System Error's Video Game Variants

The promoted run is absolutely going to be more interesting, and not just because I'm not spending 90% of it running from stuff. Much of what the Dark Knight gets in the second half of the game is exclusive to their promotion, the Deathknight. It's not necessarily good or very exciting, but it's there. Much like my Elementalist run, I'm sticking to no spellcasting items for a promoted job to up the stakes rather than being brainlessly masochistic. Having actual HP should make it not hurt as much against KARY and KRAKEN.

The Deathknight gains a bunch of new abilities. The first is SOULEATER, a decently strong move that hits all enemies at the cost of 20% of their max HP. It pairs nicely with their unlockable ability, MISERY, which increases damage the lower their HP. It's a really cool concept that encourages risk/reward.

Undead are healed by SOULEATER, for around the same damage they would've taken. However, the move also has a special secondary effect: everything that's hit by it will be inflicted with darkness, the undead included. Which may seem pointless, but remember: Dark Knights get an extra 32 hit% against enemies inflicted with this. The odds of infliction are very high. The only thing immune is the superboss you can only fight with a Spellblade in the party. It also inflicts tiredness afterward, which prevents the use of SKILLS - which includes BLOOD WEAPON, so you can't just use it and get to healing off the damage right away.


Besides the added spells that most magic jobs get, they also gain the CONSUME BAT ability. This allows them to kill any bat NPC and gain stats from them. Here it is in action. Every floor in the game with a bat has a fixed set of growths from eating them. It was better to get VIT boosts sooner rather than later!

There's a lot about the Dark Knight class that I actually like in spite of it being bad, but this isn't one of them. This is really just a way of papering over their horrendeous fixed stat growths. If you run multiple in the same party, only one can benefit from each bat. On the other hand, in a solo like this, you can see some pretty insane stats. Like I said, the biggest problem with it is that you have to go back to all the dungeons that have them. It's a massive pain. I avoided using it on my casual playthrough between that and because I was unaware of their stat growths and thought it'd break them.


After eating the LUCK bats in the Northwest Castle, the Waterfall was the logical second step, but for more (and less) reasons than usual. The first time Cleese reached the spike tile, there were seven COCTRICEs! Bad turn order meant he ended up a statue. The second time had just one, plus a horde of MUMMYs! I countered by using the Deathknight's LIMIT, DREADSPIKEs. This causes them to absorb a portion of physical damage taken from enemies, up to 50% of the character's max. This kept Cleese's health up while I whittled the enemies down.


Despite not using Defense, there was still the Ribbon and this interesting goodie to be picked up. The Coral Greatsword, as you might expect from sharing the name with a similar weapon, is effective on aquatic enemies. It is exclusive to the Deathknight. It's a mere three points of attack stronger than the Cobalt Greatsword and five points of accuracy lower. This is a pattern with the late game greatswords: lower accuracy for slightly higher attack.


He also got his revenge when the spike spawned eight COCTRICEs: here's SOULEATER in action. It seems to be like a magical attack in some capacity since it had a chance to double. The biggest problem with it is the health drop. Just this one mini dungeon used up over 50 HEAL potions because of liberal use of SOULEATER. I'll really need to weigh whether it's worth it to use it or not. You cannot drop this willy nilly without support. Which thankfully includes its own BLOOD WEAPON, but you still need to consider whether the missing health will be bad for the next encounter.

From there, the next destination was the Earth Cave for the rest of the VIT bats on B2. The third and fifth floor had STR bats, and the fourth floor had AGI bats. No longer a problem to tread thanks to the Ribbon. After getting through there, that just left the Marsh Cave. It had LUCK bats on the first two floors, and INT bats on the bottom.


Here's Cleese's stats after the great bat eating adventure. Well, almost the whole adventure. You can gain a total of 23 STR, 15 AGI, 14 INT, 23 VIT, and 24 LUCK if you're diligent enough. Ironically for having the worst in the game, a Deathknight who manipulates AGI and LUCK can have the highest combination of them (which determines ambushes and preemptives) and can actually become the only job in the game with a guaranteed run chance. Even the Thief has a tiny chance to fail a run.

As you can see too, level 28 is when he got 4-hits with the Bastard Sword. He had 58 damage with it versus 85 across 3 hits with the Onyx Greatsword: a weapon purchasable in Gaia with 52/-20/15 offenses. Onyx did 225-480 to 10 absorb enemies, Bastard did 192-424. But if we're using Cobalt for the higher hit%, that's 210-450. Yeah, not that big a difference.


That just left these guys. You can eat them too, even after you find out they're sentient. They're very special: the Sky Warriors give a strong HP growth when eaten. It is the same as an actual one in every way: 20-25 HP at base plus VIT÷4. You can get the most out of them by eating them later, but getting a strong boost sooner is also very good. I know that some soloists in the New Game+ difficulty eat one or two and save the rest for later. What about Cleese?

Well, let's think about this. He's level 28, and I intend to go all the way here even if I don't have to. He has 6 strong HP growths left to gain. He has 487HP right now. Worst case (no further VIT gains), that's 336HP from VIT and 120 from strong HP. A total of 943. So no matter what happens, Cleese is guaranteed 999HP with these. He'll gain 185HP if I eat them now - no reason not to manipulate the maximum amount of a strong HP growth. If I wait two levels and get two VIT growths, that'll be 190. That felt like the best idea.


I went ahead and filled in Cleese's spell list after this, except for BLEED (which Cleese could not use without a friend to drain) and BLND. BANE, RUB, and XXXX are as you know them: instant death spells of various kinds. Deathknight isn't as good as using them as some of the other classes in FFR due to their low INT (and I hadn't been focusing on Cleese's), but they're there and nice. I talked about BIND before, but I had a plan for it. ABSORB is a new one: it targets an enemy and steals a buff from them (or according to Wrolyn, doesn't actually steal it, just copies it). It's pretty niche because very few enemies use them in the first place.

EN-DARK is a new one you can get from the Lefein shop. The Death element in vanilla existed only to be resisted by enemies. Even in this fan remake/expansion, only CARBUNCLE is weak to it. However, as the description says, anything not resistant to the element will have a chance to be instantly killed. Notably, only LICH among the four fiends resists death. It's neat against them, and that's about it. Notably, this is Deathknight exclusive: the Spellblade doesn't learn this one.

Oh yeah, their spell charges cap at 6. Worth pointing out.


I got the levels Cleese needed, then moved to activate this quest in Onrac. Just like the guy says, your Deathknight will need to take 1000 damage in the same battle without dying (Final Fantasy Renaissance does include means to revive during battle). SOULEATER self-damage does not count. This requires good setup against the right enemy. Something like an ANKYLO could definitely deal damage, but for the solo Cleese, that would kill him faster than HEAL potions could restore it.


Yum. Actually, it looks like this could get even higher than the 25+(52÷4)=38 it was normally: I only found this out by sheer coincidence. Thankfully it was on the second bat, so Cleese only has 1 less HP than he should. Which is still 4 more than I expected.


Anyway, I settled on ZomBULLs to achieve the quest. 40-80 attack with one hit on Cleese's 41 absorb was more than manageable. They also had a decent but not high chance of missing. Their morale was the only potential problem, so here I am getting actual use out of BIND! Only in variants.


A message appears in battle once you've achieved the condition, so there's no need to count manually. I swung around to do the BOTTLE quest before heading back to pick up the MISERY trait before going into the Sea Shrine.

Heading up let me test balancing SOULEATER with BLOOD WEAPON for the first time. It wasn't always practical in the Waterfall because MUMMYs exist. GHOSTs still exist here though, so Cleese still had to be careful. Can't use either of those on them! Can't run either.

It took three attempts to make it to the bottom. GHOSTs killed one attempt. I tried DREADSPIKEs, but it could not keep up with the damage they were dealing. WATERs were the other culprit. Cleese used SOULEATER, which it wasn't enough for a kill, so he got killed. I learned from my mistake and had him use BLOOD WEAPON and attack the next time. That eventually brought him to the bottom floor.


Uh, wow. I have never seen KRAKEN attack that much before. I had the sense to use DREADSPIKEs against him, but then he got a massive critical for over 650 damage. EN-DARK went off on turn 2, but Cleese died before he could attack on turn 3.

The next attempt died to GHOSTs again. Am I going to have to encounter watch? They're slot 4 on B2 and B4. For the record, WATERs are slot 5 in B5, slot 6 in B4. But with BLOOD WEAPON, even the max draw wasn't dangerous. They were back then, but now Cleese had the HP to get around them.

The second attempt at KRAKEN, I just had Cleese use EN-DARK and go. KRAKEN again kept physically attacking! It did not proc on the second turn, but on the third...


That wasn't formally instant death, but it effectively was. See how you like it, jerk!


One last dungeon left. This guy would normally have a funny reaction if you talked to him after eating the Sky Warriors: "YOU DID WHAT?" It didn't show up here. Maybe it only does so if you eat them after you've gotten all the orbs? Oh well.

Cleese could use the Dragon Armor in Mirage Tower. With ProRing later, he would have 51 absorb, the highest he could get. Not being able to use shields hurts the Dark Knight's tanking abilities. One bit of design that I like about Final Fantasy Renaissance is that nothing really obsoletes the Fighter/Warrior in that respect. They're not the be all end all of party leaders anymore, but they're still the best at soaking hits. They also are the only ones to have 3% MDef growth - Monk still gets 4%, but even all the new jobs get 2%. The three heavy armor classes that were added have problems: Lancer and Dark Knight can't use Shields, and Spellblade has low HP. The Viking job class is one that's scheduled and will probably change this when and if it pops up, but they're likely to not be as good on offense.


Sitting in the eastern room of F2 was this horrible weapon. The Buster (great)Sword is a reference and massive joke of a weapon. It has 60 attack, the strongest of all greatswords. It also has 20 crit%. The massive problem is that it has -30 hit%.

Let's math this: Cleese has 97 damage on 3-hits with the Buster. 87 on 4-hits with the Coral. Let's say WarMECH shows up, or he's fighting TIAMAT, both with their 80 absorb. Buster Sword will deal 51-342 damage. Coral will deal 28-376. More variance, but it's much less likely to do less than it is to do equal or more. And that's just on bosses with very high absorb. On 10 absorb enemies (it's a good average, which is why I've been using it), Coral would do presently 308-656 and Buster would do 267-552, a lot worse! Crit chance throws a wrench into things, but you still get one more roll with more hits. Buster will be better than the other strong greatswords at certain thresholds: levels 20-23, 31-34, and 42-45. A Dark Knight should go with whichever gives the most hits.


TIAMAT was absolutely wrecked by the first swing of the battle: 889 damage! I then tried to do a stylish finish with XXXX - this spell instantly kills anything as long as it is under 300HP and not resistant to the death element, and she fulfilled both conditions - only for it to not work due to an outstanding bug. After trying several more times and eventually landing a STUN, I finished her off. Ugh.


Of course, I was going to pick a fight with WarMECH. It struck first for 302, then did 267. Cleese nearly one-shot it with sheer damage. Which allowed for this little bit of humiliation. It nearly killed Cleese with the next physical, but didn't get the job done. Cleese was now level 39, without having gone out of the way to grind after the midgame except for those extra two levels before eating the Sky Warriors, which partly made up for running a lot in Ordeals anyway. That said, I didn't feel the need to gain the rest of the levels. Into the final dungeon!


If this were not a solo challenge, Cleese would have a special weapon to pick up in the very first room of the past Temple of Fiends, as long as he had a Ninja buddy along to use its SEARCH ability. The Chaos Greatsword is a weak weapon on paper: 30/-10/30 offenses, so it seems like a greatsword version of the Vorpal, etc. However, much like the Crimson, it has a hidden property: increasing the odds of EN-DARK's KO landing. Because EN-DARK is a gimmick, so is the Chaos Greatsword. Its main purpose is unlocking a hidden achievement for making use of its special property.


After the non-promoted run, it was very cathartic to run into a group of FrGIANTs and FrWOLFs on F2 and just SOULEATER the lot of them. It's amazing how less deadly the fights in here were. With so much more HP, KARY's hits went from killing in two to being harmlessly healed. Same for KRAKEN.


So let's talk about the big awesome sword. Like every class in the game, Dark Knight can use the Masmune. While it's not as likely to critical as the Greatswords, it still had 56 power to, say, Onyx Greatsword's 52. And of course, +50 hit%. It was kind of jarring seeing that massive hit% spike. Suppose Cleese hypothetically hit level 42 here. Buster would do 1-100 damage on each of its 4 hits against CHAOS. Masmune was going to do 1-92 on each of its 6 hits. That math doesn't change too much at the current level.


TIAMAT doesn't have that much more, and she got cut to shreds. This was certainly a victory set in stone, but I wanted it to be a big win. Might get killed in the process, but oh well. Let's go!


My idea was to stall until FAST, use ABSORB, then use it to utterly wreck CHAOS. Even if SLO2 hit, that should counter it. The stalling didn't go very well. Actually, I discovered a neat property of ABSORB here: it was absorbing CHAOS' status immunities! That's pretty sick actually. If it isn't intentional, it should be - even if it doesn't actually remove the buffs from them. Especially if it does though: it'd give it a fun niche. But finally, he used FAST and Cleese was able to ABSORB it!


Then he got NUKED to death. Yeah, saw that coming. And wow, nice bug. Negative HP. I think (and later got confirmed) this happened because DREADSPIKES was active at the time. Only a flesh wound indeed.

Not too much trouble to run back a second time. But SLO2 hit this time, and ABSORB actually missed. Cleese could still do heavy damage, but got killed by a CHAOS critical. On my third run, Cleese actually ran into enough unrunnable encounters that he hit level 42. So I tried Buster against TIAMAT for kicks. First hit? 4 hits, 200 damage. Blah. Second one was like 1200.


Switched Masmune back in for the third attempt at CHAOS. I failed again in a way: I was stalling more aggressively, making an active effort to keep Cleese healed. I used DRAIN and also set up darkness for later. I used BLOOD WEAPON and went to chip him. Except then Cleese went crazy, hit for over 1100 damage, and killed him right there. No, no. We're going to get this done RIGHT.

The fourth attempt went very well. CHAOS barely used physicals, and Cleese was able to keep up. I hit SOULEATER's darkness. Eventually, CHAOS used FAST and ABSORB hit! I pressed FIGHT and prepared for this epic hit.


OZMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I thought this was because of SOULEATER and made another testing run, but no. It just doesn't work. In fact, he didn't even get an extra hit from darkness! I guess it only works with Greatswords despite not saying as such in the description? All that swag for nothing! A pair of 1000+ damage swings ended it either way.

Well, that was a run. The promoted version was definitely a lot more fun than trying to fool around with low level. It's why I do these: for fun!

I still feel that the Dark Knight is one of the worse new jobs in Final Fantasy Renaissance, but despite that? I like it overall. The low hits/high damage and crit gimmick is pretty interesting. My initial impression was that it's similar to Monk in how it's more of a late bloomer, and I feel that assessment is a correct one. There's also the investment aspect of having to run around old dungeons. But unlike Evoker, you aren't actively punished with superbosses to make the class function. There's nothing wrong with creating a weaker job, as long as it's fun or interesting, and Dark Knight definitely hits on the interesting. Compare with stinkers like FF5 Geomancer that barely give you any options.

It's actually probably the most unique new job in that sense. A lot of new jobs feel derivative - for example, Lancer being a less tanky Fighter with JUMP (though Fighters get their own things!) - but because of the gimmicky weapons and spells, there's nothing quite like a Dark Knight.

It was a fun solo run as well, especially with BLOOD WEAPON. It's not great in a full party, but it was able to shine in a solo. And balancing it with SOULEATER after promotion was also cool. I was expecting it to be harder than it was, but really: the only difficulty was the tedium in stat resets. Those low growths and having to make up for it with bats is the one part of the job that I don't really like.

Another one I can add to my list. Not sure what's next, but I have a few ideas. Thanks for reading.

Index

Oh yes, I forgot about this guy. Not that it changed anything. Gas Ds use the infamous POISON, a L6 spell which has 136 base power. It hurts even more coming from a Blue Mage in FFR due to INT now giving a boost to damage.


I went for Gurgu first out of the midgame dungeons, and I had to approach it in a bizarre way due to levelups. First, I had to descend and fight the Red D: the spike tile in front of the Flame Armor is a far more convenient place to obtain BLAZE. It's weak to Ice, Water, Poison, and Stone. I fought it with the newly acquired spell for kicks.

I then had to go right back up because KARY would've given a level. I grabbed the Ice Sword on the way out. What a difference it made! Shanoa's physical offense had been faltering lately, but this was enough to get her up to 3 hits. Her physical attacks had been starting to lag, but this boosted them right back to being good.


The snakelady has an infamous weakness to the status element. One GAZE and she was under Shanoa's spell. The newly added water element is also a weakness of hers. It took three of them because the second rolled very low.

Ordeals was unusually rough. It's usually too short to be of any threat, but things kept popping up and killing Shanoa. She even died to the Zombie Ds twice when they rolled paralysis on their physicals before she could move! I also could've lost by leveling up, but that was on one of the Zombie D deaths. Of course, it brought forth the usual goodies. One thing worth noting: spellcasting items no longer benefit from INT because of a weird conclusion made of an unrelated issue. Though Zeus was still good in the original, so it doesn't affect much.

That brought me to the Ice Cave. Level 21 was really pushing it for a solo character. Shanoa has plenty of win buttons, but the problem was the threat of leveling up. 26 and 32 were my potential level goals: this is when she gains 5 and 6 L5 charges respectively. Higher is naturally on the table: it's the Ice Cave after all. The Peninsula was the right place to be: BLAZE destroyed the ZomBULL/TROLL groups and were the first encounter after a reset.

I don't have any pictures, but it was a fourth try Ice Cave. Can't ask for much better! On the winning attempt. I ran into the slot 7 on the first floor, aka the same as the spike trap. It had a full 9 pack and Shanoa BLAZEd them into oblivion before they could move. I got away with a CREMATE plus HEAT on one of the undead encounters that followed. Made it through the spike, and had an "um" moment when I bumped into random encounter Frost Ds. I wasn't sure what to do. I tried GLARE, and it missed. They just used physicals. I hit run and it worked. It alerted me to exactly where I was on the encounter table though: 24. I cautiously stalled on B1 instead of charging forward mindlessly: that would've seen me run into MAGEs and SORCERERs! Instead, Shanoa had to fight through WIZARDs (Zeus, one group nearly killed her) and a MUMMY/COCTRICE mix (thankfully few in number). I went down when a pair of slot 1s were slated. The EYE got GLAREd at, and I indeed just had two R.BONE group encounters. I had to get through one more MUMMY/COCTRICE mix (slot 4, SORCERERs on B3), and that was it! I'll take a bad Ordeals and smooth Ice Cave any day!


And after that? Shanoa had to get level 27. This was a strong HP level that needed STR and VIT. I actually took a suboptimal STR+25HP growth here instead of fighting for the 1/96. And yeah, good strong HP levels are more important than VIT if it's somehow between the two: you gain VIT÷4 HP per level up, but a strong HP growth ranges from 20-25. It adds up, and one point is worth a lot more than a quarter of a point. Shanoa had only missed 2HP from it so far.

I would not be class changing in this run or exploring a run with class change. Blue Wizard gets three things out of it: besides the usual new equipment still comparable to what's available on Red (Defense being a notable exception, gotta wait till Mirage for an upgrade), their LIMIT is to make the next spell they use cast with double accuracy and guarantee learning on the next they're hit it. CONVERGENCE doubles the power of a multi target spell in exchange for making it hit only one opponent. Nothing worth exploring.

After running the Waterfall for the obligatory Ribbon, I could start hunting L7 spells. A man in Lefein south of the magic shops could be spoken to without the SLAB and carried a Blue D. I tried instantly killing it but it was being stubborn, so I had Shanoa sword it to death instead. THUNDER has 152 base power. Compare to ICE3 which has 140. Without weaknesses involved, lit is generally a better element than ice: a lot of what resists it also resists ice anyway, only Blue D, OOZE, and SCUM are exceptions across normal monsters.


Sand Ws carried CRACK: earth-elemental and +16 accuracy, adding yet another instant death spell to Shanoa's repitoire. It's tied with GLARE for the most accurate, though it's in a much worse element at the cost of hitting everything. And the final L7 spell?


Hahahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

TRANCE is every bit the horror you know it as: non-elemental paralysis that hits everything. While it doesn't have an accuracy bonus, it benefits from INT and it works on absolutely anything in the game except the Spellblade superboss and most of the Evoker ones - which Shanoa didn't have to worry about. Everything else, including CHAOS himself? Not safe from TRANCE. Instant death physicals are naturally not included with this, but when you look at a fair chunk of the Blue Mage's skillset, they can compensate for that with spells.


Now it was just a matter of clearing out what's left. I grabbed the SLAB from the upper floors of the Sea Shrine, grabbed the CHIME, and went into Mirage. This weapon is worth talking about. Shanoa actually couldn't equip it; it's exclusive to Blue Wizards, Beastmasters, and Rune Knights. It has 30/30/2.5 offenses, identical to Sun Sword except being 2 points weaker. However, it's effective on beasts. What FFR defines as a beast is "anything that isn't undead, humanoid, or mechanical". It can deal a touch more damage. Shanoa had to use the Sun Sword itself, which got her to 4 hits. While I was there, I was finally able to pick up DAZZLE, leaving only the L8 spells to pick up.

But before that time came, there was the final two fiends. I mostly ran from everything in these two dungeons, fighting only when I had to. BLIZZARD did a great job of demolishing WATERs.


This spot onwards to KRAKEN's room is very special. I'd be coming back to it later.


For KRAKEN, Shanoa used Defense thrice and GLAREd at him.

Again, I ran from everything in the Floating Castle. I counted so I didn't run into WarMECH. Yeah, I'd be fighting the thing: NUCLEAR is absolutely a Blue Mage spell. Just not yet. I picked up the ProCape for added defense.


TIAMAT was GLANCEd at. No need for a Bane Sword, she's just as weak to the stone element.

Now, I could easily beat the game at this point. Shanoa is a solo at the top of her class. But there were still the L8 spells left to grab. The two options were to get to level 50, or sacrifice stat growths. I chose the latter to make for more of a challenge. First up, heading back into the castle.


Beating WarMECH took some luck. Thankfully, the second encounter was not an ambush. Defense thrice, then I had her stall with Heal Staff until NUCLEAR came out. It eventually did. The question was how to beat it from here.


When I said everything in the base game except CHAOS is vulnerable to the time element, I meant everything. In the vanilla game, WarMECH would be protected from this anyway due to having 200 MDef, which due to the buggy formulae means most status spells will never hit anyway. But in FFR, INT works. And even after I discovered a massive failing/copying from Gamecorner which lists magic defenses in percentages which Ozmo copied over causing everything to have halved MDef, he adjusted the formula so things could still be hit with status about as consistently as before. Hence, an instantly scrapped robot.

It's also worth 32000XP, so Shanoa couldn't keep maintaining her level manipulation. NUCLEAR is the most easily accessible of the L8 spells. Its 160 base power makes it a weaker NUKE (200). Still a nice option, especially if you don't want to go in on instant death. The only flaw is being a L8 spell, and you might not reach that in normal gameplay without grinding.

Next up was INFERNO. This spell used to be exclusively found on CHAOS. There are two other enemies that use it in FFR. One of them is PHOENIX, who is exclusive to Evokers and out of Shanoa's reach. The other, I had to go back into the Sea Shrine in that little area I showed. From the end of that big room on B1 to the portal out, you have about a 1/100 chance (apparently) of running into something new that can use this skill. It doesn't follow regular encounter table logic: it just shows up and doesn't even replace the next encounter.


The first time, Shanoa died to LOBSTERs. The second go, she leveled up due to too many WATERs. But I kept going and the big guy eventually showed his face.

HADES has 128 attack, same as WarMECH, but only hits once. He has 800HP, and is weak to holy (a mostly nonexistent element in FFR; exclusive to Spellblade's EN-HOLY and Dragoon's Holy Lance) and water. And getting GLAREd at still kills him, of course. He usually uses ABYSSAL DARK. Despite the name, this is poison-elemental. Geomancers can sometimes use this as a rare spell here, and it still hurts through resistance. It can take a while for him to use INFERNO, but it popped up quickly enough in this run.

INFERNO is the fifth and final fire-elemental spell. It checks in with a power of 192, the strongest spell that a Blue Mage can cast (and still weaker than NUKE), as long as it's not resisted. I've seen this hit for over 700 damage on targets weak to it.

After that, I advanced the encounter table about...oh, a hundred times or so. Then it was off to the past!

There really wasn't much to write about the trip through the temple. I played conservatively, sometimes taking a pause to Defense/Heal Staff through battles instead of using potions. I also ran from a lot of fights. Gas Ds were a no show. PHANTOM got slashed down, and the fiends were all hit with GLARE. Even KRAKEN, who I just killed before he could move instead of futzing with Defense.


Yes, here it is: IronGOL. The eighth slot (1/64) encounter on the final floor of the game! The first time this appears on the encounter table is 129. For the first and last time, I used the Blue Mage's ability: SKILL LURE. This increases the odds of the Blue Mage being targeted by a skill, and doubles the odds of them using it. It's of dubious use, especially for a solo. The second part of it was convenient here: IronGOLs only have a 1/8 chance of using TOXIC, so this sped things up.

For all the hell to find it and worse to lock it into your save, and for being a unique skill on the rarest enemy in the entire game, TOXIC is nothing special. In spite of its name, it's a death-elemental attack that hits everything and inflicts death. Do you remember what I mentioned about SQUINT vs. GLANCE? Exact same story here with STONE, right down to STONE having +5 accuracy. You can kill Frost Ds on the march back in with it, but you can kill them with INFERNO too. This is no Masmune. It isn't even a Glass Sword.

If you're wondering, by the way: TORNADO has a skill power of 128, same as the L5 SWIRL and BLAZE. Wind-element, naturally. INK is functionally identical to FLASH: same darkness, same +24 accuracy modifier, same status-element.


Oh yeah. And I wanted to lock it in. I got the encounter so early that I didn't even go for the Masmune before heading back. It wasn't like I was going to use it much on the way. Here's TOXIC in action against some Grey Ws on the Fire floor. Again, Shanoa was able to instantly splatter the fiends on the walk back. She had to use CRACK on LICH because of running out of L7 spells. Yeah, irony: the earth fiend is not immune to earth. I used the WARP Stone FFR provides if you talk to King Coneria after breaking the Black Orb to make it out once I was through the elemental floors.

Unfortunately from there, the temple became extremely uncooperative. I guess I got insanely lucky on that back and forth. KRAKEN resisted GLARE twice and killed Shanoa, KARY resisted GLARE thrice and killed Shanoa a couple of times, PHANTOM once got a double critical and nearly killed Shanoa. I once tried to outsmart KRAKEN and Defense once, but he hit twice and killed Shanoa. I even had a CHAOS loss, and a moment where I tried to get too conservative and too looking for the right Heal fight and ended up dying.

Eventually, things lined up again. Shanoa would still want the Masmune, which took her to 5 hits. CHAOS resists all elements - even the new wind, water, and holy ones! He also resists silence and confusion for what it's worth, as well as a few oddball new ones. She couldn't quite kill CHAOS with just NUCLEARs, so she had to sword him. Before that, TIAMAT just got instantly killed. No worries.


Here were Shanoa's stats. Higher level than I was intending to be at at the end, but it's sort of what happens when you frequently fight because you can (and go back and forth through the temple). I think she gained around 8 levels just because of L8 spell hunting.


Like I said, CHAOS is not immune to TRANCE. The first try, I got very unlucky and CHAOS hit SLO2 before it landed. He stayed paralyzed forever as Shanoa plinked him down with NUCLEAR and single hit slashes once she ran out of those. She TRANCEd him again as he recovered, but he broke out quickly. I'd used too many L7 spells on the water floor and she was out. CUR4 happened and that was it.

This time, it happened nice and early (but not before a bit critical from him). He stayed paralyzed as Shanoa worked him down. She usually did around 200 damage a FIGHT, but did over 500 on a critical. He eventually did recover, but it was too late.


I dropped a NUCLEAR as a stylish finish.

This was a pleasant solo to play through. I was expecting one on the easier side, which it was when the game wasn't being ridiculous. Blue Mage has strong options for handling groups of randoms, and can just delete any boss in the game except the final one with a snap of its fingers. And when spells fail, it still has swording to fall back on.

Of course, that's the thing about Blue Mage: while it has some damaging spells, it has a ton of instant death and that's where it shines the most. Things really get ugly with its LIMIT involved. If that's not your style, you're likely to be disappointed in it. This can be circumvented a bit by changing class: CONVERGENCE does a lot for their single-target damage output. Compared to the Black and Red Mages, its damaging spells are weaker in the early and late game (without that skill being involved), but stronger in the midgame. However, they don't bring the support spells that those two classes can bring. Black is even better at status and instant death: their spells are more accurate and they get a skill to ignore resistances.

Overall, it really is sort of a variation of Red Mage. As a solo, I'd say it was easier, especially if we're talking about a Red Mage that goes unpromoted. But I feel Red is better in a party setting. Especially with the new trick it gains post promotion. It doesn't mean that Blue Mage is a bad class. It's solid, and it does well even without the L8 spell hassle (at least WarMECH is easily to manipulate). Your mileage may vary on it being limited to FF1 spells. I think it was the right choice, though: deviating from the original list would take it further away from being a FF1 expansion. Still, if STINGER disappeared in particular for TORNADO, I don't think anyone would miss it.

I've ranted enough about the coinflip on learning spells too. It's bad. All that needs to be said.


Still, there it is. A full spell list, and one I saved too.

I still need to finish all the games I mentioned in the previous report...funnily enough, I started this because I was too amped after getting 100 hammer rally in Mario & Luigi Brothership. Too much else distracted me, like a Super Robot Wars R playthrough (also Y hype!). One bit of progress at a time. Thanks for reading. May or may not do more before Samurai and Machinist drop. We'll see!

Index