FFR: Hardworking Capitalists Part I

FFR 2.0 didn't add any new classes to the game. But it did add achievements, and I figured there was one of my old favorites I could do despite it not actually having a formal achievement for it: I called it the Hardworking Capitalists. It's a simple inversion of the Living Off the Land Challenge: no opening non-mandatory chests. Everything must be bought in a store.

Now, there is a loophole here. Some classes don't need their wallet to function effectively, and therefore, defeat the purpose of this challenge. It was only the Black Belt class in the original, but for similar purposes as to my original version of this, I will also be throwing out the Blue Mage, Geomancer, and Evoker classes. Those three are dependent on money free ways to improve themselves. They're not as bad as Monk which I feel should be absolute, but they are a problem. This could be applied to several others as well, but let's keep it there.

My original party was very easy to figure out. This is by definition a no class change game, because the TAIL is in a non-mandatory chest. Red Mages top out at the L5 spells FIR3 and CUR3 without access to this. So they're out. The Thief had no reason to consider in the original. The former still holds true here. And SEARCH is out by definition of the challenge. That left the party as two Fighters, a White Mage, and a Black Mage.

So what's changed among these? Two big things: the critical hit bug has been fixed, and the HEL2 bug has also been fixed. What about the other classes?

- Dancer: Spending 300000G on a dance is definitely capitalism. However, this is sort of underpowered without class change, and the inability to open chests means raising money will conflict with any magic job. Pass.
- Lancer: Interesting choice for their auto-criticals on JUMP. They top out at Platnum Lance, which is stronger and more accurate than Silver Sword and Silver Axe. They have the same power as Warriors but less defenses. Considered.
- Trainer: They bring interesting utility to the table, but their low offense will eventually become a liability. Pass.
- Time Mage: A lot of their broken stuff is locked behind class change. I maintain that using the broken parts of this doesn't amount to playing the game anyway. But there is MARK to consider. Maybe?
- Green Mage: A lot of support and healing. Not much else, but I do need ARUB.
- Bard: Questionable capitalist and empty supportive slot. Pass.
- Dark Knight: This is the class that made me want to consider revisiting this. They can purchase the Onyx Greatsword in Gaia. 52 power! 15 crit%! And minus 20 accuracy, but omlettes and eggs. Strongly consider this one.

So what to do? As before, I will need ARUB. It is the only way to gain resistances to the myriad of instant death spells around, which includes CHAOS' CRACK. So which of the two that offer this to consider? On one hand, White Mage has the invaluable LIFE spell and can add damage with HARM spells. Green Mage would bring the REGEN line which is more efficient on healing, and a couple extra Anti-spells. Up until 2.0 this was an easy choice. But with the buffs to Green Mage, namely REGEN becoming multi-target, this became less obvious. Green Mage would be the better healer with more support skills. So it boiled down to whether I wanted the benefit of HARM early and LIFE later. I decided I'd go with Green Mage here. Battles were going to be more drawn out, so they would be able to shine better.

The next thing I'll want is some sort of AoE magic. Because I also want FAST, that narrows it to Black Mage or Time Mage. I'd be abstaining from FLOAT abuse because come on, you're not actually playing the game that way. Black Mage gets a lot more for more of the game, but Time Mage's benefit would be the MARK and DEMI spells on bosses. I thought about it and settled on Black Mage. It was a question of randoms vs bosses. As any FF1 vet will tell you, it's the randoms that are frequently more dangerous. It'd be worse too now that the RUN bug is fixed, so I felt having a delete button would be much more desired. The only question was how good would my physical damage be now that critical hits work as expected? Well, Black Mage has TMPR, so we'll see.

That leaves two spots for melee jobs. I'll stick with a Warrior in the first slot. Their superior equipment options and AGI/LUCK (which determine ambushes) still make them good party leaders. The other is between Lancer and Dark Knight. Now, there is a big problem with the latter: their guaranteed stat growths eventually stall. You're seemingly intended to use CONSUME BAT to make up for it, but this is a no class change game. I was thinking Lancer because of it before 2.0 again: BIO2 got a huge buff into being another AoE damage spell. And they have workable crit rates: the 15% of Onyx, if I could use it (good way to test?), is as good as the vanilla Masmune. Lancer's was guaranteed but came out slower. I settled on the Dark Knight.


So that settled it. Hopefully, this would go well. As before, everyone got a money-related name.

Starting gold went to Chains, Cloths, weapons, and REGEN. As with my previous iteration of this challenge, this party would simply be business as usual up through the Mystic KEY and really wouldn't be that different until much later on. I trained until I could get FIRE for Cash as well before I hit up GARLAND.


The team reached level 2 steps before fighting him. Didn't matter. He still died without incident. Just about any team can walk up and knock him down.

I did neglect to pick up SLEP for the PIRATEs, but that's only because I really didn't need to. With the ship claimed, I could start making money. The goal was to get enough gold and levels to use FIR2, then move to the Peninsula of Power. KYZOKU farming did the trick to get me over the hump.


One problem with the Green Mage choice was not having HRM2. It was easier in my original run because they could one-two punch the ZomBULLs, not so here. Picking up BIO2 for Franc helped a bit, but since the undead resist poison, it was mostly effective on the other enemies.


I picked up a Silver Greatsword for Franc. This was an upgrade over his initial weapon which was quite frankly exceedingly awful. I got this before the Silver Sword. With those, REGEN2, and LIT2, I went into the Marsh Cave.


It went smoothly. Didn't have any bad encounters the whole way through. The WIZARDs were pathetic. I got a draw of three. LIT2 killed one on the spot, another died to a physical after. A third survived and was finished off with plain old LIT. On the way out I had some GARGOYLE groups that could have been dangerous, but they didn't target the mages.


ASTOS was killed through REFLEC. Just because.

There was nothing to get from the Mystic KEY except the TNT. With that claimed and turned in, I could move onto Melmond. The Bastard Sword was here waiting to be bought. It was nerfed down to 25 power in FFR 2.0, but that's still workable for now. Plus the positive hit% was the important thing, finally letting Franc hit twice.

Still, there was plenty of cash farming to go. I wanted Steel Armor for both Penny and Franc. This would cost a ridiculous 45000 each and it is normally never worth the purchase except for a challenge like this. But it was the best thing money could buy for them: the pricier Gold Bracelet only gave more evasion for less weight. Speaking of, I wanted Silver Bracelets for the mages. 15 absorb. Lots of hard work to do; thankfully, it wouldn't have to happen right away.

I settled outside Crescent Lake. The best of the monsters there were comparable in cash output to the ones on the peninsula, and it was right near an Inn. I did go back to the peninsula eventually. Another one of my goals was FIR3, which would have a variety of uses. Really wasn't much to write about it, it was just simple grinding. End result of it was a Silver Axe for Penny (she would deal more damage with it at most levels than the Silver Sword), Silver Helmets and Gauntlets for her and Franc, the Silver Bracelets for the mages, a variety of other spells, 99 HEALs, and around a dozen PUREs. At level 14 I was ready to head in.


The VAMPIRE hit with a paralysis strike then instantly died. Earth Cave played especially nice both times I went through it; no COCTRICEs and no serious stunlocking incidents. This was where the Black Mage especially shined over the Time Mage. Cash could hit the undead's weaknesses with FIR2, and throw ICE2 on top of it for even AoE damage. I did level up on the way out, but thankfully, Franc either rolled STR or it was fixed.


LICH was a bit hairy. He went before Silver and his ICE2 did close to 150 damage to everyone but her. However, Cash's FIR3 also rolled very high. Coupled with decent rolls from the physical attackers, it was enough to defeat him on turn 2.

There was no reason to go into Ordeals, since the point of this challenge is to avoid opening non-mandatory chests. So Ice Cave it was. I got to level 16 beforehand to give buffer and LIT3 access. It was kind of painful in my original challenge, but here it was shockingly easy?! The encounters played very nice. I mostly saw WRAITH groups, and the one SORCERER group I ran into - on the way back from the EYE - was a preemptive that I used to kill them all. I played carefully here, trying to conserve Cash's spell charges by having him attack physically against smaller groups of undead. I saved the FIR3s for the big ones.


I had Silver get up an ASTONE against the EYE. It could potentially petrify; actually, my one failed attempt at the cave came when she failed to move before COCTRICEs. It was early so I reset early in. It didn't matter since it died before it could move.

Aside from the aforementioned SORCERER group, there was nothing on the way out. So I could lay claim to the airship.

There was an item I was interested in buying in Gaia: the Onyx Greatsword. However, I found out that it was exclusive to after class change. I figured it might be, actually. But that's fine, Franc could still use Cobalt and that was probably better: 47/-10/12 compared to 52/-20/15. This was another reason why I wanted to do this: checking to see if anything is class change exclusive.


Alas, capitalism can be a harsh mistress. Even if I could buy that weapon, I needed to buy this. At least I didn't need to grind for it unlike it my original run, just walk in and make the purchase.

Anyway, this is where the challenge really begins. It's here when you start to get really good items ot of treasure chests. All of it is out the window here. You can bet it's going to be painful as the game goes on. I'll split the page up here, just because.

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