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FFR: WHM/BLM/GRM/TIM playthrough Part I
Nov. 6th, 2023 08:05 pmThe gamer shoes come on for my third playthrough of FFR, where I'll be running a party consisting entirely of mages. I'm no stranger to challenge runs of FF1, and have even done a playthrough where only MAGIC and RUN is allowed. This would be a way to start varianting with Renaissance early on a somewhat low scale.
The classic White and Black Mages are here and almost exactly how you remember them. They will be getting command abilities in version 2.0 of the remake, but for now, the only difference is the presence of their respective CLERIC and SORCERER traits. They boost accuracy when using healing or elemental damage. The former also said it boosted the low end of healing spells by 50%, and the latter specified it applied only to direct damage spells. No buffs to BANE or QAKE, in other words, and maybe not even NUKE.
Then there's the new Time and Green Mages, respectively considered a strong and a weak class from what I was reading. Time had a subset of Black Magic and resisted time-elemental spells (as well as Slow, Sleep, and Paralysis). Green had a subset of White Magic and naturally resisted Poison. Time's battle command was EGRESS, which worked like Reset from FF5. Green had EXUVIATION, which removed buffs on an ally in exchange for dealing AoE non-elemental damage.
There were new spells to get in Coneria for the two new mages. I'll go over those in my magic section. For now, I got FIRE for Blair and BURST for Timea for damaging options. The latter matched the power of FIRE and LIT and was in the time element. Only CHAOS and the Evoker exclusive ODIN and BAHAMUT resist time, but only the Geomancer exclusive ZoneEATER is weak to it. So it was effectively neutral damage. I picked up some Clothes and weapons and set out...
...heading straight for GARLAND. This party is level 1. They are just a bunch of fragile mages. They still beat him. This guy is one of the biggest frauds in video game history. It could've gone even smoother if I had RUSE for Greta right away.
I was thinking EGRESS would only be an emergency thing, but I learned something about it when just such a thing happened on the walk to Pravoka: it rerolls whether you get an ambush or preemptive! The command is subject to turn order, but as long as the Time Mage is alive and can get it off, they can snap their fingers and give you a do-over. Pretty cool stuff.
Bikke's PIRATEs are also pretty bad. This party even had the potential to wipe them all at once with AoE if I'd bothered to grind more before reaching here. With the bugfix to sleep status, this was even easier. One of them still managed to wake up right away, but I had Greta drop a RUSE at the start for just such an occasion. Even weak mages can demolish a PIRATE in one blow.
It was going to take a fair bit of grinding to consistently survive Marsh Cave, not to mention to afford the magic bills. Beating KYZOKUs wasn't too difficult. I had Greta act as a tank by casting RUSE on herself. Unfortunately, EXUVIATION didn't count it as a buff and wouldn't trigger. It worked with the anti spells, at least. L2 Time Magic served up a spell called MARK: this gave all enemies 15 marks then damaged them for however many marks they had, stacking if cast multiple times. This would also trigger if they were physically attacked. As AoE, it helped with fighting them to say the least. ICE also did well, of course.
At level 5, I went and bought FIR2 and BURST2 from Elfland - the latter is the same as the vanilla L3 black spells just in a time element. Then it was off to the Peninsula. As usual, this is the fastest way to gain money and experience early on in the game. There's really not much to say about it. My mages blew things up with AoE and Greta tanked with RUSE. I forget what I went to with the Spellslingers, but I was eyeing level 8. 6 was the bare minimum I'd go with, but that would get me another strong HP level for the White and Black mages at the very least.
It was a comfortable trip through the Marsh Cave with two mages able to multicast and a third able to join in against the undead. I actually incurred a reset anyway when SCORPIONs ganged up on and killed Whitby. I didn't bother with exploring, there was little for my mages anyway except the Copper Bracelet along the way. Good for Greta since she was tanking.
I clowned on the two WIZARDs who showed up. I had Greta cast HARDEN on herself, a skill that applies stoneskin (absorbing a certain amount of damage, like the GOLEM spell but single target). It was broken right away though. Guess it's as questionable as GOLEM, actually worse since it's single target and L3. But I confused one of them with Timea's MUDDLE (single target time-elemental confusion), and I zapped them down with LIT2. The walk out went nicely too. I tried using FLOAT to skip some encounters, but it didn't last long enough to be meaningful.
I should talk about FLOAT. It's a funny spell, as you'll see later on in this report: a L4 black spell only usable by the Time Mage. It causes the party to avoid random encounters and damage tiles for around 36 steps. It is L4 of course, so in most balanced parties, it would be sharing a spot with FAST and therefore be questionable. But there's something funny about this spell: it can be used to go over shallow water too. This means rivers. You get a warning as it's running out and get an instant game over if you're over water while it happens, but you can otherwise sequence break with this.
That led me to ASTOS. He was as easy as you would expect him to be, I had all ways of messing with him. MUTE from Whitby of course, HOLD if I wanted to grab it, confusion, or just nuking him with Timea and Blair. Hey, did you know that ASTOS actually has no resistances?
REFLEC is a L4 white spell that is Green Mage exclusive. Tink went the RUB off the wall onto ASTOS who killed himself with his own spell. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Ha.
Well that was fun, but it got me in the mood to push the envelope even further. I was curious about FLOAT and wanted to do some testing in advance. I could easily reach Crescent Lake from near Elfland: I just needed two charges and Timea already had those. But she couldn't get me to Gurgu that way. Studying the overworld map though, I wondered. Could I reach the Ice Cave? There was that little dead end with a stretch of land that I could use to refresh spell charges. It would cost me some HOUSEs, but I could afford those if I sold some of the Mystic KEY loot. I looted the Northwest Castle and Elves' Castle and gave it a go.
Sure enough, I got there with just two charges on Timea! It also had a softlock protection built in; the save was not permanent, so nice bit of design there. I grinned wickedly. The Ice Cave at level 9 with mostly pre-KEY equipment. That sounded like a blast! So in I went.
I reset the first time because there were WIZARDs on the first encounter. I just ran in general through the cave, not bothering with the chests at all. My mages couldn't use any of it besides the cash anyway. I eventually came to the holes without incident. The EYE was going to be the big problem here. Would I be able to beat it with this party n their present state? Or maybe I could just cast FLOAT and levitate over the holes. Wouldn't that be something? Well, no such luck, I fell in anyway, only to discover the next best thing: [b]FLOAT allows you to skip spike tiles[/b]. I didn't have to fight the undead trap! Or the EYE! With this in mind, I went forward, running from everything except some more WIZARDs who I fried with LIT2.
I made it to the FLOATER and got it without fighting the EYE thanks to FLOAT. There was potential trouble on the way out: I didn't bring SOFTs and if Timea died, that was it. Game over. There were some MUMMYs and COCTRICEs on the final floor. I tensed up in anticipation as I made everyone run. Timea got hit...and wasn't petrified! I made it out of the Ice Cave with the FLOATER in hand in what was effectively the first attempt at it! With a party that shouldn't have even been able to normally go to it!
The desert with the airship was across the river east of Elfland. After grabbing it, yeah. The game was suddenly blown wide open. Of course, there was still a 50000G bottleneck called the BOTTLE preventing me from doing much on the northern continent. My mages didn't have the spell charges for any of the similarly expensive spells up there, either.
But I was officially off the rails. Developer intended order was completely out the window. I weighed my options after finishing KEY looting. Well, if I was going to keep at it, the only option was Ordeals. It was a boring choice, but I tried the Waterfall: it took 2 charges to get there and 2 charges to return. Timea only had 3 L4 charges and you can't use a HOUSE while FLOATing, so this wasn't an option. There was actually a unique message for trying to walk out in this fashion.
Ordeals got me the Zeus, the Heal Staff, and a Gold Bracelet for Greta to wear. Again, boring, but the only other option was grinding 50000G for the BOTTLE. So it answered itself. The first couple trips in ended in failure due to MANCATs and SORCERERs respectively. I discovered a horrible bug along the way: the game doesn't save permanently after getting to a place you're not supposed to with FLOAT, to prevent softlocking your save file. All well and good. But when I went back and reached the Heal Staff chest, it was empty!! I didn't have it in my inventory. And come to think of it, the guy at the entrance didn't respawn. A little alarmed, I tried a full quit and reload. I was back on the other side of the river.
This fixed things. I could get the Heal Staff that I otherwise would've missed, etc. I was able to get through this time. There was no trouble from the Zombie Ds: not with three spellcasters. I was able to claim my class change at level 11! So here's what every class got.
Green Wizard
- Gained two new commands, ACCRETION and BENEFACTION. The first started to record damage the Wizard took "up to a certain limit". The second could be used to pop a heal divided evenly among all allies. They sucked.
- Gained the RESIST STONE trait.
- LIMIT was BARRIER, granting resistance to "most" status effects.
White Wizard
- Gained the RERAISE command. It could be cast on an ally to revive them at 25% HP if they ever dropped to zero.
- LIMIT was BENEDICTION, a full party heal that healed some status.
Time Wizard
- Gained the DOUBLECAST command. Could be used on an ally to make them cast a spell twice in the same combat round. Um, not the next one? That is kind of busted sounding.
- Their LIMIT, COMPRESS TIME, gave them 3 turns of free action where no one else could do anything.
Black Wizard
- Received the ELEMENTAL SEAL command, preventing spells from being resisted and dealing max damage with damaging ones. Neat.
- MANAFONT was the LIMIT, preventing spell charge expenditure for three rounds.
- Nerfed to keep their hat. Hair still sticks out of their robes at least.
The sidequest guy just pointed the Black and White Wizards to the magic shops in Lefein. Weak!! But the Time Wizard hint mentioned a wizard in Ordeals who teleported himself somewhere, and the Green Wizard hint mentioned a master green wizard recluse. I assumed I needed the TELE spell to access the former; my party didn't yet have L6 charges. But the other sounded like Sarda.
I got the ROD from him right away before fighting the VAMPIRE, heh. But nothing else. Exiting and reentering made him react and taught Greta the WARDING CIRCLE world skill. What is it? Only a save point maker. It was considered a 'soft' save that wouldn't be retained when going back to the menu, like what was happening with FLOAT to prevent softlocks. It had similar buggy issues to be aware of. But otherwise, I could save in the dungeons as much as I wanted! This was nuts! It completely changes the game! Who said Green Wizard was a bad class anyway?!
(Okay sure, I haven't done much actual Green Wizarding, but then again, White Mage is also in the same boat: good when you need their spells, dead weight otherwise)
The next destination was the Sea Shrine, since I had enough money to get the BOTTLE at this point. As usual, I went through the upper portions of the dungeon to begin with. With Zeus and LIT2, it was not too difficult to get through, except when GHOSTs showed up to ruin my day. I was able to make use of Green Mage's save point for the first time in the Mermaids' room - I was under the impression it was once per dungeon at this point, which would be much more balanced. I actually popped BENEDICTION at the end, needed some fast healing.
I hit level 14 on the way to grab the CHIME. This gave everyone including Timea four charges of L4 spells. Now I could successfully enter and leave the Waterfall. The Defense was the biggest prize from this. I had basically been using Greta as my tank with RUSE, so unlimited casts of it was good. That said, Greta hadn't been doing much else so far. Her spells seemed pretty niche, so she was oftentimes just tanking against random encounters. Naturally, the first Ribbon of the game was going to help with that too.
With that, I could enter the Mirage Tower and above to fight TIAMAT as my first fiend. Reverse fiend order time! I had bought WARP for Timea which helped me leave quickly after clearing out the first two floors. With the Thor Hammer on Whitby, he could pass the Mage Staff to Blair so they both could throw unlimited spell charges around. It was worth nothing that DOUBLECAST did not work with items, so spell charges still had use.
Here's RERAISE in action. Caught it right as Blair was blinking after they were revived, heh. I fought some, I ran some in the Sky Castle. As usual, it served up the Black and White Shirts. These are still exclusive to the Black and White Wizards respectively, and give them a decent chunk of absorb. One of the nastiest encounters was a group of seven MANCATs. I had the sense of mind to have Greta use AFIR rather than running. It paid off, because four of them threw out FIR2 which crashed weakly against the barrier. No WarMECHs to be had, but you better believe I saved just in case.
So knowing me so far, you might think I'd go for the BANE on TIAMAT, right? She does resist all elements so it's natural. Well, you'd be wrong! TIAMAT uses the enemy skills THUNDER, POISON, BLIZZARD, and BLAZE in order. Greta could protect against all three! She normally resists all elements, but Blair could get around it with their ELEMENTAL SEAL command. Throw in DOUBLECAST and GAIN and they were doing 232 twice every second round. I still reset the first time because TIAMAT managed to kill Whitby with her physical attacks.
Of course, I could just load my save that Green Wizard made. So then I hit her with MUTE next time. This plus some RUSEing shut down most of the threat behind the battle. The last orb in order was the first orb lit.
That venture had gotten me to level 16, and thus, my mages had obtained their first L6 charges. The guy in Coneria who talked about classes mentioned something about Ordeals? I grabbed the TELE spell from Crescent Lake. This let me warp to an inn, the ship, or the airship. But in the front room of Ordeals, there was simply a ??? option.
I went to it and met another Time Wizard, who unlocked the SET TELEPOINT skill for me. This allowed Timea to place a waypoint wherever she chose and return to it on casting TELE. That's right, this was another in-dungeon save point. This one had no limitations on how often it could be cast, up to and including having any spell charges. Yes, that's right, you can cast TELE at 0 spell charges, although it will still expend one if there are any. I also later found out you needed L6 charges in the first palce.
Not too much to say about the Sea Shrine. The last Ribbon I'd be getting was there. Defender, Thor, Zeus, Black was the standard order of operations. SLOW crippled KRAKEN then I blew him to bits with LIT3 that did 424 damage. KARY fared no better; I went straight to her since the volcano had nothing to find. She also fell easily.
I was already killing VAMPIREs in Mirage so the lone one faired no better. I grabbed the Earth Gauntlet along the way to protect against CHAOS' CRACK. LICH actually had special dialogue realizing his impending doom.
It was earlier against KARY that I realized MANAFONT works on spell levels that you have no charges for. Payback for all his transgressions in the past!
All four orbs lit at level 18, wow. I'm definitely going to have to replay the game to get a better understanding of these classes since there's no way I'm hitting level 25 unless I go way out of my way to grind. Whether or not it's with this same party or if I would wait until 2.0 was up in the air at the time.
So I've already killed the fiends in reverse order. How much worse can things get? Well, remember. FLOAT prevents random encounters. TELE let me leave and reenter dungeons at will. Put together, I could run the entire Temple of Fiends Return without any encounters up to CHAOS. I picked up the Masmune, of course. There was no getting around beating the big guy, so I needed all the help I could get. Maybe it was sub-optimal on Greta, but it was fun.
Round 1 opened up with a Masmune swing, a White Shirt, a FAST on Greta, and an ELEMENTAL SEAL. CHAOS used ICE3, no threat since everyone had resistance. Greta did only 6 damage. Er, we need criticals here. Round 2 was another swing, another White Shirt, GAIN on Blair, and MANAFONT. CRACK fell ineffective and Greta did over 400 damage, nice! She would keep attacking while I used DOUBLECAST on Blair, who used NUKE. How much damage would it do?
Um. Excuse me? And keep in mind, that was times two. So that was just under 1900 damage in one action.
Well, I kept a save from back before I went crazy psycho mode. I think I'm going to go back and replay the game properly, or at least the ToFR. Because what in the world was that?
Next | Index
The classic White and Black Mages are here and almost exactly how you remember them. They will be getting command abilities in version 2.0 of the remake, but for now, the only difference is the presence of their respective CLERIC and SORCERER traits. They boost accuracy when using healing or elemental damage. The former also said it boosted the low end of healing spells by 50%, and the latter specified it applied only to direct damage spells. No buffs to BANE or QAKE, in other words, and maybe not even NUKE.
Then there's the new Time and Green Mages, respectively considered a strong and a weak class from what I was reading. Time had a subset of Black Magic and resisted time-elemental spells (as well as Slow, Sleep, and Paralysis). Green had a subset of White Magic and naturally resisted Poison. Time's battle command was EGRESS, which worked like Reset from FF5. Green had EXUVIATION, which removed buffs on an ally in exchange for dealing AoE non-elemental damage.
There were new spells to get in Coneria for the two new mages. I'll go over those in my magic section. For now, I got FIRE for Blair and BURST for Timea for damaging options. The latter matched the power of FIRE and LIT and was in the time element. Only CHAOS and the Evoker exclusive ODIN and BAHAMUT resist time, but only the Geomancer exclusive ZoneEATER is weak to it. So it was effectively neutral damage. I picked up some Clothes and weapons and set out...
...heading straight for GARLAND. This party is level 1. They are just a bunch of fragile mages. They still beat him. This guy is one of the biggest frauds in video game history. It could've gone even smoother if I had RUSE for Greta right away.
I was thinking EGRESS would only be an emergency thing, but I learned something about it when just such a thing happened on the walk to Pravoka: it rerolls whether you get an ambush or preemptive! The command is subject to turn order, but as long as the Time Mage is alive and can get it off, they can snap their fingers and give you a do-over. Pretty cool stuff.
Bikke's PIRATEs are also pretty bad. This party even had the potential to wipe them all at once with AoE if I'd bothered to grind more before reaching here. With the bugfix to sleep status, this was even easier. One of them still managed to wake up right away, but I had Greta drop a RUSE at the start for just such an occasion. Even weak mages can demolish a PIRATE in one blow.
It was going to take a fair bit of grinding to consistently survive Marsh Cave, not to mention to afford the magic bills. Beating KYZOKUs wasn't too difficult. I had Greta act as a tank by casting RUSE on herself. Unfortunately, EXUVIATION didn't count it as a buff and wouldn't trigger. It worked with the anti spells, at least. L2 Time Magic served up a spell called MARK: this gave all enemies 15 marks then damaged them for however many marks they had, stacking if cast multiple times. This would also trigger if they were physically attacked. As AoE, it helped with fighting them to say the least. ICE also did well, of course.
At level 5, I went and bought FIR2 and BURST2 from Elfland - the latter is the same as the vanilla L3 black spells just in a time element. Then it was off to the Peninsula. As usual, this is the fastest way to gain money and experience early on in the game. There's really not much to say about it. My mages blew things up with AoE and Greta tanked with RUSE. I forget what I went to with the Spellslingers, but I was eyeing level 8. 6 was the bare minimum I'd go with, but that would get me another strong HP level for the White and Black mages at the very least.
It was a comfortable trip through the Marsh Cave with two mages able to multicast and a third able to join in against the undead. I actually incurred a reset anyway when SCORPIONs ganged up on and killed Whitby. I didn't bother with exploring, there was little for my mages anyway except the Copper Bracelet along the way. Good for Greta since she was tanking.
I clowned on the two WIZARDs who showed up. I had Greta cast HARDEN on herself, a skill that applies stoneskin (absorbing a certain amount of damage, like the GOLEM spell but single target). It was broken right away though. Guess it's as questionable as GOLEM, actually worse since it's single target and L3. But I confused one of them with Timea's MUDDLE (single target time-elemental confusion), and I zapped them down with LIT2. The walk out went nicely too. I tried using FLOAT to skip some encounters, but it didn't last long enough to be meaningful.
I should talk about FLOAT. It's a funny spell, as you'll see later on in this report: a L4 black spell only usable by the Time Mage. It causes the party to avoid random encounters and damage tiles for around 36 steps. It is L4 of course, so in most balanced parties, it would be sharing a spot with FAST and therefore be questionable. But there's something funny about this spell: it can be used to go over shallow water too. This means rivers. You get a warning as it's running out and get an instant game over if you're over water while it happens, but you can otherwise sequence break with this.
That led me to ASTOS. He was as easy as you would expect him to be, I had all ways of messing with him. MUTE from Whitby of course, HOLD if I wanted to grab it, confusion, or just nuking him with Timea and Blair. Hey, did you know that ASTOS actually has no resistances?
REFLEC is a L4 white spell that is Green Mage exclusive. Tink went the RUB off the wall onto ASTOS who killed himself with his own spell. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Ha.
Well that was fun, but it got me in the mood to push the envelope even further. I was curious about FLOAT and wanted to do some testing in advance. I could easily reach Crescent Lake from near Elfland: I just needed two charges and Timea already had those. But she couldn't get me to Gurgu that way. Studying the overworld map though, I wondered. Could I reach the Ice Cave? There was that little dead end with a stretch of land that I could use to refresh spell charges. It would cost me some HOUSEs, but I could afford those if I sold some of the Mystic KEY loot. I looted the Northwest Castle and Elves' Castle and gave it a go.
Sure enough, I got there with just two charges on Timea! It also had a softlock protection built in; the save was not permanent, so nice bit of design there. I grinned wickedly. The Ice Cave at level 9 with mostly pre-KEY equipment. That sounded like a blast! So in I went.
I reset the first time because there were WIZARDs on the first encounter. I just ran in general through the cave, not bothering with the chests at all. My mages couldn't use any of it besides the cash anyway. I eventually came to the holes without incident. The EYE was going to be the big problem here. Would I be able to beat it with this party n their present state? Or maybe I could just cast FLOAT and levitate over the holes. Wouldn't that be something? Well, no such luck, I fell in anyway, only to discover the next best thing: [b]FLOAT allows you to skip spike tiles[/b]. I didn't have to fight the undead trap! Or the EYE! With this in mind, I went forward, running from everything except some more WIZARDs who I fried with LIT2.
I made it to the FLOATER and got it without fighting the EYE thanks to FLOAT. There was potential trouble on the way out: I didn't bring SOFTs and if Timea died, that was it. Game over. There were some MUMMYs and COCTRICEs on the final floor. I tensed up in anticipation as I made everyone run. Timea got hit...and wasn't petrified! I made it out of the Ice Cave with the FLOATER in hand in what was effectively the first attempt at it! With a party that shouldn't have even been able to normally go to it!
The desert with the airship was across the river east of Elfland. After grabbing it, yeah. The game was suddenly blown wide open. Of course, there was still a 50000G bottleneck called the BOTTLE preventing me from doing much on the northern continent. My mages didn't have the spell charges for any of the similarly expensive spells up there, either.
But I was officially off the rails. Developer intended order was completely out the window. I weighed my options after finishing KEY looting. Well, if I was going to keep at it, the only option was Ordeals. It was a boring choice, but I tried the Waterfall: it took 2 charges to get there and 2 charges to return. Timea only had 3 L4 charges and you can't use a HOUSE while FLOATing, so this wasn't an option. There was actually a unique message for trying to walk out in this fashion.
Ordeals got me the Zeus, the Heal Staff, and a Gold Bracelet for Greta to wear. Again, boring, but the only other option was grinding 50000G for the BOTTLE. So it answered itself. The first couple trips in ended in failure due to MANCATs and SORCERERs respectively. I discovered a horrible bug along the way: the game doesn't save permanently after getting to a place you're not supposed to with FLOAT, to prevent softlocking your save file. All well and good. But when I went back and reached the Heal Staff chest, it was empty!! I didn't have it in my inventory. And come to think of it, the guy at the entrance didn't respawn. A little alarmed, I tried a full quit and reload. I was back on the other side of the river.
This fixed things. I could get the Heal Staff that I otherwise would've missed, etc. I was able to get through this time. There was no trouble from the Zombie Ds: not with three spellcasters. I was able to claim my class change at level 11! So here's what every class got.
Green Wizard
- Gained two new commands, ACCRETION and BENEFACTION. The first started to record damage the Wizard took "up to a certain limit". The second could be used to pop a heal divided evenly among all allies. They sucked.
- Gained the RESIST STONE trait.
- LIMIT was BARRIER, granting resistance to "most" status effects.
White Wizard
- Gained the RERAISE command. It could be cast on an ally to revive them at 25% HP if they ever dropped to zero.
- LIMIT was BENEDICTION, a full party heal that healed some status.
Time Wizard
- Gained the DOUBLECAST command. Could be used on an ally to make them cast a spell twice in the same combat round. Um, not the next one? That is kind of busted sounding.
- Their LIMIT, COMPRESS TIME, gave them 3 turns of free action where no one else could do anything.
Black Wizard
- Received the ELEMENTAL SEAL command, preventing spells from being resisted and dealing max damage with damaging ones. Neat.
- MANAFONT was the LIMIT, preventing spell charge expenditure for three rounds.
- Nerfed to keep their hat. Hair still sticks out of their robes at least.
The sidequest guy just pointed the Black and White Wizards to the magic shops in Lefein. Weak!! But the Time Wizard hint mentioned a wizard in Ordeals who teleported himself somewhere, and the Green Wizard hint mentioned a master green wizard recluse. I assumed I needed the TELE spell to access the former; my party didn't yet have L6 charges. But the other sounded like Sarda.
I got the ROD from him right away before fighting the VAMPIRE, heh. But nothing else. Exiting and reentering made him react and taught Greta the WARDING CIRCLE world skill. What is it? Only a save point maker. It was considered a 'soft' save that wouldn't be retained when going back to the menu, like what was happening with FLOAT to prevent softlocks. It had similar buggy issues to be aware of. But otherwise, I could save in the dungeons as much as I wanted! This was nuts! It completely changes the game! Who said Green Wizard was a bad class anyway?!
(Okay sure, I haven't done much actual Green Wizarding, but then again, White Mage is also in the same boat: good when you need their spells, dead weight otherwise)
The next destination was the Sea Shrine, since I had enough money to get the BOTTLE at this point. As usual, I went through the upper portions of the dungeon to begin with. With Zeus and LIT2, it was not too difficult to get through, except when GHOSTs showed up to ruin my day. I was able to make use of Green Mage's save point for the first time in the Mermaids' room - I was under the impression it was once per dungeon at this point, which would be much more balanced. I actually popped BENEDICTION at the end, needed some fast healing.
I hit level 14 on the way to grab the CHIME. This gave everyone including Timea four charges of L4 spells. Now I could successfully enter and leave the Waterfall. The Defense was the biggest prize from this. I had basically been using Greta as my tank with RUSE, so unlimited casts of it was good. That said, Greta hadn't been doing much else so far. Her spells seemed pretty niche, so she was oftentimes just tanking against random encounters. Naturally, the first Ribbon of the game was going to help with that too.
With that, I could enter the Mirage Tower and above to fight TIAMAT as my first fiend. Reverse fiend order time! I had bought WARP for Timea which helped me leave quickly after clearing out the first two floors. With the Thor Hammer on Whitby, he could pass the Mage Staff to Blair so they both could throw unlimited spell charges around. It was worth nothing that DOUBLECAST did not work with items, so spell charges still had use.
Here's RERAISE in action. Caught it right as Blair was blinking after they were revived, heh. I fought some, I ran some in the Sky Castle. As usual, it served up the Black and White Shirts. These are still exclusive to the Black and White Wizards respectively, and give them a decent chunk of absorb. One of the nastiest encounters was a group of seven MANCATs. I had the sense of mind to have Greta use AFIR rather than running. It paid off, because four of them threw out FIR2 which crashed weakly against the barrier. No WarMECHs to be had, but you better believe I saved just in case.
So knowing me so far, you might think I'd go for the BANE on TIAMAT, right? She does resist all elements so it's natural. Well, you'd be wrong! TIAMAT uses the enemy skills THUNDER, POISON, BLIZZARD, and BLAZE in order. Greta could protect against all three! She normally resists all elements, but Blair could get around it with their ELEMENTAL SEAL command. Throw in DOUBLECAST and GAIN and they were doing 232 twice every second round. I still reset the first time because TIAMAT managed to kill Whitby with her physical attacks.
Of course, I could just load my save that Green Wizard made. So then I hit her with MUTE next time. This plus some RUSEing shut down most of the threat behind the battle. The last orb in order was the first orb lit.
That venture had gotten me to level 16, and thus, my mages had obtained their first L6 charges. The guy in Coneria who talked about classes mentioned something about Ordeals? I grabbed the TELE spell from Crescent Lake. This let me warp to an inn, the ship, or the airship. But in the front room of Ordeals, there was simply a ??? option.
I went to it and met another Time Wizard, who unlocked the SET TELEPOINT skill for me. This allowed Timea to place a waypoint wherever she chose and return to it on casting TELE. That's right, this was another in-dungeon save point. This one had no limitations on how often it could be cast, up to and including having any spell charges. Yes, that's right, you can cast TELE at 0 spell charges, although it will still expend one if there are any. I also later found out you needed L6 charges in the first palce.
Not too much to say about the Sea Shrine. The last Ribbon I'd be getting was there. Defender, Thor, Zeus, Black was the standard order of operations. SLOW crippled KRAKEN then I blew him to bits with LIT3 that did 424 damage. KARY fared no better; I went straight to her since the volcano had nothing to find. She also fell easily.
I was already killing VAMPIREs in Mirage so the lone one faired no better. I grabbed the Earth Gauntlet along the way to protect against CHAOS' CRACK. LICH actually had special dialogue realizing his impending doom.
It was earlier against KARY that I realized MANAFONT works on spell levels that you have no charges for. Payback for all his transgressions in the past!
All four orbs lit at level 18, wow. I'm definitely going to have to replay the game to get a better understanding of these classes since there's no way I'm hitting level 25 unless I go way out of my way to grind. Whether or not it's with this same party or if I would wait until 2.0 was up in the air at the time.
So I've already killed the fiends in reverse order. How much worse can things get? Well, remember. FLOAT prevents random encounters. TELE let me leave and reenter dungeons at will. Put together, I could run the entire Temple of Fiends Return without any encounters up to CHAOS. I picked up the Masmune, of course. There was no getting around beating the big guy, so I needed all the help I could get. Maybe it was sub-optimal on Greta, but it was fun.
Round 1 opened up with a Masmune swing, a White Shirt, a FAST on Greta, and an ELEMENTAL SEAL. CHAOS used ICE3, no threat since everyone had resistance. Greta did only 6 damage. Er, we need criticals here. Round 2 was another swing, another White Shirt, GAIN on Blair, and MANAFONT. CRACK fell ineffective and Greta did over 400 damage, nice! She would keep attacking while I used DOUBLECAST on Blair, who used NUKE. How much damage would it do?
Um. Excuse me? And keep in mind, that was times two. So that was just under 1900 damage in one action.
Well, I kept a save from back before I went crazy psycho mode. I think I'm going to go back and replay the game properly, or at least the ToFR. Because what in the world was that?
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