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FFR: Solo Thief (Classic) Part I
Jan. 12th, 2024 09:53 pmI was starting to get a bit burned out of Final Fantasy Renaissance. Need to space out my playthroughs more. Still, I have challenge ideas in me, some of which are linked to achievements.
Beside the Renaissance mode that is the main feature of the remake, there also exists a Classic mode that is effectively the original with bugfixes. This can still wildly change the nature of a playthrough: TMPR/SABR working means that anyone but Black Belt (which it still remains called in Classic!) can abuse the Power Gauntlets. SLEP working means the Black Mage has an easier time of the PIRATEs. The run bug being fixed means that any party that likes to run is going to have a much tougher time of doing so. And of course, the critical hit bug being fixed is the biggest of these. You really can't compare a run on FFR Classic to an NES one in any capacity.
A number of achievements in 2.0 are locked behind this mode. In particular, one for finishing, one for soloing, and one for soloing without class change. This means that the simplest is the Black Belt: despite a slightly rough start, it gets nothing from class change in the original. You don't need to reroll any level-ups unless you're really trying to min-max hard (VIT is fixed every level and STR is uninvolved in the BB's unarmed damage formula). So what about me? That seemed a little easy. Same for Fighter and White Mage: yes, really, it may be memetic but it has a lot of helpful tools that it needs to succeed. Thief would be very hard.
So what about the other two? It would be interesting to do a solo Black Mage and compare it to Sullla's attempt at it years ago on the NES version. Red Mage would cap out at L5 spells. I wasn't sure I would feel them get weaker though: they can still use Sun Sword unpromoted, and they could FAST and slash things to death. They even get TMPR before the Power Gauntlets come into play.
Ah well. Screw it. This is hardly the only Classic challenge idea I have, but If I'm doing this, I'm getting my money's worth.
What makes Thief such a bad character in the original game? It's a combination of a multitude of factors. The first of these is its low STR: you know, what you use to deal damage. If you were to manipulate STR gains on every level, it would end up with less than the Red Mage; the big difference being that the former starts with 5 and the latter with 10. This is pretty bad for a primarily physical class, and it's compounded with low hit% as well. It begins with 5 and gains 2 per level. Again, this is less than the Red Mage, which gains the same amount and begins with 7 hit% instead. The equipment draw is similarly mediocre; it becomes second-best in the game after promoting to Ninja as well as gaining a selection of Black Magic, but I wouldn't be promoting.
The two advantages that Thief is supposed to have are rendered irrelevant on the NES version. First, it was intended to be able to run at effectively (level)÷(level+1) odds. Bugs to the run formula shut this down. Second, the Ninja's ultimate weapon, the Katana, was intended to be one of the few with an appreciable critical hit chance. It actually ends up with more as a result of the bug, but everything else does too. This being fixed in FFR gives them an endgame niche. Except Black Belt still gets more, and this is a solo Thief. There will be no such luck here, and furthermore, the Thief desperately needs critical hits to beat many of the early-game bosses.
But hey, long-term, I can use the Power Gauntlet. So that'll be cool.
James was an obvious name for a thief. Multiple things fit it: Jesse James, James Moriarty, James Hook, James from the Pokemon anime (blue hair too). The latter especially because he's infamously incompetent. And I guess Hook if you stan the Disney one.
I bought a Rapier and a Wooden Armor to start off with. Then, it was off to grinding. GARLAND may be a notorious fraud, but even a solo has to level to survive against him. This meant massacring the local IMP population outside of Coneria. It was all I could really do. A lot of the other opponents were simply too dangerous. It was slow going, but mitigated by the built-in speed up features.
Stat manipulation was going to be an important part of this challenge. I didn't have to worry about LUCK, and INT was also similarly not too important. But I wanted every other stat to increase. STR was important for dealing damage. The other two helped less but every little bit helps with a solo Thief: AGI helps determine evasion and every little bit helps. Every 4 points of VIT results in a guaranteed 1 extra HP per level; note that the HP growth is calculated beforehand, so reaching a multiple of 4 on any particular level wouldn't affect the HP gained on that level. Furthermore, 20-25 extra HP is gained upon gaining a strong HP up (fixed at certain levels). I didn't sweat this too much initially, but I would later on. This guide had a handy table to reference what I needed to get and when. I wasn't going to reference it (or a recent run of this by Sullla) for my challenge, however.
At level 4, I sent James to the Temple of Fiends to pick up the Cap. A single extra point of defense made fighting just slightly easier. Besides that, it was really just a grind. A lot of this challenge was. Still pretty peachy keen compared to what I had to go through with Evoker at first.
Aside, one thing I appreciate about Classic mode, it maintains the original sprites. On Renaissance for example, the Thief on the map is recolored to match its colors in battle. It's a bit different in the original game and this extends to FFR's Classic mode. Best of all, Classic maintains the hairy Black Wizard.
Level 6 is when I beat GARLAND. I had tried at level 4, but some untimely misses after some good luck foiled the best attempt I had. James had 10 STR at 6. There was nothing to it but attacking and hope he killed the knight before the knight killed him. It only took a couple goes at the fight before this lined up.
Now I had access to the north. The first goal was Matoya's Cave for two free HEALs. This nearly went sideways the first time when James got ambushed by an OGRE and three CREEPs! He managed to escape at like 18HP, used one for safety, and was able to run the rest of the way back to Coneria to heal. After this, I tried to fight on the way to Pravoka, but it quickly proved impractical. I had to have James run to make it. There was little chance of beating the PIRATEs yet, but there were two things to buy there: Gloves for an extra 1 absorb, and a Scimtar for an extra bit of offense. It was uh, just one point of offense more. But 10 hit% instead of 5.
It was back to grinding hell at this point. IMPs were still optimal to fight because it was simple and mindless even if it was slow. James would get strong HP ups at level 7 and level 9. He would hit 2-hits with Scimtar at level 10. I figured it was possible at 9.
I got there after a lot of mindless grinding. I actually unlocked a secret achievement in the 2.0 version of the game: buying 99 HEAL potions all at once. Yeah, I earned enough to make that happen. There is nice QoL letting you buy more at once, but it's unavailable in the Classic mode of Renaissance for reasons.
Once the PIRATEs were down to 4 in number, I had James start to use HEAL potions. This was inspired by my fellow soloists Wrolyn and Tandle in the FFR Discord server doing similar things in some of the early fights in their own solos. HEAL in battle is effectively a CURE spell. This didn't work as well as I had expected: he was only very slowly gaining HP back. He actually died on this attempt anyway, but the second time it did work to rebuild him.
I had to get a buffer, kill the PIRATEs down to 3, and try again. James eventually got enough back to safely beat the remaining three. With that, I gained the SHIP.
And then it was straight to the ninth circle of grinding hell.
ASTOS and the Marsh Cave are infamous roadblocks for the solo Thief. The WIZARDs hit insanely hard, both have a ton of defense to break through, and the former has his spells. Most guides recommend going to the low 20s to deal with these issues, but that's with bugged critical hits in play. I figured it was going to take level 26 if not 28: this was when James would get 3-hits with the Scimtar and Sabre (stronger and more crit, but less hit%) respectively.
SHARKs were by far the best thing to fight, paying out tons of experience and just enough gold. So it's at this point that I started taking advantage of what I like to call a grind pattern. It's well known that encounter order is fixed after a hard reset in Final Fantasy 1, and FFR emulates this behavior. A hard reset can be achieved through the Exit to Menu option; as of 2.0, it no longer resets after a game over. A soft reset feature is built into the program. I could take advantage of this to repeatedly fight the encounters I desired.
Here's how encounter zones are...actually, you know what?
I got tired of the inconsistency in map notation between FF Origins and this FAQ , so I used the former's map and put in the latter's notation. The encounter order is listed on AstralEsper's guide, but this page has it as well.
Here are the first 16 encounters in each zone; I cut it off there because 17 and 18 are slots 2 and 4 respectively: bad to mediocre everywhere. The thing that stood out immediately: south of Pravoka wasn't great. GrOGRE would be nice once I could fight it, but I couldn't yet. Everything else was inferior to something else.
The first four encounters around Pravoka kind of sucked. South, everything could paralyze or poison. KYZOKUs were inconsistent to defeat at this level. Big groups of GrWOLFs or MADPONYs were bad news, but were the best option. The WOLF group was nice just a bit tedious. After that was when things got blown open: SHARKs were fantastic opponents: relatively easy to beat and paid out 267 apiece. But two at once could be dangerous, especially with SAHAGs around.
So instead, I went for an OGRE group (190 each) after the two SHARKs. Two was hard but I did win a couple times earlier on. A SHARK with a R.SAHAG was consistent enough though. Then I could fight an IGUANA (153), and after another WOLF group, another lone SHARK on the sea, another SHARK/R.SAHAG, another IGUANA near Pravoka, then I could hard reset.
Getting to level 11 was noteworthy. This is the only level where a Thief is not guaranteed to grow any of STR, AGI, or VIT. You have a ¼ chance of increasing a stat that is not guaranteed. This works out to a one in 64 shot. Yeah. Now, it's not as important to pump AGI too hard as long you reach enough to max out evasion with three uses of Defense. I decided to forgo it on this level because of it. One in 16 is a lot more doable needless to say. Speaking of, since INT now functions, I was sometimes manipulating INT levels when I felt like it or when all three important stats were guaranteed to increase. 12 was one such level, and it also let me get something else. This was when he got 2-hits with the Sabre. It's stronger and with a high crit chance than the Scimtar. I got it from the Elfland shop and kept going.
At level 15, I sent James down to Elfland instead. That was when he could start comfortably fighting the encounters around there, which paid out more than the loop up near Pravoka. I could fight the same GrOGRE encounter as south of Elfland in this little stretch of land here; and I could usually make it over there. Had to save more often, but I was making enough gold that it didn't matter. I kept fighting SHARKs of course: they gave more experience than OGREs anyway. The problem, naturally, was that CRAWLs actually had very low morale. So they would sometimes run away from him: they do if Morale - 2×[Leader's Level] + (0...50) < 80. CRAWLs only have 106.
That was only going to get worse as he increased in level. It meant I couldn't just hold down the button and had to have him target them first. It was the only problem with my plan to get to 26/28. I may have to start making attempts earlier than that if the enemies started to run too much.
I also took the chance to buy a Copper Bracelet. 1000G is normally an inexcusable price tag for something that only gives 3 extra absorb over a Cloth, especially when there's much better things to spend your money on in Elfland. It has the same absorb as the Wooden Armor that a few classes can use without being able to use Chain: which primarily amounts to Thief in vanilla because Black Belt grows beyond that shortly. But James had nothing else to spend his money on. So I figured, may as well for the extra evasion.
I actually beat the GrOGRE/OGREx2 group at one point. This was the highest experience payout that James could reasonably receive.
I hit level 18 by mistake, but I got a perfect level: rolled the AGI and 25 HP from the strong level up. I really wish I paid more attention to that on the early levels; it seemed that James had been getting some decidedly average rolls. He had 321 HP, but he could've have as much as 346; 25 more across 9 other strong HP ups, effectively a max strong HP up in its own right! I wasn't going to be crazy about it moving forward, especially if he needed two stat growths per level (which would be 41, and maybe 30 and 46), but it was something to pay attention to.
Still, things were getting worse. OGREs only have 116 morale. They were starting to run at level 19. CRAWLs were starting to run more often.
So at 20, I went back to Pravoka. This was a little slower, but more consistent: R.SAHAGs and IGUANAs had higher morale, it was closer to the ship where I could keep fighting SHARKs, and the GrOGRE group (124 morale) was more accessible - there had been a few times I'd failed to reach it. I generally fought on the ship except for when I could fight a GrOGRE or IGUANA, using the same cycle of resetting after 16 encounters as before.
I did humor the peninsula of power. I thought that James might be able to handle GIANTs here, but no such luck. He actually managed to defeat a single ZomBULL though. That was cool. But very difficult to replicate.
Things started getting tougher from 21 onward; this was when SHARKs could start to run. It was looking like 26/28 would be impractical to reach. Still, 24 was another strong HP up which should get James over 400HP. So I hung in there.
Eventually, I hit the goal. I would be hard-pressed to push it further than this, so hopefully, I wouldn't have to.
So let's talk about the boss of the Marsh Cave. The WIZARDs have 30 attack and 16 defense. James has 27 attack and 6 absorb. The damage formula for physical attacks is a range of attack to double attack subtracted out of defense. This meant that he would do 11-38 damage per swing that connected; he of course has two hits. So do the WIZARDs; every attack that landed would do between 24-54 damage. The WIZARDs have 84HP each. Even with all this grinding, the odds were not in James' favor in this battle. Critical hits from either side would be painful. And hilariously, they had a 2.5% chance of fleeing from the battle outright.
There was nothing to do or pick up in the Marsh Cave aside from the CROWN. With all the grinding I had done, there was even less point than usual in fighting.
I successfully made it down to the bottom floor on the first attempt. I ran into a three pack of WIZARDs. The first two hit him down to this amount of health. The third...actually ran. Epic.
This was still not an easy fight even against two. It took James three attacks to defeat the first WIZARD. The last attack was a useless critical hit. That left one more to defeat. It kept attacking and eventually knocked James to low health. It was all down to turn order (or a miracle dodge). James went first...and defeated it!
Then I just had to get out. There were still a bunch of stunning enemies running amok in the cave. I held my breath every encounter, most of all when the stairs were in sight. It was...BONEs! Actually, the only paralyzing enemies I had ever encountered were CRAWLs that he escaped from both times before the WIZARDs; and they had a good chance of running themselves anyway.
And yes I was fully willing to abuse the encounter table to manipulate my way through if need be. Surely there was something I could pull with it.
That left ASTOS to deal with. 40 absorb and 168HP. A lot of James' attacks were going to do 1 damage. It was up to critical hits for the most part: he had a 5% chance of any individual hit landing one. All the while, the dark elf would be assaulting him with spells and the odd physical attack.
Level 26/28 for 3-hits seemed impractical. So the only thing to do was throw myself against the wall until it worked. Ready?
1) Killed by the second RUB after a bunch of status spells hit all in a row
2) Instantly dead to RUB
3) Instantly dead to RUB
4) Killed by the first RUB. Not instant at least? 157 health left
5) Instantly dead to RUB. At least he got to move?
6) Instantly dead to RUB. Actually a mirror of the above, dealt the same 2 damage before dying turn 1.
7) Instantly dead to RUB.
8) Ineffective RUB! James did all of 2 damage on turn 1. 8 damage on turn 2, then he got hit by SLO2. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 3 damage. 1 damage. 13 damage. Here comes another RUB...ineffective? 1 damage. 6 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. ASTOS finally ended it with a critical at that point. 125HP left.
Magic accuracy is equal to 148 + Spell Accuracy - Magic Defense, then rolling between 0-200. Equal or less than is a hit; 0 always hits and 200 always misses. James has 61 MDef. RUB has 24 accuracy. 111 is the result. So it's a 55.5% chance of dying instantly. Then since SLO2 is right after that, it's a 75.5% chance of the attempt being ruined anyway with its accuracy of 64; SLOW is later on in the script with the same. Altogether, it adds up to a lot of counting.
9) Instantly dead to RUB.
10) Instantly dead to RUB.
11) Instantly dead to RUB.
12) Instantly dead to RUB. 13 damage attack before that. Thanks?
13) RUB and SLO2 avoided! Then the SLOW got him. Only thing to do was keep attacking, but then second RUB hit. 99HP left.
14) First RUB
15) First RUB
16) First SLO2 hit. If the second RUB didn't do it, accumulated damage would've. 106HP left.
17) First RUB
18) First SLO2 hit. Accumulated damage. 106HP left again.
19) First SLO2 hit. Accumulated damage. Dodged the second RUB? 123HP left.
20) First RUB
21) Lots of physicals before the first SLO2, which hit, because of course it did. Finally got a critical in what felt like forever, but it was for nothing. Accumulated damage, 89HP left.
22) First SLO2 hit. Accumulated damage. 130HP left.
23) Started off with a critical for 102 damage!!! Then the first RUB hit.
24) Started off with a critical for 114 damage!!!!! Then the first RUB hit.
How important are criticals? As I stated, a normal physical generates a random number between the attacker's attack stat and double the attack stat and subtracts it out of the enemy's defense, and does this per hit. But a critical takes that random number and adds it without factoring in defense. Specifically, the formula is (A...2A) + (A...2A - D); both sets of numbers are the same.
So James' 27 attack vs. ASTOS' 40 defense often dealt 1 damage, and could do as much as 14 per hit at maximum. But with a critical, it could do 28 damage at minimum (27+1), and 68 at max (54+14). So those two big hits above were both hits going critical; I noticed Renaissance can be inconsistent about saying how many critical hits you've gotten. And maybe Classic mode doesn't have that feature.
25) First RUB
26) First RUB
27) First SLO2. Damage. 122HP left.
28) RUB and SLO2 missed. But no criticals and bad damage. SLOW hit. Second RUB hit. 124 left.
29) SLO2. Damage. 108 left.
30) First RUB
31) First RUB missed. James did 2. First SLO2...missed! Then a critical hit for 106 damage!! Could James deplete 60HP? I slowed the game to actually pay attention and get any screencaps. 2 damage as ASTOS used FAST. 38 damage, another critical! A very bad critical mind you, but still a critical. ASTOS used a physical for 76. 4 damage. FIR2 does 86. LIT2 does 34. 2 damage. SLOW is next though. ASTOS does...a 31 damage physical. James does...
14! Exactly enough!
Biggest but by no means the last obstacle down. What's next? Well, you'll see.
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Beside the Renaissance mode that is the main feature of the remake, there also exists a Classic mode that is effectively the original with bugfixes. This can still wildly change the nature of a playthrough: TMPR/SABR working means that anyone but Black Belt (which it still remains called in Classic!) can abuse the Power Gauntlets. SLEP working means the Black Mage has an easier time of the PIRATEs. The run bug being fixed means that any party that likes to run is going to have a much tougher time of doing so. And of course, the critical hit bug being fixed is the biggest of these. You really can't compare a run on FFR Classic to an NES one in any capacity.
A number of achievements in 2.0 are locked behind this mode. In particular, one for finishing, one for soloing, and one for soloing without class change. This means that the simplest is the Black Belt: despite a slightly rough start, it gets nothing from class change in the original. You don't need to reroll any level-ups unless you're really trying to min-max hard (VIT is fixed every level and STR is uninvolved in the BB's unarmed damage formula). So what about me? That seemed a little easy. Same for Fighter and White Mage: yes, really, it may be memetic but it has a lot of helpful tools that it needs to succeed. Thief would be very hard.
So what about the other two? It would be interesting to do a solo Black Mage and compare it to Sullla's attempt at it years ago on the NES version. Red Mage would cap out at L5 spells. I wasn't sure I would feel them get weaker though: they can still use Sun Sword unpromoted, and they could FAST and slash things to death. They even get TMPR before the Power Gauntlets come into play.
Ah well. Screw it. This is hardly the only Classic challenge idea I have, but If I'm doing this, I'm getting my money's worth.
What makes Thief such a bad character in the original game? It's a combination of a multitude of factors. The first of these is its low STR: you know, what you use to deal damage. If you were to manipulate STR gains on every level, it would end up with less than the Red Mage; the big difference being that the former starts with 5 and the latter with 10. This is pretty bad for a primarily physical class, and it's compounded with low hit% as well. It begins with 5 and gains 2 per level. Again, this is less than the Red Mage, which gains the same amount and begins with 7 hit% instead. The equipment draw is similarly mediocre; it becomes second-best in the game after promoting to Ninja as well as gaining a selection of Black Magic, but I wouldn't be promoting.
The two advantages that Thief is supposed to have are rendered irrelevant on the NES version. First, it was intended to be able to run at effectively (level)÷(level+1) odds. Bugs to the run formula shut this down. Second, the Ninja's ultimate weapon, the Katana, was intended to be one of the few with an appreciable critical hit chance. It actually ends up with more as a result of the bug, but everything else does too. This being fixed in FFR gives them an endgame niche. Except Black Belt still gets more, and this is a solo Thief. There will be no such luck here, and furthermore, the Thief desperately needs critical hits to beat many of the early-game bosses.
But hey, long-term, I can use the Power Gauntlet. So that'll be cool.
James was an obvious name for a thief. Multiple things fit it: Jesse James, James Moriarty, James Hook, James from the Pokemon anime (blue hair too). The latter especially because he's infamously incompetent. And I guess Hook if you stan the Disney one.
I bought a Rapier and a Wooden Armor to start off with. Then, it was off to grinding. GARLAND may be a notorious fraud, but even a solo has to level to survive against him. This meant massacring the local IMP population outside of Coneria. It was all I could really do. A lot of the other opponents were simply too dangerous. It was slow going, but mitigated by the built-in speed up features.
Stat manipulation was going to be an important part of this challenge. I didn't have to worry about LUCK, and INT was also similarly not too important. But I wanted every other stat to increase. STR was important for dealing damage. The other two helped less but every little bit helps with a solo Thief: AGI helps determine evasion and every little bit helps. Every 4 points of VIT results in a guaranteed 1 extra HP per level; note that the HP growth is calculated beforehand, so reaching a multiple of 4 on any particular level wouldn't affect the HP gained on that level. Furthermore, 20-25 extra HP is gained upon gaining a strong HP up (fixed at certain levels). I didn't sweat this too much initially, but I would later on. This guide had a handy table to reference what I needed to get and when. I wasn't going to reference it (or a recent run of this by Sullla) for my challenge, however.
At level 4, I sent James to the Temple of Fiends to pick up the Cap. A single extra point of defense made fighting just slightly easier. Besides that, it was really just a grind. A lot of this challenge was. Still pretty peachy keen compared to what I had to go through with Evoker at first.
Aside, one thing I appreciate about Classic mode, it maintains the original sprites. On Renaissance for example, the Thief on the map is recolored to match its colors in battle. It's a bit different in the original game and this extends to FFR's Classic mode. Best of all, Classic maintains the hairy Black Wizard.
Level 6 is when I beat GARLAND. I had tried at level 4, but some untimely misses after some good luck foiled the best attempt I had. James had 10 STR at 6. There was nothing to it but attacking and hope he killed the knight before the knight killed him. It only took a couple goes at the fight before this lined up.
Now I had access to the north. The first goal was Matoya's Cave for two free HEALs. This nearly went sideways the first time when James got ambushed by an OGRE and three CREEPs! He managed to escape at like 18HP, used one for safety, and was able to run the rest of the way back to Coneria to heal. After this, I tried to fight on the way to Pravoka, but it quickly proved impractical. I had to have James run to make it. There was little chance of beating the PIRATEs yet, but there were two things to buy there: Gloves for an extra 1 absorb, and a Scimtar for an extra bit of offense. It was uh, just one point of offense more. But 10 hit% instead of 5.
It was back to grinding hell at this point. IMPs were still optimal to fight because it was simple and mindless even if it was slow. James would get strong HP ups at level 7 and level 9. He would hit 2-hits with Scimtar at level 10. I figured it was possible at 9.
I got there after a lot of mindless grinding. I actually unlocked a secret achievement in the 2.0 version of the game: buying 99 HEAL potions all at once. Yeah, I earned enough to make that happen. There is nice QoL letting you buy more at once, but it's unavailable in the Classic mode of Renaissance for reasons.
Once the PIRATEs were down to 4 in number, I had James start to use HEAL potions. This was inspired by my fellow soloists Wrolyn and Tandle in the FFR Discord server doing similar things in some of the early fights in their own solos. HEAL in battle is effectively a CURE spell. This didn't work as well as I had expected: he was only very slowly gaining HP back. He actually died on this attempt anyway, but the second time it did work to rebuild him.
I had to get a buffer, kill the PIRATEs down to 3, and try again. James eventually got enough back to safely beat the remaining three. With that, I gained the SHIP.
And then it was straight to the ninth circle of grinding hell.
ASTOS and the Marsh Cave are infamous roadblocks for the solo Thief. The WIZARDs hit insanely hard, both have a ton of defense to break through, and the former has his spells. Most guides recommend going to the low 20s to deal with these issues, but that's with bugged critical hits in play. I figured it was going to take level 26 if not 28: this was when James would get 3-hits with the Scimtar and Sabre (stronger and more crit, but less hit%) respectively.
SHARKs were by far the best thing to fight, paying out tons of experience and just enough gold. So it's at this point that I started taking advantage of what I like to call a grind pattern. It's well known that encounter order is fixed after a hard reset in Final Fantasy 1, and FFR emulates this behavior. A hard reset can be achieved through the Exit to Menu option; as of 2.0, it no longer resets after a game over. A soft reset feature is built into the program. I could take advantage of this to repeatedly fight the encounters I desired.
Here's how encounter zones are...actually, you know what?
I got tired of the inconsistency in map notation between FF Origins and this FAQ , so I used the former's map and put in the latter's notation. The encounter order is listed on AstralEsper's guide, but this page has it as well.
Here are the first 16 encounters in each zone; I cut it off there because 17 and 18 are slots 2 and 4 respectively: bad to mediocre everywhere. The thing that stood out immediately: south of Pravoka wasn't great. GrOGRE would be nice once I could fight it, but I couldn't yet. Everything else was inferior to something else.
The first four encounters around Pravoka kind of sucked. South, everything could paralyze or poison. KYZOKUs were inconsistent to defeat at this level. Big groups of GrWOLFs or MADPONYs were bad news, but were the best option. The WOLF group was nice just a bit tedious. After that was when things got blown open: SHARKs were fantastic opponents: relatively easy to beat and paid out 267 apiece. But two at once could be dangerous, especially with SAHAGs around.
So instead, I went for an OGRE group (190 each) after the two SHARKs. Two was hard but I did win a couple times earlier on. A SHARK with a R.SAHAG was consistent enough though. Then I could fight an IGUANA (153), and after another WOLF group, another lone SHARK on the sea, another SHARK/R.SAHAG, another IGUANA near Pravoka, then I could hard reset.
Getting to level 11 was noteworthy. This is the only level where a Thief is not guaranteed to grow any of STR, AGI, or VIT. You have a ¼ chance of increasing a stat that is not guaranteed. This works out to a one in 64 shot. Yeah. Now, it's not as important to pump AGI too hard as long you reach enough to max out evasion with three uses of Defense. I decided to forgo it on this level because of it. One in 16 is a lot more doable needless to say. Speaking of, since INT now functions, I was sometimes manipulating INT levels when I felt like it or when all three important stats were guaranteed to increase. 12 was one such level, and it also let me get something else. This was when he got 2-hits with the Sabre. It's stronger and with a high crit chance than the Scimtar. I got it from the Elfland shop and kept going.
At level 15, I sent James down to Elfland instead. That was when he could start comfortably fighting the encounters around there, which paid out more than the loop up near Pravoka. I could fight the same GrOGRE encounter as south of Elfland in this little stretch of land here; and I could usually make it over there. Had to save more often, but I was making enough gold that it didn't matter. I kept fighting SHARKs of course: they gave more experience than OGREs anyway. The problem, naturally, was that CRAWLs actually had very low morale. So they would sometimes run away from him: they do if Morale - 2×[Leader's Level] + (0...50) < 80. CRAWLs only have 106.
That was only going to get worse as he increased in level. It meant I couldn't just hold down the button and had to have him target them first. It was the only problem with my plan to get to 26/28. I may have to start making attempts earlier than that if the enemies started to run too much.
I also took the chance to buy a Copper Bracelet. 1000G is normally an inexcusable price tag for something that only gives 3 extra absorb over a Cloth, especially when there's much better things to spend your money on in Elfland. It has the same absorb as the Wooden Armor that a few classes can use without being able to use Chain: which primarily amounts to Thief in vanilla because Black Belt grows beyond that shortly. But James had nothing else to spend his money on. So I figured, may as well for the extra evasion.
I actually beat the GrOGRE/OGREx2 group at one point. This was the highest experience payout that James could reasonably receive.
I hit level 18 by mistake, but I got a perfect level: rolled the AGI and 25 HP from the strong level up. I really wish I paid more attention to that on the early levels; it seemed that James had been getting some decidedly average rolls. He had 321 HP, but he could've have as much as 346; 25 more across 9 other strong HP ups, effectively a max strong HP up in its own right! I wasn't going to be crazy about it moving forward, especially if he needed two stat growths per level (which would be 41, and maybe 30 and 46), but it was something to pay attention to.
Still, things were getting worse. OGREs only have 116 morale. They were starting to run at level 19. CRAWLs were starting to run more often.
So at 20, I went back to Pravoka. This was a little slower, but more consistent: R.SAHAGs and IGUANAs had higher morale, it was closer to the ship where I could keep fighting SHARKs, and the GrOGRE group (124 morale) was more accessible - there had been a few times I'd failed to reach it. I generally fought on the ship except for when I could fight a GrOGRE or IGUANA, using the same cycle of resetting after 16 encounters as before.
I did humor the peninsula of power. I thought that James might be able to handle GIANTs here, but no such luck. He actually managed to defeat a single ZomBULL though. That was cool. But very difficult to replicate.
Things started getting tougher from 21 onward; this was when SHARKs could start to run. It was looking like 26/28 would be impractical to reach. Still, 24 was another strong HP up which should get James over 400HP. So I hung in there.
Eventually, I hit the goal. I would be hard-pressed to push it further than this, so hopefully, I wouldn't have to.
So let's talk about the boss of the Marsh Cave. The WIZARDs have 30 attack and 16 defense. James has 27 attack and 6 absorb. The damage formula for physical attacks is a range of attack to double attack subtracted out of defense. This meant that he would do 11-38 damage per swing that connected; he of course has two hits. So do the WIZARDs; every attack that landed would do between 24-54 damage. The WIZARDs have 84HP each. Even with all this grinding, the odds were not in James' favor in this battle. Critical hits from either side would be painful. And hilariously, they had a 2.5% chance of fleeing from the battle outright.
There was nothing to do or pick up in the Marsh Cave aside from the CROWN. With all the grinding I had done, there was even less point than usual in fighting.
I successfully made it down to the bottom floor on the first attempt. I ran into a three pack of WIZARDs. The first two hit him down to this amount of health. The third...actually ran. Epic.
This was still not an easy fight even against two. It took James three attacks to defeat the first WIZARD. The last attack was a useless critical hit. That left one more to defeat. It kept attacking and eventually knocked James to low health. It was all down to turn order (or a miracle dodge). James went first...and defeated it!
Then I just had to get out. There were still a bunch of stunning enemies running amok in the cave. I held my breath every encounter, most of all when the stairs were in sight. It was...BONEs! Actually, the only paralyzing enemies I had ever encountered were CRAWLs that he escaped from both times before the WIZARDs; and they had a good chance of running themselves anyway.
And yes I was fully willing to abuse the encounter table to manipulate my way through if need be. Surely there was something I could pull with it.
That left ASTOS to deal with. 40 absorb and 168HP. A lot of James' attacks were going to do 1 damage. It was up to critical hits for the most part: he had a 5% chance of any individual hit landing one. All the while, the dark elf would be assaulting him with spells and the odd physical attack.
Level 26/28 for 3-hits seemed impractical. So the only thing to do was throw myself against the wall until it worked. Ready?
1) Killed by the second RUB after a bunch of status spells hit all in a row
2) Instantly dead to RUB
3) Instantly dead to RUB
4) Killed by the first RUB. Not instant at least? 157 health left
5) Instantly dead to RUB. At least he got to move?
6) Instantly dead to RUB. Actually a mirror of the above, dealt the same 2 damage before dying turn 1.
7) Instantly dead to RUB.
8) Ineffective RUB! James did all of 2 damage on turn 1. 8 damage on turn 2, then he got hit by SLO2. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 3 damage. 1 damage. 13 damage. Here comes another RUB...ineffective? 1 damage. 6 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. 1 damage. ASTOS finally ended it with a critical at that point. 125HP left.
Magic accuracy is equal to 148 + Spell Accuracy - Magic Defense, then rolling between 0-200. Equal or less than is a hit; 0 always hits and 200 always misses. James has 61 MDef. RUB has 24 accuracy. 111 is the result. So it's a 55.5% chance of dying instantly. Then since SLO2 is right after that, it's a 75.5% chance of the attempt being ruined anyway with its accuracy of 64; SLOW is later on in the script with the same. Altogether, it adds up to a lot of counting.
9) Instantly dead to RUB.
10) Instantly dead to RUB.
11) Instantly dead to RUB.
12) Instantly dead to RUB. 13 damage attack before that. Thanks?
13) RUB and SLO2 avoided! Then the SLOW got him. Only thing to do was keep attacking, but then second RUB hit. 99HP left.
14) First RUB
15) First RUB
16) First SLO2 hit. If the second RUB didn't do it, accumulated damage would've. 106HP left.
17) First RUB
18) First SLO2 hit. Accumulated damage. 106HP left again.
19) First SLO2 hit. Accumulated damage. Dodged the second RUB? 123HP left.
20) First RUB
21) Lots of physicals before the first SLO2, which hit, because of course it did. Finally got a critical in what felt like forever, but it was for nothing. Accumulated damage, 89HP left.
22) First SLO2 hit. Accumulated damage. 130HP left.
23) Started off with a critical for 102 damage!!! Then the first RUB hit.
24) Started off with a critical for 114 damage!!!!! Then the first RUB hit.
How important are criticals? As I stated, a normal physical generates a random number between the attacker's attack stat and double the attack stat and subtracts it out of the enemy's defense, and does this per hit. But a critical takes that random number and adds it without factoring in defense. Specifically, the formula is (A...2A) + (A...2A - D); both sets of numbers are the same.
So James' 27 attack vs. ASTOS' 40 defense often dealt 1 damage, and could do as much as 14 per hit at maximum. But with a critical, it could do 28 damage at minimum (27+1), and 68 at max (54+14). So those two big hits above were both hits going critical; I noticed Renaissance can be inconsistent about saying how many critical hits you've gotten. And maybe Classic mode doesn't have that feature.
25) First RUB
26) First RUB
27) First SLO2. Damage. 122HP left.
28) RUB and SLO2 missed. But no criticals and bad damage. SLOW hit. Second RUB hit. 124 left.
29) SLO2. Damage. 108 left.
30) First RUB
31) First RUB missed. James did 2. First SLO2...missed! Then a critical hit for 106 damage!! Could James deplete 60HP? I slowed the game to actually pay attention and get any screencaps. 2 damage as ASTOS used FAST. 38 damage, another critical! A very bad critical mind you, but still a critical. ASTOS used a physical for 76. 4 damage. FIR2 does 86. LIT2 does 34. 2 damage. SLOW is next though. ASTOS does...a 31 damage physical. James does...
14! Exactly enough!
Biggest but by no means the last obstacle down. What's next? Well, you'll see.
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