FFR: Solo Evoker Part II

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I decided on level 24 as a goal before heading into the Earth Cave. This was when Aleph exceeded 300HP. Getting t here went buttery smooth at the peninsula. I've written enough about the grinding in this challenge at this point, so there's not much more I can say about it without repeating myself.

The large packs of stunning undead are a hassle for almost any solo character; the exceptions being Time Mage who should be immune and Monk who can comfortably accumulate enough magic defense to reliably resist them. Aleph was somewhat able to fight back with CAIT SITH, confusing the lot of them. This wasn't ideal because they could still break out and stun him while he was casting RAMUH or fleeing, but it was better than just having to rely upon run luck.


The VAMPIRE was a supremely screwy fight. He instantly used DAZZLE at the start, paralyzing Aleph. I thought that was the end of it, especially when the monster dealt half of his max HP in a single attack the next turn. Aleph was knocked down to critical HP, only to recover. The only play was GOBLIN. My warrior went first...one hit KO!

I just needed to escape. The first dangerous encounter on the way back was a small group of WIZARDs. Two of them actually fled, leaving the third to get confused and punched into oblivion by GOBLIN. Three IMAGEs also showed up, the last encounter before the steps up and out of B3. I had to use GOBLIN here to target them individually because they weren't all hit by confusion.


After some refreshing, I went for the Titan's Tunnel and the CARBUNCLE battle. The little guy constantly spammed RUBY LIGHT throughout the battle. He wasn't much of a threat since summons go right through reflect. The RubyGOLs accompanying him were a different story. They hit hard; a random encounter one did over 120 damage in a single attack! Thankfully, CAIT SITH worked on them. They liked casting elemental spells on themselves which healed them or would reflect off their walls. Because RAMUH was out, this left GOBLIN.

After getting the ROD, I had Aleph gain one more level. This was for practicality reasons rather than grinding ones: he was actually reasonably close to leveling up, so this was to make sure he wouldn't do so in the middle of the second dive through the Earth Cave.

I haven't mentioned it much, but I was having unusually bad luck with critical hits throughout this run so far. Believe it or not, most enemies have a very small chance of landing a critical hit. Only seven enemies have higher than a 0.5% chance (maybe a 1% chance, how it's listed in the guide is unclear) of landing one on an individual hit: IGUANA (5%), COBRA (15.5%), TIGER (12.5%), Saber T (35%), T REX (15%), WORM (5%), and PHANTOM (20%). I mention it now because the first time I made it down to B4, a WIZARD evaded CAIT SITH then landed a critical hit which erased my chances of victory on the spot.

It would take me around a dozen attempts to make it down to B5. Virtually all of the danger was in B3 and B4. The only thing exceptionally dangerous in B5 was IMAGEs which could appear in groups of 2-6 in slot 2, and maybe 2-5 MUMMYs in slot 6. But it has none of the other undead or the COCTRICEs. I actually once ran into OOZE on B3: the 1/64 encounter on the floor. They almost killed Aleph because I underestimated their offense and wanted to conserve his spell charges, but I managed to have him run.

I didn't fight TITAN on B5. Aleph only had four L1 charges left. If I had tried to fight him, I'd have nothing left for LICH. Onto the first fiend.


I had Aleph use CARBUNCLE despite the stupid issue where certain enemies jump through their magic scripts at random instead of using them in order. It went after the ICE2 which thankfully did very little damage, but LICH would spend his next two turns physically attacking. That was either very bad luck or another symptom of that behavior that really should not exist and completely defeats the purpose of reflect in the first place. Thankfully, neither of his strikes paralyzed. The first GOBLIN did 74 damage. The next did a hundred something. Not a good sign, especially when LICH's next move was FAST as I recast CARBUNCLE. It didn't matter, as the next GOBLIN just blasted the fiend.

So! Where to after Crescent? I decided I'd do Ice Cave last: IFRIT resided in Gurgu and that would make grinding on the peninsula that much faster. I fully intended to gain as much magic defense as I could, just like I did with Green. The only question was whether to do the volcano before or after Ordeals. Well, IFRIT was also effective on the Zombie Ds. And wouldn't it be even more fun if I abstained from using spellcasting items in this challenge just to let the summon spells get their proper time in the sun? That left Gold Bracelet as the only draw of going there.

So what about KARY? That was the kicker: her physical attacks may not be as strong as KRAKEN's, but they would still hurt. CAIT SITH might not break her magic defense. If I'm banning offensive spellcasting items, that would rule out the Wizard Staff too. Of course, I could always just leave after getting IFRIT and come back when I'm more ready. Evoker does have an answer to physical attacks.

My roadmap was going to be something like: Gurgu, Ordeals, grind, Ice Cave, Waterfall, cleanup.

The nice thing about Gurgu is that it's a very short dungeon when you're just passing through. There's also very good reason to do that: the equipment is mostly Silver stuff you can buy in Crescent Lake anyway and can be inferior soon or even when you arrive depending on your dungeon order. The only good stuff is the Ice Sword, Flame Armor, Flame Shield, and in Renaissance: the Scale Mail and Lava Axe. None of which was relevant to an Evoker. It would be nice if there was a Fire Armlet around: a new piece of armwear that resists fire damage. But unlike the Earth, Water, and Wind Armlets, there is no stray one lying around to collect. You need a Thief with their SEARCH ability. Kind of a failing there.

Speaking of failing, I failed my first run into the dungeon for odd reasons: Aleph was close to a level and I had failed to notice until I was on B5. He did gain STR, but he ran out of spell charges. I had to bid a retreat, which I succeeded in despite some PERILISKs showing up.

It took a lot of fumbling around the Astral Plane, but I eventually found IFRIT. It was time to earn my next summon. Or so I thought.


I never really fought this guy in my original playthrough due to testing whether GEOSTORM was indeed bugged or not, now I would be doing so. IFRIT started off with an ambush to charge his special, HELLFIRE. I responded with GOLEM to try to cut down some of the damage. It barely had any effect! I actually once saw it one-shot Aleph outright on one of my failed attempts. But on this attempt, Aleph survived. I started throwing out GOBLINs, only for IFRIT to use a massive physical that killed him! Luckily, dying in the Astral Plane isn't a game over. I poked the data and discovered something horrific.

IFRIT has 1200HP.

In vanilla, the highest amount of HP after CHAOS belongs to the Temple of Fiends Return variation of TIAMAT at 1100. Behind that is her Sky Castle version and WarMECH at 1000. Now, the latter's infamous NUCLEAR has 80 effectivity. This translates to 80-320 damage before INT is factored in - I'm unsure if enemies in FFR benefit from it; I'm inclined to say no unless Ozmo did some shenanigans. Aleph has 314HP there and while I missed the exact damage, it had to have done at least as much as NUCLEAR. Think about that: a boss in the midgame has more HP than WarMECH and can hit just as hard if not harder than it. Sure, it has far less defense and you can gain fire resistance, but if you arrive here when you're "supposed" to, you're not going to have a very fun time.

This is part of why I think Evoker is the worst class in Final Fantasy Renaissance. Not only are its summons underwhelming because of their charge mechanic, but you have to fight superbosses to even get to them. The only reason it might not seem so bad is because FFR gives you a lot better stuff to break the game with, but to a more limited party, these bosses are awful.

I quickly realized that this was just not happening, and that I might even have to revise my rules to allow Defense just so I could win! I was right at KARY though, so I may as well give it a try.


This was what I was worried about. Aleph actually landed the confusion from CAIT SITH on the first turn, but KARY broke out of it and retaliated with this strong hit. She was at critical health, but so was Aleph. It was down to turn order...which, Aleph beat to deliver a final GOBLIN to finish it.

Okay, not how I planned it, but I'll adapt. Ordeals was the next stop. This went as smooth as it gets. The only thing really scary was a group of MEDUSAs, and CAIT SITH stopped them cold. As per my plan, I only grabbed the Gold Bracelet and got out. The Zombie D wasn't confused, so I just used GOBLIN.


Level 28 was an interesting level for Aleph. That was when he finally built up enough hit% to get 2-hits. The only weapon with any hit% that he could use was the Mage Staff (and the Masmune of course), which was 2 points of attack weaker than the Iron Staff. It was sometimes useful to physically attack to chip an enemy down if spells didn't do the job.

I decided to try the Ice Cave then and there without grinding any more besides that level. Maybe CAIT SITH would make a difference and get me through earlier than Green was able to.


It turned out, between that and a bit of luck, I was right. I reset the first encounter in which was a WIZARD group. No sense in fighting that early. Undead encounters would accoust me throughout the cave, but Aleph resisted their blows, confused them, and followed up with RAMUH. I ran into a lone MAGE in the big square room. CARBUNCLE was employed here. It actually did several physical attacks after the RUB failed, but eventually did itself in with its spells. The undead spike fell to confusion. Then, three MAGE ambush!!!! Two used RUB, both missed! I got up reflect and defeated them between that and GOBLIN. GOBLIN also beat the EYE in a single hit; its XXXX attack failed since Aleph was over 300HP. Undead spike fell again, then I ran into two Frost Ds. They can't cast BLIZZARD in 1.3.3. They got confused and were killed off with GOBLIN.

The last encounter was the scariest: six COCTRICEs and three MUMMYs! I held my breath as I fired off CAIT SITH...Aleph went first and confused them all! None recovered! I charged RAMUH next turn. A few recovered during that turn. But then Aleph went first again and killed them all! That was effectively a first try Ice Cave! You love to see it!


I went straight to the Waterfall to claim the Ribbon. I actually failed this the first time: the spike killed me on the way back when it got an ambush and did too much damage. The second time, I didn't have to contend with the spike at all: for some buggy reason, it behaved as a river tile. Not that I was complaining or going to reset because of it.


With it on Aleph's head, I went back to deal with the L3 and L4 summon bosses I had previously skipped over. UNICORN was found in the Elves' Castle. This is a gimmick battle where the boss damages its own allies while minorly healing itself; if all the enemies are gone, it deals heavy physical damage. I didn't do this earlier not only for the difficulty (some of them are stunning undead) but because functionally, the spell is just a HEAL that restores status. This was hardly relevant for a solo character; its niche of being able to cure petrify was more of a flaw to contend with for Aleph. But I got it now for completionism, defeating the boss in a single hit with GOBLIN. There was funnily enough an unintended consequence of doing it so late: enemies running away! If GOBLIN didn't scale, this could have been a problem.


Ribbon made the venture back into the Earth Cave for TITAN a leisurely stroll. I actually died in the Astral Plane when a group of OOZEs and OILs (another new slime that hit hard) killed Aleph! The boss itself played out in an interesting way. I knew from my casual playthrough that the GrANKYLOs accompanying it could use MINERAL SHELL, granting earthspikes to the enemy party. I had forgotten that this only affects physical moves. TITAN seemed to have unusually low HP so it didn't matter anyway. He was eventually killed when I confused one of the two GrANKYLOs after the earthspikes went up and they dealt the finishing blow. As for them, they ran from the battle. Well, that's one way to deal with them.

TITAN was stronger but in a much worse element than RAMUH. There is exactly one enemy that is weak to the earth-element in the game: RAMUH. 64 enemies resist it. In vanilla it existed solely to make the QAKE spell suck. About the only thing vulnerable that you might want to use it on are MudGOLs and maybe LICH (yes, he's the fiend of earth but vulnerable to it). There are 128 enemies in vanilla, meaning half the enemies in the game resist TITAN! Several FFR exclusive enemies do so as well, although most of these are Evoker exclusive to begin with. Basically if they have wings, are floating (exception: GIANTs), can swim, are slimes, are worms, are NITEMAREs, or are golems made of rock or iron, they resist earth.

The first floor of the Sea Shrine was my first destination; the Opal Bracelet and the SLAB were there. Nothing to report from it. The dungeon is as simple as always. The aforementioned Mage Staff was here, which had a very niche use under my restrictions of no spellcasting items. Yes, it was two points of attack weaker than the Iron Staff, but it had 10 hit%. This meant that Aleph would eventually get 3 hits with it; he never would with the Iron Staff. The catch? This happens at level 50. The cap. I would be reaching it, but yeah. To put it in perspective.


I went to Lefein after to pick up the CHIME and fight a new boss. Enter FENRIR. 1500HP, hits hard, and accompanied by a bunch of enemies who can hit hard themselves. I had originally wanted to fight it because it bestows blink status, granting protection from two physical attacks. It also meant Aleph had no problems with killing him. Problem was, they could kill him even better. This wasn't happening; I might have to use Defense after all just to survive this guy.


There was another possibility for a summon boss I could defeat. Because of this find in the first floor of Mirage Tower. Wind Armlet grants resistance to the new element of Wind, which was used by one of the new summon bosses. It can be equipped by anyone and gave 2 absorb.


Despite that, the FAIRY summon in Gaia was still virtually impossible to defeat. Their WHISPERWIND attack could be spammed by all of them all at once and did this much damage even through resistance! It was looking increasingly likely that TITAN was going to be the last summon Aleph would obtain without insane amounts of grinding or using spellcasting items. Which was exactly why I was continuing to manipulate strength gains.

So with this done, or rather impossible, the only thing I could do was proceed with the game normally. The Sea Shrine was the next destination. There was nothing to write about it, really. Even without access to Zeus, It was still easy to blast all the enemies with RAMUH. There are only two enemies that could pose a threat. The first being GHOSTs, who could be handled by confusing them. The other was WATERs, who actually killed me one time on the bottom floor. Unpleasant to say the least.


My original plan for KRAKEN was to use FENRIR to protect against his big physical attacks. Obviously, this was not happening. So I had to rely on confusing him instead. Which worked! I was able to start damaging him the usual way, until he broke out of it. I decided to just keep attacking at that point. He responded with an INK before dying.

Onto the Floating Castle! There was only one thing to obtain here so I could just grab that and get going without getting any of the other chests. That was the ProCape. It would still take me several attempts to make it through the dungeon. The first of these died at the hands of a SENTRY I couldn't run from. Clearly I was worrying about the wrong robot the whole time. Another attempt was foiled by SORCERERs. And then there was the third attempt. It was a nice start to the battle against TIAMAT. Then she crit Aleph for like 250 damage! That, needless to say, was the end of that.


She would get another critical hit on the next attempt at the fight! This was seriously ridiculous. To reiterate, she is not one of the enemies that has a good chance of a critical. Hers is 0.5% like most other enemies. With four hits, this was effectively just 2%. If was nothing short of atrociously ill luck. In fact, she did nothing but physical attacks for the entire battle! I was honestly surprised that there was only one critical throughout. Nevertheless, a bunch of GOBLINs, six to be exact, did her in. And that was all four orbs lit!

A quick check verified that yes, there are spells that are exclusive to the Summoner. BAHAMUT did not respond when spoken to, and only gave the message about returning with proof of courage. Because I was going to not class change, this meant that the spell was off limits to Aleph. I thought that might be the case actually, for this specific reason in fact, so that was why I was continuing the strength grinding.

I did check by the way, and PHOENIX was fightable. Maybe it's just BAHAMUT that's exclusive to Summoner? It actually seemed surprisingly doable. The big red bird just constantly spammed FIR3 which only did around 30 damage each time. The problem was that I would still need more levels, as well as the encounters in between. Just like before, they were fixed after a death in the Astral Plane. And some were GrNAGA packs that appeared to be unrunnable. I would need to get some of the other summons in order to deal with them. Of course, it would be necessary to adjust the bards from being dead to being stone, which I had an idea of how to handle. Otherwise, it would be a very nice addition to Aleph's repertoire.

So my course of action was going to be to max out Aleph's level, defeat as many summon bosses as I could, then head into the Temple of Fiends for the final dungeon. I'll break the report up again here. What's left of the game will be on the final page.

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