FF3: Solo Magus Part I

The Four Job Fiesta holds side-events on months where it's not active, and the October 2024 one was Final Fantasy III. Unfortunately, the game forces a so-called Onion Risk upon you, a chance of that thoroughly useless job on any job roll unless you grind to levels even solos would gawk at. And getting hit almost made me lose all interest on the spot. It was intended for Pixel Remaster, which I wasn't paying for yet because I'm waiting on mods that don't exist (even if FF3 is the best version of it), so I was always intending to do it not there.

Well, three options. One, play on 3D, where the job is still bad but becomes a weird omnicaster with no stats so it can at least do something. Two, just keep the job dead when the time comes. Possible. Three, item upgrade glitch. Didn't think of it in enough time. Or four: do a solo (or two). Hey, it says to use four jobs and only those four. Using one totally counts.

My selection was Monk, which I'd already done. Thief, hey neat. Onion Knight itself, I wasn't feeling that masochistic yet. Or Magus, a black magic caster. Of course you can tell what I went with from the title.

FF3 is not a well-balanced game. Many jobs exist as straight-across upgrades of the others, like in FF1. But even in the later versions, Magus, or Warlock as it is called in the fanslation, or Majin as the original Japanese calls it, stands ahead of Black Mage in almost every way. As far as NES is concerned, they can use L8 magic and get more in every stat except STR. Later versions change this up and notably give them far less VIT that BM. Still, the big difference is that Magus can use level 8 magic whereas Black Mage cannot. BM does get more low level charges on later versions and can equip more weapons, but big deal.

Actually, on an idle note: in order to use this class this early, I need to stack the cheats. It's not just enough to unlock all jobs. You ordinarily need capacity to change to it, and the level to change to it as well! Normally, you cannot become a Magus until level 30. Easy to bypass of course.

So name? Well, let's use the official name here as a basis. How about Caspar, one of the three biblical magi? But for personal reasons, we'll tweak the name to Jasper, one of its alternate spellings.


One problem with Magus in the early game is equipment selection. They can't use a weapon until the Mythril Rod, which isn't immediately available. Certainly, it wasn't appearing in the first dungeon. This meant sending Jasper to the back and attacking everything with fists. Luckily, even Land Turtle fell to flailing fists while not being able to do enough damage in return.

Another oddity about FF3 is that purchasing spells besides Pure is locked behind the first dungeon. Mercifully, the game has Cure, Ice, and Sleep able to be picked up along the way. Sucks to be players who get magic jobs first in a fiesta, that's all you get.


Here's Sleep in action against the Griffon (sic) monster-in-a-box. Status is in a truly bizarre spot in FF3. It's incredibly potent against random encounters, up to and including being able to wipe out individual enemies with instant death at will. But against bosses? They're immune to any and all, reducing them to just damage rushes with healing if you have it. I believe this and FF4 are the only games in the series that are like this. It's just another reason why it's not really suited for challenge runs.


Sealed Cave wasn't much of an issue, and Ice handily dealt with the boss at the end. There was potential poison problems because I forgot to stock up on Antidotes, but I cleared it before it could prove a problem.

I was able to access the Mythril Rod in the next town, although physical attacks had already passed their prime for Jasper. No reason not to have two of them though, so I picked them up.

As another reminder, when you cast magic on multiple enemies in FF3, at least on the NES version, the damage gets split between them, rather than only doing half damage. The only other game in the series where this is the case is Final Fantasy IV. And uniquely for this game, you can choose to single out certain kinds of monsters with your castings. This poses a unique challenge and generally lowers the effectiveness of mages against groups of enemies. You know, what you would want to use them against? Small wonder it eventually got dropped from the series. At least spells that target multiple enemies by default don't suffer this restriction in both games, but the first such spell would only show up much later on.

This presented some interesting strategy, at least: balancing group-casts with single casts to try to remove threats as quickly as possible.


There was little to worry about in the mini gauntlet, not with a full caster class. There was little threat to Jasper in the back row, and since he was in a caster class, he remained a threat. I continued to fight the whole way through. I picked up the level 3 spells in the Viking base and used them to destroy the Big Rat.

Now for a problem. The Tower of Owen requires you to be a frog to enter it. Unlike in all other games in the series, Toad is a White Magic spell. What I did for Tozus, and indeed, what the Fiesta recommends is turning someone into a relevant job to do that. Problem is, that also kills spell charges. There was a way around the conundrum at least.


Two, in fact: one of the enemies in the tower can cast Toad. However, their accuracy with it seemed abysmal. The other was to grind out a Maiden's Kiss drop from one of these then have someone else do the change. I went with this. It took a while, until like level 21 in fact. Well, more levels help, right?


These PutiMages (the things in the back) were the most annoying opponents on the way up. It was equally impossible to buy EchoHerbs yet, and they could inflict Mute. I had Jasper counter with some status of his own to shut them down. Against Medusa at the top, Jasper just killed her with spells as her petrification missed.

Opening up the outer sea also gave access to a major equipment upgrade. Jasper was able to grab the Scholar equipment from Castle Argus. In spite of its name, it is indeed usable for other classes and provided him with a good defensive upgrade. Of course, it opened up level 4 spells as well.

The Fire Crystal arc went very smoothly. I beat the bosses with spells before they could beat me. Ice3 on Salamandr could do over 1000 damage, killing him in two hits.


There were some annoying encounters in Hyne's Castle that could threaten to stunlock me. Or softlock: some couldn't kill from there. Poison was effective, and Jasper was often fast enough to get it off before they could stun him. Hyne himself was felled in two Fire2 casts. Didn't get a chance to change his barrier. Not much to write about the trip through either.

One problem: job unlocks are tied to plot flags! I noticed this earlier, like the crystals not giving jobs, telling me not to use NESticle to play this game, or the guy walking in and telling me they were burning the village early, but they were harmless. But this time, the main overworld was already unlocked. A bit of fidgeting later and I relocked most of them, allowing me to continue properly.

Lit2 handled the randoms in the Water Cave. Ice3 for the boss: Kraken is weak to both elements, and technically does worse against electrical damage. But the higher base on Ice3 is more effective.


The Sewers were easy as always. I was concerned about Goldor, who heavily resists magic, but Ice3 still did damage. The bigger problem were the Nightmare enemies in his manor, another type of enemy who could stun/softlock. Still, the dungeon was short enough that they didn't get a chance to appear or ambush often.


With the infamous Saronia ahead of me, I decided to grind in the Ancient Ruins rather than on FF3's own Penninsula of Power. There were smaller groups of enemies there. I reached level 40 on the enemies within before going after the big bird. Even the enemies here could just be kneecapped with status.


Garuda is an infamous roadblock boss, intended to be fought with the Dragoon class' Jump and a lot of praying. I'm finding out though that he isn't all that in solos. They simply have too much HP for him to be a threat and can just damage race him. Jasper was no exception to this.

I could access armor and weapon upgrades at this point; unfortunately, the damage boosting properties of the elemental rods are broken and don' work. The magic upgrades come hard and fast after this point: I could grab level 5 spells from Saronia's magic shops (previously closed), level 6 spells were in Dorga's abode, and level 7 spells could be accessed in his village after a short jaunt through the Magic Circle Cave, another mini dungeon that was of no issue for Jasper. Erase would be the most interesting of these: it's like XFER/Dispel in the first two games in how it removes enemy resistances! Except 1) it actually works in this game, and 2) it still won't hit bosses because you can't have anything like that in FF3.


Besides which, the third tier Bolt and Fire spells show up, Bio debuts in the series (non-elemental here), there's Warp (instant death and a more versatile Exit spell in one). Level 7 had Drain, Brak2, and Quake. Since the last spell targets all enemies by default, yeah. It just cooks them. Jasper did only have 12 spell charges for it at this point however. Small problem, but it would be overcome in time. Brak2 is another menace of an instant death spell. Drain would be nice if it worked on bosses but it doesn't.

I went to the Saronia Catacombs for some grinding and the glory of optional bosses: Odin. His infamous Atom Edge special just deals manageable damage in this game, so it didn't take too much effort. I actually suffered a wipe my first go at the dungeon when Jasper got petrified. Oops. Luckily, the offending enemy got killed every single time after that.


It is worth noting that the earlier spells still had plenty of use, since they scale. Here's one such example in the Undersea Cave, another optional dungeon.


And yes, not joking. Instant death is ridiculous in this game. I tore through the Temple of Time dungeon alternating between those and Quake, other spells when I needed them.


These enemies in the deeper reaches of the Ancient Ruins could split themselves. Something to note about this, if you target all enemies (even with a spell that hits everything) and they do so before the action resolves, the spell will not hit them. This was problematic. I countered it with status to shut them down.

Lake Dol, in contrast to my previous two trips down into it with solo characters, was shockingly easy. The key was that Jasper could outspeed and instantly kill the problematic stunlocking/softlocking enemies with a Quake or Bolt3. Leviathan was boiled with Fire3. Yeah, surprisingly not weak enough to electricity and not resistant to fire either.

I'll somewhat arbitrarily split things up here.

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FF3: Solo Magus Part II

Bahamut's Cave had more threatening enemies; particularly the Lamia Queens which could cause a softlock situation. The big dragon itself was the first of many enemies that resist everything and anything, just because. A lot of endgame FF3 bosses do that, and hey: it affects physicals apparently, and the endgame ultimate weapons are elemental. Have fun.


Erase came to the forefront in the infamous Cave of Darkness dungeon. This is a long and winding place filled with splitting enemies with magical resistances. It wasn't action economy efficient, but thankfully, FF3 isn't a game that demands that. I actually did have to Warp out once because I ran out, but played a bit more efficiently and used Erase more aggressively the second time.

The boss just uses physicals. Couldn't win the damage race.


Dorga and Unne were annoying, mostly for the former casting Brak2 on the second part of his spell cycle. Luckily, it could both miss or he could fail to use it, and fell in three turns. Unne was the more interesting one: she used Wall as her second spell. This reflects one spell back at the caster. Unfortunately, using one of the cave's Barrier to cast it on yourself and reflect the spell back doesn't work in FF3. Luckily for Jasper's purposes, Quake goes right through that. (Unluckily, so does Brak2, so I couldn't use them on Dorga either). I just needed to Hi-Potion to avoid her follow-ups.

It was time for the final dungeon gauntlet. I knocked off Titan at the Earth Crystal without incident. This is when you would formally unlock Magus. And in a regular playthrough, it would get obsoleted shortly. Yeah, bad job unlock pacing problems.


By the way, probably should've mentioned this sooner, but running is awful in FF3. It has an incredibly low success rate (unless the Thief's Escape is used), and the runner's defense is reduced to 0 for the turn. This means you can't escape problematic enemies, conserve spell charges as a mage, etc. and just trying can be more dangerous than actually fighting. Yet another reason this game sucks for variants.


Bright side, the Ultimate Rod was here. And what a terrifying ultimate weapon it is. For damage? Uh, no, it's a magical job's weapon. For boosting damage? Doesn't have any and they don't work anyway. But it can inflict gradual petrification on a hit. Two procs and an enemy is dead. There's few if any random encounters this doesn't work on. There's many similar weapons in the game, some accessible much earlier. Single target only, but nice for conserving spell charges.


After passing through, I moved onto Forbidden Land Eureka. Technically option, but it has the ultimate weapons, the ultimate jobs, the ultimate magic, and other stuff available. One of these is the Ribbon, guarded by a weak monster. Unfortunately, it has some holes in its defenses in FF3, but the status and elemental resistances it still gives are still very welcome.


Thankfully, there was a healing spring at the end of Eureka. The L8 spells are exactly as you'd expect: Flare deals massive non-elemental damage and will be the offense of choice on bosses who are immune to all elementals because Good Game Design from now on. The debuting Meteo deals massive non-elemental damage to all enemies. And Death is bad. Not for the reason you'd expect, though: instant death is fanastic, it just has to share space on L8 and other instant death spells do the job just as well.

And yes, I wasn't joking. You unlock the Sage job here. The magic jobs you unlock in the Ancient's Labyrinth would be replaced almost as quick as you got them in the NES version. 3D stuck it there and gave it little spell charges and the inability to use stronger summon effects as a balancing measure, and Pixel Remaster just gave them less in comparison with the other jobs but still plenty. Yet in a casual on the NES, there's little reason not to upgrade here.


I tore through the bosses here without incident. The only one of note was Amon, the Hyne palette and AI swap, and only because he was the only one I fought before getting L8 spells. Had to do some weakness searching, but got the job done.

Had to go back and restock on Hi-Potions before heading up Sylx Tower. I wasn't sure if level 65 was going to be enough, but we'll see.


Here's an enemy being petrified by the Ultimate Staff. I would be getting a free heal after the boss at the top, but it still didn't hurt to do this. More important was to save on potions, which I could do so by employing the Drain spell. Healing around 2000 a shot wasn't bad by any means.

Xande at the top is straightforward: he uses Libra on one turn, and a strong spell the next. Gives plenty of breaks to heal if needed, but I damage raced him without incident without having to.


Also, check out the Magus' hilarious dead sprite in the unwinnable fight after. Fun reminder, there was supposed to be a save point up here. But some tester complained it made the game too easy. And the developers obliged them, possibly out of spite. If I could slap anyone in the game industry, it would have to be that person. Because wow.


This sent Jasper to the final dungeon. But now behold the worst boss of the Dark World gauntlet: 2-Head D. All it does is attack. With 255 attack and up to 32 hits. This is ridiculous, especially against a solo. Your only defenses are the Safe spell (including from very limited TurtlShells) or being in the back row.

It has 29000HP, so Jasper was going to run out of HP far sooner than him. This meant using Elixirs. There are only 23 of them in the game; one which can be used in a plot event. To get more, you need to encounter the Dragons, this game's WarMECH equivalent. Actually more like the Iron Giant equivalent, since you're going for a drop off the rare enemy. I'd done it before, but it takes ages and you're not guaranteed. You could even get Onion equipment instead! The problem is doing this with Jasper is that he uses magic. Can't really effectively hunt them, not even with soft resets.

I got by him once, only to die to one of the other bosses trying to be conservative on the Elixirs, which I would need more of for the final boss. Yeah, this is bad.

So with this, I decided to grind, specifically to level 78. That was when Jasper would hit 9999HP. Which is sooner than Monk, believe it or not. As utterly bizarre and backwards as it seems, it's just how NES FF3 was balanced: later jobs have higher stat totals. I did so in the Salonia Catacombs, because some of the enemies there have a tiny chance of dropping TurtlShells. Not as much as they could though, because of more bad coding. I ultimately got none.


Here were Jasper's stats at this point.

I still lost against the dragon the first time I got back when it moved first before I could heal. That's rare at least, but still another reason why this boss is so horrible. I had made a savestate at the beginning of the Dark World though; absolutely nothing to be proven by making the run up Sylx that many times, just tedium.


I successfully beat it the next attempt. The rest was going to be fairly straightforward. Ahriman and Echidna both cast Meteo as part of their routines. It just meant staying well-healed; like in FF1, enemies in FF3 have a clear order in which they cast their spells. So it was predictable, in other words. Cerberus meanwhile just spams a weak Thunder attack repeatedly. Didn't need to use an Elixir against that.


The final boss uses FlareWave every turn. The damage was much more manageable and less volatile than the dragon needless to say. It was a simple matter of attacking and healing as necessary; DarkCloud could sometimes move first, so I just had to be aware of that. I had plenty of Elixirs to spare at this point...


...so it was just a matter of time.


So here's something fun for you. When searching for Japanese sites for the original version of FF3, I failed to find much of anything. Was hoping there would be some hidden documentation on some of those. But I did find this site, literally translated to Masterpieces to Kusoge. FF3 surprisingly passes the test, but there are a lot of issues in there that are very true. To contrast, FF2 passes as well and it basically says that a lot of the perceived problems with it boil down to misinformation, which results in shooting yourself in the foot, which led to even more misinformation. Having played both original versions, I can say this is indeed the case.

Final Fantasy III is a game riddled with problems, and I can say that with nostalgia filters off, because I have nostalgia for it. Some of it is rooted in the game design itself: the freedom of the job system is weakened by the constant demand to use certain jobs. Or not being able to strategy/status your way out of fights. Even FF1 lets you do that sometimes. If there was any game in the series that needed that fix of a remake, it was this one. If you're going to play it, play one of those. Even the 3D versions which have their own set of problems.

But anyway, Solo Magus. It's pretty good. I wasn't really challenged until the very end when FF3's bad game design really started rearing its ugly head. Solo Black Mage which is more kosher is similar, just without the level 8 spells (forcing Bio against bosses) and weaker spells and health.

So why go this far out of spite? Because Onion Knight's stat growths are laughable. They're effectively an anchor for your party unless you either grind to unreasonable levels: contrast, none of my solos have ever reached the levels needed, or get the Onion equipment, which either requires finding and fighting those infamous dragons or using the item upgrade glitch. Add in limited equipment options, and yeah. It'd honestly be better to leave them dead and have your actual characters get more experience, especially on the Pixel Remaster the fiesta is technically designed for where you can't glitch your way out of it. Furthermore, the "later jobs are better" balancing screws you over a lot more than it does elsewhere. While I do like the idea of Onion Risk in a FF3 fiesta as an analog to the infamous Berserker Risk, it should be optional. Not forced. Hence my names of the dead characters. And I willingly did four Berserkers so, yeah. I'd rather subject myself to a FF3 solo than have to use Onion in a party. Solo Onion included, but I'll cross that bridge when and if I get there.

Though, these side-fiestas are always like this, no special options, so. But the one next month (November 2024) is Final Fantasy Tactics, and I'm definitely interested in that one. If I feel like a playthrough of a longer game.

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