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sirsystemerrorThe Four Job Fiesta sometimes isn't enough for me. Sometimes it's too restrictive. Sometimes it isn't challenging enough or too samey. I had an idea for a challenge run on it for 2024. That is, until I saw an image posted by Orange Fluffy Sheep on the SomethingAwful forums thread for it.
That is the exact opposite of how I normally play. I say, play the way you want. Also, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
It is very possible to turn off random encounters altogether. The Pixel Remaster version officially allows this. The Project Demi convenience patch for the SNES version also lets you turn them off, and I'd like to say that the 2013 release might have something similar? Maybe? Codes can work too, or simply running away. But I'll be playing this on the second of these, since I wanted to check it out anyway (and my first run with it got scuffed).
Note that this is not the same as a low level game. There will be chances to gain experience later on, but it and my money flow will be limited.
Of course, this is going to be pretty brutally difficult in a fiesta setting, even taking that to the exact letter. Job fair is absolutely on the table here just to make this possible, but in the efforts to spend less money, I need to consider the best option to minimize spending (which includes spending on the Pixel Remasters). After weighing my options, I settled on Volcano 750. Most of the physical jobs were a bust in some way. Even Samurai; due to the damage formula of throwing money being tied to level, it would only be useful with a Chemist.
My initial roll would determine whether or not I started with all jobs unlocked as I like to in the fiesta (this is where it would be very differentiated from a standard challenge run). And the first job I rolled...Dancer! Pretty solid, actually. We'll take that. Physical damage and it meant Chemist was guaranteed as my Earth job. I started early, but of course, there's one problem: there's only two knives to go around! Though not as big a problem as you might expect yet: Sword Dance works just as well with fists. Especially on WingRaptor who isn't immune to Charm.
Karlabos is immune to it, among a host of other things. It could one-shot Lenna and Galuf, so I had to put them in the back. That meant Bartz got the Knife. The ideal roll from !Dance was Jitterbug Duet, which did a healthy 150~ damage. I reset until no one died, because AP is precious. To contast, Siren could also be confused, so no trouble there.
I bought a set of three more Daggers. Money has to be spent very wisely in this run because there's very limited opportunity to farm more, but this was an important investment to actually deal damage.
Then came Magisa/Forza, the first real wall. The bounty hunter would instantly kill anyone with any offensive action she took short of a physical attack to someone in the back row. The only way thing to do was !Dance and hope for Jitterbugs and Sword Dances. I had to turn the battle speed down here; Project Demi starts with it at 1 and I didn't have time to enter commands. I could get more off before she attacked. On my winning run, Faris went down. But Forza was confused from the Tango and killed his wife on the spot. The three remaining warriors managed to keep him locked down from there.
Now if this was low level and not no random encounters, I could grind AP to my heart's content at this point. Just encounter Garulas outside of Walse Tower. They take no actions and eventually run from battle, paying out nothing but AP. Instead, AP is going to be the biggest obstacle in this run.
One advantage of no encounters: I could just walk in and grab the Elf Cave in Walse Castle. It would be nice if I could've gotten 3 more AP before Garula, which would unlock !Flirt for everyone besides Faris. The only non-random battle before this point however, was Shiva.
There was no strategy to Garula (the boss) besides !Dance and hope for the best. Its counterattacks can target the same person, which is ideal because it means only one person dies. In the end, only Faris was left standing on my winning run. Inverse of before. This was a little awkward because it meant nobody would be able to use !Flirt for LiquidFlame (actually if I started from frame 1 Bartz would have it and could use it on Garula).
But no matter, Water job was Red Mage. Pretty good roll: rod breaks and status effects. But a candidate to be job faired long term if I get stuck. For what? Probably Time Mage for nonsense. I would've preferred it or Summoner, actually: Red Mage has horrid vitality, and those status ailments have limited use. Actually, with potential AP issues, there was a legitimate question of whether or not to job fair now.
I did a quick test looking ahead: two Ice Rod breaks killed LiquidFlame with both Red and Time. They don't really differentiate in the M variable until later on. But there were a lot of other factors, and I wasn't entirely certain how it was going to play out in practice. After sleeping on it and looking ahead further, I decided to go ahead and do so now. There were some situations where Red would be better, but Time was equal in many cases.
Now, just because I can break rods doesn't mean I should go crazy. After doing some selling of stuff I could never use plus some stuff that was obsolete, I was left with 8195 gil. I'll need that for !Mix supplies eventually and maybe spells.
Because of this and that job fair, even though I can use two rods to kill it, I don't have to. Instead, I used Demi. LiquidFlame is not considered Heavy except in its hand form, meaning that's half her current HP gone each casting. With Tempting Tango around, I could even stun her for a bit. The big problem is that I wanted to win while she was in her hand form: i.e. getting a Fire Rod drop. Problem there is, she's immune to ice in that form. So it took a lot of tries to get it to line up.
Then I just left the queen laying in a heap while I ran off and drank water of life from the Wind Shrine. Karnak Castle could wait to start exploding, thank you very much. I sold some of the stuff from the ship and though how I wanted to go about this.
This sequence offered the opportunity to gain experience for the first time. I certainly wanted the Elf Cape, Ribbon, and Guardian anyway. The only problem was, how was an underleveled team going to handle this? The only answer seemed to be rod breaks. I need to balance my budget carefully, of course.
After checking to make sure a rod wiped the enemies, I settled on going all out, and leaving a save for later just in case. Spoilers, it is true I have grind spots, but they're going to be pains to deal with. That said? It's easier to get money out of the first one than it is experience. I'd be getting 6000 in the castle anyway.
There are ten monsters in boxes, and I had three rods already: two Ice Rods (one free and one cheap) plus the Fire Rod I got off LiquidFlame. I bought some extras. Would I be able to get them all and get out?
Answer: yes. Very comfortably, so much that I was able to take three trips back to the pot of life! No encounters can help as much as it can hinder. This may have been Project Demi's superspeed run nonsense, but only partly. Just made it very comfortable instead of tight. I accidentally bought too few rods, but it didn't matter: by that point, I had enough power to win outright.
Drumroll. And the Fire job is...Bard! I win the coinflip! Geomancer does have short-term use, but it is otherwise terrible, especially here. Bard meanwhile, absolutely has some uses here, primarily involving !Hide. I'm glad I dodged that bullet. Everyone was now level 10. Lenna and Galuf were notably at 42AP: eight away from getting !Dance.
By going and killing Shiva, I get 5 more for them. I couldn't do this earlier because she would one-shot my characters. Bartz temporarily takes up a Bard position since he has !Time to equip. This did not involve a rod and instead involved Haste, Slow, and a lot of dancing. One soldier buddy stayed entranced by Galuf's smooth moves and beat up on the ice queen. She drops an Ice Rod too, another freebie for the collection.
Ifrit wasn't too hard, given Tempting Tango could confuse him. Also oddly, !Dance did not unconfuse him even with Sword Dance! Huh??? Not complaining since it made things easier.
Now say hello to the book. It respawns every time you leave the screen. I am taking No Random Encounters extremely literally. This is a fixed encounter! Granted, as anyone who's ever played FF5 knows, the Ancient Library sucks for grinding: little in the way of experience, and also even if I did abuse it level 5 death exists: and hey, the team is in fact level 10 right now. So what's it good for? You can run. It's a Chicken Knife grinding spot!
And if I do win? That's 1AP. I am grinding in the Ancient Library. This is what it's come to. My tentative goal is to get Bartz !Hide for later, then I can switch back into Dancer and switch one of Lenna or Galuf into Bard instead. It wasn't hard to fight them: the encounter is fixed and only has a Page 32 and Page 64. By no means insurmountable. Though, now was not the ideal time to do that. The dancers were still stuck with Daggers, and I could improve that to increase the reliability (and scope of what I could fight). So I just grinded out the runs for now. Worth noting, these fights can back attack, so I did need to save every now and then.
After I grinded out the runs for the Chicken Knife, which I normally need to do anyway because I usually fight all randoms that just don't suck to fight, it was onto Byblos. !Flirt works as a frog. Winning was easy: Demi into Fire Rod break kills. Winning without using a rod was harder. Sure, that worked, and flirting with him seemed to give him less turns? Nothing in the Algorithms guide says he should be immune. I didn't see the throbbing message though, so not completely sure. Either way, frog Galuf successfully flirted with him, and that means something all right.
A Wind Slash from him was an instant game over. Two Demis took him to the mouth of his counter script: if he's under 800, he can counter with Drain. I had some plans for dealing with this, but getting lucky worked too. If not, I would've grinded out !Hide then MP stalled. And probably died to Wind Slash anyway. As it was however, he missed out on using Drain with a third Demi, Lenna did a Sword Dance and someone dodged the Drain, then she belted out a second for the victory! Phew.
I finally bought some armor upgrades, feeling they would be a decent investment at this point: three Plumed Hats and three Sage's Robes. This in addition to three Mage Mashers left me with 11597 gil after some selling.
This also meant I could now more comfortably fight the fixed battle in the Ancient Library. I grinded out !Hide on Bartz. The question now became, how much did I want to do this? I'll decide that later.
Then it was Sandworm time. Oh dear. Quicksand was an utter killer: 60~ damage each and HP leak. Physicals to anyone in the front row but Bartz (the Ribbon wearer) also did over 200 damage and were equally killer.
On my winning run, I got pretty deep in until suddenly, it used Quicksand twice in a row! I started throwing out Elixirs at this point just to survive. Lenna went down due to HP Leak ticking too quick, but I also used a Phoenix Down. I was able to rebuild for a bit until another one got Faris. At this point, there was nothing left to do but !Dance and hope for the win: Jitterbug would heal back some of the damage. First Lenna went down, then the other two...
Then Galuf went nuts, banging out Jitterbug after Jitterbug to eventually win!! I was absolutely stunned. But I took this. It took five Elixirs, sure, and that might screw me later. But when I couldn't get any results from trying to be stingier, I just went forward.
Crayclaw was vulnerable to charm, so some singing worked. The best I was able to do against Adamantoise before my patience ran out was one Phoenix Down plus an Ice Rod. Both replaceable by hitting the books. I used double Time Mage here for twice the chances at Demi. Two of them before the Ice Rod worked, but it took a while to get those and Slow through its magic evasion.
No problem from either sentry gun fight. Bartz could hide behind the flame guns as long as he had a meat shield at the start of the fight. For Rockets, I could actually beat them outright without unbreakable defense with the Knife through a combination of Love Song and Demi. Against the Sol Cannon, it was easy as breaking two Thunder Rods to wipe the Launchers right away, Haste, Slow, then having Bartz hide. Actually, Galuf survived too due to Jitterbugs. I actually revived the Tycoon sisters so they could share in the AP growth.
Now, as I was going into this challenge, I expected Arcahaeoavis to be a roadblock. So much so that I wrote a part of it up in advance. However, it simply wasn't. I went in with Galuf and Faris as Time Mages (the former having !Dance secondary), Bartz as a Dancer with !Time secondary, and Lenna as a Bard with !Dance secondary. The dragon's script is pretty universal across the first two phases: 1/3 chance of a physical, 1/3 of a status-ailment physical, and 1/3 of an elemental attack tuned to a quarter of max HP. To avoid the physicals, I spread out the Guardian and two Elf Capes amongst the physical attackers. Also this time I remembered Healing Staff exists and used it at one point.
The first and third phases were dealt with by breaking rods. The second and fourth phases aren't Heavy, so Demi worked. I had to use a rod to finish off the fourth phase when the physical attackers were being stubborn and it was getting close to a turn. Speaking of, it barely got any: Haste on everyone plus slowing it (needed to reapply each phase) let me run all over it. The first attack got blocked, nothing meaningful happened in phases 2-4 besides a physical that got through and didn't kill. The last phase would be the most interesting: Heavy and immune to anything rod breaks can do, so it was up to !Dance. Thankfully, the dragon has much lower defense. They were very bad at getting Sword Dance and I had to revive Lenna at one point, but it fell.
Then I left King Tycoon to laugh maniacally to go back and save and weigh my options. Like, straight out of the ruins.
Okay! So. I would not be able to grind AP for Chemist yet on the books. I could after, but I'd like Galuf not to fall behind. That said, the next grinding spot is coming up which includes EXP opportunties (of course I'm not going to go too crazy with these, the point is a lowish level game after all), and due to a technicality, it'd be available throughout all of World 2 just like here. Still, this was by far the easier spot. The question from there is, what do I want to get in advance?
On the Dancer Side, while !Dance is pretty attainable, the problem with Equip Ribbons is that, it will mostly be for the Ribbons. Chemist can't use it; it'll be locked out of !Mix. Time Mage might like it at the cost of versatility. Same for Bard except that versatility becomes even more narrow. It's also a long grind to where I'd start to feel a little dirty (and probably get tired of it).
What about !Time? Comet on level 4 is interesting, but Faris could probably reach that unaided. Slowga is a bust since most bosses are single target. And Return is just to make you feel like Omniscient. On level 5, Demi2 could be cool, but there's limited non-heavy bosses from here. Haste2 only needs the actual Time Mage. Old could just be cast by the Time Mage themselves. Same for Quick for nonsense in level 6. Meteor isn't exactly amazing, and XZone is just kill non-heavy stuff. Looks like it's questionable too.
So what about multiple !Sing users? Maybe! It doesn't cost a lot to master. That said, would doubling up on stat songs necessarily be better than just killing? Remember, with low HP, I want to kill and/or disable as quickly as possible.
That said, there will be chances for nice AP gain later in the endgame if I need to: Gogo hands out 50 in particular for basically free, and Magic Pots give 100 at the cost of one Elixir (and I will cast Reset if it's more than that). Which is also around when I'd get multiple Ribbons anyway: the rest don't come until World 3, and I could use some of these to help master it some jobs for some people.
So I decided not to hit the books any more than I had. Besides, this plays truer to the spirit of this. But in the event I really needed to, I kept a backup save. The question now became prep for Chemist and World 2. I'll be cut off from elemental rods, and Lix is the best chance to stock up on items. Also worth noting, that Chemist will be cut off from some of its mixes. No encounters means no Turtle Shells or Dragon Fangs. The only ones I get are the ones I find naturally. In the case of the former, that's just two in the whole game!
I ended up with 10 Eyedrops, 50 Antidotes, and 30 Maiden's Kisses. Somewhat arbitrary numbers, but I can sell them back at the same price if I turn out to not need as many. That left room for as many as 21 rods. I settled on getting 15 in total. Gives me some buffer room heading into World 2, and feels like enough to last the whole way. If not? Again, that's what the safety save is for.
No way to get Float, that only comes in World 2. No encounters means no charming cats on the mountain. That means the only way to survive Titan's parting shot is to tank it, and at level 10, Chemist Bartz (the one who would have the highest HP) chugging a Giant's Drink wasn't enough. A quick glance revealed he's vulnerable to Stop. I grabbed the spell and together with Love Song, it kept him locked down and unable to deliver his final attack.
Actually, all three of them were vulnerable to stop. A hasted Bartz was able to completely and permanently lock down the Puruboros. It was just a matter of holding down the A button. Needed a bit of luck to get started on Manticore, but it couldn't move either once the Love Song got started. Demi sped things up because it isn't heavy.
So there you go. All of World 1 in FF5 completed, under fiesta settings (with a job fair), no random encounters ever. Of course I'm going to continue on for as long as I can. I'm pretty sure I can make it to the end with this.
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That is the exact opposite of how I normally play. I say, play the way you want. Also, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
It is very possible to turn off random encounters altogether. The Pixel Remaster version officially allows this. The Project Demi convenience patch for the SNES version also lets you turn them off, and I'd like to say that the 2013 release might have something similar? Maybe? Codes can work too, or simply running away. But I'll be playing this on the second of these, since I wanted to check it out anyway (and my first run with it got scuffed).
Note that this is not the same as a low level game. There will be chances to gain experience later on, but it and my money flow will be limited.
Of course, this is going to be pretty brutally difficult in a fiesta setting, even taking that to the exact letter. Job fair is absolutely on the table here just to make this possible, but in the efforts to spend less money, I need to consider the best option to minimize spending (which includes spending on the Pixel Remasters). After weighing my options, I settled on Volcano 750. Most of the physical jobs were a bust in some way. Even Samurai; due to the damage formula of throwing money being tied to level, it would only be useful with a Chemist.
My initial roll would determine whether or not I started with all jobs unlocked as I like to in the fiesta (this is where it would be very differentiated from a standard challenge run). And the first job I rolled...Dancer! Pretty solid, actually. We'll take that. Physical damage and it meant Chemist was guaranteed as my Earth job. I started early, but of course, there's one problem: there's only two knives to go around! Though not as big a problem as you might expect yet: Sword Dance works just as well with fists. Especially on WingRaptor who isn't immune to Charm.
Karlabos is immune to it, among a host of other things. It could one-shot Lenna and Galuf, so I had to put them in the back. That meant Bartz got the Knife. The ideal roll from !Dance was Jitterbug Duet, which did a healthy 150~ damage. I reset until no one died, because AP is precious. To contast, Siren could also be confused, so no trouble there.
I bought a set of three more Daggers. Money has to be spent very wisely in this run because there's very limited opportunity to farm more, but this was an important investment to actually deal damage.
Then came Magisa/Forza, the first real wall. The bounty hunter would instantly kill anyone with any offensive action she took short of a physical attack to someone in the back row. The only way thing to do was !Dance and hope for Jitterbugs and Sword Dances. I had to turn the battle speed down here; Project Demi starts with it at 1 and I didn't have time to enter commands. I could get more off before she attacked. On my winning run, Faris went down. But Forza was confused from the Tango and killed his wife on the spot. The three remaining warriors managed to keep him locked down from there.
Now if this was low level and not no random encounters, I could grind AP to my heart's content at this point. Just encounter Garulas outside of Walse Tower. They take no actions and eventually run from battle, paying out nothing but AP. Instead, AP is going to be the biggest obstacle in this run.
One advantage of no encounters: I could just walk in and grab the Elf Cave in Walse Castle. It would be nice if I could've gotten 3 more AP before Garula, which would unlock !Flirt for everyone besides Faris. The only non-random battle before this point however, was Shiva.
There was no strategy to Garula (the boss) besides !Dance and hope for the best. Its counterattacks can target the same person, which is ideal because it means only one person dies. In the end, only Faris was left standing on my winning run. Inverse of before. This was a little awkward because it meant nobody would be able to use !Flirt for LiquidFlame (actually if I started from frame 1 Bartz would have it and could use it on Garula).
But no matter, Water job was Red Mage. Pretty good roll: rod breaks and status effects. But a candidate to be job faired long term if I get stuck. For what? Probably Time Mage for nonsense. I would've preferred it or Summoner, actually: Red Mage has horrid vitality, and those status ailments have limited use. Actually, with potential AP issues, there was a legitimate question of whether or not to job fair now.
I did a quick test looking ahead: two Ice Rod breaks killed LiquidFlame with both Red and Time. They don't really differentiate in the M variable until later on. But there were a lot of other factors, and I wasn't entirely certain how it was going to play out in practice. After sleeping on it and looking ahead further, I decided to go ahead and do so now. There were some situations where Red would be better, but Time was equal in many cases.
Now, just because I can break rods doesn't mean I should go crazy. After doing some selling of stuff I could never use plus some stuff that was obsolete, I was left with 8195 gil. I'll need that for !Mix supplies eventually and maybe spells.
Because of this and that job fair, even though I can use two rods to kill it, I don't have to. Instead, I used Demi. LiquidFlame is not considered Heavy except in its hand form, meaning that's half her current HP gone each casting. With Tempting Tango around, I could even stun her for a bit. The big problem is that I wanted to win while she was in her hand form: i.e. getting a Fire Rod drop. Problem there is, she's immune to ice in that form. So it took a lot of tries to get it to line up.
Then I just left the queen laying in a heap while I ran off and drank water of life from the Wind Shrine. Karnak Castle could wait to start exploding, thank you very much. I sold some of the stuff from the ship and though how I wanted to go about this.
This sequence offered the opportunity to gain experience for the first time. I certainly wanted the Elf Cape, Ribbon, and Guardian anyway. The only problem was, how was an underleveled team going to handle this? The only answer seemed to be rod breaks. I need to balance my budget carefully, of course.
After checking to make sure a rod wiped the enemies, I settled on going all out, and leaving a save for later just in case. Spoilers, it is true I have grind spots, but they're going to be pains to deal with. That said? It's easier to get money out of the first one than it is experience. I'd be getting 6000 in the castle anyway.
There are ten monsters in boxes, and I had three rods already: two Ice Rods (one free and one cheap) plus the Fire Rod I got off LiquidFlame. I bought some extras. Would I be able to get them all and get out?
Answer: yes. Very comfortably, so much that I was able to take three trips back to the pot of life! No encounters can help as much as it can hinder. This may have been Project Demi's superspeed run nonsense, but only partly. Just made it very comfortable instead of tight. I accidentally bought too few rods, but it didn't matter: by that point, I had enough power to win outright.
Drumroll. And the Fire job is...Bard! I win the coinflip! Geomancer does have short-term use, but it is otherwise terrible, especially here. Bard meanwhile, absolutely has some uses here, primarily involving !Hide. I'm glad I dodged that bullet. Everyone was now level 10. Lenna and Galuf were notably at 42AP: eight away from getting !Dance.
By going and killing Shiva, I get 5 more for them. I couldn't do this earlier because she would one-shot my characters. Bartz temporarily takes up a Bard position since he has !Time to equip. This did not involve a rod and instead involved Haste, Slow, and a lot of dancing. One soldier buddy stayed entranced by Galuf's smooth moves and beat up on the ice queen. She drops an Ice Rod too, another freebie for the collection.
Ifrit wasn't too hard, given Tempting Tango could confuse him. Also oddly, !Dance did not unconfuse him even with Sword Dance! Huh??? Not complaining since it made things easier.
Now say hello to the book. It respawns every time you leave the screen. I am taking No Random Encounters extremely literally. This is a fixed encounter! Granted, as anyone who's ever played FF5 knows, the Ancient Library sucks for grinding: little in the way of experience, and also even if I did abuse it level 5 death exists: and hey, the team is in fact level 10 right now. So what's it good for? You can run. It's a Chicken Knife grinding spot!
And if I do win? That's 1AP. I am grinding in the Ancient Library. This is what it's come to. My tentative goal is to get Bartz !Hide for later, then I can switch back into Dancer and switch one of Lenna or Galuf into Bard instead. It wasn't hard to fight them: the encounter is fixed and only has a Page 32 and Page 64. By no means insurmountable. Though, now was not the ideal time to do that. The dancers were still stuck with Daggers, and I could improve that to increase the reliability (and scope of what I could fight). So I just grinded out the runs for now. Worth noting, these fights can back attack, so I did need to save every now and then.
After I grinded out the runs for the Chicken Knife, which I normally need to do anyway because I usually fight all randoms that just don't suck to fight, it was onto Byblos. !Flirt works as a frog. Winning was easy: Demi into Fire Rod break kills. Winning without using a rod was harder. Sure, that worked, and flirting with him seemed to give him less turns? Nothing in the Algorithms guide says he should be immune. I didn't see the throbbing message though, so not completely sure. Either way, frog Galuf successfully flirted with him, and that means something all right.
A Wind Slash from him was an instant game over. Two Demis took him to the mouth of his counter script: if he's under 800, he can counter with Drain. I had some plans for dealing with this, but getting lucky worked too. If not, I would've grinded out !Hide then MP stalled. And probably died to Wind Slash anyway. As it was however, he missed out on using Drain with a third Demi, Lenna did a Sword Dance and someone dodged the Drain, then she belted out a second for the victory! Phew.
I finally bought some armor upgrades, feeling they would be a decent investment at this point: three Plumed Hats and three Sage's Robes. This in addition to three Mage Mashers left me with 11597 gil after some selling.
This also meant I could now more comfortably fight the fixed battle in the Ancient Library. I grinded out !Hide on Bartz. The question now became, how much did I want to do this? I'll decide that later.
Then it was Sandworm time. Oh dear. Quicksand was an utter killer: 60~ damage each and HP leak. Physicals to anyone in the front row but Bartz (the Ribbon wearer) also did over 200 damage and were equally killer.
On my winning run, I got pretty deep in until suddenly, it used Quicksand twice in a row! I started throwing out Elixirs at this point just to survive. Lenna went down due to HP Leak ticking too quick, but I also used a Phoenix Down. I was able to rebuild for a bit until another one got Faris. At this point, there was nothing left to do but !Dance and hope for the win: Jitterbug would heal back some of the damage. First Lenna went down, then the other two...
Then Galuf went nuts, banging out Jitterbug after Jitterbug to eventually win!! I was absolutely stunned. But I took this. It took five Elixirs, sure, and that might screw me later. But when I couldn't get any results from trying to be stingier, I just went forward.
Crayclaw was vulnerable to charm, so some singing worked. The best I was able to do against Adamantoise before my patience ran out was one Phoenix Down plus an Ice Rod. Both replaceable by hitting the books. I used double Time Mage here for twice the chances at Demi. Two of them before the Ice Rod worked, but it took a while to get those and Slow through its magic evasion.
No problem from either sentry gun fight. Bartz could hide behind the flame guns as long as he had a meat shield at the start of the fight. For Rockets, I could actually beat them outright without unbreakable defense with the Knife through a combination of Love Song and Demi. Against the Sol Cannon, it was easy as breaking two Thunder Rods to wipe the Launchers right away, Haste, Slow, then having Bartz hide. Actually, Galuf survived too due to Jitterbugs. I actually revived the Tycoon sisters so they could share in the AP growth.
Now, as I was going into this challenge, I expected Arcahaeoavis to be a roadblock. So much so that I wrote a part of it up in advance. However, it simply wasn't. I went in with Galuf and Faris as Time Mages (the former having !Dance secondary), Bartz as a Dancer with !Time secondary, and Lenna as a Bard with !Dance secondary. The dragon's script is pretty universal across the first two phases: 1/3 chance of a physical, 1/3 of a status-ailment physical, and 1/3 of an elemental attack tuned to a quarter of max HP. To avoid the physicals, I spread out the Guardian and two Elf Capes amongst the physical attackers. Also this time I remembered Healing Staff exists and used it at one point.
The first and third phases were dealt with by breaking rods. The second and fourth phases aren't Heavy, so Demi worked. I had to use a rod to finish off the fourth phase when the physical attackers were being stubborn and it was getting close to a turn. Speaking of, it barely got any: Haste on everyone plus slowing it (needed to reapply each phase) let me run all over it. The first attack got blocked, nothing meaningful happened in phases 2-4 besides a physical that got through and didn't kill. The last phase would be the most interesting: Heavy and immune to anything rod breaks can do, so it was up to !Dance. Thankfully, the dragon has much lower defense. They were very bad at getting Sword Dance and I had to revive Lenna at one point, but it fell.
Then I left King Tycoon to laugh maniacally to go back and save and weigh my options. Like, straight out of the ruins.
Okay! So. I would not be able to grind AP for Chemist yet on the books. I could after, but I'd like Galuf not to fall behind. That said, the next grinding spot is coming up which includes EXP opportunties (of course I'm not going to go too crazy with these, the point is a lowish level game after all), and due to a technicality, it'd be available throughout all of World 2 just like here. Still, this was by far the easier spot. The question from there is, what do I want to get in advance?
On the Dancer Side, while !Dance is pretty attainable, the problem with Equip Ribbons is that, it will mostly be for the Ribbons. Chemist can't use it; it'll be locked out of !Mix. Time Mage might like it at the cost of versatility. Same for Bard except that versatility becomes even more narrow. It's also a long grind to where I'd start to feel a little dirty (and probably get tired of it).
What about !Time? Comet on level 4 is interesting, but Faris could probably reach that unaided. Slowga is a bust since most bosses are single target. And Return is just to make you feel like Omniscient. On level 5, Demi2 could be cool, but there's limited non-heavy bosses from here. Haste2 only needs the actual Time Mage. Old could just be cast by the Time Mage themselves. Same for Quick for nonsense in level 6. Meteor isn't exactly amazing, and XZone is just kill non-heavy stuff. Looks like it's questionable too.
So what about multiple !Sing users? Maybe! It doesn't cost a lot to master. That said, would doubling up on stat songs necessarily be better than just killing? Remember, with low HP, I want to kill and/or disable as quickly as possible.
That said, there will be chances for nice AP gain later in the endgame if I need to: Gogo hands out 50 in particular for basically free, and Magic Pots give 100 at the cost of one Elixir (and I will cast Reset if it's more than that). Which is also around when I'd get multiple Ribbons anyway: the rest don't come until World 3, and I could use some of these to help master it some jobs for some people.
So I decided not to hit the books any more than I had. Besides, this plays truer to the spirit of this. But in the event I really needed to, I kept a backup save. The question now became prep for Chemist and World 2. I'll be cut off from elemental rods, and Lix is the best chance to stock up on items. Also worth noting, that Chemist will be cut off from some of its mixes. No encounters means no Turtle Shells or Dragon Fangs. The only ones I get are the ones I find naturally. In the case of the former, that's just two in the whole game!
I ended up with 10 Eyedrops, 50 Antidotes, and 30 Maiden's Kisses. Somewhat arbitrary numbers, but I can sell them back at the same price if I turn out to not need as many. That left room for as many as 21 rods. I settled on getting 15 in total. Gives me some buffer room heading into World 2, and feels like enough to last the whole way. If not? Again, that's what the safety save is for.
No way to get Float, that only comes in World 2. No encounters means no charming cats on the mountain. That means the only way to survive Titan's parting shot is to tank it, and at level 10, Chemist Bartz (the one who would have the highest HP) chugging a Giant's Drink wasn't enough. A quick glance revealed he's vulnerable to Stop. I grabbed the spell and together with Love Song, it kept him locked down and unable to deliver his final attack.
Actually, all three of them were vulnerable to stop. A hasted Bartz was able to completely and permanently lock down the Puruboros. It was just a matter of holding down the A button. Needed a bit of luck to get started on Manticore, but it couldn't move either once the Love Song got started. Demi sped things up because it isn't heavy.
So there you go. All of World 1 in FF5 completed, under fiesta settings (with a job fair), no random encounters ever. Of course I'm going to continue on for as long as I can. I'm pretty sure I can make it to the end with this.
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