FF1 Spellslingers Part III

[sirsystemerror]

So before jumping in, there's something special about STOP and ZAP! worth mentioning. They're of the Time element. Nothing besides CHAOS himself actually resists it. You can use these spells to fish for paralysis or instant death against anything but the man himself, although magic defense is still a thing...


Anyway, that little demonstration taught me what I knew. Unless I play super conservatively in the final dungeon, I'm not going to make it through to the end. I need to RUN whenever I can. So we need to analyze our options, the bosses vulnerabilities, and so on. Since we will need our NUKEs and FADEs for CHAOS.

For LICH, my best bet is to sling FIR3 or LIT3, with HRM4 on the backup. ICE3 would work best for Kraken I don't have much choice on KARY and TIAMAT but to use the level 8 spells. I can gamble with non-poisonous instant death on the former if I really need to (QAKE having the highest accuracy), and non-quake instant death on the latter (BRAK having the highest accuracy), though the odds are slim.


I first started raising levels at the MUMMY spot in the Waterfall. This seemed to be a good spot, but after that, I decided it was time to hunt the big bad robot.

This resource helped a bit. The encounter order is fixed in FF1, so you can always predict what's coming up next. WarMECH is encounter 7. I happened to arrive on one of the "dry spells", so had to wait a while for encounter number 120 to get one.

It also makes for a good test subject. The robot has 200 Magic Defense, the same as CHAOS. By fighting it, we can get a good estimation of how much we need to beat the final boss.


Heal up, and begin! The robot gets a pre-emptive, smacking Burn for 202 damage. Zap NUKEs for 382, Chil NUKEs for 314, Heal FADEs for only 98. WarMECH goes next and hits Zap for 187


One more NUKE for 284, and that's that. Destroyed in one round. Umm...wow. My Black Wizards would not calm down. Pretty unrealistic to expect that much every time, though.

After another Waterfall grinding session, I made my first real attempt at the Temple at Level 28 (29 for Zap), with 3 spell charges at level 8. I ran from everything I could up to LICH, fighting the PHANTOM (FIR2 until dead), four Zombie Ds (FIR2/HRM2), and a WORM (LIT3 until dead)


LICH got off a NUKE that one-shot Zap. I was able to formulate a strategy for KARY: AFIR, SLOW/SLO2, and plink her down with ICE2 (a level of spell I probably won't be using much of).


And...KRAKEN. The bad news is, he could devastate me if he landed a physical. SLOW/SLO2 seems too unlikely to depend on. The good news is, if I get up a FOG2 wall, I'm fairly well-protected, and should be able to make it through if at least one BW and Heal survives. Even in this fight, two of them went down at the start, but the last one up was able to wear him down with ICE3, LIT3, ICE2, and finishing with this NUKE.


The best way to go about TIAMAT seemed to be one round of NUKE/FADE, followed by cleaning up with whatever spells I had left. And yes, HP counting is useful; lets you do things like this. Unfortunately for me, hope of trying to beat it right here right now were dashed when the BANE landed on the unprotected Chil. I was out of LIFE.

Okay, that was more of a test run than anything else. Still, that taught me two things. First, wow that run was lucky on the unrunnable luck. Besides the two already mentioned, I believe only a group of FIREs forced me to fight. Second, I felt that with just a little more juice, I might be able to take down CHAOS. Indeed, there may not be any need for the max of 9 charges, thankfully. With this, I EXITed out.


Level 30 is when I hit 4 NUKE/FADE charges, and Level 33 is when I hit 5. I _should_ be able to make do with 4, though if I fail enough times, I'll go up to 5. I leveled up by running the ToFR as wastefully as possible repeatedly, not using any potions at all during them and leaving when I was out of resources. I reached Level 30 on everyone before too long. I got as far as KARY on one trip, who I had to NUKE down when she killed two BWs. Another notable incident was a BADMAN who survived two NUKEs.


Then we were ready, after many false starts. LICH's NUKE was extremely cruel, taking down half the team, but we were able to rebuild. I got the SLO2 on KARY, which was good. I pulled out XXXX to deal the finishing blow to her. How that spell works is that it inflicts guaranteed instant death if the target does not resist the death element and is under 300HP. The fiends are protected from instant death in a way via their high magic defense, but only LICH has an actual death-element resist. And KRAKEN played nice, only killing one person.


...unfortunately, the game paid me back for that 3/256 earlier on WarMECH, with TIAMAT landing a BANE on the Ribboned Heal (as well as Chil). Burn and Zap were able to take the Dragon easily from there with NUKEs, several ICE3s and LIT3s, finishing it with an XXXX, but this was just gg. The only thing left to do was go down fighting, which they did by taking out half of CHAOS' health. I tried to rerepay the game with QAKE and BANE after the CUR4, but no such luck this time.


Also, it was just when looking at that this I realized Chil did not have the Black Shirt. I swear he did. Must've given it to him and forgotten to save. Oh well, he does now on future runs! It'll make running from Frost Ds easier, and make the PHANTOM a total nonthreat now.


Next run, I accidentally went EXIT instead of LIFE after LICH. Oh well, I only gained there. Save, restock, and another attempt. LICH died on round 1, SLO2 on KARY, perfect KRAKEN aside from a finishing ICE3 doing not enough damage to kill him wasting another spell charge...and the NUKEs and FADE rolled low on TIAMAT. Two BWs went down. I was out of potions, due to too many multi-hit moves on the first floors and an incident where WATERs killed two BWs. Couldn't think of a better way to put that fight in an image than a useless successful MUTE - because that exemplifies this fight: stupid.

I healed and pushed through anyway, belatedly realizing LIF2 was an option. Though it didn't matter, because CHAOS killed the unprotected Chil. Not enough charges to get through his 2000HP.


Next attempt saw Heal die to KARY. In response, I XXXX'd her and rampaged back through the temple, since I did buy WARP earlier for Chil. Hey, guess it had a use after all. And yeah, see how you like it. Jerk. At this rate, I might get Zap his fifth level-8 spell charge before finishing.

But yeah. XXXX is fun to use, but I probably won't be employing it unless I do get those fifth spell-charges.

__________


Next time, I ran into Frost D and BADMEN before the PHANTOM. The former got off one BLIZZARD and the latter a few physicals, no problem. The eye monster itself survived the FIR3s I threw at it, so I used some FIR2s next to seal the deal. 89 potions left after this, so far so good.


Two of a three-pack ZombieD group after this survived HRM2/FIR2x3. I finished them off, then had to burn down a FrGiant/FrWOLF group. Before heading to the earth floor, I saw two more Frost D groups, which I ran from before they could do anything.


The only notable thing that happened before LICH was a MudGOL swinging at me. He NUKEd me again, and got this very VERY rude max-damage hit on Chil. He thankfully went with STOP on round 2, preventing further casualties. 49 potions left after that affair.


KARY got off FIR3 before Heal could get off AFIR, so Chil got burned. I landed the SLOW on the first round though, so no complaining. As was the plan, I plinked her down with lower level magic as Heal ran minor healing duty with spells. 38 potions left after this fight.


A WATER group I ran into played nice, only inflicting 6 potions worth of damage. I went down to 25 to make sure I was full for KRAKEN. He smacked down Chil with this critical on the first round, and tried to do the same to Burn a few rounds later, but between his higher Absorb and the FOG2s, he survived. I called a LIT3 or INK, using CUR2, but he finished the job next turn. Zap finished KRAKEN, and two LIFE spells and 21 potions got me back in the game.


I got chance to strike first vs. a WzVAMP and VAMPIREs before TIAMAT. This time, I got good results, knocking off 977 of the dragon's 1100 HP with the initial barrage. He replied by smacking down Zap, and damaging Heal heavily on the next turn, before dying. The last four potions went to Chil, Heal used a CUR4 on Zap, and two CUR2s and a CUR3 for self-healing. One guaranteed run from AIRs later, it was time.


Final battle time again. After deliberation, I decided to play it safe and throw up the WALL on Chil. I didn't regret it. The first three NUKEs took Chaos to 1512 HP. This could be bad...


Next barrage didn't go much better. Chil NUKEd for 290, but the others did pitiful damage. 840 left to clear, but he at least hadn't started his spell progression. Next turn changed that with an ICE3.

Here came my spells. Burn for 258. Good! Zap for 242. Gooood!! Heal for 85. Bad!! Chil for 197! Acceptable! Out of the nonelemental magic, but he has only 58 HP left!


This final pair of ICE3s did him in, granting the Spellslingers victory.

So yes, it looks like it's possible to beat FF1 without any item use or physical attack, relying only on magic for damage. I was worried I'd need to resort to leveling to insane heights for enough spell charges, but a bit of creative defense against KARY made that not an issue. The early going was a bit tricky, and I did need to play at least somewhat conservatively as so not to run out of ammo. But all in all, this variant was on the easy side.

The physical classes may be strong as the Brawlers demonstrated, but the magical classes are more than capable of holding their own. It's a bit of a shame that Intelligence is bugged in the NES version of game and does not work. Had it worked...well. Going over it better later than never, spells work with the following formula.

Hit Rate = 148 + Accuracy - Magic Defense

It then uses a lookup table, with values from 0-200. If it's 0, it registers a hit no matter what (which is how those 3/256 status spells landed), and if it's 200, it registers a miss no matter what. If the spell is a resisted element, it registers a miss unless 00 is rolled. If the spell is a weak element, add +40. If the number generated is less than or equal to the chance to hit, the spell succeeds or does double damage.

INT varies based on version, but what most patches do for the NES version is add it to the hit rate, increasing the odds of double damage/status spell success. Other versions add to the damage that spells do. If that was meant to happen, then they'd be more than capable of keeping up with the physical classes, and the Red Wizard (sporting less INT) would be noticeably weaker than the monochrome mages late-game.


So yeah, that's it. Thanks for reading.

Index