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FFR: Solo Trainer Part I
Jul. 20th, 2025 08:30 pmI hate summer. I also hate broken air conditioners. Stupid thing barely lasted two years! The window ones would be better, if I was allowed to use them where I live. Technically a human rights violation, but we have other things to worry about than fighting it. During a stretch of cool days in July, I decided to get some gaming in. But I picked FFR instead of my Switch 2 like I should've (hopefully it gets something like the Split Pad Compact soon). To be fair, I got it done in two days.
Well, I was hyped up by something, so I decided to tackle the solo Trainer for tangentially related reasons. Just like in later games, they control monsters. It's a little more complicated than that, but we'll get into that as relevant.
There were many names to pull from, but I decided on something of a weird but fitting reference: Meeko, after an Original Generation antagonist from the Touhou fangame, Fantasy Maiden Wars, which was very recently announced to be getting an official translation after being a white whale of the fanslation community for ages! Meeko is a sheepgirl which fit the aesthetic of the class, but she also controls sheep, so she's something of a trainer herself.
Trainers are a physical class: their starting stats are 10 STR, 6 AGI, 8 INT, 10 VIT, and 10 LUCK. They have 7+2 hit% (same as a Red Mage would). I could buy a Chain for Meeko which is always fantastic for any character to be wearing at the start of the game. For now, the only weapon available to her was a Small knife. In due time, however. There's a lot to go over with this class.
The signature SKILL of the Trainer is the CONTROL ability. This compares HP values against level as a check in some way – it was possible to simply overpower them outright without having to weaken them – and allows you to take control of an enemy for two turns. It works similar to FF5 and FF6: the Trainer's turn is replaced with controlling the enemy. You can have them use any spell or skill they would normally be able to access. Their FIGHT attacks are abnormally strong: an IMP normally wouldn't be able to hit another one for this much damage. They also seem to use the Trainer's own hit% in some capacity. Note that other monsters will attempt to attack the controlled one. This won't break it, but they can kill them. Similarly though irrelevant for the solo, ally attacks will leave them untouched.
But wait, there's more! CONTROL also has other perks! A controlled enemy is considered to be defeated. Not only that, but just controlling them awards bonus experience equal to what they normally give out. This can only be earned once per enemy even if you hit them again after it wears off. The only restriction is that it won't work on bosses, the undead, or the new humanoids and mech classifications: no hijacking WarMECH, in other words. (With this class anyway. We'll see what Mechanist has to offer) I have a list of monster types here. The game will let you know if a CONTROL attempt failed due to a dice roll, the enemy being too strong, or if being one of these classes.
All in all, this made Meeko even more durable than most solos, because random battles were technically two against several. Since monsters attacked their controlled brethren, it took some of the heat off her. Naturally, there's nothing to control in most boss fights, but that's where promotion comes in. I'll get to that in a separate run, because it's worth doing it on a New Game+.
I had to go to level 4 to beat GARLAND, because the Small knife is just that weak. Meeko guzzled a couple of HEALs to get the job done.
The exact formula on CONTROL's success is opaque and strange. The in-game text says it's based off character level and enemy HP, and equipping a whip-class weapon adds 25% chance to the odds. However, Meeko could control a CREEP from the drop, but she had to hit a GrIMP once to get past the "Not weak enough" message – I'm not sure what it could be because CREEPs outstat GrIMPs in almost every way. Similarly, the much higher HP SHARKs a little later one could be controlled without hitting them, but a R.SAHAG could not. She would later be able to control GrIMPs right away, so my only guess is there's an invisible stat in play. Sullla speculates that enemy morale might be the missing part of the formula, which checks out with these.
Unfortunately, OGREs are considered humanoids, so no controlling them for massive early experience gains. Meeko bumped into the double OGREs and had to run: thankfully, Trainer has high LUCK and even very high LUCK growth.
Meanwhile, the PIRATEs were easy with a character with Chain. They could only deal 1 damage at a time to Meeko, so she slowly stabbed them to death. This got her enough gold to make her first weapon upgrade.
Trainers have a special ability called AXE PROFICENCY. This gives +10 to the hit% of any axe they wield. So this humble little Hand Axe bought in Pravoka has as much hit% as the infamous Silver Sword! It's a nice bonus and would bump her up to 2-hits once she hit level 6, for a fraction of the price!
Well, I still wanted to cash grind, so now's a good a time as any to talk about the final special ability of the Trainer: the LURE ability. It says it increases the chance of rare encounters appearing. Mechanically? As long as they're your visible character, which is always the case in a solo, they have a 50% chance of skipping over a slot in the encounter table, unless it's slot 7 or 8. This is mostly a tool to help Blue Mages and with their special post-promotion quest, but it makes encounter manipulation much harder.
The obvious immediate effect was that manipulating KYZOKUs was a little more of a pain. Sometimes even after a hard reset, it would be SAHAGs as the first encounter because of LURE. It's going to make getting through the Earth Cave that much harder, and encounter dodging in the Ice Cave inconsistent. No big deal for now.
It didn't take long to build up the funds for this: Elfland has the first whip available. It's a point of attack weaker than the Hand Axe, but as mentioned, just equipping this increases the odds of CONTROL working. It won't increase the threshold they need to be weakened to if existent, but it is there.
And yes, Silver Sword can be used by the Trainer! They get a small selection: Short, Long, Silver, and Glass (a Thief-exclusive new one on ToFR B5 with a gimmick of high attack and no hit%), with Bane and Beast available after class change. It was technically the best beatstick available, but I chose not to get it for Meeko just yet. Maybe not at all: there were better weapons waiting.
Aside from doing the grind: here's another strange situation: Meeko could absolutely play on the Peninsula of Power. What was the best monster for her to face there?
That's right, TYRO! Only in circumstances like these. She couldn't control ZomBULLs (undead) or GIANTs (humanoid), and FrWOLFs were too numerous. But the big dinosaurs showed up alone, so a few smacks and a CONTROL was enough to beat them and earn a huge chunk of experience! This leveled her up twice in one battle (FFR fixes the bug/quirk from the original that makes warriors only get one per battle). Which, both were bad level ups. But it was there. TYRO is also the slot 7 encounter, so it was always guaranteed to not be passed over.
I got Meeko up to level 10 before making my first runs at the Marsh Cave. And yes, you absolutely can use CONTROL on the WIZARDs! Here's the interface that pops up when you have CONTROL active. The numbers in the bottom right are the enemy's HP. I lost this fight when Meeko's victim was beaten down too quickly to do anything. The second go, there were two, and Meeko's WIZARD one-shot the other one.
Aside, there would be a new piece of equipment here if Meeko had a Thief buddy, which is outside the scope of a solo: the Bone Mail. There's no gimmick to this like the FF5 version of the item, It's simply a Trainer/Dark Knight exclusive item that has 24 absorb and 15 weight: effectively a lighter Iron Armor.
And yes, RUN is there and acts as you expect. A trick I had to have Meeko deal with CRAWLs in the cave was try to go for a CONTROL. If it worked, she could force them to escape harmlessly. It's just a shame I couldn't turn them against the skeletons accompanying them. It'd be fun to be on the giving end of the paralyzing strikes for once.
That second attempt that made it to the WIZARDs got out. So that brought Meeko to ASTOS. And a problem. Her offense was fine, but it could be way better. Most physical classes have some sort of difficulty with him due to his 40 absorb. I could have Meeko buy a Silver Sword to help, but it'd only do so much.
So it was off to the peninsula! As I said, the targets of choice were TYROs. The strategy was to hard reset, burn some encounters until the 7th (helped along by LURE), a slot 7, where I could fight the big dino. CONTROL could work right then and there at this level without having to attack! Each one brainwashed was worth 6774 experience! Meeko was leveling up once per battle against them early on into the grind!
Level 11 was worth noting: strong HP and only INT guaranteed to go up. I had Meeko settle for a mediocre growth with STR and LUCK. Mercifully, this was the worst level to manipulate: everything else is easier.
Did Meeko *need* 3-hits to beat ASTOS? Not particularly. I'm sure it was possible at a lower level. But I wanted to get her the levels anyway to better protect against the legions of the damned in the Earth Cave. Also, wow: I wasn't actively manipulating VIT, but it turned out she'd only missed one point of it so far. That surprised me to see. Of course, her max HP was lower than it could be because I was lazy on the strong HP ups.
In fact, she got hit by SLO2 early on into the winning fight, so the higher hit count didn't matter. But ASTOS decided to attack physically a lot, and Meeko eventually whipped him into submission. A win's a win.
After the business with the KEY, there were two things to pick up. Here's the first of them in Melmond. The Stun Whip is an interesting weapon. While the damage was worse than a Silver Axe (25/20/2 for Meeko), it still gave whip bonuses and had the special property of potentially inflicting stun on hit. This is not to be confused with paralysis: stun is a new status for FFR and is more or less a one-turn version of it. In theory, you could stunlock enemies.
Sadly in practice, the Stun Whip never procs its effect. If I had to guess, it's resolving like an enemy's attack with status: that is, comparing against a foe's magic defense. Enemies tend to have way over 100 MDef. Which also means that's another reason you can't turn paralyzing enemies against other ones. Hopefully, the Stun Whip at least is something that can be fixed in future versions.
EARTHs were also vulnerable to CONTROL. They were good to grind on, although Meeko initially had to whip them once to make CONTROL more consistent. For that matter, BULLs and TROLLs in the cave could be hit as well. Humanoid encompasses less than you might expect. I wanted to get Meeko some additional levels so undead attacks weren't just a coinflip as to whether she'd resist them or not. I was already missing Tyson who basically never had to worry about this. Unfortunately as of writing, every new class in FFR only gets a +2 to MDef on leveling up. +4 and +3 are exclusive to Monk and Warrior respectively.
I got enough levels to get Meeko up to 67 MDef. Then I made my first attempt at the VAMPIRE. One trick I did was switching in a Silver Bracelet over the Silver Armor (which was presently her highest absorb bodywear) once I got down to B3 to activate her evasion. Indeed, she ran into two sets of IMAGEs on this venture, and actually managed to dodge some of their swings outright.
VAMPIRE took two rounds. The big potential threat was DAZZLE, but he didn't use it and then he died. She had to get away from some COCTRICEs on the way out, managing to dodge or resist their attacks. The only other possible threat from the floor was a big group of WIZARDs, but all the dangerous stuff left Meeko alone, so she was able to get through.
On going to get the ROD, I had a weird incident with the undead. Meeko got stunned coming back from Sarda's Cave, but the 5 or so GHOULs in the fight all ran. She was eventually able to recover and get away from the GEISTs who remained. It would've only been a minor inconvenience if she had died. I think LURE gave me back to back encounters. One of the problems with the skill, shown in action.
Now it was time to make the run at LICH. She had a number of deaths on B3, not so lucky this time around. Eventually, she did break into B4, only for the stunning death to occur. I decided to have her add a level and went back in. The next attempt made it through to the boss...who went horrible! No criticals and all his status kept hitting! SLOW missed, but that didn't mean anything. It ended as you might expect. What certainly didn't help was her averaging 50 damage a swing: I switched in the Silver Axe because CONTROL wouldn't matter. It would take several more tries from here to get a winning run.
Next | Index
Well, I was hyped up by something, so I decided to tackle the solo Trainer for tangentially related reasons. Just like in later games, they control monsters. It's a little more complicated than that, but we'll get into that as relevant.
There were many names to pull from, but I decided on something of a weird but fitting reference: Meeko, after an Original Generation antagonist from the Touhou fangame, Fantasy Maiden Wars, which was very recently announced to be getting an official translation after being a white whale of the fanslation community for ages! Meeko is a sheepgirl which fit the aesthetic of the class, but she also controls sheep, so she's something of a trainer herself.
Trainers are a physical class: their starting stats are 10 STR, 6 AGI, 8 INT, 10 VIT, and 10 LUCK. They have 7+2 hit% (same as a Red Mage would). I could buy a Chain for Meeko which is always fantastic for any character to be wearing at the start of the game. For now, the only weapon available to her was a Small knife. In due time, however. There's a lot to go over with this class.
The signature SKILL of the Trainer is the CONTROL ability. This compares HP values against level as a check in some way – it was possible to simply overpower them outright without having to weaken them – and allows you to take control of an enemy for two turns. It works similar to FF5 and FF6: the Trainer's turn is replaced with controlling the enemy. You can have them use any spell or skill they would normally be able to access. Their FIGHT attacks are abnormally strong: an IMP normally wouldn't be able to hit another one for this much damage. They also seem to use the Trainer's own hit% in some capacity. Note that other monsters will attempt to attack the controlled one. This won't break it, but they can kill them. Similarly though irrelevant for the solo, ally attacks will leave them untouched.
But wait, there's more! CONTROL also has other perks! A controlled enemy is considered to be defeated. Not only that, but just controlling them awards bonus experience equal to what they normally give out. This can only be earned once per enemy even if you hit them again after it wears off. The only restriction is that it won't work on bosses, the undead, or the new humanoids and mech classifications: no hijacking WarMECH, in other words. (With this class anyway. We'll see what Mechanist has to offer) I have a list of monster types here. The game will let you know if a CONTROL attempt failed due to a dice roll, the enemy being too strong, or if being one of these classes.
All in all, this made Meeko even more durable than most solos, because random battles were technically two against several. Since monsters attacked their controlled brethren, it took some of the heat off her. Naturally, there's nothing to control in most boss fights, but that's where promotion comes in. I'll get to that in a separate run, because it's worth doing it on a New Game+.
I had to go to level 4 to beat GARLAND, because the Small knife is just that weak. Meeko guzzled a couple of HEALs to get the job done.
The exact formula on CONTROL's success is opaque and strange. The in-game text says it's based off character level and enemy HP, and equipping a whip-class weapon adds 25% chance to the odds. However, Meeko could control a CREEP from the drop, but she had to hit a GrIMP once to get past the "Not weak enough" message – I'm not sure what it could be because CREEPs outstat GrIMPs in almost every way. Similarly, the much higher HP SHARKs a little later one could be controlled without hitting them, but a R.SAHAG could not. She would later be able to control GrIMPs right away, so my only guess is there's an invisible stat in play. Sullla speculates that enemy morale might be the missing part of the formula, which checks out with these.
Unfortunately, OGREs are considered humanoids, so no controlling them for massive early experience gains. Meeko bumped into the double OGREs and had to run: thankfully, Trainer has high LUCK and even very high LUCK growth.
Meanwhile, the PIRATEs were easy with a character with Chain. They could only deal 1 damage at a time to Meeko, so she slowly stabbed them to death. This got her enough gold to make her first weapon upgrade.
Trainers have a special ability called AXE PROFICENCY. This gives +10 to the hit% of any axe they wield. So this humble little Hand Axe bought in Pravoka has as much hit% as the infamous Silver Sword! It's a nice bonus and would bump her up to 2-hits once she hit level 6, for a fraction of the price!
Well, I still wanted to cash grind, so now's a good a time as any to talk about the final special ability of the Trainer: the LURE ability. It says it increases the chance of rare encounters appearing. Mechanically? As long as they're your visible character, which is always the case in a solo, they have a 50% chance of skipping over a slot in the encounter table, unless it's slot 7 or 8. This is mostly a tool to help Blue Mages and with their special post-promotion quest, but it makes encounter manipulation much harder.
The obvious immediate effect was that manipulating KYZOKUs was a little more of a pain. Sometimes even after a hard reset, it would be SAHAGs as the first encounter because of LURE. It's going to make getting through the Earth Cave that much harder, and encounter dodging in the Ice Cave inconsistent. No big deal for now.
It didn't take long to build up the funds for this: Elfland has the first whip available. It's a point of attack weaker than the Hand Axe, but as mentioned, just equipping this increases the odds of CONTROL working. It won't increase the threshold they need to be weakened to if existent, but it is there.
And yes, Silver Sword can be used by the Trainer! They get a small selection: Short, Long, Silver, and Glass (a Thief-exclusive new one on ToFR B5 with a gimmick of high attack and no hit%), with Bane and Beast available after class change. It was technically the best beatstick available, but I chose not to get it for Meeko just yet. Maybe not at all: there were better weapons waiting.
Aside from doing the grind: here's another strange situation: Meeko could absolutely play on the Peninsula of Power. What was the best monster for her to face there?
That's right, TYRO! Only in circumstances like these. She couldn't control ZomBULLs (undead) or GIANTs (humanoid), and FrWOLFs were too numerous. But the big dinosaurs showed up alone, so a few smacks and a CONTROL was enough to beat them and earn a huge chunk of experience! This leveled her up twice in one battle (FFR fixes the bug/quirk from the original that makes warriors only get one per battle). Which, both were bad level ups. But it was there. TYRO is also the slot 7 encounter, so it was always guaranteed to not be passed over.
I got Meeko up to level 10 before making my first runs at the Marsh Cave. And yes, you absolutely can use CONTROL on the WIZARDs! Here's the interface that pops up when you have CONTROL active. The numbers in the bottom right are the enemy's HP. I lost this fight when Meeko's victim was beaten down too quickly to do anything. The second go, there were two, and Meeko's WIZARD one-shot the other one.
Aside, there would be a new piece of equipment here if Meeko had a Thief buddy, which is outside the scope of a solo: the Bone Mail. There's no gimmick to this like the FF5 version of the item, It's simply a Trainer/Dark Knight exclusive item that has 24 absorb and 15 weight: effectively a lighter Iron Armor.
And yes, RUN is there and acts as you expect. A trick I had to have Meeko deal with CRAWLs in the cave was try to go for a CONTROL. If it worked, she could force them to escape harmlessly. It's just a shame I couldn't turn them against the skeletons accompanying them. It'd be fun to be on the giving end of the paralyzing strikes for once.
That second attempt that made it to the WIZARDs got out. So that brought Meeko to ASTOS. And a problem. Her offense was fine, but it could be way better. Most physical classes have some sort of difficulty with him due to his 40 absorb. I could have Meeko buy a Silver Sword to help, but it'd only do so much.
So it was off to the peninsula! As I said, the targets of choice were TYROs. The strategy was to hard reset, burn some encounters until the 7th (helped along by LURE), a slot 7, where I could fight the big dino. CONTROL could work right then and there at this level without having to attack! Each one brainwashed was worth 6774 experience! Meeko was leveling up once per battle against them early on into the grind!
Level 11 was worth noting: strong HP and only INT guaranteed to go up. I had Meeko settle for a mediocre growth with STR and LUCK. Mercifully, this was the worst level to manipulate: everything else is easier.
Did Meeko *need* 3-hits to beat ASTOS? Not particularly. I'm sure it was possible at a lower level. But I wanted to get her the levels anyway to better protect against the legions of the damned in the Earth Cave. Also, wow: I wasn't actively manipulating VIT, but it turned out she'd only missed one point of it so far. That surprised me to see. Of course, her max HP was lower than it could be because I was lazy on the strong HP ups.
In fact, she got hit by SLO2 early on into the winning fight, so the higher hit count didn't matter. But ASTOS decided to attack physically a lot, and Meeko eventually whipped him into submission. A win's a win.
After the business with the KEY, there were two things to pick up. Here's the first of them in Melmond. The Stun Whip is an interesting weapon. While the damage was worse than a Silver Axe (25/20/2 for Meeko), it still gave whip bonuses and had the special property of potentially inflicting stun on hit. This is not to be confused with paralysis: stun is a new status for FFR and is more or less a one-turn version of it. In theory, you could stunlock enemies.
Sadly in practice, the Stun Whip never procs its effect. If I had to guess, it's resolving like an enemy's attack with status: that is, comparing against a foe's magic defense. Enemies tend to have way over 100 MDef. Which also means that's another reason you can't turn paralyzing enemies against other ones. Hopefully, the Stun Whip at least is something that can be fixed in future versions.
EARTHs were also vulnerable to CONTROL. They were good to grind on, although Meeko initially had to whip them once to make CONTROL more consistent. For that matter, BULLs and TROLLs in the cave could be hit as well. Humanoid encompasses less than you might expect. I wanted to get Meeko some additional levels so undead attacks weren't just a coinflip as to whether she'd resist them or not. I was already missing Tyson who basically never had to worry about this. Unfortunately as of writing, every new class in FFR only gets a +2 to MDef on leveling up. +4 and +3 are exclusive to Monk and Warrior respectively.
I got enough levels to get Meeko up to 67 MDef. Then I made my first attempt at the VAMPIRE. One trick I did was switching in a Silver Bracelet over the Silver Armor (which was presently her highest absorb bodywear) once I got down to B3 to activate her evasion. Indeed, she ran into two sets of IMAGEs on this venture, and actually managed to dodge some of their swings outright.
VAMPIRE took two rounds. The big potential threat was DAZZLE, but he didn't use it and then he died. She had to get away from some COCTRICEs on the way out, managing to dodge or resist their attacks. The only other possible threat from the floor was a big group of WIZARDs, but all the dangerous stuff left Meeko alone, so she was able to get through.
On going to get the ROD, I had a weird incident with the undead. Meeko got stunned coming back from Sarda's Cave, but the 5 or so GHOULs in the fight all ran. She was eventually able to recover and get away from the GEISTs who remained. It would've only been a minor inconvenience if she had died. I think LURE gave me back to back encounters. One of the problems with the skill, shown in action.
Now it was time to make the run at LICH. She had a number of deaths on B3, not so lucky this time around. Eventually, she did break into B4, only for the stunning death to occur. I decided to have her add a level and went back in. The next attempt made it through to the boss...who went horrible! No criticals and all his status kept hitting! SLOW missed, but that didn't mean anything. It ended as you might expect. What certainly didn't help was her averaging 50 damage a swing: I switched in the Silver Axe because CONTROL wouldn't matter. It would take several more tries from here to get a winning run.
Next | Index
