Deathgaze (Final Fantasy VI)

Deathgaze, also known as Doom Gaze, is a boss in Final Fantasy VI. It is difficult to find, as it hides in a random location on the world map of the World of Ruin and can only be fought by directly flying into it with the Falcon. Although the player can find it by randomly flying about, the most effective method is to land the airship and board it again so that the airship faces north. The player must then incline it a bit to the west or east and accelerate. This will take the player across every tile of the map, and while it will take some time, eventually Deathgaze will appear. The party will receive the Bahamut magicite when Deathgaze is defeated.

Battle
Deathgaze has high HP, and depending on when the player fights him, the level of difficulty varies. It has Auto-Shell. Deathgaze opens every battle by casting Lv.5 Death, instantly killing any party members with a level a multiple of five. It then uses Death, Blizzaga or a normal attack, and on its second turn Aero or Death. On the third turn of the battle Deathgaze has a two in three change to flee.

The trick to defeating it is that Deathgaze does not recover its lost health when it flees, so the party can defeat it by chasing it around and weakening it over time. Until the player defeats Deathgaze it is recommended they save before flying the Falcon anywhere in case they encounter Deathgaze.

Strategy
Casting Fira, Firaga, Ultima (Ability), and Holy spells work well against it; so does Gau's Io Rage, which has Flare Star and will always deal 9,999 HP damage to Deathgaze. Meteor (Ability) is much less effective, because of the high physical defense. Another useful strategy is to throw Flame Rods or Holy Rods on Deathgaze since these will ignore its high defenses and Auto-Shell.

In the SNES version, Deathgaze is easily defeated with the Vanish-Doom tactic, but using X-Zone on it with Vanish would prevent the game from recognizing him as beaten. Contrary to popular belief, this does not cause the player to permanently miss the Bahamut magicite; while they won't get it for that battle, Deathgaze's death script never running also means Deathgaze is not flagged as defeated, and continues to appear at random, so he will still give the magicite whenever he is beaten 'properly'.

AI Script
At beginning of battle: Lv. 5 Death (100%)

Attack Turns: 1st Turn: Attack (33%) or Death (33%) or Blizzaga (33%) 2nd Turn: Death (33%) or Aero (66%) 3rd Turn: Target: Self
 * Flee (66%)

If attacked by anything: Attack (33%)

Pictlogica Final Fantasy
Deathgaze from Final Fantasy VI appears as an enemy in Pictlogica Final Fantasy.

Trivia

 * Deathgaze appears in the U.S. commercial for the Super Nintendo version of Final Fantasy VI, along with other monsters that resemble the Magna Roader.
 * Deathgaze was originally planned to have changes in his attacks depending on his status, but the changes were removed before the release of the game, with texts in the game data being the only thing left. When Silence, Deathgaze would be unable to use Blizzaga; when Blind, he would be unable to use Death; and an unknown situation would cut his claws, making him unable to use Venom Claw.

Thanatos (FFVI) Десгейз (Final Fantasy VI)