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sirsystemerror) wrote2019-09-18 04:41 pm
sirsystemerror) wrote2019-09-18 04:41 pm
FF1 No Items Part I
Randomly while watching gyre do a no FIGHT challenge - similar to my own Spellslingers just able to use items as well - the subject of a run that didn't use potions came up in chat. This of course isn't that bad, as the Heal staff and Sullla's own Living off the Land challenge proves. I got to thinking though, what if you ditch those too? Many playthroughs of FF1, particularly challenge runs, rely upon gallons of potions and/or stalling in battles with healing items to restore health. But what if you throw those out, leaving only magic for healing, what happens then? It sounded fun, so I got to thinking about it.
Party composition on this. Obviously, there are two things to consider here: killing enemies quickly, and a lot of healing. The last of those certainly meant not one, but two White Mages. As part of killing enemies quickly, this also means having FAST. So a Red Mage is the next choice, who also gives even more white charges.
And for slot four...What? You are seeing that correctly, and thinking about the party composition is what inspired me to actually go through with this. For possibly the first time in the history of FF1 NES*, there is a valid reason to consider the Thief. Let's look at all of them first. Another White Mage is out, that would be far too little offense. A Black Mage would be far too squishy to consider - part of this is avoiding damage in the first place. I ruled out Black Belt for a couple reasons, like MDef on class change concerns and not wanting to snap the game in half by it simply existing if I have to grind high.
So Fighter, the tried and true and obvious, right? It's a strong choice here to be sure, but you'll only have the one FAST user, who is also a secondary attacker. How about another Red? An option, but one that isn't as bulky long-term. The Thief, or more specifically the Ninja, gets both of these. It can wear most of the heavy armor, its offense is very similar to RM if not better, and gets enough charges to be meaningful. The catch with it of course is suffering through the early game, and stat resetting - which you'd have to do with Red too mind you.
Fighter is probably the smart pick, but come on. When else are you going to have a solid case to use a Thief in FF1 NES?! I just have to.
The starting gold was easy to figure out. Weapons and armor for everyone, and CURE spells for the White Mages, and eventually Buff as well. Even early on, the lack of meaty Fighter attacks was noticeable. This will be mitigated to some extent as the game goes on, but it's a sacrifice I chose to make here. It's going to take a while for the Thief to pay off.
For now, Buff is taking point. His defense is superior until class change, thanks to being able to equip Chain. What got stuck with Wooden Armor.
I went up to level 3 before fighting Garland. As usual, he was of no threat. A flurry of attacks brought him down, him not doing enough damage to necessitate using a CURE.
Now, something important. Strength resetting. I did this with Mint before back in my Capitalists challenge, but that was mostly to meme. It is in fact a staple of low offense characters. Fighters have the advantage of getting Str every level, guaranteed. Others have fixed growths at certain levels, but otherwise only a 25% chance of it increasing.
This is something I would do for the Red Mage anyway even if taking a Fighter, but for this sake, I made the decision to desync What's EXP from the rest of the group in order to better manipulate this. That said, I don't actually have to worry about it for him until level 10. Starting from 11 nonfixed Str gains are every third level from there until 41 (which I hope I don't have to reach), after which it's every other.
Red meanwhile has to contend with nonfixed growths starting from 5. At levels 7, 10, 13, 16, etc are fixed growths. Much more annoying, needless to say.
Avoiding damage is a big part of this challenge. It's a strategy to attack the more dangerous enemies first, but here more than ever is it something to pay attention to. Of course, RUNning away also works for this.
Even in this setting with half the party being limp-wristed White Mages, the PIRATEs were no threat.
This is also probably one of the only times I've ever considered Gloves. I might ordinarily skip them, because 1 absorb is like nothing. Here though, where my healing is limited, every point of reduction counts.
I used the good old KYZOKU trick to farm up money. In fact, battles 1 and 3 after a reset are them, so it's a bit more efficient to get both of them. I found the best strategy was just dogpiling them one at a time despite potential ineffective hits, because this meant they were more likely to die.
When using a Thief, you end up using things that you wouldn't ordinarily with Fighters or Red Mages. Here at this point in the game, the Sabre is their best offensive option: 13/5 offensive stats. Beaten out by later weapons like the Scimtar (10/10), but for now the best it has.
It's also worth noting that any instance of poison is an instant reset, for now. Because of no PURE potions and the inn not healing it, I have no way to get rid of the status. Except...the spell. Yes, that's right, actual use for the horrifically misplaced and overpriced PURE spell! Only in variants can you see insanity like this.
My goal in the early game was to get Buff, Mend, and Gard their level 3 spells. A bit of KYZOKU grinding did the trick, and after getting FIR2 and HRM2 I could play on the Penninsula of Power. Fighting there wasn't so bad, but I did need to make proper use of CURE spells. My other goal was to get Buff to a high enough level so that he could get 2-hits with a Silver Sword.
There. What was going to have to wait a while to get 2-hits himself: he doesn't get 15 hit% weapons until after the Mystic KEY. With this I felt I had enough to head into the Marsh Cave.
Ugh.
Dungeon romping in this variant boils down to using RUN whenever possible. There is no point in fighting if you don't have to: do your grinding on your own time. This is actually where Thief is indeed a good choice for this variant as well: he will always be able to run under ordinary circumstances straight from the get-go. Sure, this advantage will vanish at higher levels - short of status being in play - but his LUCK guarantees it in the early stages of the game. Of course, turn action order is still a thing to consider...
Well, it just took resets to get by the poison. I made it to the WIZARDs before too long.
What the hell?? Okay then, that's the end of that.
My next attempt through saw Buff end up poisoned. It was late in so I went on anyway. This unintentionally gave me the idea that I should switch him to the back before the fight. It worked well: the White Mages were able to keep What healthy while Buff went to work zapping them down.
What himself ended up poisoned, however. Only thing to do was keep pressing forward.
...
Okay. I am about to say something no one has ever said when playing FF1 before - that does it, I'm getting the PURE spell.
A fight on the PoP got me the funds I needed. The very next fight saw my party getting poisoned, so I'd get to employ it as soon as I bought it!
The good thing about this purchase is that it's really not a wasted spell slot. AICE is the top spell of the level, and it's situational. FEAR is a joke, and AMUT is almost as much of one - only four enemies ever use MUTE: EYE (so far down the list you'll never see it), PHANTOM (same), WzVAMP, and GrNAGA - and you should have Ribbons by the time they pop up anyway.
Anyway, with that bought, I also wanted to get my characters to level 9, as that would give the WMs two shots of the spell. This meant it was back to the penninsula for more grinding!
Ooo, the 1/64 showed up! Appropriately enough to my recent struggles, WYVERNs can poison. That aside, they're actually one of the least dangerous things you can run into here. They have only one hit and 30 Atk. The downside is they give out like no gold. It still got me the last bit of experience needed to get to level 9. So it was time to tackle the Marsh Cave again.
The way there was smooth, I actually didn't get poisoned at all on the straight shot to these things. Getting very good luck with their numbers, too!
Oh, well that's a shame. But LIT2 carried me through like it did before. Somehow I forgot to take a picture of winning. I'm slipping, clearly, been a bit since I've done one of these.
What was able to get me out of the cave without further incident, though. I actually had no poison problems at all, the last screenshot being from the last battle. Toughed it out for the few remaining steps in the cave, encountering nothing else along the way, and healed it on the outside.
One thing to reiterate about this challenge: no items means no TENTs and such. So you need to walk over to wherever you're going from town every time. This of course is annoying when it comes to potentially reset heavy areas. Like say, ASTOS. The reverse holds true too: you can't just save on getting out, you have to get back to town as well. This variant is definitely a very different affair from how you normally play.
Thankfully, ASTOS was a straightforward affair. Buff's spells took out most of his HP. The dark elf's RUB hit What, which was ideal for further pushing apart the experience. From there the battle was a bit annoying - he has decent evasion, and very high Def for this stage of the game. Probably should've gotten some level 1 spells. Not much of value offensively was lost in What - in fact this fight is notoriously hard for solo Thieves, who can't break his defense.
A bunch of misses later, Buff did him in.
One of the most important pickups when initially doing looting with the mystic KEY was, of all things, the Silver Knife. Yes, of all things! This thing has 10/15 offense, enough Hit% to get What to two hits!
And just like that, with only the GARGOYLEs in front of it fought, it's obsolete.
The Rune Sword is the Thief's ultimate weapon if you're not changing class. It has 18/15 offense, and having item ID 27, the most critical chance he can get as well. Coral Sword is one point stronger, but has less crit chance due to having ID 25. These swords and their cousins are supposed to be effective against certain enemy types, but that aspect was broken, leaving them as weaker than the Silver Sword. Only Thief can get mileage out of them, since they can't use Silver Swords.
There was a solid pickup in the Dwarves' place: the Silver Armor is an upgrade for Buff. It's something only Red Mages really use. Thieves don't get to, irritably.
I went straight to Crescent Lake after a quick stop at Melmond to save. Here's some more strangeness for this run: Bucklers, a contender for most pointless piece of equipment. They have the same stats as the Wooden Shield: no weight and 2 absorb. The only difference is the price, and how Thieves and Red Mages can equip the Buckler. Usually a waste, since it's just 2 points and how often are RMs going to need it anyway? But here where every point counts, they're golden. They're also in fact the best Red Mages get besides the ProCape.
Of course, I also needed to do some cash grinding for Silver Bracelets. What in particular needs one, but I want them on the WMs as well.
Fighting there wasn't too bad, given proper gear. Buff's spells could damage big groups. He and What could deal respectable damage physically as well. The fights always gave enough gold to save and heal at the inn after every fight.
I went into the Earth Cave when my party was at level 12, where my WMs got their first level 5 charges - they had bought CUR3 to actually use these. I also got FAST for Buff. Appropriately, Mend got HEAL and Gard got AFIR. They also had three level 4 charges, so poison wasn't going to be much of an issue anymore either. The going was relatively smooth for the first two floors.
Of course, then there's these things. They were hell for my Capitalists due to not wanting to waste money on SOFTs. Petrification is even worse here since I can't get them at all. Worse, unlike the PURE spell, level 6 is indeed crowded for WMs. Fortunately, What got me out of these before any nonsense all three times I ran into them.
I put FAST to work at the VAMPIRE and...well, that was disappointing.
Good man, Gard. The entirity of the fight lasted only one round. The VAMPIRE himself just attacked and missed Buff. Can't ask for things to go more smoothly than that.
Besides the third of the COCTRICE groups I mentioned, I also ran into two WIZARD groups along the way. The nature of this variant means guaranteeing being able to save all the important levels of offensive magic, however. LIT2 ended them. The danger was mostly over when I hit B2, and it provided no further challenges.
So I got the ROD, getting to level 13 in the process to give the WMs two level 5 charges, getting Mend HEL2 along the way. Showing this shot because indeed, I have no potions at all in my inventory. The only healing I have to go on are my spell charges.
The chip damage can really add up along the way. But the good news was, I encountered no COCTRICES and only one set of WIZARDs along the way. Used a bit more level 3 charges than I would've liked, but I was in very good shape right before LICH. Also yes I totally forgot I could top off fully with Buff's charges. Derp.
Gard and Mend went in with HRM2 on the first turn, knocking out a good chunk of his health. The bad news was, Buff got paralyzed. And before he could cast FAST on What, too.
The variant restrictions were already in play here. Had I had potions, I could have just used those and fired off all my HRM2s at Lich, which would've been enough even with Buff being stuck not contributing. They share their slot with CUR2 however, so every use of one means one less use of the other as well. As it stood I was only able to get one more off from Mend, which ended up doing pitiful damage.
The HEL2 bug was nice to have existing here - the three of relevance got up to 200/202/198 after it fully resolved. I didn't have or bother to cast the Anti spells, I felt it better to keep the healing in the case of AFIR.
LICH has 40 def total. It was sometimes possible for What to break it naturally, but this was otherwise up to critical hits. Even the White Mages got in on this occasionally. This is why the Rune Sword is so good for solo Thief, because it needs it for like most of the fights.
All the while, Buff remained paralyzed. What got hit a couple times too, but recovered quickly. To add insult to injury, once Buff finally did recover? LICH immediately paralyzed him again! He didn't get a chance to do anything at all in this fight except take hits! This fight would've been so much easier with him able to help!
This wasn't good to see! Worse yet, though I didn't capture the text box, he was paralyzed from the strike. Gard had one last CUR3 charge, which he was able to use on What to keep him up. But that was it, that was my last healing charge. I wasn't HP counting, so I had to hope I could kill him quickly or else.
His next spell reduced my physical characters to critical HP! But on the next turn, What came through with a critical hit, putting an end to this! That had to be one of the most intense LICH fights I've ever had, sheesh.
Well, not quite. Remember, I had to actually survive the walk back. An OGRE ambush almost made sure that didn't happen, but that was the only encounter of note or consequence.
This one has been a wild ride so far. I didn't actually consider Thief would be this key early on. Without one, I would have had to reset for LUCK growths and even then running would only be guaranteed from level 11 onward. Thief could do it right away, sparing me from the grind. It in fact is not a terrible choice for this challenge. Who would've ever thought it had a legitimate use in this game? Of course the circumstances are absurd, that's what it takes for it to be useful.
No complaints about the party so far, except for Buff's total incompetence during the LICH fight. The real litmus of course, is whether or not it will hold together in the midgame and beyond. Only way to find that out is to keep playing!
Next | Index
*Living Off The Land can justify Thief too instead of a 4th Fighter, Katana's high power and crit rate gives it an advantage over Sun Sword/Defense. Low level can too since they can always run guaranteed from the drop.
Party composition on this. Obviously, there are two things to consider here: killing enemies quickly, and a lot of healing. The last of those certainly meant not one, but two White Mages. As part of killing enemies quickly, this also means having FAST. So a Red Mage is the next choice, who also gives even more white charges.
And for slot four...What? You are seeing that correctly, and thinking about the party composition is what inspired me to actually go through with this. For possibly the first time in the history of FF1 NES*, there is a valid reason to consider the Thief. Let's look at all of them first. Another White Mage is out, that would be far too little offense. A Black Mage would be far too squishy to consider - part of this is avoiding damage in the first place. I ruled out Black Belt for a couple reasons, like MDef on class change concerns and not wanting to snap the game in half by it simply existing if I have to grind high.
So Fighter, the tried and true and obvious, right? It's a strong choice here to be sure, but you'll only have the one FAST user, who is also a secondary attacker. How about another Red? An option, but one that isn't as bulky long-term. The Thief, or more specifically the Ninja, gets both of these. It can wear most of the heavy armor, its offense is very similar to RM if not better, and gets enough charges to be meaningful. The catch with it of course is suffering through the early game, and stat resetting - which you'd have to do with Red too mind you.
Fighter is probably the smart pick, but come on. When else are you going to have a solid case to use a Thief in FF1 NES?! I just have to.
The starting gold was easy to figure out. Weapons and armor for everyone, and CURE spells for the White Mages, and eventually Buff as well. Even early on, the lack of meaty Fighter attacks was noticeable. This will be mitigated to some extent as the game goes on, but it's a sacrifice I chose to make here. It's going to take a while for the Thief to pay off.
For now, Buff is taking point. His defense is superior until class change, thanks to being able to equip Chain. What got stuck with Wooden Armor.
I went up to level 3 before fighting Garland. As usual, he was of no threat. A flurry of attacks brought him down, him not doing enough damage to necessitate using a CURE.
Now, something important. Strength resetting. I did this with Mint before back in my Capitalists challenge, but that was mostly to meme. It is in fact a staple of low offense characters. Fighters have the advantage of getting Str every level, guaranteed. Others have fixed growths at certain levels, but otherwise only a 25% chance of it increasing.
This is something I would do for the Red Mage anyway even if taking a Fighter, but for this sake, I made the decision to desync What's EXP from the rest of the group in order to better manipulate this. That said, I don't actually have to worry about it for him until level 10. Starting from 11 nonfixed Str gains are every third level from there until 41 (which I hope I don't have to reach), after which it's every other.
Red meanwhile has to contend with nonfixed growths starting from 5. At levels 7, 10, 13, 16, etc are fixed growths. Much more annoying, needless to say.
Avoiding damage is a big part of this challenge. It's a strategy to attack the more dangerous enemies first, but here more than ever is it something to pay attention to. Of course, RUNning away also works for this.
Even in this setting with half the party being limp-wristed White Mages, the PIRATEs were no threat.
This is also probably one of the only times I've ever considered Gloves. I might ordinarily skip them, because 1 absorb is like nothing. Here though, where my healing is limited, every point of reduction counts.
I used the good old KYZOKU trick to farm up money. In fact, battles 1 and 3 after a reset are them, so it's a bit more efficient to get both of them. I found the best strategy was just dogpiling them one at a time despite potential ineffective hits, because this meant they were more likely to die.
When using a Thief, you end up using things that you wouldn't ordinarily with Fighters or Red Mages. Here at this point in the game, the Sabre is their best offensive option: 13/5 offensive stats. Beaten out by later weapons like the Scimtar (10/10), but for now the best it has.
It's also worth noting that any instance of poison is an instant reset, for now. Because of no PURE potions and the inn not healing it, I have no way to get rid of the status. Except...the spell. Yes, that's right, actual use for the horrifically misplaced and overpriced PURE spell! Only in variants can you see insanity like this.
My goal in the early game was to get Buff, Mend, and Gard their level 3 spells. A bit of KYZOKU grinding did the trick, and after getting FIR2 and HRM2 I could play on the Penninsula of Power. Fighting there wasn't so bad, but I did need to make proper use of CURE spells. My other goal was to get Buff to a high enough level so that he could get 2-hits with a Silver Sword.
There. What was going to have to wait a while to get 2-hits himself: he doesn't get 15 hit% weapons until after the Mystic KEY. With this I felt I had enough to head into the Marsh Cave.
Ugh.
Dungeon romping in this variant boils down to using RUN whenever possible. There is no point in fighting if you don't have to: do your grinding on your own time. This is actually where Thief is indeed a good choice for this variant as well: he will always be able to run under ordinary circumstances straight from the get-go. Sure, this advantage will vanish at higher levels - short of status being in play - but his LUCK guarantees it in the early stages of the game. Of course, turn action order is still a thing to consider...
Well, it just took resets to get by the poison. I made it to the WIZARDs before too long.
What the hell?? Okay then, that's the end of that.
My next attempt through saw Buff end up poisoned. It was late in so I went on anyway. This unintentionally gave me the idea that I should switch him to the back before the fight. It worked well: the White Mages were able to keep What healthy while Buff went to work zapping them down.
What himself ended up poisoned, however. Only thing to do was keep pressing forward.
...
Okay. I am about to say something no one has ever said when playing FF1 before - that does it, I'm getting the PURE spell.
A fight on the PoP got me the funds I needed. The very next fight saw my party getting poisoned, so I'd get to employ it as soon as I bought it!
The good thing about this purchase is that it's really not a wasted spell slot. AICE is the top spell of the level, and it's situational. FEAR is a joke, and AMUT is almost as much of one - only four enemies ever use MUTE: EYE (so far down the list you'll never see it), PHANTOM (same), WzVAMP, and GrNAGA - and you should have Ribbons by the time they pop up anyway.
Anyway, with that bought, I also wanted to get my characters to level 9, as that would give the WMs two shots of the spell. This meant it was back to the penninsula for more grinding!
Ooo, the 1/64 showed up! Appropriately enough to my recent struggles, WYVERNs can poison. That aside, they're actually one of the least dangerous things you can run into here. They have only one hit and 30 Atk. The downside is they give out like no gold. It still got me the last bit of experience needed to get to level 9. So it was time to tackle the Marsh Cave again.
The way there was smooth, I actually didn't get poisoned at all on the straight shot to these things. Getting very good luck with their numbers, too!
Oh, well that's a shame. But LIT2 carried me through like it did before. Somehow I forgot to take a picture of winning. I'm slipping, clearly, been a bit since I've done one of these.
What was able to get me out of the cave without further incident, though. I actually had no poison problems at all, the last screenshot being from the last battle. Toughed it out for the few remaining steps in the cave, encountering nothing else along the way, and healed it on the outside.
One thing to reiterate about this challenge: no items means no TENTs and such. So you need to walk over to wherever you're going from town every time. This of course is annoying when it comes to potentially reset heavy areas. Like say, ASTOS. The reverse holds true too: you can't just save on getting out, you have to get back to town as well. This variant is definitely a very different affair from how you normally play.
Thankfully, ASTOS was a straightforward affair. Buff's spells took out most of his HP. The dark elf's RUB hit What, which was ideal for further pushing apart the experience. From there the battle was a bit annoying - he has decent evasion, and very high Def for this stage of the game. Probably should've gotten some level 1 spells. Not much of value offensively was lost in What - in fact this fight is notoriously hard for solo Thieves, who can't break his defense.
A bunch of misses later, Buff did him in.
One of the most important pickups when initially doing looting with the mystic KEY was, of all things, the Silver Knife. Yes, of all things! This thing has 10/15 offense, enough Hit% to get What to two hits!
And just like that, with only the GARGOYLEs in front of it fought, it's obsolete.
The Rune Sword is the Thief's ultimate weapon if you're not changing class. It has 18/15 offense, and having item ID 27, the most critical chance he can get as well. Coral Sword is one point stronger, but has less crit chance due to having ID 25. These swords and their cousins are supposed to be effective against certain enemy types, but that aspect was broken, leaving them as weaker than the Silver Sword. Only Thief can get mileage out of them, since they can't use Silver Swords.
There was a solid pickup in the Dwarves' place: the Silver Armor is an upgrade for Buff. It's something only Red Mages really use. Thieves don't get to, irritably.
I went straight to Crescent Lake after a quick stop at Melmond to save. Here's some more strangeness for this run: Bucklers, a contender for most pointless piece of equipment. They have the same stats as the Wooden Shield: no weight and 2 absorb. The only difference is the price, and how Thieves and Red Mages can equip the Buckler. Usually a waste, since it's just 2 points and how often are RMs going to need it anyway? But here where every point counts, they're golden. They're also in fact the best Red Mages get besides the ProCape.
Of course, I also needed to do some cash grinding for Silver Bracelets. What in particular needs one, but I want them on the WMs as well.
Fighting there wasn't too bad, given proper gear. Buff's spells could damage big groups. He and What could deal respectable damage physically as well. The fights always gave enough gold to save and heal at the inn after every fight.
I went into the Earth Cave when my party was at level 12, where my WMs got their first level 5 charges - they had bought CUR3 to actually use these. I also got FAST for Buff. Appropriately, Mend got HEAL and Gard got AFIR. They also had three level 4 charges, so poison wasn't going to be much of an issue anymore either. The going was relatively smooth for the first two floors.
Of course, then there's these things. They were hell for my Capitalists due to not wanting to waste money on SOFTs. Petrification is even worse here since I can't get them at all. Worse, unlike the PURE spell, level 6 is indeed crowded for WMs. Fortunately, What got me out of these before any nonsense all three times I ran into them.
I put FAST to work at the VAMPIRE and...well, that was disappointing.
Good man, Gard. The entirity of the fight lasted only one round. The VAMPIRE himself just attacked and missed Buff. Can't ask for things to go more smoothly than that.
Besides the third of the COCTRICE groups I mentioned, I also ran into two WIZARD groups along the way. The nature of this variant means guaranteeing being able to save all the important levels of offensive magic, however. LIT2 ended them. The danger was mostly over when I hit B2, and it provided no further challenges.
So I got the ROD, getting to level 13 in the process to give the WMs two level 5 charges, getting Mend HEL2 along the way. Showing this shot because indeed, I have no potions at all in my inventory. The only healing I have to go on are my spell charges.
The chip damage can really add up along the way. But the good news was, I encountered no COCTRICES and only one set of WIZARDs along the way. Used a bit more level 3 charges than I would've liked, but I was in very good shape right before LICH. Also yes I totally forgot I could top off fully with Buff's charges. Derp.
Gard and Mend went in with HRM2 on the first turn, knocking out a good chunk of his health. The bad news was, Buff got paralyzed. And before he could cast FAST on What, too.
The variant restrictions were already in play here. Had I had potions, I could have just used those and fired off all my HRM2s at Lich, which would've been enough even with Buff being stuck not contributing. They share their slot with CUR2 however, so every use of one means one less use of the other as well. As it stood I was only able to get one more off from Mend, which ended up doing pitiful damage.
The HEL2 bug was nice to have existing here - the three of relevance got up to 200/202/198 after it fully resolved. I didn't have or bother to cast the Anti spells, I felt it better to keep the healing in the case of AFIR.
LICH has 40 def total. It was sometimes possible for What to break it naturally, but this was otherwise up to critical hits. Even the White Mages got in on this occasionally. This is why the Rune Sword is so good for solo Thief, because it needs it for like most of the fights.
All the while, Buff remained paralyzed. What got hit a couple times too, but recovered quickly. To add insult to injury, once Buff finally did recover? LICH immediately paralyzed him again! He didn't get a chance to do anything at all in this fight except take hits! This fight would've been so much easier with him able to help!
This wasn't good to see! Worse yet, though I didn't capture the text box, he was paralyzed from the strike. Gard had one last CUR3 charge, which he was able to use on What to keep him up. But that was it, that was my last healing charge. I wasn't HP counting, so I had to hope I could kill him quickly or else.
His next spell reduced my physical characters to critical HP! But on the next turn, What came through with a critical hit, putting an end to this! That had to be one of the most intense LICH fights I've ever had, sheesh.
Well, not quite. Remember, I had to actually survive the walk back. An OGRE ambush almost made sure that didn't happen, but that was the only encounter of note or consequence.
This one has been a wild ride so far. I didn't actually consider Thief would be this key early on. Without one, I would have had to reset for LUCK growths and even then running would only be guaranteed from level 11 onward. Thief could do it right away, sparing me from the grind. It in fact is not a terrible choice for this challenge. Who would've ever thought it had a legitimate use in this game? Of course the circumstances are absurd, that's what it takes for it to be useful.
No complaints about the party so far, except for Buff's total incompetence during the LICH fight. The real litmus of course, is whether or not it will hold together in the midgame and beyond. Only way to find that out is to keep playing!
Next | Index
*Living Off The Land can justify Thief too instead of a 4th Fighter, Katana's high power and crit rate gives it an advantage over Sun Sword/Defense. Low level can too since they can always run guaranteed from the drop.