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sirsystemerror) wrote2025-06-27 05:25 pm
sirsystemerror) wrote2025-06-27 05:25 pm
FFR: Solo Monk
Final Fantasy Renaissance includes the vanilla six jobs for use. They tend to be overshadowed by some of the new options for most players - whenever I see someone new pop in, they usually jump for four new ones. I may be one of the few who went for a mix of the old and the new my first go at it. That's not to say they're the same as always: in the Renaissance mode, they're given additional abilities to make them comparable in options to the myriad of new jobs that are included. For example, Thief can run faster, gains the SEARCH ability which provides a steady stream of additional and even unique equipment, and gains the MUG skill which hits 20% weaker but steals up to 50% of the enemy's gold (doesn't reduce the amount you get after battle). On promotion, it can no longer be ambushed as long as it's the visible character and gains the THROW ability, letting it use expensive consumables to deal elemental AoE damage and create weaknesses.
But I did that solo on Classic, and didn't feel the need to go for it again. I went over some of the hypothetical differences at the end of that report anyway. So for my next one, I decided I'd take a look at one of the old classes in Renaissance mode. And I figured, why not the Black Belt for something a bit more relaxed? While the new mode renames it to the Monk (and only in the new mode! It's still the Black Belt in Classic!), it's the same as always: it punches stuff really hard. In fact, that's all it does in the original. Certain sites don't like that, but really: it's all Fighter (and Thief) do before promotion, and that's all it needs to do.
There is one problem with them: their fist damage comes from leveling and gets big spikes from reaching hit% thresholds. They rely on that to keep up with Fighters, and their damage can noticeably fall behind against high absorb opponents. Check out Sullla's table comparing the two vanilla classes. A Fighter with a Silver Sword at level 10 deals 37 damage on 2 hits, whereas a Black Belt with their fists deals 20 on 4 hits. All well and good against 0 absorb opponents. Now let's say you're up against, say GARGOYLEs with 8 absorb. Subtract out of each hit: so Fighter does 29-58×2 for 58-116, Monk does 12-24×4 for 48-96. It only gets worse as the enemies have more absorb.
One flaw with the Monk in FFR specifically is Ozma's strange adamance on refusing to let them get most attack boosts. TMPR and SABR spells, Geomancer's buffs, the Dancer's SWORD DANCE, etc. will all fail on an unarmed character. Only the unique buffs of Warrior and Bard, as well as the usual FAST will work to boost their damage output. Most of these are irrelevant for a solo, though it means no Power Gauntlets even if I wanted to make use of them.
That said? High absorb enemies are rare, and the ones with really high absorb (mostly fiends and ASTOS) can affect even a Fighter. They'll eventually catch up enough, and a Fighter/Black Belt pair still outshines doubles due to weapon selection, though there's naturally more physical attackers available. And even otherwise, with the critical hit bug fixed here, Monks are absolutely going to critical more than anything around. Xcalber will only have 2.5 crit compared to Monks' matching their level. To contrast, the weapons with the highest crit% in bugfixed vanilla are the Vorpal and Katana at 15%. Even some of the new FFR weapons can't match a Monk's fists, and most that do are either a gimmicky weapon type (bows, greatswords, harps) or weaker (like the Assassn Dagger) - and don't get twice the hits that others do!
There's going to be a lot of punching, so why not a boxer name instead of copyright infringement? Though as I said, they can do more than just FIGHT in FFR.
While they have no special abilities out of battle or passively so, Monks have some special SKILLS they can pull out based around chi points. One is needed to do anything. As of now, Tyson could do three things. BOOST was needed to do anything and raised his chi to the current maximum of 2. COMBO uses 1 and executes a physical that deals one additional hit. One means one; that meant fists currently did 3 hits and nunchucks did 2. If an enemy dies, excess hits roll over to the next one. The one problem is that it disallows critical hits: the big draw of a Monk.
CHAKRA used 2 and executes a heal that also cures poison and darkness. The formula on it is opaque but consistent: for example, at level 2, it always healed 33HP on Tyson. This gets split across a party if you have one which makes it pretty useless (mine was healing like 30 at regular endgame levels, and keep in mind that's with a charge turn), but Tyson was able to reap the full benefits.
Here it is in action against GARLAND at level 4. This was way earlier than I should've really been trying, but I was bored of the grind already and wanted to see if I could push past the starting area to get it done faster. It wasn't a sure fire way to ensure GARLAND could never ever kill Tyson short of a critical hit that I'm shocked never happened, but the healing did suffice to buy enough time to eventually kill him.
Getting to Pravoka took some work at such a low level with an unarmored character. I eventually settled for using TENTs to get across. The real biggest problem with Black Belts is their slow start. The other vanilla classes have something: Fighters and Red Mages have Chain, Thieves can run, White Mage can RUSE, and Black Mage can SLEP and also have decent LUCK. Hopefully in a party, you have others to keep them going until they can get training in.
The PIRATEs in Pravoka are normally a pathetically easy fight. 9 against 4 doesn't mean much when they're so weak. Even most solos in FFR have a way to deal with them. Besides just grinding more to reduce his absorb and their hits into nothing, Tyson could use COMBO. This did take a bit of luck with turn order: this was obviously a failed attempt. On my successful one, three PIRATEs moved before he COMBOed them. They were the three that attacked! Rude! However, he moved first and knocked out three more on the next round. Another BOOST, another COMBO, and that was all she wrote.
Next was grinding. I'd gotten away with lower levels so far, but Monk really wants them. Outside Pravoka was ideal. Even though the big crossover point is at level 10, I still noticed some jumps in Tyson's power. For example, earlier on WOLFs (encounter 4 after a soft reset) and 1-2 KYZOKUs were his best bet for making quick strides. SHARKs were troublesome, but once Tyson hit level 7, he could fight them and they were mindlessly easy by level 8. He could also fight OGREs then. Eventually, that big spike came.
So how much to grind for the WIZARDs? Well, they have an absorb of 16. Tyson had an attack of 20, so he'd be doing 4-8 damage across 4 hits. Yeah, I could use a bit more leeway. I moved to Elfland to continue, as Tyson could comfortably fight OGRE/CREEP groups. He could still jump onto the ship and fight SHARKs as well. SAHAGs were also an interesting opponent: it eventually reached the point where a COMBO could wipe out most of a group.
I decided to go into the Marsh Cave at level 13. The correct play against some of the stunning monsters in here was to attack them rather than trying to run with Tyson's shaky LUCK! They could be killed in a single blow. One thing FFR retains about the class is gaining 4 magic defense on each level up. In fact, you can upgrade without worry now: it's still 4 after class change. He had over a 50% chance of resisting a stun. Some connected, none inflicted.
The WIZARDs cooperated right away: they came in a two pack and both died in a single hit. But check out this fight right before! These WrWOLFs caught Tyson in an ambush. He killed two, then had to CHAKRA. One of them got a critical hit and put him in a dire spot, only for him to survive with 1HP!
This was one of the weirdest ASTOS fights I've had. Tyson went in the usual way, the first hit being terrible. ASTOS, however, put up his own fists and attacked physically on four rounds! He did try RUB on the third, but it was ineffective. This battle is always up to critical hits for a physical attacker except maybe Dark Knight. Tyson eventually punched out the dark elf with a 123 damage critical.
Nothing to grab but the TNT. Now, the next thing to do was grind more. Thankfully, this was now much more practical than ever before. How much to go to? My goal was level 24. This would give Tyson over 100 magic defense, which would make him effectively immune to physicals on hit. Everything from the myriad of undead to SORCERERs later on would be rendered inept by this. It'd also get Tyson more hits. 21 was my bare minimum for LICH for that reason, but may as well go the rest of the way. This was supposed to be a more chill run, after all.
The spikes in the Earth Cave were ideal here. Either the Hall of Giants or the EARTHs were viable, but I preferred the latter. The GIANTs come along with IGUANAs, who are one of the few enemies with a higher than normal critical hit chance. It and the randomized group sizes made fighting in the hall a little more volatile than fighting EARTHs.
The best way to do it was to come in off a hard reset. The first three encounters are BULLs, ASPs, and BULLs, which aren't that troublesome. COBRAs in the cave could be similarly annoying since they also have a high critical hit rate. They once nearly killed Tyson when he was coming back from the Hall before I was doing this, but thankfully, he got a run off.
Once Tyson hit 21 for 6 hits, his damage got wild. I went to the Peninsula of Power for the last two levels, and he did just fine there. Big case in point though, he still got hit with a blind from a SHADOW on the walk back from that last grind session in the Earth Cave. No, no, not leaving him open in any way to prove what sort of point? Here were his stats once he hit that level, for what they're worth.
It was cathartic running into the undead down here. I just smiled, had Tyson BOOST, and killed them all with COMBOs. The VAMPIRE fared no better, being slain in a single punch even as he got a swing of his own in. The one threat was his DAZZLE, but it didn't happen.
Needless to say, Tyson made it in and out the first go. Going back in, the only threat could've been WIZARDs ganging up on him, but they were few in number the two times they did show up. That brought him to LICH.
It basically went like the Mike Tyson fight in Punch-Out!! - one hit and the fiend was down for the count and not getting back up.
No sense in hesitating, Tyson moved onto the next contender from there. There was nothing to do in Gurgu Volcano except head straight to the bottom. KARY survived two rounds with Tyson because he didn't critical, but he did close to her full HP in damage on the third. Another knockout.
And in the Ice Cave? The same undead were harmless like in the Earth Cave. And these weren't scary at all. SORCERERs have absolutely no attack: even a mage can tank them. The catch is their instant death on hit, but with over 100 magic defense, Tyson wouldn't be hurt. The only thing they could hypothetically do was delay things with TRANCE, but they weren't doing damage to Iron Mike. That left the only threat from the cave being large groups of WIZARDs, and MAGEs. Encounter tracking made sure I didn't run into either: I had to run around B2 for a bit to draw out a slot 2 encounter, but those undead were harmless.
With the Ribbon available from the Waterfall, the question remained whether to use Tyson's natural defense or to go with armor. Unless you're doing an armorless solo challenge or FFR's New Game+, the answer to that is virtually always going to be yes. In fact, let's do the math: armorless Black Belts have their level as their absorb. The highest combination of absorb you can get with armor is Opal Bracelet (34) + Ribbon or Cap (1) + Proring (8) - no ProCape for them. They'll need to be over level 43 for natural armor to surpass it, and 33 if you're only giving them a Gold Bracelet. Way higher than you'll ever reach normally. Though their high magic defense still makes them a decent candidate to go without a Ribbon in a full party.
That's all I got from the Waterfall, by the way. No spellcasting items on this run, full stop, whether I promote or not. Speaking of, was I going to? Yeah. It's good for demonstrative purposes. As I mentioned too, Masters still gain 4 magic defense per level up in FFR, so there's no disadvantage to doing so like in the original game (where that's all it actually did for them: they gained no new equipment options).
A bit ahead of time, I got level 32 the no promotion run later. This is a good grinding spot, the only problem being it's deep in a dungeon making it hard to manipulate stats. These two spaces to the left of these chests always have a single AGAMA, which are relatively harmless foes.
The Master gains some new abilities upon promotion. First, it can hold up to 3 chi and will start out with 1 chi at the start of every battle, effectively letting you use COMBO once for free. It also gains a new ability: COUNTER. Despite the name, this is closer to Hamedo from Final Fantasy Tactics. If an enemy physically attacks the Master, they have a chance to cancel the attack and perform a 1-hit physical attack in return. It's not reliable, but it's nice when it happens.
Besides their LIMIT which I'll get to, they can unlock something new by completing a fight in Ordeals. So I may as well show the new skill they have in the chi menu. CHI BLAST...kind of sucks, as you can see here. It uses all chi and its damage scales based on VIT and chi used, but I've seen it do 100 damage and 310 damage on the same kind of enemy.
This fight is normally done solo (or if you have multiple Masters, with all of them and the number of enemies scales appropriately), so it was nothing unique in that sense. There were two new enemies to see here. STATUE is exclusive to this fight. It has 300HP, resists most elements for what it's worth, and can cast CLOSE-IN: same as the Geomancer's ability, it's non-elemental. It was the highest priority target, because that damage did add up. OIL is nothing special and appears in some Evoker areas: 255 absorb that won't matter because of critical hits, and can cast INK.
This fight unlocked the CHANNELING trait: every time Tyson defeated an enemy with a FIGHT or a COUNTER, he would gain one chi. It doesn't work if he killed them any other way, including COMBO. Because fights are usually over fast in parties and it requires stuf to die, it's not amazing. But it was nice to have against randoms in this solo.
That just left the rest of the game. Nothing to talk about in the Sea Shrine: even the dreaded GHOSTs could be defeated before they got going. COMBO had reached the point where it was regularly cleaning out groups of enemies because of the Monk's sheer power. I didn't even bother with CHI BLAST because COMBO was so much better and more reliable. There was no reason to grab the Power Gauntlet even if I wasn't taking spellcasting items off the table for not being able to use its SABR. Then at the end, KRAKEN got off a critical hit and one shot Tyson! That's not how it's supposed to go! He returned the favor on the next run: 1088 damage on 8 hits, 3 of which went critical. I was hoping to test his mettle against HADES, the new WarMECH-esque encounter on the path leading up to him, but I couldn't coax it out after a few tries and didn't feel like going back after.
It was sort of bizarre playing through the game without opening many treasure chests. But then, Tyson had nothing to grab. Black Belt is the only class in vanilla that cannot use the ProCape, and that property carries over to FFR. It gets joined by the Lancer and Dark Knight classes, but strangely, not the Archer. So it was just a straight shot up to TIAMAT and--
Pft. COUNTER stopped the ambush, epic. Nice try, game.
I gave the robot the death it deserves. I may as well show off the LIMIT with this shot. Every promoted job has one, and they can only be used once before returning to an inn (or using the Red Wizard's LIMIT used on them). They're not all created equal, but this one stands above most of the rest: FOCUS STRIKE performs a physical attack, except all the hits are critical. It's pretty nuts and second only to the Elementalist's in raw power. Random trivia: this used to be the top level chi skill, and CHI BLAST was the limit. Definitely a good replacement.
That did mean that I couldn't use the LIMIT for TIAMAT. Not that I was going to: Tyson didn't need it to clean her clock. Just like before, a single punch knocked her out. KARY was the only fiend that Tyson didn't kill in one round.
Those last few dungeon treks got Tyson up to level 39. I wasn't even actively grinding, I was just playing the game and fighting every encounter. They weren't dangerous: even the few that were could be killed before they killed Tyson. The real danger would've been running and failing too many times, then dying because of it. He could certainly win at this level, but this was about sending a message:
Namely, I was curious if a FOCUS STRIKE at max level could one hit kill CHAOS. One thing I was noticing is that it seemed to be slightly weaker in terms of power: I don't have the formula so I can't prove anything, but like, when the damage between a FIGHT sometimes isn't too far behind that with far less crits, it makes you wonder. It's a slight balancing decision if so.
One nice thing about this solo that made it so relaxing is that there was really no stress to manipulate stat growths. I did go for AGI and LUCK where I could, but otherwise, the damage is entirely determined by leveling and VIT was gained every level. Black Belt is guaranteed 999HP at level 50 no matter what you do or how bad your strong HP growths are. As of 2.0, FFR caps HP growth there. So I went to Mirage and had Tyson beat on some Blue Ds. I went up to test his damage output against WarMECHs for the final few levels (as the above damage numbers indicate). Yeah, I think a OHKO should be possible on CHAOS: I just need to get lucky.
So with Mike Tyson now in his prime, off I went through the final dungeon. There's really nothing to say. Having COMBO available for free once per battle let Tyson clear out groups relatively well at the start. He could then clean up the rest without incident. The five bosses also died in a single punch. I even fought KRAKEN a few times to try to show off a trade of blows, but when he did finally move first and attack with a physical, it was only for 326 damage. Tyson then did over 2000. How's that? The dungeon might be more of a problem with Monk who has to charge up first, but even so, he could survive with bloated HP. CHAKRA exists and healed like 268HP per go, so stalling to save on potions was more than possible in lieu of a Heal Staff.
No need for a Masmune here, it was just off to CHAOS himself. I used FOCUS STRIKE and...
...yeah, I had a feeling. Also, somehow I didn't save the image even though I remember taking it, and it wasn't in MS Paint which I use to save the print screen captures I take. Imagine it doing 10 hits, 10 criticals, and around 1890 damage though. Just short.
But it was never going to be difficult, and the second blow was actually a technical one hit knock out. These numbers are why I get the sense that FOCUS STRIKE is a little nerfed compared to FIGHT, but I could've just gotten consistently unlucky each time.
Of course, I ran it back for the actual OHKO, just because I could. He even killed CHAOS before he could move! Compare the damage between the two attacks. Something's certainly up with FOCUS STRIKE and/or the Monk's FIGHT damage. Oh well, it's done.
This was a nice, chill solo. But there's a reason I chose this one to explore first amongst the original jobs: the chi mechanic is the most substantial battle change to a vanilla job in Renaissance mode. It gives a job that could do nothing but FIGHT and ITEMS actual things it can do besides.
Honestly? It's nice, but more often than not in a full normal party, Monk is still going to do what it does best most of the time: picking a target, picking FIGHT, and watching it drop. COMBO is nice once it promotes due to the free use, but the BOOST turn suffers from action economy problems. CHAKRA is horrid in a full party because the healing gets split. If you want them to heal for some reason, you're better off using a Heal Helmet or Staff. And CHI BLAST wasn't worth using in the first place. They can get just as much out of a spellcasting item used twice. The LIMIT is delicious cheese if nothing else, though your mileage may vary on if that's a bad thing or a good thing.
Being solo, however, let some of these mechanics come to the forefront. There's no need to worry about action economy when COMBO is efficient, even when you have to charge it before promotion. FIGHT can kill two enemies in two turns, but COMBO can get more than that if you're strong enough. I got plenty of use out of CHAKRA throughout the game, mainly early on. I wonder if using it solo was the intention with it? CHI BLAST remained a royal disappointment. A bit of a shame, I was expecting it to be good with grinding. Still in the end, it adds some variety to the class. It made a relatively easy solo even easier. One meme on the FFR Discord has been Solo YOLO: to complete the game without saving, which means no game overs. It's been achieved only with two classes: Dragoon by a few thanks to its absurd SUPER JUMP ability, and someone pulled it off with Monk after making it through the tough early game. It's not an achievement in the game though.
Aside, the real way Monk can benefit in FFR is in its New Game+ difficulty: you start promoted, enemies get stronger, and give more experience/gold. I don't really like the mode, but others do and they can really take off here.
I did keep the save file for pre-promoted Monk, but I decided, it's not going to change much to do that. It's on the table if I change my mind later, we'll see how I feel. Thanks for reading!
Index
But I did that solo on Classic, and didn't feel the need to go for it again. I went over some of the hypothetical differences at the end of that report anyway. So for my next one, I decided I'd take a look at one of the old classes in Renaissance mode. And I figured, why not the Black Belt for something a bit more relaxed? While the new mode renames it to the Monk (and only in the new mode! It's still the Black Belt in Classic!), it's the same as always: it punches stuff really hard. In fact, that's all it does in the original. Certain sites don't like that, but really: it's all Fighter (and Thief) do before promotion, and that's all it needs to do.
There is one problem with them: their fist damage comes from leveling and gets big spikes from reaching hit% thresholds. They rely on that to keep up with Fighters, and their damage can noticeably fall behind against high absorb opponents. Check out Sullla's table comparing the two vanilla classes. A Fighter with a Silver Sword at level 10 deals 37 damage on 2 hits, whereas a Black Belt with their fists deals 20 on 4 hits. All well and good against 0 absorb opponents. Now let's say you're up against, say GARGOYLEs with 8 absorb. Subtract out of each hit: so Fighter does 29-58×2 for 58-116, Monk does 12-24×4 for 48-96. It only gets worse as the enemies have more absorb.
One flaw with the Monk in FFR specifically is Ozma's strange adamance on refusing to let them get most attack boosts. TMPR and SABR spells, Geomancer's buffs, the Dancer's SWORD DANCE, etc. will all fail on an unarmed character. Only the unique buffs of Warrior and Bard, as well as the usual FAST will work to boost their damage output. Most of these are irrelevant for a solo, though it means no Power Gauntlets even if I wanted to make use of them.
That said? High absorb enemies are rare, and the ones with really high absorb (mostly fiends and ASTOS) can affect even a Fighter. They'll eventually catch up enough, and a Fighter/Black Belt pair still outshines doubles due to weapon selection, though there's naturally more physical attackers available. And even otherwise, with the critical hit bug fixed here, Monks are absolutely going to critical more than anything around. Xcalber will only have 2.5 crit compared to Monks' matching their level. To contrast, the weapons with the highest crit% in bugfixed vanilla are the Vorpal and Katana at 15%. Even some of the new FFR weapons can't match a Monk's fists, and most that do are either a gimmicky weapon type (bows, greatswords, harps) or weaker (like the Assassn Dagger) - and don't get twice the hits that others do!
There's going to be a lot of punching, so why not a boxer name instead of copyright infringement? Though as I said, they can do more than just FIGHT in FFR.
While they have no special abilities out of battle or passively so, Monks have some special SKILLS they can pull out based around chi points. One is needed to do anything. As of now, Tyson could do three things. BOOST was needed to do anything and raised his chi to the current maximum of 2. COMBO uses 1 and executes a physical that deals one additional hit. One means one; that meant fists currently did 3 hits and nunchucks did 2. If an enemy dies, excess hits roll over to the next one. The one problem is that it disallows critical hits: the big draw of a Monk.
CHAKRA used 2 and executes a heal that also cures poison and darkness. The formula on it is opaque but consistent: for example, at level 2, it always healed 33HP on Tyson. This gets split across a party if you have one which makes it pretty useless (mine was healing like 30 at regular endgame levels, and keep in mind that's with a charge turn), but Tyson was able to reap the full benefits.
Here it is in action against GARLAND at level 4. This was way earlier than I should've really been trying, but I was bored of the grind already and wanted to see if I could push past the starting area to get it done faster. It wasn't a sure fire way to ensure GARLAND could never ever kill Tyson short of a critical hit that I'm shocked never happened, but the healing did suffice to buy enough time to eventually kill him.
Getting to Pravoka took some work at such a low level with an unarmored character. I eventually settled for using TENTs to get across. The real biggest problem with Black Belts is their slow start. The other vanilla classes have something: Fighters and Red Mages have Chain, Thieves can run, White Mage can RUSE, and Black Mage can SLEP and also have decent LUCK. Hopefully in a party, you have others to keep them going until they can get training in.
The PIRATEs in Pravoka are normally a pathetically easy fight. 9 against 4 doesn't mean much when they're so weak. Even most solos in FFR have a way to deal with them. Besides just grinding more to reduce his absorb and their hits into nothing, Tyson could use COMBO. This did take a bit of luck with turn order: this was obviously a failed attempt. On my successful one, three PIRATEs moved before he COMBOed them. They were the three that attacked! Rude! However, he moved first and knocked out three more on the next round. Another BOOST, another COMBO, and that was all she wrote.
Next was grinding. I'd gotten away with lower levels so far, but Monk really wants them. Outside Pravoka was ideal. Even though the big crossover point is at level 10, I still noticed some jumps in Tyson's power. For example, earlier on WOLFs (encounter 4 after a soft reset) and 1-2 KYZOKUs were his best bet for making quick strides. SHARKs were troublesome, but once Tyson hit level 7, he could fight them and they were mindlessly easy by level 8. He could also fight OGREs then. Eventually, that big spike came.
So how much to grind for the WIZARDs? Well, they have an absorb of 16. Tyson had an attack of 20, so he'd be doing 4-8 damage across 4 hits. Yeah, I could use a bit more leeway. I moved to Elfland to continue, as Tyson could comfortably fight OGRE/CREEP groups. He could still jump onto the ship and fight SHARKs as well. SAHAGs were also an interesting opponent: it eventually reached the point where a COMBO could wipe out most of a group.
I decided to go into the Marsh Cave at level 13. The correct play against some of the stunning monsters in here was to attack them rather than trying to run with Tyson's shaky LUCK! They could be killed in a single blow. One thing FFR retains about the class is gaining 4 magic defense on each level up. In fact, you can upgrade without worry now: it's still 4 after class change. He had over a 50% chance of resisting a stun. Some connected, none inflicted.
The WIZARDs cooperated right away: they came in a two pack and both died in a single hit. But check out this fight right before! These WrWOLFs caught Tyson in an ambush. He killed two, then had to CHAKRA. One of them got a critical hit and put him in a dire spot, only for him to survive with 1HP!
This was one of the weirdest ASTOS fights I've had. Tyson went in the usual way, the first hit being terrible. ASTOS, however, put up his own fists and attacked physically on four rounds! He did try RUB on the third, but it was ineffective. This battle is always up to critical hits for a physical attacker except maybe Dark Knight. Tyson eventually punched out the dark elf with a 123 damage critical.
Nothing to grab but the TNT. Now, the next thing to do was grind more. Thankfully, this was now much more practical than ever before. How much to go to? My goal was level 24. This would give Tyson over 100 magic defense, which would make him effectively immune to physicals on hit. Everything from the myriad of undead to SORCERERs later on would be rendered inept by this. It'd also get Tyson more hits. 21 was my bare minimum for LICH for that reason, but may as well go the rest of the way. This was supposed to be a more chill run, after all.
The spikes in the Earth Cave were ideal here. Either the Hall of Giants or the EARTHs were viable, but I preferred the latter. The GIANTs come along with IGUANAs, who are one of the few enemies with a higher than normal critical hit chance. It and the randomized group sizes made fighting in the hall a little more volatile than fighting EARTHs.
The best way to do it was to come in off a hard reset. The first three encounters are BULLs, ASPs, and BULLs, which aren't that troublesome. COBRAs in the cave could be similarly annoying since they also have a high critical hit rate. They once nearly killed Tyson when he was coming back from the Hall before I was doing this, but thankfully, he got a run off.
Once Tyson hit 21 for 6 hits, his damage got wild. I went to the Peninsula of Power for the last two levels, and he did just fine there. Big case in point though, he still got hit with a blind from a SHADOW on the walk back from that last grind session in the Earth Cave. No, no, not leaving him open in any way to prove what sort of point? Here were his stats once he hit that level, for what they're worth.
It was cathartic running into the undead down here. I just smiled, had Tyson BOOST, and killed them all with COMBOs. The VAMPIRE fared no better, being slain in a single punch even as he got a swing of his own in. The one threat was his DAZZLE, but it didn't happen.
Needless to say, Tyson made it in and out the first go. Going back in, the only threat could've been WIZARDs ganging up on him, but they were few in number the two times they did show up. That brought him to LICH.
It basically went like the Mike Tyson fight in Punch-Out!! - one hit and the fiend was down for the count and not getting back up.
No sense in hesitating, Tyson moved onto the next contender from there. There was nothing to do in Gurgu Volcano except head straight to the bottom. KARY survived two rounds with Tyson because he didn't critical, but he did close to her full HP in damage on the third. Another knockout.
And in the Ice Cave? The same undead were harmless like in the Earth Cave. And these weren't scary at all. SORCERERs have absolutely no attack: even a mage can tank them. The catch is their instant death on hit, but with over 100 magic defense, Tyson wouldn't be hurt. The only thing they could hypothetically do was delay things with TRANCE, but they weren't doing damage to Iron Mike. That left the only threat from the cave being large groups of WIZARDs, and MAGEs. Encounter tracking made sure I didn't run into either: I had to run around B2 for a bit to draw out a slot 2 encounter, but those undead were harmless.
With the Ribbon available from the Waterfall, the question remained whether to use Tyson's natural defense or to go with armor. Unless you're doing an armorless solo challenge or FFR's New Game+, the answer to that is virtually always going to be yes. In fact, let's do the math: armorless Black Belts have their level as their absorb. The highest combination of absorb you can get with armor is Opal Bracelet (34) + Ribbon or Cap (1) + Proring (8) - no ProCape for them. They'll need to be over level 43 for natural armor to surpass it, and 33 if you're only giving them a Gold Bracelet. Way higher than you'll ever reach normally. Though their high magic defense still makes them a decent candidate to go without a Ribbon in a full party.
That's all I got from the Waterfall, by the way. No spellcasting items on this run, full stop, whether I promote or not. Speaking of, was I going to? Yeah. It's good for demonstrative purposes. As I mentioned too, Masters still gain 4 magic defense per level up in FFR, so there's no disadvantage to doing so like in the original game (where that's all it actually did for them: they gained no new equipment options).
A bit ahead of time, I got level 32 the no promotion run later. This is a good grinding spot, the only problem being it's deep in a dungeon making it hard to manipulate stats. These two spaces to the left of these chests always have a single AGAMA, which are relatively harmless foes.
The Master gains some new abilities upon promotion. First, it can hold up to 3 chi and will start out with 1 chi at the start of every battle, effectively letting you use COMBO once for free. It also gains a new ability: COUNTER. Despite the name, this is closer to Hamedo from Final Fantasy Tactics. If an enemy physically attacks the Master, they have a chance to cancel the attack and perform a 1-hit physical attack in return. It's not reliable, but it's nice when it happens.
Besides their LIMIT which I'll get to, they can unlock something new by completing a fight in Ordeals. So I may as well show the new skill they have in the chi menu. CHI BLAST...kind of sucks, as you can see here. It uses all chi and its damage scales based on VIT and chi used, but I've seen it do 100 damage and 310 damage on the same kind of enemy.
This fight is normally done solo (or if you have multiple Masters, with all of them and the number of enemies scales appropriately), so it was nothing unique in that sense. There were two new enemies to see here. STATUE is exclusive to this fight. It has 300HP, resists most elements for what it's worth, and can cast CLOSE-IN: same as the Geomancer's ability, it's non-elemental. It was the highest priority target, because that damage did add up. OIL is nothing special and appears in some Evoker areas: 255 absorb that won't matter because of critical hits, and can cast INK.
This fight unlocked the CHANNELING trait: every time Tyson defeated an enemy with a FIGHT or a COUNTER, he would gain one chi. It doesn't work if he killed them any other way, including COMBO. Because fights are usually over fast in parties and it requires stuf to die, it's not amazing. But it was nice to have against randoms in this solo.
That just left the rest of the game. Nothing to talk about in the Sea Shrine: even the dreaded GHOSTs could be defeated before they got going. COMBO had reached the point where it was regularly cleaning out groups of enemies because of the Monk's sheer power. I didn't even bother with CHI BLAST because COMBO was so much better and more reliable. There was no reason to grab the Power Gauntlet even if I wasn't taking spellcasting items off the table for not being able to use its SABR. Then at the end, KRAKEN got off a critical hit and one shot Tyson! That's not how it's supposed to go! He returned the favor on the next run: 1088 damage on 8 hits, 3 of which went critical. I was hoping to test his mettle against HADES, the new WarMECH-esque encounter on the path leading up to him, but I couldn't coax it out after a few tries and didn't feel like going back after.
It was sort of bizarre playing through the game without opening many treasure chests. But then, Tyson had nothing to grab. Black Belt is the only class in vanilla that cannot use the ProCape, and that property carries over to FFR. It gets joined by the Lancer and Dark Knight classes, but strangely, not the Archer. So it was just a straight shot up to TIAMAT and--
Pft. COUNTER stopped the ambush, epic. Nice try, game.
I gave the robot the death it deserves. I may as well show off the LIMIT with this shot. Every promoted job has one, and they can only be used once before returning to an inn (or using the Red Wizard's LIMIT used on them). They're not all created equal, but this one stands above most of the rest: FOCUS STRIKE performs a physical attack, except all the hits are critical. It's pretty nuts and second only to the Elementalist's in raw power. Random trivia: this used to be the top level chi skill, and CHI BLAST was the limit. Definitely a good replacement.
That did mean that I couldn't use the LIMIT for TIAMAT. Not that I was going to: Tyson didn't need it to clean her clock. Just like before, a single punch knocked her out. KARY was the only fiend that Tyson didn't kill in one round.
Those last few dungeon treks got Tyson up to level 39. I wasn't even actively grinding, I was just playing the game and fighting every encounter. They weren't dangerous: even the few that were could be killed before they killed Tyson. The real danger would've been running and failing too many times, then dying because of it. He could certainly win at this level, but this was about sending a message:
Namely, I was curious if a FOCUS STRIKE at max level could one hit kill CHAOS. One thing I was noticing is that it seemed to be slightly weaker in terms of power: I don't have the formula so I can't prove anything, but like, when the damage between a FIGHT sometimes isn't too far behind that with far less crits, it makes you wonder. It's a slight balancing decision if so.
One nice thing about this solo that made it so relaxing is that there was really no stress to manipulate stat growths. I did go for AGI and LUCK where I could, but otherwise, the damage is entirely determined by leveling and VIT was gained every level. Black Belt is guaranteed 999HP at level 50 no matter what you do or how bad your strong HP growths are. As of 2.0, FFR caps HP growth there. So I went to Mirage and had Tyson beat on some Blue Ds. I went up to test his damage output against WarMECHs for the final few levels (as the above damage numbers indicate). Yeah, I think a OHKO should be possible on CHAOS: I just need to get lucky.
So with Mike Tyson now in his prime, off I went through the final dungeon. There's really nothing to say. Having COMBO available for free once per battle let Tyson clear out groups relatively well at the start. He could then clean up the rest without incident. The five bosses also died in a single punch. I even fought KRAKEN a few times to try to show off a trade of blows, but when he did finally move first and attack with a physical, it was only for 326 damage. Tyson then did over 2000. How's that? The dungeon might be more of a problem with Monk who has to charge up first, but even so, he could survive with bloated HP. CHAKRA exists and healed like 268HP per go, so stalling to save on potions was more than possible in lieu of a Heal Staff.
No need for a Masmune here, it was just off to CHAOS himself. I used FOCUS STRIKE and...
...yeah, I had a feeling. Also, somehow I didn't save the image even though I remember taking it, and it wasn't in MS Paint which I use to save the print screen captures I take. Imagine it doing 10 hits, 10 criticals, and around 1890 damage though. Just short.
But it was never going to be difficult, and the second blow was actually a technical one hit knock out. These numbers are why I get the sense that FOCUS STRIKE is a little nerfed compared to FIGHT, but I could've just gotten consistently unlucky each time.
Of course, I ran it back for the actual OHKO, just because I could. He even killed CHAOS before he could move! Compare the damage between the two attacks. Something's certainly up with FOCUS STRIKE and/or the Monk's FIGHT damage. Oh well, it's done.
This was a nice, chill solo. But there's a reason I chose this one to explore first amongst the original jobs: the chi mechanic is the most substantial battle change to a vanilla job in Renaissance mode. It gives a job that could do nothing but FIGHT and ITEMS actual things it can do besides.
Honestly? It's nice, but more often than not in a full normal party, Monk is still going to do what it does best most of the time: picking a target, picking FIGHT, and watching it drop. COMBO is nice once it promotes due to the free use, but the BOOST turn suffers from action economy problems. CHAKRA is horrid in a full party because the healing gets split. If you want them to heal for some reason, you're better off using a Heal Helmet or Staff. And CHI BLAST wasn't worth using in the first place. They can get just as much out of a spellcasting item used twice. The LIMIT is delicious cheese if nothing else, though your mileage may vary on if that's a bad thing or a good thing.
Being solo, however, let some of these mechanics come to the forefront. There's no need to worry about action economy when COMBO is efficient, even when you have to charge it before promotion. FIGHT can kill two enemies in two turns, but COMBO can get more than that if you're strong enough. I got plenty of use out of CHAKRA throughout the game, mainly early on. I wonder if using it solo was the intention with it? CHI BLAST remained a royal disappointment. A bit of a shame, I was expecting it to be good with grinding. Still in the end, it adds some variety to the class. It made a relatively easy solo even easier. One meme on the FFR Discord has been Solo YOLO: to complete the game without saving, which means no game overs. It's been achieved only with two classes: Dragoon by a few thanks to its absurd SUPER JUMP ability, and someone pulled it off with Monk after making it through the tough early game. It's not an achievement in the game though.
Aside, the real way Monk can benefit in FFR is in its New Game+ difficulty: you start promoted, enemies get stronger, and give more experience/gold. I don't really like the mode, but others do and they can really take off here.
I did keep the save file for pre-promoted Monk, but I decided, it's not going to change much to do that. It's on the table if I change my mind later, we'll see how I feel. Thanks for reading!
Index