FFR: Hardworking Capitalists Part II

I started off with the Waterfall. I took advantage of movement to get the CUBE without having to fight the spike tile. Saved me a little bit of hassle. Also my cropping isn't exactly perfect as you can see, heh. It's automated to cut off the dead space in battle screens. Still works fine on overworld shots in most cases.


I wish I had more to write about the final fiend dungeons, but things were simply smooth and straightforward. When you're running through them without getting any of the chests, they tend to be over in a hurry. This of course was business as usual in Gurgu Volcano. KARY wasn't a problem.

I wanted to make sure I was as high level as possible for KRAKEN, so Air Orb was next. A couple of my runs into Mirage Tower were ended by a weird bug in 2.0 where the game softlocks if you encounter the VAMPIRE group; this also affects the air floor of the temple unfortunately. The game blacks out and gets stuck into a loop. It affected a fellow challenge runner to where he had to skip Masmune in his solo Fighter. This was fixed by the time I went through the ToFR, at least.

The Floating Castle had a pair of nasty encounters on 4F: first, a MANCAT ambush. I had to run away from this and somehow did without anyone dying. Second, a SORCERER group right after. I had to fry them down. I was surprised WarMECH didn't make an appearance at that point.

While I couldn't use the Bane Sword, I could use BANE. So it seems obvious that TIAMAT was going to be easy, right? I would just use it and take the easy win, right?


Well, you'd be WRONG! Silver got up defensive buffs, and Cash got up offensive ones. She had a few turns of physical attacks which gave me time to apply REGEN3. ALIT, APOIS, AICE, and AFIR all went up, and after I had FAST on both attackers I started to apply TMPR. She eventually fell to the assault.

That just left the Sea Shrine. Even without Zeus, this is an easy dungeon. The only threats are GHOSTs and potentially WATERs if they go a little crazy. I just had to make sure to save LIT3 charges until the end...


I was prepared for KRAKEN to finally make my experience unequal, so it was a pleasant surprise when that wasn't the case. Cash rolled high on his LIT3s. The fiend did nearly chaos dunk Franc down, but he survived. Then he used INK next turn. I finished him before he could do another physical phew.

This actually got me a secret achievement for lighting the orbs in this order: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water. Avatar of the Water or something? Not a Captain Planet reference? I wonder what else works? Earth, Wind, and Fire, maybe?


That was done, but Level 22 wasn't going to be enough for the temple. My old run had to go to level 37, and that was with bugged crit chances. I hadn't even finished making money yet: everyone had yet to have a ProRing and I still needed their final pieces of armor. That meant it was time to go back to grinding hell!

I settled on a goal of Level 30 at first. This would get Silver four charges of L8 spells (REGEN4) and get around the same amount of lesser spell charges that I had on my first run. Technically Level 31 would be better which it would get the physical attackers one more point of attack, but I decided to settle there for now.

Eventually, I resorted to killing off Franc and level him separate, just so I could mindlessly sit back and level the others. The location of choice was the Sea Shrine. Boring, but all the premier spots were actually bad for this party: either too far into dungeons, would kill me without resistances, or both. Plus it let Cash keep refreshing his spell charges as needed; the interior on a GrSHARK spike worked well in my previous run, but without two physical attackers, this wasn't as ideal. I got everyone their ProRings, and eventually, the Gold Bracelets, Steel Armors, REGEN4, and SHELL2.


So how to level the solo Franc? Right here. This tile has a spike that contains 1-2 FIREs. They were near the entrance and easy to beat. I used BLOOD WEAPON for the first and only time here; this skill heals for half the damage dealt to an enemy. The setup turn usually makes it bad, but it was perfect for grinding here since it meant not having to bother with HEALs. I did have to watch his experience to make sure I got STR level ups every time, periodically running out of the volcano to save. It didn't take too long to catch him up.

With that done and final preparations made, I could head into the final dungeon. Here's how each attempt at it went.


1) Gas Ds. These were my nemesis from my first run when I was trying this at a lower level. APOIS can help, but it can only help so much. Here's what I want to see.
2) PHANTOM used GLARE to kill Franc
3) Gas Ds.
4) Gas Ds.
5) Frost Ds in the first room. Survived but I decided, it was early, using too many potions early bad.


This was a weird fight on attempt 6. PHANTOM got off a STOP that hit everyone. It just used GLARE and physicals from there. Eventually everyone recovered and I beat it.

6) GrMEDUSAs??? That can happen if they all go before ASTONE can be used and you only have one SOFT on you. I naturally rectified this before making further attempts.


7) LICH NUKE instantly killed Cash. Very unlucky roll.
8) PHANTOM used GLARE to kill Penny
9) PHANTOM used GLARE to kill Franc

It was attempt #10 that got through. The first floors went smoothly; I either ran from anything dangerous or blew them away before they could do too much. PHANTOM fell without incident. I ran into some GrMEDUSAs. They didn't petrify, but I was ready in case they did before ASTONE went off.


As with my previous run on the vanilla game, I tried to fish for a OHKO with QAKE on LICH. It missed the first time. Silver got up a SHELL2 to try to block NUKE, but the boneman used a physical instead. QAKE landed on the second turn, though!

This spell also killed KARY. I had only seven uses of FAST here. I wanted to save extras in case I needed them against CHAOS, so I wasn't sure what to do with Cash's turn at first. So I went with QAKE, and it hit. Good stuff.


KRAKEN was something I was concerned about. The strategy was to FAST up the attackers and hope for the best. Silver spent her turns on RUSE for lack of anything better: I didn't buy INV2 since you really need multiple sources for it to be effective. This was just going to be a diceroll of a battle. His first turn was LIT2, fine. His second turn was one of the inevitable physicals. It hit and brought Franc to 2HP!!!!

The only option at this point was REGEN4; if KRAKEN used LIT2 again, Franc was toast. Silver would have to move before Franc, and both had to move before KRAKEN. Or he could just not use it.


Silver went first. Then Franc. Then came the LIT2, knocking Franc to 10HP!!


Mercifully, Cash was able to end it with LIT3 on the same turn. I think that's one of the nastiest KRAKEN fights I've ever had without actually dying.


Unfortunately, it was all for naught. TIAMAT was up next, and her BANE was a big problem. There was no defense in the original except a diceroll, WALL, or equipment. Here, APOIS was an option. But she used BANE before I could get it off.


I refused to surrender. I had to use a couple TMPRs here so that Penny could deal damage, as well as FAST. But after that, the fight was well under control. REGEN3 kept the team healthy, and I applied the rest of the anti spells without incident. Eventually, between Penny's physicals and a bit of chip damage from Cash's remaining spells, I got the job done.


So here's where it stands. A dead Dark Knight going into CHAOS. Could I do this one physical attacker short? Not on 1.3.3, but this was 2.0. TMPR would stack like it could in all official versions of the game. So maybe. Only thing to do was try!


CHAOS started things off with an ICE3 for 75/130/88. Cash used FAST on Penny, Silver got up ARUB, and Penny attacked (what else could she do?). 8 hits/8 damage. That's what TMPR is for. She led round 2 with another 8 hits/8 damage, Silver threw up REGEN4, the first TMPR came, and LIT3 did 95/86/198. I threw up SHELL2 at the start of round 3, Penny did 44, another TMPR, and CHAOS did a physical for 187 on Penny, thankfully not paralyzing.


With attack spells in the clear, Silver got up AWATER on turn 4. Penny did 176. CHAOS used CRACK, and out came yet another TMPR. CHAOS used SLO2 on Penny which didn't work, Silver used AFIR, another TMPR, and Penny did 378. That's one way around the Dark Knight being dead and critical hits being fixed: just buff attack.


REGEN4 fell off at this point, but everyone was full health, so I had Silver use AWIND instead. Out came the CUR4, not unexpected with the way things were going.


Then Penny said "CUR4 this" and one-shot CHAOS from full health. Wow! Maybe limiting TMPR/SABR to one casting each was a good balance decision, but like I mentioned before, my problem with doing that was that there's plenty of other ways to break the game in FFR, so that seemed arbitrary. Might be a good self-imposed limitation in the future because yeah, this can get silly and anyone can do this with the Power Gauntlets.

This wasn't as fun as the original, but it was still fun. It was also a lot easier overall despite the crit bug being fixed. There were a multitude of factors that went into this: Green Mage, TMPR working, having good luck (not a single dungeon went poorly, not even the infamous Ice Cave, let alone not seeing WarMECH five times), and probably some was being more familiar with what I needed to do for this challenge. I grinded more earlier on in this version of it, but I actually beat the fiends sooner - I had to go to 25 originally, and I got it done at around 22 here.

So! My thoughts on the attackers? A Warrior was still the right call I feel, but if I was to do this over, I'd replace the Dark Knight with a Lancer. I didn't end up using BIO2 as much as I thought. BLOOD WEAPON only got used during the grind fights. Bastard Sword being nerfed in 2.0 really puts a damper on the DRK class. JUMP may take two turns, but it's guaranteed criticals on all the hits that land. Criticals are what you need on the late game bosses. Plus, no STR resetting would be nice. I didn't have to as much as I thought, but it'd be a convenience. And, the early game would be easier without them missing all the time. I might even take a second Warrior instead over a Dark Knight, but at least it wasn't a poor decision.

How about Black Mage vs. Time Mage? I feel the former was the right decision. There were many situations where BLM's magic came in handy, such as the Sea Shrine KRAKEN fight or random encounters in general. TMPR vs. MARK is a wash: they serve a similar purpose in helping get by the high defense bosses. The former plays better with Lancer, that said. I feel Time Mage would only get a leg up on Black Mage in the ToFR, when DEMI and FLOAT (if you're willing to abuse it) can come to the forefront. Either should be workable, and I wouldn't fault anyone for picking TIM.

And White Mage vs. Green Mage? Like I said, this was more murky in 1.3.3, but with the REGEN line becoming multi-target in 2.0, this was a clean win on the Green Mage's part. APOIS was a big part of it, but resources can be a little stringent in the ToFR, and they do a lot to help ease the burden there. I didn't miss HARM as much as I thought, Green's high HP was nice, and there's SHELL2 which is pretty ridiculous. That said, again, White Mages still should be workable options; they still get most of the anti-spells and LIFE can come in handy when dungeon crawling or if things like what happened with TIAMAT happened (assuming they survived).

I think I might swing the other way next time: no buying from stores at all, aka Living Off The Land. It helps unlock an achievement in 2.0 too. So look forward to that report soon. And remember, shoutouts to money.

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