Dec. 5th, 2023

Evoker is my personal choice for the worst class in version 1.3.3 of Final Fantasy Renaissance. Based off the classic job itself (and the Summoner as well), it is unfortunately weighed down by its gimmicks. I don't think this is the worst pick for a solo job; I'd say Thief and Bard are worse than it. But this one certainly isn't very good.

So what makes Evoker such a bad class for a solo? First, it's a magical class. It's not like Green Mage where it's super bulky in terms of HP, this is instead exactly what you would expect from a mage. Second, many of its spells take two turns to resolve, including all damaging spells except the first. This is a gimmick of the class that many have complained about and I hope gets fixed in the future, but for now doing in 1.3.3 would make it extra challenging. Third, many of the spells are an AoE version of what Green Mage can do. Usually better, but not in a solo. Lastly, you have to beat all of the summons to use them. Every one. These are often mini superbosses for the point of the game they show up.

I named my character Aleph, after the protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei II. Aleph was created to be the messiah of the world (according to their twisted god of law and order), and depending on the player's actions, can either live up to that or do his own thing (and either way kills said god). SMT involves summoning demons and being brutally difficult, so it was a fitting name.


Surviving the first section of the game was going to be one of the most difficult parts. I spent the first bit of cash on four Wooden staves (three more so the dead slots could swing them uselessly), one Cloth, and saving the game. The next goal was to get into a battle and get all the bards killed off. It was very important that I did this in as few fights as possible. I actually softlocked and had to start over early on because I bought two HEALs in attempt to make this easier! There were many deaths, just like you see here.

The financial situation was very precarious here. The inn in Coneria costs 30G to use. IMPs drop 6G apiece. The ideal situation was to fight groups of 5 each to break even. In practice, this was close to impossible. I had to instead fight groups of 4; this would slowly cause my funds to bleed out, but they would hold for the time being. That was how the softlock happened: I did end up running out of money. On top of that all, I needed to make sure Aleph gained STR on every level, just like before. This was compulsary, not necessarily for later, but for now.

IMPs have 4 attack and defense alike. With 8 attack of his own to begin with at level 1, Aleph was dealing 4-12 damage against them while taking 3-7 in return. When you add the possibility of missing to the mix (either party could), this was very volatile. For example Aleph once defeated 5 IMPs on an ambush, and once lost to 4 on a preemptive.

Level 4 was a big breakthrough point for Aleph as that is when he gained another strong HP up. This allowed him to semi-consistently win against 5 IMPs. However, this meant that the gold situation remained static. A little bit at a time.

I felt the next move was to try to go for the Cap in the Temple of Fiends. This would boost Aleph's absorb to 2, which was a significant increase considering the circumstances I was under! It doubled his absorb! This took many resets; on my winning run Aleph escaped from two battles right away. He fought a lone GrIMP on the way back to make up some of the gold.

At this point, it was most ideal to fight two groups of IMPs before going back to heal. The more of a gold surplus I could built up, the better off Aleph would be. But it was going to take a long grind to get strong enough to take the bosses.


For example, I tried taking on the GOBLIN at Lv6. It didn't go so well: he can pull out his SPECIAL whenever he wants which did heavy damage to Aleph. And of course, he always did so at the beginning of every fight. GARLAND would be no better, and actually far worse: he has 15 attack, meaning he would do 13-28 damage to Aleph per hit. He has 10 defense and 106HP. Meaning Aleph (10 atk) would do 1-10 per hit.

There was something else important worth talking about too. IMPs have 106 Morale. Plugging them into the formula for an enemy to run, Morale - 2*[Leader's Level] + (0...50) < 80, that means have a chance to run starting at level 14. A small chance mind you. But in the absolute worst case scenario, that was when things were going to become much less consistent again.


Here's an interesting shot for you: the 1/64 encounter. I was grinding for so long that it eventually showed up. It was actually difficult, too: GrIMPs could survive more hits and hit harder. They were more practical to fight than MADPONYs, but still not ideal.

Level 8 is when Aleph gained another strong HP up. this allowed him to fight for even longer against the enemies outside. I eventually started to gain a surplus of gold because of it. Level 9 was yet another notable level. It was here that he gained enough strength to consistently one shot IMPs. There was nothing more to it. Just an endless eternal grind. I suspected that the endpoint for him was going to be either level 11 or level 14. The former was when he should get another strong HP up if Evoker's stats were a mirror of Black Mage. The latter was the last level in which he would be able to fight without IMPs having a chance to run. If he could not get the job done then I don't know. Shit game quit forever?


I decided to look at the GOBLIN again at this point. Through some data testing, it turned out that the boss had 90HP. Furthermore, its defense wasn't all that great. Didn't need to do anything but look at the damage Aleph was doing to see that. This would be possible. Barely. It was more than can be said about GARLAND. There was no way I was beating him, the notorious fraud that he is, just with a wooden staff. That fact in particular made me fear about the plausibility of solo Bard. Of course ASTOS is the bigger obstacle there, just like Thief.

Similarly, KIRIN was not a possible fight. It actually only used its special once at the beginning of the fight. So it was theoretically possible to dwindle down its HP. However, it still did too much damage along with the WOLFs. This was another fight that I was going to have to wait on.

Aleph actually gained another strong HP up at level 10, so that was convenient. Maybe that meant there would be ones on 12 and 14 too? That would be a mirror or analog of White Mage's SAIVL table. Later on Aleph would stop gaining INT as consistently, so this is probably the case.

When Aleph hit level 11, I decided to take a swing at the GOBLIN again. This fight was going to be completely up to luck. Aleph had enough health and strength at this point to beat the summoned monster in a straight-up fight. The problem was this, wasn't a straight-up fight. The more it used GOBLIN PUNCH the worse off I would be. And, much to my surprise and delight...


Victory! I honestly didn't think that was going to work, and that I would have to go even higher to get a greater buffer. I wasn't going to complain of course, because the grind was starting to get tiring.


With this said and done, the game suddenly got blown wide open. I grabbed some supplies and marched over to the Temple of Fiends. Aleph beat KIRIN with two castings of GOBLIN. I was all ready to complete the first quest finally, when a GHOUL showed up. Aleph was able to defeat it without incident, but he had only one spell charge left. It just meant falling back to Coneria to refresh. GARLAND was beaten with two GOBLIN castings.

CAIT SITH was also a non-issue. The BROOMs did almost no damage. Aleph was confused, but he instantly recovered from the ailment. Another two GOBLIN castings brought the kitty witch to his knees.

It's really can't be overstated just how much more tolerable the game had become. instead of fighting thousands of weak enemies in order to gain just a little bit of experience at a time, Aleph could fight real opponents for actual good payouts. Plus I could make actual progress in the game now! That was the most important thing of all!


The PIRATEs were susceptible to confusion. They can actually be a legitimate threat against a poorly armored character. There are nine of them, and they do a decent amount of damage. Mercifully most of them have some way around this issue, including the Black Mage now that SLEP has been fixed. Bard has AoE with harps. Thief, on the other hand, needs to get lucky. At least it can get by GARLAND much more easily and grind on actual opponents.

With the ship claimed, Aleph was able to sail to Elfland. There he was able to claim the Iron Staff. With its 14 power, it was the strongest weapon he would have access to for a long, long time.

The Dwarves' Cave was the next destination. GOLEM was the next boss there. His EARTHEN WALL special grants stoneskin, a buff that grants a barrier that absorbs a set amount of damage. Exactly how much it grants is opaque. He was accompanied by three different slime monsters: in addition to MUCK and SCUM, JELLY had about the strength of the latter without as much defense. However, it was also capable of casting CURE. The way around it was to confuse them all. GOLEM was immune, because of course he was, but it would shut down the high damaging attacks of the MUCK and the JELLY's healing.

I actually beat this on the first try, only to fail anyway because I didn't have any TENTs with me. Aleph died on the way back. Well, that one was on me. After going back and getting more than just the one to save outside the cave, I went at it again. GOLEM has 200HP. It would take me many more tries to get a run through that succeeded. On the winning run, Aleph had run out of L1 charges against the SCUM. He could only do 1 damage to it per swing. However, the same applied to the SCUM as well! He had to break the stoneskin first, but I had purchased a lot of HEAL potions. Just needed to use them, and the victory was inevitable. It seemed I forgot to take a lot of pictures for this stretch...

However, that was the end of the good times. A few preliminary runs into the Marsh Cave revealed that level 12 almost certainly wasn't going to cut it here. It was not even the paralysis, it was just damage. Too much damage being taken. Aleph failed to reach the WIZARDs in over a dozen attempts. That meant was time to go back to grinding hell! My favorite place!

The best spot for this was right outside Elfland. OGREs would pay out a healthy amount of gold and experience per kill, and just one was enough to offset the inn costs which I could duck into as needed. They also came accompanied by CREEPs. They would actually run sometimes starting from level 13: they have 104 morale. For the record, OGREs have 116. They would start to run starting at level 19.

I also checked out RAMUH. He had a lot of HP, 500 actually. His attack pattern went LIT2, charge, JUDGMENT BOLT, LIT. Seemed doable with high rolled GOBLINs. But Aleph would need more HP to consistently survive. Getting to him in the first place was tough due to all the GARGOYLEs. I had to use CAIT SITH just to give some buffer when escaping.

It was really just a matter of grinding away. By the way, I was continuing to manipulate strength gains. I hadn't checked whether or not Evoker had any spells they could not cast, but I had a funny feeling that BAHAMUT would be one of them. Again, this is no class change.

Level 17 gave another strong HP up. So I decided to try going for RAMUH again. I had a suspicion, but it was here that I noticed that the encounter table resets if you die in the Astral Plane, even though it doesn't result in a game over. I was hoping it wouldn't be a factor, because having to go through the same encounters repeatedly can lead to problems if said encounters are awful to fight.


Actually, this went very smooth once I got to him! The first GOBLIN did 166, while RAMUH used LIT2 for 80. He charged his special on the next turn while the second GOBLIN did 217. The third for 209 finished him off!

To go over it again, RAMUH deals 60-240 damage at base, to state it how most guides would put magic in vanilla FF1. It is functionally a LIT2 spread across two turns. The Evoker's charge gimmick is not very good, due to how the numbers work out and how it's better if enemies die right away. Still, it was AoE damage when I needed it, much sooner than Zeus, and CAIT SITH could provide cover for getting it off.

First L3 spell claimed. The second would have to wait and I wouldn't miss it much. At this point, I couldn't help but check if Aleph would be able to handle things on the Peninsula of Power.


Yup! CAIT SITH messed them up with confusion, RAMUH sliced through their HP while they were delirious, and GOBLIN cleaned up what was left. So now I could start making serious strides into the grinding game.

With that in mind, how high did I want to grind? Honestly? Every little bit helps. I was going to need a lot of it for Earth Cave and Ice Cave anyway (magic defense much like before). So it was just a question of when would I get bored and decide to try something different. The funny thing is this still isn't as much grinding as a solo Thief would need and especially a solo Bard. A recently released guide on GameFAQs takes the class to level 18 for the Marsh Cave. It goes to 22 for ASTOS and most recommend going even higher. It'd be even worse on this version with the bug to critical hits fixed since you can no longer rely on those to pull you through.

Still, it wasn't the best idea to get it done all right now. Aleph only had 6 absorb, and I could get it higher than that. So at level 20 I decided to start making attempts at the Marsh Cave once more. I quickly found that the extra spell charges were making a world of difference. I could throw out CAIT SITH against anything I didn't like, and either follow up with RAMUH or run attempts. Even the dreaded GHOULs were vulnerable! I also had the pleasure of occasionally seeing enemies decide to run. One notable case was a SCORPION group. I confused all but one of them, and said straggler ran on its turn! Ha!


The same strategy worked against the WIZARDs. CAIT SITH's confusion is non-elemental, which means it works against anything not immune to the status outright. Normally in FF1, immunity is governed solely by element, but FFR adds status immunity in certain cases strictly for these cases.

This run ended in failed when a group of CRAWLs paralyzed Aleph. They actually ended up fleeing the battle, but the BONEs finished him off. The second attempt almost died at the WIZARDs anyway. Even with all the grinding he had done, they still did enough damage to knock him down to under 30HP. What's worse, one of them didn't get confused! I had to GOBLIN it immediately. Aleph went first and killed it, but then another broke from confusion! GOBLIN to it, then the third one broke free! Again, Aleph killed it before it could kill him. Jeez. That was by far the most tense WIZARD fight I ever had. The fact that it was a successful escape from the cave after made it all the sweeter.


ASTOS was no problem. Two GOBLINs and he was down for the count. I grabbed some of the Mystic Key stuff, skipping the Silver Bracelet in the Marsh Cave this time around. The reason why I had gone for it with Green was to attempt to save on money. Aleph only spent on potions and equipment, so I could spare myself the hassle of that trip and just get it outright from the shop in Melmond. It took Aleph from 6 to 17 absorb! Needless to say, this would make the grind a lot easier. There was still a good amount of it to go before I felt comfortable going through the Earth Cave.

This seems like a good breakpoint for this page. With any luck, the rest of the game will be much smoother than this.

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I decided on level 24 as a goal before heading into the Earth Cave. This was when Aleph exceeded 300HP. Getting t here went buttery smooth at the peninsula. I've written enough about the grinding in this challenge at this point, so there's not much more I can say about it without repeating myself.

The large packs of stunning undead are a hassle for almost any solo character; the exceptions being Time Mage who should be immune and Monk who can comfortably accumulate enough magic defense to reliably resist them. Aleph was somewhat able to fight back with CAIT SITH, confusing the lot of them. This wasn't ideal because they could still break out and stun him while he was casting RAMUH or fleeing, but it was better than just having to rely upon run luck.


The VAMPIRE was a supremely screwy fight. He instantly used DAZZLE at the start, paralyzing Aleph. I thought that was the end of it, especially when the monster dealt half of his max HP in a single attack the next turn. Aleph was knocked down to critical HP, only to recover. The only play was GOBLIN. My warrior went first...one hit KO!

I just needed to escape. The first dangerous encounter on the way back was a small group of WIZARDs. Two of them actually fled, leaving the third to get confused and punched into oblivion by GOBLIN. Three IMAGEs also showed up, the last encounter before the steps up and out of B3. I had to use GOBLIN here to target them individually because they weren't all hit by confusion.


After some refreshing, I went for the Titan's Tunnel and the CARBUNCLE battle. The little guy constantly spammed RUBY LIGHT throughout the battle. He wasn't much of a threat since summons go right through reflect. The RubyGOLs accompanying him were a different story. They hit hard; a random encounter one did over 120 damage in a single attack! Thankfully, CAIT SITH worked on them. They liked casting elemental spells on themselves which healed them or would reflect off their walls. Because RAMUH was out, this left GOBLIN.

After getting the ROD, I had Aleph gain one more level. This was for practicality reasons rather than grinding ones: he was actually reasonably close to leveling up, so this was to make sure he wouldn't do so in the middle of the second dive through the Earth Cave.

I haven't mentioned it much, but I was having unusually bad luck with critical hits throughout this run so far. Believe it or not, most enemies have a very small chance of landing a critical hit. Only seven enemies have higher than a 0.5% chance (maybe a 1% chance, how it's listed in the guide is unclear) of landing one on an individual hit: IGUANA (5%), COBRA (15.5%), TIGER (12.5%), Saber T (35%), T REX (15%), WORM (5%), and PHANTOM (20%). I mention it now because the first time I made it down to B4, a WIZARD evaded CAIT SITH then landed a critical hit which erased my chances of victory on the spot.

It would take me around a dozen attempts to make it down to B5. Virtually all of the danger was in B3 and B4. The only thing exceptionally dangerous in B5 was IMAGEs which could appear in groups of 2-6 in slot 2, and maybe 2-5 MUMMYs in slot 6. But it has none of the other undead or the COCTRICEs. I actually once ran into OOZE on B3: the 1/64 encounter on the floor. They almost killed Aleph because I underestimated their offense and wanted to conserve his spell charges, but I managed to have him run.

I didn't fight TITAN on B5. Aleph only had four L1 charges left. If I had tried to fight him, I'd have nothing left for LICH. Onto the first fiend.


I had Aleph use CARBUNCLE despite the stupid issue where certain enemies jump through their magic scripts at random instead of using them in order. It went after the ICE2 which thankfully did very little damage, but LICH would spend his next two turns physically attacking. That was either very bad luck or another symptom of that behavior that really should not exist and completely defeats the purpose of reflect in the first place. Thankfully, neither of his strikes paralyzed. The first GOBLIN did 74 damage. The next did a hundred something. Not a good sign, especially when LICH's next move was FAST as I recast CARBUNCLE. It didn't matter, as the next GOBLIN just blasted the fiend.

So! Where to after Crescent? I decided I'd do Ice Cave last: IFRIT resided in Gurgu and that would make grinding on the peninsula that much faster. I fully intended to gain as much magic defense as I could, just like I did with Green. The only question was whether to do the volcano before or after Ordeals. Well, IFRIT was also effective on the Zombie Ds. And wouldn't it be even more fun if I abstained from using spellcasting items in this challenge just to let the summon spells get their proper time in the sun? That left Gold Bracelet as the only draw of going there.

So what about KARY? That was the kicker: her physical attacks may not be as strong as KRAKEN's, but they would still hurt. CAIT SITH might not break her magic defense. If I'm banning offensive spellcasting items, that would rule out the Wizard Staff too. Of course, I could always just leave after getting IFRIT and come back when I'm more ready. Evoker does have an answer to physical attacks.

My roadmap was going to be something like: Gurgu, Ordeals, grind, Ice Cave, Waterfall, cleanup.

The nice thing about Gurgu is that it's a very short dungeon when you're just passing through. There's also very good reason to do that: the equipment is mostly Silver stuff you can buy in Crescent Lake anyway and can be inferior soon or even when you arrive depending on your dungeon order. The only good stuff is the Ice Sword, Flame Armor, Flame Shield, and in Renaissance: the Scale Mail and Lava Axe. None of which was relevant to an Evoker. It would be nice if there was a Fire Armlet around: a new piece of armwear that resists fire damage. But unlike the Earth, Water, and Wind Armlets, there is no stray one lying around to collect. You need a Thief with their SEARCH ability. Kind of a failing there.

Speaking of failing, I failed my first run into the dungeon for odd reasons: Aleph was close to a level and I had failed to notice until I was on B5. He did gain STR, but he ran out of spell charges. I had to bid a retreat, which I succeeded in despite some PERILISKs showing up.

It took a lot of fumbling around the Astral Plane, but I eventually found IFRIT. It was time to earn my next summon. Or so I thought.


I never really fought this guy in my original playthrough due to testing whether GEOSTORM was indeed bugged or not, now I would be doing so. IFRIT started off with an ambush to charge his special, HELLFIRE. I responded with GOLEM to try to cut down some of the damage. It barely had any effect! I actually once saw it one-shot Aleph outright on one of my failed attempts. But on this attempt, Aleph survived. I started throwing out GOBLINs, only for IFRIT to use a massive physical that killed him! Luckily, dying in the Astral Plane isn't a game over. I poked the data and discovered something horrific.

IFRIT has 1200HP.

In vanilla, the highest amount of HP after CHAOS belongs to the Temple of Fiends Return variation of TIAMAT at 1100. Behind that is her Sky Castle version and WarMECH at 1000. Now, the latter's infamous NUCLEAR has 80 effectivity. This translates to 80-320 damage before INT is factored in - I'm unsure if enemies in FFR benefit from it; I'm inclined to say no unless Ozmo did some shenanigans. Aleph has 314HP there and while I missed the exact damage, it had to have done at least as much as NUCLEAR. Think about that: a boss in the midgame has more HP than WarMECH and can hit just as hard if not harder than it. Sure, it has far less defense and you can gain fire resistance, but if you arrive here when you're "supposed" to, you're not going to have a very fun time.

This is part of why I think Evoker is the worst class in Final Fantasy Renaissance. Not only are its summons underwhelming because of their charge mechanic, but you have to fight superbosses to even get to them. The only reason it might not seem so bad is because FFR gives you a lot better stuff to break the game with, but to a more limited party, these bosses are awful.

I quickly realized that this was just not happening, and that I might even have to revise my rules to allow Defense just so I could win! I was right at KARY though, so I may as well give it a try.


This was what I was worried about. Aleph actually landed the confusion from CAIT SITH on the first turn, but KARY broke out of it and retaliated with this strong hit. She was at critical health, but so was Aleph. It was down to turn order...which, Aleph beat to deliver a final GOBLIN to finish it.

Okay, not how I planned it, but I'll adapt. Ordeals was the next stop. This went as smooth as it gets. The only thing really scary was a group of MEDUSAs, and CAIT SITH stopped them cold. As per my plan, I only grabbed the Gold Bracelet and got out. The Zombie D wasn't confused, so I just used GOBLIN.


Level 28 was an interesting level for Aleph. That was when he finally built up enough hit% to get 2-hits. The only weapon with any hit% that he could use was the Mage Staff (and the Masmune of course), which was 2 points of attack weaker than the Iron Staff. It was sometimes useful to physically attack to chip an enemy down if spells didn't do the job.

I decided to try the Ice Cave then and there without grinding any more besides that level. Maybe CAIT SITH would make a difference and get me through earlier than Green was able to.


It turned out, between that and a bit of luck, I was right. I reset the first encounter in which was a WIZARD group. No sense in fighting that early. Undead encounters would accoust me throughout the cave, but Aleph resisted their blows, confused them, and followed up with RAMUH. I ran into a lone MAGE in the big square room. CARBUNCLE was employed here. It actually did several physical attacks after the RUB failed, but eventually did itself in with its spells. The undead spike fell to confusion. Then, three MAGE ambush!!!! Two used RUB, both missed! I got up reflect and defeated them between that and GOBLIN. GOBLIN also beat the EYE in a single hit; its XXXX attack failed since Aleph was over 300HP. Undead spike fell again, then I ran into two Frost Ds. They can't cast BLIZZARD in 1.3.3. They got confused and were killed off with GOBLIN.

The last encounter was the scariest: six COCTRICEs and three MUMMYs! I held my breath as I fired off CAIT SITH...Aleph went first and confused them all! None recovered! I charged RAMUH next turn. A few recovered during that turn. But then Aleph went first again and killed them all! That was effectively a first try Ice Cave! You love to see it!


I went straight to the Waterfall to claim the Ribbon. I actually failed this the first time: the spike killed me on the way back when it got an ambush and did too much damage. The second time, I didn't have to contend with the spike at all: for some buggy reason, it behaved as a river tile. Not that I was complaining or going to reset because of it.


With it on Aleph's head, I went back to deal with the L3 and L4 summon bosses I had previously skipped over. UNICORN was found in the Elves' Castle. This is a gimmick battle where the boss damages its own allies while minorly healing itself; if all the enemies are gone, it deals heavy physical damage. I didn't do this earlier not only for the difficulty (some of them are stunning undead) but because functionally, the spell is just a HEAL that restores status. This was hardly relevant for a solo character; its niche of being able to cure petrify was more of a flaw to contend with for Aleph. But I got it now for completionism, defeating the boss in a single hit with GOBLIN. There was funnily enough an unintended consequence of doing it so late: enemies running away! If GOBLIN didn't scale, this could have been a problem.


Ribbon made the venture back into the Earth Cave for TITAN a leisurely stroll. I actually died in the Astral Plane when a group of OOZEs and OILs (another new slime that hit hard) killed Aleph! The boss itself played out in an interesting way. I knew from my casual playthrough that the GrANKYLOs accompanying it could use MINERAL SHELL, granting earthspikes to the enemy party. I had forgotten that this only affects physical moves. TITAN seemed to have unusually low HP so it didn't matter anyway. He was eventually killed when I confused one of the two GrANKYLOs after the earthspikes went up and they dealt the finishing blow. As for them, they ran from the battle. Well, that's one way to deal with them.

TITAN was stronger but in a much worse element than RAMUH. There is exactly one enemy that is weak to the earth-element in the game: RAMUH. 64 enemies resist it. In vanilla it existed solely to make the QAKE spell suck. About the only thing vulnerable that you might want to use it on are MudGOLs and maybe LICH (yes, he's the fiend of earth but vulnerable to it). There are 128 enemies in vanilla, meaning half the enemies in the game resist TITAN! Several FFR exclusive enemies do so as well, although most of these are Evoker exclusive to begin with. Basically if they have wings, are floating (exception: GIANTs), can swim, are slimes, are worms, are NITEMAREs, or are golems made of rock or iron, they resist earth.

The first floor of the Sea Shrine was my first destination; the Opal Bracelet and the SLAB were there. Nothing to report from it. The dungeon is as simple as always. The aforementioned Mage Staff was here, which had a very niche use under my restrictions of no spellcasting items. Yes, it was two points of attack weaker than the Iron Staff, but it had 10 hit%. This meant that Aleph would eventually get 3 hits with it; he never would with the Iron Staff. The catch? This happens at level 50. The cap. I would be reaching it, but yeah. To put it in perspective.


I went to Lefein after to pick up the CHIME and fight a new boss. Enter FENRIR. 1500HP, hits hard, and accompanied by a bunch of enemies who can hit hard themselves. I had originally wanted to fight it because it bestows blink status, granting protection from two physical attacks. It also meant Aleph had no problems with killing him. Problem was, they could kill him even better. This wasn't happening; I might have to use Defense after all just to survive this guy.


There was another possibility for a summon boss I could defeat. Because of this find in the first floor of Mirage Tower. Wind Armlet grants resistance to the new element of Wind, which was used by one of the new summon bosses. It can be equipped by anyone and gave 2 absorb.


Despite that, the FAIRY summon in Gaia was still virtually impossible to defeat. Their WHISPERWIND attack could be spammed by all of them all at once and did this much damage even through resistance! It was looking increasingly likely that TITAN was going to be the last summon Aleph would obtain without insane amounts of grinding or using spellcasting items. Which was exactly why I was continuing to manipulate strength gains.

So with this done, or rather impossible, the only thing I could do was proceed with the game normally. The Sea Shrine was the next destination. There was nothing to write about it, really. Even without access to Zeus, It was still easy to blast all the enemies with RAMUH. There are only two enemies that could pose a threat. The first being GHOSTs, who could be handled by confusing them. The other was WATERs, who actually killed me one time on the bottom floor. Unpleasant to say the least.


My original plan for KRAKEN was to use FENRIR to protect against his big physical attacks. Obviously, this was not happening. So I had to rely on confusing him instead. Which worked! I was able to start damaging him the usual way, until he broke out of it. I decided to just keep attacking at that point. He responded with an INK before dying.

Onto the Floating Castle! There was only one thing to obtain here so I could just grab that and get going without getting any of the other chests. That was the ProCape. It would still take me several attempts to make it through the dungeon. The first of these died at the hands of a SENTRY I couldn't run from. Clearly I was worrying about the wrong robot the whole time. Another attempt was foiled by SORCERERs. And then there was the third attempt. It was a nice start to the battle against TIAMAT. Then she crit Aleph for like 250 damage! That, needless to say, was the end of that.


She would get another critical hit on the next attempt at the fight! This was seriously ridiculous. To reiterate, she is not one of the enemies that has a good chance of a critical. Hers is 0.5% like most other enemies. With four hits, this was effectively just 2%. If was nothing short of atrociously ill luck. In fact, she did nothing but physical attacks for the entire battle! I was honestly surprised that there was only one critical throughout. Nevertheless, a bunch of GOBLINs, six to be exact, did her in. And that was all four orbs lit!

A quick check verified that yes, there are spells that are exclusive to the Summoner. BAHAMUT did not respond when spoken to, and only gave the message about returning with proof of courage. Because I was going to not class change, this meant that the spell was off limits to Aleph. I thought that might be the case actually, for this specific reason in fact, so that was why I was continuing the strength grinding.

I did check by the way, and PHOENIX was fightable. Maybe it's just BAHAMUT that's exclusive to Summoner? It actually seemed surprisingly doable. The big red bird just constantly spammed FIR3 which only did around 30 damage each time. The problem was that I would still need more levels, as well as the encounters in between. Just like before, they were fixed after a death in the Astral Plane. And some were GrNAGA packs that appeared to be unrunnable. I would need to get some of the other summons in order to deal with them. Of course, it would be necessary to adjust the bards from being dead to being stone, which I had an idea of how to handle. Otherwise, it would be a very nice addition to Aleph's repertoire.

So my course of action was going to be to max out Aleph's level, defeat as many summon bosses as I could, then head into the Temple of Fiends for the final dungeon. I'll break the report up again here. What's left of the game will be on the final page.

Next | Index
Aleph was only level 33 at this point, so I had a while to go. The Sea Shrine was again the ideal place for this, just like with before. RAMUH could clear out groups without much trouble.

There was a problem that didn't prop up with Green. Because his damage only resolved after a charging turn, it gave R SAHAGs an extra chance to run away from the battle. Okay I mean sure, this was part of my self-imposed restrictions. But I did so in order to expose some of the flaws with the Evoker class. Not only can the enemies stay alive for one turn longer, things like this can also happen. In the grand scheme of things it was nothing more than a hassle. But it is still one that really shouldn't be something affecting Evoker.


To break up some of the monotony, I decided to see if I could take the L5 summons at level 41. SHIVA, found in the basement of the Ice Cave, had 1000 HP. She is pretty notorious among casual players because just look at this mess. However, it turned out that I had grossly overestimated her. The COCTRICEs did negligible damage whenever they attacked and all of them eventually ran away anyway: Aleph had 51 absorb so yeah. SHIVA herself had a simple pattern: ICE, ICE2, ICE3, charge, DIAMOND DUST. Much like any potential for petrification, these were neutered by wearing a Ribbon: the last only did like 90 damage. I probably could've beaten this much, much sooner with no change in strategy except having to mop up the birds after.


Aleph was close to another level so I grinded it out before heading to Gurgu for the runback. IFRIT was easier with higher absorb. The physicals did under a hundred. Might've gotten very unlucky the previous times, probably got crit and missed it. The big thing was the fire attacks and Ribbon helped to reduce the damage to manageable levels. SHIVA did excellent damage, ending the thing in six rounds. Probably about as much as it would've taken with GOBLIN spam though, and it might've even managed less.

Well, no big deal. I made it through without using them, right? The only difference they would've made is against WATERs, GHOSTs, and being a bigger badder attack to drop on whatever randoms I had to fight.

SHIVA also allowed me to defeat FAIRY. They were weak against ice. I lost the first time because they still hit hard with their wind moves (their physicals are hopelessly weak) and GOBLIN decided to do almost no damage. Something very funny happened on my winning attempt at the battle: all four of them went and charged their special at the beginning of the fight. Aleph charged SHIVA and got hit by all the attacks. He went first next round and one-shot all of them! I didn't check this time, but I'm guessing they had around 500HP each.


To my disgust, FAIRY still only healed a quarter of the damage dealt, simply landing ineffective on all the dead Bards. The stupid thing about it is that their own WHISPERWIND in the boss battle worked as expected: as I defeated more of them, the healing would not be split in between them. If they dealt 90 damage, that was how much they would be healed for. I'm guessing, hoping this is a bug to be fixed. Formal solos are supposed to be in v2.0 which might just be empty party slots which could allow this to work as expected, but those come with their own flaws (namely the corpses not being storage space). As far as I'm concerned, this should just ignore empty slots and heal only alive party members. It would be better for casual playthroughs as well.

FENRIR remained way too hard. It would be easy if I could just wipe the other enemies, but they got a guaranteed ambush for no good reason other than to make it more difficult and the FIGHTERs could cast WALL. This didn't give a resistance to wind at least. There were only two ways around that. I could cave and use Defense, but I'd gotten by without it so far. I intended to ride that until it was absolutely clear there was no other way around it. At least this one could be filed under my own decision.

ODIN was even more stupidly difficult if you can believe that. His pattern was to do two very strong attacks that had a solid chance of dealing a critical hit, charge, then use ZANTETSUKEN which seemed to have a very high chance if not a guarantee of instant death. Just like SORCERERs, no Ribbon, ProRing, etc. protected against this. Yet another example of the terrible design of many of the summon bosses. And want to know how much HP it has? 2000! As much as CHAOS! If that was a guaranteed kill, the only way I could win is if GOBLIN rolled high 4 times in a row! This is extra awful considering that like I mentioned, support for solos is being added. But if a solo can't do all of its content, there is something very wrong with it!


Here's Aleph's stats at level 50. I actually skipped gaining the last point of STR since it wasn't going to make a difference: every two points of it is one point of damage. Functionally, there was no difference between having 52 and 53. So I rolled for another INT boost instead. One thing I didn't notice until editing the report was how low his INT was. To recap, he started with 20 and had 47 at level 28. This pointed towards fixed gains for all those levels; but they dropped off at some point. Maybe my early thought about it reflecting White Mage's SAIVL table was right? They have consistent INT gains until level 30. Another disappointing thing about Evoker, I suppose. Granted this only comes into effect with solos or NG+, but the point remains.

Now the only thing left to do was to get the remaining summons. The first stop was the Sea Shrine. This was where LEVIATHAN resided. As you would expect, it deals water elemental damage. The WALL spell does not grant any resistance to that, either. Therefore it was the best option for taking on FENRIR's cronies.

But even doing this was difficult. On one hand, the Water Armlet (which I had procured in the Waterfall) provided resistance to the elemental moves used by the boss. Yet the sea serpent came accompanied by six WATERs. They hit way too hard, especially when Aleph was charging up for SHIVA. She would most often wipe them out, but by that point, Aleph was at critical HP and there was no way he was finishing the battle from there.


So I decided it was time to stop messing around.


The only reason I was abstaining from using the spellcasting items was for memetic purposes anyway. I would still not be using any of the offensive ones. However, if using the Defense was the only way to get through this fight, then so be it! Indeed, I won the battle on the very first try after I used this tactic. LEVIATHAN could use BUBBLE CURTAIN to cut the damage from Aleph's spells in half. But with the enemies unable to damage him much, winning was just a matter of time. I employed KIRIN here for regen status; it would restore a little under 30HP per tick. It made up for some of the chip damage taken from LEVIATHAN'S spells.

FENRIR was a non-threat with this evasion boosting. Actually, some of the enemies ran away because Aleph was so high level. It ultimately only made the battle just a little easier. Since the boss was physical only, once the MAGEs were down, there was no threat.

That left just ODIN and PHOENIX. There was no way around the former. The good news was if this didn't work, it wasn't a big deal. His spell is to charge and deal AoE non-elemental instant death. Certainly not nearly as high accuracy as it seems to be in the boss battle. Again, my only option was GOBLIN. The spell's damage was wildly variable: I actually had one ridiculous moment in the Sea Shrine where it took four castings to defeat a GrSHARK! Even if I dropped the restriction on items, Thor Hammer wasn't the answer either. It did far too little damage. And since everything else had a charging turn, they wouldn't work either. I resolved to give it at least a few tries before throwing up my arms and saying "screw this" and complaining.


And...just like that, I win. I was so stunned I got this on the first try at level 50 that I completely beefed the capture. I thought for sure that even though I got the first three high rolls, either ODIN was going to go first or the game was going to slap me in the face. I couldn't believe my luck. I'm still complaining and maintain that this is a terribly designed fight when considering a solo character. It was just sheer stupid luck here, nothing else. I think the way around it would be a new piece of equipment that prevents any and all instant death.


One left. PHOENIX appeared to be a regenerative enemy with 2000HP - I didn't need to check this one. As mentioned, it spammed FIR3 which was manageable. Aleph used KIRIN here and used LEVIATHAN to deal damage. Once PHOENIX was defeated, it used its special to restore 1000HP; half of the max like its spell if it works the same. It then started using things like BLAZE and INFERNO instead. Also yes, INFERNO! That's useful information for anyone running a Blue Mage; instead of having to hunt down the rare fight, they can just get it here if they're in the same party as each other. In any case, I was still able to win and claim the last summon Aleph would be getting.

PHOENIX takes one turn to charge, then it heals 50% of max HP. Needless to say, this is pretty good. However, it can also revive in battle. This is a problem: can't have the solo reviving their allies. But there's a solution: get them petrified instead. How to go about it?


Like this! SAURIA was the perfect enemy to get the bards petrified instead of dead. I didn't have to worry about them fleeing with the bards in front since it checks the party leader's level, but they have 200 morale so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Gold Bracelets plus ProRings gave them enough absorb so they could resist the damage the lizard dealt, and KIRIN took care of the rest. It wasn't long before they were all statues. This did mean that UNICORN couldn't be used since it would cure their ailment, but with the precedent set by using Defense, I decided I would return to Ordeals to pick up the Heal Staff.

Now, I could have class changed for BAHAMUT. Two things dissuaded me. First, his Astral Plane consists of a gauntlet of dragon fights; a four pack of all kinds in a row followed by the big dragon himself. I seriously doubted a solo Summoner could handle him. Second, even if I could, it would break what's left of the game. I had to keep at least a little challenge.


So into the temple I went. The first attempt fell to my nemesis, Gas Ds. This really demonstrates just how bad Evoker's charges are. Sure, Aleph blasted some of them for over 700 damage, but one of them took like 250 instead and killed him on the next round. Here was the encounter order on the run that followed:

- 3 Frost Ds. Run.
- 8 BADMAN. Run.
- 4 Gas Ds. SHIVA did her job this time and I took much less damage in general.
- PHANTOM. I used FAIRY here. Did over 400 and spattered him.
- CHIMERA, JIMERA. Run.
- 2 ZombieDs. IFRIT.
- 1 WORM. FAIRY.
- 3 MudGOLs, 1 RockGOL. It was a preemptive so I ran.
- 3 EARTHs. IFRIT.
- 6 GrMEDUSAs. Run.


LICH did a physical and got blasted by FAIRY! He is, in fact, weak to wind.


KARY's floor only dished up a single R.GIANT before her. I used FENRIR as insurance, but she only used spells. LEVIATHAN hit for 698, which was not enough to kill her. She has 700HP. So I finished her with a FIGHT.

- A GrSHARK and WzSAHAG group. Run on preemptive.
- 3 WATERs. SHIVA.
- A GrSHARK and WzSAHAG group. This one was bigger so I used CAIT SITH and RAMUH.


I got up FENRIR before KRAKEN could start to physical. Actually, he loved using his spells and skills. I tried to meme on him with ODIN but it missed. So I used FAIRY. I wavered a bit when two failed to kill him. I instead used Defense three times and finished him with a RAMUH.

- 2 RockGOLs. Run.
- 3 WORMs. I played this very safe with CAIT SITH, Defense, and even popped a PHOENIX.
- Masmune claimed. 6 VAMPIREs, 1 WzVAMP. Again, I had to play this safe: CAIT SITH and IFRIT.
- 4 RockGOLs. Preemptive, run!
- 5 AIRs. Confused them and ran.


And then, TIAMAT one-shot Aleph off a double critical hit. I missed it, but it did over 600 damge. Bullshit, absolute bullshit. It did more than Aleph's max HP. That was literally the only way I could've lost and I did.

I promptly stormed back through the temple. I didn't bother keeping track of my encounters this time around. You can get a general idea of my strategy from the above anyway. If I could run, I ran. If I couldn't, I used a summon. If it was dangerous, use Defense and/or CAIT SITH. PHANTOM and LICH went the same as before. I just tried to LEVIATHAN KARY outright and nearly died for it when she used two physicals in a row. Needed to use a GOBLIN just to survive. Then KRAKEN was a dumpster fire because the FAIRYs did low damage and ODIN didn't work when I tried again. I neglected Defense and the fight became a chaotic mess that saw all my L6 spells drained between FAIRY deciding to suck and all the FENRIRs I had to use. Should've just buffed while I could.

Air floor played nicer this time. This time, I used Defense thrice and chopped TIAMAT to bits. The problem was, I'd run out of HEALs! I could still heal in battle of course. Except I forgot on RockGOLs that showed up. Well, Aleph was only missing like 40HP. Surely that wouldn't be the difference against CHAOS, would it? At least the L6 spells being gone didn't matter. CHAOS resists wind and water, just because.


Turn 1 saw CHAOS use CRACK while Aleph got up a Defense stack. CHAOS used INFERNO for 50 while Aleph got up a second, and finally a third while CHAOS hit with SWIRL for 254. Thankfully his next move was a physical, allowing Aleph to charge PHOENIX. But CHAOS used TORNADO and did...115, thank goodness. A big chunk of HP restored. If I fail again, I might use the Water Armlet just to block SWIRL; it should be water elemental now. ProRing is irrelevant when I have Ribbon and Defense to make the extra absorb irrelevant. If physicals can't hit, it doesn't matter how much or how little you have.

40 damage physical and 37 damage ICE3 were exchanged. 47 damage LIT3 and another irrelevant physical. Jeez, so much for all that STR grinding. Why can't I get any criticals?! Was this going to come down to GOBLIN? If so, I hope the rolls were good. I used CARBUNCLE next turn, CHAOS used CRACK. CHAOS skipped the SLO2 and cast CUR4. No problem. Aleph charged PHOENIX, took a 76 damage INFERNO, then got up to 552HP.


FIR3 did 27 as I decided to shift to using GOBLIN instead. That's more like it! ICE2 did 25, and the next GOBLIN did 547, even better. Who needs the Masmune?! Yeah, in retrospect, if I was to go back in time, I'd have tried to manipulate INT gains instead of STR when the latter were no longer fixed. I had been careful to save L1 spell charges throughout the temple just in case this was necessary. CHAOS did FAST, GOBLIN did 553. 544 left. But next was NUKE, and he could still use SWIRL too.


Aleph went first...2 short!


But the SWIRL was weak!


And for the first time in this playthrough, I used a spellcasting item, just as an "eff you" to finish it off! Yeah, I was still pissed about that critical.

I thought about taking on BAHAMUT, but I decided it wasn't going to be very interesting. It would boil down to fighting through his dragons with a summon on each for an attempt at him. Unless CARBUNCLE could reflect his special, which I highly doubt it would because reflect just sucks in FFR, I would have to hope GOBLIN rolled high and the MEGAFLARE rolled low. And if I lose, do it all over again for another shot.


I stated in my job comments that I believe the Evoker to be the worst class in Final Fantasy Renaissance. Having done a solo challenge run with it, I stand by that claim. Sure, the Green Mage has flaws, but they are surmountable ones and the job is due a rebalance in the next version. Plus it can do its job well, which is more than can said about the Evoker. Furthermore, there was the issue of having to fight multiple superbosses in order to obtain its spells. Seriously, these bosses are absolutely balanced for Renaissance's shenanigans and are certainly much worse in NG+, which makes them stand out that much more against the vanilla game's stuff. If you don't have anything particularly broken to deal with them, they're awful to fight. Evoker itself doesn't fall into this category either.

The reward for doing so are spells that are just as strong as black magic at the same level when you factor in they're being cast across multiple turns. Contrast with other magical jobs, which can just buy them at a store, or in Blue Mage's case, hunt down most of them with far less hassle. The stats of the enemies in the main game line up to where the same-level black magic is often enough on groups. Which ironically makes Evokers better at fighting bosses; if they're not using their support instead. BAHAMUT which breaks from the pattern comes very late in the game and can only be cast so many times unless you grind very high. Some playthroughs may not even reach level 25, which is when mages get their first L8 spell charges. And ideally they would get higher than that to actually cast it more than once.

The niche of potentially saving on spell charges wasn't coming into play even in this solo challenge. Dead in one cast is still dead in one cast. Even if that cast takes two turns. And that's the big problem with Evoker. The numbers are not in its favor. It is seemingly balanced for NG+ stat bloat. That said, I'm honestly surprised that it ended up not being as big of an issue as I thought throughout the main game. Still, like that last battle in the Ice Cave, a Black Mage would have just been able to kill the enemies outright instead of having to flip a coin and go through a charge turn. Or an Evoker using Zeus. It's sad that its most reliable offense is in fact spellcasting items. Just like many other jobs.

That said, how does Evoker perform as a solo? If I were to make a comparison to anything else when it comes to a solo Evoker, it would be a hybrid of a Thief and a Black Mage. Like the former (and similar to the latter in vanilla), copious amounts of grinding is required. However, the job eventually starts to come into its own power like the latter and by the end of it. And unlike either once you factor in SLEP being fixed (very relevant on the PIRATEs for BLM), insane amounts of grinding is necessary early on. Evoker has it even worse because it needs to grind to even make it out of Coneria. However, it's better off than both classes in the late game, and maybe some others. The real problem are the summon superbosses. I would rate this one as the third, maybe fourth-hardest solo in Renaissance: it's better than Thief and Bard, but still not very good. Most of the challenge in this one boils down to the grind. The only other question mark is Time Mage (not Wizard), and I'm in no hurry to test that one out. It is also notable for not being affected by lack of class change much. It just means BAHAMUT access if you can actually beat him and being able to equip the Wizard Staff for a stronger beatstick.

And like I ranted earlier, if solo support is going to be formally added to FFR, there should be a few concessions made. The things I would change are: some sort of mulligan for GOBLIN, maybe killing a certain amount of IMPs. Letting FAIRY heal full HP. Maybe a Fire/Ice Armlet that can be obtained without Thief. And a piece of equipment to resist all forms of instant death for ODIN.

That said, did I enjoy this? Once I got by the hellish early grind: actually, yes. As difficult as Evoker was to play, it still managed to be interesting. It's more than can be said about Thief or Bard which are just painful the whole way through.

Thanks for reading. This is definitely the last thing I do in FFR before 2.0, which is supposed to release before Christmas 2023. May it bring better tidings.

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