sirsystemerror (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sirsystemerror) wrote2026-05-24 07:19 pm
sirsystemerror) wrote2026-05-24 07:19 pm
FFR: Solo Red Mage Part II
So Red Mage is actually an interesting run without promotion. Their spells cap out early, so especially on NES where TMPR is bugged, they have to rely on trickery to keep up. As usual though, I'll be promoting to fully show off the new aspects of the vanilla jobs. The LIMIT is totally useless for a solo: it refreshes an ally's LIMIT.
They also get two new spells. You just need to go to the magic shop in Lefein and press the confirm button three times quickly.
REVERS is a funny spell that inverts damage and healing. It's obviously best in a solo! No, enemies won't start hitting you with healing spells. It's out of the scope of the variant, but it can be reflected to hit CHAOS in a party setting with Evoker or Green Mage, and he's programmed to kill himself with CUR4. CURSE is less good. It's non-elemental and hits everything on the field, but it won't ignore status immunity and the status is a random vanilla one. You might luck out with paralyze, or you might get poison and deal 2HP a turn to an enemy. Worse still, a lot of what you'd want to hit with something is either not immune to the status element, or is immune to the status outright (mostly class specific bosses).
Now, a theoretical problem with these spells is spell charges. While irrelevant because they do not get any L8 spells in the vanilla game, they still get them. Starting from L32. FF Renaissance reflects this.
But then there is THIS.
This does exactly what it says: pick two spell levels and the spell charges will swap between them. It ignores the cap and goes back to normal after an inn/HOUSE. Needless to say, this is amazing and really increases the versatility of the job. Like, don't need those FIR3 charges since you're headed into the Sea Shrine? Turn them into LIT3 or ICE3 charges! Need more FAST? You got it. No use for those L1 spells? Yup, just CONVERT in battle and you can get more charges of what you do need.
I ran the Waterfall next, picking up a Ribbon and the Defense Sword for Carmen, the latter of which got her a fourth hit. She also equipped the Zeus Gauntlet! Hey, it's extra absorb, even if she isn't going to be using the itemcast. The fights and goodies here got her enough gold to get the BOTTLE (those two L8 spells had eaten up her funds), EXIT, and CUR3.
REVERS came in handy against WATERs in the Sea Shrine. RUSE was an option, but this bought Carmen enough time to freeze them to death and she didn't have to worry about getting the stacks up. And of course, all of their attacks would heal her!
Similarly, SLOW was the play on KRAKEN over RUSE. It takes one cast vs. three casts to stop his physicals cold, though RUSE could still be cast after! Three LIT3s was barely not enough. So I decided to play around with CURSE for a bit. To reiterate, what it does is completely random among vanilla status ailments. I had to have her CONVERT to get what I wanted. After it was inflicted, I had her stall with CUR3 and just waving items around uselessly.
That resulted in a "killed by poison damage" message. It was pure spite. Again, poison in NES FF1 is just bad in battle. It ticked for 2 damage every time. In fact, FFR adds a couple of extra status that are like poison and also suck. Bio does 3-18 a turn, and burn does 3 if the target doesn't resist fire, 1 if they do. That said, it's also not normally usable by the player, so it being bad only affects the enemies. Of course, it's out of battle where it can be a problem for the player.
Not much to write about Mirage Tower and the Floating Castle either. She picked up the Sun Sword as her latest weapon upgrade. Carmen was able to loot a ProRing and the ProCape to max out her absorb. There was a precarious situation where she went down to single digit HP against some RockGOLs, only barely managing to get up REVERS in time. Stupid run luck. Probably should've just killed them.
I'm pretty sure BANE had a 100% chance of killing TIAMAT. But what also effectively has a 100% chance of killing her is SLOW, MUTE, RUSE thrice, FAST, TMPR to the moon, then fight.
I decided on level 37 as a leveling goal. It would be a finalish strong HP up for Carmen (the next is at level 47). Plus, level 35→36 would give a chance to take on WarMECH without fear of a bad level up. I'd go for 50 if this was prepromotion, but didn't think Carmen needed it.
The strategy against the big bucket of bolts was simple: begin with REVERS to buy time to RUSE. With three up, Carmen was relatively safe, and could cast REVERS or CUR3 as needed to heal from NUCLEAR. But then I had her roll a bit with CURSE. It eventually rolled a confusion that stuck. It just sped things up.
I also poisoned the robot, but didn't feel like sitting around to watch it die.
The last dungeon was ridiculously easy for Carmen. The big groups had some sort of way to quickly deal with them, even these dreaded things. With CONVERT on top of it, she never had to worry about running out of important spells either. Tried to REVERS LICH's NUKE, but Carmen went after. The others got status crippled before buffing and killing. That brought her to CHAOS for the ultimate heist: stealing his time loop.
First order of business was to get up REVERS. CHAOS did a 250 damage physical before that. ICE3 healed 58, RUSE number 1. RUSE number 2, but then REVERSE wore off and CHAOS got another physical through: very low health after this hit. Refresh REVERS, LIT3 only healed 30.
FAST, SLO2 counter. FAST again. Carmen took to using CUR3. Once she had enough, she applied the third RUSE.
CHAOS actually got around to NUKE in his spell order, but Carmen had up REVERS. The only thing I needed to be careful of with it is not casting CUR3. That would've hurt her! I actually almost did reflexively until I realized, heh.
It took all of two physicals to end it thanks to some insane criticals. These weren't even with TMPR!
I went ahead and did a no promotion run from there. The basic route was: buy a ProRing, Waterfall, Sea Shrine Upper, Mirage F2 (Sun Sword), then get to 50 off VAMPIREs in Mirage Tower. I did remember to listen to Castlevania music when killing them this time. A sad fact about the Red Mage: it still keeps its title of having the second-lowest HP in the game at max level: 528-741. The next lowest as a point of comparison is Evoker at 511-763. That said, it's still in the lower tier at more reasonable levels, but not ridiculously so.
Neither remaining fiend was a problem with SLOW and MUTE to cripple them. FAST and break. I tried having Carmen fight WarMECH, but she kept getting unlucky. Would've been easy with Defense but I didn't need to prove that. SLO2 didn't buy enough time.
I reset the first run into ToFR because Carmen was down to half her HEAL supply by the time she hit the earth floor. On the reset, she'd only used 3. Quite a difference. Some golems were annoying when she kept failing her run attempts. The only dangerous encounter otherwise was a group of WATERs, but two ICE2s ended them before they ended her. LICH just got one-shot with the Sun Sword and didn't even use NUKE. The others got status crippled and beaten down.
Sadly the Masmune was just short of giving her 6-hits. But since I beat him easy at a lower level, this should be easy too.
Round 1: FAST, CRACK.
Round 2: INFERNO for 65, physical for 135 or so. Just jumped straight in hoping for crits.
Round 3: ICE3 for 39, physical for 186
Round 4: Finally a big crit for 563, CHAOS does a 251 physical of his own.
Round 5: 185 damage physical, 50 damage LIT3.
Round 6: CHAOS uses an ineffective SLO2. Carmen does a very effective physical for 953, terminating him.
Red Mage (along with what is now the Warrior) was the least changed of the old vanilla jobs in Renaissance mode. Of course, they didn't really need any help to be better, so it sort of makes sense. In fact, the new L8 spells actually didn't originally exist either, so it was just CONVERT and (ugh) SABOTEUR.
But honestly? CONVERT's enough. The job's still as good as it ever was, and that shores up the only weakness it has in getting its spell charges later. Like a case in point, by the time Red starts getting L6 spells, pure mages already have L7. And by the time they have L7, pure mages already have L8 (and you've likely overgrinded). That said, the gap isn't as bad earlier on, and normalizes after a point. For example, they still have five L4 spells/FASTs – i.e. the Important Spell – at level 19, not factoring in getting even more with CONVERT.
There are some legit good status spells, and there are good times to use them, but a Red Mage still can't go wrong with the offensive spells and major support ones. Of course, debuffing is also a form of support, but this mostly comes into play during boss fights. It's not bad: it absolutely makes Red Mage better. I just hope we get a proper dedicated debuff class.
Thanks for reading. I think I'll try something a bit harder next time. Look forward to it.
Index
They also get two new spells. You just need to go to the magic shop in Lefein and press the confirm button three times quickly.
REVERS is a funny spell that inverts damage and healing. It's obviously best in a solo! No, enemies won't start hitting you with healing spells. It's out of the scope of the variant, but it can be reflected to hit CHAOS in a party setting with Evoker or Green Mage, and he's programmed to kill himself with CUR4. CURSE is less good. It's non-elemental and hits everything on the field, but it won't ignore status immunity and the status is a random vanilla one. You might luck out with paralyze, or you might get poison and deal 2HP a turn to an enemy. Worse still, a lot of what you'd want to hit with something is either not immune to the status element, or is immune to the status outright (mostly class specific bosses).
Now, a theoretical problem with these spells is spell charges. While irrelevant because they do not get any L8 spells in the vanilla game, they still get them. Starting from L32. FF Renaissance reflects this.
But then there is THIS.
This does exactly what it says: pick two spell levels and the spell charges will swap between them. It ignores the cap and goes back to normal after an inn/HOUSE. Needless to say, this is amazing and really increases the versatility of the job. Like, don't need those FIR3 charges since you're headed into the Sea Shrine? Turn them into LIT3 or ICE3 charges! Need more FAST? You got it. No use for those L1 spells? Yup, just CONVERT in battle and you can get more charges of what you do need.
I ran the Waterfall next, picking up a Ribbon and the Defense Sword for Carmen, the latter of which got her a fourth hit. She also equipped the Zeus Gauntlet! Hey, it's extra absorb, even if she isn't going to be using the itemcast. The fights and goodies here got her enough gold to get the BOTTLE (those two L8 spells had eaten up her funds), EXIT, and CUR3.
REVERS came in handy against WATERs in the Sea Shrine. RUSE was an option, but this bought Carmen enough time to freeze them to death and she didn't have to worry about getting the stacks up. And of course, all of their attacks would heal her!
Similarly, SLOW was the play on KRAKEN over RUSE. It takes one cast vs. three casts to stop his physicals cold, though RUSE could still be cast after! Three LIT3s was barely not enough. So I decided to play around with CURSE for a bit. To reiterate, what it does is completely random among vanilla status ailments. I had to have her CONVERT to get what I wanted. After it was inflicted, I had her stall with CUR3 and just waving items around uselessly.
That resulted in a "killed by poison damage" message. It was pure spite. Again, poison in NES FF1 is just bad in battle. It ticked for 2 damage every time. In fact, FFR adds a couple of extra status that are like poison and also suck. Bio does 3-18 a turn, and burn does 3 if the target doesn't resist fire, 1 if they do. That said, it's also not normally usable by the player, so it being bad only affects the enemies. Of course, it's out of battle where it can be a problem for the player.
Not much to write about Mirage Tower and the Floating Castle either. She picked up the Sun Sword as her latest weapon upgrade. Carmen was able to loot a ProRing and the ProCape to max out her absorb. There was a precarious situation where she went down to single digit HP against some RockGOLs, only barely managing to get up REVERS in time. Stupid run luck. Probably should've just killed them.
I'm pretty sure BANE had a 100% chance of killing TIAMAT. But what also effectively has a 100% chance of killing her is SLOW, MUTE, RUSE thrice, FAST, TMPR to the moon, then fight.
I decided on level 37 as a leveling goal. It would be a finalish strong HP up for Carmen (the next is at level 47). Plus, level 35→36 would give a chance to take on WarMECH without fear of a bad level up. I'd go for 50 if this was prepromotion, but didn't think Carmen needed it.
The strategy against the big bucket of bolts was simple: begin with REVERS to buy time to RUSE. With three up, Carmen was relatively safe, and could cast REVERS or CUR3 as needed to heal from NUCLEAR. But then I had her roll a bit with CURSE. It eventually rolled a confusion that stuck. It just sped things up.
I also poisoned the robot, but didn't feel like sitting around to watch it die.
The last dungeon was ridiculously easy for Carmen. The big groups had some sort of way to quickly deal with them, even these dreaded things. With CONVERT on top of it, she never had to worry about running out of important spells either. Tried to REVERS LICH's NUKE, but Carmen went after. The others got status crippled before buffing and killing. That brought her to CHAOS for the ultimate heist: stealing his time loop.
First order of business was to get up REVERS. CHAOS did a 250 damage physical before that. ICE3 healed 58, RUSE number 1. RUSE number 2, but then REVERSE wore off and CHAOS got another physical through: very low health after this hit. Refresh REVERS, LIT3 only healed 30.
FAST, SLO2 counter. FAST again. Carmen took to using CUR3. Once she had enough, she applied the third RUSE.
CHAOS actually got around to NUKE in his spell order, but Carmen had up REVERS. The only thing I needed to be careful of with it is not casting CUR3. That would've hurt her! I actually almost did reflexively until I realized, heh.
It took all of two physicals to end it thanks to some insane criticals. These weren't even with TMPR!
I went ahead and did a no promotion run from there. The basic route was: buy a ProRing, Waterfall, Sea Shrine Upper, Mirage F2 (Sun Sword), then get to 50 off VAMPIREs in Mirage Tower. I did remember to listen to Castlevania music when killing them this time. A sad fact about the Red Mage: it still keeps its title of having the second-lowest HP in the game at max level: 528-741. The next lowest as a point of comparison is Evoker at 511-763. That said, it's still in the lower tier at more reasonable levels, but not ridiculously so.
Neither remaining fiend was a problem with SLOW and MUTE to cripple them. FAST and break. I tried having Carmen fight WarMECH, but she kept getting unlucky. Would've been easy with Defense but I didn't need to prove that. SLO2 didn't buy enough time.
I reset the first run into ToFR because Carmen was down to half her HEAL supply by the time she hit the earth floor. On the reset, she'd only used 3. Quite a difference. Some golems were annoying when she kept failing her run attempts. The only dangerous encounter otherwise was a group of WATERs, but two ICE2s ended them before they ended her. LICH just got one-shot with the Sun Sword and didn't even use NUKE. The others got status crippled and beaten down.
Sadly the Masmune was just short of giving her 6-hits. But since I beat him easy at a lower level, this should be easy too.
Round 1: FAST, CRACK.
Round 2: INFERNO for 65, physical for 135 or so. Just jumped straight in hoping for crits.
Round 3: ICE3 for 39, physical for 186
Round 4: Finally a big crit for 563, CHAOS does a 251 physical of his own.
Round 5: 185 damage physical, 50 damage LIT3.
Round 6: CHAOS uses an ineffective SLO2. Carmen does a very effective physical for 953, terminating him.
Red Mage (along with what is now the Warrior) was the least changed of the old vanilla jobs in Renaissance mode. Of course, they didn't really need any help to be better, so it sort of makes sense. In fact, the new L8 spells actually didn't originally exist either, so it was just CONVERT and (ugh) SABOTEUR.
But honestly? CONVERT's enough. The job's still as good as it ever was, and that shores up the only weakness it has in getting its spell charges later. Like a case in point, by the time Red starts getting L6 spells, pure mages already have L7. And by the time they have L7, pure mages already have L8 (and you've likely overgrinded). That said, the gap isn't as bad earlier on, and normalizes after a point. For example, they still have five L4 spells/FASTs – i.e. the Important Spell – at level 19, not factoring in getting even more with CONVERT.
There are some legit good status spells, and there are good times to use them, but a Red Mage still can't go wrong with the offensive spells and major support ones. Of course, debuffing is also a form of support, but this mostly comes into play during boss fights. It's not bad: it absolutely makes Red Mage better. I just hope we get a proper dedicated debuff class.
Thanks for reading. I think I'll try something a bit harder next time. Look forward to it.
Index