sirsystemerror | FF3 Solo Monk (NES) Part III

The Water Cave is the next dungeon, and it, true to its name, houses the Crystal of Water. I'm not sure why these lizards are called Cockatrices, but they do inflict partial petrify with their blows. I also get my first back attack along the way. Solo was in the back row for safety, but had no trouble in the front. He just had to heal after the battle. I'm surprised it took so long to see one, though.

Release...the Kraken!! He begins out of battle by killing Elia, Maiden of Water, with a "Cursed Arrow". He proceeds to not use them at all in battle. This is quite the routine boss. He has the usual assortment of level 2 elemental spells, using them at 80% odds. Backed by 50 attack power, his physical accuracy is 5x70%. Attacks get exchanged, you know. The usual.

Real neat cutscene of the world unflooding. FF3 pushed the NES pretty far graphically in some places;

Bad news is, our ship got chained up, and the only thing we can do is punch mermaids and stuff.

Good news is, we get new equipment!! This is especially welcome. The Chakra Band gives +5 to Vitality and +5 to Strength, and the BlackBelt gives +5 to Agility.

We can't go to the guy who chain the ship up's place yet though. If we try to cross over the black patch of land in front of it, we fall into the Bottomless Swamp, hit the bottom, and die. Game over. Don't ask.

Instead, we need to go do a sewer dungeon. Here, we find a Catclaw. In the remake, this would be of practical use to us. In those verisons, nunchucks are removed, and replaced with claws - which both Monks and Karateka/Black Belts may use. In this version though, only the latter can use them.

The "boss" of this very uneventful dungeon...yeah. Only interesting thing is, the data I was reading was wrong. We did pick up 8 hits along the way.

There's also a Power Ring in this dungeon. More stat bonuses, hooray!!

With the floating shoes we get from a hag in the sewer, we can cross that Bottomless Swamp which does have a bottom and reach the next dungeon. Goldor's Manor isn't much to talk about. Aside from these Nightmare horses, all of the enemies here are themed around Gold. There's even a dummied enemy called the Lost Gold who were supposed to go here, but were not put in. I reset once because of petrification from some bears, but it's straightforward.

And finally in the flesh, GOLDOR!! The guy whose name makes me think of Power Rangers. Actually, this is a somewhat easy boss...for Solo. Remember Big Rat and Hyne? Goldor has ridiculous magic defense. My friend who did the melee jobs only challenge also did a spellcasting class only challenge in this game. She couldn't get them past Goldor, though. Serious business for them, but nothing compared to the trials of Big Rat for melee jobs or the horror that is to come.

He's yet another boss with three level 2 elemental spells, by the way. The site from before, the same one that had the FF2 stuff, has an FF3 guide as well, but doesn't seem to be as good. He sure didn't seem to be using the attacks at 80% odds, but who knows? His physicals did less than 100 damage.

Beating Goldor gives us our (air)ship back. Now you may be wondering if this game has a Penninsula of Power or something akin to that.

The answer is yes.

You're ordinarily supposed to fight these guys right before the last dungeon. More insta-death triggers are in the conventional way - you get blown up or something by these statues. But there's some outcroppings of land nearby where you can go and fight them early. As you can see, I failed against these guys - partially due to a back attack.

Death Needlers get 7 attacks, but only at 36% accuracy. Despite their name, their physical actually inflicts poison. At this point, Solo had 40% evasion. In the back row, these were easy encounter to win. Even if they ambushed him (and he was thusly in the front row), Solo could still land the victory with ease.

I take Solo to Level 37 via these battles. And for good reason: the next boss fight...whole portion of the game, is just stupid. It may have been overkill, but this part of the game is stupid.

So first off, when you go near this HUGE city on the map, your airship gets blown out of the sky.

You're now confined to this place, which has a few forests and a small dungeon that provides you with Dragoon equipment. The encounter rate in them is kind of low. And they're obnoxious at times. So good luck gaining any more levels if you came here unprepared. The game gives you that equipment for a reason: it expects you to use a certain job to battle a boss.

But even with the whole set. Garuda is no joke. He does one thing (or at least 99% of the time): his Thunder special, which can do in the neighborhood 300-500 damage. The way you're intended to fight him is by jumping repeatedly with your Dragoons, and hope you kill him before he kills you. It's a hard question whether to go all in or take a White Mage for healing - he doesn't use Thunder if there's no one to target.

All Solo could do here is punch and punch away, and guzzle Hi Potions when he got low on health. Each hit that connected did about 110 damage, and he was averaging 7-8 hits. Garuda has 5000HP, so it took a few rounds. Thankfully, the average damage healed by Hi Potions was just more than the average damage from Thunder. And he needed it to gradually rebuild himself when he got low on HP.

But, another potential roadblock battle done and over with. Easier than I thought it would be, though preparing and knowing ahead of time certainly helped.

We get a sweet new airship afterwards to replace our dead old one. The Nautilus can travel at extremely fast speeds, and that's what's needed to overcome some heavy winds, see the first appearance of Moogles in the series, and enter the next dungeon.

It's another goddamn Mini dungeon.

Wipes wipes wipes. Solo frequently met his end trying to run away and failing. Really not much else to say about it, really. These guys liked to cast spells a lot, which was extra dangerous, as the back row provided no protection.

Eventually, after about two dozen tries and a bit of extra leveling later, Solo got deep into the cave. Only to run into a group of four Dark Knights. He tried to run. They would not let him run. He healed up and tried to run some more. They would not let him run. I'm not sure what the running formula is. My best guess: something completely stupid. Solo tried to run an astonishing 47 times, and every single one of those run attempts failed, I went in with full Hi Potion stocks, and look where it had ended up!!

Annoyed, I broke out the spellcasting items. Four Zeus' Rages downed the first, the remaining Zeus' Rage and two Bomb Shards the second. Solo used his remaining BombShards on the third which was unfortunately not enough to kill, opened a Bombs R.Arm to kill the fourth, then set to work beating the remaining one.

Very very slowly, but DIE!!! HAHAHAHAHA.

Seriously?! One step away from the last room. And another encounter.

Solo used the two Earth Drums he had found. Despite these things having wings, they were quite vulnerable to the drum's Quake attack. That sealed the deal on this dungeon. Good riddance. This is the last time we have to go through with this. No boss here, thankfully.

I thought I took a screenshot of it, but I didn't. But Solo's Hi Potion stock after that ordeal: 24. He'd run through three-quarters of them in that one place. What an awful dungeon.