FFR: Magicae Minimus
This is just a mini report, so don't expect too much detail here.
It was time to go achievement hunting in FFR. One set that I was eying to get done all at once were the Minimus achievements. These five ask that you complete the game with a mage that buys spells, while only having them learn at most one spell per level. I had already completed the Time Mage version of this on my low level new game+ challenge. So I would be knocking the other four out all at once; this would also help me with a couple other ones. I didn't anticipate this being too difficult aside from the complications from the party composition; it would decrease the mages' versatility heavily, but there were still clear winners and losers in each spell level. It was just a matter of picking what's best.
I also decided I would do it on New Game+ mode (after beating ASTOS on the first file). In this mode, you start out with promoted classes. However, enemy attack generally increases by 1.5x, and enemy HP increases by 2x (notable exception: CHAOS has 4x HP) - no other stats increase. On the other hand, enemy gold yield increases by 2x and enemy experience yield increases by 3x. It was mostly a practical and fun thing: a FF1 vet can easily beat the game at low enough levels to not even get a chance to use higher level magic. That exact thing happened on my third playthrough of the game which used an identical party to this except with a Time Mage instead of a Red Mage. It also starts you out with 10000G. Very nice for a magic party, needless to say.
Even triple HP doesn't stop GARLAND from being an absolute fraud in NG+. I found SLEP useful for shutting down IMP groups early, as well as the PIRATEs later. I went to Matoya's to pick up the Black Wizard's PRIMING trait. New for 2.0, this gives elemental magic a stacking 50% boost if they have already cast a spell of the element in the same battle. Their new FOCUS skill by contrast was worthless: doubling all allies' INT meant nothing with only one other offensive caster and even with three more it'd be better to have them cast a spell as well. The White Mage's new PRAY command, by contrast, was a nice little bonus. It was like having a Heal Staff early, even though it could sometimes do way less (it heals 1-10% of maxHP, the range increasing by 5% per use to a max of 30%).
A peninsula grind was very impractical even with three offensive spellcasters since the enemies hit way too hard; but I got to level 11 eventually. WIZARDs hit stupid hard on NG+ but I beat Marsh Cave on the first try. TMPR+FAST beat ASTOS after he kept refusing to cooperate with reflecting RUB. This also beat the VAMPIRE.
While enemies are stronger, magic and skills remain the same power, for better or worse. Good when they cast since you level up faster and it doesn't hurt as much relative to HP, but also makes the damaging ones worse for you because enemies also have higher HP. Because of this, I decided to try out an instant death build on Black Wizard instead of the expected elemental magic stuff; if I wasn't on NG+ I would've used the damaging magic. If enemy MDef is half of what's expected, they should be more reliable. Between BANE and QAKE, most enemies could be one-shot. Notable exceptions are elementals, ghosts, slimes, vampires, NITEMARE, SENTRY, Frost D and Zombie D, RockGOL and IronGOL, and PHANTOM. He still had ICE3 otherwise and spellcasting items always exist.
Getting to spellcasting items was the most tedious part with this team. Red Wizard can deal passable damage, but the others could not, particularly since I gave Black Wizard TMPR and FAST for long term use limiting his initial damaging spells to FIRE and LIT2. But he used QAKE on LICH: the earth fiend is not immune to earth. You'd normally only be able to kill him this way in the ToFR or with Time Mage shenanigans since it's post-class change only, but NG+ starts you class changed.
This also let me pick up WARDING CIRCLE for the Green Wizard from the get-go. This drops a save point once per dungeon floor. Only TENTs can be used at them, but it still is an incredibly handy ability.
Upon getting the Heal Staff, the question became: should White Wizard switch over to it or is PRAY spam better? With their CLERIC passive, HEAL becomes a heal for 18-24HP at base. 31 INT at the time was adding 15% more, or an extra 3. On turn 1 this was a clear win for the staff: it would need a high roll to match on some characters. This question is always gambling vs consistency, it just boils down to when the gamble becomes worth it. I was thinking 400HP on everyone: that's when just under the initial average of 5% rolls start to heal close to what the staff can. Wasn't close to that, so the staff would be better. Except for the fact that I could use it with PRAY.
The biggest prize in the Waterfall turned out to be the Wizard Staff of all things. Not only were a lot of things vulnerable to confusion, and not only was it more effective with enemies having double HP, but since they had increased attack but not absorb, it meant they were hurting themselves more.
Not much to write about the rest of the dungeons. I did Floating Castle before the bottom of the Sea Shrine to pick up the White and Black Shirts. I picked a fight with WarMECH because I could. It got an ambush turn, then used NUCLEAR. Because of the REVIVALIST trait, the White Wizard revived the Green one just in time to watch it explode to a BRAK. The Black Wizard's ELEMENTAL SEAL makes their next spell ignore resistances and makes it do double damage. Or increases their effectiveness.
Also, behold CURSE: one of Red Wizard's new L8 spells in 2.0. It inflicts a random vanilla status on all enemies. It was fun to throw out on bosses or just big groups. Naturally it was also unreliable since it can just roll poison or darkness . The Bane Sword was usually better; I believe it benefits from Red Mage's accuracy bonus on status spells too.
Also, HADES, the new rare superboss of Renaissance mode, picked a fight with me. I was wondering if that was ever going to happen in FFR given my usual WarMECH luck; it follows no encounter table logic and can just show up, even without a Blue Mage. He used his special ABYSSAL DARK, which is almost certainly a death-elemental AoE move that only did like 60~ to everyone. I didn't actually need seal here, I used XFER to remove resistances first.
This is what my spells looked like at the end. I tried to balance what would be immediately useful versus some long-term stuff; paticularly, skipping ICE2 on BW because of the Black Shirt later; somebody needed FAST anyway. Doubling up on LIFE was obvious, and EXIT helped in many midgame dungeons where you have to escape after getting the objective. Kind of a freaky spell list for the Black Wizard, huh? Like I said, it made the most sense: when enemies have like 600HP, why not just deplete all of it at once instead of mucking around with itemcasts? XFER turned out to be a bust because of ELEMENTAL SEAL (which I had forgotten about), but the only other option was LIF2. Green Wizard had WALL, and FADE was damaging and therefore bad in NG+.
I had two plans for CHAOS and his 8000HP. The first which I thought of from the very beginning was to power up the Red Wizard with FAST, TMPR, and the Power Gauntlet and have him go to town with the Masmune. Hey, funny thing too: CURSE is non-elemental. It could paralyze the final boss. Also yes, TMPR/SABR stacking is quite busted.
The other was to use ELEMENTAL SEAL and BANE or QAKE (ZAP! and RUB work too of course). BRAK would've been ideal, but Ozmo made him specifically immune to petrify because screw you I guess (probably to stop Geomancy nonsense). Hilarious fun fact, BRAK could've worked in vanilla without a 3/256 had XFER functioned: XFER has just over a 1/4 chance of breaking through CHAOS' magic defense and removing all of his resistances, and then BRAK is left with 12 effectivity. Just enough to work.
So that's about it. If you go for these yourself, just bear in mind that what worked here won't necessarily be the best in a more natural party, and being on a regular new game makes some things more or less appealing.
That said, big takeaway I had from this? I'm not sure if I like New Game+'s big numbers. It was fun being able to use instant death spells efficiently, but I imagine it can end up tedium otherwise or with a weaker party.
Index
It was time to go achievement hunting in FFR. One set that I was eying to get done all at once were the Minimus achievements. These five ask that you complete the game with a mage that buys spells, while only having them learn at most one spell per level. I had already completed the Time Mage version of this on my low level new game+ challenge. So I would be knocking the other four out all at once; this would also help me with a couple other ones. I didn't anticipate this being too difficult aside from the complications from the party composition; it would decrease the mages' versatility heavily, but there were still clear winners and losers in each spell level. It was just a matter of picking what's best.
I also decided I would do it on New Game+ mode (after beating ASTOS on the first file). In this mode, you start out with promoted classes. However, enemy attack generally increases by 1.5x, and enemy HP increases by 2x (notable exception: CHAOS has 4x HP) - no other stats increase. On the other hand, enemy gold yield increases by 2x and enemy experience yield increases by 3x. It was mostly a practical and fun thing: a FF1 vet can easily beat the game at low enough levels to not even get a chance to use higher level magic. That exact thing happened on my third playthrough of the game which used an identical party to this except with a Time Mage instead of a Red Mage. It also starts you out with 10000G. Very nice for a magic party, needless to say.
Even triple HP doesn't stop GARLAND from being an absolute fraud in NG+. I found SLEP useful for shutting down IMP groups early, as well as the PIRATEs later. I went to Matoya's to pick up the Black Wizard's PRIMING trait. New for 2.0, this gives elemental magic a stacking 50% boost if they have already cast a spell of the element in the same battle. Their new FOCUS skill by contrast was worthless: doubling all allies' INT meant nothing with only one other offensive caster and even with three more it'd be better to have them cast a spell as well. The White Mage's new PRAY command, by contrast, was a nice little bonus. It was like having a Heal Staff early, even though it could sometimes do way less (it heals 1-10% of maxHP, the range increasing by 5% per use to a max of 30%).
A peninsula grind was very impractical even with three offensive spellcasters since the enemies hit way too hard; but I got to level 11 eventually. WIZARDs hit stupid hard on NG+ but I beat Marsh Cave on the first try. TMPR+FAST beat ASTOS after he kept refusing to cooperate with reflecting RUB. This also beat the VAMPIRE.
While enemies are stronger, magic and skills remain the same power, for better or worse. Good when they cast since you level up faster and it doesn't hurt as much relative to HP, but also makes the damaging ones worse for you because enemies also have higher HP. Because of this, I decided to try out an instant death build on Black Wizard instead of the expected elemental magic stuff; if I wasn't on NG+ I would've used the damaging magic. If enemy MDef is half of what's expected, they should be more reliable. Between BANE and QAKE, most enemies could be one-shot. Notable exceptions are elementals, ghosts, slimes, vampires, NITEMARE, SENTRY, Frost D and Zombie D, RockGOL and IronGOL, and PHANTOM. He still had ICE3 otherwise and spellcasting items always exist.
Getting to spellcasting items was the most tedious part with this team. Red Wizard can deal passable damage, but the others could not, particularly since I gave Black Wizard TMPR and FAST for long term use limiting his initial damaging spells to FIRE and LIT2. But he used QAKE on LICH: the earth fiend is not immune to earth. You'd normally only be able to kill him this way in the ToFR or with Time Mage shenanigans since it's post-class change only, but NG+ starts you class changed.
This also let me pick up WARDING CIRCLE for the Green Wizard from the get-go. This drops a save point once per dungeon floor. Only TENTs can be used at them, but it still is an incredibly handy ability.
Upon getting the Heal Staff, the question became: should White Wizard switch over to it or is PRAY spam better? With their CLERIC passive, HEAL becomes a heal for 18-24HP at base. 31 INT at the time was adding 15% more, or an extra 3. On turn 1 this was a clear win for the staff: it would need a high roll to match on some characters. This question is always gambling vs consistency, it just boils down to when the gamble becomes worth it. I was thinking 400HP on everyone: that's when just under the initial average of 5% rolls start to heal close to what the staff can. Wasn't close to that, so the staff would be better. Except for the fact that I could use it with PRAY.
The biggest prize in the Waterfall turned out to be the Wizard Staff of all things. Not only were a lot of things vulnerable to confusion, and not only was it more effective with enemies having double HP, but since they had increased attack but not absorb, it meant they were hurting themselves more.
Not much to write about the rest of the dungeons. I did Floating Castle before the bottom of the Sea Shrine to pick up the White and Black Shirts. I picked a fight with WarMECH because I could. It got an ambush turn, then used NUCLEAR. Because of the REVIVALIST trait, the White Wizard revived the Green one just in time to watch it explode to a BRAK. The Black Wizard's ELEMENTAL SEAL makes their next spell ignore resistances and makes it do double damage. Or increases their effectiveness.
Also, behold CURSE: one of Red Wizard's new L8 spells in 2.0. It inflicts a random vanilla status on all enemies. It was fun to throw out on bosses or just big groups. Naturally it was also unreliable since it can just roll poison or darkness . The Bane Sword was usually better; I believe it benefits from Red Mage's accuracy bonus on status spells too.
Also, HADES, the new rare superboss of Renaissance mode, picked a fight with me. I was wondering if that was ever going to happen in FFR given my usual WarMECH luck; it follows no encounter table logic and can just show up, even without a Blue Mage. He used his special ABYSSAL DARK, which is almost certainly a death-elemental AoE move that only did like 60~ to everyone. I didn't actually need seal here, I used XFER to remove resistances first.
This is what my spells looked like at the end. I tried to balance what would be immediately useful versus some long-term stuff; paticularly, skipping ICE2 on BW because of the Black Shirt later; somebody needed FAST anyway. Doubling up on LIFE was obvious, and EXIT helped in many midgame dungeons where you have to escape after getting the objective. Kind of a freaky spell list for the Black Wizard, huh? Like I said, it made the most sense: when enemies have like 600HP, why not just deplete all of it at once instead of mucking around with itemcasts? XFER turned out to be a bust because of ELEMENTAL SEAL (which I had forgotten about), but the only other option was LIF2. Green Wizard had WALL, and FADE was damaging and therefore bad in NG+.
I had two plans for CHAOS and his 8000HP. The first which I thought of from the very beginning was to power up the Red Wizard with FAST, TMPR, and the Power Gauntlet and have him go to town with the Masmune. Hey, funny thing too: CURSE is non-elemental. It could paralyze the final boss. Also yes, TMPR/SABR stacking is quite busted.
The other was to use ELEMENTAL SEAL and BANE or QAKE (ZAP! and RUB work too of course). BRAK would've been ideal, but Ozmo made him specifically immune to petrify because screw you I guess (probably to stop Geomancy nonsense). Hilarious fun fact, BRAK could've worked in vanilla without a 3/256 had XFER functioned: XFER has just over a 1/4 chance of breaking through CHAOS' magic defense and removing all of his resistances, and then BRAK is left with 12 effectivity. Just enough to work.
So that's about it. If you go for these yourself, just bear in mind that what worked here won't necessarily be the best in a more natural party, and being on a regular new game makes some things more or less appealing.
That said, big takeaway I had from this? I'm not sure if I like New Game+'s big numbers. It was fun being able to use instant death spells efficiently, but I imagine it can end up tedium otherwise or with a weaker party.
Index