FFR: Solo Thief (Classic) Part III
Jan. 15th, 2024 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorSo let's talk the Ice Cave. Encounter manipulation isn't exactly practical in there. Most of the slots have something bad in them that could stun, we're talking like it being impossible to find a string where nothing bad will show up. I could at least try to avoid MAGEs and SORCERERs, but gaming the (messed-up) encounter tables entirely wasn't going to happen.
Instead? I was going to grind more. I had previously done this with my solo Green Mage, taking them to level 33 for an effective 84 magic defense. MDef determines the chance for a status to be inflicted on a physical hit: the formula is a 100 - MDef chance to inflict then rolling from 0-200; less than or equal to the resultant number means it inflicts; do this calculation for each hit. Having at least 100 basically prevents them entirely (I'm unsure if FFR still maintains 1/201s; I have been wrecked by them and wrecked things at least once each in vanilla). James at level 30 only had 73; he would need to hit level 44 if I wanted to cut the chance of these out entirely. That would be a lot of EARTHs killed. He was going to have to hit level 50 sooner or later, but there were better ways than this. It still didn't change the fact that it couldn't hurt to level up some more now.
So the question was, where to?
- I could try the Peninsula of Power at this point. Zeus castings will work.
- EARTHs were still viable. Tried and true and all that. 288HP, 66 attack, 20 defense, and pay out 1536 EXP.
- Grey Ws in Gurgu have 280HP, 50 attack, 31 defense, and pay out 1671 EXP. Basically worse than EARTH in every way.
- So what about FIRE? 276, 50, 20, 1620. Not noticably more than EARTH and they can appear in a two-pack for better or worse. They still count as demons/magicals so Rune Sword would offset their decent 42 evade. But could James survive fighting two?
- AGAMA? 296HP and they count as dragons. 31 attack, 74 accuracy and up to two hits, 18 defense, and pay out 2472 EXP. They have a one-in-four chance of using HEAT on any given turn, hitting for 12-48 damage. Ideal on paper, the only problem is the spikes are pretty deep in. So they're not actually ideal.
I went for the peninsula first. Halfway through the 7-minute timer I set to compare it to EARTHs, James had gotten nearly 15000EXP. Yeah, this was way faster. There was going to be one problem: again, enemy morale. ZomBULLs were running, as were GIANTs. This meant that FrWOLFs were the best thing to fight; they have 200 morale. Thankfully, encounters on the overworld have perfectly matched up those in the actual FF1 itself.
Strategy here was simple: just Zeus. Naturally, if there were one or two enemies and I was not fighting FrWOLFs, attacking was better. So let's talk about FrWOLFs. They have a 25% chance of using their special, FROST: 24-96 damage. Otherwise, they have 92HP and 25 attack, hitting only once. 4-7 spawn in slots 5 and 6, so they can either all use FROST and kill James or they could crash weakly against his 27 absorb. Someone on the FFR server recently soft confirmed that spell damage is boosted by (INT÷2)% damage; so, 10% with James' 20. Just meant there was a slightly less chance of taking three hits to kill them.
Still, enemies could run and it was a problem. ZomBULLs have 136 morale, same as TROLLs and GIANTs. Even TYROs could hypothetically start to run starting from level 32 (should be level 33 but, as I found out, enemies running is a bit bugged). So even this spot was starting to become unideal.
Level 33 was noteworthy. STR, AGI, and VIT all were guaranteed to increase. But it was a strong HP up level. In other words, there was absolutely no excuse for not trying for the highest roll possible here. After reaching this, I swapped over to grinding on the FIREs. They, like most enemies found on spiked tiles, have 200 morale. No chance of running from the fight.
This tile was the spiked one; it had the bonus of being near the bottom of a room so there was no chance of getting random encounters as long as I kept going up and down. I bought a huge stack of TENTs and even CABINs (I had the money even though they're two TENTs for over twice the cost; I ended up buying most from Pravoka during my peninsula grind since I didn't feel like going to Coneria where TENTs are at the bottom of the item shop list) to make getting to here and back to Crescent Lake more smooth. Like their palette swap, it was better to use the Rune Sword on them. Higher absorb helped offset potentially fighting two of them, although some of the fights ended up closer than I wanted to...
I settled on level 36. This would get James 85 MDef, or in other words, reduce the chance of being hit by stuns or SORCERER kills to 7.5%. This felt like a happy medium between a ridiculous grind and doing enough to tip things in James' favor. Level 37 would be another strong HP up, but the extra HP wouldn't make much of a difference in the Ice Cave. (Watch as I get killed by the HP difference somehow)
James once got wrecked by SQUINT on the way out to save before a level up in Gurgu. That was insanely unlucky, but I could only shrug. It's a problem here. And since I'm doing solo Thief, I have nothing but time on my hands.
Anyway, I got there eventually, which meant it was finally time for the Ice Cave. Encounters in order, no manipulation:
- WIZARDs. Most ran away.
- WRAITHs. Ran before they could move.
- B2. Undead mix. James took a ton of hits, got stunned, recovered on the same turn, took a ton of hits next turn, did not get stunned again, and escaped!
- IMAGEs/WRAITHs. Took four hits, got out.
- MAGE ambush. Dead.
You asked for it, game...
Okay, so assuming the encounters are correct (and that's a big assumption given what I've seen so far), that was MAGEs on floor 2. A slot 5 encounter. The encounters went 1 or 2, 6, 6, 1 or 2, 5. I can try to work around those at least: MAGEs are slot 5 in B2 and slot 3 in B1. One look at the encounter table relative into what I was running into and yeah: it's still off. Double 6 slots are always preceded by slot 4. So was WIZARDs misplaced there? Were those alleged 6s misplaced? Was I wrong about something? Well, let's try to map this broken stuff out at least a little. Hard reset.
B1 slot 3: COCTRICE/MUMMY. Correct. B1 slot 4: COCTRICE/MUMMY. Correct. Then another slot 3, for a total of three encounters before I got downstairs. Next is slot 6. Should be the undead mix. And, correct! James got through the square room with only one encounter, through the sideroom, then it was back up to B2. Slot 2 should be IMAGE/WRAITH. And they were. So far so good.
Another slot 2 is next. That is MAGEs down below on B3, hypothetically speaking. Instead, I had James run around B2 to pull another IMAGE/WRAITH encounter before jumping in the pit.
The undead tile had only five total enemies. Aaand, James got stunned. Dead? Nope! He recovered and got out cleanly. Next should be Frost Ds, encounter 7 being a slot 7. They were, a two-pack. No problem, not with that much HP. A slot 5 encounter is next. One step from the stairs no less. Should be a FrGIANT/FrWOLF group which is going to force James to fight. But nope! GrPEDE, supposed to be in slot 6.
Upstairs, a slot 3 encounter is next. Know that's a COCTRICE/MUMMY mix, but I get to the hole to the FLOATER before that. There is one step between where I land and the FLOATER/EYE fight on B2. That is hypothetically SORCERERs. So do I take the chance or pull the encounter up here? Simple math said jump in: SORCERERs can appear in groups of 1-3, COCTRICEs can appear in groups of 1-6. The former have 130 morale and the latter have 124, close enough that it means very little. Go down, take the step, nothing. It's supposed to be WRAITHs on B3, so I'm not worried about bumping into them down there until I suddenly am.
Took two rounds to beat the EYE. XXXX fell ineffective against James' greater than 300HP. Chance to strike first against the undead spike. Here comes slot 3.
Is anyone surprised? This lone one failed to deliver an instant kill and James escaped. Two slot 5 encounters were up next which I know now are GrPEDEs so this floor would carry no further threat. Indeed, I walked right through it with just running into one of them. Another slot 5 is up next. So what's that on B1? It could be R.BONEs like it's supposed to be. Or that could be screwed that up too and it could be WRAITHs. Right after that is a slot 1: WIZARDs. They're also in slot 2. Surely, SURELY, both of those aren't maligned? I stuck around and pulled the next GrPEDE encounter down on B2 and went upstairs. And right around the upper left corner of the room with the hole...it was indeed WIZARDs! Perfect. Two ran, one got smacked down. Nothing stopped him in the eight steps from there to the exit. FLOATER obtained!
And so James claimed the airship. I was very close to breaking the game open. Here's an interesting fact about this desert too: the non-side tiles are marked to have no encounters (and to be able to raise the airship on them). This is in fact properly reflected in FFR. One of those obscure details this remake gets right, so nice attention to detail there.
The first stop on the northern continents was to pick up the BOTTLE at the Caravan. I then went to Gaia to pick up the OXAYLE and to have James buy himself a ProRing to replace his well-worn Gloves. It is the best arm equipment in the vanilla game; matching Opal Gauntlets' 8 absorb but with 2 less weight. It also gives immunity to the death element. And what do you know, I'm headed to the Waterfall where there are PERILISKs hanging around.
I actually had James fight some of the encounters in here. It was a short dungeon and it cut off some of the grinding by doing it along the way. There is exactly one unrunnable encounter in here: the slot 8 (1/64) Gas D. I had just turned the game back on, so there was zero possibility of one of these appearing. It was a leisurely walk to obtain the treasures waiting within: the Ribbon being the biggest of them. This replaced the Cap and gave resistance to all elements in the game. Then there was the Defense sword. James couldn't equip it, but could use it as an itemcast for RUSE. Three or four of these, and he was effectively invincible against enemies that primarily physically attacked. Lastly, there was the Wizard Staff. Less good but still with some niche use, this casts CONF when used as an item. It's not fully reliable, but it can be clutch in a few situations.
Level 36 was another strong HP up with a VIT roll being necessary as well. It took some resets to get the perfect level here; I actually saved on a different slot with one HP off max, but I gave it a few more tries and eventually got what I wanted within a few tries. Since I grinded it out at Gurgu and was right there, I felt that I may as well tackle it now.
Even if I wasn't doing it with a Ribbon, there was little to write home about the fiery dungeon. The encounters are far simpler here; the only particularly dangerous things are the possibility of a slot 8 Red D on the final floor or PERILISKs (if you do it beforehand): supposed to be slot 5 on B2 and B3 alike. The treasure in here is mostly inferior and not worth picking up. There is of course an Ice Sword, Flame Shield, and Flame Armor, but James could use none of that. He couldn't even use the Giant Sword found in B2, notable for still being weaker than the Silver Sword (let alone the Ice Sword) except for hitting humanoid enemies effectively and having 20 hit%. So it was a simple trek through that I still somehow managed to almost die in because I thought James could 1v2 some R.GIANTs without Defense.
KARY is an absurdly easy boss. Three Defense Sword uses ensured she was unable to touch James. The Ribbon protected against her FIR2, DARK, and HOLD spells; the last spell there and her 50 defense being why I didn't try to do this sooner. And, of course, she is infamously vulnerable to the status-element. This meant CONF out of the Wizard Staff. I just had James enjoy the show as she did herself in, reapplying it as necessary.
That led James to the Sea Shrine. Here you can see one of the only dangerous encounters in here. You can't run from GHOSTs. They hit hard, so that meant Defense. This happened before I could make it to the Mage Staff, the FIR2 casting weapon. So instead, I made things a little faster with the Wizard Staff instead! Actually, this was insanely lucky and/or possibly another FFR bug: they're supposed to be resistant to status like all undead, but I got through to two of them anyway at stupidly low odds. They do have low MDef though, which is only relevant in the vanilla game for doubling magic damage or using non-elemental or time-elemental status spells on them.
I was a little worried that unrunnable encounters would push James up to level 38 before I could leave the upper floors of the Sea Shrine; the ever-important Opal Bracelet was of course there as his ultimate armor in Classic mode. Thankfully he managed to make it out just before. I grinded out the level (STR and VIT) and started off to the bottom. Level 39 just had INT missing in the SAIVL table. Not something to sweat. It was also when James would hit 4-hits, so I fully intended to have him fight enough to reach it along the way. But there was a very special treasure waiting in the depths of the underwater dungeon.
Behold, the Power Gauntlet. This item casts SABR when used in combat. It raises attack and accuracy by 16 each. The spell and therefore the weapon were bugged in the NES version, and therefore useless. But it's been fixed in FFR. Earlier versions of the game prior to the 2.0 release did not allow you to stack castings of it (or the Dancer's SWORD DANCE) despite all subsequent remakes of the game letting you do so and letting you stack a similar attack buff that the Renaissance-exclusive Geomancer can apply. Nevertheless, there remains two flaws with this. The first is that in FFR, unarmed warriors cannot receive these buffs (they still can with the Geomancer one though). The second?
I'll get to that in a bit. Amusingly, James did roll INT on level 39. There were a few more fights before KRAKEN, not enough to threatened to push him anywhere close to beyond that.
I realized while typing this up that I had still forgotten the Coral Sword. It is effective against aquatic enemies, of which KRAKEN is included. I rectified that when I could, but hey, I guess I didn't need it. The boss himself has 50 attack and can hit up to 8 times. 3 Defense sword uses meant he was hitting no times. The battle was effectively won at this point. James rolled some critical hits and got it done faster.
Anyway, here's the other problem with the Power Gauntlet. It's broken in a different way. As I mentioned in my Capitalists report, I honestly feel that restricting it to one cast each of SABR/TMPR was a very good idea from a balance perspective. The real problem I had with it is that FFR Renaissance mode and balance don't exactly walk hand-in-hand, so this felt like a bit of an arbitrary limitation. I would be restraining from using this for the most part, just to keep at least a little bit of the challenge. Fun fact: in the earliest 2.0 release, there was no upper limit to how much this could stack. You could reach tens of thousands of damage if you spammed it enough; but now, there's a limit of 255 each of attack and hit%.
A funny thing happened when I was grabbing the Coral Sword, better late than never. I ran into eight ARACHNIDs. No reason to fight so I ran. James failed to run. Because all of them moved and ran before him. I snorted at that.
That just left Mirage Tower and the Floating Castle to conquer, as well as getting to level 50. I could easily beat the game at a lower level than that, but I wanted to get an achievement in FFR 2.0 while I was here, so I figured I may as well go all the way.
The Thor Hammer was on Mirage 2F, an alternative LIT2 casting item. So let's talk about item slots, because I feel like it. James has four slots for weapons and armor. One of the former is always going to be his weapon, and two of the latter are always going to be Ribbon and Opal Bracelet. So what about the other slots? No spellcasting item can be equipped by a Thief. Any spellcasting armor will therefore take up a slot. Between the upcoming ProCape and ProRing, the former should be taken off first: it has more weight than the ProRing (and is in fact the only shield to have any weight).
Weapons:
- Defense Sword: This should be a mainstay. RUSE is very good and helps prevent damage.
- Bane Sword: This has some use; there are certain enemy groups that can just drop dead to waving this around, not just TIAMAT.
- Light Axe: This is inferior to the Mage Staff except in two cases: LICH 2 (not weak to fire) and WzVAMPs (which can use AFIR). All other undead enemies are weak to fire and FIR2 ends up with more effectivity.
- Thor Hammer: One of the elemental weapons. Few enemies resist LIT.
- Heal Staff: This isn't something to have on all the time. It's fantastic for healing with the defense sword, but that isn't going to happen every battle.
- Mage Staff: One of the elemental weapons. Fire hits the most enemies for weaknesses, but a lot also resists it. That said, most of them are the fire/water enemies.
- Wizard Staff: There are better options than confusion.
Armor
- White Shirt: INV2 is inferior to RUSE on a solo.
- Black Shirt: ICE2 is stronger than the other two elemental spells and can hit things like Gas Ds and WATERs into their weakness.
- Heal Helmet: It's an armor-ish Heal Staff and all the same applies.
- Zeus Gauntlet: Another LIT2 slot.
- Power Gauntlet: Broken busted.
Of course, predicting the order of encounters and switching in what I need for each would be the best option. But FFR is screwed up on that front as established, so for the purposes of this run, w-e-l-p. That said, in this solo, I'm at this point running from most of everything I don't have to fight when not grinding (and not solo, there would be enough slots to spread them around). So I can boil it down into unrunnable encounters.
Here's a list of almost all the non-boss ones in the game; only IronGOL and WzSAHAG/R.SAHAGs are not shown on this list. Of these, none are relevant for the Floating Castle. They're either single enemies or not here. But the Temple of Fiends Return...there's lots of unrunnable groups that I'll want to switch James' items around for. Also check that unused multiple Blue D group. Would've been scary if it was actually in the game.
All this meant is that I switched the Zeus out for the Buckler for the time being. If I wasn't going to be using it at all in the tower or castle, I may as well get some extra absorb.
That said, I found a funny way to fail my first time up the tower. I found some WzVAMPs, and figured, may as well kill them for a bit of experience and because I needed them in the bestiary. The thing I didn't count on was being closer to level 41 than I expected: James could not beat TIAMAT or the Blue D without leveling! And 41 was a doozy, as discussed.
This is a strong HP up level with STR and VIT needed. Assuming an equal distribution of the possibilities for extra HP gain, I was looking at two one-in-fours and a one-in-six. A one in ninety-six. Uh, yeah. That's a little too crazy for me to try to achieve, even if I'm doing solo Thief. I was prepared to give up one HP here, maybe two if it took too long. Needless to say, he failed to gain the right stats when I tried to.
So I did some grinding. Mirage itself seemed ideal paper. Remember that the first three encounters after a hard reset go 3-4-3. On floor 1? Those 3s are VAMPIREs, appearing in a group of 2-5. 200 morale, die easily to the Mage Staff, and pay out 1200EXP each. On floor 4? Ahahahahahaha. You see where this is going, don't you? They are supposed to be VAMPIREs, but they're instead CHIMERAs. I knew about this earlier from dungeon trekking earlier: the VAMPIRE group is instead stuck on slot 5. Well, it's still an okay spot. Might be better than the Sea Shrine. I would in fact use a grind pattern here later on, but let's not get ahead of ourselves too much.
The first time I got a STR/VIT level, James rolled the minimum amount of HP. Oh, come on. I'm playing Solo Thief. I have more time on my hands than that. So I reset and tried again. I got two more from here that were 21HP gains, including one that was a perfect level except from that (in other words, INT roll included). I also got a perfect HP roll with STR but no VIT. That...no. Not that either. He would lose 1HP overall in the end, offsetting the failed VIT gain.
Then to my shock and delight, I got an absolute perfect level: STR/VIT rolled, perfect HP, and even INT. Sick! That just left level 46 as the last strong HP up to manipulate. A VIT/AGI level; I was comfortable skipping AGI there for a perfect HP if need be. NOW I could move on; there was plenty of buffer and only killing a WarMECH or too many things would result in a similar problem to before.
There were four chests to pick up in the Floating Castle. First was the infamous Bane Sword. This had plenty of other use besides TIAMAT, not that I needed it to kill her. On the same floor was a Heal Helmet, nice for those rare times I can't have James hold the Heal Staff. The Black Shirt on the southeast room in F2 cast ICE2 for the strongest offensive option whenever it's not resisted, and the ProCape on the east side of F3 was the best shield he could use. I picked them up along my trip through.
Speaking of WarMECHs. I was still counting my encounters, and for once I knew this one was coming, slot 20. I got to the bridge on encounter 19, and even stuck around to lure it out when I got to the door with only one battle on the bridge. I just wanted the screencap. No ambush and I escaped from this little stunt without a single HEAL used. You better believe I'm going to scrap it later. That was another reason to reach level 50.
But before that point, it was time for TIAMAT.
Turn 1: Defense. But before that, TIAMAT hit for 88. Turn 2: THUNDER for 44, and another Defense. Mmm, that should do it, I think. James attacks...okay, maybe I should've considered the Bane Sword or Power Gauntlet here. But TIAMAT missed on her physical.
All up to critical hits then. Gamba! 224 on round 4. TIAMAT swung and missed again. She opened round 5 with a POISON for 53. James did only 4. Round 6: she swung and missed. 4 hits, 4 damage. Round 7: swing and a miss, 4 hits, 6 damage?
Well it's not like anything but accumulated skills can kill James. He again did 4 damage on round 8, and TIAMAT missed. She hit for 42 on round 9, as I used Defense again just in case that happened. 4 hits/11 damage on round 10, physical miss. 4 hits/10 damage, BLIZZARD for 41. I am getting very lucky with her using physicals and very unlucky with critical hits. BLAZE did 47, 4 hits/10 damage. 4 hits/5 damage, swing and a miss.
You get the idea at this point. James eventually rolled another critical for 203, but by then he had been reduced to 232HP. No more came. I tried chugging potions when he was at critical health: HEAL has better effectivity than the Heal Staff (16 vs 12), and it worked for a while, but it was a teeter-tottering stalemate and bad rolls eventually led to death. My working theory is that was all the bad luck from that perfect level up were coming back to haunt me in a mildly inconveniencing fashion.
I had another rude encounter surprise on the trip back up when I did a hard reset: I was counting in my head and bumped into the MudGOL/SORCERER group on F4 on encounter 13. Supposed to be slot 5, showing up when slot 6 is supposed to. But yes, this illustrates something else: the amount of steps between encounters can vary. Sometimes you'll find a pattern like how I was able to semi-consistently reach the GrOGRE/OGRE group in slot 7 when looping encounters down at Elfland, but other times you'll get results like this. Now, the first trip up did start from encounter 2 rather than encounter 1 (since I went up after getting the level), but I still ran into far less encounters this time. No chance of a WarMECH even accidentally, in other words. As for them, they tried a TRANCE but I escaped and James had 95 MDef at this point anyway. Encounter 14, slot 2, GUARD/SENTRY. Up to the bridge. Encounter 15, slot 5...
Supposed to be GrNAGA/AIR. But see above, plus chance to strike first. There were AIRs steps before the door (also in the wrong slot) before I could go again for round 2. Sticking to my somewhat aggressively showy plan of no Bane Sword and no Power Gauntlet.
Defense, THUNDER for 56. Miss, Defense. Defense, miss. Miss, 263. Miss, 4. 71, POISON for 41. 10, BLIZZARD for 38. Miss, 7. BLAZE for 40, 4. THUNDER for 54, 10. POISON for 55, 70. 12, miss. Miss, 4. 6, BLIZZARD for 40. BLAZE for 44, 4. 10, THUNDER for 40. Miss, 4. Miss, 53. These are pretty astonishingly bad criticals whenever they're happening. Another later into the fight after I stopped keeping track of them would do 213, but yeah. This was also a dead run.
James only has 45 effective attack with the Dragon Sword. TIAMAT has 80 defense. Without boosts from the Power Gauntlet or just instantly killing her, this fight was entirely determined by critical hits. Well, if I'm being silly, nothing to do but keep throwing myself against the wall. So I just went up after a soft reset, got the Bane Sword, Black Shirt, and ProCape again, and--
Okay, I deserve this after all that encounter manipulation talk and then just throwing it out the window. This was genuinely unexpected unlike the last one; though I did have that sinking feeling when I got my first encounter hence managing to pause and turn down the game speed enough to cap this ambush message. Slot 7 and 8 seem to be constants at least, so this was my bad.
Made it out alive, barely. Uhh, so is this encounter 34 or encounter 37? Because if it's 34 and I get three more on the bridge, that's another one. I was morbidly curious and pulled two more encounters to check, it was 37 and it wasn't even close to giving me three more on the bridge. I would've laughed if the SORCERERs in slot 39 killed me at stupidly low odds, but they didn't.
Anyway, I am warning you. Pull it a third time and you suffocate.
THUNDER for 44, James hit for 11. I forgot to cast Defense, whoops. Too rattled by that WarMECH and my countermeasure to think right. She hit physically and James hit for 11 again. I got it up over the next 3 rounds; James was at 508HP after that. 6 damage, 4 damage, 213 damage, woo!!! 11 damage yet again. 4 damage.
340 damage!!!! 17 damage. 4 damage. 12 damage. 282 damage!!!! 4 damage. I did some math at this point and think this is a win, she has 81HP left. I could actually just spam Mage Staff at this point for safety.
But instead I used the Bane Sword. If I deserved that WarMECH, then she deserved this. She was at low health anyway.
Well, 9 more levels to gain. Then it's off to kill a robot followed by a trip to the past. See you on the other side of the break!
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Instead? I was going to grind more. I had previously done this with my solo Green Mage, taking them to level 33 for an effective 84 magic defense. MDef determines the chance for a status to be inflicted on a physical hit: the formula is a 100 - MDef chance to inflict then rolling from 0-200; less than or equal to the resultant number means it inflicts; do this calculation for each hit. Having at least 100 basically prevents them entirely (I'm unsure if FFR still maintains 1/201s; I have been wrecked by them and wrecked things at least once each in vanilla). James at level 30 only had 73; he would need to hit level 44 if I wanted to cut the chance of these out entirely. That would be a lot of EARTHs killed. He was going to have to hit level 50 sooner or later, but there were better ways than this. It still didn't change the fact that it couldn't hurt to level up some more now.
So the question was, where to?
- I could try the Peninsula of Power at this point. Zeus castings will work.
- EARTHs were still viable. Tried and true and all that. 288HP, 66 attack, 20 defense, and pay out 1536 EXP.
- Grey Ws in Gurgu have 280HP, 50 attack, 31 defense, and pay out 1671 EXP. Basically worse than EARTH in every way.
- So what about FIRE? 276, 50, 20, 1620. Not noticably more than EARTH and they can appear in a two-pack for better or worse. They still count as demons/magicals so Rune Sword would offset their decent 42 evade. But could James survive fighting two?
- AGAMA? 296HP and they count as dragons. 31 attack, 74 accuracy and up to two hits, 18 defense, and pay out 2472 EXP. They have a one-in-four chance of using HEAT on any given turn, hitting for 12-48 damage. Ideal on paper, the only problem is the spikes are pretty deep in. So they're not actually ideal.
I went for the peninsula first. Halfway through the 7-minute timer I set to compare it to EARTHs, James had gotten nearly 15000EXP. Yeah, this was way faster. There was going to be one problem: again, enemy morale. ZomBULLs were running, as were GIANTs. This meant that FrWOLFs were the best thing to fight; they have 200 morale. Thankfully, encounters on the overworld have perfectly matched up those in the actual FF1 itself.
Strategy here was simple: just Zeus. Naturally, if there were one or two enemies and I was not fighting FrWOLFs, attacking was better. So let's talk about FrWOLFs. They have a 25% chance of using their special, FROST: 24-96 damage. Otherwise, they have 92HP and 25 attack, hitting only once. 4-7 spawn in slots 5 and 6, so they can either all use FROST and kill James or they could crash weakly against his 27 absorb. Someone on the FFR server recently soft confirmed that spell damage is boosted by (INT÷2)% damage; so, 10% with James' 20. Just meant there was a slightly less chance of taking three hits to kill them.
Still, enemies could run and it was a problem. ZomBULLs have 136 morale, same as TROLLs and GIANTs. Even TYROs could hypothetically start to run starting from level 32 (should be level 33 but, as I found out, enemies running is a bit bugged). So even this spot was starting to become unideal.
Level 33 was noteworthy. STR, AGI, and VIT all were guaranteed to increase. But it was a strong HP up level. In other words, there was absolutely no excuse for not trying for the highest roll possible here. After reaching this, I swapped over to grinding on the FIREs. They, like most enemies found on spiked tiles, have 200 morale. No chance of running from the fight.
This tile was the spiked one; it had the bonus of being near the bottom of a room so there was no chance of getting random encounters as long as I kept going up and down. I bought a huge stack of TENTs and even CABINs (I had the money even though they're two TENTs for over twice the cost; I ended up buying most from Pravoka during my peninsula grind since I didn't feel like going to Coneria where TENTs are at the bottom of the item shop list) to make getting to here and back to Crescent Lake more smooth. Like their palette swap, it was better to use the Rune Sword on them. Higher absorb helped offset potentially fighting two of them, although some of the fights ended up closer than I wanted to...
I settled on level 36. This would get James 85 MDef, or in other words, reduce the chance of being hit by stuns or SORCERER kills to 7.5%. This felt like a happy medium between a ridiculous grind and doing enough to tip things in James' favor. Level 37 would be another strong HP up, but the extra HP wouldn't make much of a difference in the Ice Cave. (Watch as I get killed by the HP difference somehow)
James once got wrecked by SQUINT on the way out to save before a level up in Gurgu. That was insanely unlucky, but I could only shrug. It's a problem here. And since I'm doing solo Thief, I have nothing but time on my hands.
Anyway, I got there eventually, which meant it was finally time for the Ice Cave. Encounters in order, no manipulation:
- WIZARDs. Most ran away.
- WRAITHs. Ran before they could move.
- B2. Undead mix. James took a ton of hits, got stunned, recovered on the same turn, took a ton of hits next turn, did not get stunned again, and escaped!
- IMAGEs/WRAITHs. Took four hits, got out.
- MAGE ambush. Dead.
You asked for it, game...
Okay, so assuming the encounters are correct (and that's a big assumption given what I've seen so far), that was MAGEs on floor 2. A slot 5 encounter. The encounters went 1 or 2, 6, 6, 1 or 2, 5. I can try to work around those at least: MAGEs are slot 5 in B2 and slot 3 in B1. One look at the encounter table relative into what I was running into and yeah: it's still off. Double 6 slots are always preceded by slot 4. So was WIZARDs misplaced there? Were those alleged 6s misplaced? Was I wrong about something? Well, let's try to map this broken stuff out at least a little. Hard reset.
B1 slot 3: COCTRICE/MUMMY. Correct. B1 slot 4: COCTRICE/MUMMY. Correct. Then another slot 3, for a total of three encounters before I got downstairs. Next is slot 6. Should be the undead mix. And, correct! James got through the square room with only one encounter, through the sideroom, then it was back up to B2. Slot 2 should be IMAGE/WRAITH. And they were. So far so good.
Another slot 2 is next. That is MAGEs down below on B3, hypothetically speaking. Instead, I had James run around B2 to pull another IMAGE/WRAITH encounter before jumping in the pit.
The undead tile had only five total enemies. Aaand, James got stunned. Dead? Nope! He recovered and got out cleanly. Next should be Frost Ds, encounter 7 being a slot 7. They were, a two-pack. No problem, not with that much HP. A slot 5 encounter is next. One step from the stairs no less. Should be a FrGIANT/FrWOLF group which is going to force James to fight. But nope! GrPEDE, supposed to be in slot 6.
Upstairs, a slot 3 encounter is next. Know that's a COCTRICE/MUMMY mix, but I get to the hole to the FLOATER before that. There is one step between where I land and the FLOATER/EYE fight on B2. That is hypothetically SORCERERs. So do I take the chance or pull the encounter up here? Simple math said jump in: SORCERERs can appear in groups of 1-3, COCTRICEs can appear in groups of 1-6. The former have 130 morale and the latter have 124, close enough that it means very little. Go down, take the step, nothing. It's supposed to be WRAITHs on B3, so I'm not worried about bumping into them down there until I suddenly am.
Took two rounds to beat the EYE. XXXX fell ineffective against James' greater than 300HP. Chance to strike first against the undead spike. Here comes slot 3.
Is anyone surprised? This lone one failed to deliver an instant kill and James escaped. Two slot 5 encounters were up next which I know now are GrPEDEs so this floor would carry no further threat. Indeed, I walked right through it with just running into one of them. Another slot 5 is up next. So what's that on B1? It could be R.BONEs like it's supposed to be. Or that could be screwed that up too and it could be WRAITHs. Right after that is a slot 1: WIZARDs. They're also in slot 2. Surely, SURELY, both of those aren't maligned? I stuck around and pulled the next GrPEDE encounter down on B2 and went upstairs. And right around the upper left corner of the room with the hole...it was indeed WIZARDs! Perfect. Two ran, one got smacked down. Nothing stopped him in the eight steps from there to the exit. FLOATER obtained!
And so James claimed the airship. I was very close to breaking the game open. Here's an interesting fact about this desert too: the non-side tiles are marked to have no encounters (and to be able to raise the airship on them). This is in fact properly reflected in FFR. One of those obscure details this remake gets right, so nice attention to detail there.
The first stop on the northern continents was to pick up the BOTTLE at the Caravan. I then went to Gaia to pick up the OXAYLE and to have James buy himself a ProRing to replace his well-worn Gloves. It is the best arm equipment in the vanilla game; matching Opal Gauntlets' 8 absorb but with 2 less weight. It also gives immunity to the death element. And what do you know, I'm headed to the Waterfall where there are PERILISKs hanging around.
I actually had James fight some of the encounters in here. It was a short dungeon and it cut off some of the grinding by doing it along the way. There is exactly one unrunnable encounter in here: the slot 8 (1/64) Gas D. I had just turned the game back on, so there was zero possibility of one of these appearing. It was a leisurely walk to obtain the treasures waiting within: the Ribbon being the biggest of them. This replaced the Cap and gave resistance to all elements in the game. Then there was the Defense sword. James couldn't equip it, but could use it as an itemcast for RUSE. Three or four of these, and he was effectively invincible against enemies that primarily physically attacked. Lastly, there was the Wizard Staff. Less good but still with some niche use, this casts CONF when used as an item. It's not fully reliable, but it can be clutch in a few situations.
Level 36 was another strong HP up with a VIT roll being necessary as well. It took some resets to get the perfect level here; I actually saved on a different slot with one HP off max, but I gave it a few more tries and eventually got what I wanted within a few tries. Since I grinded it out at Gurgu and was right there, I felt that I may as well tackle it now.
Even if I wasn't doing it with a Ribbon, there was little to write home about the fiery dungeon. The encounters are far simpler here; the only particularly dangerous things are the possibility of a slot 8 Red D on the final floor or PERILISKs (if you do it beforehand): supposed to be slot 5 on B2 and B3 alike. The treasure in here is mostly inferior and not worth picking up. There is of course an Ice Sword, Flame Shield, and Flame Armor, but James could use none of that. He couldn't even use the Giant Sword found in B2, notable for still being weaker than the Silver Sword (let alone the Ice Sword) except for hitting humanoid enemies effectively and having 20 hit%. So it was a simple trek through that I still somehow managed to almost die in because I thought James could 1v2 some R.GIANTs without Defense.
KARY is an absurdly easy boss. Three Defense Sword uses ensured she was unable to touch James. The Ribbon protected against her FIR2, DARK, and HOLD spells; the last spell there and her 50 defense being why I didn't try to do this sooner. And, of course, she is infamously vulnerable to the status-element. This meant CONF out of the Wizard Staff. I just had James enjoy the show as she did herself in, reapplying it as necessary.
That led James to the Sea Shrine. Here you can see one of the only dangerous encounters in here. You can't run from GHOSTs. They hit hard, so that meant Defense. This happened before I could make it to the Mage Staff, the FIR2 casting weapon. So instead, I made things a little faster with the Wizard Staff instead! Actually, this was insanely lucky and/or possibly another FFR bug: they're supposed to be resistant to status like all undead, but I got through to two of them anyway at stupidly low odds. They do have low MDef though, which is only relevant in the vanilla game for doubling magic damage or using non-elemental or time-elemental status spells on them.
I was a little worried that unrunnable encounters would push James up to level 38 before I could leave the upper floors of the Sea Shrine; the ever-important Opal Bracelet was of course there as his ultimate armor in Classic mode. Thankfully he managed to make it out just before. I grinded out the level (STR and VIT) and started off to the bottom. Level 39 just had INT missing in the SAIVL table. Not something to sweat. It was also when James would hit 4-hits, so I fully intended to have him fight enough to reach it along the way. But there was a very special treasure waiting in the depths of the underwater dungeon.
Behold, the Power Gauntlet. This item casts SABR when used in combat. It raises attack and accuracy by 16 each. The spell and therefore the weapon were bugged in the NES version, and therefore useless. But it's been fixed in FFR. Earlier versions of the game prior to the 2.0 release did not allow you to stack castings of it (or the Dancer's SWORD DANCE) despite all subsequent remakes of the game letting you do so and letting you stack a similar attack buff that the Renaissance-exclusive Geomancer can apply. Nevertheless, there remains two flaws with this. The first is that in FFR, unarmed warriors cannot receive these buffs (they still can with the Geomancer one though). The second?
I'll get to that in a bit. Amusingly, James did roll INT on level 39. There were a few more fights before KRAKEN, not enough to threatened to push him anywhere close to beyond that.
I realized while typing this up that I had still forgotten the Coral Sword. It is effective against aquatic enemies, of which KRAKEN is included. I rectified that when I could, but hey, I guess I didn't need it. The boss himself has 50 attack and can hit up to 8 times. 3 Defense sword uses meant he was hitting no times. The battle was effectively won at this point. James rolled some critical hits and got it done faster.
Anyway, here's the other problem with the Power Gauntlet. It's broken in a different way. As I mentioned in my Capitalists report, I honestly feel that restricting it to one cast each of SABR/TMPR was a very good idea from a balance perspective. The real problem I had with it is that FFR Renaissance mode and balance don't exactly walk hand-in-hand, so this felt like a bit of an arbitrary limitation. I would be restraining from using this for the most part, just to keep at least a little bit of the challenge. Fun fact: in the earliest 2.0 release, there was no upper limit to how much this could stack. You could reach tens of thousands of damage if you spammed it enough; but now, there's a limit of 255 each of attack and hit%.
A funny thing happened when I was grabbing the Coral Sword, better late than never. I ran into eight ARACHNIDs. No reason to fight so I ran. James failed to run. Because all of them moved and ran before him. I snorted at that.
That just left Mirage Tower and the Floating Castle to conquer, as well as getting to level 50. I could easily beat the game at a lower level than that, but I wanted to get an achievement in FFR 2.0 while I was here, so I figured I may as well go all the way.
The Thor Hammer was on Mirage 2F, an alternative LIT2 casting item. So let's talk about item slots, because I feel like it. James has four slots for weapons and armor. One of the former is always going to be his weapon, and two of the latter are always going to be Ribbon and Opal Bracelet. So what about the other slots? No spellcasting item can be equipped by a Thief. Any spellcasting armor will therefore take up a slot. Between the upcoming ProCape and ProRing, the former should be taken off first: it has more weight than the ProRing (and is in fact the only shield to have any weight).
Weapons:
- Defense Sword: This should be a mainstay. RUSE is very good and helps prevent damage.
- Bane Sword: This has some use; there are certain enemy groups that can just drop dead to waving this around, not just TIAMAT.
- Light Axe: This is inferior to the Mage Staff except in two cases: LICH 2 (not weak to fire) and WzVAMPs (which can use AFIR). All other undead enemies are weak to fire and FIR2 ends up with more effectivity.
- Thor Hammer: One of the elemental weapons. Few enemies resist LIT.
- Heal Staff: This isn't something to have on all the time. It's fantastic for healing with the defense sword, but that isn't going to happen every battle.
- Mage Staff: One of the elemental weapons. Fire hits the most enemies for weaknesses, but a lot also resists it. That said, most of them are the fire/water enemies.
- Wizard Staff: There are better options than confusion.
Armor
- White Shirt: INV2 is inferior to RUSE on a solo.
- Black Shirt: ICE2 is stronger than the other two elemental spells and can hit things like Gas Ds and WATERs into their weakness.
- Heal Helmet: It's an armor-ish Heal Staff and all the same applies.
- Zeus Gauntlet: Another LIT2 slot.
- Power Gauntlet: Broken busted.
Of course, predicting the order of encounters and switching in what I need for each would be the best option. But FFR is screwed up on that front as established, so for the purposes of this run, w-e-l-p. That said, in this solo, I'm at this point running from most of everything I don't have to fight when not grinding (and not solo, there would be enough slots to spread them around). So I can boil it down into unrunnable encounters.
Here's a list of almost all the non-boss ones in the game; only IronGOL and WzSAHAG/R.SAHAGs are not shown on this list. Of these, none are relevant for the Floating Castle. They're either single enemies or not here. But the Temple of Fiends Return...there's lots of unrunnable groups that I'll want to switch James' items around for. Also check that unused multiple Blue D group. Would've been scary if it was actually in the game.
All this meant is that I switched the Zeus out for the Buckler for the time being. If I wasn't going to be using it at all in the tower or castle, I may as well get some extra absorb.
That said, I found a funny way to fail my first time up the tower. I found some WzVAMPs, and figured, may as well kill them for a bit of experience and because I needed them in the bestiary. The thing I didn't count on was being closer to level 41 than I expected: James could not beat TIAMAT or the Blue D without leveling! And 41 was a doozy, as discussed.
This is a strong HP up level with STR and VIT needed. Assuming an equal distribution of the possibilities for extra HP gain, I was looking at two one-in-fours and a one-in-six. A one in ninety-six. Uh, yeah. That's a little too crazy for me to try to achieve, even if I'm doing solo Thief. I was prepared to give up one HP here, maybe two if it took too long. Needless to say, he failed to gain the right stats when I tried to.
So I did some grinding. Mirage itself seemed ideal paper. Remember that the first three encounters after a hard reset go 3-4-3. On floor 1? Those 3s are VAMPIREs, appearing in a group of 2-5. 200 morale, die easily to the Mage Staff, and pay out 1200EXP each. On floor 4? Ahahahahahaha. You see where this is going, don't you? They are supposed to be VAMPIREs, but they're instead CHIMERAs. I knew about this earlier from dungeon trekking earlier: the VAMPIRE group is instead stuck on slot 5. Well, it's still an okay spot. Might be better than the Sea Shrine. I would in fact use a grind pattern here later on, but let's not get ahead of ourselves too much.
The first time I got a STR/VIT level, James rolled the minimum amount of HP. Oh, come on. I'm playing Solo Thief. I have more time on my hands than that. So I reset and tried again. I got two more from here that were 21HP gains, including one that was a perfect level except from that (in other words, INT roll included). I also got a perfect HP roll with STR but no VIT. That...no. Not that either. He would lose 1HP overall in the end, offsetting the failed VIT gain.
Then to my shock and delight, I got an absolute perfect level: STR/VIT rolled, perfect HP, and even INT. Sick! That just left level 46 as the last strong HP up to manipulate. A VIT/AGI level; I was comfortable skipping AGI there for a perfect HP if need be. NOW I could move on; there was plenty of buffer and only killing a WarMECH or too many things would result in a similar problem to before.
There were four chests to pick up in the Floating Castle. First was the infamous Bane Sword. This had plenty of other use besides TIAMAT, not that I needed it to kill her. On the same floor was a Heal Helmet, nice for those rare times I can't have James hold the Heal Staff. The Black Shirt on the southeast room in F2 cast ICE2 for the strongest offensive option whenever it's not resisted, and the ProCape on the east side of F3 was the best shield he could use. I picked them up along my trip through.
Speaking of WarMECHs. I was still counting my encounters, and for once I knew this one was coming, slot 20. I got to the bridge on encounter 19, and even stuck around to lure it out when I got to the door with only one battle on the bridge. I just wanted the screencap. No ambush and I escaped from this little stunt without a single HEAL used. You better believe I'm going to scrap it later. That was another reason to reach level 50.
But before that point, it was time for TIAMAT.
Turn 1: Defense. But before that, TIAMAT hit for 88. Turn 2: THUNDER for 44, and another Defense. Mmm, that should do it, I think. James attacks...okay, maybe I should've considered the Bane Sword or Power Gauntlet here. But TIAMAT missed on her physical.
All up to critical hits then. Gamba! 224 on round 4. TIAMAT swung and missed again. She opened round 5 with a POISON for 53. James did only 4. Round 6: she swung and missed. 4 hits, 4 damage. Round 7: swing and a miss, 4 hits, 6 damage?
Well it's not like anything but accumulated skills can kill James. He again did 4 damage on round 8, and TIAMAT missed. She hit for 42 on round 9, as I used Defense again just in case that happened. 4 hits/11 damage on round 10, physical miss. 4 hits/10 damage, BLIZZARD for 41. I am getting very lucky with her using physicals and very unlucky with critical hits. BLAZE did 47, 4 hits/10 damage. 4 hits/5 damage, swing and a miss.
You get the idea at this point. James eventually rolled another critical for 203, but by then he had been reduced to 232HP. No more came. I tried chugging potions when he was at critical health: HEAL has better effectivity than the Heal Staff (16 vs 12), and it worked for a while, but it was a teeter-tottering stalemate and bad rolls eventually led to death. My working theory is that was all the bad luck from that perfect level up were coming back to haunt me in a mildly inconveniencing fashion.
I had another rude encounter surprise on the trip back up when I did a hard reset: I was counting in my head and bumped into the MudGOL/SORCERER group on F4 on encounter 13. Supposed to be slot 5, showing up when slot 6 is supposed to. But yes, this illustrates something else: the amount of steps between encounters can vary. Sometimes you'll find a pattern like how I was able to semi-consistently reach the GrOGRE/OGRE group in slot 7 when looping encounters down at Elfland, but other times you'll get results like this. Now, the first trip up did start from encounter 2 rather than encounter 1 (since I went up after getting the level), but I still ran into far less encounters this time. No chance of a WarMECH even accidentally, in other words. As for them, they tried a TRANCE but I escaped and James had 95 MDef at this point anyway. Encounter 14, slot 2, GUARD/SENTRY. Up to the bridge. Encounter 15, slot 5...
Supposed to be GrNAGA/AIR. But see above, plus chance to strike first. There were AIRs steps before the door (also in the wrong slot) before I could go again for round 2. Sticking to my somewhat aggressively showy plan of no Bane Sword and no Power Gauntlet.
Defense, THUNDER for 56. Miss, Defense. Defense, miss. Miss, 263. Miss, 4. 71, POISON for 41. 10, BLIZZARD for 38. Miss, 7. BLAZE for 40, 4. THUNDER for 54, 10. POISON for 55, 70. 12, miss. Miss, 4. 6, BLIZZARD for 40. BLAZE for 44, 4. 10, THUNDER for 40. Miss, 4. Miss, 53. These are pretty astonishingly bad criticals whenever they're happening. Another later into the fight after I stopped keeping track of them would do 213, but yeah. This was also a dead run.
James only has 45 effective attack with the Dragon Sword. TIAMAT has 80 defense. Without boosts from the Power Gauntlet or just instantly killing her, this fight was entirely determined by critical hits. Well, if I'm being silly, nothing to do but keep throwing myself against the wall. So I just went up after a soft reset, got the Bane Sword, Black Shirt, and ProCape again, and--
Okay, I deserve this after all that encounter manipulation talk and then just throwing it out the window. This was genuinely unexpected unlike the last one; though I did have that sinking feeling when I got my first encounter hence managing to pause and turn down the game speed enough to cap this ambush message. Slot 7 and 8 seem to be constants at least, so this was my bad.
Made it out alive, barely. Uhh, so is this encounter 34 or encounter 37? Because if it's 34 and I get three more on the bridge, that's another one. I was morbidly curious and pulled two more encounters to check, it was 37 and it wasn't even close to giving me three more on the bridge. I would've laughed if the SORCERERs in slot 39 killed me at stupidly low odds, but they didn't.
Anyway, I am warning you. Pull it a third time and you suffocate.
THUNDER for 44, James hit for 11. I forgot to cast Defense, whoops. Too rattled by that WarMECH and my countermeasure to think right. She hit physically and James hit for 11 again. I got it up over the next 3 rounds; James was at 508HP after that. 6 damage, 4 damage, 213 damage, woo!!! 11 damage yet again. 4 damage.
340 damage!!!! 17 damage. 4 damage. 12 damage. 282 damage!!!! 4 damage. I did some math at this point and think this is a win, she has 81HP left. I could actually just spam Mage Staff at this point for safety.
But instead I used the Bane Sword. If I deserved that WarMECH, then she deserved this. She was at low health anyway.
Well, 9 more levels to gain. Then it's off to kill a robot followed by a trip to the past. See you on the other side of the break!
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