sirsystemerror | FFR: Solo Archer Part III

I won't be promoting or doing a promotion playthrough, so let's talk about what the Ranger would get. SCAVENGE can be used on a map screen at will. It will either do nothing, give materials from one of the monsters in the area, or start an encounter. If used after stepping on a spike, it will guaranteed a material the first time and start an encounter all subsequent times. It's kind of just there: doesn't really speed up the material grind. You can find the Yoichi Bow with it northwest of Gaia: 20/30/50 offenses. The Rose Bow bought in the same town has 25/35/30. It's crit gambling vs. power.

RAPID-FIRE is the limit: it deals four attacks to random enemies at max damage variance, and is unaffected by SLOW. Oh yes, since he hasn't been inflicted yet: SLOW drops an Archer's damage bonus from hit%. It used to make it impossible to hit, thankfully that got changed. Still not something they want to be hit by.

Then, fricking HUNTER'S MARK.

This SKILL can be used at will, every single turn, and will trigger at the start of a turn. Its effect? Every hit of the next physical attack will be critical. Here's the Icepick getting boosted by this effect. Monk's LIMIT skill is to do a physical where every hit to be critical. It's like having that available on-demand! Now, some abilities in FFR cannot be spammed, inflicting a special tiredness status that prevents skill use. These include the Lancer's JUMP, the Blue Wizard's CONVERGENCE, and the Time Wizard's DOUBLECAST - which notably didn't have it before.

HUNTER'S MARK? Has no tiredness. It can be used every single turn, and probably should be because the Ranger sucks on offense as discussed. Let me repeat and spell it out: this is like having a LIMIT - which in FFR are abilities you can use once per inn visit - available to use as often as you want. Sure, it's only the next physical that works, but the right party composition can solve this. Why this skill was not given tiredness when DOUBLECAST got rightfully nerfed is beyond me. It might even deserve two turns of tiredness: it's that crazy. My Ranger did nothing but spam this over and over once I got this in my casual, when not using spellcasting items. And on top of all that? You don't need a bow if you don't want one!

It's inefficient for a solo though, so I wouldn't use it even if doing a promoted run. There just isn't enough to justify it.

One thing I will miss out on though is this. Instead of buffing hit%, this scarf boosts crit%! Exclusive to promotion only, so I'll have to wait for the Sea Shrine to get the next one. I did pick up a ProRing though because I had the money.

It took three tries to make it through the Waterfall because COCTRICEs at the spike kept petrifying Yahata. But the Ribbon is, as always, a game changer. Now, the only danger was going to be death by numbers.

Going in and out of the upper level of the Sea Shrine was annoying because Yahata ran into three WzSAHAG/R.SAHAG sets. No Zeus, so I just sped things up while he whittled them down as they hit him for nothing. There would have been another knife here if I promoted, but not doing that as mentioned. Strangely, not as good as the Catclaw (you're trading 5 hit% for 0.5% crit and mech effectiveness), but may as well be plus it's free.

There was this, too. This boosts hit% even higher and gives a point of absorb.

I had Yahata gain some levels at the entrance of the Sea Shrine. The fights there went NAGA/maybe a WATER, a GrSHARK or two, and the same as the first. Paid out well and were easy. Then I went down. One nice thing about the Icepick is that it helped shred these things. More than it probably should have, but I wasn't complaining. Thankfully, there were no GHOSTs on the way down, so--

Oh you have GOT to be fricking kidding me. Well, nice try game. I switched the Silver Bow back on just in case this happened. I know better due to all the times I've gotten WarMECHed.

As a refresher: HADES is a new encounter found at the bottom of the Sea Shrine from the exit to the last room to the end. He's not part of the encounter table: he just has a 1% of showing up to kick your ass. He can use INFERNO, which Blue Mages can learn, as well as ABYSSAL DARK, which Geomancers can use and is a hard-hitting Poison-elemental attack. 800HP, 128 attack on 1 hit, and 60 absorb.

I should've really figured out if you can run, but instead I fought him. This guy is considered a spellcaster, meaning one THROAT SHOT and that was a guaranteed silence. I piled on by inflicting paralysis. And yeah, this is another place where bows can shine: Yahata was doing solid damage despite having only 36 attack.

He ultimately never got to do anything before dying. Now, do you want to try and show up too, robot? I mean the big problem is that this gave Yahata a level, but he rolled strength and it wasn't strong HP, so not a lot of harm done.

As for KRAKEN, a single TAIL SHOT reduced his infamous physical to nothing. Yahata beat the turn order, so beating the big monster from there was not a problem.

There was nothing to get in Mirage Tower or the Floating Castle for Yahata except the ProCape. Archers can surprisingly wear these! I generally prefer the extra absorb over a few points of extra damage, though I would prefer the Silk Scarf's crit boost if Yahata could wear it. That said, he was coming up on level 39, where he would have 160 hit%. Or, 6-hits with the Icepick.

The dungeon flew by. WarMECH knew what was good for it and stayed away, because I got there at like encounter 14. Thought about luring it out, but decided, nah.

I hit TIAMAT with some SCALE SHOTs on top of everything else for the fun of it. It really doesn't make enough of a difference, especially with Archer itself.

One last thing before heading into the final dungeon: my inventory screen. You can have so much in it that FFR gives you a second page to put things on! Though the only thing on the page was the WARP stone I picked up out of habit.

The going went smooth. Yahata did die once to EARTHs. I had him use the bow on the next time through the earth floor to counter them with paralysis. Naturally, I used the Icepick most of the time, but especially on the Water floor. He was able to tear through another group of WATERs as a result.

Most of the fiends were dealt with in the same way. THROAT SHOT the first and last, TAIL SHOT the last three, and even humiliate them with LEG SHOT. AIM and fire. Here's a lower roll; KARY and TIAMAT got hit for around 1200. LICH just got shot with no issue.

Because of how much of the Archer's skillset is tied to bows, I didn't bother with the Masmune. It was straight through TIAMAT and onto the final floor.

Now let's talk about CHAOS. As I've been mentioning, Final Fantasy Renaissance now gives certain enemies outright immunity to particular status ailments. You can see CHAOS' right there. In particular, he can't be silenced: this was newly introduced in the version that introduced Archer. So you can't just cheese him with THROAT SHOT and shut everything but his physicals off. You also can't confuse him, kill him with petrify (HEAD SHOT relevantly), instantly kill him in three turns from when you cast the spell (regular instant death is fine), or prevent him from running away. But you might notice the absence of something else.

Yes, that's right, you can LEG SHOT him. No magic defense, no resistance. If he loses the coinflip, he's toast. You might also notice Holy resistance there. That presently causes minor issues with White Wizard.

I won't be doing that. I started off with a TAIL SHOT to neuter his physical offense. Then Yahata wound back.

You can hold an AIM for as long as you want. It won't go beyond 360% effectiveness, but I could effectively have Yahata wait for CHAOS to cast CUR4. And because slow only affects an Archer's damage, that meant that even if SLO2 hit (which it didn't), it wouldn't have hurt him as bad as it would any other physical character.

He went through his spell progression reasonably quickly. Finally, the CUR4 did go off. I selected NEW and FIGHT+ to kick things off with--

Oh. All right then.

When I first did a casual, I had mixed feelings about the Archer class that settled on weak dislike, apathy at best. Now that I've played solo, I feel I dislike this one. Oddly because I enjoyed this for the most part, but it really highlighted the problems with the class compared to my casual experience.

Archer is a class of ridiculous highs and pathetic lows, and on the low end you have the class' offense as I've been mentioning. The biggest problem with it doesn't appear solo: when in a party setting, Archer is going to struggle to get kills before its allies do. Especially in a party with an offensive spellcaster. You have to slow down to make them work, which can be anything from a hassle to actively suicidal. They benefit a lot from FAST, but then, others benefit even more. Archers shine the most in parties that don't have much offense except them, and at that point, you're running a memetic party based around supporting them. But the payoff on the skills is good. Maybe too good.

And that's the other part of Archer's questionable design. LEG SHOT is nuts, one of the easiest to access, and can shut down any boss in the main game with nothing more than a winning coinflip. If this was later and inconvenient, sure. But HIDEs are fairly easy to obtain and it's a straight 50-50. At least with THROAT SHOT, the enemies can still sometimes do stuff and it's a unique niche against LICH. I've said enough about HUNTER'S MARK too. The class is either destroying things (mostly single targets) or it's just there. It's sort of like the Time Mage in that respect except not as fun.

Thanks for reading. This will be the last solo I do before new content in 2.2, which will introduce Ronin and Machinist.

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