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

Heading into the und--wait a minute, what? Rally-ho??? Was the hack maker a big FF9 fan or something, because that is not what it is in any other game. It's instead Tally-Ho later on in Tomra.


I managed the Rydialess against Golbez! Pig bought me the time. Always fun to do. I don't see why she gets to level up, though. There was a change in the cutscene after: instead of a magic hand, Golbez himself rises and takes the crystal himself before poofing.


Unfortunately, the Warp glitch was fixed in the hack. Surprisingly, no Dwarf Axe available to buy in the castle. But there were some new weapons for Rosa to potentially use. Punisher was one such treasure in the castle (or was it in Zot?) that was an okay weapon that cast the Ninja spell Bind when used as an item. Flail was interesting: low accuracy and power, effective on reptiles, giants, slimes, and mages, and could stun things. I just kept her with a bow.

In Babil, ice weapons shredded most of everything. One problem with Rydia, by the way: she hadn't learned any new black magic aside from the tier 2 spells she learned in the event. The hack frontloads her magic, although actually eases up once she starts learning them again. It's the big problem I'll have to contend with in solo Rydia. It was definitely a relief to get Bio a little later!


You ancient beings might find this weird, but a scientific society...I forget the whole of what I wrote there. But yeah. I before E is a damn lie.

Lugae went a little screwy, but it was fine.


At the end came the next big change: instead of Cid going on a suicide bombing run, he drops a Bomb Ring off the Enterprise! He subsequently rejoins the party. Doesn't help with the maintenance though, ha. His men complain that he was lazing at home.

There were a lot of Wrenches to pick up in the Eblan Cave, and even for sale. They definitely replace Shurikens. And give off a funny mental image of some mechanic just dropping them or something. I also bought a Morning Star along the way. Same as the Flail, but stronger. Felt ideal for Rosa for now, those racial bonuses go a long way.


Edge has a different palette for some reason. He looks the same in battle. Unlike in vanilla, he gets toasted before he can use fire on the fire fiend. Rubicante's personality changes to be more arrogant.


The scene afterwards changes; as I mentioned, Golbez replaces Edge. Cid mocks Edge, to which the ninja replies that Rubicante is his to defeat. Kain is like "are you mad?!" and Edge boasts about being a ninja. Rydia tells him to shut up: they lost many friends, and he just cares about his boasting? This gets Edge to apologize, and Cid to mock him more. Cecil points out there's more to this than some vendetta. Cid asks Rosa to heal him to shut him up, Edge also demands it. Rosa gets annoyed but does so. Edge does say his thanks and says he'll scout ahead. He says he'll race us there! Rydia tells him to be careful after he's gone. Cid still doesn't like him.

Instead of him doing a ninja trick, he digs a way inside that the party uses.


The Dwarven Hammer was in the four Mad Ogre chest. Seemed to be effective on giants. Thought it'd be thrown, so I had a fight where Cid was in the back row, oops.


Conveniently, Rosa learned Cure3 steps before reaching the bosses of overworld Babil. The King and Queen still fight, with Edge talking during the scene. However, it's Rydia who gets especially pissed after; Rubicante in turn responds that not even Shiva can pierce his cloak of flame.


When it's down though, she wrecks him pretty bad.


Wow, rare sight! I actually triggered Rubicante's death message! This only happens if you knock him under 1000HP without going to 0. It's very precise.

Afterwards, Edge offers to join, but the chancellor and our party tell him to go help his people in the caves. He does so, but still says he's going to go after Golbez. Rydia is a lot softer to him in this scene, compared to canon where she doesn't really give a damn and tolerates him at best. Did the hack dev ship them or something?


It turns out in this hack that the airship in Babil was stolen from Cid's designs. And he was going to name it the Falcon anyway. It still can't fly over magma.


Going into the infirmiary in the Dwarven Castle reveals that Edge didn't sit still for five minutes before falling into the underground and ending up here somehow. Cid mocks him some more, he claims to be learning about the dwarves, and Rydia defends him again. Sheesh. Cid at least uses this to make him help with the airship remodeling. Though, there's a hint that Rydia's sweet talking is intentional to manipulate him, but even that's out of character.


Over in Tomra, there was new stuff in the shops. Besides the Monkey Wrench which just seemed to be a stronger thing to throw, there was a purchasable Elven Bow and Silence Arrows which would normally be in the Sylph Cave. ColdSnap replaced the Chain Whip: the same power except ice-elemental and casts Flood.

It actually looked like all the ninja magic was scattered as itemcasts. Blitz and Flame cast their own spells, already mentioned Punisher casting Pin, a staff I haven't seen yet casts Smoke, and Mirage Staff was actually the ninja version. Neat. Also, apparently I missed a LOT of itemcasts. The hack gives no indication. But a short list of some that I did miss

- Legend Sword casts..."Staff". I assume this is the same Poisona spell the vanilla things uses. It was replaced with the Basuna Staff which casts the Mythril Staff effect instead.
- Flame/Blizzard Spears have Fire2/Ice2 respectively.
- Actually, Dagger and Air Knife also had the Dancing Dagger itemcast (as would an upcoming one). So there really was no difference in the Mist Clip after all.
- Orhalcon on Mt. Ordeals, meanwhile, used Fire1 instead.
- Nocturne Harp had Poison as an itemcast.
- Most hammers seem to have Quake as an Itemcast, just like Gaia Hammer. Exception being the base Wooden.

Anyway, one problem with heading to the side-dungeons: Rosa hadn't learned Float yet! The hack had messed with learn levels on her, too. She was set to learn it on level 33. Which, actually is only one level later, but point's still the same. Cure3 is another example: 31 vs 28.

My solution was to go in anyway. All I could really do. Wasn't too bad to go directly to the land of summons. Cid itemcasting hammer and Rydia itemcasting Blitz Whip messed up most of the enemies here.


Heh, nice lore tweak here. I assume it's assuming to Flayer?

I tried to fight Ashura with cunning, but it didn't work. So let's talk about ATB mechanics. I'm not sure if this is how it works on later versions, but SNES is totally screwed up. First, an agility anchor is determined. In the vanilla game, this will always be Cecil. If there are multiple, the first Cecil in party slot order is used. If he is not present, the first in party slot order is used. The game takes the anchor's agility×5 and divides it by the character or monster's agility, rounding down and setting it to 1 if either AGI stat is 0. That's how many ATB ticks must pass before they can act. Ashura had a Relative Agility (RA) of 1 with Cecil's current AGI of 24, and everyone else had an RA of 5 (in fact, he will always have an RA of 5 unless he hits 0). He would need to hit at least 27 AGI to slow her down.

So it was into the Sylph Cave. Rosa learned Float for the last battle of it, so damage tiles weren't a threat. The treasure room had a ton of stuff: a Power Shirt (only usable by the girls for some reason), Rune Staff (can't critical, makes sure anything else can't critical because of bugs, bad), Mist Rod (damage boosting!), Zeus Gauntlet (renamed Giant Gauntlet).


But then the last chest suddenly started playing boss music. These things hit stupidly hard, and could use Bad Breath. I tried reflecting it, but it had no effect, unlike the trick to mess up with the Lunarsaurs. Actually killed me once. They seemed to be weak to fire, so Rydia could nuke them with Fire3. Didn't have the Flame equipment though, otherwise Kain would've been able to destroy them too.


Eventually, one fell, and then the other. And this was the reward. Could it be...?


...not gonna lie. This is pretty badass. However, that's all I can really say in its favor. It's effectively a worse Death or Break spell: 40MP vs 30 or 2, 4 casting time vs 2 for both. Higher accuracy, but it hardly makes a difference. It's also single target only.


With Reflect on Rosa, the only thing left to do was deal with the ATB problem. And there was one thing Cecil could use that I had that boosted his AGI over the threshold: the Dancing Dagger! Better still, taking it off did nothing, it's only initial AGI that matters. So he could...well. It was just Rydia attacking with Titan and Kain jumping with the Dancing Dagger. So he was on healing duty.


I used Ashura to buy myself some time to slow Leviathan. She still used FF2 US's odds; i.e. no chance of Protect, even though it is now a White spell. After that? Just attack and heal. Fire3 was the spell of choice for Rydia here. It did the most damage out of all her offensive options. Still would after this: Tsunami has 40 power, tier 3 black magic has 64. Same cast speed, too. Summoning magic is really best on random encounters, but they're still MP inefficient. Especially here where she could spam Blitz for nothing.


That brought me into the Sealed Cave. Unfortunately, the reflect trick didn't work anymore. What the hell?! I don't see why this of all things needed to be nerfed. I'm not even sure what happened; they don't resist KO. Maybe a change with enemy spells on an internal level? But the hack did make them mechs, so Cid could do some real damage. Reflect was still good to stop their Disrupt, but I had to have Cecil use the Dancing Dagger for those AGI related reasons I mentioned.

There was one final hammer in here for Cid, along with the Flandango Sword. The usual Light Sword as well. I had Cecil use that due to its higher accuracy.


Sure enough, Demon Wall was a mech too. It was a bit close, but got it done before it started Crushing.


And the scene on the way out is changed. Instead of Kain being remote mind controlled again, Golbez personally shows up to do it. Then he fails, so he just uses Pressure - status resistances be damned - walks up, and grabs it.


Yeah, this guy ships them. I hate it. Like, this is Playable Golbez. It did advertise some rewrites, but before it was just sprucing up some of the more poorly worded parts. This is changing things entirely. Ugh.


Edge naturally didn't speak during the Yang sidequest. No one did in his place. With Throw on Cid who was about to leave the party per Cecil's request to gather everyone to help just in case, there was no point in a knife/spoon as a reward. So instead, Sheila gave the Assassin Dagger as a reward. I saved Odin for later...


The scene with meeting Fusoya mostly implements extra canon text, such as namedropping Cecilia (Cecil's mom and namesake). However, Zemus is a scientist in this hack. Okay then.

Fusoya came with 50% more MP. With him, I noticed that compared to its casting time of 0 in the original game, Flare had a cast time of 3 here. Probably deserved it. Still the best black spell to cast. His Regen got buffed: restored 100HP per tick and no longer locked him down for the duration.

Nothing different in Bahamut's Cave. He fell no problem.


Kain's initial equipment on his third rejoining was scattered around this room in the Giant. The Firebute was in the Last Arm chest. Nothing to the bosses in the giant. Gungnir was changed to be lightning element, which helped against Cagnazzo and the mechanical enemies.


There's massive changes to the scene after. It goes mostly the same except for explicitly pointing out that Golbez's mind control was briefly shaken after Tellah's Meteor. Then Edge shows up for vengeance. Rydia talks him down. Golbez is prepared to accept his fate, but only after he stops Zemus.

Edge is ready to beat him down. Fusoya sense great potential and invites Edge along. He's startled, but goes along with it. Golbez begs to be taken along, but Fusoya refuses: Zemus already controlled him once, it could not only happen again, but could happen to Cecil too.


They leave, Cecil says it's time for them all to go.

Golbez is again prepared to answer for his crimes. However, Kain of all people sticks up for him; after all, he was controlled as well. Cecil can't really remember his brother from when he was young, and Golbez had his memories stolen (canon). He acknowledges being forgiven but doesn't think the rest of the world will agree. Cecil has a better idea: come with them to the moon. That will be his chance to redeem himself, and they need his help. They'll stop Zemus from taking them over with the power of trust. And besides, Edge and Fusoya are the ones who really need help. There's no bit with the girls being shoved aside and staying.


Ran a little long on this part. But now, it's finally time. No minor appetizers. The actual draw of this hack starts next time.

Next | Index

So with Kain in our party, do we switch Porom to the back again? Oddly enough, she is about as capable with the Fight command as Kain is, so he gets to stay in the back and use Jump, while Porom gets to swing her hammer. He can also equip the Throwing Axe if I really do need the Fight command (if Jump is too slow, I guess). Also, check out this freaky quirk when landing.


Some of her survivability goes up when I pick this bad boy up. Despite an unassuming name, the Armlet, in addition to a +10 Vitality bonus, protects against physical attacks from every single enemy race in the game. Its only downside is that it can't be equipped by any class that wears armor. It was also possible to send Edge back and have him rely on Shruiken, but I decided that there was more to keeping him in the front row than there was to putting Kain there. I also got a Blk.Cowl drop as a bonus for him, a floor before I'd get it normally.


Nope, this hack does not let you have Alerts. Lame.


I think I briefly touched on the Steal glitch in my Solo Edge report, so here it is in action. Despite the novelty, it wasn't worth it for Porom to do this when her Mystic Hammer was extremely powerful on its own. Similarly, when I got a Rune Staff/Silence Staff drop further in, she remained with the hammer.


The biggest problem when climbing the Tower were those BlackCat enemies. Hit them with a nonlethal attack, and they counter with Blaster, to either paralyze or instantly kill a random party member. Things like Edge's throwing, Kain's jumping, or Palom's Bio/Quake could bypass it, though.

So we climb up the floors of the tower. Lugae is not there to obstruct us, leaving us free to proceed behind him to the basement floors behind him (from Babil when you're entering it from the Eblan Cave). Yeah, I'm not sure how that works either.


One time it was worth it to switch Kain in, though: these Mad Ogres were weak to the Ogre Axe I'd picked up. Knowing they were in this box, I made the switchover for this one battle.


Lugae is waiting before the Crystal Room. He wasn't that difficult. Porom could dismantle the robot with her hammer, and the others' damage was not to be sneezed at as well. I was able to quickly move on to the second phase of the battle.

This whole bit is one big speedrunning reference. Lugae underflows the robot's MP to cast Meteo, which would actually be funny and pretty par for ROMhacks if he cast the real one and not Zeromus' which is basically harmless. And similarly, if Barnabas explosion from lack of oil kills everyone (it's no different than before), forcing you to kill both at the same time. Then he uses the attack you glitch in to kill the final boss instantly in the 64 door glitch category, the Grenades' Chain Reaction. Which is dubbed upt Co because menus, and is called that here too because references. For whatever reason, this does not instantly kill you. No damage race before doom either. Wasted moments...


Similarly, Lugaeborg was just a giant beatdown. He got off one nasty Laser due to his inflated HP, but without Sleeping Gas counters to worry about, this was probably slightly easier than it would be in vanilla.


The scene before this is weird. Golbez places a Crystal down, then just walks up to you and attacks. It's actually pretty similar to his Dwarf Castle incarnation from vanilla. Two key differences being you can resist the paralysis (Kain and Cecil's Viking Helmet/Power Gauntlets allowed this), and there's no Summoner to show up to save you. Regardless, I was able to inflict heavy damage on Golbez between Cecil using the Avenger, Palom using Bio, Edge physically attacking and hitting his Light weakness, and Porom and Kain both attacking physically.

From here, it was a race to see if I could outrace his Demolishes and counters on being hit. I didn't bring enough Phoenix Downs, so this was a tight thing. Cecil continued to chip away while Kain and the others played revival duty, throwing out damage when all was right.


And a final Quake ended it, the encounter coughing up one hell of a drop. Cursed Ring, by contrast to vanilla, has its elemental absorption built-in, and only has a penalty of -5 to all stats.


What the FUCK? I beat him! And I beat his dragon! Why the fuck am I the one face down on the ground? Fuck this ROMhack. I'm not putting up with this garbage. We won. What's on the other side?


This room! Oddly, it is actually set up to have an exit back, unlike its vanilla counterpart. The door there is also functional. And it leads...


Um? Hello?


I can't put down any crystals. The altars don't even respond. But I can go in the middle to repeat the scene where I get sent to the Underworld, though without any ill effects other than having to go up the tower again.

Anyway, with that BS and winning a battle I didn't know you weren't supposed to win and yet was coded with those drops and yet was not coded with anything to either branch off into an alternate path or explain why you're suddenly facedown on the ground out of the way, the game REALLY opens up. We're told to find our friends and save the world! Just like in FF6, except not really! There's also a few other quests you can do, and a primary one is finding the Floater.


So I can finally go to Mysidia. Palom and Porom encourage him to see the Elder, who has forgiven him by this point for his being deceived. Though Cecil has yet to forgive himself, the Elder says to climb Mt. Ordeals to become a Paladin. It seems I can't get in, though...also, I need to find a Floating Stone to raise the Lunar Whale, because wishes/prayers are DEAD. Where is it? They have no idea, so we need to look.

Also, the Serpent Road is here, but it's apparently being haunted by evil spirits, so I still can't enter it. At least I have some sort of explanation now!


Baron seems to be the only other place where I can make headway that doesn't involve part members, and I can do that with a new airship. Apparently Red Dwarf is a reference, and that's the kind of thing that's okay - subtle but fitting in context. This is stupid and forced, though both at least keep with the theme of FF3/FF4 Airships coming from popular culture...

So this Floater. Hm. Maybe it's in the Ice Cave, because it's there in FF1?


Oh, fuck me dead, it is. King Santos gives it to the twins as a present.

Anyway, this unlocks the moon and Mt. Ordeals. Class change is optional in this hack. Well. I was orignally going to do this part of the game as an "as I explored it" kind of style, but I felt this flowed better and is more informative. Okay, so you can sort-of freely choose your party from here on out in the game. Because of cumbersome engine limitations, you can't add a character without losing one first. So I'll talk about how to obtain and lose every character and their advantages and disadvantages.


- Paladin Cecil: After getting the Floater, you can go to Mt. Ordeals. Cecil will have to fight a Zombie/Ghoul/Revenant group five times on his own. He'll lose whatever equipment he has on after class changing of course, but if you have a Flame Sword and some throwaway equipment, it's perfect. You face the Dark Knight at the end as usual, and then you're given one final test: to protect others, namely the rest of your party in a battle against the DarkMist. Honestly, Cecil (who still spawns at Level 1!) is the one who needs protecting here.

Go for it, or not? The obvious disadvantage is having to build him back up again, as well as losing access to some of the Dark Swords like Blood and Avenger. Dark Knight Cecil is still viable. But if you're not going to use Porom or Tellah, Paladin Cecil is very good. Like Dark Knight, he learns a variety of White Magic, and way more than he does in vanilla. This includes Cure3.


- Losing Kain: Go to Bahamut's Cave on the moon. The enemies in it are as dangerous as they always are, but you at least don't need to fight Behemoths. When you reach him, you face him with Kain alone. He greets Kain as the son of Ricard, and offers to take him up as an apprentice if he wins. To win, you simply jump over his Meganukes when they're at one; it's basically the Dark Bahamut battle from FF4a. Also in a fun glitch, Bahamut gives you a screwed-up message if you go back talk to him after.

Kain will automatically dispose of a boss if you lose him in this way, which is both a bad and a good thing. He can equip heavy armor (including the Dragon Armor found in Bahamut's Cave, which protects against the main three elements), can physically attack from the back row albeit with a few problems, and with his spears can deal air, fire, ice, lightning, and holy damage, as well as dealing racial damage to Mechs and Dragons with the Gungnir and Dragon Lance respectively. He can also equip axes, doing racial damage to Giants, Slimes, Reptiles, and Mages. He's extremely solid.


- Losing Palom/Porom: To lose the twins, you try to enter the Serpent's Road. You'll fight the EvilWall, who is weak to Light and despite starting really close dies really quickly. When you win, they petrify themselves to stop the wall from closing in further.

With Rosa and Rydia's abilities nerfed, they're the only characters to carry the full compliment of Black and White Magic respectively besides Tellah. Porom as you've seen is a capable front row fighter with hammers, dealing high damage on Mechs and Mages, as well as being able to hit with the Fire and Lightning element. Palom has his magic to rely on. Both good characters.


- Losing Edge: If you go to the Cave of Eblan, you'll find it infested with robots. The path that ordinarily leads to the castle's secret underground living quarters now leads to the Giant of Babel, where a surviving Lugae is. You fight the CPU at the end, and Edge leaves you to be with his people afterwards.

While Edge's Black Magic isn't too hot, he can throw things. Ashura, Kotetsu, and Murakumo can deal Holy, Dark, and Air damage respectively. Triton Dagger can deal Ice damage. Most interesting is the Assassin's Dagger. It doesn't seem to be anywhere in the hack from what I can tell, but it deals racial damage to Dragons, Reptiles, Giants, Slimes, and Mages, and may instantly KO a target. Fantastic weapon. Edge does suffer from low HP for a character that wants to be in the front row. He's also the only character who can't equip the White Robe, Dragon equipment, or Protect Armlet; he can't get resistance to the three basic elements. To him, the best defense is a good offense.

So oddly enough, I feel I want to keep this party. It's extremely solid, aside from the weirdness of Kain being in the back row.


- Obtaining Rydia: Speak to her in the Feymarch. You'll fight an upgraded Mombomb (explodes into GrayBombs and Balloons, or if she's strong enough, can outright kill it!) and the Baron Guards from her perspective and alone, both easy fights. She'll see her village being burned from her perspective, see the future, then join you - also because Cecil is the closest thing she has to family now.

Rydia continues to learn summon spells. Of the ones you haven't seen and their levels, 30: Mist/35: Flayr/40: Titan/45: Bird/50: Levia/55: Asura/60: Odin/65: Baham. The strongest is the last one at 60 power (and is even cast instantly), with Titan being 40 and Leviathan being 35. Rydia seems to shine at wiping out groups of enemies with her summons, but Black Magic seems stronger on single targets, like in FF5. To compare with some power numbers, Ice3 and friends are 64 power (and comes much sooner for Palom!) and Flare is 100 power. She can ignore Reflect with anything, which Palom only has Quake for.

Unlike what is claimed, she doesn't become a master of magic at any point to my knowledge. Her big flaw is the lack of any instant cast magic that's worthwhile up to Bahamut.


- Obtaining Rosa: Go to Bahamut's Lagoon. You'll see her trapped by tentacles, and then you have to face Octosoul. It has an 8-hit combo (laughable with Paladin's inherent Cover), and after using Search, will follow it up with the EvilWall's Crush. Oddly, she's the only character whose quest you can start without getting a WARNING. If you refuse her after the batlte, you can't get her.

Rosa can hit Mages and Dragons for racial damage, and can hit for all six elements. Her power is a bit on the low side, however, as aside from Yoichi Arrows, none of them have any attack value. She can't equip armlets with this setup, and staves are hardly acceptable damage-wise. Does get a decent selection of White Magic, at least.


- Obtaining Yang: Go to the Mythril Mines, which are a new dungeon with an original design! Most of its enemies are from the Sealed Cave/Ice Mines. Yang apparently went off to find the SeaRuby to cure the King of Fabul's poison, which randomly seemed to happen during the Fabul raid and only came up now. Beat the uncreative repeat palette swap Sealion near the end to obtain the SeaRuby, whose only real trick is a BigWave. The Thor Hammer is also in here, pretty useful hammer.

Yang punches stuff for consistently high damage, but has no elemental or racial properties with his fists due to the lack of claws, so his damage is a bit too consistent. As we went over before, Chakra is booty butt. Probably the worst character because of it. Two things of recruiting him or at least doing the quest and making him disappear forever, though: you receive the Save the Queen from the King, a neat Paladin sword that is weaker than other options but gives +15 Agility, and if Edge is in your party, she'll tell Yang to give the Cleaver to his ninja friend. Nothing that you'll miss, but still nice to have.


- Obtaining Edward: That body will finally be out of the way, so you can go into the basement of Damcyan Castle to find him with Anna, or rather an evil spirit possessing her corpse. He'll play music to calm the spirit while you beat it up and try not to get destroyed by its status magic. After Anna thanks you for freeing her, tells Edward to go out and love the entire world.

Edward performs as well as he would as if it were the postgame in GBA, getting the fantastic Loki's Lute that deals racial damage on every race in the game. There's also the Blood Harp for absorption, the Requiem Harp for Holy (and Spirits), and Apollo's Harp for Fire (and Dragons). His harps do require a double grip which limits his use of armlets, which is a bit unfortunate. He can equip the White Robe for the resistances, but remains quite frail.

His later songs kind of disappoint. Dirge (25) damages and may inflict Count on all enemies, Magic (36) recovers ally MP, Image (49) adds Blink to all allies and is definitely useful, Angel (64) is the same as Ciriatto's, and Final (81) restores all allies HP/MP, at the cost of an ungodly charge time of 15 and getting to level 81 in the first place.


- Obtaining Tellah: Go to the Magnetic Cave. It's a much shorter dungeon than in vanilla, being only three rooms including the final one, but still has its gimmick. Beat the Dark Elf at the end to obtain him and have him learn all spells in the game. The biggest problem from the battle against him is Tellah himself and his variety of high-damaging and instant kill spells.

Despite his status as a magical jack of all trades, Tellah has two huge flaws. The first is Edge syndrome. The other characters will have leveled up in the meantime due to being part of the shadow party, but Tellah will rejoin at a mere level 20. This is compounded by his not really gaining a lot of HP/MP until like Level 40. He needs a lot of investment to be worthwhile but can do Palom and Porom's jobs if you get him. Not at the same time and with a stat deficency, but at least the latter is something you might really want.


- Obtaining Cid: After getting the TARDIS, speak to him in the Dwarves' Castle. Beat the Ship'sAI boss, which more or less acts like Ivan Ooze from vanilla with all the Reflect business.

Cid uses Hammers and Axes, wears heavy armor, and has a truckload of HP. His attacks can be of the three basic elements, as well as being effective on Mechs and Mages. He's a bit of a one-trick pony, but the high HP and heavy armor (Dragon equipment) helps a lot. He's solid on his own, though not as tanky as Kain or the Cecils due to inability to equip shields with his hammers.


There's interactions between characters as you go through with these. For example, if you have Telllah when getting Edward they'll acknowledge each other, Rydia will make a smart remark about a Rat's Tail before Kain fights Bahamut

There are a couple other side-quests not linked to anything. You can retrieve the Adamant from the Mythril Mines to obtain the Ragnarok from Kokkol the Smithy. You can also fight Odin, to learn a bit about Cecil's history and how he adopted him as a child. He'll comment on whether or not you changed classes, acknowledge Kain and Rosa if either is there, and bestow you his late wife's sword, Excalibur, after a battle.

And a few other item locations...
- Air Knife: Damcyan Basement.
- Sage's Staff: Mt. Ordeals.
- Break Blade: Magnetic Cave. Is notably not magnetic.
- Venom Axe: Magnetic Cave. Is magnetic!
- Defender: Giant of Babil.
- Yoichi Bow: Giant of Babil.
- Gungnir: Giant of Babil
- Thor Hammer: Mythril Mines
- Muramasa: Mythril Mines
- Blood Harp: Mythril Mines
- Triton Dagger: Mythril Mines
- Slasher: Mythril Mines.
- Apollo Harp: Lunar Passage
- Holy Lance: Lunar Passage
- Murasame: Lunar Passage


Anyway, I checked out class change. I was able to use the speedrunning method of grinding to get Paladin Cecil back up to speed, though I used MacGiants instead of D.Machines because Porom could one-shot them; the D.Machines are strangely not machines. This also levels up everyone but Tellah, should I change my mind on this party, since they'll get all that experience as well - unsplit!

Let's finish what we started. So you go to the moon and are welcomed by Golbez, who sics the Eight Archfiends on you. This was a fun fight, with most everyone able to do heavy damage to everything in it.

If you got rid of Kain, he automatically kills the Shadow Dragon here. Since I did not, I had to fight it, and blew it away extremely quickly (and got another Cursed Ring!). Then it's Golbez himself, who wasn't too difficult. His counterattacks and DarkHoly were painful, but nothing I couldn't manage.

What happens next varies depending on whether you class changed Cecil or not. If you did, you kill him for real. Zeromus shows up, explains this is really an asteroid you're on instead of a moon, and all the hatred including your own for Golbez summoned him. If you did not, Golbez does not die. He begs for mercy, explains he has awakened an evil spirit, and you send him to face whatever his fate may be in Mysidia. Also either way, you can't turn back, because this hack loves its "you can't go here" triggers. At least there's a shop at the entrance to the Lunar Subterrane.

Instead of being able to talk, the Moon Crystals simply say what they are: Time, Space, Matter, Energy, Infinity, Singularity, Spirit, Mind.

(I didn't finish the report, but did the hack. One big change: the Crystal Armor/Demon Armor, depending on whether you upgrade Cecil or not, is found from the Lunar Subterrane bosses. Zeromus is the same as usual except Paladin Golbez shows up to make him vulnerable if you don't change class, but there's something special for beating him with a solo Paladin Cecil: an extra dungeon where you find FuSoYa, who turns out to be Zemus, who turns out to have created Lavos from Chrono Trigger. Winning as solo Dark Knight, meanwhile, gives a New Game+. There's a Let's Play though if you want to read that)

Index

So let's port over a ROMhack playthrough I did. Unprecedented Crisis, a Final Fantasy IV hack. Why this one? Because I'm a sucker for alternate history, that's why. And this hack does have two of the things needed to make a ROMhack tolerable: it's not excessively hard, and it's still the same game at the core. Plus, it's fun to dominantly play through a game; though I have some varianting in mind for it later and after finishing this playthrough.

Because I got a power outage in the middle of this and for some reason did not Ctrl+S to save what I was doing, the start of this probably isn't going to be my best work. Then it happened again, but I did save it. But I'll try my best to get everything back up to speed anyway!


The good news is, the first few parts are almost identical to vanilla. So I don't really need to go over it too much in detail. There's new weapons and equipment, but the main thing to talk about is the differences with characters. Kain is basically the same as his original incarnation - he jumps and he wears armor. Cecil by contrast is quite different. He has his DarkWave ability in this hack, and he also has a Black Magic command! It's very small at the start, consisting of only Blind and Poison (now a Dark-elemental spell that inflicts HP leak), but it's something.


I did a trick called Mist Clip here, just to see if it would still work. This allows you to enter Mist from the right side, which oddly enough, exists and is properly coded You can then access the good items in here immediately. It really didn't affect too much in the end, but was fun to do. Humorously, even without the equipment, Rydia's defenses were still almost as high as Cecil's - 15 to his 16. With it, she exceeded it with 18, and a whole lot of Magic Defense on top of that. Also, worth noting - DK Cecil is no longer very limited in what he can equip. Funnily, you get sent straight to the final dungeon if you try this in later versions of the hack. Speedruns actually exploit this.

Also of note, there are now Serpent Roads in almost every town in the game. However, all of them are sealed off at Mysidia's end, preventing any sort of use of them.


Rydia has lost her White and Black Magic commands. Instead, she only has Summon and a new command called Help! This works similarly to Tellah's Recall command, except it's not completely useless like that is in this version. Instead of randomly using either weak magic he could use anyway, status spells, or rarely Bio, it has a 24/160 chance of using Mist Dragon, Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh, or Titan, a 16/160 chance apiece of Leviathan or Odin, and a 8/160 chance of Bahamut. She still needs to pay the appropriate MP costs for each spell. And instead of learning spells with the story, she learns them by leveling up. She begins with Imp/Goblin, and learns a new one every fifth level.


Because of this and it just not being hard, there was simply no need to buy anything except for maybe a few consumables before heading into the next dungeon. I'd find some more stuff for Tellah along the way, Rydia was equipped already, and while the new Broad Sword was a stronger option for Cecil, he can't use DarkWave with it in-hand. And he'll be getting the Darkness Sword in the dungeon, too! 100GP saved by not buying it. The Waterway was as per usual, simple. The Fire Rod I got from Mist Clip came in handy for conserving Rydia's MP, as did an Ice Rod found in the cave itself. It also worked when I got owned by Toad.


Tellah is here of course. While he only has half as much MP, he has twice as many spells, including the second-tier Black Magic spells. He came in handy for wiping out groups of elementally-weak enemies. The only tricky group here were the 4 WaterHag/2 TinyMage groups. Mute didn't block the latter's Rasp/Osmose on being hit with magic; they were the only groups who weren't massacred.


In the cave beyond, there's a set of Mythril equipment that allows Cecil to push his defense up past the mages. Octomammoth was a funny fight. For whatever reason, his lightning weakness is gone. He's only weak to Dark, so the best option for Cecil and Tellah were to attack and use Poison respectively. When Rydia's Chocobo did less than 100 damage, I had her use Help! instead and see if I could get anything useful. The result of this was her pulling out Leviathan to massacre the octopus.


Not much to note about the Antlion Cave or Antlion itself - who also had the privilige of seeing Rydia roll the 16/160 for the sea serpent of death before it, for 2576 damage. A couple interesting things: you can't access the treasure room in Damcyan, as the guy never disappears when being spoken to.


Second, there's an interesting and sensible change here to account for the fact that Rydia can't use Black Magic anymore. Instead of being afraid to cast Fire to melt the ice, she's afraid to summon a Bomb to blow the ice up. She learns it all the same afterwards. The nighttime event with Edward is also skipped.

So let's talk about the two new members. Edward is much better than in vanilla. Split is actually viable now, healing around 60-90 HP per use. This is actually the first instance of mass healing you get access to. His Sing command is no longer random, with him being able to use unique song magic. The two he begins with are Defense and Speed, which cast Protect and Haste on all party members respectively. In the Antlion Cave, he learns the Allure song, which attempts to inflict confusion on all enemies. Good for locking down foes, and better than using his weakish harps in the cave.

Rosa's function has significantly changed. Her new class is Archer; she has lost most of her White Magic. What she does have and learn is time magic orientated. Her class ability is Charge, which functions identically to Yang's similar command in vanilla. Furthermore, her Fight command acts as Aim, so there's no need to stress over having to scroll down to the command every single time.


But yes, boom! And a snappy comment to go along with it.


Yang got a pretty significant nerf. Claws, which allowed him to tie elements or racial damage to his attack, are no more. In exchange, he received the Chakra ability, but this is complete garbage. The problems with it are twofold. First, it can only target Yang himself. Second, it heals 1/3 of his current HP. Not maximum, current. So those times you would want to use it - when Yang is low on HP - it's completely useless!

Not much to say about MomBomb. The autobattle sequence with Yang before it doesn't happen, with him kiling those in the cutscene too. The little bombs are easily cleaned up between DarkWave, Kick, and Rydia's Shiva. One of the big changes on the mountain are the Cocatrices, which now actually can petrify you. Edward's Allure song helped stop them before they could get going.


The Fabul battles are easy. The enemies do resist Dark, so I have Cecil use a Mythril Sword I picked up on Mt. Hobs when they're not in use. DarkWave and Kick decimate the ImpCap/Weeper/Waterhag groups, and would even dent the soldiers badly if not for the fact that I want to kill the Generals every time for the extra experience, which isn't a problem.


Small changes throughout it: Rosa and Rydia now show up instead of a generic guard, and Rydia uses a Phoenix Down at the end.


HACK NAMEDROP HYPE. Oddly, you're thrown directly onto the ship after this scene, where you get the Ancient Sword instead of the Deathbringer.


Um. There's something different about this boat ride, but I can't put my finger on it...

So yes, the hypothetical we're dealing with here is, "What if Leviathan never attacked the ship on the way to Baron?" So now we're in Baron with Dark Knight Cecil, Yang, Edward, and Child Rydia. Unlike getting here normally, you can't go to Mist.


But you still need to beat up some guards to get in. Ridiculously easy, of course. The shops offer up another defensive upgrade for Cecil, which I happily snap up to at least do something with my hardearned cash.


The Old Waterway is quite dangerous, with enemies stronger than your party showing up. Edward's Life song that he learned here restores 1/5 Max HP; I generally found Split to be better. At least at the end of it, a special guest comes in from EasyType: the Coral Sword!


You break Cid out of jail by using the Baron Key. I give him Cecil's old Mythril Gear. He has a special skill called Rage that sees him inflicts Berserk on himself.

Cagnazzo is recognizable in pattern, but the fight plays out somewhat differently. You can't startle him out of using electricity (though your only way to would be Rydia with Ramuh or the Thunder Staff and Lit-Bolts, which reminds me, those are now droppable items, along with FireBombs and the new Ice-Balls), so you will have to take them from time to time. But he will eventually lower the water himself. He's weak to ice and electricity without any switching depending on his state. ColdDust and JudgBolt are just as strong as each other here, worth noting, and HellFire for that matter.


He still goes into his shell at the end for increased defenses/evasion. Of course, some attacks deal damage regardless of defenses!

You get the Water Crystal after facing him. But wait, what happened to the guy you fight before him?


Well, because you got here sooner, Baigan was not corrupted by Golbez. He knew about the King being a monster, but he couldn't take action against the sorcerer and Baron's forces. Cecil confronts him about this, but sympathizes with his explantion. Baigan watches over the kingdom in the meantime. Also, the Enterprise has yet to be built here. And the kingdom's boats are useless. So how are we going to get to Troia to protect the last crystal?


With the help of Summonloli leading us to a new dungeon!

At Mist when I'm supposed to be in Mist, I buy defensive upgrades for Edward, which was pretty overdue. The new stuff isn't that much worse for Cid either, so I make the switchover for him, giving him much more magic defense. Yang remains with the strength boosting equipment I picked up in Fabul. Rydia of course, already has stuff from here from before.


A short ways into the next dungeon, Edward becomes a highly valuable asset offensively. The Fairy Harp is like all fairy equipment: extremely strong against giants. Ogres pollute the first screen of this dungeon, so this is a very good weapon. Rydia's Bomb spell was of use here, since most of the threats were smaller groups of enemies with a lot of health, and it charges faster than the elemental spells, too.


They have some nice drops, too. I end up with two of these for free. They're better than the headwear Cecil and Cid were using, so I make a swapover.


The battle against Scarmiglione is moved to here. He only hisses as you walk near the bridge, and it's Yang who senses him here. He himself only has 3000HP. Rydia was one level away from learning Ifrit, so I got her that level, and had her instantly wipe them out. Instead of Bolt, he counters everything you do with Calcify to inflict gradual petrification. My party was in absolutely dreadful shape by the end, like shown here but with Cid 3/4ths of the way there, but no one was fully petrified. Edward did kick it though, due to a Bio spell.


The undead form is also much nastier. Instead of just attacking, he throws in spells, including an opening Quake. Thankfully, Rydia can do her thing with Ifrit. Yang was instantly petrified here, and stayed that way because I selected Phoenix Down instead of Remedy, but this was by no means insanely hard! The physicals did 1 damage to Rydia and Edward, and not much more to those in the front row. They could inflict Curse (halves attack and defense), but still negliable. Also, if you're wondering about the weird way the numbers look, I was trying out a quickstrat for image splicing. Though it works fine on the GBA version, it doesn't so much on the SNES version.


Cutscene! Mysidia learns of the false king, and sends a group - including Palom and Porom - on a diplomatic mission. Then they get attacked by a sea monster just like you do in vanilla, before the twins Warp away. As a random note, despite using the same graphics, this is supposed to be a random sea monster and not Leviathan at all.


It's important to know about this obscure Chocobo Forest if you want to advance. I knew about it, though had trouble finding it. Troia itself has the elemental arrows for sale, but otherwise, nothing too much. In the castle...


Shit goes down. The Red Wings attack, and Golbez is all "going somewhere?" and arrives to personally lay the smackdown on us in a cutscene, with help of the Shadow Dragon. But then Tellah is like "going somewhere?" to him, and attacks.


And because you can't have FF4 without this scene, Tellah's rage unlocks the ultimate spell, and he casts Meteo on Golbez.


Inversion of circumstances. Edward leaves us to stay by the side of a bedridden Tellah in Troia. But Tellah lives! He vows to learn every spell ever and defeat Golbez. Also, the Crystal of Earth hasn't been stolen by the Dark Elf. The Clerics give us it to hold on to, so that Troian lives are not endangered by a second attempt at an invasion.

Tune in next time to watch this hack start to fall apart at the seams!

Next | Index

My past three FFR solos didn't promote to complete the game. In the case of Evoker, not much of consequence was added. Green Mage would've gotten a once per floor save point, which is pretty nuts even if you can only use TENTs at them. In the case of Lancer, it was more equipment and a broken ability that invalidates randoms. Those two would've snapped the game apart had I taken full advantage of them. But this time, I was considering it. Elementalist has a small yet big change from Geomancer that really helps the class. But Geomancer without promotion would also be more of a 'challenge' run.

The answer I arrived at was to do both if there was merit, and report both! And there certainly was merit here.


Because after promotion, what are now Elementalists gain a good ability that fixes the problems with geomancy: SAMPLE. No longer are you bound by the set of the dungeon you're in. Instead, you can use the world ability to get a second set of spells! They have their own spell slots (copied from your current max), cannot be refreshed (not even at an inn) without resampling, and cannot be used in the same terrain they're from, for no reason other than sensible balance.

I figured promotion would be the more interesting run to go through as the "prime" run just because of this one ability. The run was otherwise going to be reduced to the usual spellcasting items spam. But to up the stakes? I'm banning them moving forward for Elementalist. Zeus is fine on runs like this for the Ice Cave, but after that? Yeah. Let's go.


So what can SAMPLE do? Take the Waterfall, for example. Actually, in earlier versions of this, it featured the river terrain. This is even worse than artificial if you can believe that: a single target Water-elemental attack, another single target Water-elemental attack, a single target Water and Death elemental KO move in the vein of XXXX, SNARE, etc, and a multi target status heal. With two more Water-elemental attacks in AoE flavor if you get lucky. As you might expect, every single enemy on rivers resist Water, so it is completely useless on them.

It could play havoc here against MudGOLs which are weak to the element, but it was technically a bug (it had no terrain formally set so just carried over the river terrain) and Ozmo put artificial here instead. Why artificial in a damn cave behind a waterfall? Some sort of kink, maybe?

Actually ironically artificial was better to have here just because it gave an AoE for the spike. I failed my first run in because I got a bit too eager with fighting and gained a level. Eesh, thought I had plenty of wiggle room to get in and out and be ready to level after. Made sure that didn't happen the second time.


That said, the Sea Shrine was going to be tougher with my restrictions than it would be for the unpromoted class which I would allow to spam the usual Zeus. Nothing's really amazing to take into here: only the Ocean and Floating Castle terrains have a lit attack, and both are single target. Aquatic enemies resist earth and fire as well as their own element.

So I decided I would take grass terrain inside as I cleared the upper half. This would give me an edge up on GHOSTs, give a non-elemental AoE, and not a lot in the shrine resisted wind so that gave me another attack besides a melee one. It wasn't too much trouble, and I got to the SLAB, Opal Bracelet, etc. and back on the first try.


Guo Pu took the Sea Shrine's own terrain with him into Gurgu Volcano to take on KARY. She was not only weak to the water element, but there was a second spell in it that was helpful: PRESSURE. This reduces the target's attack value by 20%. No save, no roll, it just works. This meant that she went from a base of 40 to 32 and then 25.


Suddenly, her individual hits usually did 1 damage to Guo Pu; I'm pretty sure it's actually stronger than shown because she should have been able to hit for as much as 50 damage on any of her six attacks. Which was still just 13 against Guo Pu's absorb. Maybe she just got unlucky and rolled on the lower end each time.


With this in play and his own offensive spells doing heavy damage, this one became a formality.


I also had business back in the Ice Cave, where I no longer feared to tread thanks to having a Ribbon. What a big difference immunity to status and death elements did, huh? Another elemental bell was here ready to be claimed, that I really didn't care to dawdle around to grab the first time. These all had a specific use later.


I took the Ice Cave's terrain down into the Sea Shrine's depths. The underwater terrain's native PRESSURE would help for GHOSTs and KRAKEN, and the former weren't resistant to water. The ice element meanwhile, would help deal with WATERs. It shouldn't be a surprise that a Water Bell was down here to grab too. PRESSURE was useful in general actually. It definitely reduces attack more than by 20%. I usually threw it up and used TERRAIN to refresh before running from encounters. Against those I couldn't, two shots of water AoE was still enough for R.SAHAGs. There was also this hidden move. It's supposedly poison-elemental, not death-elemental like I thought it would be. Also used by the rare new HADES encounter down here.

I actually died once to WATERs when they did too much damage before I could do anything. I used the Ice Bell instead of the Water Bell to prevent that on the next go.


To further show how great PRESSURE is, this is how much KRAKEN did on the first swing. Ouch.


And this is what he was reduced to after just one. The reason why I say it has to be more than 20% is that he has an attack value of 50. 20% of that is 40, which should be statistically impossible to hit for 1 against Guo Pu's 37 absorb and very unlikely to hit that low on all hits (the range is anywhere from one to two times). But it was. After crippling him further, I healed up with ICEWALL, used FORGED IN ICE several times, and began smacking him.


It still only did like double digit damage, so I tried geomancy instead. Yeah, that did it. And that's without a weakness too, just an elemental boost from a bell. Geomancers can do some scary damage even without getting into the broken nonsense that is their LIMIT.

I gained some levels going up and down the Mirage Tower for two reasons. One was that I was fetching the last two remaining bells. The Wind Bell is on the north side of Mirage's F2 treasure room, and the Thunder Bell was in the upper right of Floating Castle F2. The other was that I was testing a bug: each terrain is supposed to have its own separate spell slots, but in this version, any charges you used in artificial were used in celestial. It didn't happen the other way around. Even Ozmo wasn't sure how that happened.


The Blessed Bell combines the effects of all the other bells into one omni*-elemental boosting package, and also has 20/20/1 offenses. Non-elemental, poison, and time (only seen in Astral terrain accessible with an Evoker) are unaffected, however. It also has a very special secondary effect I may or may not show off. Depends.

Floating Castle had a new terrain, and it was not wind based as you might expect. Instead, it had PLASMA, a single target lit elemental attack. There was also METEOR SHOWER, a multi-target attack. Since it was non-elemental, that meant it couldn't benefit from the Blessed Bell's bonuses and did sad damage. Then there was STARDUST, which inflicted random statuses on all enemies. But the big one was COSMIC RAYS. This was a 30% boost to ally magic damage! After a couple of these, PLASMA was approaching like 2000 damage on the hapless randoms.

If you're curious, the Astral plane has a ST and AoE Time-elemental spell, and clones of STARDUST/COSMIC RAYS as the other two. The two classes have nice synergy in how you can benefit from them sooner, and it just so happens there's a relatively useless summon you can keep around to keep sampling Astral terrain. Wouldn't be seen in a solo, of course.

I grabbed the ProCape and--


--got killed by WarMECH. You must really have a deathwish, robot.

I hard reset and went back up, aiming for encounter 20 to challenge it. Now, every promoted class in the game has a LIMIT skill, a one-time ability. You either need to use an Inn (not a HOUSE) or the Red Wizard's LIMIT to recharge. Not all are created equal. For example, Dragoon's executes an immediate SUPER JUMP and removes tiredness on JUMPs, but it only lasts for three rounds and it still counts air time. It's mediocre. Summoner instantly resummons the last summon. This can be great. Green Wizard gives status immunity. Questionable outside of one superboss you can fight with a Rune Fencer.


This is Elementalist's: GEOSTORM. It's an AoE elemental nuke normally, fairly modest. But with the Blessed Bell? This happens. Not something I intended to use, but if anything deserves it, it's this thing. And that was on the lower end of rolls. I hit him for over 10000 damage once. I don't know if that was a nerf or what. Still, that was--


--yeah, yeah. Knew I was about to screw myself here. I missed the VIT roll on this level, so I couldn't save this attempt. Although if I gain a level, level 40 has a guaranteed STR and VIT gain. So if I do that, then I can murder this thing and get away with it. So I went ahead and did that, returned, hard reset, and went back up ready for murder.


What, you think I need that cheap parlor trick to win? Hah!


Crushed under enough PRESSURE, even WarMECH's physicals were reduced to nothing. Even his NUCLEAR was neutered thanks to BUBBLE CURTAIN, which causes enemy magic/skills to deal half damage. It's identical to Green Wizard's SHELL2.


He used it all of once for a mere 50 damage. With that in place and some buffing with COSMIC RAYS, it was just a matter of using WATERSPOUT until the robot blew up.


Blam. No spellcasting items, no GEOSTORM cheese, just pure geomancy against the big bad robot to achieve victory. I actually had to go back and fetch the ProCape due to where I was on the encounter table. Then I had to stall the encounter table so I didn't get a second one on the way back. Yeah, could've nuked that one with GEOSTORM, but again, level ups.


Against TIAMAT, I tried rolling with STARDUST, and cracked up laughing when this was the result. It's non-elemental, so anything is fair game against this as long as it gets through magic defense. FFR does give certain monsters outright immunities to certain status, but this is limited to CHAOS and original enemies. With her good and confused, I had Guo Pu start stacking COSMIC RAYS. I wanted to see just how high damage his could get. He used all five charges by the time TIAMAT recovered, and unleashed hell.


Or so I thought. That was underwhelming. I took underwater terrain partly because water is specifically one of the elements she does not resist. Maybe it doesn't stack, or she's resistant to water even if the in-game bestiary doesn't say so. Still got her in two casts, but ugh.

Almost there for this. The last part and the unpromoted run are left.

Next | Index

With 31:21 on the gameclock, Edward was ready to head into the Cave of Trials. Of all the bonus dungeons added in the remakes of Final Fantasy games, I think I like this one the best, although I can admit to not having played FF6 far enough to see how it works in practice. It exists unlike 3, it's not a tedious romp like 1 or 5, and it doesn't make assumptions about what weapons you had your characters specialize in like 2 PSP. It gives each of the characters a chance to shine, gives you some busted equipment and the opponents to unleash them on, and maintains a reasonable amount of difficulty and replay value.


Yang's trial wasn't hard at all. The lesser monks could barely touch Edward, and the same went for the Lunar Titan boss at the end of it. When I let him use his telegraphed Earthquake attack on Edward instead of hiding, it didn't even crack 1000 damage. He starts spamming Crush at the end, the same thing the Demon Wall uses when it gets close. Except now you can have instant death immunity.


Edward's trial is more interesting. You enter a parallel version of Damcyan Castle that has become frozen over.


You obtain the Requiem Harp within. Now this is a ridiculous weapon. The downside is that it imposes a penalty of 5 to all base stats. Otherwise? It's effective on giants and flan (!) and absorbs damage from anything it hits. Look at this madness! I would absolutely use this over the uberweapon in the Ruins if this was not restricted to the trial. The only enemies you can use them on are these things. After defeating them, they reappear, and you need to use the Sing command. This will cause a Requiem effect that will set their souls to rest. You do not need the Requiem Harp equipped for this either.


Sadly, I guess they couldn't have the bard be too supreme. Alas.


Lunar Shiva attacks with ice. Who knew? Remember what I said about Edward's equipment from the Cave of Trials though: it makes him weak to ice. So having them on actually makes him very weak in this fight. Protect Ring overrides this though, and s Edward had no problem with her attacks. She's still weak to fire as well, so Apollo's fiery song melted her in no time.


And this is the reward.

The Harmonious Ring has 15 Def/20 Eva/20 MDf/12MEv. While it confers no bonuses, it changes Edward's Sing to Chant. This causes it to instead cast Protect and Shell on all allies. Were this a later Final Fantasy game, this would be a miniature Mighty Guard. But in FF4, they simply raise the defense stats by a small amount, like a weaker version of the FOG spells from FF1. Still a good piece of equipment just for the raw stats once he has his ultimate armor.


That said, not everything about the Lunar Ruins is great. This floor is full of fixed encounters you have to break through. Or there's a teleporter maze with no encounters and no logic, just randomness. I got this last one all four times I went through the Ruins! Sheesh. Small consolation is that there's far worse in other games.


Cecil's trial is a Paladin test. The more tests you pass, the better of a weapon you receive at the end. If you use the Grimoire you receive after completing a trial, you can reenter it. Since I am not playing as Cecil, I gleefully swiped this Golden Apple to boost Edward's HP a little further. Lunar Odin is the boss at the end. You can instantly kill him by using an electric attack when he raises his sword after Haste. I did this the first and third time, but hid through the Zantetsukens the second time and fought him more legit.


And then the cave bridge maze map showed up. The floors in the Ruins are randomly drawn from a set between trials. I was hoping for this!

Behold, Loki's Lute. This weapon has 150 power and gives Edward a bonus of 15 to his Strength, Agility, and Stamina. Like Apollo's Harp, it is effective on dragons, effectively dealing 4x damage to them. It is also effective on machines, beasts, ghouls, giants, mages, and undead! This isn't every monster type in the game, and some are untyped, but it's still absolutely monstrous. Too bad randoms aren't really worth fighting for me anymore, but in a normal party? Yeah, this is when Edward becomes pretty damn good even at normal levels.


Here I am unleashing it against Ivan Ooze's palette swap. Which, I joke about this sprite because that's who it reminds me of, but this one looks like his 2P color in the Power Rangers Fighting Edition game on the SNES. That pretty much cemented it in my mind.


And the Vishnu Vest on the same trip! This piece of equipment has 30 Def/50 Eva/15 MDf/6 MEv. It gives resistance to fire, ice, lightning, holy, and darkness and a bonus of +10 to STR, AGI, and STA! The low magical evasion aside, this is an excellent piece of equipment that only makes the supreme bard even better.

As for the rest of the trials? Back in. The presence of Ifrit in Rydia's trial was why I stopped short there last time. Being the summon of fire, he takes 1 damage each time from Apollo's Harp thanks to having the immunity bit (same thing that causes Decil to deal 1 damage to undead). Loki's Lute kills him just fine, though. Actually, all of these summon minibosses were just a Hold Down A affair. They were big sacks of HP with little in the way of power.


The same held true for the Lunar Dragon that was the boss of the trial. It retains the gimmick of turning into mist, but the counter was nothing in the off-chance I messed it up. It's holy-elemental, but it doesn't cast the spell. The worst it did was not something to Edward but an occasional 9999 self heal. And all that did was set Edward back a bit. Unfortunately, it is not considered to be a dragon racially, so Edward's damage was only sufficient rather than absurd.


Lunar Asura in Rosa's Trial was absolutely pathetic. She has a much more intricate version of her earthly form that I went over in Rosa's own report. In brief though, I simply had to avoid triggering her Restore or Globe 199 counters. Which, are only triggered when she's hit with magic. The easiest way for any physical attacker to do the fight is to wait until her face turns red and she casts Toad, physically attack her and she'll cast Mini, then she'll get another turn and use Toad again. Repeat until dead. For extra humiliation, I attacked her when her face was white instead. This triggers physical counters (barely hit or hurt) and Curaga castings (didn't heal enough).

Lunar Ifrit uses fire moves, and again, I needed to wait until getting Loki's Lute to take him on. He's most notable because his attacks get weaker as he does. Like instead of charging up for Flame, a maxHP% damage attack, he uses Flamethrower. Which is nothing even to the average party. I swear they got the script backwards.


And while it didn't show up last trek, now it was time for the superboss! It is indeed considered a dragon, so Loki's Lute was belting out 9999 damage each time. If Brach is attacked when counting down to Mega Flare, he goes a little crazy and starts reflecting sets of three powerful magics off a wall he throws on himself. Sometimes he casts Globe 199 too. So I didn't do that and just had Edward hide. The biggest threat were his Scorches, which did insane damage even through Vishun's resistances. Sometimes Edward could survive, sometimes he would take 9999 damage. But unfortunately for the big lizard, Edward could just hide behind those though. I threw on a Silk and Sandals to make things faster; there's an opening to attack between the two Scorches.

The reward is the Hero's Shield. 20 Def/55 Eva/20 MDf/15 MEv, +15 to all stats, and the absorb flag, which turns elemental resistances into absorption. Like, the Vishnu Vest's. Of course it's a shield, so Edward can't actually use it with a harp since it's two handed.


But he can use it with the Assassin's Dagger, a weapon that can be purchased on one of the town floors in the Ruins. This weapon is okay, mostly notable for being able to deal instant death to enemies. This cuts off access to Sing/Chant and Edward has to be in the front row, but with the Vishnu Vest, he has 99% evasion. Is it better or worse? Depends on the situation. Assassin's Dagger is weaker than Loki's Lute, but both shred random encounters in their own way. The Lunar Ruins bosses have no racial weaknesses and certainly aren't going to be instantly killed (by this weapon at least).


But against bosses that use elements? Yeah, I could just hold A here. I couldn't for Lunar Leviathan, but that just meant healing. I mean, you make so much money down here and Edward has nothing to spend it on but Elixirs. It even works on Brach's Scorches, so in a casual playthrough, you can snowball a lot more Hero's Shields after winning one.

The last boss to deal with was Kain's Lunar Bahamut. This is a gimmick fight in which the solo Dragoon is supposed to jump over the Megaflares. Hide worked just as well. As did having absurd stats that neutered it.


Which just left the final boss of the Ruins. Zeromus EG follows this pattern: Big Bang -> Toad+Mini -> Whirl -> Flare -> Drain+Drain -> Osmose+Osmose -> Earthquake+Lightning+Flame. The biggest threat is the combination of HP leak from Big Bang to HP critical through Whirl. Most of my solos had to use the Grimoires you get from beating the Lunar Summons, which inflict crippling statuses onto him. Hey, did you notice he has no Black Hole in this phase? Edward could destroy him by wearing the Hero's Shield since it turned the elemental moves into massive healing. With the Loki's Lute, this was slower. But with too many Elixirs, Edward was unkillable by damage.

Later on, EG will go Tidal Wave+Tornado -> A bunch of physicals -> A bunch more physicals -> Fira+Blizzara+Thundara -> Black Hole. For a desperation phase, this is actually weaker, especially with high evasion. He also counters damage with Absorb, which doesn't absorb anything but does heal his HP. As long as you can outdamage the healing, which Edward could indeed do - he was doing around 4000 damage at worst and EG was healing for around 3000, less he was damaged, there's no problem.


And that was that.

Edward finished the postgame with 40:05 on the timer. It's the natural consequence of lacking massive damage some of my others were able to pump out. He only got good at the very end of the game, which to be fair, is when you're supposed to get him again. Still, that equipment and especially postgame equipment does a lot for the bard's usability. It's kind of funny in a way that Advance Edward still doesn't conform to what a Bard was later established as. In a normal playthrough, he's a glass cannon. Then he takes elements of the Onion Knight or Freelancer class in how he's a late bloomer. His support is basically nonexistent. This actually applies in After Years too: his songs are random and unreliable, but he still has Loki's Lute and Salve can be used with any healing item making him a godlike healer.

He was a fun character to play overall, and one of the ones I was most looking forward to - ironic that it took me so long to get around to it, though. That's 6/12 characters I've played a solo of with FF4. But I think it's time I personally do the only solo you can do without cheats or codes. Maybe with a twist or two to go along with it. Look forward to it in the indeterminate future.

Index

Before I head into the next section of the game, let's talk about the Pig status. It's unique to Final Fantasy IV and a counterpart to Toad and Mini. Toad removes a character's physical and magical capabilities (except for Toad), Mini just removes the physical, and thus Pig just removes magic abilities (except for Pig). So what's the deal? Status priorities. Being a Pig will render a character immune to most status ailments. This does disable a few commands, but Hide (or Edward's other commands for that matter) is not one of them.

The best part? A dancer NPC in Mysidia will gleefully inflict this status on the entire party. I got Edward turned into a pig before I continued into the Underworld, feeling any little bit of help could make a difference here.

The problem with Edward for a while was going to be his equipment. He is unique among the characters not in the final five in that he doesn't get a lot of options for himself. Mages have a similar draw to other caster classes, Yang is fine and doesn't need weapons, and even Cid gets to use axes despite none being available while he's in the party. Edward is stuck with harps (I already have the best one until before the final dungeon), knives (the next one is only seven points stronger than Dancing and way over in the Sylph Cave), or bows. He can use any and all bows, but besides their low accuracy they always suffer from the back row penalty on the Gameboy Advance version. He could go to the front, but with his HP and equipment, this is very suicidal in most scenarios. Nevertheless, I grabbed a set of elemental arrows just in case. Unfortunately, while the PSP version fixes this bug, it comes with another issue: a solo Edward is forced to unhide, critical HP or no. I found that out after humoring switching over and running it back. A tradeoff I wasn't willing to make. I could surmount this eventually. Short term pain.


The Calco dolls could be confused, which made the fight easier. Didn't even need to bother with an hourglass to prevent them from fusing. Golbez followed a distinct pattern with his spellcasting. In this case, I just had to hide past the higher damaging Thundaga to make the fight more comfortable.

Now I could have Edward buy a Rune Armlet. I could've gotten this from a drop in the Tower of Zot, but it would've been a hassle for something that had few benefits in the short term. It gave Edward some extra magic defense, which was always welcome.


I found a hilarious way to die on the first floor of the Tower of Babil: I confused an Evil Puppet, whose script is to cast Reflect on their party. The Puppeteers cast Death on their party when confused. Oops. That aside, there wasn't much to the dungeon. Aside from that hiccup which was easily manageable by confusing them first, nothing was dangerous or did anything bad when confused. The only potential problem were the White Mousse, but Dancing Dagger itemcast beat them if I wanted to.


Lugae at the end was dealt with by using Thunder Arrows on Barnabas. I could then hide until he blew himself up. As for Lugaeborg, he healed Edward's Piggy status. Oh well. He is strictly a magical opponent, so there was no issue with having Edward fight up front. As long as I hid past his deadly lasers, this wasn't a dangerous fight.

There were some annoying encounters in the Elban Cave, but nothing deadly. I was able to buy Poison Arrows here for the first time. Babil 2 was also not too much trouble, although there were some fights that were too much hassle to regularly deal with. Balloons were not one of them as he could just Hide on and wait for them to blow themselves up.


But now here comes Rubicante. This was going to suck for many reasons. First off, he effectively has 32999HP (he technically has 34000, but he dies under 1001 and shows a unique message if he somehow lands on that tiny threshold). He counters the attack command with Fira, counters fire magic with Life on your party, and though irrelevant, counters summons with Blizzara on himself. Which heals him if his cloak is up. If it's down, he's about to cast Scorch, which could deal over 2000HP. Close to double Edward's max HP.

With just Spider's Silk, Edward could attack with the Dancing Dagger's itemcast and immediately go hide, healing as needed. This cut out the threat of Fira, but it was painfully slow. There had to be a better way. Okay, a better way that didn't involve using one of my precious Hermes Sandals.

Well I tried to find stuff in FF4kster, but it didn't have the right version of Rubicante in it. But I managed to find this guide which gave some helpful insight and showing me what I had figured from initial testing.

The fire fiend follows a strict attack pattern: Cloak off -> Nothing -> Scorch -> Cloak on -> Physical -> Cloak off -> Nothing -> Scorch -> Cloak on -> Nothing -> Double physical -> Nothing -> Nothing -> repeat. And indeed, Edward had time to attack then hide before the Scorch with just Spider's Silk. This let him use Ice Arrows instead. And hey, there's a nice spot to bow back out after that double physical. It's just, there's no cue of it, and, you know, arrows don't deal full damage from the back row in this version of the game.


I figured out a good rhythm pretty quickly. Have Edward wait in hiding until the second cloak off with the double physical. If I lose track, it's obvious by the delays in the cloak being closed where I am. When the sound effect finishes, count to seven. Unhide, use a Hi-Potion, attack, hide. His damage was all over the place, but it was way way more than the Dancing Dagger itemcast. Repeat, and hope menu lag doesn't screw me over.


It did once, but with this, the fight was entirely down to execution. I had the ATB speed turned down to 6 to give me some leeway. But it thankfully didn't take too long.


This opened up the sidequest dungeons, and neither area was very pleasant for Edward to be in. The Evil Dreamers in the Sylvan Cave were nearly unbeatable. They came in massive groups and spammed Fira. The Bog Witches were as annoying and not dangerous as always, though hilariously cast Mini when confused. The other enemies were less of a problem, they just took forever to wear down. Even Malboros: their Bad Breath simply didn't work. How status immunity functions in FF4 (at least in earlier versions) is that if you're immune to one part of a multi-status attack, you're immune to it all.

At least there was the Mage Masher to pick up. A stronger melee weapon than the Dancing Dagger, finally. Though at this point, it was better to use bows. The Elven Bow was here too. Both weapons did extra damage to mage-type enemies.


Similarly, the Land of Summons had plenty of enemies that could ruin Edward's day, especially on an ambush. Thankfully, there were plenty that could be wrecked with confusion as well. That Lamia's Harp turned out to be way more useful than I thought. I had him equip a Diamond Armlet to make the Thunder Dragons less of a problem. I could probably have beaten the bosses at the end, had I been willing to use Elixirs. I picked up the Yoichi's Bow from the town, grabbed a stack of Angel's Arrows, and went off to the Sealed Cave.


At least the doors were not going to be a problem: Edward could smoothly duck past the Ninth Dimensions. He usually did have to deal with the enemies that popped out of the door at low health though. Actually used an X-Potion against the Yellow Dragon at the end.


For the boss, Spider's Silk, Hermes Sandals, then fire away with Yoichi's Bow + Angel Arrows. I was concerned about this, but apparently there was nothing to worry about. Its physicals were infrequent and manageable, and Edward killed it long before it got close to him. Resources well spent.

Edward was level 56. That was really suspect for getting through the Giant of Babil, especially the Elemental Lords fight. Once I did get through that though, he would finally gain actual equipment. And once he got beyond level 70, business would really start to pick up. And there was a fantastic grinding spot on the moon. The first floor of the Cave of Bahamut had plenty of Dark Sage and Selene Guardian encounters. They were prime bait for the Lamia's Harp: once they were charmed by Edward's music, they would gleefully petrify themselves. Worst case scenario, this would help get me through the Giant. But I got him up to 60 at first, keeping an extra save just to be on the safe side.


Edward pretended he was Rosa for this battle, attacking the elemental lords with the appropriate arrow that they were weak to. I made sure to have him hide through Scarmiglione's Curse as well as Rubicante's Firaga and Scorch. I used Spider's Silk on both phases of the fight (Cagnazzo/Barbarricia is considered a different enemy). Because Rubicante was entirely magical, he could fight up front for extra damage. Cagnazzo had no attacks worth hiding behind.


For Barbarricia, I had Edward pop back out after Maelstrom. Then he had two turns to attack or heal before having to hide past Ray. It was insanely slow going though, entirely because I somehow had Ice Arrows on instead of Holy Arrows. I even bought Holy Arrows just for this fight. Do not ask how that happened, because I am equally as unsure. Only thing I can think of is that I did this fight when distracted and groggy. Hey, it still worked.


Meanwhile, the CPU was a time where Edward's low HP was a boon. The Attack Node's laser is tuned to 10% of max HP. Edward simply shrugged it off. The only potential problem could've been running out of Hi Potions, but I had enough to make it through.

And now finally, it is time for what the Pixel Remaster does not want you to have, despite being based off the GBA version and making plenty of other changes to the games against its mission statement to be faithful to the originals, especially blatant with FF1 which isn't anything like the original at all.


With all this done and ready to head into the Cave of Trials, Edward's gametime is not looking too hot. But not about how long you take after all, it's about how well you do. And okay, Edward has been functional at best up until now, but his ascension is close at hand.

Next | Index

(art by sutei (giru))

The original spoony bard himself, Edward (originally Gilbert) Chris von Muir is the prince of Damcyan and the series' first named Bard character after the class's debut in the previous game. Far from the soaring supportive heights the class would become in later games, Edward as the Bard class in FF4 is a weak character in battle, and some would give him flak for not being a super hardened badass in plot either. At least later releases including this one would do a lot for the guy, particularly The After Years where he is a cunning mastermind (one of the few bright spots on that mess of the game).

He has three abilities and two of them are bad: Sing and Heal. The first of these requires a harp to be equipped (in 2D anyway) has a 25% chance each of inflicting silence, charm, sleep, or nothing. Unless he's a toad, in which case it will always use toadsong. It's by far the most useless incarnation of the ability in the series. Even the 3D versions let you manually choose and gives more spells, as does the After Years to an extent (which unfortunately still keeps randomness). And Pixel Remaster makes it a group cast. Heal (aka Salve) debuts in this game and splits a Potion between the party for pitiful healing. 3D again and even the After Years fixes this by letting you use multiple copies of a healing item all in one turn. Noticing a pattern here? Heck, the After Years even changes Hide to Escape. Functionally identical, just with a less cowardly descriptor more befitting of his character.

Hide has the most use and takes him out of battle until he chooses to return; it triggers automatically when he is in critical health unless alone. Because of a quirk in the coding, a solo Edward on low HP will always be forced to return even if he triggered Hide manually. Also, a solo Edward will be forced to return on the PSP version regardless. Unlike FF5, bosses in FF4 do not use MP (the stat exists but it's calculated based off their HP and is only used for the purposes of Osmose), but he can at least avoid certain telegraphed attacks. This command is better in the 3D versions where you can give it to Rosa or Edge and have them attack with Aim or Throw. Here, you're limited to running, returning, waiting, or effectively passing the turn by defending. In this version, the autohide can be used to trigger the Psycho Edward bug, mixing its invincibility with the berserk status. However, it still doesn't work without a party, so it's outside the scope of this variant.


Here's the guy's stats at his starting level. Not very impressive to say the least. While the butt of many jokes with low stats and questionable skills, this meant this was going to be a very interesting challenge!

There was not much to write about the early portions of the game. Even for a character as weak as Edward, the enemies were simple enough. Not even the Mist Dragon was a problem, with weak physical attacks and plenty of time to heal up when it was in its mist form.


An interesting property of the Dreamer's Harp that Edward starts with is the ability to put things it hits to sleep. Naturally, as the designers were in a bit of a mood, status ailments are universally prevented from working on most boss fights. The soldiers were one such fight. I had Edward hide until Cecil kicked it, bopped him out after the general gave the order to attack, and put him to sleep. The soldiers never attack without orders (and commit suicide if the general goes down). This earned him a nice chunk of experience.


Here's a rarity for you, and actually maybe one of the only times I made use of the Sing command in the playthrough: as a counter to the Gigantoads turning Edward into one. It's a toggle much like the spell itself, so Edward flipped himself back to being human.

Octomammoth is an interesting fight: the more times it is hit, the slower and stronger it gets. Still, from the back row, this was manageable damage. I just had to use Potions.


A numerical weapon upgrade was in the Antlion Cave. This instead has a chance of inflicting confusion on a hit. You might be thinking to yourself that this is better, and in any other game in the series, you'd be correct. However, two quirks about FF4 make that not necessarily the case. For one, sleep is not dispelled on a physical attack, whereas confusion is. So Edward can continue to pummel opponents while they're helpless and sleeping. Second and stranger, confused enemies instead run a different script. This does not necessarily mean attacking their own party. The Tiny Mages in the overworld outside the cave are a particularly rude example. Charm them and they'll respond by casting Death on your party! This meant taking a little more caution in what random encounters I used it against. Against bosses, it was obviously the better choice.

Like the Antlion. It uses Counter Horn whenever struck with a physical attack. This might seem like it would make the fight a huge hassle, but from the safety of the back row, its attacks were pitiful even on Edward. It was simply a matter of not overextending myself too much.


Mom Bomb on Mount Hobs only performs physical attacks until she takes sufficient damage. Then she swells up, performs an explosion attack, and splits into six lesser bombs. It should be noted that enemy AI is unusual and prone to bugs when there are no valid player targets in FF4. This was not one of those cases: Edward could simply sit back and watch as the mom and her children all fruitlessly blew themselves to the underworld.

The captains in the Fabul Gauntlet are another example of an enemy that does not behave how you would expect them to when charmed. They instead continue to order their troops to charge. Dreamer's Harp worked just fine and indeed prevented the troops from attacking.


The most dangerous encounter on Mount Ordeals were the Liliths. They counter physical attacks with Slap, which paralyzes. And if you confuse them, they start using Entice to confuse you right back! There were also groups of seven zombie type enemies. It was far better to simply Hide then run against them.


Scarmigilione was a simple matter of hiding past the Drains, then killing some of the zombies. When I was down to one, I went after the boss to prevent him from going into his own attack routine. Every hit still meant a Thunder, which necessitated healing. The undead form simply does poisoning physicals. No problem and no strategy but to attack and heal periodically. Same for the Dark Knight.


Before heading to Baron, I took a sidetrip back to Mist to buy a Dancing Dagger for Edward. This weapon is slightly stronger than the Lamia's Harp, at the cost of needing to be in the front row (FF4a has a bug where back row doesn't matter and will either always or never be applied, but I don't exploit it). However, it can be used as an item unlimited times to cast a psuedo spell with a power of 40 and a multiplier of 8. As a point of comparison, level 1 elemental spells have a power of 16 and level 2 elemental spells have a multiplier of 64, with the multiplier determined by (stat)÷4+1. It's sufficient, but the way spell damage is calculated in this game means it can also just suck.

I just used the revive Cecil strategy for Yang, meanwhile. He has too much HP and you prove little by depleting it all with a solo. In Baron town, Edward was able to upgrade his equipment a little. There was trouble down in the Underground Waterway named Hydras. If these landed their Entangles, it would paralyze and likely kill Edward. I ended up running from them, only to encounter like seven all in a row. Sheesh.


For Baigan, I destroyed the left arm because it can entangle. I then hit the right arm with Dancing Dagger itemcast once before doing the same for Baigan. The former act gave a safety buffer in case the right arm used Self-Destruct before I could move again. Edward couldn't survive that even at full HP, since his just sucks. I couldn't kill both arms because he simply regenerates them, but killing one was just fin.

It was Cagnazzo afterwards where the hell began. The first phase is a simple dance: gather water, Tsunami, Haste self, repeat. It's that second phase where things get difficult: Cagnazzo will bolster his defenses (technically evasion) and heal himself for 531HP with Restore. My previous soloists had ways around this. Most could just outdamage it, although I had to hunt for a semirare drop in Rosa's case. Even with Hermes Sandals and Spider's Silk to tilt the speed odds in his favor, Edward could not deal enough damage to overcome this. And there was no reprieve in an item drop. Edward could use Bows, but they're inaccurate.


So welcome to FF4's own Penninsula of Power, and also one of the weakest ones out there. This can be found north of Mount Ordeals; you can't reach there on a Chocobo and have to walk by the mountains. The enemies here are the same as the ones found around Troia and Mythril. In other orders, the next story area after I cook the turtle. Still, it was as decent a place as any. Lamia's Harp on the the Hell Needles permanently disabled them: they would spam Needle on themselves, unable to break from it. Confusing Treants made them counter with Peck, petrifying their own party.

Still, I had to save after every battle. A back attack could be very fatal. No, going in the front wasn't an option either: FF4 (and 3) uniquely have ambushes: back attacks without switching rows.


I got up to level 41. Edward now had more attack multipliers, especially with help of a Twist Headband, and a bit more offense. I hoped this was enough...


...and it was. I still needed to use Hermes Sandals and a Spider's Silk to tilt the odds in my favor, but the roadblock was down.

I went to Eblan Castle next for the glory of it. Most of the strong monsters in boxes fell to charming shenanigans, although I lost once against the Mad Ogres when they kept attacking themselves, and multiple times against the Steel Golem and Skuldiers when the former (the only thing that COULD be confused) kept attacking itself rather than its allies. I ended up using Bomb Fragment items to deal with the skeletons.


There was a funny glitch if Edward talked to himself: the player Edward was forced to look left.

Edward had little trouble over in the Magnetic Cave. Cait Siths in particular were very vulnerable to confusion, assaulting their allies and themselves with Blaster for paralysis or even instant death. I could also stun the Mindflayers with it, making them 'attack' Edward with Scan.


As for the Dark Elf himself, his damage was manageable in the first phase. I simply popped a Hi Potion after every Tornado while attacking with the Dancing Dagger. Edward fell into the back row and used the Lamia's Harp when the Dark Dragon came out due to its physical attacks. Just had to heal every now and then.

In Zot, the Ice Lizards cast Blizzara when confused. This healed them. But it was also very effective in eliminating the slime monsters that sometimes accompanied them.

For the Magus Sisters, Dancing Dagger itemcast was the order of the day. It did enough, and physicals happen in the fight. This and a mistimed Fira eventually beat Cindy. The other two cast spells afterward, but Edward still had up a reflected Reflect. Sandy was the first target because of Berserk in particular, and she died before it hit. Then I finished Mindy.


Against Barbarricia, I had a relatively foolproof strategy. Pop a Hermes Sandals, and after Rosa and Kain kick it, do the following. Pop out after the elemental lord uses her Tornado/Ray combo. Attack or heal if needed, taking a physical before popping back in. I had to have Edward in the back using the Lamia Harp; the Dancing Dagger just missed if used as an item, and I'm pretending the back row bug doesn't exist. This was doing absolutely pitiful damage, but it was slowly getting the job done. My only concern was running out of Hi Potions or if Edward was knocked into critical - the damage from the physicals was highly erratic. I won comfortably before any of that happened.


This is pretty rough so far, relatively speaking. I had to use two sandals and a silk to get through; I can farm the latter at least, but the haste shoes are limited in the 2D version. Hopefully I don't run out. 11:11 game time to finish off the Overworld section of the game. But it's not about how you start, it's about how you finish. And I can promise that Edward is going to finish strong, if nothing else.

Next | Index

The Four Job Fiesta holds side-events on months where it's not active, and the October 2024 one was Final Fantasy III. Unfortunately, the game forces a so-called Onion Risk upon you, a chance of that thoroughly useless job on any job roll unless you grind to levels even solos would gawk at. And getting hit almost made me lose all interest on the spot. It was intended for Pixel Remaster, which I wasn't paying for yet because I'm waiting on mods that don't exist (even if FF3 is the best version of it), so I was always intending to do it not there.

Well, three options. One, play on 3D, where the job is still bad but becomes a weird omnicaster with no stats so it can at least do something. Two, just keep the job dead when the time comes. Possible. Three, item upgrade glitch. Didn't think of it in enough time. Or four: do a solo (or two). Hey, it says to use four jobs and only those four. Using one totally counts.

My selection was Monk, which I'd already done. Thief, hey neat. Onion Knight itself, I wasn't feeling that masochistic yet. Or Magus, a black magic caster. Of course you can tell what I went with from the title.

FF3 is not a well-balanced game. Many jobs exist as straight-across upgrades of the others, like in FF1. But even in the later versions, Magus, or Warlock as it is called in the fanslation, or Majin as the original Japanese calls it, stands ahead of Black Mage in almost every way. As far as NES is concerned, they can use L8 magic and get more in every stat except STR. Later versions change this up and notably give them far less VIT that BM. Still, the big difference is that Magus can use level 8 magic whereas Black Mage cannot. BM does get more low level charges on later versions and can equip more weapons, but big deal.

Actually, on an idle note: in order to use this class this early, I need to stack the cheats. It's not just enough to unlock all jobs. You ordinarily need capacity to change to it, and the level to change to it as well! Normally, you cannot become a Magus until level 30. Easy to bypass of course.

So name? Well, let's use the official name here as a basis. How about Caspar, one of the three biblical magi? But for personal reasons, we'll tweak the name to Jasper, one of its alternate spellings.


One problem with Magus in the early game is equipment selection. They can't use a weapon until the Mythril Rod, which isn't immediately available. Certainly, it wasn't appearing in the first dungeon. This meant sending Jasper to the back and attacking everything with fists. Luckily, even Land Turtle fell to flailing fists while not being able to do enough damage in return.

Another oddity about FF3 is that purchasing spells besides Pure is locked behind the first dungeon. Mercifully, the game has Cure, Ice, and Sleep able to be picked up along the way. Sucks to be players who get magic jobs first in a fiesta, that's all you get.


Here's Sleep in action against the Griffon (sic) monster-in-a-box. Status is in a truly bizarre spot in FF3. It's incredibly potent against random encounters, up to and including being able to wipe out individual enemies with instant death at will. But against bosses? They're immune to any and all, reducing them to just damage rushes with healing if you have it. I believe this and FF4 are the only games in the series that are like this. It's just another reason why it's not really suited for challenge runs.


Sealed Cave wasn't much of an issue, and Ice handily dealt with the boss at the end. There was potential poison problems because I forgot to stock up on Antidotes, but I cleared it before it could prove a problem.

I was able to access the Mythril Rod in the next town, although physical attacks had already passed their prime for Jasper. No reason not to have two of them though, so I picked them up.

As another reminder, when you cast magic on multiple enemies in FF3, at least on the NES version, the damage gets split between them, rather than only doing half damage. The only other game in the series where this is the case is Final Fantasy IV. And uniquely for this game, you can choose to single out certain kinds of monsters with your castings. This poses a unique challenge and generally lowers the effectiveness of mages against groups of enemies. You know, what you would want to use them against? Small wonder it eventually got dropped from the series. At least spells that target multiple enemies by default don't suffer this restriction in both games, but the first such spell would only show up much later on.

This presented some interesting strategy, at least: balancing group-casts with single casts to try to remove threats as quickly as possible.


There was little to worry about in the mini gauntlet, not with a full caster class. There was little threat to Jasper in the back row, and since he was in a caster class, he remained a threat. I continued to fight the whole way through. I picked up the level 3 spells in the Viking base and used them to destroy the Big Rat.

Now for a problem. The Tower of Owen requires you to be a frog to enter it. Unlike in all other games in the series, Toad is a White Magic spell. What I did for Tozus, and indeed, what the Fiesta recommends is turning someone into a relevant job to do that. Problem is, that also kills spell charges. There was a way around the conundrum at least.


Two, in fact: one of the enemies in the tower can cast Toad. However, their accuracy with it seemed abysmal. The other was to grind out a Maiden's Kiss drop from one of these then have someone else do the change. I went with this. It took a while, until like level 21 in fact. Well, more levels help, right?


These PutiMages (the things in the back) were the most annoying opponents on the way up. It was equally impossible to buy EchoHerbs yet, and they could inflict Mute. I had Jasper counter with some status of his own to shut them down. Against Medusa at the top, Jasper just killed her with spells as her petrification missed.

Opening up the outer sea also gave access to a major equipment upgrade. Jasper was able to grab the Scholar equipment from Castle Argus. In spite of its name, it is indeed usable for other classes and provided him with a good defensive upgrade. Of course, it opened up level 4 spells as well.

The Fire Crystal arc went very smoothly. I beat the bosses with spells before they could beat me. Ice3 on Salamandr could do over 1000 damage, killing him in two hits.


There were some annoying encounters in Hyne's Castle that could threaten to stunlock me. Or softlock: some couldn't kill from there. Poison was effective, and Jasper was often fast enough to get it off before they could stun him. Hyne himself was felled in two Fire2 casts. Didn't get a chance to change his barrier. Not much to write about the trip through either.

One problem: job unlocks are tied to plot flags! I noticed this earlier, like the crystals not giving jobs, telling me not to use NESticle to play this game, or the guy walking in and telling me they were burning the village early, but they were harmless. But this time, the main overworld was already unlocked. A bit of fidgeting later and I relocked most of them, allowing me to continue properly.

Lit2 handled the randoms in the Water Cave. Ice3 for the boss: Kraken is weak to both elements, and technically does worse against electrical damage. But the higher base on Ice3 is more effective.


The Sewers were easy as always. I was concerned about Goldor, who heavily resists magic, but Ice3 still did damage. The bigger problem were the Nightmare enemies in his manor, another type of enemy who could stun/softlock. Still, the dungeon was short enough that they didn't get a chance to appear or ambush often.


With the infamous Saronia ahead of me, I decided to grind in the Ancient Ruins rather than on FF3's own Penninsula of Power. There were smaller groups of enemies there. I reached level 40 on the enemies within before going after the big bird. Even the enemies here could just be kneecapped with status.


Garuda is an infamous roadblock boss, intended to be fought with the Dragoon class' Jump and a lot of praying. I'm finding out though that he isn't all that in solos. They simply have too much HP for him to be a threat and can just damage race him. Jasper was no exception to this.

I could access armor and weapon upgrades at this point; unfortunately, the damage boosting properties of the elemental rods are broken and don' work. The magic upgrades come hard and fast after this point: I could grab level 5 spells from Saronia's magic shops (previously closed), level 6 spells were in Dorga's abode, and level 7 spells could be accessed in his village after a short jaunt through the Magic Circle Cave, another mini dungeon that was of no issue for Jasper. Erase would be the most interesting of these: it's like XFER/Dispel in the first two games in how it removes enemy resistances! Except 1) it actually works in this game, and 2) it still won't hit bosses because you can't have anything like that in FF3.


Besides which, the third tier Bolt and Fire spells show up, Bio debuts in the series (non-elemental here), there's Warp (instant death and a more versatile Exit spell in one). Level 7 had Drain, Brak2, and Quake. Since the last spell targets all enemies by default, yeah. It just cooks them. Jasper did only have 12 spell charges for it at this point however. Small problem, but it would be overcome in time. Brak2 is another menace of an instant death spell. Drain would be nice if it worked on bosses but it doesn't.

I went to the Saronia Catacombs for some grinding and the glory of optional bosses: Odin. His infamous Atom Edge special just deals manageable damage in this game, so it didn't take too much effort. I actually suffered a wipe my first go at the dungeon when Jasper got petrified. Oops. Luckily, the offending enemy got killed every single time after that.


It is worth noting that the earlier spells still had plenty of use, since they scale. Here's one such example in the Undersea Cave, another optional dungeon.


And yes, not joking. Instant death is ridiculous in this game. I tore through the Temple of Time dungeon alternating between those and Quake, other spells when I needed them.


These enemies in the deeper reaches of the Ancient Ruins could split themselves. Something to note about this, if you target all enemies (even with a spell that hits everything) and they do so before the action resolves, the spell will not hit them. This was problematic. I countered it with status to shut them down.

Lake Dol, in contrast to my previous two trips down into it with solo characters, was shockingly easy. The key was that Jasper could outspeed and instantly kill the problematic stunlocking/softlocking enemies with a Quake or Bolt3. Leviathan was boiled with Fire3. Yeah, surprisingly not weak enough to electricity and not resistant to fire either.

I'll somewhat arbitrarily split things up here.

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