Dragon Warrior, Variant Style

[Iainuki]

I discovered there's a hitch in any normal attempt to get a savefile where you can drop off the hero at the end of the game: when you leave a merchant at New Town, the game saves. Unfortunately, you have to leave a merchant at New Town to win, unless you alter memory to give yourself the Yellow Orb. If you're going to alter memory, though, better to do it directly: I found a thread that gives a Game Genie code, ENKXEIEI, that changes the bit responsible directly. As the poster notes, you only have to use it at the beginning of the game to drop off the hero.

With that done, I started analyzing how possible the different solos and SCCs are.

Solos

• Hero: Yes. I just demonstrated this is possible, obviously. Relies on the Orochi Sword's Defense, Lightning, and Healall versus Baramos; the hero's great gear possibilities in Zoma's Castle; and Healall versus Zoma.
  
  
• Sage: Yes. Sage has Sap and BiKill to make up for its weaker weapon choice against Baramos, plus a wide variety of other spells for the rest of the game. Zoma's Castle might require leveling high enough so that you can run from everything. Healall will work just as well against Zoma.
  
  
• Fighter: Maybe, requires tons of grinding. Darkwing has showed that a fighter can beat Baramos with lots of attempts and a lucky series of criticals. Jury is still out on Zoma.
  
  
• Soldier: Maybe, requires tons of grinding. If fighter is possible, soldier likely is too, but it's harder because it will require more attempts to string together a series of criticals and not-misses with the Demon Axe. Soldiers have better equipment available for Attack and Defense, and in theory with strength and agility seed farming their stats won't be any lower; they also have slightly better HP.
  
  
• Pilgrim: Maybe, requires even more grinding than fighter or soldier. Beating Zoma isn't much harder because of Healall, though a pilgrim will have less HP than a sage or hero. Baramos is a real problem, though: he's beatable but you would have to hit level 99 and farm strength seeds to get your damage high enough to beat his regeneration, counting turns spent healing yourself.
  
  
• Wizard: No. You have no way to damage Zoma except attacks, and even with a staff of force and 255 Str you will only barely get ahead of his regeneration. Since Chance apparently doesn't work on bosses (see slartifer's comment on page 4 of the mis-titled solo sage thread) except for the weak healing effect, the only hope is Bikill, which lets you do about 110 damage per round versus Zoma after regeneration. However, Zoma can dispel Bikill and if you recast it, he'll regenerate; meanwhile, you have no good way to heal (Healmore is your best option) and few HP, barring acorns of life. If it's possible, it would require extreme amounts of strength seed and acorn grinding, or bug exploitation, and heroic repetition of the Zoma fight to get the right combination of tremendous blows and no dispels.
  
  
• Merchant: No. Same problem as the wizard.
  
  
• Goof-off: No. Same problem as the wizard, plus numb self has a 2.5% chance of killing you every round.
  
  

Single-Class Challenges

• Sages: Easy. The early game will be very, um, interesting because you need to get three goof-offs to level 20. Once you have four sages, you have massive spell power and should be able to clear the rest of the game with ease.
  
  
• Fighters: Easy. Fighters can power through high boss Defense with tremendous blows, plus wipe the floor with most random encounters. The Sage's Stone will make Zoma and his bosses trivial. May require more grinding than sages, but not fundamentally difficult.
  
  
• Pilgrims: Easy. Pilgrims have a much better early game than sages. Zoma would be trivial with four character capable of casting Healall. With Sap and massive healing power, Baramos would be slow to die but not threatening.
  
  
• Soldiers: Difficult. Like fighters, only worse. Limited high-end weapons will limit the third and fourth fighters' usefulness barring extreme farming to get rare drops. Zoma and his bosses won't be hard because of the Sage's Stone, but Baramos will be very, very hard and probably rely on getting criticals from the Demon Axe. Soldiers can wear magic armor and in Alefgard shields of strength, and will be more durable than fighters until high levels; also, the Orochi Sword gives access to Defense.
  
  
• Wizards: Very difficult. Since wizards can't damage Zoma except with attacks, they'll be reliant on staffs of force, but even at level 99 and 92 Str three wizards can't get ahead of his regeneration. Bikill would be needed, but Zoma dispels Bikill and regenerates 100 HP every turn spent recasting it. Strength seed farming or bug exploitation would be mandatory. Chance doesn't help at all, but at least you can use the Sage's Stone for healing.
  
  
• Merchants: Extremely difficult. Merchants will have the Sage's Stone against Zoma, but first they have to clear Baramos. Four attacks from Merchants with maxed-out Str from levels, 127, and zombie slashers against Baramos' Defense will do around 284 damage a round, but the merchants will probably run out of HP before Baramos does. Defeating Baramos would require lots of attempts to get lucky tremendous blows, strength seed farming, or both.
  
  
• Goof-offs: Probably impossible. Since goof-offs waste turns, even goof-offs with 255 Str from immense amounts of strength seed farming probably won't hit often enough to keep ahead of Zoma's regeneration, and the Sage's Stone is not reliable when the goof-off holding it can waste many turns in a row. This doesn't even take into account numb self.
  
  

[Iainuki]

There's really only one other single-class solo in DW3 that's practical, and that's the sage---fighter, soldier, and pilgrim all require heroic amounts of grinding, epic luck manipulation, or both. My big question was what I wanted to start my sage as, and after thinking about it a bit, I decided to run with a pilgrim. A wizard starting out would be incredibly, incredibly painful, and while a fighter gets marginally better Strength and Agility after class change, I was going to be luck-manipulating level-ups anyways so I suspected a lot of the difference would cancel out, and in any event there are strength and agility seeds but no items that increase maximum MP, and a pilgrim-turned-sage would have much higher MP after class change.

Since I wasn't limited by the hero's spell bug in this challenge, I could have gone wild with creating soldiers and selling their gear (well, if you make the maximum number of possible characters, it can start causing other havoc), but a solo pilgrim only really doesn't need a lot of expensive gear at the beginning: an iron spear for 750 gold, a chain mail for 480 gold, a bronze shield for 180 gold, and a leather helmet for free in the Tower of Najimi. Solos are also not short on cash, as I learned when soloing the hero. I made four soldiers, enough to cover a chain sickle, a leather shield, and incidentals in Reeve once I sold the hero's and the default characters' gear, and set out. It was immediately apparent that the early going was going to be rougher than for the hero, as it took me two hits to kill the second-weakest enemy in the game, Black Ravens, on the way to Reeve. Things improved after I bought a chain sickle, as I was able to kill most monsters in one hit, but I was still taking more damage than the hero; and improved again once I gained some levels and my HP wasn't so low.

I gained up to level 9 while doing the Promontory Cave and the Tower of Najimi, and the most important early game spell, Surround. Spiked Hares and Demon Anteaters, in particular, have no resistance to Surround. The Cave of Enticement took several tries, but more because of my own stupidity than anything else: twice I fat-fingered the controls and fell down a hole and once I overestimated my ability to take damage and didn't heal when I should have. My final pass I had really bad luck with enemy encounters, ran out of MP, and had to get first-round escapes from two groups of five enemies right at the end. I didn't see any Magicians in the entire Cave.

On arriving in Romaly, I bought my early-game final gear, set out for Kanave, and died immediately to a pair of Spiked Hares, who put me to sleep, and Magicians. I made it the second time, for all the good that would do me. I was in no way strong enough to attempt to do anything else, which meant I needed to do some grinding. One really nice thing about grinding around Kanave as a pilgrim was that Killer Bees also no resistance to Surround, which makes them a little less deadly. I tried to kill Killer Bees and died as often as I succeeded, ran from Army Crabs and Rogue Knights since I couldn't them very well, and killed everything else. When I learned Sleep, I tried that against Killer Bees, but it seemed worse than Surround. Infernos did allow me to kill groups of Army Crabs with two casts.

At level 13 I got bored with grinding and started trying the Tower of Shanpane. Humanabats for once were more than walking free experience, as Stopspell meant I couldn't do anything but trade blows with them. I kept trying to get the gold on the third floor, but, not counting the times I died to Beeeeeeeeeees!, three times running I ran out of MP right as I neared the gold and had to jump off the side to avoid dying. When I reached level 14 and learned Stopspell (which gas clouds don't resist, letting me shut down their damage) and Healmore, they helped, but not enough. I brought a wyvern's wing, two medical herbs, and the thief's key in addition to my standard gear: since pilgrims learn Antidote, I didn't need to allocate slots to antidote herbs.

After that third attempt, I got bored and decided to try to make it to Isis. I died a lot on the way to Assaram, to Wild Apes, Vampire Cats, and Madhounds, but mostly Wild Apes. I discovered, however, that I was high enough level to have a decent chance of running from them, and after a couple of tries, I made it, first to Assaram and then into the desert. As before with my solo hero, I discovered that I could kill the enemies in the desert, unlike the enemies in the grasslands before, even though the desert enemies are supposed to be "harder." Anyway, I wanted two things in Isis: the Meteorite Armband, of course, but all the grinding I'd been doing had given me enough money for a cloak of evasion, the best armor available for a pilgrim or a sage without access to the ship and arguably the best armor for them period, though I wasn't sure whether under solo conditions something with more Defense might not be better.

I returned to the Tower of Shanpane, made it up to the top after I fat-fingered and fell off once and got killed by Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! a couple of other times, but one fight against Kandar was enough to convince me I had no without getting more levels or better gear. I made some attempts on the Pyramid, but while one time I reached the Magic Key, I never came close to making it out with it. More frustrating, I kept dying right before making it outside when I turned back, so I wasn't even earning experience from it. I spent some time grinding outside Isis. This wasn't much more fun, there were lots of groups that could kill me or force me to run, so my experience per time wasn't great, but it was better than any of the available alternatives. I grinded up to level 19, with 101 HP and 87 MP, but I was much weaker than my solo hero at this same point in the game.

I tried the Pyramid again. Normally, this would be insane, but I had a trick I hadn't used before: Expel is a cheap, 2 MP hero and pilgrim spell that can remove a very limited set of enemy types from battle. You don't experience or gold for enemies you Expel, but it's a quick way of cutting dangerous enemy groups down, if it works. (I realized ex post facto it might have been useful grindfor Babbles and Scorpion Wasps, in my both solo hero run and this run). For the Pyramid, Mummies and Mummy Men only resist it at 77/256, which means that I could cut down the size of large groups before beating them to death, without burning much MP. Long story short, it worked. I had a lot of trouble because the Mummies and Mummy Men kept coming in mixed groups, or the groups would be split up so Expel wouldn't hit all the enemies in one cast. The only way I found to deal with King Froggores was to cast Stopspell to block them from casting Sleep. When Mummies summoned Horks, I just ran. Everything hurt, a lot, dealing 10 or more damage every hit not even counting terrible blows. By the time I made it to the Magic Key, I mostly was just casting whatever spell I needed to make the enemies less dangerous, then running, since that used less MP than fighting them. I made it out, barely, with no MP left, but I made it.

I gathered up the treasures in Aliahan and, while walking outside Isis to get night to fall, I gained level 20. After grabbing the rest of the Isis treasure, including the wizard's ring, as a major reason why I was having trouble in dungeons was running out of MP, I stashed it and other items I didn't need immediately, went to Portoga for the Royal Scroll, took Norud's tunnel to Baharata, and then walked to Dhama. I died once on the way to Dhama, but only once, and then it was on to the Tower of Garuna. There was absolutely no reason for me to gain further levels as a pilgrim. In the Tower, I didn't try to fight anything, I just cast whatever status spell neutralized the enemies most effectively and healed until I successfully ran away. For Great Beaks, it was Surround, for Garudas, Stopspell, for Sky Dragons, if I'd seen any, it would have been Expel since they no resistance to Expel(!). I skipped everything except the Book of Satori. I exited the Tower as fast as I could and immediately wyvern winged back to Dhama to change classes to a sage. (Well, okay, there was one hiccough in there: there's no item store in Dhama, and I only had one wyvern wing which I'd used to get back to Dhama from the Tower. After I changed classes to sage, I realized I was trapped in Dhama because I didn't have a wyvern's wing and I couldn't run from enemies around Dhama at level 1. I reloaded, walked back to Baharata, sold my leather helmet temporarily, and bought two wyvern wings so after changing classes I could wyvern wing to somewhere safer.)

For comparison, after changing classes I had 20 Str, 17 Agi (before the Meteorite Armband), 27 Luck, 52 HP, and 47 MP. At level 10 as a Pilgrim, I had 23 Str, 14 Agi, 26 Luck, 51 HP, and 40 MP. Note that you don't gain much in the way of stats after class change until around level 5, and I wouldn't be back to equivalent stats until around level 15, because sages have better stat growth than pilgrims; I would still be more powerful because of better gear and a wider variety of spells. Still, starting over at level 1 wouldn't mean that I'd have to go back and farm the areas about Reeve and Aliahan for experience. I could grind around, say, Kanave. Again. However, I made two improvements to my equipment first. Unlike pilgrims, sages can wield a broadsword, so I traded my iron spear for that. Second, I bought a staff of force (5000 gold in Assaram but only sells for 1875 gold, 55 Attack but burns 3 MP per attack, an improvement of 22 over a board sword)---I probably should have done it before, since when you're grinding outside a town the fact that the staff of force burns 3 MP every time you attack with it is immaterial since you're going to the inn so frequently anyways. It's useless in dungeons, but I expected to use it against Kandar as well. I had 11k gold at this point, so even these slightly-extravagant expenditures didn't bankrupt me.

With better spell access, attacks that could kill enemies in one hit, high enough Defense so that enemies could only do 2-3 points of damage to me if they hit, and a cloak of evasion to reduce Beeeeeeeeeees! instagibs, grinding around Kanave went faster than it had before. I hadn't bothered to manipulate luck on my pilgrim levels, as with the way stat growth works, higher stats for my pilgrim would result in about the same stats for my sage. I grinded up to 10 around Kanave, which didn't take long, and then up to 12 around Isis because I could handle the enemies there. At that point, with 97 HP, 77 MP, 90 Attack with the staff of force, and 63 Defense, I went to try Kandar again. I had some additional spells that would make the fight much easier than when I had last tried it: Upper gives you +100% to your Defense every time you cast it, which after two casts reduced Kandar's and his Henchmen's damage to very little, and Bang, which does fire damage to all enemies, required because his three Henchmen are all in their own groups the first time you fight him. I also cast Surround, because he can do terrible blows which would ignore my Defense, and Sap on Kandar, but it was a very easy fight. Kandar gave me level 14, Return, and the Golden Crown.

Now that I was a sage, I could start using acorns of life, but I wanted to hold off on seeds (for weird stat growth reasons not worth going into) until I was much higher level and closer to fighting Baramos. It was now time to clean up some of the dungeons I hadn't bothered with earlier. The Dream Ruby Cave wasn't so bad though I died to five Deadly Toadstools on the first floor the first time I went in and I had to do it in two passes afterwards because I ran out of MP. The second time, I got the Dream Ruby because I had enough MP and was there, so why not, even if it's useless to me? In the Pyramid, I used for the first time a combination that will probably appear periodically in the rest of the game. The thing I had discovered about the solo pilgrim and even more so the solo sage was that they could win most fights by opening with an appropriate status ailment spell, or occasionally a damage spell. For instance, in the Pyramid Upper reduced Mummy Men's damage to almost nothing at the cost of a round and 3 MP. The problem with this is that you run out of MP. However, at level 15 I learned RobMagic, which meant that as long as I could get a lock-down on a not-too-dangerous MP-possessing enemy vulnerable to RobMagic, I could restore large amounts of MP. In the Pyramid, King Froggores fit the bill, as they were vulnerable to Stopspell, had a reservoir of 30 MP for me to tap, and couldn't do much damage after Upper. At one point after clearing out most of the treasure chests, I was prepared to leave the dungeon, only three King Froggores showed up and I restored 60 MP off of them. I went back and cleared the rest of the chests, and exited because of inventory constraints rather than running out of MP.

Money at this point wasn't that useful to me, but it would be once I got the ship. The main reason to do these dungeons, though, was to get seeds for later and acorns for now, plus to gain experience since I wasn't even close to ready to take down Kandar again---chances are that would have to wait for Bikill i.e. level 21, to handle his regeneration. I went to one of my favorite grinding locations, the upper floors of the Tower of Garuna. I picked up the iron helmet, of course, and equipped it. The experience from the ordinary enemies wasn't so bad at this point, either, but I was really hunting for a Sky Dragon and Metal Slimes, since I had poison moth powder from the treasury at Isis. Alas, I didn't find one, though I did kill a Metal Slime. I discovered that Surround worked well against Great Breaks, Rammores needed Upper and Stopspell, and that RobMagicing Garudas worked against them as well as Stopspell since they only have 12 MP, can't resist RobMagic, and of course it replenished my MP to boot. I Expelled SkyDragons despite their experience because I couldn't fight them efficiently with the gear and levels I had and they have no resistance to Expel. The only enemies I didn't have an elegant way of dealing with until level 20 were Stingwings, but at 20 I learned Snowblast and nuked them with maximum prejudice. I learned Bikill when I hit 21, no luck manipulation required, and immediately went to kill Kandar.

Kandar didn't stand a chance. I cast Upper two times, rendering his damage negligible, then killed his Henchmen, Sapped him, buffed myself with Bikill, and went to town, hitting for over 100 damage an attack with the staff of force. A solo sage is definitely not as strong against random encounters as a solo hero, but they really shine on bosses.

With the ship, I could upgrade my gear again, so I went almost directly to do that: I did drop off a merchant at New Town, pick up the Staff of Thunder at Soo, and get the Vase of Drought at Eginbear, then use it to get the Final Key. I died to Man O' Wars on the way to the Pirates' Den and Eginbear, but there's not much you can do about that as a solo character. With the Final Key, I only had to make one trip to Tedanki; I also bought my zombie slasher there. After that, it was time to go to Samanao. I had an exciting fight against a grizzly and an old hag on the way: the grizzly could do about 50 damage, almost a third of my HP, in an attack, and the old hag did about half that attacking and not much less with Firebane. Luckily, that was the only random encounter I met. After buying a silver shield, I was left with 10k gold and a question: should I swap the cloak of evasion for a magic armor (5.8k gold, 40 Defense) and give up the dodge chance for 20 extra Defense? After thinking about it for a minute, I concluded the answer was hell yes: the dodge chance doesn't benefit from Upper and my big problem was lots of little hits, not big hits. I didn't sell the cloak of evasion, though, because I suspected it might see situational use later. (It didn't.) In all this upgrading, I'd gained 32 Attack and 43 Defense, a significant difference. Unfortunately, that's almost the last upgrade a sage gets: there's a weapon available in Alefgard that is better than the zombie slasher, under certain conditions, but Samanao is it for defensive gear.

I next tried fighting the Orochi and discovered that I had nowhere near the damage I needed given that I needed to heal every other turn with Healmore. I would need Healall and more HP to be able to kill it/her. I also tried going into the Samanao and died to the first group I encountered inside, a group of three skeletons who straight-up killed me. (Okay, in hindsight, I probably could have Expelled them, but I didn't think about it at the time, and that still proved the Cave was too dangerous.)

It was time for more grinding in the Tower of Garuna. I used the same strategy as before, poison moth powder, until I reached level 27. At 27, I learned the spell Chaos, which allowed me to do the same trick, confusing Sky Dragons to kill Metal Slimes, but because I didn't need to leave the Tower to buy new poison moth powders, I could also confuse other monsters any time I met a mixed encounter including Metal Slimes. However, Chaos is actually better than that: Metal Slimes are vulnerable to confusion with only 77/256 resistance, and not only do confused Slimes not run away unless they're the last enemy left, but they also damage other Metal Slimes! Chaos makes grinding amazingly faster. Using RobMagic on Garudas, a sage in the Tower of Garuna becomes a perpetual grinding machine. I stopped at level 34, after having acquired one agility seed from a Metal Slime.

(Something really weird happened in the Tower of Garuna. Poison moth powder failed on a Sky Dragon with a group of Metal Slimes, so I killed it, and then I started attacking the Slimes, expecting nothing to happen as usual, but suddenly I was doing 20-30 damage to them, killing them in a single hit. It only lasted that one battle, but what a battle. I assume it's some bug, but I have no idea why it occurred.)

I tried the Orochi again, with much more success. I didn't actually need level 34, I'd just fallen into a grinding trance, but I did need level 33, at which I'd learned Barrier, and level 30, for Healall. I opened the battle with three buffs and one debuff, Barrier, Upper, Bikill, and Sap. Barrier reduces damage from fire attacks, and in the case of the Orochi, it nerfed her/its fire breath from 60 damage to 20 damage, transforming the battle. With Barrier up, killing her/it was trivial. The second fight with the Orochi gave me level 35, at which I only learned a spell that's only useful when soloing, Open: Open opens doors like the Final Key does, but doesn't require an inventory slot. In any game with four party members, you just carry the final key, but when you only have eight inventory spaces, that extra space can matter a lot. At this point, I had 148 Attack, 176 Defense, 77 Luck, 274 HP, and 215 MP.

The Samanao Cave was both harder and no less annoying than with a solo hero. Voodoo Shamans with RobMagic were a huge pain and even with all of my spells, the best way I found of dealing with them was to fail to run away until I succeeded, but they still stole a lot of MP. I was able to refill some off Terror Shadows, who could only do minor damage with Snowblast. It was watching Snowblast from Terror Shadows that made me suspect that magic armor actually reduces damage from spells, which is another undocumented feature---I find it maddening that there isn't any good equipment FAQ for this game, since giving protection against all spells makes magic armor much stronger, and obviously a better choice than a cloak of evasion for sages and pilgrims in general. (Knowing this could have helped my ironcore party quite a bit.) By this point I had enough luck to not fall asleep with every Tortragon breath, but I still rated them as dangerous; however, while they have 179/256 resistance to fire, ice, infernos and Sap/Defense, they only have 77/256 resistance to Beat and Defeat which meant I had a way to kill them quickly. The most dangerous groups involved Skeletons, because after one cast of Defense each one could deal 50 or more damage in a single round, and more than that with more castings of Defense. They have 77/256 resistance to all elements, so I just used Firevolt and hoped it all of them. I did the Cave in two passes because of Voodoo Shamans, but I made it.

The Boss Troll was pathetic. I was only scared of terrible blows from him because of Upper, and he did land one. I cast Healall and continued casting buffs and debuffs; I used Upper, Surround (to reduce the chance of a terrible blows), Sap, and Bikill. It took a few tries to land Surround and Sap because he has 179/256 resistance to both, but after that the battle ended very quickly. I took the Staff of Change and bought ten wizard's rings, noticing that I was burning through a lot more MP than I had with a solo hero. After I finished the Sword of Gaia questing and tossed it into the volcano, I decided to try Necrogond.

The Necrogond passage was, as usual, terrifying. As with my solo hero, my worst fears were Hologhosts and Marauders, either of which could instantly kill me. I could usually kill a single Hologhost in one hit before it got to act because the zombie slasher gets bonus damage against them, but Marauders had way too much HP for that tactic. With Marauders and multiple Hologhosts, my best choice was Expel (this could have worked for my solo hero, too): they only have a 77/256 resistance, so Expel could and did remove entire groups of three Marauders or Hologhosts before they could act. I was not nearly as lucky as with my solo hero, as I had multiple encounters with Hologhosts and Marauders. Expel made Necrogond possible. (I did have a stone of life, and it never broke while I was in the dungeon because I resisted all the Beat and Defeats that did land.) As for everything else, I Firevolted Frost Clouds since they have no resistance to fire and Firevolt is guaranteed to kill them in one hit; Snowstormed groups of Minidemons so I didn't take too many Blazemores and RobMagiced individual Minidemons because they aren't dangerous without MP; cast Barrier and Upper against King Tortragons to nerf their damage to something manageable while I beat them to death, since with their Bounce I couldn't debuff them; cast Upper against Trolls, which rendered them all but helpless; and used a combination of Snowstorm and attacks to finish Lionheads, as they had too much HP to take down just with attacks, plus I needed to kill them fast before they managed to Stopspell me. I didn't bother with the treasures in Necrogond, since a sage can't use any of them. I should have brought a wizard's ring, but in any event I made it out with 32 MP.

I feel compelled to note at this point that my solo sage had passed all the key milestones of the game earlier than my solo hero: she defeated Kandar for a second time at level 21, she cleared the Orochi and the Boss Troll at levels 34 and 35, respectively, and survived Necrogond at level 37. I wondered if that would hold in Alefgard. I should note that up to this point, I had been using suboptimal tactics: aside from not bringing a wizard's ring into Necrogond, I should have been using Bounce a whole lot more than I was against enemies like Hologhosts, Minidemons, and Lionheads. Bounce reflects enemy spells without affecting your own buffs or healing. In a solo game it's like Stopspell on steroids since it works on everything, with no chance of failure, and doesn't impede your own casting in the slightest.

Since I was doing so well, I decided that I wouldn't pause, I would go straight on to Baramos. Baramos' Castle, as mostly a redo of Necrogond, was not harder. I could run from Snow Dragons, which meant the only monsters that my solo sage hadn't encountered before that I had to fighter were Evil Mages and Stone Hulks. Evil Mages were dangerous, but are vulnerable to, again, Expel, as they only have 77/256 resistance. Stone Hulks weren't that dangerous, though I died stupidly to a group of three even after casting Upper twice and Bikill because my solo sage kept rotating damage between them and they have 50 regeneration. Even with Bikill, I wasn't able to do damage fast enough. I should have switched strategies and used Snowstorm, as they only resist ice at 77/256 and it would have hit all three of them. I died stupidly to Baramos the first time because I did my buffs and debuffs in the wrong order. On the second time, I won, at level 37, after I changed my tactics to buff first, then debuff. First, I cast Barrier to reduce the damage from all his spells and especially his fire breath. Second, I cast Upper until I maxed out my Defense, bringing his attacks down to around 20 damage at maximum, casting Healall as necessary. I cast Stopspell to prevent him from using Blazemost, which still did a huge amount of damage, and Explodet, forcing him to attack more often. (Note: I should have used Bounce here! It reflects enemy spells but doesn't disrupt your own.) Then I cast Surround, which further reduced his attack damage, and finally Sap and Bikill so I could begin attacking. All these spells had taken 60 MP to set up, leaving me with 158 MP left. I burned through a good chunk of it healing while I attacked again, and again, and again, but I could tell I was making steady progress even with a couple of stretches of unlucky minimum damage rolls on my attacks. I knew I would win eventually, I was only concerned I would run out of MP first, but it turned out I still had around 80 MP left when he finally went down. I chalked up another boss where the solo sage turned out to be much stronger than the solo hero. And I didn't even need to use the Noh Mask!

The Alefgard overworld was very easy, though I once made the mistake of not casting Upper first against Kragacles before hitting them with Defeat. I had nothing to do in Alefgard except assemble the Rainbow Drop and head to Zoma's Castle, so after hitting the towns I went to Rubiss' Tower. The Tower turned out to be easier than I expected. Bounce neutered Wing Demons and Magiwyverns pretty well and Magiwyverns in particular made good batteries for RobMagic, I could cast Infermost directly against Leonas (rather than using the Sword of Kings), and Stopspell countered Vile Shadows. I didn't have a good way of handling Voodoo Warlocks, but they were more annoying than dangerous. Again, my MP pool outlasted the Tower and I retrieved the Sacred Amulet and the acorns of life, ignoring the Armor of Radiance since it's useless to a sage.

My first foray into Zoma's Castle, after using the Rainbow Drop to make a bridge, confirmed my suspicions that it was going to be a different ball game. I made it to the triple pair of granite titans in the entrance hall and killed them, but I was almost out of MP and that was just the first floor. I had some good ideas on how to handle some of the deeper encounters, but I suspected after that first trip, not good enough. The only real advantage my sage had was the ability to carry two wizard's rings, since I didn't need the Final Key. After a bit of thinking about it, I decided to try, to get a feel for how deep I would. It turned out that I almost made it to Zoma, when I met an encounter with an Archmage and two Lionroars and badly mishandled it, thinking I could take them with attacks after casting Bounce, which stopped their spells but not their attacks, and didn't heal early enough. However, that was right outside the last floor, so clearly I could make it. I died once more, somewhat less stupidly to an awful encounter of a granite titan and two archmages, but after that I made it again. Before describing the boss fights, I'll offer some notes on the enemies. Green Dragons only have 77/256 resistance to Beat and Defeat, but if they were broken up into more than one group, it was frequently cheaper MP-wise to just run away and heal after the battle. Hydras had few enough HP that I could kill them without any buffs and heal after. Goopis I could deal with easily with Firevolt, but that still cost a good chunk of MP. Voodoo Warlocks I didn't have any good tactics for, but at least I could run from them fairly easily. Against Troll Kings, I cast Upper and ran, since with Upper they could do barely any damage to me, but it wasn't MP-efficient to buff up to kill them. (Limbo, of course, doesn't work on a solo character, so they don't even try.) Barogs I just cast Bounce against on the first turn and that was that, since they don't have any real offense beyond Beat or Defeat. I Expelled Putregons and Swordoids since they both only have 77/256 resistance; I sometimes killed Swordoids that weren't grouped together, since they're vulnerable to the zombie slasher and didn't do much damage after I cast Upper, but Putregons have so many HP it was always better to Expel them. Lionroars I could nerf with Bounce and Upper, making them do almost no damage while I beat them to death slowly with attacks. The three enemies I hated most, though, were Archmages, Granite Titans, and Salamanders. Archmages do a lot of damage, unless I cast Bounce to stop their spells, and cast Revive, which meant that I had to kill them first no matter what other enemies I was fighting with them or how much damage those enemies could do; against multiple Archmages, I had to use two casts of Infermost to ensure they all died at the same time and couldn't Revive each other. Granite Titans did enormous amounts of damage unless I cast Upper and could critical, which I could handle except when I met them with other enemies I needed other buffs against, e.g. Archmages. I hated the Granite-Titan-and-two-Archmages group more than any other in Zoma's Castle except maybe three Salamanders. Finally, I had no good way of dealing with Salamanders at all: their fire breath deals massive damage, their attacks aren't much weaker, they have high HP, and they aren't really vulnerable to any quick kills. I could cast Barrier, Upper, and Bikill or Snowstorm and kill them, but that cost so much MP it wasn't even remotely worth it; I found my best strategy was to cast Barrier (to reduce damage from their fire breath), Healall as needed, and then to run until I escaped.

I made it to the final floor with two wizard's rings and near-full MP after some ring uses. King Hydra was easier than I expected: I cast Upper, Barrier, Sap, and Bikill, and he went down in only a couple of Healalls. Baramos Bomus took more doing: his fire breath is so damaging that it was better for me to let him cast Explodet, which meant no Stopspell or Bounce. I cast Barrier, Upper, Sap, and Bikill and then started hacking, since there were no other useful buffs or debuffs, and killed him after maybe half a dozen Healalls; thankfully he only has 50 regeneration. Baramos Gonus is a joke with Upper: after I maxed out my defense, I didn't even need to use Bikill to finish him off, and I only needed on Healall, after the fight. Zoma, alas, was a completely different story. Buffs and debuffs are useless because Zoma dispels them so often. Because of this, I ran into two huge problems: I didn't have enough HP to fit many Healalls in between needing to heal myself, and his physical attacks were doing huge damage to me. I concluded two things: I needed to grind for more HP, and I would have to use the Noh Mask to reduce Zoma's damage.

Luckily, sages have three additional grinding tools. The first is the falcon sword (25k gold), a weapon that only sages and the hero can equip which has only 5 Attack but attacks twice, i.e. 2 damage against a Metal Slime or Babble rather than 1 damage and two chances to critical. With high enough Strength, it's actually their best weapon against any monster that doesn't have high Defense. The second is BeDragon, a wizard spell I learned at 34 which turns you into a dragon, causing you to lose control of your actions but giving you a reasonably powerful fire breath attack. Under most circumstances, this is a really stupid spell to cast, especially in a solo game, but the breath attack can kill Metal Slimes and Babbles en masse, making it an amazing spell for grinding. The third is Chance, a wizard spell I had just learned at level 41, that has fourteen different possible effects and a 6/17 chance of killing Metal Babbles or making it easy to kill Metal Babbles.

I realized in retrospect I should have used a falcon sword my first time in Zoma's Castle, not that it would have changed the outcome against Zoma. The following is a list of the enemies in Zoma's Castle and their Defenses.

• Salamander: 59
  
  
• Goopi: 75
  
  
• Voodoo Warlock: 60
  
  
• Granite Titan: 90
  
  
• Archmage: 150
  
  
• Hydra: 120
  
  
• Troll King: 78
  
  
• Green Dragon: 75
  
  
• Barog: 57
  
  
• Putregon: 45
  
  
• Lionroar: 60
  
  
• Swordoid: 72
  
  

This is a good sample of the dispersion in Defense of enemies in Alefgard in general. The Strength where a falcon sword becomes better than a zombie slasher against enemies with 60 Defense that don't take bonus damage from a zombie slasher is 85, and against enemies with 150 Defense, 130 Strength. (For the Sword of Kings, against enemies with 60 Defense the crossover Strength is 140 and against enemies with 150 Defense it's 185. In practice, for solo hero I think the Sword of Kings' ability to cast Infermost makes it better until you reach very high Strength.) When I made my first attempt on Zoma, I already had 94 Strength.

Before I started, I realized I hadn't ever picked up the Golden Claw, so I went to get it to speed up the process. There were two plausible locations for me to grind, around Rimuldar and the first floor of the Tower of Rubiss. Both of them have Metal Babbles, and some very rough calculations indicated that Rimuldar had slightly more Metal Babbles. Testing showed, however, that the Tower of Rubiss was much, much better for grinding, mainly because the other enemies gave better experience and didn't cost so much MP. Groups of three Leonas give around 10k experience, compare to about 50k for a Metal Babble, and are very common on the first floor of the Tower of Rubiss. I could cast Bounce and quickly mow down Leonas and Winged Demons for 3k experience per while not taking that much damage. Meanwhile, I could RobMagic Magiwyverns to replenish my MP. Rimuldar didn't have half as good a grinding setup. Sages stop getting Strength after level 51, Agility after level 55, and HP after level 55, but continue getting MP and Luck all the way to 99. I worked myself up from level 41 to level 56, ending up with 135 Strength, 404 HP, and 308 MP. The only stats that would matter for the fight against Zoma were HP, MP, and Agility, but my sage hit 255 Agility with the Meteorite Armband at level 45. I used all my stored strength seeds to get myself up to 150 Strength.

It was time for another attempt on Zoma. I would make two changes to my inventory, swapping the zombie slasher for a falcon sword and taking the Noh Mask instead of a wizard's ring. My major advantage in the random encounters on the way to Zoma would come from a much improved ability to run away because of my higher level, but the falcon sword would do more damage to almost everything. It turned out I didn't need to worry: I ran successfully from every encounter in Zoma's Castle. The falcon sword made the boss rush even easier, since with Sap and Bikill I could do upwards of 300 damage per round. After the boss rush, I restored my HP with Healall, my MP with my wizard's ring, and put on the Noh Mask. I died twice, the first time because he double-moved me when I was low on HP---this is possible because even with 255 Agility because of an unlucky initiative roll, and the second time because I just ran out of MP, I assume because he rolled high on HP and used his strong blizzard breath, which did over 100 damage to me. The third time was the charm. I got down to 12 MP and thought I was about to lose again, but then my second-to-last Healall killed him. I have to assume he was harder because of my lower HP, but really my solo sage wasn't that much weaker than my solo hero and had a much larger MP pool, 541 HP and 227 MP for my hero versus 454 HP and 308 MP for my sage. Zoma may have just gotten high HP rolls all three times I fought him as a sage.

This was a much more satisfying and fun game than solo hero. Some of it was that having both the wizard and pilgrim spell lists gave me a lot of tactical variety, so I was constantly developing new tactics for efficiently dispatching random encounters and bosses. Some of it was that having everything up to Zoma be easier and Zoma harder made for a better, less frustrating experience. Finally, the rest of it was that a solo sage has much better tools for grinding than a solo hero, reducing the amount of time I spent grinding, plus I was able to do my last level grinding in Alefgard which really cut down on the net time I spent. On the whole, I strongly recommend that someone wanting a fun solo in DW3 start with solo sage. I think this will be the last solo I'm going to play in DW3 for awhile, possibly ever---the rest more like work than fun to me.

[Iainuki]

After some forum searching today and then independent testing on my own, I showed that the charts that came with DW3 are wrong (no duh, we already knew that, but they're wronger than I at least realized), and also almost everything posted on the Internet about DW3 equipment is wrong. This person is right, AFAICT. I also verified that the instant-death protection provided by the angel's robe is not complete, but since I don't have any idea what the chance of an instant-death spell hitting should be in the first place, I have no idea if the angel's robe provides any actual protection. The Sacred Amulet might provide perfect instant death protection, as I never saw an instant-death spell break it, but it may have just been the hero's high Luck, since I again have no way of knowing what the chance was without the Sacred Amulet.

The big take-home messages:

• The Armor of Radiance is the best armor in the game bar none. The only significant benefits that other armors give that it doesn't are the angel robe's instant-death protection (if it exists---of course the hero also gets the Sacred Amulet, which supposedly does the same thing) and the cloak of evasion's dodge chance.
  
  
• The Shield of Heroes reduces all breath damage, but that barely matters since only the hero can use it and the hero will definitely be wearing the Armor of Radiance. My solo hero, who used a shield of strength instead, still had protection against breath attacks because of the Armor of Radiance. The Shield of Heroes remains thus a rather unexciting item.
  
  
• The water flying clothes are the second-best armor in the game, after the Armor of Radiance; a pity only wizards can wear them.
  
  
• Magic armor dominates sacred robes.
  
  
• Magic armor may well be better than the Armor of Terrafirma or the Swordedge Armor under some circumstances.
  
  
• Barrier and other forms of protection against breath attacks don't stack, but Barrier and magic armor provides as much breath and spell reduction as it's possible to get.
  
  
• Soldiers have a real advantage over fighters in being able to equip armor that reduces damage from spells (magic armor) and fire breath (dragon mail).
  
  
• This means that my sage in my ironcore game should definitely have been wearing magic armor against Baramos and probably for the whole rest of the game, since 1/3 reduction against all spells is pretty compelling for a third-position character compared to the dodge chance, and the Defense difference would have made up some of the difference against physical attacks.
  
  
• Also against Baramos in ironcore, I might have considered having my hero wear magic armor instead of the dragon mail, since I was taking more net damage from spells because there are two Explodets and the risk of Blazemost in his AI cycle.
  
  
• My solo sage and solo hero were using the right gear.
  
  
• I understand now why my solo sage had a much harder time against Zoma than my solo hero: I was taking one-and-a-half times more damage from Zoma's breath attacks! In addition to my lower HP, no wonder I had to heal more often and thus had difficulty overcoming Zoma's regen.
  
  

[Iainuki]

After looking at the single-class challenges, none of them looked particularly interesting to me---the ones that weren't brutally hard looked too easy and too similar to the variants I'd already played, as I could already diagram out in my head how most of the key battles would go. I might still pick them up but offer no guarantees. Instead, I went looking through T-Hawk's and Sulla's other FF1 variants for ideas for other challenges that might prove interesting without requiring a solution via massive grinding, as grinding can solve almost all problems in DW3. The best was a variation on T-Hawk's Brawlers challenge: he played the game without casting spells or using items that cast spells. For DW3, that seemed too hard, mainly because of DW3's ridiculously limited healing: in DW3, you get eight inventory slots per character and items and equipment are not divided like in FF1, so if you only wear armor and carry a weapon on all four characters you have 24 spaces for medical herbs. Each medical herb heals only somewhat more, relatively speaking, than a Potion in FF1, and you get 99 of those. I didn't think that Zoma's Castle would be doable unless I grinded up to level 54 so I could just run from everything, so I decided spell-casting items were fair game--they're not half as powerful as in FF1, anyways, except for the Sage's Stone, and I was skeptical about my ability to beat Zoma and his bosses without it. Likewise, I considered not taking the hero, but this variant was going to be tough enough with the hero's uber gear. Note that I won't be abusing the hero's spellcasting ability this game, so they'll be only an overpowered damage-dealer and tank. (Seriously, the hero is so much better than the other classes it's not even funny.)

As T-Hawk said about his old-school FF1-in-FF5 variant, I knew the challenge had potential when I started thinking about parties. Pilgrims, wizards, and sages were all out in a variant without spells, so the question was how many fighters and how many soldiers. Soldiers have better damage mitigation, which would be extremely and unusually important because healing would be so limited. On the other hand, fighters have much better damage and can take out enemies before they act because of better initiative, preventing damage before it occurs. I also had to think about formation issues. Whoever was in the back would take massive damage from spells, breath attacks, and unweighted physical attacks and being able to mitigate those with magic armor or dragon mail and high Defense seemed like a good idea. The hero couldn't take the front position, though, and I needed good physical defense in both the front and the second position. It boiled down to two choices: the hero, two soldiers, and a fighter, or the hero, two fighters, and a soldier.

I needed to do math. Average Agility for fighters at levels 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 is 100, 119, 148, 169, and 190; for soldiers, that's 21, 26, 31, 36, and (you guessed it) 41. (No, those aren't typos. Soldiers always act last and giving one the Meteorite Armband is pointless because their base Agility is so low.) Fighters will always end up wearing cloaks of evasion that give 20 Defense. Pre-ship soldiers max out at full plate, an iron shield, and an iron helm for a total of 60 Defense, and even a level 15 fighter wearing a cloak of evasion would have almost that much Defense. Post-ship fighters get magic armor or dragon mail, a silver shield, and an iron mask for 95 or 100 Defense, so a fighter would have to be about level 35 to match one. In Alefgard, fighters only get one more upgrade, the shield of strength, for another 10 Defense. Clearly, soldiers would always be ahead provided sufficient gold to buy their equipment, but previous experience told me that buying all the best weapons and armor right after getting the ship wasn't going to happen. The tiebreakers all go in the fighter's direction: besides their offensive advantages, fighters are dirt cheap to equip; there's only one of what's clearly the best weapon for a soldier; and fighters have more inventory space for medical herbs. I would go with two fighters, the hero, and a soldier, switching between fighter-hero-fighter-soldier, soldier-hero-fighter-fighter, and soldier-fighter-fighter-hero formations depending on the enemies I faced and my gear.

I did the standard opener, making four additional soldiers beyond the one I intended to take with me and selling their gear, then heading up to Reeve to buy equipment. I bought a chain sickle for Iainuki, two training suits for the fighters, and passed Iainuki's copper sword to Joanna; I also bought two leather shields and a leather helmet, plus the one from the Tower itself, for Iainuki and Joanna after returning. As I'd expected of a physical-heavy party, my team made short work of the Promontory Cave, the Tower of Najimi, and then even the Cave of Enticement: I encountered no real problems doing any of them, though I didn't see any Magicians in the Cave. Joanna was doing about as much damage as Iainuki and doing more than the fighters because she had higher Strength than Iainuki and, unlike the fighters, access to a weapon, even if it wasn't a good one. After I stopped in Romaly, the trip to Kanave went smoothly, and I bought my first iron claw with the money I'd acquired from the Cave, though I didn't have any money left over for anything else. My characters were a mix of 6 (Iainuki), 7 (the fighters), and 8 (Joanna) at this point.

I then headed off to see if I could tackle the Tower of Shanpane. The answer was a decisive, "No," though partly because I didn't bring enough medical herbs. I had to turn around on the first floor. By this point, my fighters had better defense than Iainuki or Joanna because I couldn't afford better armor for either of them, so fighter Agility gains carried the day; once I bought a second iron claw in Kanave after my first attempt on the Tower, they were also doing easily twice the damage that Iainuki and Joanna were doing. My party was still strong enough that none of the enemies stood out as being difficult or annoying at all. After retrieving the Tower's gold on my second trip, I had enough to afford a broad sword, which went to Iainuki, freeing her chain sickle for Joanna and bringing them about them even on Attack. I went back to the Tower a third time for Kandar, had no difficulty reaching the top, and even less difficulty beating Kandar, since all my characters could take hits and dish out good damage both. Kandar brought everyone up to level 10 except Joanna, who was level 11. I gave the Golden Crown to Joanna, who at that point had 30 more HP than Iainuki.

I had a choice of buying another broad sword or waiting until Isis to get a battle axe, I decided to do the latter, bypassing the Dream Ruby Cave for then though I did stop by Noaniels so I could use a wyvern wing to get back to it later. While trading blows with Wild Apes on the way to Assaram worked better than it had any right too, Infernus Crabs were immune to my physical attacks with Increase up. I picked up the Meteorite Armband for Iainuki, then broke down and bought a broad sword for Joanna since I still didn't have enough for a battle axe. I hit the Pyramid next since what I needed more than anything was money, to buy Iainuki and Joanna better gear, and the Magic Key and Trick Bags were the best ways to get it. While the Mummy Men, Mummies, and the Horks the latter summoned hit hard because my armor was still not so great, my number one fear were King Froggores---the others couldn't TPK me unless I got really unlucky, but King Froggores definitely could with their Sleep spell. Luckily, though I met quite a few, none of them put more than two characters asleep at a time and the awake members always finished off the King Froggores before they did too much damage. I had to run when a Trick Bag accompanied by three Mummies opened with Surround, cratering my damage, but that was more costly in terms of medical herbs than dangerous. Joanna's terrible initiative became noticeably detrimental in the Pyramid because acting after everything meant King Froggores got more chances to cast Sleep and everything did more damage. I got the Magic Key, skipped the trapped chests for when I had actual armor, snagged the flashy clothes on the way out, and then went to liberate the Aliahan and Isis vaults.

A note on seeds: unlike in any of my previous games, I had more than one party member who could use agility seeds, because soldiers benefit from them at low levels. However, I decided I'd rather give them to the hero, still, because I would never see enough agility seeds to give my soldier relevant initiative and any agility seeds that went to the hero would have their benefits doubled by the Meteorite Armband. I sold the wizard's ring from Isis---you won't see that in any normal game! I then bought a battle axe for Iainuki and giant shears for Joanna; giant shears are a soldier-only weapon with 48 Attack, 8 more than a battle axe, for 3700 gold, and a soldier's best weapon before getting the ship. I also gave the fighting suit from Aliahan to my lead fighter, Tomoe, and switched the leather helmet and Golden Crown from Iainuki to Joanna and vice versa, as by using all the agility seeds I'd found on her and giving her the Meteorite Armband, Iainuki now had the best Defense in the party. After maxing out my offense, I still had 2.6k gold left, which went to two iron shields and two chain mails for Iainuki and Joanna. For comparison, in order:

Code:

        Level    HP    Attack    Defense
Tomoe        12        78    76    52
Iainuki        12        81    72    64
Hangaku        12        80    75    36
Joanna        13        102    98    40

By the time I reached Baharata Joanna was level 13 and everyone else was level 12. Joanna was again proving useful, then by killing enemies in one hit everyone else took two hits to down. I considered going back to the Dream Ruby Cave or the Pyramid for the chests I'd skipped, and then asked myself: why? I wasn't sure I was strong enough to take Kandar, but it looked like a reasonable possibility. I cleared all the chests in the Kidnappers' Cave in one pass, then considered buying more gear but decided that I shouldn't have any trouble handling the second fight with Kandar and with the ship so close, there was no point in spending more money. For once, Catulas' MP draining attack was completely irrelevant to me. The second fight with Kandar went exactly as I expected it to, my reasonable defense and excellent offense tore through him without any real difficulty whatsoever. He gave Joanna level 16 and everyone else level 14.

Now that I had the ship, I had way too many places I could spend money: two cloaks of evasion (2.9k each), two magic armors (5.8k each), two zombie slashers (9.8k each) or dragon killers (15k each), two iron masks (3.5k each), and two silver shields (8.8k each). Not even counting the weapons, that was 42k, when I had... 7k. I wasn't going to have enough money without a lot of grinding, which meant the real question was where to economize. I would find one and eventually three weapons for my hero and soldier, the Orochi Sword, the Thunder Sword, and the Demon Axe, but the last arrive so late, in Necrogond and Baramos' Castle, that I would need at least one weapon in the interim. (The Orochi Sword is also not that great as a weapon, about as good as a zombie slasher but 14 Attack down from a dragon killer.) I would also get the Armor of Terrafirma and the Swordedge Armor, but neither of them is as good as magic armor, and the Swordedge Armor also arrives too late. An obvious partial solution to my problem was selling the Golden Claw: I was a bit reluctant because it would make any grinding I needed to do later slower, but before Alefgard the best place to grind is the top floor of the Tower of Garuna, and it's not worth hauling the Golden Claw up there anyways. I decided to do it after the usual things.

I did the usual things in the usual order to get the Staff of Thunder, which I gave to Iainuki because she had the lowest Attack, the Red Orb, the Final Key, a leaf of the World Tree, the Lamp of Darkness, and the Green Orb. The trip to get a leaf of the World Tree was... exciting. Unlike my ironcore party, who only met one encounter and were strong enough to take it on, my berserkers immediately met a group of three Grizzlies who killed Joanna in the first round and laughed at my attacks. I ran, then ran again from five more encounters before managing to make it to the leaf. Retrieving the Golden Claw was trivial for characters who never used magic in the first place. The trip to Samanao was not quite as interesting as getting the leaf, but I managed to kill two out of a group of eight Metal Slimes, discovered that only Joanna could do more than one damage to Tortragons, and otherwise didn't have any trouble. I invested in one dragon killer, since I'd be using it until I got the Demon Axe from Baramos' Castle, and gave it to Iainuki since Joanna had the giant shears and Iainuki had better initiative. That put Iainuki out in front of Joanna for Attack, though not by much. I also bought a magic armor for Joanna, replacing her chain mail. The fighters were definitely behind at this point:

Code:

        Level      HP     Attack    Defense
Tomoe        16           110    99    63
Iainuki        17           127    128    79
Hangaku        16           115    96    47
Joanna        18           149    119    62

I still needed more money so I went to collect the chests in the Pyramid and Dream Ruby Cave I'd skipped, picking up a random luck seed drop on the way. I invested the money in a magic armor for Iainuki and a cloak of evasion for Tomoe, who gave her fighting suit to Hangaku. While doing the Tower of Garuna for a little more experience and the iron helmet there, since I was still short on cash, I had a Hunter Fly drop a cloak of evasion for Hangaku: score! I grinded for a bit on the top floor, bringing Joanna up to 21 and everyone else to 20, though my poison moth powder failed when I met a Sky Dragon and Metal Slimes. After that, I bought iron masks for Joanna and Iainuki, then went to Jipang and the Orochi's Cave for the easiest Orochi kill ever: the fight lasted two rounds, the Orochi attacked once and Tomoe dodged, and I claimed the Orochi Sword for Joanna. It was so easy that I didn't follow the Orochi and walked out of the Cave so I could fight her/it again, if I needed more grinding for Baramos or, more likely, Necrogond. My lack of healing was becoming a serious issue by this point, though, as I'd consumed almost all my medical herbs on the way to the Orochi.

I now had enough money for a silver shield, so I bought one and gave it to Iainuki. I also had Iainuki do the Navel of the Earth, a dungeon which is easy in most games but hard in this challenge: after the Final Key and the Staff of Thunder, I only had one inventory space for a medical herb, and because I couldn't cast Outside, I'd have to walk down and back up. I punted on the Armor of Terrafirma, since a magic armor is better in almost all circumstances at that point in the game and later, went straight for the Blue Orb, and made it out, though not before a terrible blow from a Mummy on the way out reduced me to green HP and forced me to run from everything else.

My next stop was Samanao Cave, which I had to do in two passes after running out of herbs after getting most of the chests on the second floor on the first pass. While Voodoo Shamans' Robmagic didn't matter for once, their ability to Vivify dead enemies remained very annoying. Because I had so little healing, I was a lot more afraid of Terror Shadows and their Snowblast spell than usual, but Tortragons were the only enemy I thought might wipe me. They did put all but one person asleep two or three times, but all my characters had enough Attack at this point to kill them, albeit slowly. After I retrieved the Mirror of Ra, the Boss Troll went down just as fast as the Orochi had and did almost as little damage.

After I finished the Sword of Gaia questing and bought a silver shield for Joanna, I prepped for Necrogond, the last thing I had to do before Baramos' Castle save the final Orochi kill, by giving Iainuki a stone of life, buying two full moon herbs for Marauder numbing, and filling all the rest of my slots with medical herbs. I also switched up my formation, putting Iainuki in the back and Joanna in the lead, since I couldn't put Iainuki in the first position because of Parry-Fight, having Joanna first seemed to help reduce the physical damage I was taking, and one of them had to be last so she could soak spells without Parry with the magic armor. Even making it to Necrogond with enough HP that I felt ready to take on the dungeon was hard and took three tries; the experience I gained put me up at levels 25 for Joanna and Iainuki and 24 for the fighters. The first time I made it inside, I had to back out after getting numbed on the first floor, which is basically a short entrance hall, and consuming of my medical herbs getting that far. On my second attempt, I reached my first goal, the Thunder Sword. I would have gone farther except that shortly thereafter a Hologhost Defeated both my fighters. I revived one with my leaf of the World Tree and backed out, with the Thunder Sword. I gave it to Iainuki and then passed Iainuki's dragon killer to Joanna; aside from straight-up increasing their Attack, the with the Thunder Sword and the Staff of Thunder I hoped to be able to take out groups of Frost Clouds before the majority of them could act, reducing the damage I was taking. By this point, everyone had gained a level.

After I acquired another leaf of the World Tree, I continued trying Necrogond. I had a few more false starts just trying to reach the entrance with enough HP to make it worthwhile attempting, and then another attempt ended on the second floor when a Hologhost killed Tomoe. I revived her with a leaf, exited the dungeon, picked up another leaf, and headed back. The next attempt I finally, finally, made it past the second floor without anyone dead from Hologhosts, though Marauders had already made me use all of my full moon herbs. I decided to keep going anyways, because the third floor and lower don't have any Hologhosts. By the time I was through the third floor, virtually all of my medical herbs were gone, and I was pretty sure I was toast. The fourth floor was terrifying, the fifth floor even more so, and I was even more certain I was toast when on early on the fifth floor four Frost Clouds got a preemptive attack and cast Snowblast two times, reducing all my character to low single-digit HP. I killed them easily with the Thunder Sword and the Staff of Thunder in the next round, but the damage was done. Firebane from Lionheads killed Joanna and Tomoe in the next fight, but I killed them and revived Joanna for her 248 HP. I very luckily fled from a group of three Marauders on the first round---they almost certainly would have killed me---and then even more luckily made it up the final corridor without any random encounters. I was out of the dungeon, but not out of the woods, as I had to walk over land at night to the shrine to get the Silver Orb, and the next hit would kill Hangaku, Iainuki had only 63 HP from my very last medical herb, and Joanna probably wouldn't survive long enough to escape without Parry-Run. I took a deep breath, plotted my route, and hit the shrine without any random encounters. Victory! I didn't even get TPKed in the dungeon.

Necrogond had brought the fighters up to level 27, Joanna to 28, and Iainuki to 29. At this point, all I had to do before Baramos' Castle was cleanup. I took a merchant to New Town for the Yellow Orb, got the acorns of life from the Tower of Jipang, and killed the Orochi again, twice, for the Purple Orb. After some thinking about it, I decided to give Iainuki all the acorns of life: in Alefgard, since she would be the only one with spell and breath resistance, I wanted to put her in the back to soak damage from all the breathers and spell casters since the since the fourth person never has access to Parry, and her high Defense meant she would take less damage from unweighted physical attackers; it might also help against Zoma. This held for Baramos to a lesser degree. Giving her the acorns of life would add just that much more durability, because in my experience it was always the last character who I had the most trouble keeping alive.

After getting Ramia, I made a foray into Baramos' Castle for an item that, for once, mattered: the Demon Axe. The Demon Axe is an odd soldier-only weapon with 90 Attack and a 1/8 (=32/256) critical rate and a 1/8 miss rate. In general, because criticals ignore Defense, and in this party since I didn't have Sap, the net effect of the criticals and misses would be positive, but also when you have the ability to manipulate luck with multiple attempts, obviously a weapon with a higher variance is better. I equipped Joanna with it, left all my other gear the same, took the Orochi Sword out of the vault, and packed every last free inventory space with medical herbs. My characters had the following stats:

Code:

        Level    HP        Attack        Defense
Joanna        30        276        202        108
Hangaku        29        214        174        92
Tomoe        29        209        171        90
Iainuki        30        248        182        167

As you can see, I was rapidly approaching the level at which fighters leave soldiers in the dust despite gear, but for the moment Joanna was still holding her own.

My next try on Baramos' Castle ended when I had to warp out after using all my medical herbs to heal after four fights with four Evil Mages. I swear I was meeting more encounters than usual in Baramos' Castle, which was probably just bad luck. At least one of the Evil Mages dropped a leaf of the World Tree as consolation. On my next attempt, four Evil Mages killed Iainuki with a blitz of damage spells. However, even though the damage floors were ripping me up because I didn't have StepGuard or adequate healing, on my next try I finally made it to Baramos with... almost full HP, after using all my medical herbs.

My tactics for the battle were a very simple variation on the tactics I'd used with three fighters in my ironcore testing: have Iainuki cast Defense with the Orochi Sword (Iainuki had the lowest Attack, no bonus critical rate, and the best chance of acting before other characters on the first round) while everyone else attacked, and then just attack. The first round went well, with Iainuki landing Defense before Joanna or Hangaku got their hits in. The second round also went well, as Hangaku got a critical in and Blazemost hit Joanna, the character with the most reduction the spell. On the third round, Joanna got a critical and Hangaku resisted Limbo, which was about as well as I could hope. And on the last round, Hangaku landed the killing blow with another critical, before Baramos could act. The couple of extra levels and the much better optimized equipment and formation made the difference here.

In Alefgard, I had about 39k gold to spend, so when I reached Hauksness I immediately bought shields of strength for Joanna and Iainuki. The shield of strength can used as an item to cast Healmore on oneself by anyone, but only soldiers and the hero can equip it as a shield. I discovered that Kragacles were an absolute nightmare for an all-physical party like the one I had, and had to retreat back to Hauksness after getting three encounters in a row with them: Kragacles have 338-450 HP, 150 Attack, and can attack up to three times a round, with criticals. Kragacles killed Hangaku twice on the way to Kol, forcing me to turn back both times. When I finally did make it to Kol, I sold the Oricon and bought the Sword of Kings, leaving me with about 15k gold which I immediately invested in a shield of strength for Hangaku. In Rimuldar, I gave the Ring of Life to Joanna, figuring that she was taking the most damage because she was in the lead and that with the highest HP in my party, I'd get more healing from it on her than anyone else.

With only three shields of strength, I had some trouble in the Tower of Rubiss keeping Tomoe healed up. After I ran out of medical herbs, I ended up swapping the shield of strength between Hangaku and Tomoe. I got the acorns of life, which I gave to Iainuki, and the Armor of Radiance, ditto, and stupidly forgot the Fairy Flute the first time so I couldn't finish the Tower. I had another 15k after I sold Iainuki's now-obsolete magic armor with which I bought my last shield of strength. There were no other treasures in Alefgard I cared about, as I needed Iainuki to use a shield of strength rather than the Shield of Heroes, so I went straight to get the Rainbow Drop, make the bridge, and kill the entrance guardians. My party was easily strong enough to handle the three pairs of Granite Titans despite my lack of magic. The last Titan I killed dropped a Thor's sword at 1/64 odds. The Thor's sword has the second highest Attack in the game, 95, after the Sword of Kings, among all non-cursed weapons; it also casts Firevolt when used as an item. Unfortunately, I was all but certain that a Thor's sword was worse than the Demon Axe against Zoma because of the Defense-ignoring property of criticals. In a party with a second soldier it would have been quite useful, replacing the Thunder Sword as the second soldier's weapon, but as it was I'd have Joanna carry it to use its Firevolt spell occasionally.

Stats-wise, at this point my character looked like:

Code:

        Level   HP        Attack        Defense
Joanna        37        344        230        121
Hangaku        36        265        201        103
Tomoe        36        255        205        106
Iainuki        37        314        240        228

Gear-wise, they had:

Code:

Joanna            Hangaku            Tomoe            Iainuki
Magic armor        Iron claw        Iron claw        Meteorite Armband
Iron mask        Cloak of evasion    Cloak of evasion    Iron mask
Demon Axe        Leaf of the World Tree    Leaf of the World Tree    Thunder Sword
Final Key        Shield of strength      Shield of strength    Shield of strength
Shield of strength    Medical herb        Wing of the wyvern    Sword of Kings
Ring of Life        Medical herb        Medical herb        Armor of Radiance
Thor's sword        Medical herb        Medical herb        Sacred Amulet
Orochi Sword        Medical herb        Medical herb        Medical herb

Zoma's Castle, given that I had healing from my shields of strength, turned out not to be hard at all; with only medical herbs, it would have verged on impossible, since I had to heal many hundreds of HP on my fighters in the dungeon. The Sage's Stone went to Tomoe, because I needed Joanna's actions free to use the Orochi Sword against Zoma and she had higher attack power anyways; and it made the boss rush trivial. Note that if you can get to the boss rush and keep your characters alive, the Ring of Life makes it possible to heal up fully after every fight with a lot of annoying item swapping and walking---the trick is getting to the last floor without it. For Zoma himself, on the first round I had Joanna use the Orochi Sword to cast Defense, Iainuki use the Sphere of Light, and the fighters heal, then everyone but Tomoe attacked while Joanna reapplied Defense when Zoma dispelled. He went down in only a few rounds, as I expected, and I'm not even certain that I needed the Sage's Stone.

In retrospect, I'm mostly surprised at how not difficult this challenge was. Like T-Hawk observed about FF1, it's really the physical classes that are the powers in DW3. Necrogond was hard, Baramos' Castle wasn't easy, but for the most part my party plowed through the game at breakneck speed without encountering real problems. Not allowing myself to use shields of strength in Alefgard would have made it harder but not in an interesting fashion, since all that did was save 15 levels worth of grinding I would have to do otherwise, and I don't feel bad about that. I was also surprised that my soldier contributed as much as she did: she kept ahead of the fighters on Defense, did more damage in some parts of the game, and didn't fall behind too badly in the late-game, plus her high HP and ability to wear magic armor were quite helpful later on. A second soldier would have been a bad idea because my cash was very tight through the whole game with just the hero and one soldier, plus without that second fighter I would have had a lot more trouble finishing off certain enemies before they could act and kill me, but I'm pretty sure one soldier was better than another fighter. The default hero-soldier-pilgrim-wizard party is terrible for beginners; if I had to recommend a party for people to learn the game on, I'd suggest hero-soldier-fighter-fighter since the hero would have provided plenty of healing and utility spells without my variant ban on casting.

[T-hawk]

Thanks again for sharing. It's a bit hard to follow along for a game I haven't played, but things like physical classes dominating other options come across clearly. Glad I could provide some inspiration for the way of the variant.

[Iainuki]

I decided to wrap up this set of DW3 variant challenges with something silly: four sages. The late game was easy, but the early game was hilarious.

I started out in Aliahan after setting the bit that allows me to drop off the hero by making my party of three goof-offs (Wu, Karle, Bell) and one wizard (Meitner). (Guess what my name theme was this time!) Goof-offs have pretty bad stat growth across the board, particularly for Strength, but get good Intelligence growth (this actually reduces their MP compared to bad Intelligence growth if you class-change them into a sage!) which is utterly useless since Intelligence only determines MP growth and they can't spells, and great Luck growth, which is also pretty useless since Luck is only a defensive stat that makes status-effect spells less likely to work on you. As if this weren't bad enough, they also get terrible equipment choices, level slower than merchants, and have a 65/256 chance of not acting in a given round; at level 35 and higher, they can sometimes actually numb themselves instead of acting. Goof-off, in other words, is a physical damage class that does no damage and has no advantages. (Not that I had any intention of letting my goof-offs hit level 35!) I also made three soldiers and do some selling, buying, and juggling of equipment so that my three goof-offs end up with copper swords and training suits in Reeve and Meitner got a cypress stick and wayfarer's clothes.

Normal parties can easily clear the Promontory Cave in one pass after reaching Reeve. My goof-offs and wizard required two passes; I was both horrified and amused to discover that Meitner, doing 1 or 2 damage with her cypress staff, was actually a significant combat contributor, especially on rounds when all the goof-offs decided to goof off. When I went back for the Thief's Key in the Tower of Najimi, I managed to do it in one pass, mercifully. High Luck or no, Masked Moths landed Surround on the goof-offs every single time they tried. After the Tower, everyone had made level 6, and I bought turbans for my goof-offs, as the ability to wear turbans is one of the few real advantages goof-offs get: a turban costs 160 gold and gives 8 Defense, making it a bargain in the early game. I had amazing luck in the Cave of Enticement, not meeting a single enemy on the second floor, and then only meeting one group of three Spiked Hares on the third floor---they put everyone but Bell to sleep, but she managed to run away after three tries, before anyone took too much damage, thanks partly to turbans.

When I reached Romaly, everyone was level 7. Rather than buying anything there, I wanted to see if I could survive the trip to Kanave. I was shocked when I made it, thanks largely to Meitner's IceBolt, though Wu had died and Karl was numb by the time I limped into town, and I'd had to manage two lucky runs against the last two fights. I bought Wu an iron spear, which is actually the best weapon a goof-off can wield except for the Sword of Illusion, which you only get one of, after defeating Baramos, and which can also only be wielded by female characters. I walked around Kanave until nightfall, again surviving only because of Meitner's Icebolt and Firebal, then picked up the poison needle for her.

There's a reason I picked a wizard for my non-goof-off character. Far east of Kanave, there's a place where a powerful monster zone overlaps an area that's accessible much earlier in the game, similar to the penninsula northeast of Provoka in FF1. Normally, the enemies there will just trash you, but one of the possible encounters involves Bomb Crags. Bomb Crags, as I mentioned before, do nothing until they get to "low" (I think it's one-eighth) HP, at which point they cast Sacrifice and kill your party, no saving throw allowed. However, the poison needle works on them, allowing you to bypass their Sacrifice and collect their experience and gold directly. I had a lot of success running from the dangerous groups I couldn't fight there, enough so I wondered if Luck gets figured into running chances as well. Even so, it took a couple of deaths to get my first encounter with four Bomb Crags, but when I killed them I gained two levels apiece for everyone, bringing the goof-offs to level 10 and Meitner to level 9. I wyvern-winged back to civilization to save and buy another iron spear, since even though Bomb Crags can generate the necessary levels I would still need to get, at a minimum, the Magic Key and then survive the trip to Dhama to class change. I then rinsed, lathered, repeated, for seven more groups of Bomb Crags and four more levels, at which point it would take three groups of Bomb Crags for each level, because I wanted to see if I could defeat Kandar the first time.

(I could have used this same leveling technique for my solo sage by starting with a wizard. However, the thing about a solo pilgrim is that while they're not a great character, they're certainly not terrible on the level of a party with three goof-offs in it, and with a solo wizard getting to Kanave would be awful, getting the Magic Key would be worse, and getting the book of Satori crazy. For three goof-offs, though, needling Bomb Crags the kind of cheese that would make the first part of the game less painful, not more, because normal grinding for them would so hard.)

I bought the last iron spear I needed and three leather shields, with the only remaining upgrades being cloaks of evasion that I couldn't afford with only 2.2k gold left. My goof-offs had only a few more points of Strength and hit points than my wizard, at that point, but I think their unreliability was even worse than their lack of damage. However, it turned out that at level 14, even goof-offs could handle the Tower of Shanpane without too much trouble, allowing me to save most of Meitner's MP for the fight with Kandar. I was never going to win a straight fight with Kandar, but Meitner had Increase, and despite my party's pathetic Defense, after a couple of casts Kandar and his Henchmen couldn't do much damage to me. The goof-offs traded blows with the Henchmen and used medical herbs when appropriate while Meitner cast Increase, the whole party version of Upper. After all the Henchmen were dead, Meitner switched to casting IceBolt against Kandar himself while the goof-offs added a little more damage. He went without anyone dying---I was half-expecting a terrible blow to kill someone---and I claimed the Golden Crown, but no more levels, for my trouble. Meitner equipped the Golden Crown, of course.

The big prizes for my party were of in the Pyramid, and before going back to grinding on Bomb Crags, I decided to see if I could retrieve them. I was surprised to discover that I could fight all of the enemies on the way there, albeit with Meitner providing most of the offense by burning MP; the goof-offs were just there to tank. The Meteorite Armband of course went to Meitner as the one useful member of my party. Everything in the Pyramid did tons of damage to my party. King Froggores were a serious problem as always, though at least they never managed to send my whole party to sleep at the same time, meaning goof-off luck might have been good for something. I had to run from Mummies since I didn't have the damage output to deal with their Hork summoning. I was very, very surprised when I managed to get the Magic Key on the first try, and even more surprised when I managed to retrieve the flashy clothes, which for once I equipped, on my lead goof-off Karle. (Sadly, you can't buy flashy clothes until you get the ship and reach Soo.)

I did the usual things of retrieving the Isis and Aliahan treasures and getting the Royal Scroll for Norud from Portoga. The usually-trivial trip to Baharata, however, turned into a three-attempt nightmare where I would get an encounter every two steps. The monsters in the area ripped apart my party, particularly Heat Clouds: they come in groups of four or five, are immune to fire damage, and have enough Defense so the goof-offs could barely hurt them, which meant that I had no way to kill them except one per round with IceBolt. Meanwhile, their breath attacks wore down my weak HP forcing me to heal constantly. I could handle the other monsters in the area without so much pain, so of course every other encounter I saw included Heat Clouds. I also met groups that I couldn't kill at all, like a Healer and Heat Clouds and a Vampire Cat and Infernus Crab. I eventually limped into Baharata with half HP or less on my entire party and only 8 MP on Meitner.

It was clear I wasn't making it any farther. My goof-offs at this point were level 16, and Meitner was 15. If I was lucky, the next four levels for my goof-offs would give them another 4 Strength, totally inadequate for piercing Kandar's Defense in the second fight; even with Increase, I wouldn't be able to win. Likewise, without better offense I couldn't hurt any of the enemies past Baharata. The most I could hope to do was grind to level 19 or so, walk to Dhama, then grind to 20 and class change. It was time for more Bomb Crags: each one gives 220 experience to all members of the party, far more than any other monsters my party could actually fight, and even when I won, my goof-offs took lots of damage, which I could only heal inefficiently. I could buy cloaks of evasion, which would help with physical defense, but wouldn't do anything for my offensive weakness.

Once my goof-offs hit level 19 (that's about 60 Bomb Crags), I walked to Dhama. To, again, my surprise, I had more success with the enemies around Dhama than the ones around Baharata, mainly because none of them had fire immunity and they cast fewer mass damage spells; admittedly, Meitner had learned Blazemore while grinding, which helped. I decided to grind out the rest of the experience around Dhama, as battles gave about one-fifth the experience, but took a lot less time. Once all my goof-offs arrived at level 20, I changed them all into sages. Then, I sold all my turbans, leather shields, flashy clothes, training suits, and iron spears to buy broad swords, chain mails, bronze shields, and leather helmets. Net effect: at level 1, my sages were about as well-defended and hit about as hard as my goof-offs had been at level 20, though they still had fewer HP. I went east of Kanave and needled one more group of four Bomb Crags to get my new sages up to level 7, putting them Strength-and-Agility-wise where they'd been at level 20 as goof-offs, though still with fewer HP; they had around 20 MP, as a consequence of the permanent MP-crippling effects of being class-changed from goof-offs, and only half as much Luck as they'd has goof-offs, for how much that matters. (Not much.)

I could have poked more Bomb Crags like I had before, but unlike goof-offs sages are a real class, so I thought I'd clean up some of the dungeons I'd skipped. One problem with four sages is that both the characters in the first position can't use Parry-Fight, which means they take a lot of damage. (Later on, I would make sure they were always equipped with the Meteorite Armband and whatever the best defensive gear I had that was available, but for now the Armband stayed on Meitner, as she provided a lot of my offense.) The Dream Ruby Cave with a level 19 wizard and three Luck-buffed sages was a joke as they tore through everything and mostly ignored the Deadly Toadstools' sleep breath. The Pyramid was rougher, my sages took significant chunks of damage from the Mummies and Mummy Men, though I could Expel inconvenient Mummies with my new access to pilgrim spells. For the most part I just used Meitner to nuke groups with Firebal and Firebane and had the sages attack, then used their MP to cast Heal out of combat. Meitner ran out of MP about two-thirds of the way through the trapped chests, but I finished them relying on just attacks and Heal with one Expel when my lead sage took too much damage. I jumped off the roof with almost no MP left, though I had enough to deal with the Infernus Crab that attacked right when we landed. All this nonsense brought my sages up to level 10.

With Meitner approaching level 20, my next goal was to get the book of Satori so she could change classes right after hitting 20. The enemies in the Tower of Garuna could do lots of damage to me, but I had just barely enough MP to heal it all. Sky Dragons weren't worth killing because they're immune to fire, so I used Expel against them, but my sages weren't fast enough to beat their initiative so I ended up taking a lot of damage from their fire breath. On the top level of the Tower, I managed to kill two out of a group of seven Metal Slimes, giving Meitner level 20 while bringing my sages up to level 12. I collected the iron helmet and gave it to my lead sage Bell, made it to the Book of Satori on fumes, and cast Outside. After changing Meitner to a sage, I bought equipment for her and also three more iron helmets for 2000 gold each, maxing out my pre-ship equipment. For comparison, Meitner had 42 MP at level 1 after changing classes, whereas Bell and Wu had 33 MP each and Karle 48 MP at level 12.

With much better offense, due to Sap, having characters who could act reliably, and higher Attack, I could now tackle Kandar---I didn't want Meitner to get the experience as a wizard, which was the only reason I delayed. The Catulas in the Kidnappers' Cave were annoying as always, but rather than letting them drain my MP, I Expelled them, as they only have 77/256 resistance. By the time I made it to Kandar, Meitner was level 8. I opened the battle with four casts of Increase, making myself all but immune to Kandar and his Henchmen, then beat the Henchmen to death while Sapping and trying to Surround Kandar. Surround never did land, and I had terrible luck hitting with Meitner's Blazemore despite Kandar's 77/256 resistance, but he died without landing any terrible blows so it worked out. By the time I got out of the Cave, Meitner was up to level 10 while everyone else was level 13.

For once, I had better attack magic than the Staff of Thunder when I picked it up, as Meitner had learned Snowblast at level 20. My party had no trouble with the encounters on the water despite their technically-low levels, but on the way to get a leaf of the World Tree after getting the Final Key, a lucky hit from a delinquent armor killed Bell because she was in the lead and couldn't parry; I still managed to get the leaf. Before heading to Tedanki, I went back to the Pyramid to pick up and sell the Golden Claw, putting myself a little over 30k gold. In addition to picking up the Lamp of Darkness, the Green Orb, and acorns of life, I bought three zombie slashers for almost all my gold. Falcon swords become better for sages than zombie slashers eventually, but I was hoping never to reach eventually this game.

My next goal was to kill the Orochi for the Orochi Sword. The Cave wasn't hard, but I discovered that with so many casters, two people unable to Parry-Fight, and so little HP, having characters get confused by Derangers was extremely MP-intensive. I eventually started running away whenever they confused me since running away meant my own confused characters couldn't cast powerful attack spells to kill me and Derangers have no attacks of their own. My first attempt on the Orochi herself/itself ended after some bad luck, with her/it waking up and breathing almost every round plus resisting sleep many times. I was convinced I could do it, though, if rolls didn't break against me so often. I tried again, had a false start where Bell got killed on the way, and then had great luck with Sleep and having her/it stay sleeping, though Sap took four tries to land. After that, she/it died in short order. The Orochi Sword is not as good as a zombie slasher because it doesn't have bonus damage, but it was more than good enough for me not to need to shell out another 9.8k gold until I had bought better armor for my party. The experience brought Bell, Karle, and Wu up to level 16, while Meitner remained level 14.

I went next to Samanao to buy my lead sage magic armor. Since I was there, I tried the Samanao Cave, and discovered my sages had no trouble handling the enemies there: Voodoo Shamans were annoying as always but not dangerous, and I had to run from Tortragons since I had no good way of causing damage to them, but I could kill everything else. Lethal Armors I could damage by casting IceBolt and Snowblast. Skeletons were the worst because they cast Defense and attack in the same round, dealing tremendous amounts of damage. A preemptive attack by three Skeletons on the bottom floor of the dungeon killed Bell, again. However, aside from that and having to do it in two passes because of Voodoo Shamans, I encountered no problems. The Boss Troll was the easiest boss monster ever, as I just cast Increase a bunch of times then cast Sap until it stuck, then attacked until it died. By this point, everyone was 17 except Meitner, who was 16.

I then did some clean-up, collecting the Tower of Arp's treasures and the Blue Orb from the Navel of the Earth. I used Meitner: with magic armor, the Meteorite Armband, and the Staff of Thunder, she had no trouble clearing the Navel at level 17 and gained level 18 on the way to the orb, finally evening out my sages' experience. That left only the Sword of Gaia questing and the passage through Necrogond for the Silver Orb before Baramos. I wasn't going to beat Baramos before level 21, because at a minimum I was going to need Bikill. In practice, it would probably require several levels after 21 for all of my sages to learn Bikill unless I did some heroic save-scumming. I believed that Barrier (32-34) and Healus (34-36) would certainly enable me to kill Baramos---the trick would be figuring out if those were required or if I could do it with fewer levels and a smaller set of spells. Regardless, though, as my party was only level 18, I needed to do some grinding.

It was back to the Tower of Garuna with poison moth powders. While poison moth powders are expensive at 500 gold per, I decided I was more impatient with grinding than I was desirous of getting better gear for my characters. Meitner learned Bikill at 21, Wu and Bell at 22, and Karle took until 23. I hit level 24 before using up all my poison moth powders, then I went to do the Sword of Gaia questing in preparation for Necrogond, as a break from grinding. Before trading in the Staff of Change, I spent 10k on four wizard's rings: previous experience suggested I wouldn't need them, but then I'd never taken four sages through Zoma's Castle before, and I really wanted to finish the game with the least grinding possible. I could have bought a silver shield instead, but I was going to get silver shields eventually, and certainly at least one or two before Baramos. My characters hit 25 before I made it to Necrogond proper.

Before beginning, I put Karle, who had both the highest Agility and highest HP in my party, in the lead and gave her the Meteorite Armband; took out the stone of life and gave it to Meitner, who was in the third position and most likely to survive if things went poorly against Hologhosts; and bought my fourth magic armor. My first trip into Necrogond was to pick up the gold and the Thunder Sword, which while useless to sages could be sold for 5625 gold. (Note that the Swordedge Armor has no sell value and is thus useless period.) I Outsided, Returned, bought a silver shield for Karle, and took some wizard's rings out of the vault since I noticed how high my MP consumption had been. I was less worried about Marauders and Hologhosts than usual, since my sages all had NumbOff and Vivify, an MP-intensive revive spell, plus with three former goof-offs my party should have been more resistant to instant-death spells and numbing breath because of high Luck. The other enemies were more threatening than usual, particularly King Tortragons, Frost Clouds, and Lionheads because of their breath and/or hit-all spells; Lionheads also have Stopspell, which posed a particular threat to my party. I cast Increase against Marauders and Trolls, Snowblast against groups of three and four Minidemons, Stopspell and Increase against Lionheads, Firebane and used the Staff of Thunder against Frost Clouds, Infermore with everyone when I saw a group of four Hologhosts since they only resist Infernos at 77/256, and tried to cast Sap against King Tortragons but they got Bounce off first every single time. Marauders numbed me quite a few times but NumbOff made that more annoyance than threat; Hologhosts never landed an instant-death spell. King Tortragons were definitely the enemy I had the most trouble dealing with their powerful breath attacks and immunity to all my spells. I had to use a wizard's ring once on Karle near the end since she was carrying most of the burden of the combat magic, because she could more reliably act before the enemies.

After claiming the Silver Orb, I went to do clean up. I took a merchant to New Town for the Yellow Orb. I killed the Orochi twice using a new strategy: mass Snowstorm. All my sages had learned Snowstorm at level 26, and it does an average of 100 damage that the Orochi doesn't resist. She/it didn't even survive the first round or get to act as three Snowstorms. I bought another silver shield. Finally, I decided to distribute the acorns of life evenly among my party, getting everyone up around 200 HP.

I'd been thinking about Baramos and how best to kill him. I had Bikill, of course, but Bikill takes a turn to cast, and even with Sap and Bikill, my sages weren't going to clear more than about 125 damage a round each. Even with magic armor, I doubted I would survive much more than the four or five rounds I had seen in my ironcore testing, especially since my lead character couldn't Parry-Fight. Snowstorm, on the other hand, looked promising: Baramos only has 77/256 resistance to ice, and with four Snowstorm casters I would expect to deal about 280 damage a round, with no actions required for buffing or trying to get Sap to stick. Baramos has a maximum of 900 HP, so as long as I made it four rounds or so, I expected to kill him, with damage to spare. I decided to try it.

My first attempt on Baramos' Castle went horribly, with two preemptive attacks by Evil Mages, Hologhosts landing Beat and Defeat, and tons of encounters with Stone Hulks and the like draining my MP. While I could handle one or two Stone Hulks with just Increase, I discovered that I needed to cast Snowstorm against groups of three because otherwise my party would distribute damage and fail to get through their regeneration; against Evil Mages, I just used Expel since they weren't worth fighting. When a second Hologhost killed Karle and Wu in the same encounter, with three characters below 50 MP, I Returned out to try again---I had enough money from all the random encounters to buy a third silver shield, so I did; I'd also gained level 28 from all the fighting. The second pass went much, much better, and I reached Baramos with about 90 MP each, more than enough. The battle with Baramos himself had no subtlety, as every member of my party cast Snowstorm every round. The first round, three Snowstorms hit, the second all four, and the third three, then he died in the fourth round to two Snowstorms. His breath did enormous damage to me, as expected, but Blazemost landed on Bell who was in the second position and could easily absorb it, thanks to magic armor; Limbo didn't remove anyone in the third round, and he didn't get to cast Explodet or Chaos in the fourth. I have to admit, I'd never planned to beat Baramos with pure damage spells, but it worked really well.

In Alefgard, while gathering the usual plot coupons, after I sold the Oricon I could finally afford to get the last silver shield and zombie slasher, finally maxing out my equipment from items that had first become available right after I got the ship. This is the peril of running a party where all the members require expensive gear! I gave the Ring of Life to Karle as she was leading. Groups of Kragacles died to the whole party spamming Defeat, and nothing else on the overworld proved very difficult---even when a Darthbear killed Karle with a terrible blow, Vivify brought her back right after the battle. The Tower of Rubiss was almost as straightforward, I traded Snowstorms with Leonas because I took too much damage killing them with just attacks, and had some difficulty with two encounters of four Vile Shadows---I should have used Bounce there. Everything else died without causing too much trouble. In Zoma's Castle I cleared out the Granite Titans guarding the entrance and learned that MP limitations were going to be a problem. I prepped for the final descent by taking out all my wizard's rings, the Sphere of Light, and using all the seeds I had stored. My party was level 32 except for Wu, who was level 31: there was an unfortunate incident where I'd confused wyverns to kill a Metal Babble, but before I could kill the Wyverns, they'd killed Wu. The only treasures worth getting in all of Alefgard were another stone of life and a wizard's ring, but I thought I'd rather see if I could make it with what I had.

Just getting to Zoma's Castle in decent shape took a number of tries, the most memorable of which was ended when a Troll King Limboed Meitner, forcing me to Return to Aliahan to retrieve her, though eventually I figured out I could run from most things which made the process easier. In Zoma's Castle, I tried to run from an encounter of a Voodoo Shaman and three Green Dragons, then a group of two Green Dragons and a Hydra, and failed both times until I died, because both of those groups would require enormous MP use to defeat and heal up after. I had Barrier at that point, but even with Barrier breath attacks still did a ton of damage to me. I ran away mostly from Green Dragons and Hydras, unless they were in groups small enough to kill without taking too much damage; Surrounded Granite Titans; Expelled Putregons, since they were definitely not worth fighting; Stopspelled Barogs, which mostly shut them down; Stopspelled Lionroars, since their attacks didn't really do enough damage to concern me; cast Increase against Swordoids to nerf their damage to where I could take them in melee; and Snowstormed Salamanders. I didn't really have any good way of dealing with Archmages except to have everyone cast Bounce and then slowly beat them to death, since I didn't have Infermost and Infermore didn't do enough damage. Luckily, I didn't see many of them. On the way down, a Barog dropped another rare item I'd never seen before, a mysterious hat, which is actually really useful because it reduces MP consumption by 20%. I gave it to Meitner since in the third position the 8 Defense hit she took to wear it instead of an iron helmet wasn't that consequential. After I survived the first floor, I made it to Zoma in one attempt---go figure. By the last floor, everyone had gained level 33.

Against the boss rush, MP conservation was the name of the game. I used Barrier, Increase, Sap, Bikill, and the Sage's Stone against King Hydra, since that was the most MP-efficient way I could think of to kill him, due to his 100 HP/round regen. Baramos Bomus I blitzed with Snowstorms, just like Baramos, since he does a tremendous amount of damage per round but doesn't have much HP or regen. Baramos Gonus has no regen, so I cast Increase eight times and then beat him to death slowly with unbuffed attacks. I managed to restore all of my MP from a single wizard's ring before fighting Zoma; however, with less luck, I could have easily consumed more. Against Zoma, well, you can probably guess the basic outlines of the tactics, but they were simple and straightforward. I gave Karle the Sphere of Light and Bell the Sage's Stone. First round, I used the Sphere of Light and the Sage's Stone and cast Barrier and Increase. In the second and subsequent rounds, I cast Barrier as needed after dispels while Bell used the Sage's Stone and everyone else cast Healall on Zoma. With three Heallalls racking up around 380 damage a round after his regen, Zoma died in four rounds.

This variant wasn't incredibly challenging, but again it was refreshingly different. The early game was interesting because I had to rely on a single wizard's spells for almost all of my offense, though the grinding was tedious. Later on, I again discovered how useful damage spells were---normally, they're concealed by the wizard's defensive liabilities. I'm pretty sure I could have cleared Baramos at level 26, once my sages learned Snowstorm, and Zoma at level 30, once they learned Healall, but going lower would have been difficult in both cases.

If I return to DW3 at some point, I'll be looking at something hard and very different from the games I've already played, like four wizards. For now, I plan to finish my minimal-grinding FFV solo hardcore run . (Seriously, T-Hawk, 759 Black Flames?)

[Iainuki]

I've been looking at Dragon Warrior 4 a bit lately, and discovering that my childhood judgment of the game was all too correct. They made one huge design blunder that (at least for me) sucks all the fun out of the game: you only ever get to control one member of your (usually four-person) party at a time. The other members are controlled by AI scripts---bad AI scripts. Stories abound of AI-controlled characters with pilgrim/cleric-like spell lists spamming instant death spells uselessly against bosses. You don't even get to pick individual scripts for different characters, they all use the same script. This makes the game play a lot like T-Hawk's Three Berserkers and a Nanny, only the characters you control never get support magic, with shades of Sullla's solo berserker, since the avenues for better strategy are very limited so the only way to make progress is to go grind more levels. A Let's Play of the game has a video showing what a comedy of errors this turns the final boss fight into. Boss fights in general end up dominated by random luck. All non-damage combat spells are near useless since you can't manipulate the AI to cast them when it would be advantageous. Casters are devalued since they'll randomly waste turns casting useless spells---at least the combat characters attack reliably, the only pity being you don't have enough of them for a full party. Most of the battle tactics revolve around blitz attacks since it's impossible to make anything more subtle work. The whole game is just stupid. What were they thinking? Needless to say, this makes variant play very difficult since any variant has to work around the AI-controlled characters.

They released a DS remake of the game that fixed this problem, only to introduce several of its own. The worst is the horrible translation, not in the Engrish sense, but in the sense they translated almost all the dialog into the worst kinds of phony Scottish, Irish, French, and Russian accents imaginable. In this game, the broken English isn't a bad translation, it's a deliberate choice. The mind boggles. As if that weren't bad enough, not only did they not keep the same spell names from earlier iterations of the series, they translated most of the spell names as sound effects. Look! You know what the revival spells are called? Zing and Kazing. Ice spells are Crack, Crackle, and Kacrackle. I only wish I was kidding. I also don't like the graphics, the original game was designed in 2D and grafting 3D isometric graphics onto that irritates my aesthetics, but that's more personal preference. I just don't think I could bring myself to play the remake even if my computer was fast enough to run it, which I doubt.

There's a Game Genie code that gives you control over your party for the NES version, but of course that makes the game too easy since it's balanced for the stupidity of your AI-controlled party. DW1 doesn't offer any interesting variant play, the one and only solution to all problems is more grinding. I think all the DW2 variants are insanity challenges: ironcore even with some minimal grinding allowed would be brutal, with I suspect many attempts meeting a late demise in the Road to Rhone, equipment-or-spell limited challenges are as bad or worse, and solo Prince of Cannock would be just awful. Maybe one of the remakes might be gentle enough, if I can avoid getting too irritated by the changes. That leaves DQ5+, which I never played as a kid and will have to look into at some point.

[T-hawk]

As if that weren't bad enough, not only did they not keep the same spell names from earlier iterations of the series, they translated most of the spell names as sound effects. Look! You know what the revival spells are called? Zing and Kazing. Ice spells are Crack, Crackle, and Kacrackle.

That wasn't unique to this translation of DW4. Dragon Quest 8 did that too, so they just brought the translation of the older game in line. Square/Enix did the same thing here with DQ as with Final Fantasy, where later games had like Blizzard / Blizzara / Blizzaga so they used the same names in later remakes of the early games.

[Sullla]

Yeah, I also owned Dragon Warrior/Quest 4 as a child. The game is completely an utterly ruined by forcing all of the non-hero characters over to AI control. It's an insane design decision that ruins what would have been a very good game otherwise. Such a waste.

I personally dislike the various different remakes that try and make all of the old role-playing games "more Japanese" in their names. I even understand why they do it, as much of their audience is made up of anime and manga fans who love anything and everything associated with Japanese culture. But I still feel like that's a mistake which is limiting the appeal of these games to a larger audience. Anyone can understand the difference between Fire/Fire2/Fire3; however, it gets very confusing when you start using Firaga or whatever. Which is easier for a newcomer to understand immediately: a spell called "Heal", or a spell called "Esuna"? Yeah. I don't even want to go into the bizarre Dragon Quest version of the same stuff (seriously, Kazing?) Sales for Japanese RPGs have been dropping steadily for a decade now, and I believe that it's the insistence on catering to the (small) fanbase of Japanophiles (weeaboos, heh). Yes, there's a core audience who loves this stuff, but the developers are alienating the mainstream.

There's a reason why regionalization exists. Some things that work for Japan don't work for Westerners. I think I'd be too ashamed to spend much time on a game with a ridiculously cutesy style or idiotic-sounding names.