I needed a place to put all the challenge runs I do on classic Final Fantasy games. So I guess this is it. Sullla's site, T-Hawk's site, and Sofis' site are recommended reading, as is the Realms Beyond thread for even more reports by various others.

This will be periodically updated with various posts of mine from that topic, as well as any more runs I do through games whenever I'm bored and feel like doing a new take on a classic game.
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Final Fantasy
- FFZZ Hack Playthrough (v1.5): I | II | III | IV
- The Spellslingers: I | II | III
- Hardworking Capitalists: I | II | III | IV
- Solo Monk [PSP]: I | II | III | IV
- No Items/Potions: I | II | III | IV
- Four Monks [MSX]: I | II | III | IV
- The Iron Fists [WSC]: I | II | III
- No Start Menu: I | II | III
- Solo Thief [FFR]: I | II | III | IV

Final Fantasy II
- The Magicians: I | II | III | IV
- "Solo Monk": I | II | III

Final Fantasy III
- Solo Monk [NES]: I | II | III | IV | V
- Solo Red Mage [NES]: I | II | III
- Solo Magus [NES]: I | II

Final Fantasy IV
- Solo Palom: I | II | III | IV
- Solo Edge: I | II | III | IV
- Solo Rosa: I | II | III | IV
- Solo Yang: I | II | III | IV
- Solo FuSoYa: I | II | III
- Solo Edward: I | II | III | IV

- Solo Cecil [3D] (in-progress): I | II

Final Fantasy V
- Solo Cannoneer: I | II | III | IV | V
- Solos vs. Gil Turtle: I | II | III | IV
- Solos vs. Shinryu: I | II | III | IV
- Solos vs. Omega: I | II | III
- Quadzerker!!: I
- No Random Encounters (FJF '24): I | II | III
- Four Job Fiesta: 2014 | 2023

Final Fantasy VI
- The Nudists (in-progress): I | II | III

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
- The Cheerleader: I | II | III | IV
- Low Level Game: I | II
- Low%: I | II | III

The Final Fantasy Legend
- Solo Monster: I
- Solo Human: I
- Solo Mutant: I | II

Final Fantasy Legend II
- Robot Party Playthrough: I | II
- Solo Monster: I | II | III | IV
- Solo Mutant: I | II | III | IV
- Solo Human: I | II | III
- Solo Robot: I | II | III | IV

Final Fantasy Legend III
- Low Level Game: I | II | III

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Final Fantasy Renaissance
- Hardworking Capitalists: I | II
- Living Off the Land: I | II
- Low Level New Game+: I
- One Spell Per Levelx4: I

- Solo Green Mage (v1.3.3): I | II
- Solo Evoker (v1.3.3): I | II | III
- Solo Lancer (v2.0.5): I | II | III
- Solo Geomancer (v2.1): I | II | III
- Solo Blue Mage (v2.1.3): I | II
- Solo Dark Knight (v2.1.3): I | II
- Solo Monk (v2.1.3): I
- Solo Trainer (v2.1.3): I | II

(See my gaming playthroughs section for my first four runs of the game, including a mage and physical only party)

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Articles
- FF4: Drop-only Items
- FF5: The Status Bug
- FF Renaissance: Job thoughts
- FF Renaissance: Magic list/thoughts
- FF Renaissance: Weapon/Armor list
- FF Renaissance: Class stats and tables
- FF Renaissance: Elements/Races guide
- FF Renaissance: Poaches guide
- FF Renaissance: Achievements guide

L1
- CURE (WM,RM,KN): ST heal, base 32
- HARM (WM,__,__): AoE non-elemental damage to undead, base 48
- FOG (WM,RM,KN): ST +8 absorb boost
- RUSE (WM,RW,KN): ST +80 evade boost
- FIRE (BM,RM,NI): ST fire-elemental damage, base 20
- LIT (BM,RM,NI): ST lit-elemental damage, base 20
- SLEP (BM,RM,NI): AoE status-elemental sleep, +24 acc
- LOCK (BM,RM,NI): ST -20 evade reduction, +64 acc

White: HARM is a nice spell for fighting undead. It's worth noting that CURE isn't as good as you might think: a HEAL potion is just as strong. Still, it's better than FOG in most cases. RUSE is neat, but unless your party composition somehow ends up with a White Mage up front, it's mostly a safety net.

Black: The damaging spells here peak very early: they do count towards PRIMING's buff after class change, however - so you can cast them followed by a stronger one to get extra damage while using less spell charges. FIRE can be a nice cheap way of beating SCUMs in the Marsh Cave. SLEP has some niche uses, but it also will eventually be left behind. LOCK is a terrible spell.

Red: First off, to get it out of the way: don't let SABOTEUR influence your decision-making. SLEP and LOCK are still questionable spells with very limited use. It might be worth holding off until class change for RUSE: a Red Wizard can get decent use out of it against fights like KRAKEN.

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L2
- LAMP (WM,RM,KN): ST heal darkness
- MUTE (WM,RM,KN): ST status-elemental silence, +64 acc
- ALIT (WM,RM,KN): AoE lit resist to all allies
- INVS (WM,RM,KN): ST +40 evade boost
- ICE (BM,RM,NI): ST ice-elemental damage, base 40
- DARK (BM,RM,NI): AoE status-elemental darkness, +24 acc
- TMPR (BM,RM,NI): ST +14 attack
- SLOW (BM,RM,NI): AoE status-elemental reduce hits to 1 or counter FAST, +64 acc

White: MUTE is a highly underrated spell and can shut down ASTOS in particular. The A-Spells have their uses, and ALIT is no exception. They're good against LICH, TIAMAT, and Evoker bosses. INVS isn't that great except in limited parties. LAMP is mostly irrelevant.

Black: TMPR is one of the most powerful spells in the game. Cast this enough and any physical attacker with a weapon (Ozmo doesn't let Monks get buffs) will become a force of nature. ICE is okay but suffers from the same problems as the L1 spells, and there's some uses for SLOW. If you're taking a Dark Knight, you can consider DARK. Otherwise, it draws the short straw.

Red: Most of what I said above applies to the Red Mage. MUTE is good enough to take anyway, you can still consider SLOW, but you should still stay away from DARK short of a Dark Knight - and even then, there's better ways. Don't underestimate TMPR, it'll be way better! Even ALIT can be considered over SLOW: they're about as niche as one another. Absolutely do consider skipping ICE: there's very little long-term benefit.

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L3
- CUR2 (WM,RM,KN): ST heal, base 66
- HRM2 (WM,__,__): AoE non-elemental damage to undead, base 80
- AFIR (WM,RM,KN): AoE fire resist to all allies
- HEAL (WM,__,__): AoE heal, base 24
- FIR2 (BM,RM,NI): AoE fire-elemental damage, base 60
- LIT2 (BM,RM,NI): AoE lit-elemental damage, base 60
- HOLD (BM,RM,NI): ST status-elemental paralyze, +24 acc
- LOK2 (BM,RM,NI): AoE -40 evade reduction, +40 acc

White: HRM2 is a nasty spell that can wreck the undead in the Marsh and Earth Caves. HEAL usually doesn't do enough to be worth it and you get three items to cast it for free, so it's best not to bother with the actual spell. This applies further if you're running them with a Green Mage. You can get good use out of CUR2 and occasional niche use from AFIR.

Black: LOK2 is the odd one out: the elemental spells are massive. FIR2 is great on undead, but LIT2 can help beat the WIZARDs. HOLD is a neat spell that works on most bosses: of the vanilla ones, only LICH and CHAOS can't be hit by it.

Red: This is maybe the first hard level to decide on for a Red Mage. If you have more AoE, you can consider only one of FIR2 or LIT2 - but both is still very good! HOLD is good enough on its own merits. AFIR should be considered if your party has low offense and you have no other source of it. CUR2 can be nice sometimes. Continue to ignore LOK2.

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L4
- PURE (WM,RM): ST heal poison
- FEAR (WM,__): AoE status-elemental -40 morale
- AICE (WM,RM): AoE ice resist to all allies
- AMUT (WM,RW): ST heal silence + resist silence
- ICE2 (BM,RM,NI): AoE ice-elemental damage, base 80
- FAST (BM,RM,NI): ST doubles hit% or cancels SLOW
- CONF (BM,RM,NI): AoE status-elemental confuse, +64 acc
- SLP2 (BM,RM,NI): ST non-elemental sleep, +64 acc

White: LICH's opening spell is ICE2, so pray for good turn order when using AICE against him. It's good against FrWOLFs too. AMUT is irrelevant due to how so few enemies use MUTE, and FEAR is a meme. Unless you're trying to get the Designated Adventurer achievement, PURE is a waste of money. Remember, buying only one or even no spells in a level is perfectly fine.

Black: ICE2, CONF, FAST. All fantastic spells. Stuff over 80HP will immediately wake from sleep, and most enemies by the time you get this will be close to or over this threshold, so don't bother with SLP2.

Red: Unless you're doing some sort of challenge run, it's hard to argue against ICE2, CONF, FAST. If you want AICE for LICH, it's best to replace CONF regardless of SABOTEUR.

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L5
- CUR3 (WM,RM): ST heal, base 132
- LIFE (WM,RW): ST revive with 1HP. Works in-battle with the REVIVALIST trait only.
- HRM3 (WM,__): AoE non-elemental damage to undead, base 120
- HEL2 (WM,__): AoE heal, base 60
- FIR3 (BM,RM): AoE fire-elemental damage, base 100
- BANE (BM,RW): AoE poison-elemental KO, +40 acc
- WARP (BW,RW): Transports party to previous floor. Cannot be used in battle.
- SLO2 (BM,RM): ST non-elemental reduce hits to 1 or counter FAST

White: In my opinion, the hardest spell level to decide for. Every one of these spells has merit and, aside from LIFE, you can give up one of the other three. HRM3 does have the least long-term viability, but the short-term benefits can't be understated. CUR3 heals enough to be a small-scale panic button, and while HEL2 is no longer as good as HEL3, it's still decent.

Black: If you don't have a White/Red/Time Mage, consider saving for WARP for its utility. SLO2 is usually the one to ignore: most of what you'd want to hit can be hit by regular SLOW anyway. Worth noting that any instant death spell used with ELEMENTAL SEAL can one-shot anything that doesn't outright resist instant death. Use BANE and similar spells with it at your own cheesy risk.

Red: A lot from here on out is Red Wizard only: if you're going unpromoted, there's only three options. Absolutely save for LIFE, and FIR3 is good enough that you shouldn't ignore it either. The last slot is a tossup. BANE works with SABOTEUR and is pretty ridiculous, though quite a bit resists poison. If that's too overpowered or the resistance is a problem, SLO2 is non-elemental and can hit anything, though it's niche and single-target. It's usually better to go with EXIT over WARP. Finally, CUR3 is perfectly viable.

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L6
- SOFT (WM,__): Heals petrification. Cannot be used out of battle.
- EXIT (WW,RW: Escapes a dungeon. Cannot be used out of battle.
- FOG2 (WM,RW): AoE +12 absorb boost
- INV2 (WM,RW): AoE +40 evade boost
- LIT3 (BM,RW): AoE ice-elemental damage, base 120
- RUB (BM,__): ST death-elemental KO, +24 acc
- QAKE (BM,__): AoE earth-elemental KO, +40 acc
- STUN (BM,__): ST status-elemental paralyze on enemy ≤300HP. It will always/only hit if they're under the threshold and don't resist the element/status.

White: SOFT is ignorable for similar reasons to PURE: the money you spend on it will never equal the amount you spend on SOFTs, so only buy it if going for achievements. EXIT is fantastic utility, and with enough INV2 stacked, your party is untouchable physically. You can stack it twice as fast with the White Shirt, though it will mean the White Wizard won't get to wear it. FOG2 is also workable, though it takes a lot more castings compared to INV2.

Black: Lots of status here. LIT3 is a spell you can't go wrong with. STUN is a fun pseudo-finisher, though is still subject to status resistances. Of the two instant death spells, QAKE is better: hits everything and works on MudGOLs in particular (which resist the common elements).

Red: Four spells to choose from. It's usually best to leave behind FOG2: INV2 does mostly the same thing except it prevents damage entirely. It can be funny, though. Don't pass up EXIT unless you have a White/Time Wizard.

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L7
- CUR4 (WW,__): ST full heal + status recovery
- HRM4 (WW,__): AoE non-elemental damage to undead, base 160
- ARUB (WM,RW): AoE status/death/earth resist to all allies
- HEL3 (WM,__): AoE heal, base 96
- ICE3 (BM,RW): AoE ice-elemental damage, base 140
- BRAK (BW,__): ST stone-elemental petrify, +64 acc
- SABR (BW,__): Self +16 attack/accuracy
- BLND (BM,__): ST status-elemental darkness on enemy ≤300HP. It will always/only hit if they're under the threshold and don't resist the element/status.

White: As nice as HRM4 is, the undead aren't as common by the time you can access it. ARUB is very useful for covering an unRibboned party member. CUR4 is a fantastic panic button, and HEL3 is solid. If you really want to make room for HRM4, what you should drop is party dependent: ARUB is a relatively safe drop with Red Wizard (gets it anyway), Paladin/Rune Knight, or if you're planning to grind up to level 25+, HEL3 is a safe drop with Green Mage.

Black: Darkness is terrible and so is BLND. It was not the ailment to make a >300HP spell for. BRAK is the most accurate instant death spell. SABR is weird and mostly useful for challenges, since it's self-cast only. You can never go wrong with an elemental AoE, though!

Red: There's only two spells and they're both good!

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L8
- LIF2 (WW): ST revive with full health to one ally
- FADE (WW): Unlike vanilla, AoE Holy-elemental damage, base 160
- WALL (WW): ST resist *most elements
- XFER (WW): ST remove resistances
- NUKE (BW): AoE non-elemental damage, base 200
- STOP (BW): AoE time-elemental paralysis, +48 acc
- ZAP! (BW): AoE time-elemental death, +32 acc
- XXXX (BW): ST death-elemental KO on enemy ≤300HP. It will always/only hit if they're under the threshold and don't resist the element/status.

White: Pop a WALL on your unRibboned party member to protect them against everything but the new elements. XFER is strange and hard to justify except in magic-only challenge runs. FADE and LIF2 are both solid. However, note that FADE is now of the new holy-element. The ultimate Evoker and Spellblade resist it and even CHAOS currently does so. Only the undead are weak to it.

Black: NUKE isn't all that, but it's still a fantastic damaging option for them, especially with other options. The rest is situational: very little resists the Time-element though they're mostly there for fun. Still, unless you're in standard mode, nothing resists anything when ELEMENTAL SEAL is involved. XXXX is more of a memetic finisher for the same reason.

Back | Index

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

Next | Index

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

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

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

That's only part of the problem, though.


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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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

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

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


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


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

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


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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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


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

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

Next | Index

According to Ozmo in an interview, the Blue Mage was one of the most obvious picks for a new job to add to Final Fantasy Renaissance. These wielders of monster abilities have appeared in various forms throughout the series from 5-11, with more sporadic appearances later like in Stranger of Paradise and in various side-games. It was one of the jobs I was most looking forward to playing, having saved it for my second casual. It ended up disappointing, I hate to say it. Hopefully, this solo report will at least be fun and interesting! It was one I wanted to do anyway for a while.


I was tempted to name this solo after the Lone Ranger, but I decided on Shanoa instead. Hailing from the Castlevania series, she dresses in blue and uses abilities obtained from monsters. Felt like a neat place to reach into.

Blue Mage is very similar to Red Mage in terms of equipment, with both having a good equipment draw (including Chain). They are also similar statistically, although Blue is guaranteed an INT growth on every level up and has higher averages. Considering INT boosts spell damage by (INT÷2)% and adds (INT×2.5) to spell accuracy, getting a point of it every level is a very good thing.


Also, fair warning: don't expect to see classic Blue Mage spells in their skillset like White Wind, Goblin Punch, or Mighty Guard. There are 26 enemy skills in vanilla Final Fantasy 1 and the FFR Blue Mage gets 24 of them spread across their eight levels of magic, for better or worse design. The only two unavailable to them are INK and TORNADO.


Because most of the enemy spells only show up later in the game, FFR scatters these "trainers" throughout the game to give your Blue Mages the opportunity to learn magic much sooner. A good bit of design sense for the most part. The monsters will ambush you and immediately use their spell. There's one in a very dumb location, but I'll get to that one when it's relevant.


This was not a carbon copy of the regular enemy CEREBUS. It had 96HP compared to the standard's 192, and less stats in general. It seemed a lot less likely to use SCORCH later in the battle. I had to get Shanoa to level 2 and have her chug some HEAL potions during the battle to survive this, but with that, she obtained her first spell.

Now, there is one big flaw with FFR's spell learning that I should mention before going any further: there is an element of luck involved. See, you only have a CHANCE to learn a spell. This is apparently lifted from FF11 (a favorite of Ozmo's) and is extremely stupid. No other game in the series puts Blue Magic learning up to a coinflip, for very good reason. The only ways to improve your odds are by leveling up or by using their LIMIT after promotion. Hopefully, Shanoa being a solo character would prevent this from being a frustration, and being the only target helps too. It's only a minor annoyance for these trainer battles, but there are some spells which you can only learn from random encounters.


There! First spell learned! SCORCH is as basic a spell as they come, and the first of five fire-elemental AoEs in the game. It has a base effectivity of 14. As a point of comparison, the FIRE spell has 20. So it's weaker, but hits everything. It would be good enough in the Marsh Cave at least.

There was a second spell to pick up that was too difficult as-is: the guard near the Mystic Key locked rooms had a NITEMARE. Again, this only had 100HP. It was much more difficult to beat for far less, though: it still got 3-hits which could easily destroy Shanoa. Not only that, but the spell it uses is SNORTING, a single target spell that inflicts darkness. Darkness is not a good status in FF1. It increases accuracy and helps the Dark Knight in FFR, but it wouldn't have a big effect. I was just at the point where it was enough to cause problems though, and unlike CEREBUS, the NITEMARE could use SNORTING in the battle.


It took a few attempts to make it over to Pravoka. Once I was there, though? Area of effect spells are not something you would normally have access to in vanilla FF1 at this point. Some classes in FFR do, and Blue Mage being one of them, Shanoa ended it on the first turn. Even if it weren't for this, Chain made all their attacks deal 1 damage.

Now, there were two L2 spells I could access at this point. A man in Pravoka offered to let me fight a BigEYE for the FLASH spell - hey, I guess there's a familiar one here after all. As you might expect, it inflicts darkness on all enemies. It had 101HP. Shanoa could actually defeat it because it didn't hit hard, but I wanted to keep the spell menu sorted.

Meanwhile, over in the Dwarves' Cave, there was an AGAMA with HEAT available. This one has 148HP, and unfortunately, it had a small chance to use HEAT afterwards. Shanoa couldn't win this. Not yet.

So it was time for a Silver Sword grind. KYZOKUs were the target, of course. This would also gain some levels, which would help out.


While trying to reset for stats on level 7 - the game was being unusually stubborn to give me a 1/4 STR gain - Shanoa ran into a lone OddEYE on the ocean. I immediately took advantage: I had her cast SCORCH for little damage, and as I hoped, it used GAZE! This paralyzed her, and once she recovered, she knocked it down. Another one learned!

GAZE cannot be learned through an NPC trainer. It is a L1 status-elemental spell that inflicts paralysis on one target with a +0 accuracy modifier. Compare to HOLD at L3, which has +64 accuracy. It's worse, but at a lower level and paralysis is deadly no matter where it comes from.

The proper level came shortly after that, and Shanoa got her sword.


What a difference, and sheesh! Calm down! This easily got her the spell. HEAT's base effectivity is 24. I beat the NITEMARE for its spell. I doubted I would ever use SNORTING, but it's the completionism that counts. I forgot about FLASH for a while.x

Elfland had even more NPC monsters to fight. The elf near the magic shops brought out a R.HYDRA with 91HP. Its CREMATE has a base power of 48. Compare it to the L3 FIR2 which has 60, and this is a little sad. It can still get the job done, however. It hurt Shanoa bad, especially considering it used it again in the battle, but two swings from the Silver Sword brought it down.


The Elf Castle had two more. Someone throwing out an EYE might seem scary, but all it uses is STARE. Few FF1 players have likely seen this: it's used exclusively by EYE, and only after GLANCE, SQUINT, and GAZE in its skill script. For something that requires you to drag out a fight against the thing, it's nothing special. 34 base power and non-elemental. It's hard to find a use for this: there are enemies who resist most elements, yes, but that's what the Blue Mage's sword skills are for.


I had to gain another level before going to my next destination: there was one more in the castle, but there was no problem with letting this one sit, permanently if need be. Because that destination was the Peninsula of Power!

FrWOLFs FROST is identical to CREMATE in power, just in the ice element instead. There is also no NPC that uses one, so I may as well grab it now because I can! CREMATE blasted the dogs away. My winning run was pretty sick: two of them survived, so it was down to turn order. One moved...and missed! Shanoa finished them off from there and got her shiny new spell.


That nearly got her another level. And on the way back, she hit 1 to the next level exactly. With that, I couldn't help but do a bit of flexing by gaining that level from the second NPC trainer in the Elf Castle. He carried a MANTICOR. These battles always give 1GP and 1XP.


I normally hesitate to call anything useless. Even things like FEAR have their purpose in weird variants. But STINGER really pushes the line. It targets all enemies and inflicts poison. In NES FF1, poison damage is not percentage-based. It instead deals 2 damage per turn. This spell is also L3! This is absolutely not worth it! I didn't even write its HP down, I think it was eighty something?

One more was available, in the Northwest Castle. It was the first of the Dragon Sages, just a flashy title for the ones who carry around dragons. Unlike some of the previous enemies, this one is indeed an unnerfed Frost D: as far as I can tell, it had 200HP exactly the same. Taking on an enemy from the midgame was going to be tricky. But I had a plan for this one.


They are not immune to the status element. Once I landed a GAZE, that was it. A few swings brought it down. And better yet, Shanoa learned its spell on the first try!

If you were worrying that Blue Magic is simply worse versions of Black Magic, let BLIZZARD ease your fears. It is L4 and has a base power of 100! ICE2 only has 80. This is a fantastic spell when the enemies don't resist it.

That was everything I could do before the Marsh Cave except maybe grind a bit more for it if I wanted. I was going to anyway for the Earth Cave just to help against the legions of the damned in there, and I'd be leveling on the Peninsula. But I decided I'd try to make it through before that. I got Shanoa to level 11 since she was close enough to it, and went in.

The first go was one of the strangest Marsh Caves I've ever had. I ran into four BONE/CRAWL groups, and Shanoa survived three of them (including once when the CRAWL got to attack). The last one finally got her, unfortunately. The second attempt ended at the WIZARDs. The third somehow died to spiders and slimes. I was fighting throughout the cave, because this was a character who could get stuff done.


The strategy against the WIZARDs was to use BLIZZARD. They may resist the ice element, but it's strong enough to take chunks out of them anyway, potentially enough to do it in two blasts.

The way out was very quiet. I was actually hoping to encounter some stunning undead: this was one character where I wasn't as worried about them. If Shanoa went first, she would simply end them with CREMATE. But it was all GARGOYLEs and other stuff that were easy to beat. Some finally did appear on B1, but it was on a chance to strike first. I went for the guaranteed RUN instead of the guaranteed kill for some reason.


ASTOS one-shot Shanoa the first go at the battle. She one-shot him the second time around. Fair is fair.

I didn't bother going back to the Marsh Cave for the Silver Bracelet. Sometimes I'll try if the character needs the money or in party setups, but that Silver Sword was otherwise the last piece of equipment that Shanoa needed to spend money on. She wasn't going to be buying her magic, just items and the BOTTLE.


Melmond had two new NPC trainers: one with a PERILISK and one with a SAURIA. They appeared to have standard stats. Both used an instant kill move that were the remaining L4 spells: SQUINT and GLANCE respectively. The former is death-elemental KO, the latter is stone-elemental petrify. After a lot of resets to resist the instant death, I got the first of these then used it after more resets to get the second. Note that in FF1, Poison and Stone were one and the same. They've been disentangled in FFR, but this only affects two enemies: CARBUNCLE (weak to death and not poison) and COCTRICE (resists stone but not poison). So, basically irrelevant.

If it's between the two, GLANCE is preferred due to its +5 accuracy bonus. And uh, it's actually always going to be GLANCE: almost everything that resists one resists the other. The things that only SQUINT works on are COCTRICE, Frost D, WIZARD, and both KARYs.


Something entirely new was waiting for me in Crescent Lake. ZoneEATER cast SWIRL, a spell that was originally non-elemental and exclusive to CHAOS. In FFR, it has the new water element and the same 128 base power. It was weak to the time element, which I had no means to exploit. So instead, I just one-shot it with GLANCE.


Oh, wow! I wasn't expecting that! There's another NPC trainer in Crescent who owns a PHANTOM. Its GLARE is yet another instant death attack, this one in the time element. In the original game, it existed solely to be resisted by CHAOS: nothing else did. A small handful of extra ones in FFR also do, but they're class exclusive. You can one shot anything else as long as you beat a magic defense roll. I was just fooling around trying to beat it with CREMATE and fully expecting to demonstrate the infamous "Needs more data" message that tells you when you fail the ability learn. But Shanoa learned it. She doesn't actually have the spell charges to cast it yet because it's L6, but it's there for when she does.


One advantage of playing this character is that I could actually do better than usual down here. Most classes would have to hit RUN at the sight of the undead hordes, COCTRICEs, etc. Shanoa could instead attack them. CREMATE wiped out the zombie type enemies (IMAGEs occasionally survived), BLIZZARD beat the COCTRICEs. I even had SWIRL to wash away WIZARDs! This was better than risking a run attempt that might not even work.

It's still the Earth Cave though, so it still took multiple attempts to get through. Turn order is still a fickle thing. And the first time I reached the VAMPIRE, he DAZZLEd and killed Shanoa on the spot.


Ah, here's that horrendous piece of game design. On my winning run no less! VAMPIRE hit Shanoa with DAZZLE, which she resisted before killing him. Then there it is, no DAZZLE for her. The next opportunity to learn it would be in Mirage Tower. At least it's no big loss: it's a L6 spell, status-elemental with +32 accuracy. It's just a stronger GAZE, and still not as good as HOLD (and it's higher level).

After making it back, I went and got the ROD after refreshing. There was a big one waiting in the Titan's Tunnel behind the eponymous monster!


JIMERA uses an ability called STONE. This was originally known as POISON on the NES version, and was renamed to not be identical to the Gas D's infamous breath attack. It hits all enemies at +5 accuracy and attempts to inflict petrify on them! And with the improved spell accuracy, it has a strong chance of working indeed. This spell is absurd, and it's L5! If you know when to employ it, it's one of the best spells in the Blue Mage's arsenal.

Why 1HP, by the way? Should've mentioned it earlier, but if you die to an NPC monster, you don't game over. You just get booted back to the map with everyone at 1HP. JIMERA could be GLAREd at, but it was also weak to SWIRL. I had to do this a couple of times because of an unexpected and suboptimal level-up. One time after, I did get the failed to learn message. Keep in mind that Shanoa was level 16 here, having long since started to learn L5 spells. The odds of learning a spell are completely opaque, by the way.

So it was back into the Earth Cave after gaining level 17 and making sure it was a good one. My first attempt that made it down to B4 was a weird mirror of my first attempt at the Marsh Cave. This time, it was four COCTRICE groups that showed up. Three were frozen to death until the fourth finally got her.


I took this shot a little later. This guy is massive bait, and who I was alluding to earlier when I said most of the NPCs with monsters were in sensible locations. There's a reason why I showed Shanoa being one-shot by the ZoneEATER's SWIRL: BLAZE has the same 128 power. Remember, they move first in an ambush, so you can't set up AFIR to protect against this in a party setting, which will end up way in the hole on healing. And you may just fail to learn it, because of wonderful game design!

There is a VERY good reason why you don't have to put up with this in any* official game in the series. I know Ozmo loves his FF11, but no. This is one piece of game design that should've stayed there.


And for a solo, it meant spending more time on B4 than necessary. He is not worth it! Especially when I can just kill LICH instantly with GLARE! I was actually surprised at how quickly the Earth Cave cooperated here. My second attempt that made it to B4 made it through, fourth or fifth overall. Not going to complain!

Well, Blue Mage has been doing all right for itself so far. Level 17 is fairly low for a solo at this point. But of course I'm going to get more levels for the Ice Cave, and for spellcasting/learning purposes.

First leg of the game down. Click over to see what's next.

Next | Index

*FFT. Certain high-level magic can be learned Blue Mage style if an enemy caster hits you with it, but you can of course learn it naturally. But Ultima and Zodiac, which are exclusive to this, are guaranteed learns. So it's fine there. Not fine here!

Let's take a look at the man in black's stats to start out with. Lowish AGI and WIL comparatively, but good STR, VIT, and WIS - some of which is boosted by equipment. He had all of the damaging black spells except for Flare and Meteor, which he would be learning. As for equipment, he came in with a full set of Genji Gear and a Midnight Sword: 115 power and 75% hit, and boosted WIS by 3. He could use other swords beside Dark ones. Speaking of, the Deathbringer was off-limits even though the others could be used.


Besides Black Magic, Golbez has two commands. The first of these is Dark(Wave), the same as Dark Knight Cecil's. At this point, it wasn't that great. The other is Pressure, which attempts to inflict paralysis on all enemies. Earlier versions of the hack apparently gave him Taunt, another one of his abilities from The After Years, but the hack maker felt it was underwhelming, so it was replaced with Dark.


I defeated Odin without incident. But that's just the problem with this hack. Golbez only becomes playable at the very end. I mean, it was the most sensible spot for it if not the only sensible one. But still, I was only going to get to play with him for the final dungeon.


I picked up the Excalibur and found this Sylph selling items. CallShop was a new one. It allowed me to buy X-Potions, HiEthers, Elixirs, Cottages, Whistles, Sirens, CallShops, or Artemis Arrows at will. Supposedly there's Perseus Arrows in the game, but I never ran into them. They're supposedly in "Eblan Items", wherever that is. Probably some weird spot I never checked.


During the trip down the Subterrane, I acquired various pieces of Ebony equipment for Golbez. The gauntlets resist the three basic elements and gives +5 to STR, AGI, and WIS as well as resisting attacks from zombies. The armor resists poison, gives +5 to WIS and WIL, and resists spirits and zombies. The helmet also resists the three basic elements and gives +3 to WIS and WIL. And the shield? +3 to WIS/WIL, resists blind, mute, pig, mini, frog, and berserk.


The Ebony Sword was guarded by the White Dragon, replacing the Murasame. I thought he might be able to do heavy damage to the boss - it absorbs Holy and is therefore weak to Dark because of a quirk in FF4's coding; much like Fire and Ice, except only on the SNES version. But turns out that Golbez' dark swords aren't dark-elemental.


There was a new boss to fight. The Shadow Dragon was in a random chest guarding the Dragoon Lance. All it ever did was Demolish, so I could simply outrace it with Phoenix Downs. The formerly rare weapon helped against some of the dragons down here. The Dragon Whip was also in a different chest.


A Hummingway near the save point allowed for a quick return to the Lunar Whale. There was also a shop near Wyvern.


I beat Plague with the timer on 00. It strangely dropped a DarkMttr item. I could use these in battle, but they otherwise had just as little effect as they did in the original game.


Lunarsaurs only go berserk if you fight them, so I just used magic and jump attacks.


Finally, I got one of these. The hack changes these to be the uncommon and rare drops as well, so it's not that ridiculous to get anymore. Unfortunately, it was also nerfed and doesn't give as much defense. It's also worth noting Pink Puffs can be dangerous, but the hack lets you gain immunity to their berserking, which helps. Oh yes, and don't try to stock up. No matter how many tails you have, the guy takes them all and only gives you one Adamant Armor.

With Golbez and Cecil having excellent armor, they were lower priority. So I decided to give it to Rosa. Making your healer tankier is always better. I passed the Minerva to Rydia in turn. In this hack, it gives +15 to all stats, resists paralyze, and gives resistance to some enemies. The most important thing about the Adamant? Don't go back on your choice. Because of more SNES bugs, the elemental resistances turn into weaknesses after it's removed. In turn, I gave her Ribbon to Kain instead.

There was also an Artemis Bow available for claiming. More rare stuff made not so rare.


Uh oh. This is definitely not Ogopogo.


This was the Darkside. It had 65535 HP at least (might've regenerated) and cast a barrage of high-powered magic. Golbez couldn't do more than 1 point of damage with his physical attacks. He'd learned Flare though, so I had him use that. This was legitimately more dangerous than Zeromus, sheesh.


I only barely won: even with Adamant, Rosa got wiped out by a Flare for over 6000 damage. Rydia was the last one standing. She moved and used Bahamut, finishing it off.


Golbez's memories completely return after the battle, and whatever this is talks to him before giving him the Dark Eternal sword. Simply called Eternal in the menu, it had high stats and that's about it.


Ogopogo was instead moved to the second crystal floor, guarding a second Minerva. If I knew that was there, I would've given the Adamant to Golbez instead.


Edge gets to use Meteor. Instead, he gets mocked for being a mere human of the Blue Planet.


One change in the revival sequence: you get different things rather than just energy from the various characters. Unfortunately despite the text, Golbez can't use the Crystal.


There was really nothing to Big Z. Golbez and Rydia nuke him, Cecil attacks, Kain jumps, Rosa heals. His Big Bangs kept getting nerfed by the spells due to another quirk.


Smooth clean win.

Rydia insults Edge again after with the usual line. Inconsistent writing or tsundereshit. You be the judge. It still ends with Golbez deciding to go with Fusoya, feeling he cannot return to the planet. And the rest of the ending is the same.

Well. What's my verdict here? It was okay. I wouldn't call this hack incredible, but it's not bad either. That RydiaxEdge stuff was annoying, but most of the rest of the rewrites were fine. Really, this is sort of a problem with FF4's plot structure not being conducive to letting Golbez join at any point except the last minute. You'd have to like, rewrite it entirely for him to break out early and them have Zemus or someone become the active threat instead for him to be around sooner, or have used the GBA version so there's a postgame instead.

Very mixed feelings about the balance changes. Personally feel they shouldn't have been a part of the hack, but at least they didn't go out of control hard mode and weren't too noticeable unless you were combing the data like I was. Some of it was definitely questionable in any case, like how Shadow summon is technically a worse Death. That said, I liked the new equipment and making it so there are no rare drop items. Definitely the worst part of FF4, especially given how few of them are worth it. Well, mostly: there's a new one, unless I didn't find the fixed locations. Onion Sword drops from Breath and Mind (aka the last room of the game before the final boss) at slots rare/ultra rare. It has 200 power, boosts all stats by 10, casts Pyro when used as an item, and can only be used by Decil (?!), Pecil, Kain, and Golbez. Not too big a difference maker.

All in all, I was kind of underwhelmed here. But hey, wanted to do this forever, and I finished it. Hopefully, it was an entertaining enough read!

Index

Decided I was overdue on playing this FF4 hack: Playable Golbez. This hack makes, among other modifications, a few story edits here and there culminating with letting you play as the man in black himself at the very end of it. I needed something chill the day I started it anyway. (And then I mostly spent time on something that will only be relevant later)


Not too sure about these text changes so far from the opening scene. They aren't terrible, this being the botttom rung, but they could be worse I guess. There were also some map changes; one I noticed was beds being in the Baron prison cells. Just flavor so far.

Like most hacks of the SNES version, commands like Decil's Dark Wave were available. Although there were elements of FF2us in there; namely, keeping simple Remedys as a catch-all healing item, though they were way more expensive.


Speaking of expensive, I did the infamous Mist Clip, picking up a Dancing Dagger by selling an X-Potion in town as well as getting the good equipment from Rydia's house. Because I felt like it.


I first started to notice changes when making my way through the watery pass. First, Rydia actually learned more than the three White Magic spells she did in vanilla. I already knew these would still go away later, though. Tellah also had more spells to start with: Scan/SIlence/Cure1 on White, and Poison/Drain/Toad/Sleep on Black.


More interestingly was Tellah's Guess/Recall. In the vanilla game, this is sad: 15% each of a basic tier 1 spell or toad, 5% each of Break, Bio, Tornado, or Death (which can be amusingly multicast even if the original spell doesn't), and 20% of nothing. 3D improved it to focus on elemental magic (and still 31% of Toad) and even let him pull rare spells out of it, keeping it after Ordeals. Here? I peeked into the editor to see what was up. 20% each of Slow, Hold, or Pig. 5% each of a tier 2 spell. 15% for Break, 10% for Death. It doesn't seem able to fail. Still gimmicky, but nice to gamble on.


There was also the first new instances of new equipment. Believe it or not, vanilla FF4 does not have a basic dagger weapon. This hack added it. Even if I didn't Mist Clip, I wouldn't use this. More amusingly was the Hades Shield. Decil infamously doesn't get a shield upgrade in the Watery Pass compared to getting one for all his other equipment pieces. He does here.

Octomammoth is never a big deal, and was less so with Dancing Dagger. I tried to get a Bolt2 out of Guess, but Tellah just used Slow followed by ineffectual spells. Stupid FF4 not letting you status bosses (except Slow)


Oh, neat. I always thought it was kind of absurd everyone died in Damcyan. There were significantly more survivors in the hack, one soldier saying that the King ordered them to stand down so they'd be spared. I like this change. Also, hey! Just handing you one of the summoning items! These are some of the game's ultra rare drops and really are not worth the trouble for the effort you need to get them. For example, Goblin is weaker than Chocobo. Would this hack change that?

A quick look showed it was 8MP to Chocobo's 4MP. Poking the data showed it had 6 power instead of 4 and the same casting time.


Anna is still among the dead though. Edward's Song had no changes. Antlion Cave was also very similar. With Goblin and Dancing Dagger doing around 400 damage each, Antlion fell easily.


Mt. Hobs had a treasure trove to be picked up. First was the Bomb spell, another one of Rydia's rare summons. It deals damage based off her HP. Then there was the Air Knife. Wind element aside, this was very weak and not worth using, especially because of the third weapon: the Silver Harp. Its power put it just below the level of strength of the illegal Dancing Dagger! It seemed to be both fire and holy elemental. On top of that, it was effective on the same undead enemies all Silver weapons in the vanilla game were. Suddenly, Edward was my best damage dealer!

Speaking of, Rosa was not. I thought here damage on Cocatrices felt low, so I checked and the wind element was indeed removed from arrows. Wind instead seems to be the domain of spears. I'm not sure what to think about that change. It's bad, but why?


Big change in Fabul: I haven't been bringing up shops much, but they have been changing. Here though, the Demon dark knight armor was removed and put in Fabul's treasure rooms instead. Good thing I went to look instead of directly into the gauntlet.


Oh yeah, neat change: Red Mages are in! They would appear scattered around various parts of the game moving forward. Also scholars were in FF4 to begin with, but there were more of them too.


Really? This isn't the luck I wanted in my life, game. I normally wouldn't be able to get this here, but the hack lets these items drop from anything. Said gauntlet was otherwise vanilla. After all that, I could pick up the Cocatrice summon from the treasure room in the throne room. Though Rydia wouldn't be able to use it.

Tiny change in Mysidia: the now Red Mage at the entrance hits Cecil with Mini instead of Toad.

Palom's Bluff returned. And Porom's Tears was modeled after the PSP version, inflicting mass confusion instead of effectively doing nothing.


There was another new knife heading up Mt. Ordeals, but that wasn't important. Scarmiglione was the same as always. But there was a pretty big change with Tellah: contrasted with before, now he was missing some spells! In the original game, he only misses out on Holy, Quake, Flare, and Death (despite the fact that he can Recall Death in the original). The hack did give him Death here, but removed access to tier 3 elemental spells and Tornado as well. He also lost access to Cure4 and Life2. Interesting rebalancing that was going to make the game more difficult.

The Paladin equipment already was questionable in vanilla, but the hack nerfed it while keeping it the same price. As an example, Paladin Armor gives 11 defense in vanilla, 8 defense in the hack. It was already preferable to use the Gaia Gear or Karate Gi which give evasion and stat buffs, but this just makes the decision even more of a no-brainer. Still got the shield since it's cheap and there's nothing else to fill the slot.


Oh, that's a bug all right. Pretty sure this didn't happen in vanilla, either. Looks pretty sick at least, especially compared to his ugly original sprite. Speaking of bugs, there was another one the hack introduced: you could no longer choose your target with Slow. Not even sure how this happened: all the hack seemed to do in the data was change it from split to single target.


Wow, speaking of the gi, it went way up in price in this hack. Still bought Yang one. Probably good balancing, but also a little unneeded? It's like this hack is making a half-hearted effort to do that while also making things easier. I think I prefer that to going all in and ruining things, at least.

Nothing to note in the Old Waterway until the Ancient Sword. Somewhat infamous in the vanilla game, it's weaker than the Legend Sword Pecil starts with. It can inflict Curse on a hit, but 1) it's questionable, 2) it comes at the end of a dungeon and bosses can't suffer it, 3) the next dungeon bans swords. EasyType actually outright replaces it with the Coral Sword, which shreds Cagnazzo. No luck here, it maintained its lower accuracy, so I still stuck with the Legend Sword.


Ha, I see what the hack creator did there. Wrong twin saying it, but still, much more convincing line. I definitely noticed Tellah's missing spealls against the two Baron Castle bosses. Usually, Cagnazzo could be near instantly destroyed. It was a much slower fight with Bolt3/Ice3, but I wouldn't say more difficult: still had more than enough healing to deal with it.

More minor changes: the Black Mage in the tower instead uses Toad instead of Pig. More sensible to use different Black Magic I guess? Also I haven't been mentioning it, but a lot more characters call Cecil by name. Scarmiglione and this little girl in particular.

Now, in Troia came the first major story change. So far, everything had just been text alterations that simply boiled down to rewriting things. Cid's atrocious accent aside, it simply existed - it was not bad fanfic material, but a few lines aside on both sides it never stood out either. Not anymore.


Edward still wants to fight with Cecil. Instead of giving a Twin Harp/Whisperweed, he uses a special technique and projects a shadow of himself with the Twin Harp, effectively rejoining the party! The bad news is, the hacker either didn't know about the shadow party (how SNES works with characters who leave and rejoin), couldn't find a way to implement it (Unprecedented Crisis does and it uses the same tool), or intentionally made him rejoin at level 5. He points this out in the text, saying that he might be rusty.


I took him with me to Eblan to gain at least a few levels instead of rushing directly into things. If you ever have problems going here early in any version of the game, by the way? Just have Tellah multi-cast Break. If he gets it off, everything dies.

Two changes I noticed along the way: Cid had the Throw command. Edge never joins the team, so I guess this makes up for it. And instead of the Blood Lance, a Killer Bow was in the castle. This would be nice for the Magnetic Cave.


I could buy a Wrench in Agart. No one could equip this, however. I assumed it was a flavorful Shuriken change to go with Cid's new ability to Throw, and didn't buy it because it was 5000 gil a shot.


Two new weapons were in the Magnetic Cave. The Nocturne Harp was stronger than the currently unusable Silver and could poison. The Mirage Staff itemcasts Blink. Neat.


I switched Edward back to the Silver Harp for the Dark Elf fight to take advantage of Holy weakness. Result: he was on par with Cid and Yang. Poor Tellah, though. With his tier 3 spells and Tornado cut off, he couldn't do more than 1 damage to the boss. I instead had him use Slow. Didn't take long.


Zot was pretty vanilla. Surprisingly, a couple enemies dropped Sirens and I even got a Dark Sword. Also, Edward "leaves" the party. With Cid's Throw ability, I was able to sneak in some extra damage against Barbarricia while she was spinning.

This has been a hack all right so far. It's a ways off until the main draw of things, but it's good to see there's stuff to tide things over in the meantime. So check back later for the next part.

Next | Index

Last time, Cecil and company managed to reach Baron without their ship being attacked at sea. They defeated the fake, drowned king Cagnazzo in time to save Baigan, but due to an airship shortage, had to go through the Misty Mountains to reach Troia, defeated the blighted despot Scarmiglione on the way there. There, Golbez attacked and defeated them, only for Tellah to attack and defeat him. The old Sage survived the casting of Meteo, in this history.

So now what do we do? The hack gives no hint of this. Go to the Magnetic Cave and try to protect the crystal by hiding it there, similar to The After Years? Nope. We're not allowed into the Magnetic Cave, with the game pushing us back for no discernible reason open entry. Do we go to Mysidia and climb Mt. Ordeals to become a paladin? Nope, the latter is blocked by fire, and the former Cecil refuses to enter out of shame. Agart? Mythril Town? All you'll find there are places to shop.


No, instead you have to go to Eblan. Here, you meet up with Edge, and an out-of-character Rubicante. In this hack, he really did experiment on Edge's parents, instead of it being Lugae and Rubicante being disgusted with that. This is where the hack starts to diverge from "alternate history" into "reimagining", and this is the first of many questionable changes for the sake of being changed that some ROMhacks have a bad habit of doing. Luckily, I like ROMhack deconstruction about as much as alternate history, so here we go.


As for Edge himself, he lost his unique Ninja magic for Black Magic with an elemental focus, including Tornado which now does Wind damage. Due to the makeup of your team at the moment and the loss of Boomerangs as a weapon type, that's what he's most useful with in the now enemy-laden castle - though Tornado is the only useful one, since the only others are the level 1 elemental spells and Fire2. As a random note, don't quite understand how, but Ninja is coded in an interesting way to replace a Black Magic command set for him specifically.

There are still some trapped chests, but only lone Stalemen are in these, which Cid can shred. They guard various pieces of Flame equipment. Finally, the random encounters around the castle itself are a bit weaker, being from Troia's set instead of Eblan


Rubicante is in the basement. I equipped the Flame Shield and Flame Armor on Cecil and Cid respectively - they protect against fire in this hack instead of ice. The ones in the front row attack, Rydia summons Shiva if the cloak is open (2000+ of his 10000HP! Which is a bit less because of a death message) and Bomb if not, and Edge is pretty much an item bot.

I make use of a neat trick here: remember how in my Solo Rosa challenge, I mentioned that Rubicante will revive your whole party if you hit him with fire? It works that way in this hack too, and I took advantage of this when people went down. All in all, it wasn't a difficult fight. He's implied to retreat after being defeated.

############

I promised a hack that drastically went down the drain in quality, and so I shall deliver.


So beyond Rubicante is the Cave of the Eblan's living quarters floor. Yang leaves you in order to lead the armies of Eblan. The enemies in here are from the same part of the game as they would ordinarily be, and are a bit painful. Which makes you wonder why he replaced them on the overworld and not here. Nothing really of note in the shops, aside from Shruikens being 100GP apiece. I pick up a good stock of them for Edge's use.


So you go through, and then you end up in the enemy stronghold: the Tower of Zot. Which is somehow the Tower of Babil in this complete with the Babil music, but it has the same enemies as Zot. Enemies that are weaker than the ones in the cave leading there. Why he felt it necessary to do this fusion, I have no idea. Rydia learned Sylph during this excrusion, but the treasure really wasn't much to talk about.


The Magus Sisters weren't hard at all. They only got a chance to get off a single Delta Attack, between Cecil/Cid's attacks, Rydia's Bomb summon, and Edge throwing Shruikens, before Cindy kicked it. Sandy did throw out a Comet, but Mindy and her fell shortly thereafter.


In this hack, instead of there being mind control, Kain is just pretending to be loyal to Golbez. This bugs me in a bit of a weird way, though I'm not sure why


Barbariccia is up next. Somehow, Rosa tricked her into untying her, overpowered her, and tied her down in her place. Cecil fails to notice until he's untied Barbariccia, because I guess all blondes look the same, and so Kain teams up with us to take her down. She was an easy fight. In addition to Kain's jumping, Edge's throwing as in my solo challenge with him could pierce through and deal damage. Rydia's Sylph is Wind-elemental, and also worked to deal with her effectively.


Hey, stupid ROMhacker! When you write dialogue like this in an attempt at humor, get your facts straight! There's two moons in the sky in the world of FF4! Faulty dialogue - or more commonly, reference-laden, especially just for the sake of making a reference - is one of my biggest pet peeves with ROMhacks. In less crazy news, apparently the tower does leads to the moon, rather than summoning a giant robot or anything. But yeah, I was watching a friend play this before I got here, and my exact reaction was

[06/29][00:50:17] "The moon. As in, the one in the sky."
[06/29][00:50:30] bluntness aside, THERE'S TWO OF THEM :^)


All right, so we go back down. To the floor where you entered, there was a locked door. You can enter it with the Tower Key, and it leads to a Crystal Room. By the way, it's possible to encounter enemies from the second version of vanilla Babil in the brief walk between there and the crystal room. I got a preemptive here, so it wasn't that big a deal, though.


And suddenly, Rosa? This scene has some of the strangest original dialogue so far, not counting any forced references. Rosa goes around greeting everyone; kissing Cecil, saying hi to Cid who wants her to call him Grandpa for some reason, thanking Kain for being a spy, acting motherly to Rydia, meeting Edge, and generally acting cutesy. Also, I guess how she did it was she wooed Barbariccia into playing some hardcore BDSM but then ran off, the same Barbariccia who's implied to want Kain, but okay.

We get ready to go to the one and only moon by placing the Crystals on their respective altars, when suddenly, it's not working! What could be missing? Rydia guesses Heart, and I reach through the internet and strangle the ROMhacker for that stupid reference. Golbez reveals the second set of Crystals and the Underworld, and I guess in an act of being too demonstrative, drops us in a trapdoor to it. We somehow lose Rydia during this, ending up at the base of the Tower of Babil.


We can't go in there because Kain stops us, but we can go to the Dwarves' Castle, where Palom and Porom somehow ended up in after casting Warp on the ship earlier. The Dwarves offer them as help, and for once, the ROMhacker does something good with Cecil's reaction to them being Mysidian. Cid leaves us to help upgrade the tanks, and also a random airship lying around. It's red, and it's from the dwarves, so the twins come up with the name the Red Dwarf. So in the course of a few dungeons, our entire party save Cecil has been replaced.


So Porom is an interesting character. She can strangely equip Hammers now, and needs one to use her new ability, Bonk! It has a 25% chance each of casting Arise, Haste, Blink, or Esuna. While of questionable use, it's at least leagues better than the original Cry. Her defenses are still low, as is her attack multiplier, so this is more of a cute gimmick than something you can really rely on. They're also two handed, so you'll give up an armlet if you use it.

Palom has been given his Bluff command back, renamed Focus. Unlike his sister, he has nothing drastically special equipment-wise. So he has to do what Black Mages do best instead. Both of the twins suffer from Edge syndrome - they come at a much lower level than the rest of your party would normally be at.


With the Airship, you now you get a choice: the Feymarch, Bahamut's Lagoon (GET IT??? :D :D :D) - which replaces the Sylph Cave, or the Ice Mines - which replaces the Sealed Cave. This is where the game starts to get a bit more open-ended, ridiculously hard, and also quite hilarious in the wrong way. Each of these has a crystal, and props for actually giving them locations which vanilla and even The After Years is noticeably evasive on; they likely just ran out of time and never bothered to explain it. They house the Shadow, Holy, and Ice Crystals respectively, with the Dwarves' Castle having the Bolt one.

As for easily-accessible shopping, the castle doesn't have much of anything. Some of the stuff in Tomra is ridiculously expensive. I decide to skip out on most of it aside from grabbing some Ice Arrows for Rosa, due to a shortage of money and hoping I'll be getting even better stuff in the various dungeons.


Also, as it turns out, King Santos of Tomra is literally Santa Claus. Dwarves say Lali-Ho. He says Ho-ho-ho. Since when does Santa live in the geographical equivalent of Hell?!


I decide on the Feymarch first, to check out that last shopping locale. And it is brutal. You have no access to Float, and you're fully expected to cope with it by buying a billion healing items, soldiering through, and opening the menu every few steps over the damage tiles under penalty of having to run from random encounters. That are very capable of one-shotting some of your party members, because your equipment and levels aren't anywhere near what's practical for these enemies. Having to catch up the twins doesn't help this much, either...


I can cope, though. And the best part about coming here is, I get this thing from a trapped chest. The five Warriors in guarding it weren't a big deal, and fell to DarkWaves and Tornados. Here's Cecil's stats with it on. Though it has a penalty of -5 to every stat, it is extremely powerful and quite accurate.


Rydia takes Yang's role of being saved by the Sylphs, who have relocated here due to their cave being taken over by a reference. The boss, who attacks after you get the Shadow Crystal...


Not only is it a palette swap of Scarmiglione, it's the exact same fight! There's a bunch of Zombies, there's him in the back, he counters every time you hit him (with Stop), and he orders the goons to attack with RedFeast. Except they are way too powerful and leave my party completely crippled after just one of them. Apparently, these repeats may be in-part due to engine limitations making it difficult to insert new AI routines...but still.

I can't seem to kill him before he can get it off, and when I do kill him to stop those attacks, I still have to deal with the vicious Reapers. They have a ridiculous 6000HP, which Demi can at least cut into, but their physicals alone hit hard. So I have no choice but to turn back and leave Ciriatto for later.


The Lagoon's enemies are somewhat more manageable. Most interesting was a trapped chest with this guy in it. He actually was kinda like a mashup between FF1 Astos and his appearance in this game. He opened with a Fire2/Lit2/Ice2 combo, and would throw out Death and a party-wide Slow as part of his script. While I didn't have the equipment from later on in the cave that would deal insane damage to him, this wasn't too difficult an encounter. Each Shruiken throw did 1000 damage in particular.


The Avenger was the prize from the Wizard fight, but also in the same room of six was this thing. The Mystic Hammer was enough that Porom could actually do semirespectable damage when fighting in the front row. Specifically, it's extremely effective on mechs and mages - which included the ToadLady enemies and her TinyToads (speaking of, Cecil's and the twins' equipment helped stave off that and the Malboro's Breath). It can randomly silence on a hit, and gives a +15 to Wisdom and Will. The Rune Bow also was highly effective.


Completing a trifect was the Mage Masher, guarded by this ugly-looking thing. Flame Sword, Fire Arrows, and Fire2 took care of it quite handily.


A Rubicante palette swap who goes by Draghinazzo was the boss here. He even restores your health. He claims to be a prophet for Bahamut, but a slip of the tongue and we get to fight him.


He hits like a goddamned truck, but then again, so does Cecil with the Avenger. It seems the sword is Dark-elemental. Because of it, this one didn't last too long. He opened with Holy to flatten someone, then closed his cloak and used Blink. Had Edge and Palom attack to disperse it. His only other real move was a double physical combo concentrated on Porom. If I had Bio on Palom, this would've been a total stomp.

The Black Shirt and White Shirt were in the chests behind him. They were an interesting choice. The Angel Robes the twins had on do give +5 to Wisdom and Will (as well as Vitality), resisting Mute, Pig, and Toad. The others give +15 to their respective stat, and the White Robe resists the basic three elements. Seems situational.


I went to the Ice Mines next. It is literally the Ice Cave from FF1 in layout. Good creativity. The encounters here seem to be easiest of the trio, but their payout and the encounter rate are both low.


There was another Wizard-in-a-box here. It took 3184 from Edge, 2322 from Porom, then flopped over dead. The Chaos Blade was the reward from this, another Dark Swrod for Cecil, but the Blood Sword was coming out stronger even factoring in the stat drop.


Interestingly enough, the same Warp trick as would work in FF1 to get to your destination works here, though I explored the lower floors anyway. There was a huge cache of gold down there and an IceBrand.


Sheesh, now he's even recycling dialogue and circumstances on the palette swaps. Or making fun of himself/engine limitations.


The latest palette swap, Alichino, was a straightforward affair. His Ice3s hurt, but were not really lethal. When he raised the ice (with another stupid reference), he did throw up Reflect, but it didn't stop Cecil's Flamesword or the two Fire Arrows Rosa had on her, both of which could do over 1000 each. Despite getting owned by the Reflect, this one was a simple affair. And Palom and Porom find the real king alive and well in the ice after the battle.


Now for this guy proper. A couple of Yaguu Darkness and some extra attacks did indeed kill him before he could order the RedFeast brigade. I decided to get a few more levels beforehand, on seeing what was waiting when testing Bio for curiousity purposes later. And holy crap, Harm did not disappoint. Despite this, it was still better to do this than to save the Yaguus for later.


And naturally you fight undead Ciriatto too. He opens by telling you to hear the song of the fallen angel, uses Angel song on you, and reduces everyone to critical HP. Luckily, Porom had Cure3, but she was still my primary damage dealer with Harm, making this really awkward. Rosa's Holy Arrows did 1600. The first time, I got smacked by DarkWave and killed off from there. The second time, I prepared for it.


With a few Palom Focused Fire2s (for lack of anything better, he wasn't weak to it), thrown Shruiken or Edge attacks, and healing potions when needed, I got the kill. He had 16000 HP total.


So back to the Castle. I do a bit of inventory management, and unequip Rosa because she leaves. Cid upgraded the tanks, and even used the Bolt Crystal to generate an anti-Warp field. But then the Red Wings attack, Cid's fortification is put to the test, and Rosa leaves to help for some reason. Now, it's known that FF4 actually was indeed going to have two sets of archfiends. Calcabrina is one of the remnants of this, named after one of the Malebranche in Dante's Inferno much like the rest of them and the archfiends here. Is it finally time for its sort-of official promotion?!


Of course not! Meet Malacoda of the Thunder. She'll be able to bypass the electric barrier stopping Golbez from just Warping in and taking the Crystal. Now see? In-universe references are the kind of thing you should go with.


Meanwhile, we still do need to deal with those...that one doll. It's ridiculously easy. Palom's Bio and Porom's regular attacks could do over 2000 damage. It has 10000HP, and accomplished nothing significant before falling to pieces. It even had its HP run out.


Then Golbez shows up, beats us down in a cutscene because he's a cheater, takes the three Crystals we garthered, only to fall prey to his only other weakness besides Meteo: getting literally stabbed in the back by Kain! Malacoda shows up, and now we have to fight her.
.

As with the last three, this is the same deal as with her palette swap. She goes into a spin, Kain needs to Jump on her to get her out of it. This was really annoying at first, because she used Magnet to Stop him. She also hit Porom with it, which was dangerous and forced me to heal with HiPotions with everyone else, and Palom, who had been Focusing to power up his Ice2s while waiting on Kain. It seemed she had an Ice weakness.

I reset and got Kain a Blizzard Lance, but it didn't contribute anything other than heightened offense - his Thunder Spear was perfectly capable of hitting her due to a Wind weakness from her floating (weaknesses override absorption when it comes to physical hits). After a while of fighting, her 30000HP was all gone.


So status report? Golbez has 7/8 crystals, but it's useless without the last one we hold. Because Cid is an engineer and Rosa is a fucking badass and heavily damaged their airships with nothing more than her bow and sharpshooting skills, they get to lead the frontal assault on the tower. Meanwhile, everyone else will enter, using Kain's knowledge of the tower's layout, Edge's Ninja skills, Palom and Porom's magic, and Cecil's pretty face, and take back the rest of them!

Next | Index

The questions before diving into the past were this: did I want to go to 50 with this promoted character? I absolutely would for unpromoted. And second, which SAMPLE to take? It didn't take me long to settle on underwater. PRESSURE would be excellent insurance on KARY and KRAKEN, and the snakelady was still weak to water. BUBBLE CURTAIN would be fantastic on LICH, TIAMAT, and CHAOS. Finally, the water floor aside, there wasn't a lot that resisted it. As for levels, I decided no, let's do it at 41 (which I reached for the next strong HP up) and see what happens.


Look at this awful damage. Just look at it! This is why artificial terrain is bad. You could legitimately get just as much damage out of FIR2 or something. It's like CLOSE IN has a much lower multiplier than other abilities. It was thankfully sufficient on some of the water floor enemies (which had the potential to be the biggest threat), but against these menaces and their 200 magic defense? Yeah, it was bad. I just had to hope I didn't run into them.

LICH got off NUKE before I could BUBBLE CURTAIN. Wasn't too tough to kill before the second one at least, but that did not bode well. I was down to half my heal potions before the midway point. Never a good sign.


I actually bumped into the 3/64 slot on the fire floor. They were promptly washed away.

KARY got off a hit before PRESSURE, but she was reduced to uselessness from there. WATERSPOUT dealt with her. And thankfully, the water floor played nice. That was what I was most concerned about. KRAKEN got PRESSUREd before he could attack. From there, CARVE MODEL handled him.


But this was bad. I was down to just 9 potions after claiming the Masmune. I took advantage of a new item FFR added, the WARP stone, which you can claim from Coneria's king after breaking the black orb. Its intended purpose is to let anyone escape from the temple one time without needing one of the vanilla mages or a Time Mage. I instead used it to skip part of the walk back after getting the legendary sword.


Yup, WORMs ran me out, then TIAMAT attacked physically before I could get PRESSURE off. That and BUBBLE CURTAIN did neuter her offense. I just had Guo Pu buff and attack with the sword from here and eventually finished her off.


Here's the stats. And to say it again: just 135HP. I am royally screwed, needless to say.


It was die or do this (and move first which Guo Pu did), and I told the game in no uncertain terms where to shove it. I mean, it was just going to boil down to "run the temple until I don't lose too much health", and without this delicious cheese I'd just end up employing the same strategy against CHAOS I'm going to in the unpromoted game. I just felt like it wouldn't prove anything except that I had the patience to do so. And well, I did - it's just that I have other games I want to play. No need to run it a second time (and probably many more times) just for that.

After all, I was about to run through the latter half of the game a second time!

######


Waterfall was basically the same unpromoted, only that without a water SAMPLE, I couldn't easily kill these things before getting the Defense. They could hit pretty hard if Guo Pu failed enough runs.

Since I didn't take them off the table for unpromoted Guo Pu, he could merrily Zeus through the Sea Shrine just like anyone else. Later on, I could add Mage Staff and Black Shirt (if I wanted to spare the slot) into the mix. Yay spellcasting items!


KRAKEN could still be PRESSUREd. And Defense Sword was in play here too just like anyone else could use. I went with PRESSURE anyway because that renders him harmless sooner: one turn versus three. I defensed up too, because why not?

I got WarMECHed again in the Floating Castle. I knew it was coming, but I thought I could try to get across the bridge in one encounter since I had one a step before going into the bridge. Didn't happen. I tried STARDUST in desperation but nothing got rolled.


TIAMAT could be Bane Sworded just like anyone else could. I didn't need to: I could still mess with her with STARDUST. This doesn't have perfect accuracy, so this was hilarious to see. She stayed paralyzed for the rest of the battle while I tested COSMIC RAYS stacking. Results were unclear, but it made PLASMA do enough through resistance (398 on the finishing blow) together with the bell.

Blessed Bell can still be obtained with Geomancer. However, I found it couldn't be used by Geomancer! I know it could in earlier versions, so this had to be a bug, a silent nerf, or I was wrong. Either way, you really shouldn't be able to trade for it and lock yourself out of bells with the class, so I filed a complaint, heh.


KARY was confused with the Wizard Staff as usual. But she kept breaking out so I just stopped. Defense up for extra safety and attack with Geomancy anyway since even resisted it was a bit more consistent than physicals. I fought fire with fire because it did more than attacking, and got a rare roll to finish her.

Oddly, I was at the end of the game at a lower level than I was with Elementalist: 33 vs 41. Fighting less and trying to figure out a bug will do that. But I went ahead and took him to 50 anyway on the VAMPIREs. It only occurred to me that I should've been listening to a Castlevania soundtrack, but Sonic 3D Blast is a good one too.


Here's what Guo Pu's stats looked like before starting the descent. Could I have gone lower? Yes. Didn't feel like it, though, and I had something extra in mind.

It's ToFR where things started to get different. Geomancer Guo Pu would have one big advantage over Elementalist Guo Pu: spellcasting items, meaning the ability to Defense and Heal Staff. I wouldn't have to worry about running out. However, the huge downside was limited spell charges and being limited to that awful artificial set.


Turns out that spellcasting items really do simply and homogenize things. I had Black Shirt ready for Gas Ds, but none showed up. PHANTOM got killed in two CARVE MODELs. Nothing helped against LICH so I just splattered him with two CARVE MODELs too.


But KARY and KRAKEN's physicals could still be dealt with with Defense. That is the other side of the spellcasting item coin: without them, against KRAKEN specifically, it's just "reset until he doesn't kill you". It's subjective which option is better. But more importantly, so could everything else's physicals be annulled. I didn't even need to bother with that flimsy Heal Staff. Guo Pu simply had enough potions to make it through.


I actually used geomancy against TIAMAT. I wanted to save the big stacks for CHAOS. True, Power Gauntlet exists, but there was a very convincing reason not to use it in this case. I was just past six hours on the game clock when I started the final battle.


I didn't talk about or use the FORGED IN spells very much. They're better suited for supporting a party than a solo Geomancer. FORGED IN IRON increases power and, more importantly, critical hit chance by 10%. This was how I intended to beat CHAOS last time and how I had to this time. CARVE MODEL only does so much, and I'd have to resort to TERRAIN rolling eventually due to only have six spell charges at max. That would be more than enough time for CHAOS to kill him with accumulated damage into a NUKE.


Defense thrice, and once SLO2 didn't land (first try, woo!), that was basically game set. He used a lot of his skills at first; Guo Pu got to resist SWIRL and TORNADO due to a change to the Ribbon in this version that hasn't yet been walked back and might not be. They're now of the water and wind element respectively, and as of 2.1, Ribbon's resistances expanded to include those (not WALL, though). Even if this wasn't the case, I still could've resisted SWIRL by equipping the Water Armlet from the Sea Shrine at least.


The first attack stunk, but then the criticals started rolling in. Actually, he hit for 1220 damage on one swing before CUR4 negated it. But with this, Guo Pu swiftly brought an end to things.

And that's solo Geomancer complete, both with and without promotion. This was one that I wanted to do for a while, just because of how good it is in FFR compared to that awful FF5 Geomancer. It's funny how while it's still very much recognizable in its luck-based roots, just a couple small changes turn a class into a legitimate force of nature. Allowing you to cast geomancy directly is huge, and yet, it kept a shackle on with the limited spell charges. You eventually do have to start rolling with TERRAIN if you want to keep going. It's pretty neat design, and like I said in my job comments - while Geomancer technically has unlimited spell charges, the same can be said about any mage who holds a spellcasting item. Any new class that can break from ITEMS spam is good in my book. I do think artificial terrain sucking so bad and being so prevalent was taking it too far, but the good outweighs the bad here.

I liked the idea of doing a run where I promoted and another where I didn't. Probably not going to do it for every challenge I do, that said. But in this case, they played differently enough to make both runs worthwhile. SAMPLE does a lot to help Elementalist in elemental dungeons, makes for interesting gameplay, and it didn't feel out of place. No terrain really stands out over another, and most have at least one good reason to take them. I personally felt it made for the more interesting run.

Is that it? No, there was still one last thing to do before I could call it a challenge.


EAT SHIT. That said, this took a bit of luck to take it on without PRESSURE's nonsense, even at a higher level. I tried to get STARDUST to land but it never did. It boiled down to Guo Pu not getting ambushed, and then an insanely lucky WarMECH miss on turn 1 after just one Defense use. After three, I used COSMIC RAYS and attacked away with PLASMA. I just had to hope it didn't use NUCLEAR too much, and it didn't.

Okay, now that's it. Don't expect more soon: I have to save Concordia and become the hero Erdrick, and am way overdue with killing the Seven Heroes. My next FFR challenge might be something of a party variety. I have a few different ideas. Thanks for reading, and see you then!

Index

The name 'Geomancer' can send a chill down the spine of Final Fantasy players everywhere. It debuted in the third game in the series and has since then consistently been a frustrating RNG class and always being at the mercy of what's around it. Even in FFT where they're at their best and can always do the same thing as long as they're on the right terrain, it's primarily for its stats and equipment making it an excellent carrier class. Thankfully, while FFR makes them take after the main series, they're a lot better.

What's in a name? Geomancers in canon are said to use feng shui to perform their psuedo-magic. Their Japanese name, Fūsuishi, directly references this. One of the first uses of the term in recorded history is in The Book of Burial, which is commonly attributed to the poet Guo Pu. He is also renowned as a geomancer himself. Why not? I could only think of one fictional character who used it (Mononobe no Futo), but a little bit of a historical reference wouldn't hurt.


Here's the base stats of the class. Geomancer is everything you'd expect out of a magic class: lots of INT and not much of else. This being FF1, it was naturally possible to manipulate growths, and I would do that for STR and VIT at every level up, as well as INT when reasonable in the event that it did not have a fixed growth, and sometimes AGI as well.

Geomancy has no base power provided, but instead seem to scale off level. It can be used one of two ways in FFR. First, you can select one of four spells from the MAGIC menu. These all begin with one spell charge, and they gain an additional spell charge for the first on the list (which is always a damage spell of some kind) on levels ending in 5, and one for the rest on levels ending in 0. Alternatively, you can use the TERRAIN command to use a random one for free. When doing so, there is a decent chance to restore one spell charge for all levels in the current terrain, and around a 5% chance of one of two rare spells specific to the terrain that can only be used in this way.

This one simple change alone does a lot to help Geomancers' viability. Instead of rolling the dice every time, you have a certain degree of control over what is going to happen. A small degree. Do keep in mind their very limited spell slots.


It's worth noting that, aside from a weird bug I ran into later, each different terrain has its own spell slots. For example, I could use the second slot LEAF SWIRL in the forest, then go to the grass terrain and still use the second slot SHINING FLARE. These were multi-targeting spells that respectively did non-elemental and fire damage. At level 1, these weren't enough to consistently kill IMPs, but they usually did at level 2.


Though there are some flaws with Geomancy. One of the biggest being this: the aritifical terrain. This horrible terrain set is used in many different places: the Temple of Fiends (and return), the Marsh Cave, Northwest Castle, Ordeals, the Waterfall, and Mirage Tower. Of the four you can use naturally, CARVE MODEL is simply a ST non-elemental attack. Geomancer later gets equipment to boost certain elements, so this is notably underpowered by comparison. CLOSE-IN is an AoE non-elemental that can inflict darkness. MARBLE ARMOR just boosts party absorb by 20%, and FORGED IN IRON damage/critical by 10%.

The last two don't help a solo Geomancer much. Them showing up in TERRAIN is annoying. But what's worse is the rare spells. CHASM isn't too bad: it's a Stone-elemental AoE that can sometimes instantly KO an enemy. But MIRROR is awful: this, yeah, let's say this inflicts reflect on all party members. You want control of when reflect happens, and it's badly flawed in FFR anyway: half the enemies you'd want to use it on can just decide to jump around in their AI scripts, completely removing the point of it. It works the other way too: you can reflect spells onto the enemies. You can do funny things like killing undead with healing spells. But geomancy can be reflected too. Keep spamming TERRAIN after a MIRROR, and you might just give the enemy a buff.

That said? It's GARLAND I was up against for now. He's the biggest fraud in all of Final Fantasy. It just took a bit of luck with CARVE MODEL and TERRAIN and I won.


Pravoka uses the ocean terrain. It's actually not the worst thing on the ocean due to THUNDERBOLT, a ST attack that can inflict stun (a one-turn paralysis). CALM WATERS heals and sets regen, healing the recipients for 10% of their max HP at the end of every turn. The other two are AoE water spells - a new element added for FFR. There's not a consistent rhyme or reason to what's weak to it besides fire enemies (KARY included), but it should be obvious that anything water-related resists it. The PIRATEs don't count and were easily washed away by this.

That said, yeah. It was hard to be on the water. KYZOKUs were destroyed, and single SHARKs were fried. Everything else was bad and I ran from.


But Geomancy was good enough to play on the Peninsula of Power even at a low level! TANGLEVINE was a multi-target spell that had a high chance of paralyzing stuff. The basic grass set is actually one of the best; the other two are WIND GUST, a solid wind-elemental ST move that GIANTs were unfortunately resistant to, and SUNBATH, a healing spell. Healing spells in geomancy are crazy. At their best, they leave HEL3 in the dust and come a lot sooner.


Oddly, FrWOLFs were the big target again! They were very vulnerable to paralysis (contrast GIANTs who were rarely affected or ZomBULLs who weren't as much) and SHINING FLARE finished them off. I got Guo Pu to level 10 before heading down into the Marsh Cave.


It was the Marsh Cave all right. The strategy on the randoms was to run like hell. The strategy on the WIZARDs was to just use CLOSE-IN and hope they were wiped before me. Oddly, while darkness status is normally unnoticeable, it absolutely made the difference and saved Guo Pu in one try. But it still sucked. I got annoyed after five failed attempts at or after beating the WIZARDs (to say nothing of getting to them) and went back to add more levels. This was supposed to be more of a fun/chill run. I expected to add even more for the Earth Cave and Ice Cave anyway. I got to level 15 for now.

The problem with Geomancer was turning out to be spell charges. While they're technically unlimited through lucky use of TERRAIN, they are at the same time very limited. As a point of comparison, at the level 15 I eventually went in at, the other pure caster classes have 5 charges of level 3 spells and 4 charges of level 4 spells. Red and Blue both have 4 and 3 there respectively. Geomancer is stuck with 2 AoE spells and 3 ST spells.

It didn't take too long after that. One thing I did on my winning run was use CARVE MODEL to kill CRAWLs whenever one (not two) showed. This worked and one shot them each time, but I was out of them by the time I hit the WIZARDs. It was a two pack and a close game, but I made it through. The dangerous fights on the way out were actually GARGOYLEs! Those things hit really hard and killed a few runs on their own. This was not one of them. I saved as soon as I made it out and smirked when I saw I was one step away from another encounter.


That said, if there is one thing Geomancy is good at? Sheer damage on the ST attacks. I was actually flipping a coin (rolling a 1d20?) and trying to see if I could get MIRROR out of TERRAIN. Instead I got a high damaging CARVE MODEL, and a second finished him. First try, no RUBs today.

I bought a Silver Bracelet at Melmond after taking care of the key business, then went to Crescent Lake to grind. My goal was level 20 for the Earth Cave. One of the most fun spells in forests was SNARE. This is supposed to work like STUN, BLND, and XXXX - that is, anything under 300HP that does not resist the element gets hit, in this case, with an earth-based instant death move. Unfortunately, it was bugged and still sometimes missed, and Ozmo couldn't reproduce it so hasn't fixed it.

The Earth Cave had STALACTITE and EARTH EMBRACE and a single and multi target offensive option respectively. They were unsurprisingly in the Earth-element. It's terrible in FF1 and even FFR: it existed solely to make enemies resistant to the QAKE element. Only FFR's RAMUH is weak to the element and, being an Evoker boss, would not be seen here. Despite this, the element is actually solid in the dungeon. COCTRICEs and EARTHs obviously resisted it, as did the VAMPIRE, GAROGYLEs, IMAGEs, and even the rare OOZE. But it would work fine on WIZARDs and even LICH himself.

There were also two support spells here. EARTH BLESSING was another good heal spell, AoE not that it mattered, that increased absorb by 10% as a small bonus. And MINERAL SHELL gave Earthspikes, which causes half the damage dealt to be reflected back at the attacker. Might have to use both against the VAMPIRE.


Waiting for me in this formerly empty upper left room was the first bell of the game. Aside from a special late game one, these weapons universally have 15 attack, 15 hit%, 0.5% crit, and boost geomancy spells of one element. Naturally, the Earth Bell boosted earth spells. By how much? Well, I saw the rare CAVE-IN spell do like 200 to the wolves in here without the bell, but it cracked over 400 with it. So I'm thinking anywhere from 1.5× to 2× damage, or some sort of other potency boost.

The only downside to these is that they only affect one element, and often come midway through their relevant dungeon. Of course, there's ways to make that not as big an issue.

Guo Pu only had 18 luck, which did not give him good odds of running. At his level of 20, he had just over a 50% chance. Instead of trying to win a coinflip against the legions of undead, it often felt better to use EARTH EMBRACE instead. This was enough to one-shot the zombies, if he was lucky enough to go before them or not get paralyzed. No such luck with IMAGEs or COCTRICEs though. It would take multiple castings.


The first time I reached the VAMPIRE, he instantly paralyzed Guo Pu and that was the end of it. I employed spikes as planned the next time, but there was a problem: the buff only lasted two rounds. My luck with dodging paralysis or DAZZLE was going to run out long before his HP, and that's what happened. The third time, I just threw up my arms and used STALACTITE just to see how much it would do before preparing for bell-based violence.


Oh. Well. That works. Got him in two. I had to fight him one more time when I failed my run out, but it went just as well as before.

I gained a level outside, got the ROD, and went back in. It shockingly only took attempts to make it to the bottom from here! It was an insane run that I really shouldn't have won. Guo Pu had to tangle with small groups of IMAGEs and a five-pack of COCTRICEs. I just tried to end them with EARTH EMBRACE instead of trying to run. Between these, a WIZARD group, and a couple MUMMYs, there obviously wasn't enough spell charges. So I actually had to roll with TERRAIN, sometimes against the deadly enemies themselves! He 1v1'd an IMAGE for a while and avoided petrification. Even after this, a TROLL kept critting him at absurdly low odds on the bottom floor. Thankfully, I did survive that and moved onto LICH.


After all the trouble the Earth Cave usually gives me in solos? Going first and instantly killing the boss was catharthic. Like I said, LICH does not resist earth. Strange, but it's true: even in vanilla, I've murdered him with QAKE a couple times in the final dungeon.

Moving onto the midgame, all three of the damn things were horrible! For different reasons that I'll get to when relevant. I started off in Ordeals as usual. This would get me a Gold Bracelet and Zeus.


It wasn't just bad luck in Ordeals, it was the geomancy set. Artificial is horrendous, I can't stress that enough. Geomancy's scaling seems to level out after a point, and not only do these skills not benefit from any elemental bonuses, but they also seem to just be weaker. Not only that, but TERRAIN rolling is equally bad. At least in the elemental dungeons you might get healing or a moderate offensive buff if you want to fight with bells. In artificial? Anything from bad buffs to actually bad buffs.

The first time I made it to the Zombie Ds, they showed in a pack of two. Artifical sucked so bad that Guo Pu just died miserably. Even the second go at them - after a lot of runs failed due to being damaged to death by physicals or FIR2 and the odd MEDUSA petrify - it was a tight win.


The Ice Cave needs no introduction. Besides a single target and multi target spell, it has two others in its geomancy set: ICEWALL was a strong heal and AICE. FORGED IN ICE gives a 20% power bonus and infuses the weapon with ice. Even with changes to the formula made in version 2.1 to make the Spellblade job actually work, nothing here was weak to ice. Unlike the Earth Cave, undead universally resist the ice element, so I had to use Zeus. It was better than trying my luck with running.

Actually, there was an update released partway through this that silently nerfed (not even listed in patch notes) spellcasting items by making them no longer benefit from INT. Strange change after having them work like that for so long. I wasn't about to let that affect this challenge midrun, especially given why it was made, so I stayed on the old version.

But besides the usual suspects, everything else could also be a problem. I actually died a couple times to FrGIANTs and even a GrPEDE because of their ice resistance. I had to either spam Zeus and hope it rolled well or try to physical them down with a lousy bell. The only things in the cave that didn't resist ice were the EYE, SORCERERs, and MAGEs. Yeah, the boss and the worst possible things to be fighting. Actually, I could splatter single SORCERERs nicely with ICE PILLAR. MAGEs could theoretically be silenced by WHITEOUT, but it rarely seemed to proc and their ambush rate was too high. Many attempts made it far. Then one run failed for a novel reason: an unwanted level up on the way. That was the last straw, and I pulled out to go gain some more levels.


After a bit of time on the peninsula, I went down into Gurgu. One nice thing about Geomancer is that they render the party immune to damage tiles if they're the visible character. You also still don't get encounters on them, so it's just a good little bonus. Much like the Ice Cave, a lot in here was resistant to fire. FIREWALL and FORGED IN FIRE were other elemental equivalents. HOTSPOT just did single target fire. MAGMA SURGE was the AoE spell that could inflict burn. Nothing in the documentation says what this new status does. I mean, it's some sort of poison variant given how I saw something die from burn damage, but any other effects? Opacity sucks.

Guo Pu again suffered deaths at the hands of hard-hitting fire-resistant enemies from time to time. My target was way on the bottom floor: the Flame Bell was here. This would boost the damage of SHINING FLARE.

I thought I could fight KARY while I was at it, but she did too much damage and Guo Pu had no way to kill her before she killed him. So it was back down to grab the bell again before going back on the grind. I hit level 28, good for 79 magic defense, before making more attempts at the Ice Cave.


I wasn't encounter watching since it was late, and regretted it: I kept getting MAGEs and SORCERERs. Although now I was high enough level that the latter would sometimes run, which led to a bit of comic relief at least. This actually happened twice.

And that was all there was to it: resetting a lot until you get through. When it comes to a FF1 solo, the Ice Cave is not a matter of skill, but a matter of patience and how much you're willing to grind to tilt the odds. Same for the Earth Cave. It's sort of why I'm starting to sour on them, might have to do more party-based challenges. Someone on the FFR server, I believe yusiko, made a remark to the effect that the Ice Cave is the actual final dungeon of a solo. And my fellow soloist Wrolyn says every one homogenized afterward. Honestly, I'm inclined to agree with both. This isn't to say things were going to be smooth sailing for Guo Pu for the rest of the game after this or that it would be identical to every other solo, but this was the last major obstacle.

I was about at the end of my patience for level 28 when I finally got a run that made it through. Way too many were ended on B3 by MAGEs. Actually, twice they jumped me in the tiny room in between the square room and pit room. That's just spite. I actually survived all four RUBs, only to die to the LIT3s when WHITEOUT didn't silence them.

Final dungeon down? Well, there's still the rest of the game to deal with.

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