to survive the fight.

With my strategy the chance of successfully completing the battle in one round is approximately 2/3. For me, this is high enough that I'd rather not backtrack to the world map to save afterwards. You can do so if you want, especially if you're going to have Steiner take Abadon's experience as that path has a large time buffer. With this battle Freya gained another level and has now mastered her first ability -- Antibody.

After the battle I proceeded straight through Burmecia, eventually getting no encounters. In the balcony area after rescuing Wei and Kal, I went through the first opening and back out again to reduce the chance of an encounter. In the next screen after that I opened the first chest for a Tent to give me some extra gil.

After saving with Atla I made some changes to my equipment to prepare for Beatrix and to switch over to Dagger and Steiner. I gave Zidane the Mythril Dagger, Yellow Scarf, and Wrist, and gave Vivi a Wrist. Then I removed Vivi's Cotton Robe and Yellow Scarf, Freya's Bronze Gloves, Quina's Cotton Robe, and Zidane's Bronze Vest and Feather Hat, and activated Zidane's Bandit. From Beatrix I stole the Phoenix Down and Chain Plate. It's definitely not worth going after the Mythril Sword. After skipping the FMV and saving my time at the end of disc 1 is now 02:36:26.