More Final Fantasy

[Gustaran]

Hey, apparently there's a FF 5 remaster just released on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/11738...FANTASY_V/

...

I don't know if I have anything I want to do with the game worth picking this up, but posting a pointer in case someone here does.

Thanks for the information, I had this game on my list for years and since the remaster is available for iPad as well, I decided to go ahead and get it on the App Store.

I have only played for an hour, but everything works great so far. The soundtrack is amazing and especially the mini maps are very useful when you are new to the game, since it's possible to overlook an exit if you don't know the maps.

[System Error]

"Grinding hell isn't real, it can't hurt you"
Grinding hell:

Needless to say, yeah, killed my motivation for a while. Due to the likes of KRAKEN, I figured my levels weren't going to be enough for the temple. Seeing someone else doing the challenge eventually motivated me to pick this one back up myself. I settled on 26 which was close to my previous goal. I didn't feel the need to head to 29, but

My grinding spot of choice was still FIREs in the volcano. It was simply the safest spot to do so, it simply took forever over the other options. Eventually, I hit my grinding goal and was ready to set out, after two pieces of business. The first was changing class.


The second was, of course, destroying the robot. It got an ambush because of course, but it stuck to physical attacks. On turn 1, the Masters attacked, Ree healed, and Stor used INV2. It did another physical attack during this turn, and turn 2 was much the same except with a HEL2.


On turn 3 I went for the kill, having the WWs use FADE (which I don't intend to use in the temple and bought especially for the robot). This cinched it, and the venture actually got everyone but Kung to level 27. He was only 600XP off and it had a strong HP up, so that was easy to grind out.

That meant the temple was all that remained. I was worried about Gas Ds, they in fact ended the first three runs into the temple. On the third of these I tried to anticipate by using HEL2, but the WWs moved first. On subsequent attempts, they left me alone.

It was my sixth run at the temple that got through. Besides that, one died at TIAMAT when I couldn't get WALL off in time, another died at KRAKEN when he dunked Stor.


The only interesting thing about PHANTOM is that it took two rounds to defeat, and that I somehow forgot to take a picture. Slacking, it's been over a year (I slacked so hard in fact I forgot to class change at first). The biggest thing to get down with the temple was finding things to heal against. Generally this meant things without any magic. After PHANTOM I used a FrWOLF with AICE up. Before LICH, I used a MudGOL. It was slightly annoying to defeat it after because the RockGOL had slowed my warriors. The general strategy is White Shirt/Defense up, then use the healing items.


I was a little concerned about the boneman. The WWs didn't have over 400HP, and I've seen some huge NUKEs before. Thankfully it simply wasn't an issue. Two HRM3s and a Master attack brought him down before he could move.


I used FIREs to heal before KARY. She got off a massive physical against Fuu, pictured there, and she thankfully survived the fight. I made sure to get up AFIR on the first turn and beat her down. Not a huge deal aside from that big physical scare.

One of the scarier encounters on the water floor was, believe it or not, a SeaTROLL/LOBSTER/SeaSNAKE group. I threw out all my offensive items against them, but I got some bad turn order and Ree ended up poisoned. I couldn't heal her because well, the items did kill them. Three WATERs were next; I'd healed against them at the start of the floor and did so again before KRAKEN. Thankfully they left Ree alone and I got the healing up.


The strategy against Kraken was one I'd been thinking of for a while. Three INV2s plus the Defense, stack the evade as fast as possible. It didn't work once, but the second time he only hit Kung to critical HP. Still extremely dangerous, so I had to CUR4 immediately, skipping a turn of INV2 in the process.


I was just playing through as I went and forgot some stuff because CHAOS was some shit, but I believe Kraken hit someone down again through the five stacks, necessitating an ALIT just in case. Thankfully he used INK instead. Whatever the case, Stor finished him off with a Black Shirt cast.


Against TIAMAT, I had the WWs use WALL on themselves. I was counting on the bloated magic defense of the Masters for them to survive, but on one run Kung still died and the BANE going before the WWs killed them too. On the winning run, I instead took another huge attack on turn 1


I couldn't get off a second set of WALLs because I only had two casts because I cut my grind short of getting more L8 charges. Would've been able to if I made it to 28. I prefered to save them for CHAOS, so I just got up A-spells. They kept punching away, and I eventually got the win.


A NITEMARE/EVILMAN group showed up afterward, perfect to heal against. Of course, DRINK was still useful to speed things along. Hey for all the scares, I at least had excellent encounter luck. That's probably what's most important in a temple run under variant rules.

That meant it was time to kill Chaos.


I took him to 1742 on the first series of attacks. The WWs cast WALL on the Masters. They were more important this time - they might be able to win on their own even if both WWs died to CRACK. CHAOS physically attacked Kung, no paralysis. I had Ree heal him next turn and Stor prep ARUB for protection against CRACK. Then ICE3 did way too much damage on Stor, but he didn't CRACK. 1521 HP left. LIT3 was next so I used ALIT.


But CHAOS went first with...another physical. Stor used HEL2. Fuu pulled out this whopper of an attack, but Kung only did 87. A little over halfway.

CHAOS' had yet to CRACK and his next elemental was behind that LIT3 adn a SLO2, so I just threw out HEL2s on the WWs. He was left with 664HP, and everyone else was in good shape. I used AFIR and HEL2 next turn. CHAOS did his third physical of the battle however, 144 on Fuu. She thankfully wasn't paralyzed, none of that nonsense this go around. She was a little low on HP, but CHAOS only had 481.

I aimed a CUR4 at her next turn along with a CUR2 on Stor. The SLO2 happened with CHAOS left at 333. This is getting dangerous, he's right before his on CUR4 and I have three full party heals left...


And he used it immediately at the start of the round. Stupid meatheads suddenly deciding to do little damage. They brought CHAOS to 1730HP afterward. I'd thrown out some INV2s just in case, for lack of much better to do during that round. AICE and another INV2 were my spells of choice during that round, CHAOS choosing to use FIR3. He was left with 1566HP, becuase Fuu only did 8 damage.


Stor had nothing better to do next turn, so he used the Black Shirt. Ree used HEL2 to prep for the upcoming NUKE. CHAOS used CRACK, and the Masters attacked. CHAOS was left with 1216.

Next set of attacks: Stor did 27, Fuu did 185, Kung did...5. And Ree did 29. 970 left as CHAOS used ICE2. After thatm Fuu did 263, CHAOS used FAST, the WWs used their healing items, and Kung did 82. Full health for the potential NUKE. Unfortunately, the WWs went first the next turn, also using the healing items. I anticipated it correctly, turn order just got me.


212-390-294-202 were the numbers, christ. Fuu and Kung retaliated with 100 and 97 respectively. 428HP left on CHAOS, but this is dangerous again!! The WWs had one HEL2/HEL3 left respectively and used them. Fuu did 109, Kung 101, and thankfully the WWs went before CHAOS, who used ICE3.


On the next round, Fuu went first with the Black Shirt for 27 damage. Fuu attacked for 185. Kung finished it off with...5 damage, which didn't actually finish CHAOS off and in fact left him with exactly 1HP.


Fucking deserves that humiliation for letting CUR4 happen with those pathetic attacks. Take it home, Ree.

Final thoughts? Might be one of my last party-based FF1 challenges, at least ones that involve copious amounts of grinding for a party. That said, this was an interesting challenge. Settling on spellcasting gear right away was different, no shuffling stuff around allowed. It forced some creative strategies at times, like actual use of DRINK and MUTE. Offense was no problem, and I didn't really feel the sting of not having an offensive mage/FAST. Meanwhile, double HEAL spells definitely helped a lot in those tight places.

Now if you want to take a look at the other person doing the same challenge who inspired me to pick this pack up, go here to see CranberryPSO's run. They're using a Red Mage instead of the second White Mage, so there's differences to be had in how they play out!

As always, thanks for reading.

[System Error]

Did my first Four Job Fiesta in close to a decade! The jobs were White Mage, Samurai, Beastmaster, and Chemist. I also used Extra Jobs and got Gladiator. Uh, yeah. I held back on throwing money and mixing chemicals and I still stomped the main game into the ground, but also the entire postgame as well as fucking murdering Gogo the Mime. It was pretty fun, I might do some more this year if I'm up to it.

[T-hawk]

That's hilarious, bouncing a weak Cure spell off your own wall onto Gogo, in order to trigger him into bouncing Holy off you onto himself.

[System Error]

I did five fiestas overall this year. The first I mentioned was a Meteor Run (any job any time) with extra job (replace one job with a GBA job when unlocked) which gave me White Mage, Samurai, Beastmaster, Chemist. Uh, yeah. This beat Enuo without problem. Second was SNES on the new Onion option which gives jobs that appeared in FF3, effectively a set of 12 with 3 possibilities at each Crystal. I ended up Knight, White Mage, Geomancer, Ninja.

Took me a bit to finish that, but no real problems. Then I rushed three more. Next was Typhoon 750 (crystals can give any job from them or previous crystal, Wind/Water bias effectively, and magic jobs), intended on 2013 but I went to GBA. It featured full bestiary completion, including Enuo. Blue, Red, White, and Black made for an interesting party. Also an easy one. I have a newfound appreciation for Transfusion after this; it's effectively an on-demand Elixir that only costs reviving the Blue Mage.

Fourth and fifth were the most interesting. Former was SFC Classic (FF1 jobs), Duplicates (can get the same job), Natural (each must use their crystal's job), with an additional catch: I was doing it as fast as possible to fulfill a donation challenge. RDM/WHM/BLM/THF was the setup, but I job faired White Mage to Monk because seriously four in as many fiestas? I ended up with a 7:00 game time at Exdeath.

But then it was time for the main event.

So in the Twitter days of the fiesta, there was a secret option called !Blame. It was named in honor of the late great Everhate, a speedrunner notorious for his bad luck (and memetically, spreading it: "Blame Everhate."). He did a fiesta in 2015 with Berserker Risk, and got four of them. He actually completed it, too! It's still up on his Twitch channel. I tried a !Blame run back in the day, but computer issues and life stuff got in the way. Always meant to go back to it, but there's no way to do it on the current iteration of the fiesta.

Except Upgrade (you can only use the most recent job you've unlocked, but any of the abilities from previous jobs) with BERSERKER RISK, and not upgrading at all once Berserker is hit. There's reasons to play this on SFC, GBA, and Pixel Remaster. First has the underflow glitch. Second has speedup and you can use Chicken Knife. Third might make fixes and has experience boosting, but I ruled out paying for it. So I went GBA. That said, I had only a 97.7% chance (plus the natural odds of a Berserker, I ran it on no 750 to increase the odds) of being able to do this run without a job fair. I would totally blame Everhate if I had to. First was Thief, which would've been nice if I was interested in giving them abilities. Second was the BERSERKER I sought. Let's do it!

I started instantly, as in, from New Game when our hero, named in honor of the man himself, is still named ?. I got to Lv8 before Wing Raptor, but it remained uninteresting because the Berserkers killed it before it went into defense mode. Karlabos was also splattered, and both even with two characters lacking weapons. I got Dagger drops in the Ship Graveyard to rectify it before Siren. No problems from her, Magisa/Forza, or Garula. For wild Garula, simple attacks worked before it fled.


W1 has a trio of obstacles for a pure Berserker team and the first is Liquid Flame. Always counters and moves into a different form when attacked. Blaze in particular will four-shot the party, no questions asked. So that means grinding. Disregarding luck, this challenge is like 90% grinding and 10% setup. I settled on 23 before heading into the Fire Ship. Eyedrops were important here in case of Crew Dust Flashing. Beat the boss with only Lenna downed and completed the escape.

Dhorme Chimera couldn't win before I did. I beat Jackanapes with hammers then went to the Ancient Library. Ifrit was easy. The trick with Byblos is to outdamage his counter-Drains. Besides leveling, using Mythril Hammers (the Gauche was fine) reduced his defense enough to make enough of a difference. With the ship, hammers killed the Skull Eater. I farmed up four Death Scythes and killed Minidragons with them to break defense (Ramuh also got beat).


But now it was time for the big Sandworm/Sol Cannon grind. I tried a few spots and ultimately settled on Black Flames. They're relatively nonthreatening and give a good amount of experience and gil. I hit level 41, earning over 600000 gil in the process. Enough for 4 copies of all the rings! Angel Rings were the most important. With Plumed Hats for maximum magic evasion with them, I began the struggle.


Due to bad code, you have a 1/7 chance of hitting Sandworm in this battle: there's three holes, three Sandworm positions (which redirect onto holes), and one actual target. The big exception is 2013 where it'll always attack the front and Sandworm is always considered to be in the front row, but that version has its own problems. It took like thirty to forty tries? I experimented with weapons, settling on Death Sickles after seeing a video that used them (in spite of their death spells triggering double the counters). But eventually, it was done!

Prototype, Crayclaw, and Adamantoise were all run over effortlessly. The little guns before the cannon even more so: the Launchers only do percent-based damage and rely on confusion, but Berserkers can't be confused. Flame Rings laughed at the other one. The Cannon by contrast was first try. Guess I was wrong, only really awful for a solo Berserker. Angel Rings neutralized aging status and gave magic evasion.

From here on out, it would be relatively smooth sailing until the final boss. Archaeoavis didn't use enough percent damage attacks to win. The Puroburos eventually just ran out of MP; Mage Mashers stopped their spells when they could. Titan and Manticore were easy. Ran through Gilgamesh 1 and 2. Tyrannosaurus was a matter of taking off Death Sickles and hoping he didn't kill with ???. I upgraded equipment and went into Drakenvale. No problems there, the first Death Sickle swing felled the Dragon Pod. Kept them off throughout, naturally.


Grinded out my Reflect Rings without resetting which got the Berserkers to level 44. Atomos actually failed to kill anyone until the end and didn't get to drag Faris anywhere. Tore through Ghido's Cave and the Forest of Moore. Death Sickles for the Crystals. No chance of Gil Turtle, by the way: I'd need to level them up enough to survive a 3500+ damage Earth Shaker and get that far in the first place. Which, I guess I could've done, but didn't feel like it. I wore Reflect Rings for Exdeath and did well.

Needed to spend time running to power up the Chicken Knife after obtaining it - this is another reason I usually don't take it. After the Pyramid (which was also mostly running) and running through Melusine, I went to Mirage and then into the Void. It was a detour and I wasn't quite ready to beat the game yet, but there was stuff to get. Namely, steals. My targets were Aegis Shields from Gorgimeras, Bone Mails for Necromancers, and Thor's Hammers from Death Claws. Not even Quadzerker has problems with Calofisteri. Apanda was also defeated handily. I barely beat Azulmagia and then Catostrophe was simple. For Halicarn, I reloaded for the rare Aegis Shield steal. No problem there: Reflect Rings stopped the mega Holys and once I was untoaded I wrecked them. Coral Rings for Twin Tania.

Took forever to get my steals, needless to say, so much that I just put the remainder in out of fear the fiesta wouldn't finish in time. >_> I actually had to quicksave out of the Void because I'd run out of Hi-Potions! Can't really grind in there because of that. My next goal was to reach a high enough level to beat the game. Which is like, in the 70s at the very least to start taking shots at NED. Everhate himself went to high 80s, and was on SNES with the Gaia Hammer magic underflow bug. I saw mid-80s for another strat on PR. Someone else said they did it around 75. This would be the one reason to play on Pixel Remaster, since that has built-in experience boosting. Just snapping my fingers and maxing it felt like too much. Of course, everything else I could make use of was on the table.

The overworld was the ideal grind spot, so I used this resource to check my options. Near Kelb seemed promising: the two common encounters give 1100, the semirare gives 825, and the rare still gives 600. Consistency was key, and none of the encounters are particularly dangerous.

Once I got 71, I went in. Actually no problems from the enemies this time, no hi-potions and only a few Elixirs used. I beat Gilgamesh 5 and Necrophobe, getting the Genji equipment in the process. But before I mingled with Exdeath, I decided to go after Shinryu. Omega is of course, overdesigned trash and impossible to even damage with this team (it is very very hypothetically possible to survive).


I farmed up four Ice Shields. Equipment across all was Thor's Hammer (best damage, can't use Chicken Knife since you can run), Ice Shield (absorbs Snowstorm), Diamond Helm (stops Lightning), Bone Mail (absorbs Roulette), and Coral Ring (stops Tidal Wave/Atomic Ray). Then it was a matter of running the fight until they killed Shinryu before Maelstrom into physical/Lightning killed them. It eventually happened.


There are various strategies for fighting Neo Exdeath with Quadzerkers. For SFC, the underflow bug is abused. One strategy I saw was zombies wielding Death Sickles to act as healers. But anyway, 71 wasn't enough despite an old guide saying 65ish. Probably technically possible. So I just grinded more. At about level 75 I figured, what am I trying to prove? Well, PR lets you increase enemy experience values, so that's what I did to accelerate things. I ended up going to 97, mostly in case I'm dumb enough to try and see how far this can go into Sealed Temple. Then it was just back into the void to try until I win.

It was very possible to do the other stuff, by the way. Mage Mashers and luck beat Omniscient and that's about the only obstacle I'd have, high or low level. I figured there wasn't too much point, however. It was going to be a hilarious stomp no matter what.


The setup was to use Status Bug to get Bone Mail and Angel Ring resistances. I wore Reflect Rings. I could've farmed/put in Mirage Vests but I didn't feel like it, so instead the actual armor worn was Black Garbs. Plumed Hats for having the best magic evade. Aegis Shields for shields and Thor's Hammers for weapons. Except Faris. She got the Chicken Knife, had Genji Shield status bugged, and wore the Genji Armor.


Would you believe it was second try? I can't. First I stopped when a Meteor got off near the end of the tree phase. But then I simply won. There's definitely a luck factor involved in this fight even at high levels. I just got lucky to see it very fast. The video uses a LUA script to show what's going on for viewer purpose. From it I learned that Grand Cross seems to be able to inflict Slow status on GBA - I assume that's what was going on with the ATB bars changing. Usually never comes up because of Hermes Sandals giving immunity, but I used Reflect Rings instead and I didn't have their resistances. Still, slowing everyone but Faris wasn't enough to stop the victory.

So yeah. Even if it involved a lot of greasing the wheels of time with speedup and experience boosting, I've completed a Quadzerker run in FF5 from start to finish. It's a lot more doable than solo.

[T-hawk]

Fun read, thanks. Although I got confused about all the talk between the different versions. Those screenshots are all GBA, right? What were you doing, hacking/hexediting the savegame/memory for that based on what the other versions allow?

[System Error]

Fun read, thanks.  Although I got confused about all the talk between the different versions.  Those screenshots are all GBA, right?  What were you doing, hacking/hexediting the savegame/memory for that based on what the other versions allow?

Glad you enjoyed it. And yeah, pretty much what I did. Specifically on Pixel Remaster's Switch and PS4 options (not Steam), it includes built-in features to increase (or decrease!) experience, ABP, and gil. I went a lot further than the 4x it has, but still. :P The fiesta ends at the end of the month, so that was part of my motivation in speeding things along too. If I wasn't under time constraints, I would've tried.

I also found this resource on Quadzerker runs, but it hasn't been updated for Pixel Remaster (even though I saw it linked in a PR video). I only found it when I was near the end and it didn't tell much much I didn't already I know - and didn't know the status bug, of course. The strategy seemed similar to their GBA one. One big advantage of PR version is that you can get two Chicken Knives (or two Brave Blades, or one of each - and PR also makes a change where the BB can regain power).

[System Error]

So a while back I learned of the Final Fantasy Renaissance project through a friend, a remake of FF1 in Unity with a new mode with a bunch of extra jobs and stuff (and questionable balance). I directed Sullla to it, and he has recently done two runs on it himself using the Original mode that mainly has bugfixes. It recently got a big boost in popularity (and newbies fussing about FF1 NES' jank) due to ProJared doing a video on it. I ended up doing four playthroughs to analyze all 16 jobs in the game. There are definite balance problems with some of the jobs, making me wonder if they were made for the New Game+ mode where you start promoted and everything has higher stats. FFR otherwise has the base game's numbers even with a bunch of fancy new bells and whistles.

But I'm here today to present a solo challenge of my own. The Green Mage is a job based around buffs and is a frequent target of disdain from the FFR community for being situational and ineffective. I disagree with this because it gets a really stupid save point ability at class change. It's also set for a rebalance in version 2.0 of FFR. But I don't need any of that. So with all that considered, I did a solo run. Enjoy.

[System Error]

I've completed three challenge runs of FF Renaissance lately.


The first is a revisit of my Hardworking Capitalists. With the critical hit bug fixed, things are going to be tougher. But with new jobs, the game is also much easier.


Next, I swung the other way into Living Off the Land. A major gamechanging feature is the ability of the Thief class to find items on the field. This completely turns the challenge upside down alongside the new Geomancer class. Still, it manages to be interesting in its own little way.


And finally, I did a low level challenge on the New Game+ mode where you start upgraded and all the enemies are harder and pay out a lot more. With the help of a broken-by-design class and...uh, yeah, a sick sense of humor and an achievement on the line, I accomplish this at level 16.

[Anskiy]

Someone speculated this is what Earth/Fire/Wind/Water actually was; an Avatar reference

So Ozmo is an Avatar fan, eh? 

It's kind of amazing how breakable FFR is with the new classes, but well, it's not like FF5 was a very well balanced or difficult game either.