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My first stop in the midgame was Gurgu Volcano. There were two new pieces of equipment for Meeko to pick up on the bottom floor of the dungeon. I wanted Meeko to get those before doing anything else.

Scale Armor is something I technically could've used with my Dark Knight: only they and Trainers can use this 32 absorb armor. It's the same weight as and 2 less absorb than the Flame Armor in Gurgu, so it was inferior for Cleese. But it was a very nice boost for Meeko until she could grab the Opal Bracelet.

Meanwhile, the Lava Axe was in the upper middle room. This effectively had 26/25/2 offenses thanks to Meeko's AXE PROFICIENCY. So effectively, 1 attack point and 5 hit% better than the Silver Axe. Still, an upgrade's an upgrade, and it's indeed Fire-elemental. Note that this and the other new axes are currently Trainer exclusive: Warriors and Ninjas don't get to use them. I imagine this will change once Viking gets added, but in due course.

I then got up to level 33 by grinding off the FIREs. This would be good for 4-hits with the Lava Axe, and give Meeko 79 MDef for the Ice Cave – a good start for that. I decided to have Meeko take on KARY from there. No real reason not to.

There was a lot of plinking down going on. She was breaking KARY's defense, it was just slow due to the lack of criticals (until this last hit). Meeko got hit with DARK, but it didn't really slow her damage output. Thankfully, she dodged SLOW and managed to kill the fiend before the fiend killed her.

I went to the Ice Cave after that. No Ordeals yet, didn't think the stuff there would make a huge difference. Meeko had actually gained enough experience from the trip down to KARY that I got her level 34. Then from fighting on the river, got so much more that I decided to get her up to level 35 just so she wouldn't level up in the middle of the dungeon. 83 magic defense would be more than enough to make it through.

These jerks would be the major potential problem. Meeko died to them once, and when they popped up again, I decided to go for some revenge even if it wasn't the smartest move. They aren't humanoids, so here's what having a monster use MAGIC looks like – SPECIAL looks similar. You get a list of their spells and can cast any of them. Just like normally, monsters do not have spell charges, so you can use them however and as often as you like. I had this one zap its friends to death. Ha!

SORCERERs could also be manipulated: it's a shame that their instant death isn't very functional because enemy MDef is so much higher than player MDef. They're also a good example of the anomaly with monster attack damage: they have 1 attack, relying entirely on their instant death to do anything. They can hit for hundreds of damage when controlled. I actually had some comedy here: Meeko took control of one, and then got hit by TRANCE from the other. This freed the other, and they proceeded to run away.

There was another axe here on the upper portion of B1: the Frozen Axe gave a bit more hit% and 3 more damage. Didn't need it for the boss: the EYE fell under Meeko's CONTROL for an instant win, no big deal. No incidents on the way out. Hard to complain about a second try Ice Cave! This got the FLOATER, and opened up the rest of the game.

Something I had forgotten to pick up: Trainer can use the Buckler. This weak shield only has 2 absorb, but it exists. I bought it now that I remembered, because I may as well. I also learned that they could use the Silver Gauntlets here. I thought they were Beastmaster exclusive, but they aren't for some reason. It's weird since they can't use Copper or Iron, but can use this (and even Zeus/Power post-promotion). They're currently the only class that can use Silver but not the others, even after promotion. I'd be buying a Proring shortly though, so there was no need to buy it at this juncture. Off my game, clearly.

The usual goodies were over in the Waterfall. I'll only have Meeko use them sparingly this run. One of the more interesting ones was this new weapon. The Control Whip is unfortunately exclusive to promotion. It has identical stats to the Stun Whip, but if it doesn't kill something, it will roll for a CONTROL on it. It's neat, but if you want to actually use the monsters against the others, keep in mind that it still damages them and that means they will be that much closer to dying at the hands of the other enemies.

My time in there also exposed an interesting quirk of CONTROL that I had a feeling about for a while: the number of hits are based off the Trainer's. It seems to be tied to level specifically: Meeko had 4-hits currently, but monsters were only doing 3. She would later get 4-hits with them at around level 39, even without a weapon. How is this relevant? If I controlled a MudGOL that used FAST, it would not get extra hits. But if I had it use FAST on Meeko and had her attack it would do 7-hits for some reason. Why an odd number? FAST is currently bugged and doubles hit% instead.

Hey, what?! Get controlled, jerk!

The Sea Shrine upper portion was the next stop. Spellcasting items came to the forefront for one reason and one reason only: Mage Staff on GHOSTs. It was either do that or die. And I didn't mind doing that in this specific case. Not going to go all in on them, mind you – I do try to rein them in even when not promoting because otherwise every class homogenizes in the back half of the game. But screw GHOSTs in particular.

I ran the quests from there and entered the next dungeon before lighting the Water Orb. Unfortunately, most of the equipment in the Mirage Tower and Floating Castle duo is Beastmaster exclusive. The Beast Sword, the Bane Sword, the Wyrm Helm and Wyrm Gauntlets (+10 for what they're worth), and they could even get the Dragon Armor! But one exception is this. For a Trainer, this is a 32/35/3 weapon. Basically a better Sun Sword (32/30/2.5)! Meeko was very close to achieving 5-hits with this weapon, and she was so high level that whips weren't making much of a difference with CONTROL, so I swapped over.

Granted, most of her battles still did consist of controlling something then having it kill its friends. But these two dungeons had a lot that couldn't: VAMPIREs, the machines, BADMANs, and GrMEDUSAs. For these enemies, I just had Meeko run. She was gaining experience insanely fast anyway. So fast that she was going to hit the level cap without much extra effort.

The only thing to do in the tower was grab the ProCape and prepare for the inevitable WarMECH. I was prepared to use Defense to fight it. But uh, it was a no-show. Both times I went up. I almost died to SORCERERs somehow despite having over 100 MDef: TRANCE and the MudGOLs behind them were the culprits.

In an earlier challenge, I mused that maybe it was a good thing that the Power Gauntlet's SABR ended up broken because it can easily unbalance the game. The corollary of it is that if critical hits worked as intended like they do in FFR, then maybe it was actually the intended solution. The fiends' defenses are massively high, so Meeko had to rely on critical hits to kill TIAMAT before she killed her. She got a grand total of zero the first try at it. The second, she got enough to win, but was still at critical health when she won. And keep in mind, most endgame weapons don't have a lot of critical hit chance. I'm really not sure how to feel about it.

That just left KRAKEN to take care of. I did pick up the Power Gauntlets just in case. Even without Zeus abuse, the Sea Shrine went fairly smoothly with CONTROL. I continued to just fry GHOSTs on sight. KRAKEN himself also wasn't a big deal. Meeko endured most of his blows and dealt solid damage in return, winning the damage race pretty cleanly.

Just needed to gain the last four levels to reach level 50 from there, which I did by controlling the Blue D spike repeatedly. I wasn't necessarily intending to level cap with Meeko, but it just ended up happening by itself. I dropped a point of STR because it wouldn't have made a difference in Meeko's damage.

My first run through the temple went awful! Believe it or not, Gas Ds were not involved in it. It was just a ton of accumulated damage due to bad turn order. The Earth floor was the worst: three groups of EARTHs all in a row! Even with controlling them, Meeko took a ton of damage when they kept dying immediately. LICH did a big NUKE and KARY got a bunch of licks in.

My HEAL stocks were so shattered (this is when I got the Masmune) that I was forced to use Defense/Heal Staff after TIAMAT just to go into the final boss at full health! I did do so: better that than dying. I also decided to Defense against KRAKEN, but I didn't against TIAMAT and almost regretted it. It was capped off with a bad CHAOS that finished it off. Well, any time SLO2 lands is bad unless you're a magic class or one that can otherwise counter it.

The next run went significantly smoother. As a point of comparison, I had 40 HEALs remaining at the end, without ever having to Defense and Heal. I still used Defense a couple of times against KRAKEN and TIAMAT. But that was it. It was a much smoother final dungeon, and hopefully, the prelude to a smooth final boss.

Second go at the final fight, I had Meeko Defense twice then start swinging. Still no Power Gauntlet yet. She was at 555HP after those first two turns between a big CHAOS physical and an ICE3, and her first shot did 193. CHAOS LIT3 did 56. Round 4: physical for the text box disappeared too fast, Meeko did 145. SLO2 missed! Meeko did 106. Then 33 as CHAOS missed a physical.

CUR4 reset things and Meeko decided now was the time to start doing real damage: 474 to be exact. 179 followed on the next round, as a CHAOS FIR3 did 39. The next swing did 165, CHAOS finally tried CRACK which of course fell ineffective. 129 damage, and INFERNO did 53. ICE2 did 28, and Meeko did 96. Over halfway now, but that last 957 needs to go fast. Because after FAST, that's going to be NUKE.

SWIRL is now Water-elemental due to FFR changes, and Ribbon resists it. It just did 38 damage. Meeko kept poking for 122.

Then, this! ...wasn't enough. CHAOS used TORNADO for 40, Wind-elemental now. Funnily, in earlier versions, Ribbon didn't resist these two spells. Even when it didn't or that change is reverted, you can still resist them with the new Wind and Water Armlets. In any case, if Meeko can attack once more, that'll do it. This should be it unless CHAOS physicals and does a critical hit.

Yup, done! That was very lucky at the end.

As I wrote in my job comments, the big problem with Beastmaster in FF5 is that you needed to constantly catch new monsters to get a single shot of something. Having the focus be on CONTROL and giving you incentive to use it did wonders for the class concept. Similarly, Relm in FF6 had a similar issue of needing a relic slot to use her control. No worries about that here.

The class is also decent when it's not controlling things. It's above the likes of Red Mage (before buffs), though it doesn't quite reach the level of the dedicated physical attackers. All in all, it's actually quite simple when you boil it down: CONTROL something juicy and beat it up. It's sort of like an instant death spell in that sense. It's pretty effective, too. Though it will be lower level in a party setting (higher than usual with their bonus experience), so you might actually have to weaken things or use whips for longer. I like this one overall.

But speaking of CATCH, it's available on promotion, so let's talk about it briefly. CATCH works on the same mechanics as CONTROL, the only difference being the monster is removed from the field entirely. You can then RELEASE it later in any other battle where there's room to place it, whereupon it works like a controlled monster with no time limit. They're automatically retrieved after battle if they or the Beastmaster isn't dead (the latter of which can cause them to escape or even become an enemy!). It's also possible to CATCH them again to restore their HP (the only way to do so). This is a major change for a solo that would be more interesting to explore from the beginning: i.e. New Game+ where you start promoted and every monster is stronger. Their LIMIT sucks though: it just guarantees the next CONTROL if it can work at all. The odds are so good that it's better to try it twice.

What's next? Probably another vanilla class, or maybe a full party challenge idea I've been floating in my mind for a bit. But immediately: more hot days. Until then, screw summer, and thanks for reading.

Index

I hate summer. I also hate broken air conditioners. Stupid thing barely lasted two years! The window ones would be better, if I was allowed to use them where I live. Technically a human rights violation, but we have other things to worry about than fighting it. During a stretch of cool days in July, I decided to get some gaming in. But I picked FFR instead of my Switch 2 like I should've (hopefully it gets something like the Split Pad Compact soon). To be fair, I got it done in two days.

Well, I was hyped up by something, so I decided to tackle the solo Trainer for tangentially related reasons. Just like in later games, they control monsters. It's a little more complicated than that, but we'll get into that as relevant.

There were many names to pull from, but I decided on something of a weird but fitting reference: Meeko, after an Original Generation antagonist from the Touhou fangame, Fantasy Maiden Wars, which was very recently announced to be getting an official translation after being a white whale of the fanslation community for ages! Meeko is a sheepgirl which fit the aesthetic of the class, but she also controls sheep, so she's something of a trainer herself.

Trainers are a physical class: their starting stats are 10 STR, 6 AGI, 8 INT, 10 VIT, and 10 LUCK. They have 7+2 hit% (same as a Red Mage would). I could buy a Chain for Meeko which is always fantastic for any character to be wearing at the start of the game. For now, the only weapon available to her was a Small knife. In due time, however. There's a lot to go over with this class.

The signature SKILL of the Trainer is the CONTROL ability. This compares HP values against level as a check in some way – it was possible to simply overpower them outright without having to weaken them – and allows you to take control of an enemy for two turns. It works similar to FF5 and FF6: the Trainer's turn is replaced with controlling the enemy. You can have them use any spell or skill they would normally be able to access. Their FIGHT attacks are abnormally strong: an IMP normally wouldn't be able to hit another one for this much damage. They also seem to use the Trainer's own hit% in some capacity. Note that other monsters will attempt to attack the controlled one. This won't break it, but they can kill them. Similarly though irrelevant for the solo, ally attacks will leave them untouched.

But wait, there's more! CONTROL also has other perks! A controlled enemy is considered to be defeated. Not only that, but just controlling them awards bonus experience equal to what they normally give out. This can only be earned once per enemy even if you hit them again after it wears off. The only restriction is that it won't work on bosses, the undead, or the new humanoids and mech classifications: no hijacking WarMECH, in other words. (With this class anyway. We'll see what Mechanist has to offer) I have a list of monster types here. The game will let you know if a CONTROL attempt failed due to a dice roll, the enemy being too strong, or if being one of these classes.

All in all, this made Meeko even more durable than most solos, because random battles were technically two against several. Since monsters attacked their controlled brethren, it took some of the heat off her. Naturally, there's nothing to control in most boss fights, but that's where promotion comes in. I'll get to that in a separate run, because it's worth doing it on a New Game+.

I had to go to level 4 to beat GARLAND, because the Small knife is just that weak. Meeko guzzled a couple of HEALs to get the job done.

The exact formula on CONTROL's success is opaque and strange. The in-game text says it's based off character level and enemy HP, and equipping a whip-class weapon adds 25% chance to the odds. However, Meeko could control a CREEP from the drop, but she had to hit a GrIMP once to get past the "Not weak enough" message – I'm not sure what it could be because CREEPs outstat GrIMPs in almost every way. Similarly, the much higher HP SHARKs a little later one could be controlled without hitting them, but a R.SAHAG could not. She would later be able to control GrIMPs right away, so my only guess is there's an invisible stat in play. Sullla speculates that enemy morale might be the missing part of the formula, which checks out with these.

Unfortunately, OGREs are considered humanoids, so no controlling them for massive early experience gains. Meeko bumped into the double OGREs and had to run: thankfully, Trainer has high LUCK and even very high LUCK growth.

Meanwhile, the PIRATEs were easy with a character with Chain. They could only deal 1 damage at a time to Meeko, so she slowly stabbed them to death. This got her enough gold to make her first weapon upgrade.

Trainers have a special ability called AXE PROFICENCY. This gives +10 to the hit% of any axe they wield. So this humble little Hand Axe bought in Pravoka has as much hit% as the infamous Silver Sword! It's a nice bonus and would bump her up to 2-hits once she hit level 6, for a fraction of the price!

Well, I still wanted to cash grind, so now's a good a time as any to talk about the final special ability of the Trainer: the LURE ability. It says it increases the chance of rare encounters appearing. Mechanically? As long as they're your visible character, which is always the case in a solo, they have a 50% chance of skipping over a slot in the encounter table, unless it's slot 7 or 8. This is mostly a tool to help Blue Mages and with their special post-promotion quest, but it makes encounter manipulation much harder.

The obvious immediate effect was that manipulating KYZOKUs was a little more of a pain. Sometimes even after a hard reset, it would be SAHAGs as the first encounter because of LURE. It's going to make getting through the Earth Cave that much harder, and encounter dodging in the Ice Cave inconsistent. No big deal for now.

It didn't take long to build up the funds for this: Elfland has the first whip available. It's a point of attack weaker than the Hand Axe, but as mentioned, just equipping this increases the odds of CONTROL working. It won't increase the threshold they need to be weakened to if existent, but it is there.

And yes, Silver Sword can be used by the Trainer! They get a small selection: Short, Long, Silver, and Glass (a Thief-exclusive new one on ToFR B5 with a gimmick of high attack and no hit%), with Bane and Beast available after class change. It was technically the best beatstick available, but I chose not to get it for Meeko just yet. Maybe not at all: there were better weapons waiting.

Aside from doing the grind: here's another strange situation: Meeko could absolutely play on the Peninsula of Power. What was the best monster for her to face there?

That's right, TYRO! Only in circumstances like these. She couldn't control ZomBULLs (undead) or GIANTs (humanoid), and FrWOLFs were too numerous. But the big dinosaurs showed up alone, so a few smacks and a CONTROL was enough to beat them and earn a huge chunk of experience! This leveled her up twice in one battle (FFR fixes the bug/quirk from the original that makes warriors only get one per battle). Which, both were bad level ups. But it was there. TYRO is also the slot 7 encounter, so it was always guaranteed to not be passed over.

I got Meeko up to level 10 before making my first runs at the Marsh Cave. And yes, you absolutely can use CONTROL on the WIZARDs! Here's the interface that pops up when you have CONTROL active. The numbers in the bottom right are the enemy's HP. I lost this fight when Meeko's victim was beaten down too quickly to do anything. The second go, there were two, and Meeko's WIZARD one-shot the other one.

Aside, there would be a new piece of equipment here if Meeko had a Thief buddy, which is outside the scope of a solo: the Bone Mail. There's no gimmick to this like the FF5 version of the item, It's simply a Trainer/Dark Knight exclusive item that has 24 absorb and 15 weight: effectively a lighter Iron Armor.

And yes, RUN is there and acts as you expect. A trick I had to have Meeko deal with CRAWLs in the cave was try to go for a CONTROL. If it worked, she could force them to escape harmlessly. It's just a shame I couldn't turn them against the skeletons accompanying them. It'd be fun to be on the giving end of the paralyzing strikes for once.

That second attempt that made it to the WIZARDs got out. So that brought Meeko to ASTOS. And a problem. Her offense was fine, but it could be way better. Most physical classes have some sort of difficulty with him due to his 40 absorb. I could have Meeko buy a Silver Sword to help, but it'd only do so much.

So it was off to the peninsula! As I said, the targets of choice were TYROs. The strategy was to hard reset, burn some encounters until the 7th (helped along by LURE), a slot 7, where I could fight the big dino. CONTROL could work right then and there at this level without having to attack! Each one brainwashed was worth 6774 experience! Meeko was leveling up once per battle against them early on into the grind!

Level 11 was worth noting: strong HP and only INT guaranteed to go up. I had Meeko settle for a mediocre growth with STR and LUCK. Mercifully, this was the worst level to manipulate: everything else is easier.

Did Meeko *need* 3-hits to beat ASTOS? Not particularly. I'm sure it was possible at a lower level. But I wanted to get her the levels anyway to better protect against the legions of the damned in the Earth Cave. Also, wow: I wasn't actively manipulating VIT, but it turned out she'd only missed one point of it so far. That surprised me to see. Of course, her max HP was lower than it could be because I was lazy on the strong HP ups.

In fact, she got hit by SLO2 early on into the winning fight, so the higher hit count didn't matter. But ASTOS decided to attack physically a lot, and Meeko eventually whipped him into submission. A win's a win.

After the business with the KEY, there were two things to pick up. Here's the first of them in Melmond. The Stun Whip is an interesting weapon. While the damage was worse than a Silver Axe (25/20/2 for Meeko), it still gave whip bonuses and had the special property of potentially inflicting stun on hit. This is not to be confused with paralysis: stun is a new status for FFR and is more or less a one-turn version of it. In theory, you could stunlock enemies.

Sadly in practice, the Stun Whip never procs its effect. If I had to guess, it's resolving like an enemy's attack with status: that is, comparing against a foe's magic defense. Enemies tend to have way over 100 MDef. Which also means that's another reason you can't turn paralyzing enemies against other ones. Hopefully, the Stun Whip at least is something that can be fixed in future versions.

EARTHs were also vulnerable to CONTROL. They were good to grind on, although Meeko initially had to whip them once to make CONTROL more consistent. For that matter, BULLs and TROLLs in the cave could be hit as well. Humanoid encompasses less than you might expect. I wanted to get Meeko some additional levels so undead attacks weren't just a coinflip as to whether she'd resist them or not. I was already missing Tyson who basically never had to worry about this. Unfortunately as of writing, every new class in FFR only gets a +2 to MDef on leveling up. +4 and +3 are exclusive to Monk and Warrior respectively.

I got enough levels to get Meeko up to 67 MDef. Then I made my first attempt at the VAMPIRE. One trick I did was switching in a Silver Bracelet over the Silver Armor (which was presently her highest absorb bodywear) once I got down to B3 to activate her evasion. Indeed, she ran into two sets of IMAGEs on this venture, and actually managed to dodge some of their swings outright.

VAMPIRE took two rounds. The big potential threat was DAZZLE, but he didn't use it and then he died. She had to get away from some COCTRICEs on the way out, managing to dodge or resist their attacks. The only other possible threat from the floor was a big group of WIZARDs, but all the dangerous stuff left Meeko alone, so she was able to get through.

On going to get the ROD, I had a weird incident with the undead. Meeko got stunned coming back from Sarda's Cave, but the 5 or so GHOULs in the fight all ran. She was eventually able to recover and get away from the GEISTs who remained. It would've only been a minor inconvenience if she had died. I think LURE gave me back to back encounters. One of the problems with the skill, shown in action.

Now it was time to make the run at LICH. She had a number of deaths on B3, not so lucky this time around. Eventually, she did break into B4, only for the stunning death to occur. I decided to have her add a level and went back in. The next attempt made it through to the boss...who went horrible! No criticals and all his status kept hitting! SLOW missed, but that didn't mean anything. It ended as you might expect. What certainly didn't help was her averaging 50 damage a swing: I switched in the Silver Axe because CONTROL wouldn't matter. It would take several more tries from here to get a winning run.

Next | Index

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

There are many jobs in Final Fantasy Renaissance that can be considered the worst. Thief is still limp wristed, but brings utility to the table with SEARCH. Green Mage is a slow-roller in a rocket tag game, but brings so much defense that it can set the pace. Evoker forces you to fight superbosses and is also a slow-roller due to the charging gimmick, but the utility spells are ridiculous if nothing else.

Dark Knight is also way down there. Let's start with the stats: the growths are horrendous! It has fixed STR growths up through level 6. It then gets growths on 8, 10, and 12, before gaining a point every odd level up to the cap. AGI growths are every even level up through 22, and every odd level from 23-43. These sound fine, but STR in particular is bad for a physical class: even Thief gets more fixed STR! Dark Knight has a higher minimum due to a higher base, but that's still telling. As for the other stats? VIT is fixed on 3 and 6, LUCK is fixed on 6 and 13. That's it. There are no fixed INT growths, bad news when this job can use magic.

The way you're supposed to make up for it is with its CONSUME BAT ability after promotion, which allows them to kill a bat NPC and gain a stat boost depending on where they are. The flaws with this are twofold: first, you need to backtrack to take advantage of these, which is a massive timesink. Second, if you run multiple Dark Knights in a party, only one can take advantage at a time. This is just a "funny" way of papering over its horrendous growths. Or maybe balancing: from stuff I read, I sort of get the impression that Ozmo started with this ability then worked backwards from there.

That's only part of the problem, though.

Negative hit%? You're looking at the gimmick of their one and only weapon type, Greatswords. These have good crit chance and unusually high attack - this starting one had 18 power and 10 crit% - at the cost of low (actually in all but one case outright negative) hit%. The good news is the number of hits is floored at 1. The bad news is it's number of hits that gives you the big damage spikes in FF1. Combined with the possibility of missing, which is much more likely with that negative hit%, and you have a very inconsistent damage dealer. At least they gain 3 on a level: they have the same 5+3 as Black Belts/Monks.

Now, there is one thing they can do to tilt the odds: if an enemy is inflicted with darkness, they gain 32 hit%. They have a near-guaranteed way of inflicting this after class change while dealing damage, but otherwise, you need to spend turns better spent on just attacking. Speaking of, they're also immune to the darkness status, for the few times that comes up (practically: SHADOWs, WzOGREs, NITEMAREs, and maybe KARY).

It gets even worse for this class: ambushes! To calculate the odds of an ambush, you take the first party slot's (AGI+LUCK)÷8, plus a random number between that and 100, then subtract the enemy formation's surprise factor. If the result is less than or equal to 10, it's an ambush. If it's over or equal to 90, it's a preemptive. It should be no surprise that the class with like no LUCK and shaky AGI is going to be ambushed a lot. Then there's running. For that calculation, you compare LUCK to a random number between 0 and (Level+15). So Clesse with his 4 LUCK has a little less than a ¼ chance of running at the start of the game and short of manipulating growths it's only going to get worse from there. While a lot of classes are in a similar boat, they have much more fixed LUCK growths. This class is wildly gimmicky in all the wrong ways!

With all this, I named the character after John Cleese, the actor who portrays the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight is famously incompetent and yet very persistent. Things that would describe the experience with this character well.

Here's one of the problems of the job on display: even though Cleese could wear Chain, IMPs still roughed him up badly simply because he kept on missing attacks. Just about any other dedicated physical job could kill one per round. Not him.

The other problem of course was all the stat resetting. It was utterly miserable, all that needs to be said. I hard focused in on LUCK, because this job needed it.

For GARLAND, I had Cleese employ BLOOD WEAPON for the first time. This special ability causes the Dark Knight's physical attacks to drain half the damage dealt for the next two rounds. The action economy is normally a problem, but it can be nice for a solo. There are still three things to be aware of: one, it can only drain as much HP as the target has. So no dunking an IMP for like 50 and getting 25 back, you only get 8. Second, you can still miss. When Cleese did so mid-battle, I gave up and just attacked and won. Third and though irrelevant here: it won't drain against the undead or mechanical enemies.

Oh yes, should restate that Dark Knight can use magic. Their low INT makes them poor in comparison with all other mages now that it works, but spells did the job when it didn't work before and some of them are INT agnostic. They get two per level. The two in Coneria were SLEP and BIO - a weak Poison-elemental spell with 10 base power. FIRE and LIT both have 20. It can sometimes inflict the status of the same name, dealing 3-18 damage per turn to an enemy. But it's just sort of there.

Against the PIRATEs, I had Clesse use SLEP. It did a good job of keeping them incapacitated. Being asleep or paralyzed removes evasion from the hit formula, so it increased his chances to hit a bit. He kept missing, because of course. For the record, the accuracy formula is (168 + Hit% - Evade). Hitting a weakness or the enemy being blind adds 40, being darked subtracts 40. You have that expression out of 201 chance of hitting.

The two L2 spells available here were DARK and PAIN. Far from the murderstatus it is in FF8 or murderdamage it is in FF10, this instead targets an enemy and damages it for however much damage the Dark Knight took the previous turn. It's bad in a party - attacks get spread, and putting your Dark Knight first is a recipe to get ambushed a lot (unless you pair it with a Ninja to prevent those). It goes up to questionable in a solo due to the fact that enemies have so much more health. But it has some fun niches, such as the fact that it always goes first.

My next goal was to raise a bit of money. It just meant KYZOKU grinding. There were two purchases waiting for Clesse in Elfland.

This was the first of them. It's effectively FIR2/LIT2 with a chance of a rider effect and in a different element. A very bad element, but one that would suffice for killing groups that don't resist it. Such as KYZOKUs. Instead of flailing around, Cleese could cast magic and wipe them in 1-2 blasts. I quickly made the money back and purchased the Silver Greatsword. It has 40/-15/10 offenses.

With this new weapon, Clesse had 51 attack. And only 5 hit%. It's interesting to compare this to say, a Fighter at the same level. Clesse does 51-102 damage before absorb. A Fighter with a Silver Sword will have 2-hits at 36 base, effectively dealing 72-144 damage against a 0 absorb enemy. The rift between the two only widens as the game goes along. Now, with darkness involved or against high absorb targets? It's a bit of a different story, especially with Greatswords' high crit%. But I went over the problems with darkness, and high absorb mostly means fiends and ASTOS.

Oh yes, here's a rare shot from my grinding. It's rare to see this message in vanilla: poison does 2 damage per turn, possibly due to a bug. It's replicated in FFR because it's ambiguous. There were no ways to poison an enemy in FF1 (and even if there were, surprise surprise: it was bugged), so the only way you could ever see it is if a party member ends up poisoned with 1-2 HP.

Some more grinding later, and I was ready for the Marsh Cave. It took several tries. Sometimes it was the stunning undead. Other times it was missing the WIZARDs. They resist both the poison and status elements, so Cleese could only attack. I made use of BIO2 against CRAWLs on the way out, as it was often enough to get a kill over trying to run. It gave him a much higher chance of escaping, in other words.

One advantage Cleese did have is that he was functionally immune to ASTOS' SLO2. One hit is still one hit, and he hit more than hard enough to consistently punch through the dark elf's absorb. He also had HOLD to lock him down. It didn't hit with the one spell charge Cleese had, but RUB also missed. So I shrugged and had him attack, and eventually won.

That gave the Mystic Key. There wasn't much to get with Cleese, just the Iron Helmet and Iron Gauntlet I guess. Dark Knights can't use shields, not even the ProCape. But what was in Melmond was even better than any treasure.

Say hello to what used to be the best greatsword in the game, right here to buy. Bastard Sword is the only one with positive hit%. It may be only +10, but you take what you get. This used to be better before 2.0, since it had 35 power (though only 3 crit%). It was arguably the best in the game back then. Whatever the case, it was finally enough to get up to 2-hits. In fact, it would get 6-hits at level 50. Just ignore the fact that Masmune gets 7-hits at level 47.

The other contender, the Cobalt Greatsword was in Crescent Lake: 47 power and -10 hit%. It's also the strongest an unpromoted Dark Knight can get. I tend to use it anyway, because the other ones carry a harsher hit% penalty and don't get that much stronger. Which one I preferred depended on whether or not I could get 2-hits with Cobalt. Which, would be in exactly one level.

If you want some numbers as an example: right now, Cleese had 61 damage with Cobalt and 39 with Bastard. So Cobalt did 61-122 on 1 hit, and Bastard did 78-156 on 2 hits. With higher accuracy, of course. Enemy defense does muddy things: against one with 10, Cobalt does 51-112, and Bastard does 58-116. One ding later though, and Cobalt was preferred. Even with the lower accuracy, it was worth the tradeoff.

Compare to Fighter: 39 damage at the same level with the Silver Sword, and 3 hits. 87-174 against a 10 absorb enemy. Yeah. Though conversely on LICH, a Silver Sword Fighter does 1-38 damage on each of their 3 hits. A Cobalt Dark Knight does 21-82 on each of their 2. They're much more likely to deal good damage, even before critical hits. If there is one thing they are good at, it's beating up the fiends.

It's around this point of the game where Dark Knight starts to pick up. Even in a party, getting Bastard makes a huge difference.

Oh yes, more spells were available now. L4 which were back in Elfland (Cleese didn't have the money or the spell slots) had DRAIN and BLEED: these both did 20% of a target's MaxHP, 10% if they're a boss only in the case of DRAIN (reflect presumably lets you hit them for full with BLEED), and absorbs it as healing. It can only drain as much health as an enemy has, and it doesn't work on mechanical or undead enemies. It's still okay on the fiends. BLEED only targets allies so it was useless. L6 was RUB and STUN, but only the latter could be used by Dark Knight.

L5 had BANE, but Dark Knight couldn't use it. There was also BIND. This spell stops the enemies from running if it hits. There are very few practical uses for it: one being if you're on New Game+ where experience yield is massively increased but enemy morale stays the same, and you're using a Blue Mage that wants the enemies to stick around. Otherwise? When have you ever cursed an enemy running away in FF1? Maybe in a solo when you're grinding very hard? I mean, I guess that's the use here...

Now the Earth Cave. No way in hell I was doing that with this class without some more magic defense. So it was over to Crescent Lake to grind. Once Cleese hit level 18, I switched him back over to the Bastard Sword. They're close enough in power for now (41 vs 63) that I preferred having 3 hits to technically slightly more. Even 10 absorb didn't change much.

I also made a purchase I rarely ever make. Steel Armor is, as T-Hawk put it best, a sucker's trap. In a normal party, this 45000G buy isn't worth it: it lasts from now until you get Flame or Ice Armor. Nothing in the Earth Cave, Ordeals, or Volcano/Ice Cave hits hard enough to warrant this chunk of extra defense over Iron Armor. Solos can make use of it. This did mean putting off some of Cleese's magic purchases, but they weren't a big deal.

I decided to grind a bit on EARTHs like I did with James the Thief. Cobalt was actually the better option here: Bastard did 22-62 on 3 hits. Cobalt did 44-108 on 2. This is a genuinely interesting thing about this class: sometimes, you'll want to switch weapons around depending on what gets the most hits. The mid/lategame ones in particular are very close in power. And against bosses, Bastard's advantages disappear.

The same logic applied to the VAMPIRE: Cobalt was better. It actually got one-shot the first time I reached him. Then Cleese died to a nine-pack of undead. It was close: that insane defense actually saw him get the chance to recover several times, he just never moved before getting stunned again. I encounter rolled to 31 before going back in since that's a good undeadless stretch. There were still so many encounters that an encounter with them showed up anyway: four. Yeah, made it out just fine and they held off until he was up the stairs.

There was one more piece of business on B3. I decided I'd at least peer at it for playthrough/demonstrative purposes. The Crimson Greatsword is off in the far corner and unassuming on the surface. Its stats are identical to the Steel Greatsword in Pravoka: 27/-25/10.

However, the weapon has a hidden property: if you use BLOOD WEAPON, physical attacks will drain the full damage done instead of half. The skill still has the problem of action economy, it has low power, the accuracy penalty is the second-lowest, and it's in an out of the way corner of the dangerous floor. But it is the first weapon a Dark Knight can find in a chest, for whatever obscure challenge it's worth. I actually did survive and make it back after picking it up, so it's there if I need it (I never did).

Before grabbing the ROD and heading down to fight the first fiend, I decided I'd take Clesse up to level 24 at least. That would mean 3 hits with the Cobalt Greatsword. Didn't take too long on the Peninsula, which was the quickest place. He didn't have much trouble. Even 4 ZomBULLs he could simply beat in a straight up brawl most of the time.

I had a wonderfully blessed second dive into the Earth Cave. I ran into two big undead groups on B3, but each time was on a chance to strike first. I idled before B4 because the next encounter was slot 2: undead. But it took a ton of steps to lure the encounter out. Either you can't get encounters near the ROD plate or I just got a super lucky roll that I had to burn. I passed through B4 in three encounters, which saved Cleese from having to fight COCTRICEs. Still, another slot 2 was coming up: still IMAGEs on B5. And: chance to strike first!

LICH used ICE2 for 58, while Cleese bashed him for 176. Cleese moved first on the second round for 233, and that was it! Told you they were good at killing the fiends!

I decided I'd go into Gurgu next, just to get rid of the heavy Steel Armor. There wasn't much to get in the dungeon as usual, with the notable exception of the Flame Armor. Red D was a little scary, but I got it done in two shots.

KARY is of course weak to the status element. One HOLD and she was locked down. This was only his second attack, but ouch all the same.

Ordeals wasn't too tough. I died to SORCERERs and MEDUSAs a few times, below average luck for myself, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. Ice Cave, I didn't take any pictures of. There is literally no strategy but maybe game the encounter table and hope for the best. I didn't bother with it this time and never really paid the price. I wasn't counting either, I think it took like 20 tries?

Now. I was sort of indirectly challenged by Wrolyn to finish at a lower level than his solo unpromoted Dark Knight, which was around the 30s. I never care for level when it comes to solos. However much it needs or I feel like, that's what I go for. I do these for fun and informative purposes. I certainly can do it if I want, and I decided I'd up the stakes to eradicate all doubt: sure, I'll get it done lower level. Without itemcasts. Or a Ribbon.

I have basically nothing to write about this, because it was so boring. Dark Knight doesn't much much in the north without promotion anyway: it's just the usual stuff everyone gets and the BLND spell. A guaranteed (not actually right now because under 300HP spells are bugged) chance of darkness is not great. Cleese hit RUN and hoped for the best, everywhere. The highlight of it was getting a random encounter Blue D twice when going up Mirage. Which, like a lot of unrunnables, was a reset. Also, I could do this at the Waterfall!

There were tons of unrunnables in the Sea Shrine so that took a bunch of attempts. I actually settled on beating two GHOSTs when clearing out the upper level. LOBSTERs got me twice because low level on a solo is stupid - I could otherwise just hit Zeus once or twice and win. KRAKEN got me once before I hit HOLD and had done with it. The same worked on TIAMAT, and it was the same story actually: Cleese died the first time, paralyzed the fiend the second, and beat her down from there.

Before heading into the past, I went back into the Earth Cave to retrieve the Earth Armlet. This would help stop CRACK. It plus the Flame Armor were about the only difference that I could make with throwing Ribbons off the table.

Well, I went up to 99 attempts before I even got to LICH. Most of them were ended by running into Gas Ds: there was nothing Cleese could do except die to them. After that, he had to get through PHANTOM: with all sorts of status moves, this was another roadblock. It didn't help that Cleese was simply not getting lucky rolls against the thing. Quite a few were ended by Zombie Ds, and surprisingly: BADMANs were also a problem. Nine of them could hurt bad and sometimes kill. I reached the Earth floor several times, but kept getting killed by GrMEDUSAs. I got excellent use out of BLOOD WEAPON against FrGIANT/FrWOLF groups, though.

Once he finally made it to LICH for the first time? Poor rolls, then a ZAP! ended it.

Okay, maybe that was taking it too far. Let's get a Ribbon and this over with. Still no spellcasting items to prove my point, unless I hit another 99 failed attempts. Restart the count.

1. Without its instant death, PHANTOM is nothing. 4 Zombie Ds are still a problem, though.
2. Nor are Gas Ds with BLOOD WEAPON up. It took me 99 tries to even get to LICH before, and this try? I got to him and beat him. Think Ribbon makes a difference? KARY got hit with HOLD after two tries. BLOOD WEAPON and kill. I had an annoying encounter with WATERs, and KRAKEN was a joke in the wrong ways: all three remaining HOLDs missed, but he kept not attacking physically, so I still won. But then TIAMAT did two physicals, and that did kill.
3. 4 Gas Ds still hurt.
4. 4 EARTHs, lifesteal couldn't keep up
5. 4 Gas Ds
6. I just do not care, double run fail against Frost Ds my ass
7. Double HOLD miss against KARY and double critical killed
8. Paralyzed both KARY and KRAKEN. Made it to the Masmune, but kept getting low rolls on TIAMAT and killed from there by a big critical.
9. 4 Gas Ds
10. 4 Frost Ds and double run fail
11. 4 Gas Ds
12. Dead to KARY when the HOLDs wouldn't take
13. Survived Zombie Ds with 11 HP. Eventually dead to KRAKEN
14. 4 EARTHs, lifesteal couldn't keep up
15. KARY double physicalled before I could do anything
16. KARY
17. KARY
18. 4 Gas Ds
19. 4 Zombie Ds
20. KARY
21. 4 Gas Ds
22. 4 Zombie Ds
23. 4 Gas Ds
24. A big crit on KARY let me STUN her. Then 4 WATERs killed.
25. KARY
26. LICH almost cycled to NUKE and killed me. KARY went fine. Insanely lucky KRAKEN where he hit Cleese for 459 only for HOLD to land! I hit a PAIN, then two strong attacks for the victory! Got the Masmune, then made it through TIAMAT thanks to the attack rolls going nicely.

On round 1 of CHAOS, he started out with a 297 damage physical as Cleese used BLOOD WEAPON. ICE3 for 51, then Cleese hit for just 116. LIT3 also for 51, followed by Cleese hitting for 82. Reupped BLOOD WEAPON as CHAOS did another physical, I think for 133.

At this point, it was clear this wasn't happening. I survived for a bit thanks to DRAIN, but SLO2 hit as well and that was the end of that.

You get the idea. I stopped keeping track of exact failures here. KARY and KRAKEN were responsible for most of the deaths, but 4 Gas D resets weren't that far behind. Any unrunnable really. It's a big problem with no spellcasting items. I actually did get killed by LICH occasionally. I was encounter watching enough to not get SORCERERs at least.

Second time I got to CHAOS was try 72. He opened with ICE3 for a nice 69 damage. Then LIT3 for 37. Then SLO2, which...missed! I used BLOOD WEAPON, right as he used CUR4 literally as fast as he could've. He then used a physical for 239.

Cleese hit harder. His next attack did 346. That was it: the only thing that was going to stop me from here was a massive physical from CHAOS. His next one did 183. Then he used CRACK.

And here's DRAIN. This did 200 damage each time to CHAOS, restoring exactly that much to CLEESE. Since he was under 1000 and nowhere near the next CUR4, it was literally down to just using Cleese's five charges!

He actually did physical a lot from here, but never got the massive crits of his own.

Anyway, there. I proved my point and now I just hate myself. I could've beat it easily if I did use spellcasting items (Defense) for KARY and KRAKEN in particular, but logic left my brain for the sake of never being bugged by that again. :P Luckily, that's what the "with promotion" run is for. That said, it wouldn't be very different without these self-imposed extra restrictions: just easier and more enjoyable. And Cleese would have been higher level. I know some people might enjoy it, but it's just not something for me even if I can do it.

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