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FFR: Solo Thief (Classic) Part II
Jan. 15th, 2024 05:40 pmThe game opens up immensely upon the acquisition of the Mystic KEY. Lots of treasure to loot! So time to get looting.
There were two noteworthy weapons to find among the myriad of goodies. The first of these was the Rune Sword found in the Temple of Fiends: 18/15/2.5 offenses, and effective against demons (also called magical) and spellcasters (also called mages). It was the Thief's best weapon besides the Masmune in the original version of the game due to having the highest crit chance of any weapon it could use.
But with that fixed, there was also the Dragon Sword in the Dwarf Cave: 19/15/5 offenses. Stronger in every way except effectivity under certain cases. Comparatively, dragon works on...dragons. Hitting a weakness results in a +4 to the attack part of the damage formula and a +40 accuracy bonus (not hit%!)s; this does not stack in the case of hitting multiple weaknesses (such as Rune vs LICH or Xcalber vs a lot of things). Yeah, even though it's bugged and doesn't work on the NES version, it's still supposed to be just a tiny bonus. These weapons also had +15 to hit% and bumped him up to 3 hits. The Were Sword was also here I guess; same stats as the Rune Sword but effective on werebeasts. Only WrWOLFs and CATMANs fall under this category.
Melmond allowed him to buy a Silver Bracelet, which increased his absorb. He could've technically gotten a free one from the Marsh Cave, but it's not like he had anything to spend his money on. He also went to Crescent Lake to buy a Buckler. 2 absorb isn't much; it's the exact same as the Wooden Shield at the start of the game except that Thief and Red Mage can both equip it (as well as three Renaissance jobs). But any extra point of it counts, especially since there were no spellcasting items to take up room yet. That brought him up to 19 absorb. Certainly not very impressive but still a massive improvement over simply 6.
I figured the next step was to gain some more levels. Another strong HP up before LICH would be nice, two would be better. It would also have the added bonus of increasing magic defense; which is relevant in avoiding physicals on hit. Particularly for the Ice Cave later. The question was, where to grind?
I looked at a few different places for starters. The Titan's Tunnel was pretty crummy: a lot of the encounters were GrWOLFs which paid out poorly and were likely to bolt. Slots 1 and 2 are GrOGRE/OGRE mixes. Even the former had a chance to run at this point. TIGER was the 6/7 slot, and while they paid handsomely, they were also likely to run.
What about near Crescent Lake? It was interesting. TROLLS and GIANTs both had 136 morale and wouldn't start to run until James was level 29. But PEDEs had 111 - they were already fleeing consistently! BULLs only had 124 and also had a chance to run. Slot 4 (encounter 2 after a hard reset) has 1-2 GIANTs, slot 2 (encounters 5-6) has 1-2 TROLLs. Slots 6 and 7 are also TROLL and BULL mixes. I could do seven fights, running from the COBRA/SCORPION mixes, before a hard reset. Could I do better?
I looked at the infamous hall of giants. James could win these fights, but it was sketchy. IGUANAs are one of the few enemies in the game with a decent chance to critical hit, and the GIANTs of course hit hard themselves. Furthermore, the enemy numbers here could vary wildly: 1-2 GIANTs and 0-3 IGUANAs. Not ideal. Especially since there was something better right here.
EARTHs are on spiked tiles in front of a lot of treasure chests scattered throughout the cave. They did hit hard, but it was often less than a GIANT fight dealt and they paid out almost as much. James could usually win one on one; the Rune Sword was also effective against them and gained extra power and accuracy. Best of all, they have 200 morale. Anything with at least this much will never flee from battle without glitches or the FEAR spell being involved. This seemed to be the best thing to fight.
But the problem with both of these? They're in the middle of a dungeon. And Melmond has no item shop, so it's something of an inconvenience to keep ducking back out once I started to run low on HEALs.
One thing concerned me about EARTHs: they have a massive 66 attack. They did 47-113 damage against James' 19 absorb. But if they roll the 0.5% chance of a critical hit or so (or maybe 1%), they could deal as much as 245. The last thing I wanted was for a bunch of high rolls to unexpectedly flatten him after a lot of progress. So for at least the first little bit, the safest option was to loop the encounters outside of Crescent Lake. The town was right next door; James can and did jump into the inn there after every single encounter. And if an accident happened, well, because he was constantly healing and saving, no big deal. He could skip over the first and third fights, fighting a GIANT group in-between and four groups with TROLLs and possibly BULLs after before resetting.
That said on some further testing when switching things around for the sake of variety, EARTH fights paid out a consistent 1536 each time. James earned 19968 EXP in 4:30 there on level 27 (that's four and a half minutes). Then it took about 2:20 to go restock HEALs and get back. Just one test of course, but that's still most of a level in seven minutes. So I tried back near Crescent Lake for around seven minutes at level 28, that gave 17925. So ironically the EARTHs were indeed the quicker thing to grind on despite having to run out frequently! Just less safe because of what I said and the two were comparable anyway.
Though it was moot because GIANTs were starting to run...wait, what? Apparently Ozmo made a coding mistake, probably using the ≤ operator instead of < on the morale check since it should never be less than 80 at 28; it can be 80 exactly though. They and TROLLs would anyway at 29 though, so moot.
I did end up going to level 30. It was just a question of grind now or later, and I figured now couldn't hurt. 34/37/19/34/44 were his core stats. As mentioned, level 30 was a strong HP up level with STR and AGI. I decided I'd either accept max HP with STR, or second max with STR and AGI. I got the former quickly enough; I could live without an extra point of AGI in the long run. As long as three Defense uses brought James to 255% evasion. He remained only 25HP behind max. I probably should've grinded out the last level somewhere safer than Earth Cave B1 so I could try for the best option after using a different slot; you can only select your save slot with a TENT, etc. in FFR if you're setting a save slot for the first time. Something to keep in mind for the future.
Anyway, nothing more to do than run the cave.
- GrOGREs. Run and ignore them.
- 4 WIZARDs. James one shot three one after another. The fourth ran.
- 2 IMAGEs. Chance to strike first. Zoom.
- 2 IMAGEs. Chance to strike first. Zoom. No I didn't accidentally type this twice.
That brought James to the VAMPIRE.
Round 1: James moves first, crits, and kills. Easy peasy. But now could he escape?
- 3 WrWOLFs. Run. 2 of them ran before that.
- Here we go, 3 GEISTs and 3 SPECTERs. Swing, miss! Swing, hit. No proc! Swing, miss. James moves and runs!
- 4 GEISTs and 2 SPECTERs. Swing, miss. Swing...paralyzed. He broke out, got paralyzed on the same turn, then got a turn at 172 health. Paralyzed again.
He ded yo.
Alas, getting stunocked and killed is simply a fact of life in Final Fantasy 1. There's simply no way around...ahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Actually, there is. Encounter table, remember? Yes, I'm seriously about to do this. Strap in.
As far as Earth Cave B3 is concerned, encounters slots 4, 5, and 6 are SPECTER/GEISTs, IMAGEs, and COCTRICES respectively. Here's a look at what the encounter table looks like with those removed. There were some stretches where it was possible to avoid seeing these entirely. 186-195 was very good in particular: everything there is either slot 1 (WrWOLF/GrWOLF), 2 (GrOGRE/OGRE), or 7 (MUMMYs). That said, this takes a long while to get up to and is really excessive: I could do all that only to lose at the VAMPIRE.
Maybe the best I could do was try to avoid big stretches of these encounters to minimize my chances of running into a stunning enemy. But if I enter B3 after slot 31, I might only have to face one COCTRICE group, one set of WIZARDs (for what they're worth), and one or two undead groups. What if you add B4 to the mix? Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
So how to do this? Simple: save and exit game outside the cave to get back at the start of the encounter table, reload the save, and soft reset repeatedly when I run into encounters. Once within striking distance, go into the cave and hang around here, and once enough encounters have passed, go in.
So I did just that. My first encounter would be a GEIST/SPECTER mix. With any luck it could also be the only one; I could've delayed by one but I would've ran into undead anyway. But James ran from them before they could move. He was in the little tunnel at the time.
He was just around the bend leading south in the northmost passage when he ran into MUMMYs. These sleep instead of paralyze so they're much less dangerous. Run anyway! In the corridor leading to the VAMPIRE's room, there was a GrOGRE/OGRE mix. Run away.
Get DAZZLED. Then get killed. Welp.
Also, wait a sec. That was off. That encounter slot order was 4-7-2. There is no point on the encounter table where you should be able to fight MUMMYs after a GEIST/SPECTER group.
I cracked it open in FFHackster, just in case. Yeah, the formation guide had it in the right order: Battle 1C is 2-4 WIZARDs. Slot 3. I did some sanity checking; it was SPECTER/GEIST group in slot 3. I then remembered I ran into this before. So I'd just run into another bug/inconsistency in Final Fantasy Renaissance compared to the original game, lovely. The question was, what was where?!
3=GEIST/SPECTER, should be WIZARDs
7=MUMMYs, that's right.
1=GrOGRE/OGRE, should be WrWOLFs
2=WrWOLFs, should be GrOGRE/OGRE
Was it as simple as getting them backwards? I checked a slot 5 encounter, that was IMAGEs. So that was right. It was just those four that were inverted. So I have to change my plans. You may argue that it'd be faster at this point just to try repeatedly. But I'm already too far gone. :) So if 3/5/6 are the slots to avoid instead...
Then this is even easier. There's a big stretch of them early! There seemed to be more to it than this; ARACHNIDs were in slot 5 on B2 for example. But that wasn't important right now. Everything should work out from here.
As expected, the first encounter was MUMMYs before James had even left the lower corridor. He ran before they could move. That was followed by slot 4 in the "step" rooms: it was WIZARDs, 3. None ran, all died in one hit. 3 WrWOLFs and 3 GrWOLFs were next in the corridor on the left side. That brought James to the VAMPIRE again. This was sus: DAZZLE paralysis, then a lot more of ineffective ones. James eventually broke out, resisted two more DAZZLEs, and got the win.
WIZARDs would be again right after, so he healed up after picking up the RUBY. One ran and the other two got one-shot. Another MUMMY group showed very shorly after; James hadn't even passed by the room with 1020G. Ran from them with no trouble. 6 encounters left before the undead show. Should be plenty unless it isn't. I got batblocked in the left corridor. GrOGRE/OGREs in the steps. 2 WIZARDs on the bend...
And safe!
Okay, so can I do that again? For now, I'll assume B4 has the proper encounters. Slots 2/3/5 are the ones to avoid on B4 and slot 2 is the one to avoid on B5. Starting from 44 seems ideal: this kicks off a long string of encounters and by the time I hit slot 3 encounters, I would be in B5. But what about reaching there from B3? There's a big line of dangerous encounters on that floor beforehand.
That said, that stretch is very long. If I go to B3 on slot 44, I should be able to make it through with just one, maybe two COCTRICE encounters. That's 6-7 encounters to make it through B4, which should be enough. Of course, watch the encounters there be wrong too.
So I walked in, a bit later because I derped. Beat the WIZARDs, escaped from the COCTRICEs, then there was a GrOGRE/OGRE group that was no problem. I was headed up to B4 on slot 49. The first encounter should be TROLLs.
And right away, yeah, these are hosed too: slot 4 encounter was IMAGEs. He got stunned, recovered on the same turn, did not get stunned again, and fled the next turn. And encounter slot 6 is next. GrIMP/WrWOLF/GIANT mix. SURELY these are fine, right?
Give me a break, here. It was a chance to strike first though. So this was fine. I kept going, rounding the tunnels for the final northward stretch to the stairs to B5. Slot 1 was next. Should be WIZARDs. They were...
OZMO, SERIOUSLY. Apparently by talking to him, this happened because he used various sources for the encounter slots and picked the "average" between them. I recommended using the monster formation guide on GameFAQs or even FFHackster for verification. Stunned again...
Recovered and escaped. Close call indeed. No more encounters on B4. But that was a slot 1. Another slot 1 is next on encounter 52. And if this is messed up...
ghgfjhdskhkdjgh. THAT IS SLOT 3. 3!!! NOT EVEN THE SAME RARITY!!!! What stupid guides online messed that up?! I mean this is better than IMAGEs, but...okay. Encounter 53: slot 6. Supposed to be MUMMYs. It is MUMMYs. That was right before LICH's room. I am out and up to LICH.
So what weapon to use? LICH has 24 evasion. Accuracy is determined by the formula of (Base Chance + Hit%) - evasion and rolling from 0 to 200; 0 always hits and 200 always misses. The equation in parenthesis is capped at 255. Base chance is normally 168, but if the target is weak to an element on the weapon, 40 is added to the formula. 40 is also added if the defender is blind. The attacker being blind subtracts 40. LICH has nothing that can inflict blind. James should have perfect accuracy with all weapons.
It boils down to extra damage against extra crit chance. Leaving aside the unpredictability of the latter, how does that extra damage shape out? That is to say, would using the Rune Sword over the Dragon Sword work out to killing LICH in fewer hits on average assuming no criticals?
James has 34 STR at level 30. This works out to 17 attack; Dragon makes that 36 and Rune totals 39 with the bonus. Dragon deals 1-32 per hit, Rune deals 1-38. However, there's a lot more rolls of 1 with Dragon. To calculate the sum of consecutive numbers, you use the formula (n÷2)×(first+last), where n=(last-first+1). Then I just need to add the extra 1s to get the average damage per hit.
The calculation works out to 741 for Rune Sword and 528 for the Dragon Sword. So how many rolls would work out to one damage? 39/40/41 for the Rune, so add two extra 1s for 743. 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 for Dragon, so that totals 533. Divide by the range and assuming I didn't make any mistakes, it should be an average of 18 damage per swing for Rune and 16 damage per swing for Dragon. 3 hits each, so 54 vs 48. Divide into his 400 HP, and it means that it will take an average of 8 attacks with the Rune Sword to kill LICH and 9 attacks with the Dragon Sword. That is of course assuming no critical hits. So let's calc those.
Assuming the average, Rune Sword will hit 24 times and Dragon Sword 27 times. We can calculate the odds of at least one critical hit with the formula 1 - (1-Pr)^n, where n is the number of tries and Pr is the odds. 1/40 for the Rune Sword and 1/20 for the Dragon Sword. So the odds of getting at least one critical hit in 24 hits with the former is 45.5358%. And the odds of one of the Dragon Sword's 27 hits being a critical is 74.9655%. Quite a lot higher, and that's just for one crit! Sparing the math and throwing it into a stat calculator, there's a 12.02% chance of 2 and a 2.136% chance of 3 with the Rune Sword. Meanwhile, the Dragon Sword has 39.39% chance of 2 and a 15.05% chance of 3.
Of course, everything is subject to variance. Even critical hits: you saw both high end and low end ones against ASTOS. But all in all? I settled on the Rune Sword. It was close enough that I felt either isn't wrong. At the end of the day, it boiled down to gambling vs consistency.
Turn 1: ICE2 for 57. James does 87. Solid start. Turn 2: 59 vs a successful SLP2. James woke on turn 3 because he was over 80HP and took a 34 damage physical. No paralyze. Turn 4 was LICH using FAST and James doing 103 on a critical. 151HP left on LICH.
Turn 5: LIT2 hit for 37. James hit for 48. 103 left. Then out came the HOLD on turn 6. James did not recover then or on turn 7, where LICH used a 35 damage FIR2. Then LICH did a 110 damage physical. James remained paralyzed. Next turn, James remained paralyzed. SLOW hit. James still remained paralyzed. 121 damage physical from LICH. SLEP. Woke up. Still paralyzed, but then it finally wore off. LICH did 75.
15 from James, 45 from LICH, and that's dead.
Ooookay. I didn't expect to win this on the first try at least. I am extremely disappointed that the encounter table is still mangled. And I'm pissed about it too.
Sigh, so let's update it with this new information, and giving you another look at this. It's funny how the situation with 44-53 is completely inverted.
And this with some updated info too. From the looks of it, my best shot that doesn't involve a lot of advancing the encounter table may be just going in from a hard reset. It wasn't the most ideal option, but anything better is too far to manipulate. Like that stretch from encounter 204 is promising, but if LICH or something kills James again, I get to advance it like 200 more times again. Maybe something I'd do for the Ice Cave, but not here.
So I gave it a try from a hard reset. I got three encounters before B3. A COCTRICE flock, a WrWOLF/GrWOLF group, another WrWOLF/GrWOLF group, and a MUMMY group got in the way. An IMAGE group attacked steps from the plate to B4 and stunlocked James to death.
I repeated it. This time, James got the chance to strike first against the IMAGEs which were encountered in roughly the same place. B4 served up in order: WIZARDs, GrIMPs and WrWOLFs, GIANTs and WrWOLFs (same encounter slot at 5), then up to B5. ARACHNIDS, MUMMYs, and I was at LICH again. Yeah, this seems right: only two bad encounters. Round 2 against LICH. FIGHT!
James did 85, LICH missed! ICE2 did 77, James did 45. LICH did another physical and missed again! And James did 71. This is a fantastic start: LICH is halfway dead and only barely scratched the surface of his spell order. I felt at this point only a paralyzing physical or James doing no damage would do me in.
Round 4: SLP2, woke up. Round 5: FAST and 41. Round 6: two off a max damage LIT2, ouch. But James returned the favor: 116 damage critical hit! LICH had 42HP remaining.
80 was more than enough. A seven-round fight with six attacks. Above the expected average.
Okay, wow. I was not intending to go into this much detail for the Earth Cave. But I did, mostly thanks to those encounter bugs. Also I realized that I completely forgot the Coral Sword. I can get that later, though.
That led to picking up the CANOE and heading into Castle Ordeals after post-dungeon restocking. This was short enough that I didn't feel the need to manipulate encounters. 4 MEDUSAs, they didn't manage to kill James. Up next was...okay, probably a reset. Yup, SORCERERs are in slot 7 in the teleporter maze. They got James with a OHKO. For that matter, I'll need to watch slot 7 and slot 6 on the floor above.
Actually, let's look at it anyway: assuming these encounters aren't mixed up too, next encounters are 1-4-2-1-1-4-6-6. On F2, this is a lot of ZomBULLs (1 and 2) and a MEDUSA group (4). It's R.GOYLEs (1) and MUMMY/WzMUMMYs (4) on F3. I didn't think that would be enough to make it through before more SORCERERs show up there.
Well, I tried it anyway. And one thing that helps is if you don't get any encounters until a few steps here. ZomBULLs were very dangerous opponents: James survived with only 22HP. One of them ran, but it was one he had weakened.
The MEDUSA group appeared before the pillar to F3. One swung, missed, and James escaped. No surprises before I moved up a floor. So order up here should be MEDUSAs...
And it continues. I'm not sure how to feel about this even though it's to my benefit. Escaped before they could do anything.
Okay, this is bad. Those 1s are almost certainly MEDUSAs. Maybe those 6s aren't SORCERERs, but I hope I don't have to find out. I picked up the Heal Staff after running from the NITEMARE, made it over to the Gold Bracelet, equipped it, and held my breath for the next encounter.
Really? Well, the overworld seemed fine, but the dungeon encounter order is looking suspect everywhere. Still, I'd rather have these things than MEDUSAs: they're supposed to be slots 4 and 5 up here. Actually, James got slept, knocked awake, and was able to run as it all happened on the same turn. That's why I was never scared of them in the Earth Cave.
I encountered nothing else, and was able to pick up the last of the big items here. The Zeus Gauntlet could not be equipped by James, but he could use it to cast LIT2 as much as he wanted. So I put it on over the Cap; a loss of 1 absorb wasn't that big a deal. If I needed it/didn't need LIT2, I could switch it. It's worth noting too: empty slots still work as backpacks.
Unfortunately, ZombieDs are undead and therefore can stun and I ran into two of them. James recovered, but he was still killed.
Well, that sucked. I did a full hard reset and tried again. Slot 3 is supposed to be R.GOYLEs, and that is indeed what I ran into. James ran before they could move, got killed by MEDUSAs, and I hard reset again. Same thing happened. So I instead soft reset, pushed the encounters past 7 (a 7 slot), and moved on.
Encounter 8 is a slot 5 on F2: supposed to be MANCATs, instead MUMMY/WzMUMMY. Not complaining about that. R.GOYLEs were next on slot 3, chance to strike first got me out. Up the steps into another slot 5 and another MUMMY/WzMUMMY mix: supposed to be slot 4/5 but it's instead 1/5. Slot 5, there they were again, escape. Slot 1 was next, and again they were there. But slot 6 was next and I was in the tunnel leading south..........made it to the ZombieDs without another encounter! Now, could I win this time?
Just one. I could've considered Zeus against them last time, but physicals were absolutely the answer now. It hit James for 47, James retaliated for 77. It hit for 54, he did a big 155 critical hit. It hit for 70. He finished it with 96.
That's more than enough for this page. I was trying to be super high IQ for this, and I guess I still can be, I'll just have to adapt if I want to use this in the Ice Cave. But after that, James gets Airship access and won't have to worry about status on hit for the most part.
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There were two noteworthy weapons to find among the myriad of goodies. The first of these was the Rune Sword found in the Temple of Fiends: 18/15/2.5 offenses, and effective against demons (also called magical) and spellcasters (also called mages). It was the Thief's best weapon besides the Masmune in the original version of the game due to having the highest crit chance of any weapon it could use.
But with that fixed, there was also the Dragon Sword in the Dwarf Cave: 19/15/5 offenses. Stronger in every way except effectivity under certain cases. Comparatively, dragon works on...dragons. Hitting a weakness results in a +4 to the attack part of the damage formula and a +40 accuracy bonus (not hit%!)s; this does not stack in the case of hitting multiple weaknesses (such as Rune vs LICH or Xcalber vs a lot of things). Yeah, even though it's bugged and doesn't work on the NES version, it's still supposed to be just a tiny bonus. These weapons also had +15 to hit% and bumped him up to 3 hits. The Were Sword was also here I guess; same stats as the Rune Sword but effective on werebeasts. Only WrWOLFs and CATMANs fall under this category.
Melmond allowed him to buy a Silver Bracelet, which increased his absorb. He could've technically gotten a free one from the Marsh Cave, but it's not like he had anything to spend his money on. He also went to Crescent Lake to buy a Buckler. 2 absorb isn't much; it's the exact same as the Wooden Shield at the start of the game except that Thief and Red Mage can both equip it (as well as three Renaissance jobs). But any extra point of it counts, especially since there were no spellcasting items to take up room yet. That brought him up to 19 absorb. Certainly not very impressive but still a massive improvement over simply 6.
I figured the next step was to gain some more levels. Another strong HP up before LICH would be nice, two would be better. It would also have the added bonus of increasing magic defense; which is relevant in avoiding physicals on hit. Particularly for the Ice Cave later. The question was, where to grind?
I looked at a few different places for starters. The Titan's Tunnel was pretty crummy: a lot of the encounters were GrWOLFs which paid out poorly and were likely to bolt. Slots 1 and 2 are GrOGRE/OGRE mixes. Even the former had a chance to run at this point. TIGER was the 6/7 slot, and while they paid handsomely, they were also likely to run.
What about near Crescent Lake? It was interesting. TROLLS and GIANTs both had 136 morale and wouldn't start to run until James was level 29. But PEDEs had 111 - they were already fleeing consistently! BULLs only had 124 and also had a chance to run. Slot 4 (encounter 2 after a hard reset) has 1-2 GIANTs, slot 2 (encounters 5-6) has 1-2 TROLLs. Slots 6 and 7 are also TROLL and BULL mixes. I could do seven fights, running from the COBRA/SCORPION mixes, before a hard reset. Could I do better?
I looked at the infamous hall of giants. James could win these fights, but it was sketchy. IGUANAs are one of the few enemies in the game with a decent chance to critical hit, and the GIANTs of course hit hard themselves. Furthermore, the enemy numbers here could vary wildly: 1-2 GIANTs and 0-3 IGUANAs. Not ideal. Especially since there was something better right here.
EARTHs are on spiked tiles in front of a lot of treasure chests scattered throughout the cave. They did hit hard, but it was often less than a GIANT fight dealt and they paid out almost as much. James could usually win one on one; the Rune Sword was also effective against them and gained extra power and accuracy. Best of all, they have 200 morale. Anything with at least this much will never flee from battle without glitches or the FEAR spell being involved. This seemed to be the best thing to fight.
But the problem with both of these? They're in the middle of a dungeon. And Melmond has no item shop, so it's something of an inconvenience to keep ducking back out once I started to run low on HEALs.
One thing concerned me about EARTHs: they have a massive 66 attack. They did 47-113 damage against James' 19 absorb. But if they roll the 0.5% chance of a critical hit or so (or maybe 1%), they could deal as much as 245. The last thing I wanted was for a bunch of high rolls to unexpectedly flatten him after a lot of progress. So for at least the first little bit, the safest option was to loop the encounters outside of Crescent Lake. The town was right next door; James can and did jump into the inn there after every single encounter. And if an accident happened, well, because he was constantly healing and saving, no big deal. He could skip over the first and third fights, fighting a GIANT group in-between and four groups with TROLLs and possibly BULLs after before resetting.
That said on some further testing when switching things around for the sake of variety, EARTH fights paid out a consistent 1536 each time. James earned 19968 EXP in 4:30 there on level 27 (that's four and a half minutes). Then it took about 2:20 to go restock HEALs and get back. Just one test of course, but that's still most of a level in seven minutes. So I tried back near Crescent Lake for around seven minutes at level 28, that gave 17925. So ironically the EARTHs were indeed the quicker thing to grind on despite having to run out frequently! Just less safe because of what I said and the two were comparable anyway.
Though it was moot because GIANTs were starting to run...wait, what? Apparently Ozmo made a coding mistake, probably using the ≤ operator instead of < on the morale check since it should never be less than 80 at 28; it can be 80 exactly though. They and TROLLs would anyway at 29 though, so moot.
I did end up going to level 30. It was just a question of grind now or later, and I figured now couldn't hurt. 34/37/19/34/44 were his core stats. As mentioned, level 30 was a strong HP up level with STR and AGI. I decided I'd either accept max HP with STR, or second max with STR and AGI. I got the former quickly enough; I could live without an extra point of AGI in the long run. As long as three Defense uses brought James to 255% evasion. He remained only 25HP behind max. I probably should've grinded out the last level somewhere safer than Earth Cave B1 so I could try for the best option after using a different slot; you can only select your save slot with a TENT, etc. in FFR if you're setting a save slot for the first time. Something to keep in mind for the future.
Anyway, nothing more to do than run the cave.
- GrOGREs. Run and ignore them.
- 4 WIZARDs. James one shot three one after another. The fourth ran.
- 2 IMAGEs. Chance to strike first. Zoom.
- 2 IMAGEs. Chance to strike first. Zoom. No I didn't accidentally type this twice.
That brought James to the VAMPIRE.
Round 1: James moves first, crits, and kills. Easy peasy. But now could he escape?
- 3 WrWOLFs. Run. 2 of them ran before that.
- Here we go, 3 GEISTs and 3 SPECTERs. Swing, miss! Swing, hit. No proc! Swing, miss. James moves and runs!
- 4 GEISTs and 2 SPECTERs. Swing, miss. Swing...paralyzed. He broke out, got paralyzed on the same turn, then got a turn at 172 health. Paralyzed again.
He ded yo.
Alas, getting stunocked and killed is simply a fact of life in Final Fantasy 1. There's simply no way around...ahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Actually, there is. Encounter table, remember? Yes, I'm seriously about to do this. Strap in.
As far as Earth Cave B3 is concerned, encounters slots 4, 5, and 6 are SPECTER/GEISTs, IMAGEs, and COCTRICES respectively. Here's a look at what the encounter table looks like with those removed. There were some stretches where it was possible to avoid seeing these entirely. 186-195 was very good in particular: everything there is either slot 1 (WrWOLF/GrWOLF), 2 (GrOGRE/OGRE), or 7 (MUMMYs). That said, this takes a long while to get up to and is really excessive: I could do all that only to lose at the VAMPIRE.
Maybe the best I could do was try to avoid big stretches of these encounters to minimize my chances of running into a stunning enemy. But if I enter B3 after slot 31, I might only have to face one COCTRICE group, one set of WIZARDs (for what they're worth), and one or two undead groups. What if you add B4 to the mix? Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
So how to do this? Simple: save and exit game outside the cave to get back at the start of the encounter table, reload the save, and soft reset repeatedly when I run into encounters. Once within striking distance, go into the cave and hang around here, and once enough encounters have passed, go in.
So I did just that. My first encounter would be a GEIST/SPECTER mix. With any luck it could also be the only one; I could've delayed by one but I would've ran into undead anyway. But James ran from them before they could move. He was in the little tunnel at the time.
He was just around the bend leading south in the northmost passage when he ran into MUMMYs. These sleep instead of paralyze so they're much less dangerous. Run anyway! In the corridor leading to the VAMPIRE's room, there was a GrOGRE/OGRE mix. Run away.
Get DAZZLED. Then get killed. Welp.
Also, wait a sec. That was off. That encounter slot order was 4-7-2. There is no point on the encounter table where you should be able to fight MUMMYs after a GEIST/SPECTER group.
I cracked it open in FFHackster, just in case. Yeah, the formation guide had it in the right order: Battle 1C is 2-4 WIZARDs. Slot 3. I did some sanity checking; it was SPECTER/GEIST group in slot 3. I then remembered I ran into this before. So I'd just run into another bug/inconsistency in Final Fantasy Renaissance compared to the original game, lovely. The question was, what was where?!
3=GEIST/SPECTER, should be WIZARDs
7=MUMMYs, that's right.
1=GrOGRE/OGRE, should be WrWOLFs
2=WrWOLFs, should be GrOGRE/OGRE
Was it as simple as getting them backwards? I checked a slot 5 encounter, that was IMAGEs. So that was right. It was just those four that were inverted. So I have to change my plans. You may argue that it'd be faster at this point just to try repeatedly. But I'm already too far gone. :) So if 3/5/6 are the slots to avoid instead...
Then this is even easier. There's a big stretch of them early! There seemed to be more to it than this; ARACHNIDs were in slot 5 on B2 for example. But that wasn't important right now. Everything should work out from here.
As expected, the first encounter was MUMMYs before James had even left the lower corridor. He ran before they could move. That was followed by slot 4 in the "step" rooms: it was WIZARDs, 3. None ran, all died in one hit. 3 WrWOLFs and 3 GrWOLFs were next in the corridor on the left side. That brought James to the VAMPIRE again. This was sus: DAZZLE paralysis, then a lot more of ineffective ones. James eventually broke out, resisted two more DAZZLEs, and got the win.
WIZARDs would be again right after, so he healed up after picking up the RUBY. One ran and the other two got one-shot. Another MUMMY group showed very shorly after; James hadn't even passed by the room with 1020G. Ran from them with no trouble. 6 encounters left before the undead show. Should be plenty unless it isn't. I got batblocked in the left corridor. GrOGRE/OGREs in the steps. 2 WIZARDs on the bend...
And safe!
Okay, so can I do that again? For now, I'll assume B4 has the proper encounters. Slots 2/3/5 are the ones to avoid on B4 and slot 2 is the one to avoid on B5. Starting from 44 seems ideal: this kicks off a long string of encounters and by the time I hit slot 3 encounters, I would be in B5. But what about reaching there from B3? There's a big line of dangerous encounters on that floor beforehand.
That said, that stretch is very long. If I go to B3 on slot 44, I should be able to make it through with just one, maybe two COCTRICE encounters. That's 6-7 encounters to make it through B4, which should be enough. Of course, watch the encounters there be wrong too.
So I walked in, a bit later because I derped. Beat the WIZARDs, escaped from the COCTRICEs, then there was a GrOGRE/OGRE group that was no problem. I was headed up to B4 on slot 49. The first encounter should be TROLLs.
And right away, yeah, these are hosed too: slot 4 encounter was IMAGEs. He got stunned, recovered on the same turn, did not get stunned again, and fled the next turn. And encounter slot 6 is next. GrIMP/WrWOLF/GIANT mix. SURELY these are fine, right?
Give me a break, here. It was a chance to strike first though. So this was fine. I kept going, rounding the tunnels for the final northward stretch to the stairs to B5. Slot 1 was next. Should be WIZARDs. They were...
OZMO, SERIOUSLY. Apparently by talking to him, this happened because he used various sources for the encounter slots and picked the "average" between them. I recommended using the monster formation guide on GameFAQs or even FFHackster for verification. Stunned again...
Recovered and escaped. Close call indeed. No more encounters on B4. But that was a slot 1. Another slot 1 is next on encounter 52. And if this is messed up...
ghgfjhdskhkdjgh. THAT IS SLOT 3. 3!!! NOT EVEN THE SAME RARITY!!!! What stupid guides online messed that up?! I mean this is better than IMAGEs, but...okay. Encounter 53: slot 6. Supposed to be MUMMYs. It is MUMMYs. That was right before LICH's room. I am out and up to LICH.
So what weapon to use? LICH has 24 evasion. Accuracy is determined by the formula of (Base Chance + Hit%) - evasion and rolling from 0 to 200; 0 always hits and 200 always misses. The equation in parenthesis is capped at 255. Base chance is normally 168, but if the target is weak to an element on the weapon, 40 is added to the formula. 40 is also added if the defender is blind. The attacker being blind subtracts 40. LICH has nothing that can inflict blind. James should have perfect accuracy with all weapons.
It boils down to extra damage against extra crit chance. Leaving aside the unpredictability of the latter, how does that extra damage shape out? That is to say, would using the Rune Sword over the Dragon Sword work out to killing LICH in fewer hits on average assuming no criticals?
James has 34 STR at level 30. This works out to 17 attack; Dragon makes that 36 and Rune totals 39 with the bonus. Dragon deals 1-32 per hit, Rune deals 1-38. However, there's a lot more rolls of 1 with Dragon. To calculate the sum of consecutive numbers, you use the formula (n÷2)×(first+last), where n=(last-first+1). Then I just need to add the extra 1s to get the average damage per hit.
The calculation works out to 741 for Rune Sword and 528 for the Dragon Sword. So how many rolls would work out to one damage? 39/40/41 for the Rune, so add two extra 1s for 743. 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 for Dragon, so that totals 533. Divide by the range and assuming I didn't make any mistakes, it should be an average of 18 damage per swing for Rune and 16 damage per swing for Dragon. 3 hits each, so 54 vs 48. Divide into his 400 HP, and it means that it will take an average of 8 attacks with the Rune Sword to kill LICH and 9 attacks with the Dragon Sword. That is of course assuming no critical hits. So let's calc those.
Assuming the average, Rune Sword will hit 24 times and Dragon Sword 27 times. We can calculate the odds of at least one critical hit with the formula 1 - (1-Pr)^n, where n is the number of tries and Pr is the odds. 1/40 for the Rune Sword and 1/20 for the Dragon Sword. So the odds of getting at least one critical hit in 24 hits with the former is 45.5358%. And the odds of one of the Dragon Sword's 27 hits being a critical is 74.9655%. Quite a lot higher, and that's just for one crit! Sparing the math and throwing it into a stat calculator, there's a 12.02% chance of 2 and a 2.136% chance of 3 with the Rune Sword. Meanwhile, the Dragon Sword has 39.39% chance of 2 and a 15.05% chance of 3.
Of course, everything is subject to variance. Even critical hits: you saw both high end and low end ones against ASTOS. But all in all? I settled on the Rune Sword. It was close enough that I felt either isn't wrong. At the end of the day, it boiled down to gambling vs consistency.
Turn 1: ICE2 for 57. James does 87. Solid start. Turn 2: 59 vs a successful SLP2. James woke on turn 3 because he was over 80HP and took a 34 damage physical. No paralyze. Turn 4 was LICH using FAST and James doing 103 on a critical. 151HP left on LICH.
Turn 5: LIT2 hit for 37. James hit for 48. 103 left. Then out came the HOLD on turn 6. James did not recover then or on turn 7, where LICH used a 35 damage FIR2. Then LICH did a 110 damage physical. James remained paralyzed. Next turn, James remained paralyzed. SLOW hit. James still remained paralyzed. 121 damage physical from LICH. SLEP. Woke up. Still paralyzed, but then it finally wore off. LICH did 75.
15 from James, 45 from LICH, and that's dead.
Ooookay. I didn't expect to win this on the first try at least. I am extremely disappointed that the encounter table is still mangled. And I'm pissed about it too.
Sigh, so let's update it with this new information, and giving you another look at this. It's funny how the situation with 44-53 is completely inverted.
And this with some updated info too. From the looks of it, my best shot that doesn't involve a lot of advancing the encounter table may be just going in from a hard reset. It wasn't the most ideal option, but anything better is too far to manipulate. Like that stretch from encounter 204 is promising, but if LICH or something kills James again, I get to advance it like 200 more times again. Maybe something I'd do for the Ice Cave, but not here.
So I gave it a try from a hard reset. I got three encounters before B3. A COCTRICE flock, a WrWOLF/GrWOLF group, another WrWOLF/GrWOLF group, and a MUMMY group got in the way. An IMAGE group attacked steps from the plate to B4 and stunlocked James to death.
I repeated it. This time, James got the chance to strike first against the IMAGEs which were encountered in roughly the same place. B4 served up in order: WIZARDs, GrIMPs and WrWOLFs, GIANTs and WrWOLFs (same encounter slot at 5), then up to B5. ARACHNIDS, MUMMYs, and I was at LICH again. Yeah, this seems right: only two bad encounters. Round 2 against LICH. FIGHT!
James did 85, LICH missed! ICE2 did 77, James did 45. LICH did another physical and missed again! And James did 71. This is a fantastic start: LICH is halfway dead and only barely scratched the surface of his spell order. I felt at this point only a paralyzing physical or James doing no damage would do me in.
Round 4: SLP2, woke up. Round 5: FAST and 41. Round 6: two off a max damage LIT2, ouch. But James returned the favor: 116 damage critical hit! LICH had 42HP remaining.
80 was more than enough. A seven-round fight with six attacks. Above the expected average.
Okay, wow. I was not intending to go into this much detail for the Earth Cave. But I did, mostly thanks to those encounter bugs. Also I realized that I completely forgot the Coral Sword. I can get that later, though.
That led to picking up the CANOE and heading into Castle Ordeals after post-dungeon restocking. This was short enough that I didn't feel the need to manipulate encounters. 4 MEDUSAs, they didn't manage to kill James. Up next was...okay, probably a reset. Yup, SORCERERs are in slot 7 in the teleporter maze. They got James with a OHKO. For that matter, I'll need to watch slot 7 and slot 6 on the floor above.
Actually, let's look at it anyway: assuming these encounters aren't mixed up too, next encounters are 1-4-2-1-1-4-6-6. On F2, this is a lot of ZomBULLs (1 and 2) and a MEDUSA group (4). It's R.GOYLEs (1) and MUMMY/WzMUMMYs (4) on F3. I didn't think that would be enough to make it through before more SORCERERs show up there.
Well, I tried it anyway. And one thing that helps is if you don't get any encounters until a few steps here. ZomBULLs were very dangerous opponents: James survived with only 22HP. One of them ran, but it was one he had weakened.
The MEDUSA group appeared before the pillar to F3. One swung, missed, and James escaped. No surprises before I moved up a floor. So order up here should be MEDUSAs...
And it continues. I'm not sure how to feel about this even though it's to my benefit. Escaped before they could do anything.
Okay, this is bad. Those 1s are almost certainly MEDUSAs. Maybe those 6s aren't SORCERERs, but I hope I don't have to find out. I picked up the Heal Staff after running from the NITEMARE, made it over to the Gold Bracelet, equipped it, and held my breath for the next encounter.
Really? Well, the overworld seemed fine, but the dungeon encounter order is looking suspect everywhere. Still, I'd rather have these things than MEDUSAs: they're supposed to be slots 4 and 5 up here. Actually, James got slept, knocked awake, and was able to run as it all happened on the same turn. That's why I was never scared of them in the Earth Cave.
I encountered nothing else, and was able to pick up the last of the big items here. The Zeus Gauntlet could not be equipped by James, but he could use it to cast LIT2 as much as he wanted. So I put it on over the Cap; a loss of 1 absorb wasn't that big a deal. If I needed it/didn't need LIT2, I could switch it. It's worth noting too: empty slots still work as backpacks.
Unfortunately, ZombieDs are undead and therefore can stun and I ran into two of them. James recovered, but he was still killed.
Well, that sucked. I did a full hard reset and tried again. Slot 3 is supposed to be R.GOYLEs, and that is indeed what I ran into. James ran before they could move, got killed by MEDUSAs, and I hard reset again. Same thing happened. So I instead soft reset, pushed the encounters past 7 (a 7 slot), and moved on.
Encounter 8 is a slot 5 on F2: supposed to be MANCATs, instead MUMMY/WzMUMMY. Not complaining about that. R.GOYLEs were next on slot 3, chance to strike first got me out. Up the steps into another slot 5 and another MUMMY/WzMUMMY mix: supposed to be slot 4/5 but it's instead 1/5. Slot 5, there they were again, escape. Slot 1 was next, and again they were there. But slot 6 was next and I was in the tunnel leading south..........made it to the ZombieDs without another encounter! Now, could I win this time?
Just one. I could've considered Zeus against them last time, but physicals were absolutely the answer now. It hit James for 47, James retaliated for 77. It hit for 54, he did a big 155 critical hit. It hit for 70. He finished it with 96.
That's more than enough for this page. I was trying to be super high IQ for this, and I guess I still can be, I'll just have to adapt if I want to use this in the Ice Cave. But after that, James gets Airship access and won't have to worry about status on hit for the most part.
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