FFL Solo Human
After Solo Monster in FFL2, I wanted something easier. And well, I went with the easiest variant that came to mind in a Final Fantasy game: Solo Human from its predecessor.
Humans in FFL are different from in traditional SaGa. They grow by drinking various potions: the Strong potion increases strength by 2, the Agility potion increases agility by 2, and the HP200/HP400/HP600 items increase HP by 1-20, until they cross over the threshold after which they only increase it by one point.
What makes Humans so powerful is that the only limit on the first two is a two-byte integer. You can push their stats extremely high and well beyond the displayed limit of 99, up to 254. They cost 300GP apiece. The only thing you need to watch out for is drinking too much overflowing either value.
As far as FFL1 is concerned, females have an edge over males when it comes to solo challenges, due to their starting with a Saber that can be sold for a lot of gold. Therefore, I went with the human female. After searching around for names, and being unable to find a noteworthy female steroid-abuser, I simply decided to name her after Sada Kaur, a fearsome female Sikh warrior whose exploits helped in Ranjit Singh's rise to power.
With this money, Sada bought Gold Armor and Gold Gloves for defensive protection, and a Rapier to deal damage. She fought some weak monsters outside to grind Agility Potions. She went up up to 16 Agility before taking on the P-Frog.
Despite the poison, this was not a difficult fight. Beating him unlocks a room with a Strong potion, and allowed her to get the King Armor.
This armor is amazing, if only temporary. 20 Defense is actually the third-highest in the game, yielding only to the Suit from World 4 and the Arthur Armor from the second tower. There's only two things in the World of Continent that can really get through it: the Karateka whose martial arts have a weird damage formula, and King Sword.
Still, even he couldn't do much, and soon fell to Sada's fury.
The King Sword has unlimited uses. After drinking some Strong potions, Sada could kill any enemy in one hit. No enemy can hit through her defenses. There are fixed encounters in King Sword's castle. See where this is going?
The solo human "challenge" in Final Fantasy Legend is most easily done by grinding as hard as you can as early as you can, then crushing the game with over 200 Strength and Agility. The only real threats are magic attacks (which eventually become mostly a non-issue) and accumulated damage.
There's a guide on GameFAQs about this variant, and for the human, the guidewriter suggests going up to 100 for World 1, then went along as he went through the game. However, he still does concede that doing it all in one go is nice in how you don't need to keep track of each stat to avoid overflowing it with too much of a stat potion. Exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for in wake of solo monster in FFL2. And I mean, not like it's hard to do it now. I might try it the "hard" way later, but for the here and now...let's crush this game!
Also I did find out how to autofire on bgb. Except it doesn't work for FFL, since it doesn't seem to register one frame inputs. I had to settle for turning the emulator up to 600.0fps and holding down the A button, releasing it whenever meat pops from the endless Wererats and Zombies.
A while of this later, we're ready. Q: What's the best way to keep track your stats when raising them? A: In hexadecimal! Since Strong and Agility potions add 2 to their stats, and you can hold 8 items at a time, a base-16 system of counting keeps it nice and simple.
Now, the guide advises you not to go over around 234 in each stat, since you may lock yourself out of endgame equipment combinations. But honestly, 244 works fine. The strongest gauntlet by far is the Ninja Gauntlet which gives +10 agility, but two less defense from not having the Giant Gauntlet in the meantime while equipping (or not for 7 less) the Geta Shoe in World 4 isn't going to make much of a difference.
As it turns out though, I only had enough to boost Sada's Agility to 180, so she had to go back for a second round.
When all was said and done, and Sada had 244 in each of Strength and Agility, she could proceed with the game. The Steward was murdered to kick off the festivities.
Genbu was one-shot by having an Axe smashed into his shell for over 500 damage. Granted, that's a lot less than the over 800 the King Sword was doing, but it's actually the best weapon for a while. Cheap, and it gets the job done. Also worth noting that the Battle Swords of the World of Ocean are roughly the same in strength at double the price. The GameFAQs guide swears by them, despite the higher cost and occasion ineffectiveness.
Speaking of the World of Ocean, the only thing that was going to pose a threat were the Magicians and Big Eyes. Due to the ludicrous agility Sada has, nothing could actually hit her physically.
The first thing she did on arriving was buy some HP400s to increase her HP to 416. She filled her battle inventory with Axes, and moved on.
Even an Octopus blinding her had no effect on her performance (she's already blinded here). She actually went through a good portion of the game blind, to no effect.
I couldn't one-shot Seiryu with an Axe, but I'd saved up a present for him. Martial Arts work in this game much like they FFL2: they get stronger as you use them and the last use deals extra damage. Which was enough for the kill. I only did this since I was testing them out, and had saved this up anyway.
One difference from is how there's an exploit where it only reads the usage byte of the first of a martial arts' kind in your inventory, allowing you to unleash full-power attacks repeatedly, sans the last-use bonus. Even with this, it wasn't worth it to use them.
There are Medusas in the second climb of the tower, so I have to save from time to time lest Sada instantly be petrified.
When I hit the World of Sky, Sada bought the Dragon Armor to protect against all elemental attacks. I decided to run a comparison of the various available weapons against Garlic monsters. Note that this screenshot is from the end of the game, since I forgot to take pictures of anything during this world.
- Saber: 336, 2060GP
- L-Saber: 371, 10480GP
- Battle: 537, 989GP
- Axe: 539, 412GP
- Katana: 617, 2060GP
- Ruin: 696, 9800GP
- Ogre: 776, 9880GP
- Silver: 778,10712GP
Yeah. Not sure what's up with Lightsabers coming out so weak. The guide recommends it as a weapon of choice, when even his generic weapon of choice overpowers it. Sada bought some Katana and moved on.
Anyway, this is a short world. Sada fought some guards, she flew to a hut, she fought more guards, she went through the sky palace with no enemies, she broke out of a short jail dungeon while grabbing the Giant Gauntlet along the way, she went back into the palace, she immediately left, then she re-entered to fight the boss. You're supposed to go through the whole palace again, and find Byakko is not there, and it's moved when you leave. But you can just immediately leave.
Byakko was easy. The Dragon Armor protected against the one attack he was able to get off: an Ice spell. Two Katana swings brought down the White Tiger.
Because there are enemies with magic attacks in the next part of the tower, Sada bought two Cure Books. Or she did, and I found that using them on party members with 0 Mana in this game heals 0HP, at least from the item menu.
The monsters in question are Jellies and Gazers, the former of which would not die in one hit to an Axe swing. That's why I got those Katanas. Since I had enough after a trip up the tower, I even bought a couple Ogre Swords. She also found the Army Helmet in this section of the tower, another defensive upgrade that she didn't need since nothing could actually hit her. And yes, she's still blind.
Oh, we'll see about that.
Suzaku has 255 Defense. Sada has 254 Strength. She could kill him outright!! Eventually, since he has 5000HP. Who needs a chainsaw!? Shame this has no rewards, let alone any effect.
Note that even if you reach the town this way (or via saving), the plot events won't proceed unless you meet Sayaka in the underground - although you can approach the Atom Ant battle from the wrong direction; she and the ants won't be there, but the fight will trigger anyway.
I did another test after reaching town, using Thorns as my victim, and also doing three attacks each.
- Catcraw: 435, 427, 418
- Katana: 643, 632, 617
- Ogre: 790, 785, 823
- Flame: 848, 873, 892
- Ice: 877, 875, 893
- Elec: 877, 875, 893
- Dragon: 934, 988, 928
Yes, the strongest agility weapon was weaker than middle-of-the-road strength weapons! Guess that's one thing FFL gets better than its successor: agility weapons are balanced by being weaker. The elemental swords are roughly the same in power, though the cheapest are the Ice Swords at 23880GP.
All the while, the GameFAQs guidesman sticks with Battle Swords here despite saying they are not able to kill enemies in one hit. At this stage of the game, you make enough money so that buying more expensive weapons like Katanas and Ogre Swords, or even a few of these is not an issue!
If nothing being able to physically hit Sada wasn't enough, she acquired the Band in the nuclear power plant. Which is more or less a FF1 Ribbon. It protects her against all elements, traditional and status! Machine dropped in three hits of a Dragon Sword.
Without his plot armor force field, Suzaku has only 1500HP, and 77 defense instead of 255. Two hits did him in.
There were two weapons of note in the fourth section of Tower. The Xclbr, which damages groups of enemies albeit only around 250, and the Glass Sword. The latter is one of the more notorious weapons of the game. While not the strongest weapon, it pierces enemy defenses like O-Weapon. Furthermore, it was supposed to have a use value of 1. The US version changed it to have 50. By contrast, the Xclbr had unlimited uses in SaGa, and 50 uses in FFL.
I've read in some guides that you can't use Arcane (restores all uses of the item) on the Glass Sword, or else it will go to 1 use. There may be more than one version of FFL, since according to the solo guide and my own testing right in this playthrough, it went back to 50. At any rate, it wouldn't be necessary, as I don't plan to use it enough to run it out.
It was the weapon of choice on Ashura, felling him in about four blows. The Dragon Swords I was using only did 450.
Before heading into the true tower, Sada bought some HP600s. To increase it beyond that amount would require a lot of HP200s, which wasn't necessary, so she went without. It's worth noting that technically speaking, 50 HP200s can be bought for the same price as one HP600, but with the amount of money I had, the more convenient option was better.
The Glass Sword was not weapon of choice in the true tower or against the revived four fiends. The Sun Sword was the weapon of choice there. It did a solid 999 (the damage limit) on anything in the way that didn't have O-Weapon, and occasionally killed undead - which include the Ssu-Ling - instantly. Glass Sword only did around 600 on average.
Here are Sada's stats before fighting the Creator. If the Glass Sword was a single use, the Masmune or the Sun Sword would be the weapons of choice. The former does more on average, but I've randomly seen it do around 200 less damage. The Sun Sword was a consistent 440-ish. There is one complication I'll get to when I do the Solo Mutant, but it's irrelevant for Sada.
She swung the Glass Sword repeatedly, and eventually, the Creator died. She came close to dying, but did have enough to go the distance. You know what? Here's a play-by-play.
- Round 1: Sada does 569, Creator does nothing
- Round 2: Sada does 662, Creator does nothing
- Round 3: Sada does 661, Creator uses Light to no effect
- Round 4: Sada does 650, Creator does 86 with an unnamed attack
- Round 5: Sada does 529, Creator does 238 with Right
- Round 6: Sada does 734, Creator uses Repent to no effect
- Round 7: Sada does 588, Creator uses Flare for 287
- Round 8: Sada does 658, Creator defeated
The battle would play out similarly, yet slightly different each time when repeated. And yes, on that particular one, she survived with 1HP. She had 42HP when the fight ended the first go when I wrote that statement, but that's the truest definition of having just enough HP.
So yeah. That's what happens when you juice a human in FFL up to 254 of each stat. I hesitate to even call this a challenge, as aside from some instant-death spells and slimes/eyes attacks, nothing at all actually hurt Sada. Once she put on the Dragon Armor, she was immune to spells, and the Band provided immunity to all the harmful status. Besides those, only the Creator himself posed any sort of threat.
And that's it. It really says something when coming up with a name for the character was the hardest part of the challenge. Easy variant, and easier than playing normally. All there is to say about this one.
Index
Humans in FFL are different from in traditional SaGa. They grow by drinking various potions: the Strong potion increases strength by 2, the Agility potion increases agility by 2, and the HP200/HP400/HP600 items increase HP by 1-20, until they cross over the threshold after which they only increase it by one point.
What makes Humans so powerful is that the only limit on the first two is a two-byte integer. You can push their stats extremely high and well beyond the displayed limit of 99, up to 254. They cost 300GP apiece. The only thing you need to watch out for is drinking too much overflowing either value.
As far as FFL1 is concerned, females have an edge over males when it comes to solo challenges, due to their starting with a Saber that can be sold for a lot of gold. Therefore, I went with the human female. After searching around for names, and being unable to find a noteworthy female steroid-abuser, I simply decided to name her after Sada Kaur, a fearsome female Sikh warrior whose exploits helped in Ranjit Singh's rise to power.
With this money, Sada bought Gold Armor and Gold Gloves for defensive protection, and a Rapier to deal damage. She fought some weak monsters outside to grind Agility Potions. She went up up to 16 Agility before taking on the P-Frog.
Despite the poison, this was not a difficult fight. Beating him unlocks a room with a Strong potion, and allowed her to get the King Armor.
This armor is amazing, if only temporary. 20 Defense is actually the third-highest in the game, yielding only to the Suit from World 4 and the Arthur Armor from the second tower. There's only two things in the World of Continent that can really get through it: the Karateka whose martial arts have a weird damage formula, and King Sword.
Still, even he couldn't do much, and soon fell to Sada's fury.
The King Sword has unlimited uses. After drinking some Strong potions, Sada could kill any enemy in one hit. No enemy can hit through her defenses. There are fixed encounters in King Sword's castle. See where this is going?
The solo human "challenge" in Final Fantasy Legend is most easily done by grinding as hard as you can as early as you can, then crushing the game with over 200 Strength and Agility. The only real threats are magic attacks (which eventually become mostly a non-issue) and accumulated damage.
There's a guide on GameFAQs about this variant, and for the human, the guidewriter suggests going up to 100 for World 1, then went along as he went through the game. However, he still does concede that doing it all in one go is nice in how you don't need to keep track of each stat to avoid overflowing it with too much of a stat potion. Exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for in wake of solo monster in FFL2. And I mean, not like it's hard to do it now. I might try it the "hard" way later, but for the here and now...let's crush this game!
Also I did find out how to autofire on bgb. Except it doesn't work for FFL, since it doesn't seem to register one frame inputs. I had to settle for turning the emulator up to 600.0fps and holding down the A button, releasing it whenever meat pops from the endless Wererats and Zombies.
A while of this later, we're ready. Q: What's the best way to keep track your stats when raising them? A: In hexadecimal! Since Strong and Agility potions add 2 to their stats, and you can hold 8 items at a time, a base-16 system of counting keeps it nice and simple.
Now, the guide advises you not to go over around 234 in each stat, since you may lock yourself out of endgame equipment combinations. But honestly, 244 works fine. The strongest gauntlet by far is the Ninja Gauntlet which gives +10 agility, but two less defense from not having the Giant Gauntlet in the meantime while equipping (or not for 7 less) the Geta Shoe in World 4 isn't going to make much of a difference.
As it turns out though, I only had enough to boost Sada's Agility to 180, so she had to go back for a second round.
When all was said and done, and Sada had 244 in each of Strength and Agility, she could proceed with the game. The Steward was murdered to kick off the festivities.
Genbu was one-shot by having an Axe smashed into his shell for over 500 damage. Granted, that's a lot less than the over 800 the King Sword was doing, but it's actually the best weapon for a while. Cheap, and it gets the job done. Also worth noting that the Battle Swords of the World of Ocean are roughly the same in strength at double the price. The GameFAQs guide swears by them, despite the higher cost and occasion ineffectiveness.
Speaking of the World of Ocean, the only thing that was going to pose a threat were the Magicians and Big Eyes. Due to the ludicrous agility Sada has, nothing could actually hit her physically.
The first thing she did on arriving was buy some HP400s to increase her HP to 416. She filled her battle inventory with Axes, and moved on.
Even an Octopus blinding her had no effect on her performance (she's already blinded here). She actually went through a good portion of the game blind, to no effect.
I couldn't one-shot Seiryu with an Axe, but I'd saved up a present for him. Martial Arts work in this game much like they FFL2: they get stronger as you use them and the last use deals extra damage. Which was enough for the kill. I only did this since I was testing them out, and had saved this up anyway.
One difference from is how there's an exploit where it only reads the usage byte of the first of a martial arts' kind in your inventory, allowing you to unleash full-power attacks repeatedly, sans the last-use bonus. Even with this, it wasn't worth it to use them.
There are Medusas in the second climb of the tower, so I have to save from time to time lest Sada instantly be petrified.
When I hit the World of Sky, Sada bought the Dragon Armor to protect against all elemental attacks. I decided to run a comparison of the various available weapons against Garlic monsters. Note that this screenshot is from the end of the game, since I forgot to take pictures of anything during this world.
- Saber: 336, 2060GP
- L-Saber: 371, 10480GP
- Battle: 537, 989GP
- Axe: 539, 412GP
- Katana: 617, 2060GP
- Ruin: 696, 9800GP
- Ogre: 776, 9880GP
- Silver: 778,10712GP
Yeah. Not sure what's up with Lightsabers coming out so weak. The guide recommends it as a weapon of choice, when even his generic weapon of choice overpowers it. Sada bought some Katana and moved on.
Anyway, this is a short world. Sada fought some guards, she flew to a hut, she fought more guards, she went through the sky palace with no enemies, she broke out of a short jail dungeon while grabbing the Giant Gauntlet along the way, she went back into the palace, she immediately left, then she re-entered to fight the boss. You're supposed to go through the whole palace again, and find Byakko is not there, and it's moved when you leave. But you can just immediately leave.
Byakko was easy. The Dragon Armor protected against the one attack he was able to get off: an Ice spell. Two Katana swings brought down the White Tiger.
Because there are enemies with magic attacks in the next part of the tower, Sada bought two Cure Books. Or she did, and I found that using them on party members with 0 Mana in this game heals 0HP, at least from the item menu.
The monsters in question are Jellies and Gazers, the former of which would not die in one hit to an Axe swing. That's why I got those Katanas. Since I had enough after a trip up the tower, I even bought a couple Ogre Swords. She also found the Army Helmet in this section of the tower, another defensive upgrade that she didn't need since nothing could actually hit her. And yes, she's still blind.
Oh, we'll see about that.
Suzaku has 255 Defense. Sada has 254 Strength. She could kill him outright!! Eventually, since he has 5000HP. Who needs a chainsaw!? Shame this has no rewards, let alone any effect.
Note that even if you reach the town this way (or via saving), the plot events won't proceed unless you meet Sayaka in the underground - although you can approach the Atom Ant battle from the wrong direction; she and the ants won't be there, but the fight will trigger anyway.
I did another test after reaching town, using Thorns as my victim, and also doing three attacks each.
- Catcraw: 435, 427, 418
- Katana: 643, 632, 617
- Ogre: 790, 785, 823
- Flame: 848, 873, 892
- Ice: 877, 875, 893
- Elec: 877, 875, 893
- Dragon: 934, 988, 928
Yes, the strongest agility weapon was weaker than middle-of-the-road strength weapons! Guess that's one thing FFL gets better than its successor: agility weapons are balanced by being weaker. The elemental swords are roughly the same in power, though the cheapest are the Ice Swords at 23880GP.
All the while, the GameFAQs guidesman sticks with Battle Swords here despite saying they are not able to kill enemies in one hit. At this stage of the game, you make enough money so that buying more expensive weapons like Katanas and Ogre Swords, or even a few of these is not an issue!
If nothing being able to physically hit Sada wasn't enough, she acquired the Band in the nuclear power plant. Which is more or less a FF1 Ribbon. It protects her against all elements, traditional and status! Machine dropped in three hits of a Dragon Sword.
Without his plot armor force field, Suzaku has only 1500HP, and 77 defense instead of 255. Two hits did him in.
There were two weapons of note in the fourth section of Tower. The Xclbr, which damages groups of enemies albeit only around 250, and the Glass Sword. The latter is one of the more notorious weapons of the game. While not the strongest weapon, it pierces enemy defenses like O-Weapon. Furthermore, it was supposed to have a use value of 1. The US version changed it to have 50. By contrast, the Xclbr had unlimited uses in SaGa, and 50 uses in FFL.
I've read in some guides that you can't use Arcane (restores all uses of the item) on the Glass Sword, or else it will go to 1 use. There may be more than one version of FFL, since according to the solo guide and my own testing right in this playthrough, it went back to 50. At any rate, it wouldn't be necessary, as I don't plan to use it enough to run it out.
It was the weapon of choice on Ashura, felling him in about four blows. The Dragon Swords I was using only did 450.
Before heading into the true tower, Sada bought some HP600s. To increase it beyond that amount would require a lot of HP200s, which wasn't necessary, so she went without. It's worth noting that technically speaking, 50 HP200s can be bought for the same price as one HP600, but with the amount of money I had, the more convenient option was better.
The Glass Sword was not weapon of choice in the true tower or against the revived four fiends. The Sun Sword was the weapon of choice there. It did a solid 999 (the damage limit) on anything in the way that didn't have O-Weapon, and occasionally killed undead - which include the Ssu-Ling - instantly. Glass Sword only did around 600 on average.
Here are Sada's stats before fighting the Creator. If the Glass Sword was a single use, the Masmune or the Sun Sword would be the weapons of choice. The former does more on average, but I've randomly seen it do around 200 less damage. The Sun Sword was a consistent 440-ish. There is one complication I'll get to when I do the Solo Mutant, but it's irrelevant for Sada.
She swung the Glass Sword repeatedly, and eventually, the Creator died. She came close to dying, but did have enough to go the distance. You know what? Here's a play-by-play.
- Round 1: Sada does 569, Creator does nothing
- Round 2: Sada does 662, Creator does nothing
- Round 3: Sada does 661, Creator uses Light to no effect
- Round 4: Sada does 650, Creator does 86 with an unnamed attack
- Round 5: Sada does 529, Creator does 238 with Right
- Round 6: Sada does 734, Creator uses Repent to no effect
- Round 7: Sada does 588, Creator uses Flare for 287
- Round 8: Sada does 658, Creator defeated
The battle would play out similarly, yet slightly different each time when repeated. And yes, on that particular one, she survived with 1HP. She had 42HP when the fight ended the first go when I wrote that statement, but that's the truest definition of having just enough HP.
So yeah. That's what happens when you juice a human in FFL up to 254 of each stat. I hesitate to even call this a challenge, as aside from some instant-death spells and slimes/eyes attacks, nothing at all actually hurt Sada. Once she put on the Dragon Armor, she was immune to spells, and the Band provided immunity to all the harmful status. Besides those, only the Creator himself posed any sort of threat.
And that's it. It really says something when coming up with a name for the character was the hardest part of the challenge. Easy variant, and easier than playing normally. All there is to say about this one.
Index