Amount of damage depends on the target's HP.
Description
Demi is a Blk Mag spell in Final Fantasy IX for Vivi that deals fractional damage to one or multiple regular enemies (it will always miss on bosses) based on their HP; the spell takes 30% of their maximum, meaning the more HP the enemy has, the more damage Demi can do, though the damage caps at 9999. In Trance, Vivi can use the spell twice in one turn.
Kuja can use the ability Demi against the party. Demi can be reflected and can be countered with the support ability Return Magic.
Obtain[]
Demi is learned from the Cypress Pile, Amethyst, and Black Belt for 30 AP. Cypress Pile is bought in Lindblum (disc 3), Oeilvert Mogshop, Desert Palace Mogshop, and Esto Gaza (after Desert Palace). Amethyst is synthesized in Daguerreo, Hades, and Black Mage Village in the endgame, found in the Outer Island and Forgotten Island chocograph treasures, and in Alexandria later on in the game. Doctor Tot also gifts the party one as part of the story. Amethysts drop from Ring Leaders and Toramas. Black Belts are synthesized in Daguerreo, Alexandria (disc 3/4), Treno (disc 3/4), and Lindblum (disc 3/4), rewarded from the Stellazzio coins quest (8 coins), found in the Black Mage Village, and stolen from Deathguise.
The earliest access to Demi is via the Black Belt found in the Black Mage Village; in the item shop; the player needs to ask for "the usual" after overhearing a conversation from the walkway above.
Mechanics[]
The formula for Demi is:
![{\displaystyle Damage=[(30*Target'sMaxHP)/100]}](https://cdn.statically.io/img/services.fandom.com/mathoid-facade/v1/media/math/render/svg/cf5af369c46b9cd2d4fd5ba4edb9002087f2665d)
Demi will never work on bosses. Damage is unaffected by multi-targeting the cast, target's Shell, or Vivi being under Mini.
The chance of the spell working on a target that is not immune is calculated as follows:
![{\displaystyle Chance=40+Level+[Magic/4]-Target'sLevel}](https://cdn.statically.io/img/services.fandom.com/mathoid-facade/v1/media/math/render/svg/ec017a7eb2838dddb0ffef2e859764e8bd31950c)
Two randomly generated values determine if the spell will hit:
- A random number 0...99 >= Chance, the spell misses its mark
- A random number 0...99 < Target's Magic Evade, the enemy evades
In Vivi's Trance, Blk Mag turns into Dbl Blk where Vivi can cast two spells on his turn. The spells cost MP and expend the Trance gauge independently.
The support abilities that affect Demi are Reflect-Null, which makes Vivi's spells pierce a target's Reflect status, and Reflectx2, which doubles the spell's efficiency to 60% of the targets' max HP when reflected.
Use[]
As Demi deals damage independent of Vivi's stats, there is no need to use Focus for it. It is best to use it early in the battle to hopefully start with a large shave to the target(s)' HP. As Demi can be "freely" multi-targeted, it can be good against groups, however, Final Fantasy IX does not have many enemy formations with groups of enemies, and notably in the final dungeons, there is only ever one enemy in a random encounter.
Demi can be used to whittle down an enemy's health without killing it for Quina to become able to eat them. This can be useful especially in the late game if the player is wanting to eat an early game enemy for a Blue Magic spell they missed.
When Vivi has Reflectx2, the most efficient way to use Demi is to multicast-reflect it off the entire four-man party; the spell animation is not repeated, but the spell is actually quadrupled (if all castings were to hit, considering the spell's poor accuracy compared to Vivi's other damage-dealing spells), plus doubled up in power due to Reflectx2. This can be quite MP efficient, though running low on MP is not usually too much of a concern after Vivi learns Osmose.
Demi is hindered by its low success rate, unusual property of the spell for Final Fantasy IX as in most games, the recurring version has no such handicap. For pure damage-dealing, Vivi is better off using his other spells and trying to exploit an enemy's elemental weakness, or powering up his spells with equipment pieces that confer elemental affinities.
Other fractional damage abilities in the game are Amarant's Demi Shock, Dagger's Atomos, and Quina's Aqua Breath.
Etymology[]
Demi is a prefix meaning "half", from the Latin dīmidium meaning "divided in half".
In Japanese, the spell is called "Gravity". Gravity, or gravitation, is the natural phenomenon by which physical bodies appear to attract each other with a force proportional to their masses. It is most commonly experienced as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped.