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FFR: Living Off the Land Part I
Jan. 4th, 2024 09:05 pmThe next challenge run I would be attempting on Final Fantasy Renaissance would be the Living Off The Land Challenge. Unlike the Capitalists, FFR actually has achievements that are sort of related to this one, for not buying weapons/armor from the shop and not spending too much money throughout the game. The challenge is simple: no buying anything from the shops in towns, except optionally PUREs and SOFTs as a mercy rule. Inns and Clinics are allowed. Sullla had done this on vanilla and I recommend giving his report a read.
Party selection on the original version was fairly obvious. The three mage classes are out, and Black Belt defeats the purpose of the challenge. There were really only three options: go with four Fighters, or use three and one Thief, STR grinding it to take advantage of Katana and its high crit chance instead of getting your fourth Fighter stuck with Ice Sword until the very end. It's certainly what I'd take on Classic Mode with the run bug fixed. But the added classes of FFR opens up a lot of new options for this.
Monk is still banned. Green and Time Mage are also out for buying magic. You could make the argument that Bard and Dancer rely on stuff in towns; it depends on how far you want to push it. Maybe even go as far as to ban Xcalber and Blue Mage teachers because they rely on towns too? Well, I could go super extremist to make this even more of a challenge. Let's think on that one.
Then I thought to myself, could that be possible? Never using any town services including the Clinic and Inns? Not in vanilla. But FFR is a different story. The question was going to boil down to saving.
Well, if I'm going super strict, I'm down to the following.
- Warrior: This will be without Xcalber, but it's still there.
- Thief: Almost certainly a take. It gives a lot of extra stuff with SEARCH.
- Monk: I would allow it here because the party needs all the help it can get. Certainly one to consider, but not to rely upon because that start is going to suck.
- Geomancer: Absolutely a take. It is the only way to use and renew magic. And the only way to heal regularly.
- Lancer: Alternate Warrior. JUMP would be very nice.
- Trainer: Gets some good stuff and only the monster munchies are out by definition. Given CATCH is really questionable in the first place...
- Dark Knight: Alternate Warrior that gets its own options.
Everything else relies upon stuff you can find/do in towns, up to and including restoring spell charges. The question was, how strict do I go? Do I not even class change? The biggest question here was how many saves would I have throughout the game with this. There's 17 or so in the base game, and Thief finds 10 of them spread throughout the game. I thought, yeah, this version could be fun, but I'll save it for later. I want to get a feel for the challenge before I go too crazy. So what about the less strict version?
I settled on this. SEARCH and Geomancer were the big gamechangers in the Renaissance version of the challenge. Magically, I could only otherwise make a case for Blue Mage and Evoker. They're both kind of a hassle in their own ways. Physically, Warrior was obvious. It still is the only shield-user. What about the rest? Trainer is the only other shield-user and effectively has an instant kill move, but is otherwise the weakest of the group. Dark Knight can self-heal with BLOOD WEAPON. Lancer has JUMP. All three have plenty of new weapons to find. A second Warrior was also an option.
Realistically, the problem with Dark Knight and Lancer is that their weapons take until Earth Cave B3 to appear. So they'd be stuck unarmed until then. Possible to tough it out, but I'd rather not. So this boiled down to just Warrior and Trainer. They could both use a lot of the swords and knives that showed up through the game. But practically, Warrior absolutely blows Trainer out of the water. Trainer starts with 7 HIT% and gains 2 per level, whereas Warrior gets 10 to start and gains 3 per level. Their MDef growth is much higher. And despite Trainer being able to use shields, the only option is Buckler and ProCape. The Knights would get the 16 absorb ones, including Aegis. Now, Trainer does get Dragon Armor at least, so it's viable defensively. The fourth Ribbon comes late, but until then (ToFR) Dragon+Aegis+ProRing is ideal. Really though, it's the offensive differences that made the difference here. It may be a bit boring to use two of the same class, but it seems like the smartest option to me. Sometimes you have to be practical!
Also there's going to be no Blessed Bell GEOSTORM. That's too cheesy.
Right away, the presence of the Thief started to pay dividends. In the vanilla game, the first piece of equipment you can find is stashed in the upper floors of the Marsh Cave. Needless to say, getting something much earlier, even if it's only a simple pair of Gloves, was a game-changer. This was just the tip of the iceberg, however.
Before equipping them, I unlocked an achievement for going into battle without any equipment. No, I didn't forget. :)
I decided to get up to level 3 before taking on GARLAND, just for the HP buffer. There was no need for cash with this party. Even under these circumstances with nothing in the way of items, the early game was not difficult by any stretch of the imagination. Geomancer was able to sling AoE magic while the Warriors could still deal enough damage to kill IMPs in a single blow.
Waiting in the Temple of Fiends was a Cap to add a bit more absorb. But more importantly, there was a major gamechanger.
A Scimtar was waiting to be picked up by the Thief! Getting an actual weapon this soon was huge. It went on my second slot Warrior, as he was less likely to be attacked. The Gloves and Cap were on the first slot.
GARLAND continues to be a giant fraud even under circumstances such as these. I started the battle off by having Digger use FORGED IN IRON to give a boost to my offenses. This is one of the few things that allows a Monk to take advantage of attack boosting: iron fists indeed. However, it was the weapon and magic that did most of the damage here. In no time at all, the so-called legendary knight was dead.
I had my first death on the way back from Matoya's Cave, which had another pair of gloves to pick up. I just reset that and started to RUN a bit when things looked dicey.
Bikke's PIRATEs were instantly wiped out by geomancy. Then it was onto the Dwarf Cave for another big SEARCH item.
The Long Sword was even better. 20 power is almost as much as the infamous Silver Sword (23) and 10 HIT% was practically speaking not that far behind 15. Suddenly, this was looking like more of an armorless challenge than anything. Speaking of, the Elves' Castle had a Copper Gauntlet. It was just 1 more absorb over the gloves, but any little bit of extra was welcome.
Now it was time for the Marsh Cave. No beating around the bush or grinding, just heading in. This was the biggest obstacle for Sullla in vanilla. He had to grind a little before going in; the combination of Thief, items to save with that I was willing to use (I would have more by the time I needed more), and already having equipment meant I was able to march straight inside. I used a TENT to save before heading in. I had enough to spare; I had been finding several with SEARCH and that's what these items are here for: to be used. By the time I needed more, I would have more.
The first destination was north. There were three great finds here. First, there was the Short Sword, which gave the three physical attackers a weapon of some kind. The Large Dagger would normally be gold, but there wasn't much purpose as it was. However, to the left of this room in the corner and to the right were two SEARCH finds: first, the Med Cap had been moved here. It gave 2 absorb and immunity to poison. It went straight on my lead. There was also a free Copper Bracelet. More absorb.
My second trip was down to B3 to pick up the Iron Armor. There was a SEARCH find here that would be better if I had a Trainer or Dark Knight: this has the same absorb as Iron Armor with less evasion. That said, there would be a second pair of Iron Armor soon, so the benefit it provides would be very short term.
The WIZARDs came in a two-pack. I used MARBLE ARMOR to increase everyone's absorb before starting the beatdown. It didn't take long before they were dead and the CROWN was in my hands.
Getting out wasn't too much trouble. I had a decent amount of HEALs built up from SEARCH by this point, and I used them to give me some buffer. I ran from everything on the way out; there was nothing dangerous and everyone survived the trip.
ASTOS wasn't going to be too big a problem. There were two ways to go about this. The Geomancer's FORGED IN IRON would boost the damage and crit rate of everyone so they could deal damage to the dark elf. Alternatively if Digger rolled MIRROR out of TERRAIN, that would give the team reflect which he would use to kill himself. I couldn't get that to happen, but eventually, the RUB missed instead and the team won.
This meant it was time to go looting! There was enough lying around in rooms locked by the Mystic KEY that the run would settle into normalcy by this point, except for the limited potions of course.
The hardest thing to get was quite naturally the stuff in the basement of the Marsh Cave. There was a Silver Bracelet and Buckler down there though, so it was going to be worth it. Like before, I simply ran from most of the encounters. There wasn't much point in fighting them with my limited pool of healing, so I may as well take advantage of Thief's ability to run guaranteed.
Here's what everyone's armor looked like when everything was said and done. Weapons were Rune, Long, Dragon, and Iron Staff respectively. I kept the Power Staff since it had a specific use for later.
There was another find in the Titan's Tunnel. Obviously very welcome. Now it was like both Looter and Digger were wearing Chains.
There was a small weapon upgrade in the infamous Hall of Giants. Any little bit helps. Fighting them wasn't too difficult; one of the Geomancer's TERRAIN abilities here was a party-wide heal that was somewhere between HEL2 and HEL3 in power. By now, Digger had two manual charges of it, and could regain more with use of TERRAIN. Digger also found his first bell below, which enhance Geomancy spells of the matching element. In earlier versions, they even enhanced itemcasts - I saw Zeus hit for 300 in the Sea Shrine, for example. Sadly nerfed.
Against the VAMPIRE, I threw up the MINERAL SHELL Geomancy spell. This bestows the Earthspikes buff to all allies, damaging enemies for half the damage they dealt in return. This was the perfect spot to use it, against a miniboss with a ton of attack.
Sarda's Cave had a second Power Staff. So here's the effect of equipping multiple on the same party. This is about where it'd be useful, but only so many classes can use this and most are better off with something else.
The depths of the Earth Cave gave up the Spirit Hat as a SEARCH item, which prevents paralysis when worn. It went straight to Looter: as long as he didn't die, I could escape from any undead battle instantly. COCTRICEs were still a threat, but I escaped them every time they appeared. Some of the team did end up petrified, but I had SOFTs.
LICH wasn't too tough. The first ICE2 hit ridiculously hard, but I had two full-party heals I could pop and Digger's TERRAIN rolled a strong spell that also hit insanely hard. I did forget to equip both Warriors with Rune Swords for the attack bonus, which is now functional in FFR, but it didn't matter.
With the midgame opened up, I went straight to Castle Ordeals. This was a treasure trove of stuff to get. Besides the vanilla Ice Sword, Gold Bracelet, Zeus Gauntlet, and Heal Staff, there were two hidden treasures to obtain with SEARCH. The first of these was the Assassn Dagger. This was 3 points of attack weaker than the Dragon Sword I was having Looter use, but it was 5 hit% more accurate and had 25 more crit% chance! This became his weapon of choice. It's certainly the best for the strict version of this challenge. The second was a second Gold Bracelet. My armor situation was suddenly very good.
The trip through the castle itself went buttery smooth. I can't even remember what I ran into besides a couple of ZomBULLs that forced me to fight. The Zombie Ds were similarly easy to dispatch and deal with.
Ice Cave time! I didn't fight anything I had to here like usual, instead choosing to RUN. The finds continued into here. I picked up another Ice Sword in the rectangular room, as well as an Ice Bell just before this room. There was a Light Axe with SEARCH: going for this actually landed me in an encounter with a single SORCERER. It used TRANCE - which Looter was immune to, because even though it has no element, the Spirit Cap just makes him immune to the status outright - and I escaped.
I used some HEAL and HEAL2s before the EYE to ensure at least one character would be over 300HP to potentially resist its XXXX attack. It ultimately didn't matter because Looter moved first and killed it with a critical hit before the monster could move. Fantastic result to say the least. Click next to see what lies beyond!
Next | Index
Party selection on the original version was fairly obvious. The three mage classes are out, and Black Belt defeats the purpose of the challenge. There were really only three options: go with four Fighters, or use three and one Thief, STR grinding it to take advantage of Katana and its high crit chance instead of getting your fourth Fighter stuck with Ice Sword until the very end. It's certainly what I'd take on Classic Mode with the run bug fixed. But the added classes of FFR opens up a lot of new options for this.
Monk is still banned. Green and Time Mage are also out for buying magic. You could make the argument that Bard and Dancer rely on stuff in towns; it depends on how far you want to push it. Maybe even go as far as to ban Xcalber and Blue Mage teachers because they rely on towns too? Well, I could go super extremist to make this even more of a challenge. Let's think on that one.
Then I thought to myself, could that be possible? Never using any town services including the Clinic and Inns? Not in vanilla. But FFR is a different story. The question was going to boil down to saving.
Well, if I'm going super strict, I'm down to the following.
- Warrior: This will be without Xcalber, but it's still there.
- Thief: Almost certainly a take. It gives a lot of extra stuff with SEARCH.
- Monk: I would allow it here because the party needs all the help it can get. Certainly one to consider, but not to rely upon because that start is going to suck.
- Geomancer: Absolutely a take. It is the only way to use and renew magic. And the only way to heal regularly.
- Lancer: Alternate Warrior. JUMP would be very nice.
- Trainer: Gets some good stuff and only the monster munchies are out by definition. Given CATCH is really questionable in the first place...
- Dark Knight: Alternate Warrior that gets its own options.
Everything else relies upon stuff you can find/do in towns, up to and including restoring spell charges. The question was, how strict do I go? Do I not even class change? The biggest question here was how many saves would I have throughout the game with this. There's 17 or so in the base game, and Thief finds 10 of them spread throughout the game. I thought, yeah, this version could be fun, but I'll save it for later. I want to get a feel for the challenge before I go too crazy. So what about the less strict version?
I settled on this. SEARCH and Geomancer were the big gamechangers in the Renaissance version of the challenge. Magically, I could only otherwise make a case for Blue Mage and Evoker. They're both kind of a hassle in their own ways. Physically, Warrior was obvious. It still is the only shield-user. What about the rest? Trainer is the only other shield-user and effectively has an instant kill move, but is otherwise the weakest of the group. Dark Knight can self-heal with BLOOD WEAPON. Lancer has JUMP. All three have plenty of new weapons to find. A second Warrior was also an option.
Realistically, the problem with Dark Knight and Lancer is that their weapons take until Earth Cave B3 to appear. So they'd be stuck unarmed until then. Possible to tough it out, but I'd rather not. So this boiled down to just Warrior and Trainer. They could both use a lot of the swords and knives that showed up through the game. But practically, Warrior absolutely blows Trainer out of the water. Trainer starts with 7 HIT% and gains 2 per level, whereas Warrior gets 10 to start and gains 3 per level. Their MDef growth is much higher. And despite Trainer being able to use shields, the only option is Buckler and ProCape. The Knights would get the 16 absorb ones, including Aegis. Now, Trainer does get Dragon Armor at least, so it's viable defensively. The fourth Ribbon comes late, but until then (ToFR) Dragon+Aegis+ProRing is ideal. Really though, it's the offensive differences that made the difference here. It may be a bit boring to use two of the same class, but it seems like the smartest option to me. Sometimes you have to be practical!
Also there's going to be no Blessed Bell GEOSTORM. That's too cheesy.
Right away, the presence of the Thief started to pay dividends. In the vanilla game, the first piece of equipment you can find is stashed in the upper floors of the Marsh Cave. Needless to say, getting something much earlier, even if it's only a simple pair of Gloves, was a game-changer. This was just the tip of the iceberg, however.
Before equipping them, I unlocked an achievement for going into battle without any equipment. No, I didn't forget. :)
I decided to get up to level 3 before taking on GARLAND, just for the HP buffer. There was no need for cash with this party. Even under these circumstances with nothing in the way of items, the early game was not difficult by any stretch of the imagination. Geomancer was able to sling AoE magic while the Warriors could still deal enough damage to kill IMPs in a single blow.
Waiting in the Temple of Fiends was a Cap to add a bit more absorb. But more importantly, there was a major gamechanger.
A Scimtar was waiting to be picked up by the Thief! Getting an actual weapon this soon was huge. It went on my second slot Warrior, as he was less likely to be attacked. The Gloves and Cap were on the first slot.
GARLAND continues to be a giant fraud even under circumstances such as these. I started the battle off by having Digger use FORGED IN IRON to give a boost to my offenses. This is one of the few things that allows a Monk to take advantage of attack boosting: iron fists indeed. However, it was the weapon and magic that did most of the damage here. In no time at all, the so-called legendary knight was dead.
I had my first death on the way back from Matoya's Cave, which had another pair of gloves to pick up. I just reset that and started to RUN a bit when things looked dicey.
Bikke's PIRATEs were instantly wiped out by geomancy. Then it was onto the Dwarf Cave for another big SEARCH item.
The Long Sword was even better. 20 power is almost as much as the infamous Silver Sword (23) and 10 HIT% was practically speaking not that far behind 15. Suddenly, this was looking like more of an armorless challenge than anything. Speaking of, the Elves' Castle had a Copper Gauntlet. It was just 1 more absorb over the gloves, but any little bit of extra was welcome.
Now it was time for the Marsh Cave. No beating around the bush or grinding, just heading in. This was the biggest obstacle for Sullla in vanilla. He had to grind a little before going in; the combination of Thief, items to save with that I was willing to use (I would have more by the time I needed more), and already having equipment meant I was able to march straight inside. I used a TENT to save before heading in. I had enough to spare; I had been finding several with SEARCH and that's what these items are here for: to be used. By the time I needed more, I would have more.
The first destination was north. There were three great finds here. First, there was the Short Sword, which gave the three physical attackers a weapon of some kind. The Large Dagger would normally be gold, but there wasn't much purpose as it was. However, to the left of this room in the corner and to the right were two SEARCH finds: first, the Med Cap had been moved here. It gave 2 absorb and immunity to poison. It went straight on my lead. There was also a free Copper Bracelet. More absorb.
My second trip was down to B3 to pick up the Iron Armor. There was a SEARCH find here that would be better if I had a Trainer or Dark Knight: this has the same absorb as Iron Armor with less evasion. That said, there would be a second pair of Iron Armor soon, so the benefit it provides would be very short term.
The WIZARDs came in a two-pack. I used MARBLE ARMOR to increase everyone's absorb before starting the beatdown. It didn't take long before they were dead and the CROWN was in my hands.
Getting out wasn't too much trouble. I had a decent amount of HEALs built up from SEARCH by this point, and I used them to give me some buffer. I ran from everything on the way out; there was nothing dangerous and everyone survived the trip.
ASTOS wasn't going to be too big a problem. There were two ways to go about this. The Geomancer's FORGED IN IRON would boost the damage and crit rate of everyone so they could deal damage to the dark elf. Alternatively if Digger rolled MIRROR out of TERRAIN, that would give the team reflect which he would use to kill himself. I couldn't get that to happen, but eventually, the RUB missed instead and the team won.
This meant it was time to go looting! There was enough lying around in rooms locked by the Mystic KEY that the run would settle into normalcy by this point, except for the limited potions of course.
The hardest thing to get was quite naturally the stuff in the basement of the Marsh Cave. There was a Silver Bracelet and Buckler down there though, so it was going to be worth it. Like before, I simply ran from most of the encounters. There wasn't much point in fighting them with my limited pool of healing, so I may as well take advantage of Thief's ability to run guaranteed.
Here's what everyone's armor looked like when everything was said and done. Weapons were Rune, Long, Dragon, and Iron Staff respectively. I kept the Power Staff since it had a specific use for later.
There was another find in the Titan's Tunnel. Obviously very welcome. Now it was like both Looter and Digger were wearing Chains.
There was a small weapon upgrade in the infamous Hall of Giants. Any little bit helps. Fighting them wasn't too difficult; one of the Geomancer's TERRAIN abilities here was a party-wide heal that was somewhere between HEL2 and HEL3 in power. By now, Digger had two manual charges of it, and could regain more with use of TERRAIN. Digger also found his first bell below, which enhance Geomancy spells of the matching element. In earlier versions, they even enhanced itemcasts - I saw Zeus hit for 300 in the Sea Shrine, for example. Sadly nerfed.
Against the VAMPIRE, I threw up the MINERAL SHELL Geomancy spell. This bestows the Earthspikes buff to all allies, damaging enemies for half the damage they dealt in return. This was the perfect spot to use it, against a miniboss with a ton of attack.
Sarda's Cave had a second Power Staff. So here's the effect of equipping multiple on the same party. This is about where it'd be useful, but only so many classes can use this and most are better off with something else.
The depths of the Earth Cave gave up the Spirit Hat as a SEARCH item, which prevents paralysis when worn. It went straight to Looter: as long as he didn't die, I could escape from any undead battle instantly. COCTRICEs were still a threat, but I escaped them every time they appeared. Some of the team did end up petrified, but I had SOFTs.
LICH wasn't too tough. The first ICE2 hit ridiculously hard, but I had two full-party heals I could pop and Digger's TERRAIN rolled a strong spell that also hit insanely hard. I did forget to equip both Warriors with Rune Swords for the attack bonus, which is now functional in FFR, but it didn't matter.
With the midgame opened up, I went straight to Castle Ordeals. This was a treasure trove of stuff to get. Besides the vanilla Ice Sword, Gold Bracelet, Zeus Gauntlet, and Heal Staff, there were two hidden treasures to obtain with SEARCH. The first of these was the Assassn Dagger. This was 3 points of attack weaker than the Dragon Sword I was having Looter use, but it was 5 hit% more accurate and had 25 more crit% chance! This became his weapon of choice. It's certainly the best for the strict version of this challenge. The second was a second Gold Bracelet. My armor situation was suddenly very good.
The trip through the castle itself went buttery smooth. I can't even remember what I ran into besides a couple of ZomBULLs that forced me to fight. The Zombie Ds were similarly easy to dispatch and deal with.
Ice Cave time! I didn't fight anything I had to here like usual, instead choosing to RUN. The finds continued into here. I picked up another Ice Sword in the rectangular room, as well as an Ice Bell just before this room. There was a Light Axe with SEARCH: going for this actually landed me in an encounter with a single SORCERER. It used TRANCE - which Looter was immune to, because even though it has no element, the Spirit Cap just makes him immune to the status outright - and I escaped.
I used some HEAL and HEAL2s before the EYE to ensure at least one character would be over 300HP to potentially resist its XXXX attack. It ultimately didn't matter because Looter moved first and killed it with a critical hit before the monster could move. Fantastic result to say the least. Click next to see what lies beyond!
Next | Index
