More Final Fantasy

[English Language]

Oh yeah, when you get enemies dropping down 40k to 50k an encounter in the Lethe Court, leveling up is fairly painless(even if the encounters themselves can be lethal, but that's what 99 Cottages are for between fights).

Very true about Bone Mail and Vampire(it's not supposed to actually, the formula for Vampire is coded as "Damage=[MaxHP-CurrentHP]/2", but for some reason the "/2" part isn't added in).

Conversely however, the Bone Mail doesn't actually do a whole lot for me either. The only thing it adds for this fight is Confusion immunity which, while helpful, doesn't come up often enough for me to consider switching yet(Rocket Punch is only used by one of the Launchers 1/3rd of the time every other round, and counting the Aegis Shield blocking and the chance it might not even hit at all after he's been Dark Shocked, the chances of Rocket Punch appearing and actually landing are low enough for me to write off).

Plus ditching the Bone Mail also loses me the Black Robe, which raises my Magic stat up quite a bit, and gives me Elixir access, so unless Rocket Punch starts becoming a serious problem, I'm handing the win over to Black Robe for now.

After running some numbers, with Wave Cannon's 22k health, I need to do at least 5500 with each Level 3 Flare to kill him in 4 shots. With my Magic at 57 right now(boosting it any higher means ditching the Chicken Knife and it's +5 Agility), I need to be level 76 to reach the multiplier needed for that.

More powerleveling I guess.

[Plus C]

Well, I think that is all it'll take; some times the best way to make a puzzle piece fit is to crush it in with enough force that it HAS NO CHOICE.

Good luck!

[English Language]

Underestimate. At level 76, the damage added up to about 5300 a hit..not enough. I found leveling up to 81 would do the trick.


(the above pic was snapped before my powerlevel spree)
So yes, Wave Cannon. Much like Soul Cannon, his script consists of a lot of text, Nothing, then ending in a powerful attack. Unlike Soul Cannon, it's a Double Surge Beam instead of 1. This is 100% fatal, aside from briefly removing yourself from the field(Jump and Hide), there is no way to negate or reduce the damage from this attack.

The two Launchers are also similar to Soul Cannon. They can use the same Valiant Attack, and then have a different set every other round(Launcher 1 can use Missile, Rocket Punch, and Rainbow Wind, Launcher 2 has Missile, Flash, and Mustard Bomb), none of which are as bad as Valiant Attack(ok, maybe Rocket Punch, but it's rare).

Then Guardian, who is inactive until Wave Cannon dies, then opens with Delta Attack, Gravity/Graviga, and then other stuff, the only dangerous of which is Encircle. After Gravity/Graviga, damaging it triggers a counter that revives Wave Cannon, then restarts it's script back at Delta Attack(killing Wave Cannon resets it's script as well). Letting it go too long can let it revive the Launchers.

The only way I found was to Dark Shock the WC and both launchers at the start(all three need to hit, which isn't too difficult), then spam Level 3 Flare until the explode. Once Guardian appears, Dark Shock him and lay into him with more Level 3 Flares. Eventually he'll revive WC, who starts his script at wherever it was when he died. WC itself will need to be killed again before it reaches the Surge Beams(Guardian can still be damaged too).


Once Wave Cannon died the second time however, I was in the clear. Encircle only showed up once on the winning run and missed. All that's left from here is Enuo, Shinryuus, and the Omegas.

[Iainuki]

Are you not using the Dark Shock/L2 Old/L5 Death combo because it's too cheap?

[English Language]

Unfortunately, all parts of the Wave Cannon are level 97, and their level never reaches a number divisible by 5 no matter how many Dark Shocks they take, and timing a Level 5 Death against an Aging enemy is difficult. Better to go for the surefire Level 3 Flare kill.

[System Error]

Excellent work, English Language. It'll be interesting to see whether Blue Mage can take down those bosses.

So the thing I want to do still isn't ready yet. May as well make another solo venture!! But not in FF5.
_________________


We'll be playing Final Fantasy III. One catch: this game, particularly the NES version, is nowhere near as condusive to soloing as FF5 or...any other game in the series, really. Some bosses demand the solutions of particular job classes. Furthermore, several jobs simply exist as near or full-on straight-across upgrades of other classes. The White/Black Mages and Devout/Magus classes in particular, or almost every class and the Ninja/Sage. Furthermore, in NES version, there's a level requirement to use jobs from each crystal! One that we can bypass, but still. Regardless of the circumstances, I was curious as to how a solo job challenge would play out if one actually attempted it on this game. So that's what I'm doing.

It should be stated the DS/PSP release fixes some of these job nuiances - but has its own share of issues and retains some of the other problems. In fact, it could be argued it's even less friendly to soloing at times. So it's pretty much a wash. While I am capable of bringing you a report from the latter version, I figured I may as well do the NES version.

So of our six starting jobs, since we may as well start with the basics, Onion Knight is out due to being statistically weak. It would take a ton of grinding to get them far enough for the massive stat gains at the very end to matter. Four of the other five get upgrades at a later point. The best case could be made for Monk - it has one good perk over its Karateka upgrade, compared to Warrior's one meh perk and the Mages' nothing. So it's a tossup between Monk and Red Mage. Power vs. healing and magic options.


One intro dungeon later...I may be committing some sort of copyright infringement here. But whatever. As did the Solo reports start as such in FF1 and FF5, so shall they start in FF3. For however long they go for before I get tired of doing them, because like I said, this game is not really friendly to solo job challenges. For this excrusion, Solo is being joined by his old pal Dead. But since you can't name your characters the same thing in FF3, also joining him are Corpse and Mr. Boddy.


Solo picked up a pair of Nunchucks from the nearby village of Ur before setting out. The formula for unarmed damage for Monks' fists, along with the later Karateka class, is 1.5 times their level. This applies to each fist. So for now, these do more damage.


Umm...wow. Talk about your early wipes. See what I mean when this game does not like solos?


Solo tries to enter the first dungeon, only to run into trouble. Not shown is how these mummies can poison him and make his life miserable. Yeah. I think it's grinding time, and the game has just started.


I took Solo to level 9 before entering the Cave of the Seal. This gave him a 4x attack multiplier on his attacks. I also made the quick decision to ditch the nunchucks due to their terrible accuracy. His unarmed attacks were doing more damage just on the basis of being more accurate, and eventually outclasses the nunchucks anyway.

The statistics are mostly as you'd expect them to be. Note that magic defense gets a bonus based off Intellect and Spirit. Solo is stuck with those stats at around that level, so he's going to be feeling any magical attack that gets hurled his way more than most classes might.


You may be noticing a trend with these screenshots...the random encounters can really rack up the damage. It should stop soon, both when Solo has the HP to fight through and the massive Potion stock to wipe away their damage, but for now, we'll just have to soldier on.


At least the first boss of the game we got to fight with him was a snap. Jinn cursed the village of Kazus and the castle of Sasoon, turning everyone there into flat 2D ghosts. Solo could punch him for over 100 damage a hit, and his Fire spells weren't much to talk about.


Compared to the nasty undead mix in the previous dungeon, the birds on this short mountain dungeon called Road to the Summit were not particularly threatening.


The next "boss" is Bahamut. The objective is to run away. Somehow, this is difficult, and I end up getting killed once. When you run, you're rendered Defenseless for the turn, which lowers your defense and evasion to 0. This is, needless to say, very undesirable. While irrelevant for our challenge, any member of the party using Run renders the whole team Defenseless.


And now we have a problem and a solo exception. The next part of the game requires you to shrink down using Mini to traverse a dungeons. Making the switch isn't the problem - even though Dead can't actually cast the spell due to not having the spell charges (back to those in this game), Solo can switch over to do so, using a Healing Spring to get the charges.


It's this that the problem. No fighting ability. Yeah. You're intended to get through this part of the game by blasting through the opposition with mages. But we're stuck with one class, a class that cannot use magic.


This is what most of the random encounters looked like. The rest of them ended with the entire party dead. And remember, trying to run during a round renders you Defenseless. It wasn't actually too a problem from the back row, since most of the enemies missed anyway. I kept this tactic in my mind for later.

This is also where the Karateka class has a pretty nasty fault in comparison to Monk. It has no Run command in its menu. What it does have is BuildUp; the Karateka can store power before using the Attack command to do double damage. It can also use the command twice for triple damage. The downside is, it gives the Defenseless property. While there is a part of the game where this is good to have around, I don't see it practical to get through here if you can't run from battle!!


The good news is, this is a short dungeon.


The bad news is, there's another one right after it. The Nepto Shrine. It's not too long either, but you need to walk back out after you go in. And remember, all the while, Solo will be unable to fight. He'll simply have to run from everything. A friend of mine underwent a similar ordeal before, doing a melee jobs only challenge. Of course, the big difference between that and this is, that I have only one character. Only one chance to run away per round instead of four. And if he fails to run, he'll be smacked around pretty hard.


I was doing a pretty poor job of getting screenshots. But those spiky guys have magic spells, and as alluded to before, Solo really felt them. He again ran from all of the fights. These things could kill him very quickly if they decided to cast magic several rounds in a row.


And there's a boss at the end. Now Solo has to fight. Ugh.


The good news is, Solo didn't have to whittle down its 450HP with just his dinky mini physicals. He could break out spellcasting items - such as this one to cast Ice2 - to deal consistent damage to the rat.


The bad news is, the rat has magic of its own. And it _hurts_. Umm, yeah. Solo only has 3 SouthWinds. That's dead. This is a roadblock battle for any class that has to go at it physically. What can we do about this?


Well, go back in time for one, as I forgot a few items. This Griffin is a monster in a box in Sassoon Castle, guarding a Red Mage exclusive weapon. It also has spellcasting items on its drop list, so Solo farmed for one. He also got a Zeus' Rage in Kazus, which casts Bolt2 on the enemies.


Finally, he went up to Level 14 to give himself some extra HP.


Even with the added buffer, this was still a ridiculously hard encounter. Spellcasting items I believe are not affected by magic stats, but can do wildly variable damage. Getting through the dungeon itself was no easy task either - he sometimes never even reached it. And the rat's magic is absolutely deranged. Solo survived one assault with 1HP left!!


After his spellcasting items ran out and had done enough damage - and even in the best case it wasn't going to be enough - all Solo could do was beat away for 1-2 damage a hit. His constant Potion guzzling did not outrace the boss' magic. And stalling it out isn't an option in this game.


It took ages and several attempts, but the deed was eventually done


That's not the last mini area we'll be seeing, by the way. But it's mercifully the only one with a boss.


Beating the Big Rat gives us access to a ship.

I've played more of this variant, but don't feel like writing it all up at the moment. So more of this horrible idea that has a good chance of roadblocking at several places down the line to come.

[System Error]

Finally back to normal size and able to actually play the game again instead of running away all the time. Solo chose to stay in the back row for defensive reasons. He had trouble hitting the enemy at times, but they had more trouble hitting/hurting him. Even when he was asleep, they still couldn't hit him.


He also found this useful spellcasting item. This casts Haste when used in battle, which doubles hits. There's only five of them in the game, with the rest being ultra rare drops.


Solo able to upgrade his equipment at the Ancient's Village. He found a Kenpo Gi earlier, and was able to purchase a Headband from this shop.


We have a ship, but we can't access everywhere due to a whirlpool being in the way. So next up is a dungeon you need to be a frog to enter, the Tower of Owen. Thankfully, you don't need to be a Toad the rest of the way. Being a Toad is like being Mini, only you can't cast any magic but Toad.


These guys caused Solo a bit of grief on the way up, inflicting the Blind status. He only had one Eyedrop in stock, so you can guess how that ended.


On hitting Level 17, Solo got two more attack multipliers. If I'm reading the data correctly, he'll be at 6 hits for a while yet. But in between 30-35, he'll jump to 8 and from 10.


He was thusly able to break out these improved brawling skills on the next boss, Medusa. She can do two things: a physical attack that doesn't do a lot of damage, or Break. Thankfully on that last one, the spell is inaccurate. So this didn't become a diceroll of a battle.


Beating this dungeon removes that whirlpool. The third-tier nunchucks were purchasable in the next...well, it's a cave of dwarves. Solo's fists were already better than two of these; he found a freebie earlier, but only able to access the one, it plus the second tier nunchuck were weaker than his fists.


Also, Hi Potions were purchasable here! Solo stuck to the regular stuff for the time being, but bought 20 Hi Potions in case he needed them. I should've mentioned this before, but note that when you buy in bulk in FF3, you get a discount. Specifically, a 10% discount when you buy 4 (well, 25/256 to be precise), and a 20% discount (51/256) when you buy 10. So instead of 12000, each set of 10 Hi Potions only cost 9610.


The next dungeon has petrifying enemies. Saw this screen a couple times before it was over.


Guzco was a snap. You'd expect someone with his build to be a melee-orientated attacker. This might be a good time to talk about how FF3's AI "scripts" work. Each enemy has a set chance to use a special attack. In Guzco's case, it's 80%. If this check passes, then they roll to see which attack they use. Guzco only has Fire2 to choose from, so that's what he always uses. Because Solo actually had his defenses from not being mini (yes, magic defense is zeroed when small too!), this spell abuse was moot.


Guzco someone survives this encounter, steals both of the Dwarves' horns, and retreats to the Flame Cave. For some odd reason, you can swim through lava in FF3 like it's nothing. Waterfalls of any kind hurt, though - whether they're made of lava like the ones in here, or water like the ones back in an early town. The only treasure in here for Solo was two Hi Potions. He picked up the Blizzard sword just for selling purposes.


This dungeon also has the first bombs and slimes in FF3. Thankfully, in this game, the slime enemies have no physical defenses to speak of, so Solo simply punched them a few times before they died.

There was also another enemy in here that could inflict Petrify on Solo, which sort of looked like a Chimera. He took these out whenever possible, but still suffered a reload.


The boss of this dungeon, the Salamander, has an 80% chance of using his lone special attack: Flame, which does an impressive amount of damage, if not for the fact that Solo now has Hi Potions. They easily outhealed this for about 430HP of restoration. Solo punched the lizard to death and moved on.


Next up...PAIN. Hyne's Castle is one of the nastier dungeons in the game, and not just because you're committed to it once you're thrown into it (literally). Those Pharoah enemies could inflict Sleep on Solo. Those Lamias could inflict Confuse. They could simply inflict status over and over, and Solo would never get a turn past his first. I ended up getting him a few more levels, and sending him to the back row once more. With this, the battles were no less annoying, but far more manageable.

It's certainly one of the more interesting dungeons graphically as far as the NES games go, at least. It's a fortress in a magically corrupted tree.


Hyne himself is certainly one of the game's more interesting bosses. Every third turn, he's guaranteed to use WallChange, which will switch his weakness to Fire, Ice, or Lightning. He absorbs all other elements. Knowing this, I was able to slip in some SouthWinds at the start to sneak in some extra damage.

Other than that, he has a 99% chance of attacking with a special skill. 37.5% of the time, it will be Ice2 or Bolt2. 25% of the time, it's Fire2.


You're supposed to use mages for this fight again as with the Big Rat; the game pushes you to take advantage of the Scholar job, which has a command much like the Cid in FF4's or the Blue Mage in FF5 to check enemy weaknesses. Hyne has 4x60% evasion to foil physical attackers, but has a paltry 11 defense. Solo just kept plinking away, sucking down Hi Potions as needed.


Even without the SouthWinds, this would've been a straightforward, if lengthier encounter. A bit more dangerous than some of the recent boss fights, but by no means hard.


You get Airship access shortly after finishing this dungeon (well, again; you're given one as your first vehicle, but it's quickly destroyed). Solo picked up some Magic Keys, which would be needed to access some treasures. He could get these later, and wanted them for an upcoming dungeon, but it was convenient to get them now.


Most notable is this find in Arguss Castle. Elixirs are hard to come by in this game, and restore HP and spell charges to maximum. You can never buy them anywhere in FF3, and potions never improve past Hi Potions, so their usefulness - if need to conserve them - can't be understated.


And that ends what I suppose you could consider the World 1 of FF3, the Floating Continent. Up next is the surface world, which would be World 2. Look out for it. And I do mean _look out_, because this is where the game's dungeons get longer, and the bosses get nastier.

[T-hawk]

Nice work on the solo Blue Mage bonus dungeon run, English.

This thread is getting a bit cluttered with multiple reports going on at the same time. Anyone think it's worth pulling out the FF2 stuff into its own thread? Or would that just get it less viewers than leaving it here?

[English Language]

Idk, this is a FF general thread and it's not like we have too many reports going on at the same time right now.

Speaking of which, Grand Aevis taught me a very important lesson earlier. When attempting to land something no matter how miniscule the odds, give it enough repetition....


...and it'll eventually land. I pretty much gave up trying to brute force Shinryuu down the hard way and spent last night and most of today running repeats of this fight just hoping for Dark Shock to land. About 5 minutes ago it finally did, but very nearly got Rock killed too. Between landing that Dark Shock and Level 2 Old, Shinryuu had me knocked down, and during his second no interupt segment, knocked me down to zero health...then used Poison Breath to hit me for 240 damage..and I survived with 240 health. He Roulette me before anything too bad happened though. And before long....


..Shinryuu's offense had finally been neutered...well, mostly. He still had slim odd if he used Maelstrom, then Lightning to off me, so I need to work fast. He did, unfortunately, get Mighty Guard off, and I have no good way of getting rid of his MP(plus I like having his Roulette around) because of his Magic Evade. Magus Rid powered Aerogas were the ticket here, chunking him for about 1400 a pop. It was nice to be the one double turning this boss for a change I'll tell you that.


I got worried near the end because I was running very low on MP, but he died right before I ran out, so whatevs.

So, that's one annoying superboss down, 4 to go.

While the Omegas are my biggest fear, Neo Shinryu has a few things I'm worried about as well. Namely, the trick I pulled here doesn't work since the parts that attack and get attacked are two seperate parts for Neo Shinryu. Even if they weren't both parts have a crazy 120% Magic Evade. So does Enuo as a matter of fact, so I can't use Dark Shock shenanigans on him either. Omega MKII has 100% so nothing for him either. So aside from the remote possibility of hitting Omega, looks like Shinryuu was the last fight where Blue Mage's level altering shenanigans are remotely feasible.

[System Error]

This thread is getting a bit cluttered with multiple reports going on at the same time. Anyone think it's worth pulling out the FF2 stuff into its own thread? Or would that just get it less viewers than leaving it here?

Hard to say, really. There's only so much you can do with FF2 though - only one or two more things to do with it that could be considered interesting - so it'll pretty much be a waste.

_________________


The Water Cave is the next dungeon, and it, true to its name, houses the Crystal of Water. I'm not sure why these lizards are called Cockatrices, but they do inflict partial petrify with their blows. I also get my first back attack along the way. Solo was in the back row for safety, but had no trouble in the front. He just had to heal after the battle. I'm surprised it took so long to see one, though.


Release...the Kraken!! He begins out of battle by killing Elia, Maiden of Water, with a "Cursed Arrow". He proceeds to not use them at all in battle. This is quite the routine boss. He has the usual assortment of level 2 elemental spells, using them at 80% odds. Backed by 50 attack power, his physical accuracy is 5x70%. Attacks get exchanged, you know. The usual.


Real neat cutscene of the world unflooding. FF3 pushed the NES pretty far graphically in some places;


Bad news is, our ship got chained up, and the only thing we can do is punch mermaids and stuff.


Good news is, we get new equipment!! This is especially welcome. The Chakra Band gives +5 to Vitality and +5 to Strength, and the BlackBelt gives +5 to Agility.

We can't go to the guy who chain the ship up's place yet though. If we try to cross over the black patch of land in front of it, we fall into the Bottomless Swamp, hit the bottom, and die. Game over. Don't ask.


Instead, we need to go do a sewer dungeon. Here, we find a Catclaw. In the remake, this would be of practical use to us. In those verisons, nunchucks are removed, and replaced with claws - which both Monks and Karateka/Black Belts may use. In this version though, only the former can use them.


The "boss" of this very uneventful dungeon...yeah. Only interesting thing is, the data I was reading was wrong. We did pick up 8 hits along the way.


There's also a Power Ring in this dungeon. More stat bonuses, hooray!!


With the floating shoes we get from a hag in the sewer, we can cross that Bottomless Swamp which does have a bottom and reach the next dungeon. Goldor's Manor isn't much to talk about. Aside from these Nightmare horses, all of the enemies here are themed around Gold. There's even a dummied enemy called the Lost Gold who were supposed to go here, but were not put in. I reset once because of petrification from some bears, but it's straightforward.


And finally in the flesh, GOLDOR!! The guy whose name makes me think of Power Rangers. Actually, this is a somewhat easy boss...for Solo. Remember Big Rat and Hyne? Goldor has ridiculous magic defense. My friend who did the melee jobs only challenge also did a spellcasting class only challenge in this game. She couldn't get them past Goldor, though. Serious business for them, but nothing compared to the trials of Big Rat for melee jobs or the horror that is to come.

He's yet another boss with three level 2 elemental spells, by the way. The site from before, the same one that had the FF2 stuff, has an FF3 guide as well, but doesn't seem to be as good. He sure didn't seem to be using the attacks at 80% odds, but who knows? His physicals did less than 100 damage.

Beating Goldor gives us our (air)ship back. Now you may be wondering if this game has a Penninsula of Power or something akin to that.


The answer is yes.


You're ordinarily supposed to fight these guys right before the last dungeon. More insta-death triggers are in the conventional way - you get blown up or something by these statues. But there's some outcroppings of land nearby where you can go and fight them early. As you can see, I failed against these guys - partially due to a back attack.


Death Needlers get 7 attacks, but only at 36% accuracy. Despite their name, their physical actually inflicts poison. At this point, Solo had 40% evasion. In the back row, these were easy encounter to win. Even if they ambushed him (and he was thusly in the front row), Solo could still land the victory with ease.


I take Solo to Level 37 via these battles. And for good reason: the next boss fight...whole portion of the game, is just stupid. It may have been overkill, but this part of the game is stupid.


So first off, when you go near this HUGE city on the map, your airship gets blown out of the sky.

You're now confined to this place, which has a few forests and a small dungeon that provides you with Dragoon equipment. The encounter rate in them is kind of low. And they're obnoxious at times. So good luck gaining any more levels if you came here unprepared. The game gives you that equipment for a reason: it expects you to use a certain job to battle a boss.


But even with the whole set. Garuda is no joke. He does one thing (or at least 99% of the time): his Thunder special, which can do in the neighborhood 300-500 damage. The way you're intended to fight him is by jumping repeatedly with your Dragoons, and hope you kill him before he kills you. It's a hard question whether to go all in or take a White Mage for healing - he doesn't use Thunder if there's no one to target.

All Solo could do here is punch and punch away, and guzzle Hi Potions when he got low on health. Each hit that connected did about 110 damage, and he was averaging 7-8 hits. Garuda has 5000HP, so it took a few rounds. Thanfully, the average damage healed by Hi Potions was just more than the average damage from Thunder. And he needed it to gradually rebuild himself when he got low on HP.


But, another potential roadblock battle done and over with.


We get a sweet new airship afterwards to replace our dead old one. The Nautilus can travel at extremely fast speeds, and that's what's needed to overcome some heavy winds, see the first appearance of Moogles in the series, and enter the next dungeon.


It's another goddamn Mini dungeon.


Wipes wipes wipes. Solo frequently met his end trying to run away and failing. Really not much else to say about it, really. These guys liked to cast spells a lot, which was extra dangerous, as the back row provided no protection.


Eventually, after about two dozen tries and a bit of extra leveling later, Solo got deep into the cave. Only to run into a group of four Dark Knights. He tried to run. They would not let him run. He healed up and tried to run some more. They would not let him run. I'm not sure what the running formula is. My best guess: something completely stupid. Solo tried to run an astonishing 47 times, and every single one of those run attempts failed, I went in with full Hi Potion stocks, and look where it had ended up!!


Annoyed, I broke out the spellcasting items. Four Zeus' Rages downed the first, the remaining Zeus' Rage and two Bomb Shards the second. Solo used his remaining BombShards on the third which was unfortunately not enough to kill, opened a Bombs R.Arm to kill the fourth, then set to work beating the remaining one.


Very very slowly, but DIE!!! HAHAHAHAHA.


Seriously?! One step away from the last room. And another encounter.


Solo used the two Earth Drums he had found. Despite these things having wings, they were quite vulnerable to the drum's Quake attack. That sealed the deal on this dungeon. Good riddance. This is the last time we have to go through with this. No boss here, thankfully.

I thought I took a screenshot of it, but I didn't. But Solo's Hi Potion stock after that ordeal: 24.


Beating this dungeon magically enhances our airship so it can go underwater.