Dragon Warrior, Variant Style

[Iainuki]

There's another long series of old JRPGs besides Final Fantasy, though they've never achieved the same level of success in the US, the Dragon Quest (translation of the Japanese title)/Dragon Warrior (US title) series. I played these games when I was a kid, and recently I did a variant run of Dragon Warrior 3. I didn't think dumping this report in the Final Fantasy thread made sense, so here it is. I haven't looked closely enough at some of the other Dragon Quest/Warrior games to determine how good they are for variant play, but I suspect for some of the later games in the series, there might be interesting variants available.

Wikipedia has an overview of the series' game play, but for the variant I played, the most salient characteristic of the early games in the series is how much grinding is required. The first game is more or less nothing but grinding, with all the tactics revolving around how to grind *more efficiently*. The second and third games have more tactics and strategy to them, but there's still an expectation of a fair amount of grinding. I think completing the first game without grinding is impossible, and I seriously doubt it would be possible to do the second game without grinding because there aren't enough important choices and there are some brutal step-ups in difficulty. The third game, though, has enough latitude that I thought it might be possible. Since you're reading this, you know I was right, but it took a certain amount of work to get there.

I thought I'd try to introduce Dragon Warrior 3 by analogy with the first Final Fantasy---if you already know the game, feel free to skip this section. DW3 and FF1 are both games where you have a party of four characters who each have four slots for equipment, can cast spells, and gain levels based on the experience you get from killing enemies. (The AD&D influences on both games are clear.) You take your party through a series of dungeons, accumulating better items and higher levels, until you eventually kill the final boss. There's a token plot taking place in the background, but you can ignore it---the core of the game is about killing enemies and looting dungeons.

Like in FF1, at the beginning of the game you can pick from among different classes for your party, with different allowed equipment, spell access, and stat growth. Unlike in FF1, there's a fixed member of the party with a special class: the hero, who gets a special spell list with direct damage, healing, status ailment, and utility spells on it, plus the best equipment access in the game and a lower experience requirement per level at high levels. There are useful spells the hero doesn't get, but the hero is just better than any other character, mkay? There are seven other classes.

• Soldiers vs. Fighters: The two physical combat classes are soldiers and fighters, analogous to fighters and black belts in FF1. Soldiers wear heavy armor and wield weapons, fighters have a very limited selection of low-Defense armor and can only equip one weapon, the iron claw. Unlike in FF1, fighters are better than soldiers under most circumstances. It all comes down to stat growth: soldiers get terrible Agility (Agi) growth, fighters get great Agi growth. Agi does two things, improve initiative and boost Defense. Initiative in DW3 is extremely important because it often means you can kill enemies before they can act. It also turns out that under most conditions, the Agi boost to Defense makes up for the armor that fighters can't wear, so soldiers don't have much actual advantage in Defense. Meanwhile, fighters also hit harder despite being unable to use most weapons because they have better Str growth and a special level/256 chance to critical hit. Soldiers do get more HP, but that doesn't make up for their lower damage and initiative, especially since a soldier takes a lot of money to keep in level-appropriate gear.
  
  
• Pilgrims are something of a hybrid between the white mage and red mage. Like a white mage, they get all the healing and most of the support and status ailment spells, plus some special offensive spells. Like a red mage, they can use decent but not the best armor and weapons, and they get enough HP and stat growth to go with their gear to allow them to serve as second-class physical combatants.
  
  
• Wizards are the black mage equivalent. They have terrible HP and can't equip any decent armor or weapons. Their spell list contains direct damage, indirect offense, support, and utility magic.
  
  
• Sages are a little like suped-up red mages, but are made weird by DW3's class-change mechanic. Rather than advancing to a better class mid-game like in FF1, a non-hero character in DW3 at level 20 or higher can change classes to any another class but the special hero class, retaining their spells and half their stats, but starting over at level 1 and gaining the stat growth and equipment restrictions of a new class. Staring over at level 1 sounds like a huge penalty except that because the experience chart is exponential at low levels, it takes more experience to go from 20 to 25 than it does to go from 1 to 20. However, in practice changing classes is useless for other reasons except that it's the only way to become a sage; under normal conditions, you can only change one character into a sage per game. Sages learn all the spells that both pilgrims and wizards can cast at the same levels, and have generally better stat growth than both pilgrims and wizards, in particular higher HP, and equipment access that's just a little better than a pilgrim's.
  
  
• Merchants are a terrible class that makes the FF1 thief look good.
  
  
• Goof-offs are a useless joke class.
  
  

For those keeping track at home, the best classes are obviously fighters, pilgrims, and sages, though wizards and soldiers are viable.

• Physical Damage: The basic formula for average damage from physical attacks is Attack/2 - Defense/4. Attack and defense values vary from the low teens on the low end to the low 200s on the high end. Criticals (called "tremendous blows" by the game or "terrible blows" when enemies do them) do slightly less than Attack damage and ignore Defense; except for some special cases, PCs have a flat 1/64 critical chance.
  
  
• Spell Damage: Each spell deals damage in a fixed range, on average from the low teens for the lowest-level spells to around 100 for the most damaging spells. PCs take half the damage from all spells that enemies do.
  
  
• HP: It varies from low teens at level 1 to 100-200 in the 20s and low 30s, depending on class.
  
  
• Spells: Are cast with MP, not spell levels. They're learned randomly on level up, not bought in towns according to plot progress. Important spells include healing (pilgrim and hero); ice, infernos, and lightning element damage spells as most dangerous things resist fire (wizard, pilgrim, and hero respectively); spells that cure status ailments (pilgrim); Decrease, which halves the defense of a group of enemies, and Sap, which zeroes out one enemy's defense (pilgrim); BiKill, DW3's version of FAST which straight-up doubles a physical attacker's damage after Defense but doesn't stack with tremendous blows; Outside, the instant-dungeon-escape EXIT-equivalent (wizard and hero); Return, a spell that warps you to any of most towns you've previously visited and gives you an instant escape in battle on the overworld map (wizard and hero); status ailment spells Stopspell (hero and pilgrim), Sleep (hero and pilgrim), Surround (pilgrim), and Chaos (wizard); Stepguard, a spell that prevents walking across certain tiles from causing damage (wizard); Barrier, a late-arriving fire-protection spell (pilgrim); and Bounce, a late-arriving spell that reflects enemy spells (wizard).
  
  
• Spell-Casting Items: Exist and are just as important as in FF1. However, the only healing item is in a position equivalent to FF1's Masmune, though it's far more broken. This makes the earlier parts of the game a lot harder.
  
  
• Party Order Affects Chances of an Attack Landing: Like in FF1, characters further back in the party have less chance of being hit by physical attacks from normal enemies. However, some enemies have "unweighted" targeting and an equal chance of hitting anyone in the party with their physical attacks, and single-target spells also choose with equal probability among all party members. In other words, back-rank characters aren't half as safe in DW3 as in FF1.
  
  
• Enemy Selection: You can't choose to aim single-target attacks at a particular enemy, only at a group of enemies, which means that it's entirely random whether single-target attacks will line up correctly to finish enemies off.
  
  
• Status Ailments: Slow reduces Agility for a battle while Defense and Sap decrease defense. (Positive versions of these spells exist but are almost never worth casting.) Surround gives physical attacks a 5/8 miss rate and works most of the time. Sleep hits all members of the party or an enemy group, has a reasonable success rate, characters or enemies will wake up randomly with a middling probability, attacks don't affect it. Stopspell prevents all spellcasting from an enemy group or the party and has a good success rate. All of those are cured after battle. Poison is a forgettable early game nuisance that does small damage every few steps. Numbness prevents any actions in or out of battle and has a small chance to end every round in battle and every step outside of it. Limbo removes one party member or enemy from combat permanently, sending them back to a particular location at the start of the game, forcing you to stop whatever you're doing and leave any dungeons in progress to retrieve them. Chaos only hits one target, has a decent success rate, and causes them to attack their allies. Instant death spells exist but don't have great success rates; one hits multiple targets.
  
  
• Status-Ailment Protection: There isn't any, except for some items that decrease the chance instant-death spells work. Characters resist ailments more often as they gain levels, but there's no complete protection against anything. Enemies always have either 0/255, 77/255, 179/255, or complete resistance to any given status ailment.
  
  
• Elemental Protection: Minimal, not very effective, mostly restricted to either breath attacks or spells, and only affects fire not the other elements.
  
  
• High-End Gear: Most of it's cursed with disadvantages that make it unusable. Everyone but the hero will be using mostly store-bought items in the endgame.
  
  
• Preemptive Attacks: Not as common as FF1.
  
  
• Instant-Lose Random Encounters: Both worse and better than FF1, as instant-death attacks don't work as often, stoning doesn't exist, and the success rate of party lock-downs isn't as high. Still quite possible, though.
  
  
• Random Encounters More Dangerous Than the Bosses: yes, with the exception of ThatOneBoss and arguably one other boss.
  
  
• Expected Grinding: a whole lot more than FF1.
  
  
• Running: Usually a bad idea, chances of successfully escaping are low. It's better to fight it out and almost always better to cast Return if you have the spell and you're on the overworld map.
  
  

If you look at this list and conclude the game is harder than FF1, you'd be right, though FF1 is horrible in its own special way and has more places where it's possible to just instantly lose no matter how careful or well-geared you are. The worst bottleneck in FF1, the midgame troika, is not as bad as the worst bottleneck in DW3, ThatOneBoss.

Because grinding is such a core element of the DW series, my first thought for a variant was, "I want to run this game without grinding." My second thought was that just eliminating grinding wasn't hard enough. Thus, I now present to you Dragon Warrior 3, ironcore style.

Before I begin, some acknowledgements. Darkwing Duck holds the SDA record for a DW3 speed run. I used his run as a reference while constructing my strategy for this variant. 1whoistornapart did an enormous amount of research disassembling DW3's code; his bestiary, stat gain analysis, information on when classes learned spells, and other discoveries were critical.

The first restriction for this variant is no reloading from past saves, only making exceptions for technical failures or accidental critically awful button-presses; obviously, there will be no reloading after dying. The second restriction is no grinding. FF1 has an uncomplicated encounter system that makes it a little easier to define grinding. For the purposes of this variant challenge, I avoided grinding by trying to always be going for some objective that wasn't just hitting random encounters for gold and experience, and avoiding unnecessary random encounters while pursuing those objectives. I took the most direct routes through dungeons. When traveling overland, wherever possible I stayed on the lowest-encounter-rate terrain that still took me where I was going (i.e., on grasslands and the ocean and off hills where possible) and didn't travel at night. I used Return and Outside when they were available to shorten the distance to a destination. I avoided unnecessary fixed encounters like mimics. I didn't bother to pick up low-value or useless items in dungeons where they would have led to more random encounters. There's a cursed item called the Golden Claw that pushes up your encounter rate to 100/255 per step, but I didn't use it to grind for experience and gold, I just fought the encounters necessary to remove it from the dungeon where you find it so I could sell it for cash. I also didn't do anything like abuse the Orochi with Outside. (Don't ask.) I made some route-lengthening mistakes and choices to minimize danger that sometimes increased the amount of experience I got, which I've tried to annotate in my report.

When I started my practice run for this variant, I went with the same party that Darkwing did in his speed run: the hero and three fighters, planning to turn one of the fighters into a sage at level 20. As Darkwing noted, he would have taken three fighters through the whole game if he could have, but he needed the healing and some other spells a sage would provide. There's a lot of overlap between the demands on a no-grinding game and on a speed run, in particular, not much money and not much experience. With gold so short, fighters are even better than soldiers because they cost so much less money to keep in equipment. Meanwhile, early game, the hero's magic is adequate, and later on changing one of the fighters to a sage gives you the additional spells and MP for healing you need for the rest of the game.

There was, however, a problem with this strategy. ThatOneBoss, Baramos, is the hardest boss and hardest part of DW3. On his speed run, Darkwing learned that you don't need DW3's version of FAST, BiKill, to kill Baramos, but his speed run is segmented and so he could manipulate luck to get that BiKill-less speed run. He also intended to manipulate luck to ensure that his sage hit 21 in Baramos' Castle and learned BiKill that level: a sage or wizard has a 50% chance of learning BiKill at level 21 and every level thereafter if they haven't already learned it. In ironcore, I couldn't rely on learning BiKill at level 21 or reaching level 21 with such precise timing, so I had to take a different approach.

My practice run told me that I would gain about 100k experience over the course of the run, with some amount of random variation. It takes a fighter 45805 experience to get to level 20, and a sage 64664 experience to get to level 21. Obviously, getting 110469 experience before Baramos was optimistic, and then I would only have a 50% chance of getting BiKill---that would lead to a lot of failed runs, and that's even before I accounted for my less-than-100% chances of killing Baramos even with BiKill. Turning a fighter into a sage wasn't going to work. I considered substituting the class with the lowest experience requirements to reach level 20, the merchant: they take only 27807 experience, which meant that it would take only 92471 experience total to hit level 21 as a sage. This is a lot better, but a level 21 sage still only has a 50% chance of learning BiKill. Reaching level 22 as a sage requires 77175 experience, for a total of 104982, which was still achievable but would require luck, and push the probability up to 75%. Getting any level higher than that would never happen without grinding. Worse, early on merchants are as expensive as soldiers to equip and have worse stats to boot, plus make terrible sages because of peculiarities of DW3's stat growth system. There was a better approach.

Since characters retain all their spells after class change, I could start with a wizard, all but guarantee that I got BiKill, and then class change to sage. The wizard's experience chart for the relevant levels is:

21: 45676
22: 54121
23: 63622
24: 74310
25: 86334
26: 99861

They level slower than merchants but faster than fighters. Because of the exponential progression of experience per level, if I had 100k total experience, if I learned BiKill at each of the following levels, my sage would be at the following corresponding levels after changing classes and reaching Baramos:

21: 20
22: 19
23: 18
24: 16
25: 14
26: 2

If I learned it at level 26, that wasn't going to work unless I got lucky with how much experience I earned, but as long as my sage hit the high teens, I'd probably have about the same chances of beating Baramos. A level 25 wizard has a 96.875% chance of having learned BiKill. While those odds look better than they are because of the lumpiness of the experience distribution in the end of the game and the possibility I'd end up having to take a level 1 sage into Baramos' Castle or the other dangerous late-game dungeon, they were still better than any other method I could see of getting BiKill. Taking a wizard also had other advantages: they cost almost nothing to equip, less than a fighter, and they do acceptable damage, sometimes as good as a fighter's, though they don't reliably act before enemies like fighters do. The downside is that they have pitiful HP and defense, which would make my party more vulnerable than if I had another fighter, but a wizard would definitely contribute more than a merchant.

One obvious question is why bother to class change to a sage at all, if a wizard has BiKill and the advantage of higher levels? There are several reasons. I've already mentioned the first, that the exponential experience-to-level chart means that changing only costs a few levels. The second is that sages have much higher HP than wizards: an average wizard at level 26 has 134 HP, while an average wizard-turned-sage at level 18 has 125 HP. If my wizard learns BiKill at 21 or 22, it was quite likely that changing classes would give me more HP when fighting Baramos, not less. Third, sages can equip much better gear than wizards, which significantly decreases the damage that they take against Baramos. Fourth, there's another spell that increases my chances of success against Baramos, Sap, which is a pilgrim spell learned in the same way as BiKill but starting at level 8; a sage will almost certainly learn it by level 14, but a wizard never will. Finally, I would need healing and other pilgrim spells in the last part of the game, after Baramos, while none of the wizard spells I would get would be that useful.

These considerations fixed my party: one hero (Iainuki), two fighters (Macha and Badb), one wizard (Anann). Now, before I begin, I have a very important bug to describe. DW3 has a special in-combat command (in addition to the obvious Fight, Spell, Run, and Item commands) called Parry that halves all damage taken during the round it's used. The bug is that if you select Parry, hit B to go back, and then select another command, you execute the other command, but still take half damage. The last character in the party can't use Parry-Fight (as the bug is usually called), because if they select Parry, the combat round begins. Parry-Fight makes this variant possible and in my opinion, generally makes the game more fun. One weird consequence of this is that when facing enemies with unweighted targeting, breathers (breath attacks always hit all party members), or spell-casters, the most protected position in the party is the third position because it takes half damage from all attacks and has the second-lowest chance of being hit by normally-targeted physical attacks. (Note that normally-targeted attacks hit, in order of the character hit, 44%, 39%, 15%, and 1% of the time.) Later on, that means that my wizard/sage will almost always be in the third position. One additional wrinkle is that only the first character has access to the run command, but because there are only four slots for commands in the battle screen, if a spell-caster takes the first position they will have a command list of Fight, Spell, Run, Item without access to Parry, so the leader has to be a non-spell-caster. For this variant challenge, because of that, even though the hero often has the highest Defense, they still have to occupy the second position; it's not too much of a penalty, though, as the second position gets hit almost as often as the first.

One last thing before I begin is to note that in addition to my practice run, I had one attempt die to sleep-lock by Deadly Toadstools in the Dream Ruby Cave before my successful run.

[Sullla]

This is very interesting stuff. I have considered doing something with Dragon Warrior / Quest 3 (clearly the best of the NES Dragon Quest games) but never went into the numbers or tried a variant. Looking forward to the rest of your report.

[T-hawk]

the most salient characteristic of the early games in the series is how much grinding is required. The first game is more or less nothing but grinding

Heh, I'll throw in my Dragon Warrior 1 experience here. I got the cartridge cheap and bare (no instructions) after the NES's heyday but before the Internet, sometime around 1994. Played it for a while until running into some boss (a dragon?) in a tunnel dungeon leading to a new continent. I could work out by the numbers that I'd have to level to 18 or so... except that I stubbornly kept retrying at a much lower level until I got a couple lucky critical hits to kill it. Then I was way underleveled and couldn't kill much of anything in the next couple areas, and gave up on the game.

Never played DW3 but I'll read along with any reports you share. Thanks, Iainuki.

[Iainuki]

Rather than selecting and naming your characters all at once at the beginning of the game as in FF1, you just name the hero at the beginning of DW3, and then once you start the game you can create other characters and add or remove them to the party as you desire, though you can't ever remove the hero. There's some theoretical upper limit that I've never hit because, you see, there's another bug: if you create more than eleven characters, and the hero counts, the hero immediately learns the first eight spells on their spell list for use in-combat but not out of it. The major problem with this is that you lose access to Heal, the only healing spell the hero will get until high levels, out of combat; for some variants, this might be an acceptable tradeoff, but for this one it would be fatal. (Theoretically I could have exploited this bug later to learn Sleep if I needed it for a particular boss, but that eventuality never came up in my run.) Anyway, this method of character creation enables another minor exploit: you can create soldiers, strip their starting equipment, and sell it for early-game cash.

You start the game with three preset characters, a soldier, wizard, and pilgrim in a town called Aliahan. I made another wizard and two fighters for my own party, and four more soldiers so I could sell their starting gear. I transferred the preset pilgrim's wayfarer's clothes with their amazing 8 Defense to Anann, my wizard; this is the best armor available for a wizard until much, much later. I then sold everything else's gear for a total of 742 gold, including the 50 gold you get for talking to the king at the start of the game. I assembled my party and walked to Reeve, the second town in the game, and immediately bought two training suits (the best armor for fighters until much later in the game, 10 Defense, 80 gold), a chain sickle (24 Attack, 550 gold, the best weapon for the hero available in Reeve or Aliahan), a leather shield (4 Defense, 90 gold), three antidote herbs (they cure poison), and a bunch of medical herbs (they heal HP). Note that the hero started with the best armor available that early in the game, a leather armor (12 Defense, 150 gold).

Random encounters on the way to Reeve had given everyone level 2. Anann's physical offense proved pathetic as she couldn't damage Slimes, the weakest enemy in the entire game. The first dungeons, the Promontory Cave and the Tower of Najimi, are conjoined and not that dangerous, with the major threats slowly running out of HP and getting poisoned without an antidote herb to cure it, but Anann was the only one in danger of running out of HP. I had to constantly change formation between fighter, Iainuki, Anann, fighter and fighter, Iainuki, fighter, Anann, depending on the composition of the enemies and Annan's HP. Anann had to parry to stay alive if anything could hit her, but sometimes I wanted her to cast spells. Froggores, an enemy in the Tower, use unweighted targeting. I did the Promontory Cave in one pass and the Tower itself in another because I was running out of HP and Iainuki didn't have Heal yet. I got everyone but Iainuki up to level 4 in the Promontory Cave, and then level 6 for Anann and level 5 for everyone else on the way to the Thief Key. The Thief Key is a plot coupon that lets you open one kind of door and gives you access to an NPC in Reeve who gives you the Magic Ball; the Magic Ball is another plot coupon, which opens the Cave of Enticement, a dungeon that takes you off the island on which you start the game. I also got a leather helmet for Iainuki (Defense 2, 80 gold, though this one was free).

I forgot to get the Magic Ball on my first trip to the Cave of Enticement, but honestly that was fine: I got a string of hard random encounters that burned HP and MP so I wouldn't have been going into the Cave at full strength. By this point, Iainuki had learned Heal and Anann Icebolt, which would be her primary offensive spell for most of the run; Icebolt does about 30 average damage and unlike fire spells, few enemies resist it. There are three particularly dangerous enemies in the Cave: Magicians, who can deal significant damage with the weakest attack spell, Blaze, and who have very high Defense; Demon Anteaters, who will all attack the same target when in a group; and Spiked Hares, the worst of all, who often use a sleep attack that hits the entire party and unweighted targeting. I had to put Anann in the third position even thought it left her open to Demon Anteaters and other normal attackers because the fighters could do only negligible damage to Magicians, leaving Iainuki and Icebolt as the only reliable ways to kill them in one attack. I ran out of MP quickly in a series of fights against four Magicians and tough mixed groups containing Spiked Hares, including one where Scorpion Wasps' summoning ability got out of control after a Masked Moth cast Surround, and I had to cast Icebolt to clear them faster than they could summon new ones. I picked up the magic knife (14 attack, 200 gold, but again this one was free) on the way out and that gave Anann enough Attack to do noticeable damage, a little less than the fighters, to enemies there and on the way to Kanave. By this point, Iainuki was level 6 and everyone else level 7.

The portal at the bottom of the Cave of Enticement comes out at a town near Romaly, but the next equipment I needed was in the town after that, Kanave. One item I needed is only available at night in Kanave---the NPC blocking the way to the chest moves at night---so I circled Kanave until night fell. The item in question is the poison needle: it only does 1 damage, but it has a 12.5% chance of instantly killing the target. Since a wizard will end up doing 1 damage to all the enemies anyways because enemy Defense outscales a wizard's Attack, the poison needle is their best weapon. Kanave also sells the only weapon that increases a fighter's Attack, iron claws (30 Attack, 770 gold). After selling the now-unneeded magic knife, I had enough to afford iron claws for both my fighters, bringing their Attack quite a bit above Iainuki's and allowing them to damage even the high-Defense enemies in the next area. I should mention at this point that while better armor and weapons were available for Iainuki, I always prioritized offense since it's just better in DW3 to kill enemies faster than to try to increase protection against them, especially since in random encounters it's often practical to take out enemies before they can attack. Iainuki's next Attack upgrade was the broad sword (33 attack, an improvement of 9, for 1500 gold) and thus the iron claws were more efficient.

With no need to buy more equipment, as all the upgrades were too expensive, I did the next dungeon, the Tower of Shanpane, in one pass. The enemies in the Tower of Shanpane are forgettable and don't do anything particularly dangerous or novel; the Demon Toadstools, not to be confused with Deadly Toadstools, have sleep breath but don't use it that often (25%) and don't appear in large groups. The only hard part was the boss fight, against Kandar and three Kandar Henchmen. They're all physical-only attackers with unweighted targeting; Kandar himself can critical. I needed Anann's damage so I put her in the third position and had her Parry-cast-Icebolt every round. I wiped out the Henchmen in two rounds courtesy of a tremendous blow from one of the fighters, but Iainuki and Anann were at low HP. (In DW3, if someone has low HP, the menus turn from white to green. I don't know how they chose green.)



I had the fighters heal Iainuki and Anann by using medical herbs (they heal about 40 HP from my observations, I don't know that from the code or statistical testing), since they were the most likely to act before Kandar could attack again, while Iainuki attacked and Anann cast Icebolt. Though Anann got down to low HP again from two attacks by Kandar, he went down without anyone dying; if I'd been unlucky and he'd criticaled any of my characters when they were low or Anann any time, someone would probably have died. I should note that Icebolt outdamaged the fighters and Iainuki, 30 per spell compared to 15-20 per attack even though it failed once on Kandar because of his 77/256 ice resistance, so at this point offensively Anann was more than holding her own. He gave enough experience to take Annan to level 10 and everyone else to 9. By this point I'd learned also two important spells, Return with Iainuki and Outside with Anann.



The Dream Ruby Cave is an entirely optional side quest one can undertake before going for the next plot coupon. The dungeon that plot coupon is in, the Pyramid, is quite dangerous, so I'd done the Cave before to get more gold and experience before tackling the Pyramid: all told, the Cave has about 830 gold in chests and sellable items, plus two items that give small but permanent stat boosts. I decided to do it again, but before doing so, I wanted to get another item. I walked to Assaram and then to Isis, both of them valid targets for Return, to get the Meteorite Armband, which is hidden in Isis: the Meteorite Armband doubles a character's Agi, improving their initiative and Defense. I gave it to Iainuki because the hero is the strongest character in the game, and wearing the Meteorite Armband Iainuki would be about as fast as the fighters throughout the game, meaning she would act before most enemies. In particular, for the Dream Ruby Cave, I wanted to act before Deadly Toadstools. I also didn't have quite enough money for a broad sword and picking that up before the Cave also seemed wise.



The random encounters I met on the way were mostly Vampire Cats, which even against a party with a wizard in it to be affected by Stopspell weren't that threatening. I got the Armband and after selling my Chain Sickle, only had 2.2k, not enough for a battle axe (40 attack, an improvement of 16, for 2500 gold), so I bought the broad sword anyway and Returned to Kanave en route to Noaniels and the Dream Ruby Cave. The Armband and the broad sword put Iainuki's Agi, attack, and defense on par with my fighters. I should mention that while Iainuki was getting regular defense boosts from gear and the fighters from strong Agi gains, Anann had gained 7 total Agi for 3 more Defense by level 10. This, on top of pathetic HP (Anann had 44 at level 10), is why wizards are so vulnerable.

The Dream Ruby Cave was quite exciting once I got down to the third floor and started meeting groups of five Deadly Toadstools again. This time, I went after them with maximum prejudice: Iainuki had learned Firebal and Anann Bang at levels 10 and 11, and I used both spells when I encountered those monsters. Firebal and Bang both do 20 average damage. (Bang does it to all enemies, while Firebal only hits a group, though that difference was irrelevant for this purpose; Anann should have learned Firebal too by this point, but it's one of those spells where a wizard has a 50% chance to learn it starting at level 7...) Deadly Toadstools have 23-30 HP and 77/256. A successful hit from Bang or Firebal alone would sometimes kill them, a fighter attack plus Bang or Firebal would definitely kill them, and hits from Bang and Firebal would definitely kill them. Even with these precautions, I still had one fight where everyone fell asleep and Anann almost died, until she woke up and cast Bang to kill the last Deadly Toadstools, with an assist from Macha. Worse, by the fourth floor Iainuki was out of MP, so I had to take a group of five Deadly Toadstools there without using Firebal. Luckily, none of them breathed sleep, I made it to the Dream Ruby without encountering any more, and then Anann could cast Outside to take me out of the dungeon safely. By this point, everyone but Iainuki was level 11; she was still level 10.

(I made a mistake here: the only purpose of the Dream Ruby is that it wakes up Noaniels, allowing you to buy items there. However, the only things I care about in Noaniels are cloaks of evasion, which are also sold in Isis. For some reason I forgot that Isis sold them. Descending to the fifth floor to get the Dream Ruby was an unnecessary risk, and I should have punted with Outside.)

After selling my broad sword, I had enough money to cover a battle axe and an iron shield (12 Defense, an improvement of 8, for 700 gold) for Iainuki, both of which I would use until well after I would get the ship. (The role of the ship in DW3 is a lot closer to that of the FF1's airship than FF1's ship: the DW3 ship can take you almost anywhere in the game.) I was anticipating the Pyramid to be horrible, and it was. It's packed with nasty enemies: Mummy Men are hard-hitting physical attackers with unweighted targeting; King Froggores appear in groups of four and have a 25% chance of using Sleep; Mummies are also hard-hitting physical attackers capable of summoning an even beefier physical attacker, Horks; and Flamapedes have fire breath and so can drain healing reserves quickly even if they aren't that dangerous in and of themselves. I went in with Anann in the third position because of Mummy Men, and she would stay there for most of the rest of the game. The most frightening moment was when four King Froggores got a preemptive attack on the third floor and put everyone but Iainuki to sleep while knocking her into the green. (People familiar with my ironcore FF1 reports know how much I enjoy monsters with disabling abilities getting preemptive attacks.) I managed to run on my first attempt, which was very lucky. Other times Mummies summoned multiple Horks and Trick Bags rendered all my physical attackers all but useless with Surround and I had to rely on Icebolt. By the time I'd picked up the Magic Key and reached the fourth floor, I was in no shape to fight the Mummy Men in the trapped chests, so I just ran past them, picked up the flashy clothes (armor for goof-offs, but worth 975 gold when sold), and jumped out.

Like its FF1 equivalent, the Magic Key is a plot coupon, as it opens all the doors the Thief Key does and an additional type, but also unlocks some treasure rooms in previous towns. Unlike in FF1, the treasure is mostly crap. The best of it is in Aliahan: a free fighting suit (23 defense, an improvement of 13, for 800 gold) which is the highest-Defense but not the best armor a fighter can equip, 464 gold, and some minor stat-boost items. Isis has one big piece of treasure that I wanted to save for later because it can't be bought except under special circumstances, a wizard's ring, and I might need it in the endgame, but the rest of it's only 629 gold in chests and sellable items. Because it's only available at night, it felt too much like grinding to me. In retrospect, I think that walking around outside until night was justifiable here since the money would have gotten me another cloak of evasion without that many random encounters; I was being overly strict here.

After going back to Aliahan, getting the fighting suit and gold with the Magic Key, and selling everything else I'd picked up in the Pyramid, I had 5.6k, enough for one cloak of evasion but not two. (This is where the treasure from Isis would have helped.) I went back to Isis and purchased one, giving it to Anann because she desperately needed any defensive boost available. A cloak of evasion costs 2.9k gold, gives 20 Defense, and can be worn by anyone, but what makes it possibly the best armor for physical defense in the game is that gives a bonus 13/64 chance to dodge any physical attack. It's clearly the best armor, period, for fighters, arguably the best armor for wizards, and it's better than all the other options for the hero until much later. For comparison, the highest Defense armor available for the hero until after getting the ship is the full plate armor with 32 Defense for 2.4k gold, and the evasion chance gives better average damage reduction than 12 Defense.

I went back for the trapped chests I'd skipped in the Pyramid and didn't half as harrowing a time on the way up. With much more MP and attacks (Icebolt also) that could sometimes take out Mummy Men in one hit, I had no trouble clearing the chests, for 842 gold and two stat-boosting items. I Returned to Isis to get another cloak of evasion, which I gave to Macha, my lead fighter; I passed the fighting suit to Badb, my rear fighter. After all this, Anann was level 13 and everyone else was level 12.

The Magic Key also allows you to take a portal to a new city, Portoga, where the king sends you on a quest for pepper and gives you another plot coupon to persuade a dwarf to open a new path for you, which in turn allows you to travel to a new town, Baharata. On the way to Baharata, I earned enough for a third cloak of evasion, which I equipped on Badb. The next dungeon, the Kidnappers' Cave, is short and not difficult, but with one wrinkle: it's filled with Catulas, who can cast Robmagic and steal 5-10 HP with every casting. If I hadn't had a wizard with me, this wouldn't have mattered, but I needed a wizard for the boss fight at the end of the Cave. On my first trip, after I'd retrieved all the treasures worth having, Iainuki had 0 MP and Anann 16 MP left, and I thought that Annan didn't have enough for the boss fight. I had to abort another attempt due to a swam of Catulas all Robmagicing Anann, and finally got to the boss with 36 MP on Anann and level 14 for Anann, 13 for everyone else.

The boss is Kandar again, with two Kandar Henchmen. The Henchmen's stats don't change, but in the second fight Kandar has much higher stats and HP, plus he regenerates 50 HP/round so you have to do at least that much just to make progress. However, on the whole the fight was easier because Anann wasn't so close to instant-death range, especially since I got a fair number of dodges from my cloaks of evasion. With no real risk of anyone dying, it was just a matter of time despite his HP and regen. I ended up using 20 MP, so I wouldn't have had enough in those earlier tries on the Cave. He gave everyone other than Anann level 14.

After beating Kandar and turning in another plot coupon, I got the ship. You still get random encounters on the ship, but for the most part none of the overland travel I'm momentarily going to describe was particularly dangerous: I wanted to collect equipment improvements and plot items in towns and other encounter-free areas before proceeding. I sailed first to another town called Soo for the Staff of Thunder. The Staff of Thunder casts Firebane when used as an item, dealing about 35 fire damage to a group of enemies, and would give Anann a viable non-MP using attack at last: when I first picked it up, it actually did about the same damage as my fighters' and Iainuki's attacks, admittedly with the possibility of resistance. It's worth noting that the most powerful spell Anann had was Firebane, so except against fire-resistant enemies, the Staff superseded her actual spells. (I'm pretty sure the designers didn't ever intend a level 14 party to have the Staff of Thunder, but details.)

I forgot the correct order for the next section of the game and so had to double back afterwards. I sailed from Soo to the Pirates' Den to get the first of the six plot coupons that lead to Baramos' Castle, the Red Orb. I Returned to Aliahan, sailed to Lancel, and bought an invisibility herb at Lancel. I Returned from Portoga and sailed to Tedanki for the Lamp of Darkness, which when used turns day to night. (I arrived during the night and sailed in circles until it was day again; this wasn't necessary, but only provoked one random encounter.) I Returned to Portoga and sailed to Eginbear, where I used the invisibility herb I'd bought to get past the guards and get the Vase of Drought. Finally, I Returned to Aliahan and sailed south to get the Final Key in the Sunken Shrine. The Final Key opens the third type of door in the game as well as all doors the Thief and Magic Keys do.

After that, I collected the only item involving real danger, a leaf of the World Tree. A leaf revives a dead character with full HP when used, in or out of combat. There's a particular place on the world map where you can get a leaf if you don't already have one, and if you use it and come back, you can always get another. A leaf meant that if both Iainuki and Anann died, as long as one of the fighters was alive, I could use it and then Outside and Return to get myself out of whatever I'd gotten myself into. I sailed directly to the relevant forest after the Sunken Shrine and had to sail in circles to wait for day and a lower chance of random encounters: the monsters in the area were definitely dangerous to my party at that point. Luckily, on my way to the leaf, I only met one random encounter, a Grizzly and two Lethal Armors, both hard-hitting physical enemies but without any extra nastiness. They did a lot of damage and my fighters and Iainuki could barely touch the Lethal Armors because they had such high Defense relative to my Attack (think single digit damage), so my fighters and Iainuki took down the Grizzly while Anann again proved that combat magic is useful in some places, Icebolting the Lethal Armors since they were 179/256 resistant to fire.

After all this traveling, by the time I reached the Tower of Garuna, another dungeon, everyone was level 15 except for Anann, who was level 16. The Tower of Garuna has Nevs, who can cast Chaos and Surround but aren't that threatening because they die easily; Garudas, who can cast Firebane at 30% and thus do a fair chunk of damage to the whole party; and Sky Dragons, who have high HP and breath fairly damaging fire at 50% odds. These enemies can be brutal if you go into the Tower too early, but by the time I entered it, they were not that dangerous. There's one more enemy common on the top floors of the Tower that requires explanation, though: Metal Slimes. Metal Slimes are immune to all magic, take 1 or 0 damage from physical attacks, deal almost no damage, have a 37.5% chance of fleeing in any given round, and give 4140 experience. For comparison, Sky Dragons give 800 experience, Garudas 220 experience, and everything else in the Tower of Garuna less than 200 experience. In other words, Metal Slimes are enemies designed for grinding, and they are the mechanic that I hate more than any other in DW3. The only ways to kill a Metal Slime before it runs away are tremendous blows (which ignore the Metal Slime's huge Defense and kill it in one hit), the poison needle, or slow accumulation of damage. I killed three Metal Slimes in the Tower, one with a lucky poison needle roll and two with damage accumulation, and they gave me the lion's share of the experience I needed for level 17. The two major treasures I needed from the Tower of Garuna were the iron helmet (16 defense, an improvement of 14, for 2000 gold) and the Book of Satori, which is a special item that's required for anyone but a goof-off to turn into a sage and is consumed after use for that purpose.

I stopped in at Jipang so I could Return there later on the way to the Tower of Arp. The Tower of Arp had noticeably harder enemies than the Tower of Garuna, mostly Lethal Armors, but Icebolt still worked quite well and my other characters could do a lot more damage to them with my higher levels so even groups of four died without putting me in serious danger. The Tower of Arp is also really short which nerfs the difficulty of the harder enemies; the only reason to go there is to pick up several of the HP-boosting items, acorns of life.

I still only had 9.4k and had nothing to spend money on except some not-so-important defensive upgrades for Iainuki and a zombie slasher, the next offensive upgrade for Iainuki, at 9.8k, 65 Attack, an improvement of 25, plus it does bonus damage against a wide and fairly useful selection of enemies. Obviously, I wanted the zombie slasher, but I didn't have quite enough money. I had to sail back to Tedanki because I had forgotten that I only wanted to go there in the first place after after getting the Final Key, a mistake on my part, and walked to Samanao so I could Return to it. That left, before Baramos' Castle, only four dungeons: Orochi's Cave, the Navel of the Earth, the Cave of Samanao, and Necrogond. Due to some lucky encounters with Metal Slimes on the way to Tedanki and Samanao, Iainuki and Anann were level 18 and the fighters level 17. Iainuki had picked up Outside and Anann Return, meaning either of them could take the party out of a dungeon and to safety solo, but most important, Iainuki had learned Sleep at level 17.

The next boss I needed to fight was the Orochi. The Orochi is much, much harder than Kandar: she/it hits harder, attacks twice per turn, breathes fire, and regenerates 100 HP/round. The Orochi killed me in my practice run, the first time I'd died, but after dying I'd looked at her/its bestiary entry and realized that the Orochi only has 77/256 resistance to Sleep. I'd tried again with Sleep and killed her/it easily. (This is where that spell-learning bug I mentioned earlier might be useful: the hero will always learn Sleep by level 18, but if I hadn't made level 18 by the time I needed to fight the Orochi, the spell bug could have given me the spell, and by that point I would have already learned all the spells that the bug could stop me from learning out of combat.)

The Orochi's Cave itself is a short dungeon with enemies that are more annoying than dangerous, though in my practice run some bad luck had killed one of my characters after someone got hit by Chaos. There's only one treasure chest, and it contains the Noh Mask, the second piece of cursed gear available. (The first, the Golden Claw, I'll come back to later.) The Noh Mask is a helmet that gives 255(!) Defense, but permanently confuses the character wearing it as if they had Chaos cast on them, and prevents them from using items or casting spells outside of combat; it can sometimes be useful in solo challenges since a confused solo character acts normally, though they still can't use items or cast spells outside of combat while wearing the Mask, but was obviously useless for this variant.



When I reached the Orochi, Sleep worked just as well as it had in my testing. The pattern for the battle went: Iainuki casts Sleep, the Orochi sleeps for that round, Iainuki attacks, the Orochi wakes up in and gets one attack or breath in, Iainuki casts Sleep again. Meanwhile, the fighters attacked and Anann cast Icebolt. (Of course, few dangerous enemies in this game are vulnerable to fire, making the wizard's fire spells kind of useless; the Orochi is no exception.) Having a zombie slasher would have sped up this process a bit, but since Iainuki spent most of her actions casting Sleep, it wouldn't have made a significant different. The Orochi did get me low, and I would have had to spend a turn healing if she/it hadn't died that turn. The Orochi drops the Orochi Sword, which has 63 Attack, almost as much as the zombie slasher though it doesn't deal bonus damage to any enemies, and also casts Defense when used as an item.

You have to fight the Orochi twice, too, the second right after the first, though you have a chance to go to an inn in between. In the second fight, I had some bad luck: the first two Sleep spells didn't work, and when the Orochi did fall asleep, Defense from the Orochi Sword didn't work. I had to heal with medical herbs. At last I cast Sleep and the Orochi fell asleep for three rounds, Defense landed, and I managed to do enough damage to kill it, though on the last round of the fight, she/it breathed twice and got me very low. All told, Anann gained level 20 and everyone else 19 from the Cave and the Orochi fights. Anann learned Snowblast, an ice spell that hits a group and does 50 average damage, her first real offensive improvement since the Staff of Thunder. Winning the second Orochi fight gives you the Purple Orb.

I made a quick side-trip to Isis to pick up the wizard's ring there using the Lamp of Darkness. Then, I attempted the stupidest move in this entire challenge run: since I need to maximize experience on my wizard to get BiKill ASAP, I had intended to send my wizard into the Navel of the Earth, since it generates some thousands of experience. The Navel of the Earth is a dungeon that a character has to go through solo, fighting enemies well below their level. However, my brief trip convinced me that even underleveled enemies could rip through a wizard fast enough to put me in serious danger, despite the wizard's ability to use mass-damage combat magic. I was going to need sage equipment and stats to be able to do it safely, so I decided to defer it. That left only one reasonable option for my next dungeon: the Samanao Cave. However, since the Orochi Sword is an acceptable substitute for a zombie slasher, I bought a silver shield in Samanao (30 defense, an improvement of 18, for 8.8k) and sailed to Muor (another mistake: Lancel sells iron masks and is available via Return) for an iron mask (24 defense, an improvement of 8, for 3.5k) for Iainuki.

Samanao Cave contains one annoying enemy, Voodoo Shamans, who can cast Robmagic, and one dangerous enemy, Tortragons, who have a 37.5% chance of breathing sleep, extremely high Defense, and 179/256 resistance to all elements but lightning. (And I didn't have any lightning spells yet.) The right way to deal with Tortragons is to counter sleep breath with Sleep: they only have a 77/256 resistance. For some reason, I didn't realize this while I was in the cave, but I didn't have any bad luck with Tortragons so it didn't matter. I also got lucky with Voodoo Shamans, not seeing many of them either, so I managed to finish the Cave in one pass, partly because Anann had learned Robmagic earlier and could steal MP back. Even after getting all the other treasures and the plot coupon in that order, I could still afford to cast Outside. Inside, Anann gained level 21, but of course didn't learn BiKill. The fighters went up to 20 and Iainuki to 21. The plot coupon allows you to fight another boss, the creatively-named Boss Troll, who's just an normal-targeting heavy-hitter with 179/256 resistance to Sleep, Surround, Defense, and fire but 0/256 ice resistance; I beat him down with Snowblast and attacks after switching formations to put Anann in the back.

Defeating the Boss Troll gives you the next plot coupon, the Staff of Change. I note that the Staff of Change, in addition to being a plot coupon, has another use: near Noaniels, there's a village of elves where the shopkeeper will refuse to sell you anything because you're human. If you use the Staff of Change, eventually you'll randomly give your party the appearance of dwarves, and she will allow you purchase items, in particular, wizard's rings. This is the only time in the game you can purchase wizard's rings. In my variant run, of course, every bit of cash I had at this point was spoken for, so I couldn't afford to buy any and had to rely on the ones you find in chests.

There is one need for a merchant in DW3: there's an NPC who wants to found a new town and requires that a merchant join him, permanently. If you have a high-level merchant and have them go to work for the NPC, you will lose your party member for good, but luckily a level 1 newly-created merchant works just as well, so that's what everyone does. I sailed to drop off my merchant, then went to trade the Staff of Change for the Sailor's Thigh Bone. The Sailor's Thigh Bone triggers the Phantom Ship to appear, which is a very short, very easy dungeon with the Locket of Love at the end of it. The Locket of Love in turn enables you to sail to the Shrine Jail where you get the Sword of Gaia. The Sword of Gaia is yet another plot coupon that you toss into a volcano to open a path to the penultimate and most dangerous dungeon before Baramos, Necrogond. I was right outside the volcano in question when a random encounter brought Anann to 22, and she learned BiKill.

I of course immediately took the Book of Satori and went to change classes. Before starting Necrogond, I needed literally every bit of experience outside Necrogond so Anann would have a better chance to survive inside it. With 12k gold to spend, I went to buy her a silver shield, breaking the offense-first rule because a level 1 sage wasn't going to do much damage even with a zombie slasher and because she needed more defense to survive my next destination, the Pyramid for the Golden Claw so I could afford aforesaid zombie slasher. She also got the iron helmet from the Tower of Garuna, which Iainuki no longer needed and brought her up to a respectable 76 defense, about the same as the fighters. Bad luck with random encounters after getting the Golden Claw meant that Anann was only level 7. The Golden Claw is another piece of cursed equipment, theoretically a fighter's best weapon since it has 55 Attack, only it sets the encounter rate everywhere to 100/256; for comparison, normal encounter rates are more like 10/256. However, it's worth 11250 when sold, which is in almost all cases the best use for it. The zombie slasher is the unquestionably the best weapon for a sage, since it has the highest Attack of any weapon they can equip and also gets bonus damage.

It was time to tackle Necrogond. I'll introduce Necrogond with Darkwing's description:

This segment is solely for the hardest dungeon in the game, the Necrogond. While it's no Road to Rhone, there are a lot of dangers here. The area has nothing but previously unseen, ramped up enemies that really lay the wood down. First the troll which has a good chunk of HP and hit really hard. Frost clouds use Snowblast, and use it fairly often. Minidemons use blazemore and a small breath attack. Marauders aren't too bad, but numb you and hit twice and annoyingly have just enough HP to avoid being two hit killed. Lionheads use Firebane, but are a relief to see, generally. Dancing Jewels are annoying as hell but thankfully rarely appear. King Totragons have high defense, hit hard and will do a medium breath attack. All these guys rack up the damage but that isn't the biggest run killer. That would be the hologhost. The lovely, lovely hologhost uses instant death spells half the time it acts. Many a run died instantly here.

My notes on the enemies, in a little more detail, in approximate order of danger:

• Hologhosts have a 25% chance of using Beat, a one-target instant-death spell, and a 25% chance of using Defeat, an instant death-spell that hits the entire party. These spells don't have great success rates, but they're not zero, either. It is possible but thankfully very rare for a single Hologhost to TPK you if it gets to act. Of course, they can appear in groups. Hologhosts also have 179/256 resistance to fire and Sleep and immunity to ice. They only have 77/256 resistance to Stopspell, but that 77 means it's not reliable. Their only saving graces are that their HP and Defense aren't that high so sometimes they go down in one hit; that they only have 59 Agility, compared to my fighters and Iainuki who had around 100 at this point; and that a zombie slasher gets bonus damage against them, so my sage could hit them almost as hard as my fighters.
  
  
• Marauders have a 25% chance to breathe "scorching breath" that causes numbness and hits the entire party. It doesn't work very often, which is good because otherwise they would be lethal rather than merely very dangerous. They are also very common in Necrogond, with three Marauders one of the most common groups in the dungeon. Given the difference in frequency, I'd peg Hologhosts and Marauders as representing about the same level of danger. Since numbness doesn't go away after battle, Marauders could achieve a mobility kill on me by numbing Iainuki and Anann, preventing any escape from the dungeon, and then leaving me with no choice but to walk forward into the possibility of a random encounter with two characters unable to act from the beginning of the battle. Full moon herbs cure numbness so if I had one and at least one character alive and unnumbed, I could always escape the dungeon, but that's not perfect insurance. As Darkwing noted, Marauders also have enough HP to avoid getting killed in two hits and attack twice per round with 115 Attack, though from my observations they can only attack twice or breathe once and attack, not breathe twice. They do only have 77/256 resistance to ice and fire and take bonus damage from a zombie slasher, which at least made killing them a little easier.
  
  
• King Tortragons have 90-120 HP, 200 Defense (= 50 damage reduction), 113 Attack (= 61 damage before mitigation), 90 Agility, breathe medium-strength fire, and usually cast Bounce their first action in combat, making magic useless against them. While they're not likely to kill a party with full HP going into combat, they can do a lot of damage before going down, which will require a lot of MP or medical herbs to heal.
  
  
• Trolls have 188-250 HP and 155 Attack and use unweighted targeting. They're also not dangerous but cost a lot of MP to heal after. They're vulnerable to the zombie slasher.
  
  
• Frost Clouds will breathe weak ice or cast Snowblast every action, which means they do a lot of damage if they get to act, but have 0/256 fire resistance, 60-80 HP, and aren't that fast, so fire attack magic could often finish off groups of five before they got many actions.
  
  
• Minidemons use Blazemore and weak blizzard breath, but go down in one or two hits. Not that dangerous or healing-intensive.
  
  
• Lionheads use Firebane and Stopspell, but likewise aren't that dangerous or healing-intensive.
  
  
• Dancing Jewels don't have much in the way of dangerous magic and die easily.
  
  
• Metal Babbles are an upgraded analog to Metal Slimes with more HP, a 50% chance of fleeing, and 40200 experience (that's not a typo). They're hard to kill barring a lucky tremendous blow.
  
  

After dumping the Sword of Gaia in the volcano and Returning to fill all my slots with medical and full moon herbs, as sages don't learn NumbOff until level 15-17 meaning Anann didn't have it then, I proceeded to Necrogond. I made one serious mistake, possibly my most serious mistake in my run, in these preparations: I forgot the stone of life from Samanao Cave. There are only three stones of life available in all of DW3, and what they do is block one successful instant-death spell---if the character resists the spell, the stone isn't used up---against that character, and are consumed afterwards. Iainuki should have been carrying it, since if things went poorly at least she could Outside and Return even if everyone else died. Anann was level 11, my fighters had gone up to 21, and Iainuki earned 22 by the time I actually made it to the entrance---the enemies outside Necrogond aren't much easier than the ones inside. I was not too surprised when it went poorly, especially since I got multiple groups of Hologhosts on the first floor. When one Hologhost landed Defeat on Iainuki and Anann killing both in the same encounter, I used the leaf of the World Tree to revive Iainuki and retreated with Outside.

After a quick trip to get another leaf, I went back to Necrogond and in my first random encounter, one of my fighters landed a tremendous blow on a Metal Babble, giving Anann three levels, to 17, and everyone else a level, putting Iainuki at 24 and the fighters at 23. (It would be the only Metal Babble I killed the whole game.) There are only three treasure chests in Necrogond, all on the second floor. One has 784 gold (which I would still need, incidentally, for purchases after finishing Necrogond), one has the Swordedge Armor (55 Defense, an improvement of 35), and the Thunder Sword (85 attack, an improvement of 22). In my party, only Iainuki could use either of the items. The Swordedge Armor has a minor ability that returns one-half the damage that the wearer takes to physical attackers, but because Iainuki had such high Defense that wasn't much damage, and moreover it only works on certain enemies. The main reason to use the Swordedge Armor was that the huge Defense boost finally overcame the cloak of evasion's dodge chance. The Thunder Sword, in addition to boosting Iainuki's Attack over my fighters', also casts Boom, a 60-expected-damage fire spell that hits all enemies; I used it against Frost Clouds and Marauders.

My second attempt went much better. While getting the treasure on the second floor I encountered mostly Minidemons. I had a brief heart attack near the stairs down when a single Hologhost got a preemptive attack, but it didn't act that round, and I killed it before it got a second chance. Marauders gave me trouble on the third floor when they numbed people twice. The first time, it was Badb; I stupidly used a full moon herb rather than NumbOff, which Anann knew by then, because I was worried about MP conservation. The second time, it was Anann and I had to use a full moon herb, leaving me with only one left. I kept going and luckily none of the other groups of Marauders succeeded at numbing me until the very last corridor on the last floor, when they hit Anann again; I used my last full moon herb and ran for the exit and made it out, the whole of point of Necrogond being to get to a shrine on the other side which contains the Silver Orb. One amusing sidenote is that a Frost Cloud dropped a Multi-Edge Sword on the last floor, and I briefly wondered whether it would increase or decrease my chances of success against Baramos. The Multi-Edge Sword is another piece of cursed gear, available from monster drops and in one chest in the last dungeon, which has 100 Attack but deals one fourth of the damage the wielder deals back to the wielder in combat. (Decrease, because I'm pretty sure BiKill would make Iainuki kill herself. I still have a save, though, and might test it at some point.)

After the Necrogond gauntlet, Annan was 19, Macha and Badb 24, and Iainuki 25. After buying the essential gear for the attempt on Baramos (I'll talk about that when I get to Baramos himself) and selling Iainuki's cloak of evasion, I only had about 2k left but figured that would be enough to cover taking necessary items out of the vault. (DW3, unlike earlier games in the series, has item storage other than your characters' inventories, but it costs money to use for items with actual sell value.) I did, however, need to finish the Navel of the Earth for the penultimate orb, the Blue Orb; now that Anann had real armor, 40 more HP, and healing from MP, I figured it ought to be doable. After one fumble where I forgot to switch the Meteorite Armband to Anann, the only encounter that frightened me was a Deranger and a group of four Mage Toadstools on the last floor. I used the Staff of Thunder on the Mage Toadstools, figuring that if I took out most or all of them, if the Deranger cast Chaos on me I would beat it and the surviving Toadstools to death before running out of HP since confused solo character can attack normally. I got three, but resisted Chaos twice and killed the Deranger and remaining Toadstool with attacks without getting confused. I picked up the Blue Orb, but since I already had the Swordedge Armor, I skipped the Armor of Terrafirma: it has 50 Defense, no special ability, and only Iainuki in my party could use it.

The last orb, the Yellow Orb, is in the new town that you had to take a merchant to earlier in the game, and as far as I know isn't accessible until you've gotten all the other orbs. With the six orbs, I sailed to the shrine where you get DW3's version of the airship, the phoenix Ramia. Ramia can travel anywhere without random encounters and land on any terrain except mountains, but it doesn't matter because the only place that Ramia can take you that matters is Baramos' Castle.

Next up: Baramos.

[Iainuki]

The hardest part of this run was working out a viable strategy against Baramos. Baramos has 675-900 HP and heals 90-109 HP per round. He attacks twice a round in a fixed pattern that lasts four rounds and then repeats: Explodet/attack, strong fire breath/Blazemost, Limbo/Attack, and Explodet/Chaos. Explodet does 140 damage against enemies, so 70 damage to each member of the party, which is further reduced by Parry-Fight to 35 on average except against the character in the last position. The strong fire breath does 45 damage to everyone except the person in the last position to which it does 90. Blazemost does 180 damage to a single enemy so 90 damage to one target in the party, so the last person would take 90 damage and anyone else would take 45 damage. Thus, most of Baramos' damage comes from his fire breath and spells, and that damage is the primary threat he poses.

For my first tests against Baramos, I went in with a party of three fighters at 24 and the hero at level 26, had the hero use the Orochi Sword to cast Defense on Baramos until it stuck, and otherwise had everyone attack. It went terribly: in ten clean combats, I got eight losses and two wins. When I did win, tremendous blows made the difference: on the first win, I got two tremendous blows; and on the second, three tremendous blows and I won even despite having to revive Iainuki. However, tremendous blows were necessary but not sufficient: on two losses, I got two tremendous blows and lost because of bad luck, the hero getting killed by Blazemost in one because she was in the last position and missing the first use of the Orochi Sword on the other. Obviously, a one-fifth chance was not good enough.

I went back to a previous save in my practice run and changed one of my fighters to a sage at the first opportunity after level 20, then I reran the parts up to Baramos. My sage had hit level 19 by the time I made it back, and so I tried some other strategies without much more luck. Using Sap instead of Defense and then Healmore to try to keep my party alive longer won three of ten attempts, but that could easily be attributed to Sap just being better than Defense, as Sap followed by attacking all-out won four of ten attempts. I then did just enough grinding to get my sage to level 21 and manipulated luck to get BiKill, since I didn't want to get a new practice run to Baramos, and tried using Sap followed by BiKill on the hero: no better, four wins in ten attempts. Finally, I tried having the hero cast Zap, a lightning spell that does an average of 80 damage, slightly better than attacking during the first round, having my sage Sap and then cast BiKill, while the fighters and then the hero attacked all-out. I got through three wins in six attempts before stopping.

After all this unsuccessful testing against Baramos, I went back, studied alternative strategies, and checked game mechanics. Baramos is only vulnerable to Sap/Defense, Sleep, Stopspell, and Surround out of the status ailment spells. Stopspell might look useful, as most of Baramos' most dangerous attacks are spells, but unfortunately, his AI switches over to using fire breath and attacks (randomly, AFAICT) in place of spells. His fire breath does more total damage than any of his other attacks, so Stopspell didn't help. (I also checked the possibility of running him out of MP with the hero's spell Ironize, which makes the party invulnerable but unable to act for a couple of rounds; however, not only did a level 26 hero not have enough MP, but even if Baramos did run out, I suspected from my Stopspell testing that he would just breathe more.) Baramos' physical attacks just aren't that dangerous, so Surround is pointless. Sleep is an odd case: it doesn't stick that often, even less often than his 179/256 resistance would suggest though that may have been my small sample size, and when it does stick, he often wakes up in the same round. Sometimes, though, he'll stay asleep for two or three rounds, leading to a spectacular victory. However, Sleep is a high-risk, unreliable strategy that worked even less often than the best of the previous strategies I'd tested. I also tried at one point taking the Golden Claw into Baramos' Castle to boost a fighter's offense, but the encounter rate was totally overwhelming, and I would never have survived to reach Baramos carrying the Golden Claw.

At that point, I did some mathematical analysis on the average outcomes of battles against Baramos using attacks and damage-enhancing spells, solving for the point where the amount of damage the party had done exceeded Baramos' expected HP, including regeneration. Read the strategies in the following list the following way: "Defense+BiKill hero/BiKill fighter/attack" means a party of two fighters, the hero, and a sage; and that in the first turn the hero should use the Orochi Sword to cast Defense while the wizard/sage should cast BiKill on the hero, and the fighters attack; then in the second, the sage casts BiKill on one of the fighters and everyone else attacks; and in the third and subsequent rounds, everyone attacks. These are approximate average numbers of rounds it will take a party to kill Baramos, provided everything goes right.

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; Defense+BiKill hero/BiKill fighter/attack: 4.27

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; Sap/attack: 4.80

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; Sap/Healmore: 6.65 (Healmore extends the party's life, but not enough to compensate for the slower killing time.)

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; Sap/BiKill hero/attack: 4.21

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; Sap/BiKill hero/BiKill fighter/attack: 4.13

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; Sap/BiKill hero/BiKill fighter/BiKill fighter/attack: 4.25

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; BiKill hero/attack: 6.00

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; BiKill hero/BiKill fighter/attack: 5.16

fighter, hero, sage, fighter; BiKill hero/BiKill fighter/BiKill fighter/attack: 4.87

fighter, hero, fighter, fighter; attack: 7.46

fighter, hero, fighter, fighter; Defense/attack: 5.80

Some words of caution about these numbers: they make a lot of assumptions and ignore a lot of possibilities, including the person in the last position dying from Blazemost in the second round, tremendous blows (about 1/10 chance per hit from the fighters), Limbo and Chaos working, characters dying from taking too much damage in the third and fourth rounds, use of the leaf of the World Tree, and Sap not working 77/256 of the time. They're most accurate as ballpark numbers for comparing strategies to each other and getting an approximate idea if a strategy is even workable.

My previous testing suggested that these numbers, rough as they were, were valid for comparing strategies. My chances of winning lined up roughly with a strategy taking fewer rounds to win in the above list, though not in a linear fashion. (I had a small sample size for each strategy, though.) I couldn't find a way to stop Blazemost from killing the person in the fourth position if it landed on them: Explodet, fire breath, and Blazemost would do enough damage to kill any of my characters. Limbo doesn't work very often, partly because the hero's immune to it; Chaos works more often and is more dangerous. It wasn't unusual to reach the fourth round with a relatively intact party, but by the fifth round it was all but certain one or more characters would be dead or incapacitated, and by the sixth round only one or two stragglers would be alive and functional. Victory, if it happened, almost always came in the fifth round, as one might expect from the aforesaid numbers: the best strategies required more than four rounds on average to kill Baramos under ideal conditions, so under more realistic conditions five rounds was likely. A sixth-round kill was rare because Baramos heals 100 HP/round and one character usually can't deal more than 100 HP in damage.

With the above numbers in mind, I went back to Baramos and tried out a new, optimized version of the best strategies I'd worked out before. First, I made two equipment changes. I switched the hero from the Swordedge Armor to a dragon mail, which has 45 Defense, 10 less, but reduces the amount of damage from fire breath attacks. (I think by 1/3, but don't quote me on that.) Because she already had high Defense from her other gear, she took minimal damage from Baramos' physical attacks so the dragon mail reduced damage more, plus it's rare that Baramos would hit her more than once. I also switched my sage from the cloak of evasion to the sacred robe, which has 40 Defense so 20 more, but also reduces damage from fire spells, both Explodet and Blazemost. (I think by 1/2, but again don't quote me.) My testing showed that with this gear, the only way that Baramos could kill someone in the second round was to land Blazemost on the character in the fourth position, and that moreover it increased the HP I had in the third and fourth rounds and greatly increased my chances of having all characters alive to take an action in the fourth round. Then, I swapped the hero to the second position because having her fourth didn't help, and she did more damage than either of the fighters so I didn't want her to die to Blazemost.

I also changed spell and attack order. First round, I used the hero to cast Defense from the Orochi Sword, my sage to BiKill my lead fighter, and the fighters to attack. Second round, I used my sage to cast BiKill on the hero, and everyone else attacked. On the third and subsequent rounds, everyone attacked. The previous numbers I gave didn't take into account four factors that make these tactics better: first, the hero (who had the Meteorite Armband) had a reasonable chance to act earlier than the fighters, which increased the chance of Defense landing before one or both of the fighters attacked, thus boosting first-round damage; second, with the hero using a spell first round, it was better to cast BiKill on my lead fighter since there was a small but significant chance it would land before she attacked; third, if Baramos Blazemosted my last fighter in the second round, my sage would have a free action on the third round to revive her with a leaf of the World Tree; and fourth, if Defense failed my sage could cast Sap on the second round and BiKill on the third round, recovering more gracefully from a Defense failure in the first round. When I tested this new strategy against Baramos, I killed him eight of ten tries, and on the failures multiple things went wrong: one time both Defense and a second-round Sap failed then my last fighter died to Blazemost, and the other Defense failed, Blazemost killed my last fighter, Limbo took my lead fighter out of combat, and Chaos confused my last fighter after I revived her. That's even more bad luck than I'd expect in an "average" run, and most importantly, this strategy could still kill Baramos when two or three things went wrong as long as I didn't roll snake eyes on everything. After those tests was the first time I was confident that DW3 ironcore was really doable.

Going back to my real run, it's worth observing that even aside from all the other reasons to class change to sage, there was no way a wizard would survive long enough against Baramos: for comparison, Anann had 141 HP at level 19 as a sage compared to the 105 HP she had at 22 as a wizard. I'm not even sure a pilgrim would make the cut: on average a level 25 pilgrim has 133 HP, still less than my sage.

I'd saved all the acorns of life I'd found for this point in the game because I wanted to have a better idea of final HP totals before using them. Acorns of life give a random max 1-5 max HP boost. Macha had 195, Badb had 190, Iainuki had 158, and Anann 141. That left the fighters about 20 above average, Iainuki 30 below average, and Anann 10 above average. The two characters who needed to survive as long as possible against Baramos were Badb, my offensively-strongest fighter who I would put first, and Iainuki, plus an honorable mention for Anann since she needed to live at least three rounds or so. In my testing, the hero had 207 HP, the two fighters 204 and 200, and the sage 140 HP, which made Iainuki the clear outlier. Giving Iainuki all the acorns brought her up to a more respectable 185 HP.

I bought a dragon mail and a sacred robe and pulled out the stone of life that I should have used in Necrogond to protect against Hologhosts, and also took the Multi-Edge Sword (to satisfy some idle curiosity), the Orochi Sword (necessary), the Swordedge Armor (there are no real fire-breathing enemies until you hit Baramos), Annan's cloak of evasion for Anann (the most dangerous enemies in the castle are attackers, not fire-spell casters), and the rest of my standard equipment plus medical and full moon herbs. Baramos' Castle has many of the same enemies as Necrogond, plus Evil Mages, Snow Dragons, and Stone Hulks. Stone Hulks are heavy-hitting physical opponents who only resist Surround at 77/256, which renders them easy. Snow Dragons breathe ice and have a 50% chance of attacking twice per turn but basically don't do enough damage to matter. Evil Mages are by far the most threatening since they have some dangerous spells, Stopspell, Chaos, Blazemore, Sleep, and Snowstorm, the second-most-powerful ice damage spell. Moreover, even though the Castle is long, it has half the usual encounter rate for a dungeon. The Castle is just not hard compared to Necrogond, much less Baramos himself.

It was almost a nonevent except for one frightening fight against four Evil Mages. I tried Stopspell from Iainuki and Anann against the Evil Mages' 179/256 resistance, landed it on only one which the fighters promptly killed, then the Evil Mages retaliated with Stopspell, Snowstorm, fire breath, and Blazemore, almost killing Badb, leaving Anann at low HP, and blocking my spells. I managed to kill them fast enough with attacks to prevent anyone from dying, but that was luck. I only bothered picking up one item in the castle, another wizard's ring. The two other items in the Castle are the Demon Axe, which is a solider-only weapon that's arguably their best option: it has 90 Attack, higher than anything else a soldier can wield that isn't cursed, and a 1/8 miss rate coupled with a 1/8 critical rate; and the Unlucky Helmet, which has 35 Defense but reduces Luck, the stat which determines how often a character resists status-ailment spells, to zero. Needless to say, the Unlucky Helmet is useless. When I finally reached Baramos, Stone Hulks had given everyone another level, so Iainuki was at 26, Macha and Badb were at 25, and Anann at 20.





At Baramos, I double- and triple-checked my equipment and items, then went in. On the first round, Iainuki's Defense from the Orochi Sword failed, but both fighters landed tremendous blows for a total of about 300 damage. The second round went much worse, with Sap failing to land and both fighters reduced to very low HP. On the third round, my luck turned again: Baramos attacked Iainuki who easily absorbed the damage, Limbo failed on Badb, and Sap finally landed.



However, with my party in terrible shape, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it. In the fourth round, Explodet did exactly as much damage as needed to kill Macha, 35, and of course also killed Badb, though at least Chaos didn't affect Anann. The only silver lining was that my fighters got their attacks off before dying.



Then, on the fifth round with only Iainuki and Anann alive, Iainuki shocked me when she landed a killing blow against Baramos, before he attacked and almost certainly killed me. I had made it, just barely. I had a combination of really awful and great luck that fight: tremendous blows on the first round are hugely helpful (tremendous blows don't benefit from BiKill or Defense/Sap, so the first round is the best round to get them), terrible luck with Sap and Defense since it took three tries to stick them, bad luck with Anann since she acted after all three other characters in all rounds, and good luck with Limbo and Chaos. For the curious, my experience totals at Baramos were 108924 for both fighters, 106844 for Iainuki, and 56790 + ~54121 = 110911 for Anann; these were high compared to my tests, but I actually attribute that solely to the lucky Metal Babble kill since it accounted for 10k experience per character.



Killing Baramos opens up the remaining two locations accessible only with Ramia in the first world: in one, you get a plot coupon item that reduces the stats of the final boss, Zoma, and in the other you find a ship that takes you to Alefgard, the setting of Dragon Warrior 1: the big reveal here is that DW3 is a prequel to DW1. Exciting, huh? In Alefgard you don't have Ramia, which makes her one of the most useless means of transportation in any JRPG ever, and have to sail from place to place again. (DW designers really like their random encounters.) Anyway, after beating Baramos, I sold the Multi-Edge Sword since the Sword of Kings, the hero's ultimate weapon, is better in every way, especially since it's the only high-end weapon that's not cursed, switched Anann back to her cloak of evasion since there are quite a few heavy-hitting physical enemies, some with unweighted attacks, in Alefgard but few fire spellcasters, and left Iainuki in the dragon mail, since there are quite a few fire-breathers, 10 defense isn't that much, and the Swordedge Armor's ability is close to useless.

After Necrogond and Baramos, Alefgard is an anticlimax. The enemies are harder, but there's nothing like the discontinuity in difficulty that Necrogond or especially Baramos present. My first goals in Alefgard were to get the items, plot and otherwise, that didn't require anything more dangerous than overland travel to towns and shrines: Tantegel for the Stones of Sunlight, Hauksness for the Oricon, the Rain Shrine for the Staff of Rain, Kol for the Fairy Flute and to sell the Oricon for the Sword of Kings, and then Rimuldar for the Ring of Life. This route also hit all the places I might need to Return to later. (Yes, it skips the fifth town in Alefgard, Cantlin, but as far as I can tell there's no reason to ever visit Cantlin.) The Oricon sells for 22,500 gold, but the Sword of Kings costs 35,000 gold. I had just enough money to buy it when I arrived in Kol thanks to selling the Multi-Edge Sword from that random Frost Cloud drop for 4k gold. (I probably could have raised enough from selling probably-obsolete gear if I'd been short.) The Sword of Kings has 120 Attack, an improvement of 35, and casts Infermos, the strongest infernos spell, when used. Infermos does 90 average damage, though it has high variance. The Ring of Life, from Rimuldar, heals the wearer for 1 HP every time you take a step outside combat, and I gave it to my lead fighter, Macha, of course. After all of this was done, Anann was level 22, Iainuki 27, and the fighters 26.

My next destination was the Tower of Rubiss, for the last plot coupon I needed to open my way to the final dungeon. The enemies in the Tower are mostly more nuisance than threat, with the only real exception Vile Shadows. I only hit two bad encounters in the Tower: a group of four Vile Shadows on the second floor and a very lucky Winged Demon on the fourth, on my way up to Rubiss. Vile Shadows breathe sleep and cast Beat, an awful combination; after thinking about it, I decided to use the Sword of Kings against their 77/256 resistance to Infernos while having Anann cast Stopspell, which they can't resist. She blocked their spells before they managed to cast Beat; one breathed sleep but only put Macha to sleep in the first round, after which two of them were dead, making it easy to finish them off in the second round. The lucky Winged Demon cast Blazemost twice in one round, both Blazemosts targeting Badb at the rear, and she died after taking over 160 damage. I had to revive her with a leaf of the World Tree, which meant I had to retrieve another one after finishing the Tower. I also picked up the acorns of life, which went to Anann, and the Armor of Radiance, the hero's best armor: it has 70 Defense and restores 1 HP/step like the Ring of Life. I would rather have the extra 25 Defense and the healing than the breath damage reduction for the last part of the game, so I wore it. Everyone went up a level in the Tower.

The plot coupon you get from Rubiss, the Sacred Amulet, is also an accessory that only the hero can equip that reduces the chances of instant death spells working; I discovered that the hero can equip the Meteorite Armband and the Sacred Amulet at the same time, so I did. From Rimuldar, I went to get the final plot coupon, the Rainbow Drop, and met a pair of Bomb Crags on the way there. My unreliable childhood memories failed me there, as I remembered that Bomb Crags were lethal but not why: it turns out they cast Sacrifice, an instant-death spell that as far as I know can't fail against the PCs, but only use it when reduced to 1/8 HP, so I could have safely run. I stupidly Returned, and there followed an extremely frustrating sequence where I got random encounters every two steps while trying to go back to the appropriate shrine from Rimuldar. (I'm exaggerating, but there was a stretch in the middle where I actually did get random encounters every two steps for ten steps.) However, it is almost always more dangerous to try to run from a random encounter than it is to fight it, so I kept fighting them, gaining more experience on the way. No one leveled except for Anann, but I ended up close to the next level.

After finally getting the Rainbow Drop, I made two last stops before Zoma's Castle, the cave northwest of Tantegel for the Shield of Heroes and another stone of life and the cave southwest of Tantegel for another wizard's ring. The Shield of Heroes is the best shield for the hero at 50 Defense, 20 more than a silver shield, but doesn't have any other special properties; honestly, I could have probably made do with a store-bought Shield of Strength with 40 Defense and the ability to cast Healmore when used as an item in combat, and arguably the stone of life was more important than the Shield. Both caves have forgettable enemies and present little real danger to an optimized party. This and the foregoing encounters trying to get the Rainbow Drop brought Iainuki up to level 31, Anann to 26, and the fighters up to 29. Iainuki equipped the Shield of Heroes, sold her silver shield, and then I picked up another leaf of the World Tree and extracted the wizard's rings, Rainbow Drop, and Sphere of Light from the vault for the run to Zoma. The major dangers in Zoma's Castle consist of physical attacks, breath attacks, and some status spells, not fire magic, so a cloak of evasion remained the best armor for Anann.

Zoma's Castle itself is more of an endurance challenge than anything else---it tests whether you can cut through five floors worth of powerful enemies without running out of MP. There were only four enemies I was all concerned about. Troll Kings cast Limbo, which would have required me to start the dungeon over if it ever succeeded, but only have 77/256 resistance to Stopspell and never got off Limbo when I hadn't preemptively blocked it. Barogs are like buffed Hologhosts who cast Defeat all the time rather than Beat and Defeat, but they don't have much higher HP or Agility and by that Zoma's Castle I had two stones of life and higher Luck so their spells were unlikely to work and even less likely to force me to retreat, much less TPK me. Putregons have 170 Attack, 263-350 HP, and breathe medium-strength ice, but have 0 fire resistance and only 77/256 Surround resistance so it's easy to win the damage race against them. The greatest threat, in my estimation, are Salamanders: they can appear in groups of three and have 150-200 HP, too much to kill them before they attack, and breathe strong fire with 50% odds. They were the only thing that I thought could end my run unless I made a mistake, but luckily they only appear on the third floor. Swordoids are theoretically more powerful Marauders, and they do have 128-170 HP and attack twice with 158 Atttack, but they're actually easier even if they do more damage because they can't cause numbness.

The trip to and the first floor of the Castle were packed with random encounters, nothing dangerous but healing after Green Dragons, Hydras, Troll Kings, and Boss Trolls took a toll on my MP. There's an entrance hall where you have to fight three pairs of Granite Titans in quick succession, but this wasn't at all threatening because Granite Titans only resist Surround at 77/256, and all they can do is attack physically. However, by the time I finished the Granite Titans, I was questioning whether I was going to have to go back just because I'd used up more MP healing than I'd expected on the first floor. Luckily, I encountered almost no enemies on the third floor and only a few groups of Swordoids on the fourth floor, interspersed with enough walking so that Macha and Iainuki healed without my needing to spend MP. My luck continued with the fifth floor and I managed to get to the Sage's Stone, leaf of the World Tree (you can get another if it comes from a monster drop or, as the one in Zoma's Castle does, from a chest), and wizard's ring with 40 MP for Iainuki and 60 MP for Anann left, easily enough to finish the game. The Sage's Stone breaks DW3: it casts Healus for free, healing something like 80 HP for all members of the party, and anyone can use it.



I reached Zoma's floor with Iainuki at level 33, the fighters at 32, and Anann at 29, just a little lower than in my practice run. Zoma has three bosses you have to fight before him, though you get a chance to heal out of combat before each boss and Zoma himself. King Hydra can attack or breathe medium fire twice in a round in any combination, but has little Defense and only 413-550 HP despite his 100 regeneration; he died in the second round after I BiKilled Iainuki. Baramos Bomus is more or less Baramos, only with half the HP and regen. I took five rounds to kill him since Sap failed four times in a row against a 77/256 resistance, and he has 200 Defense; the Sage's Stone kept me at full health throughout the battle. Baramos Gonus has 0 Defense, 360 Attack, and attacks once per round; it took three rounds to kill him with BiKill on Macha and Iainuki because he starts with 675-900 HP and has 50 regeneration. And, finally, Zoma wasn't hard either: using the Sphere of Light against him reduces his damage to the point where the Sage's Stone can heal faster than he can deal damage. He has high HP, 100 regen per round, 200 Defense, and constantly dispels Sap and BiKill, but as long as you can manage more than 100 damage a round despite the dispels, you'll will, it's just a matter of time. I can't emphasize enough how easy this last part of the game is: the Sage's Stone can heal faster than any of these bosses can deal damage, unless Baramos Gonus gets lucky and hits the same target multiple times, in which case I might have had to have Anann cast Healmore or Iainuki Healall. With the Sage's Stone, I could have killed Zoma and his minions at the same level and with the same equipment with which I beat Baramos. The only reason to even get new gear and higher levels in Alefgard is to help with the random encounters on the way to Zoma.

[Iainuki]

In conclusion, I had a lot of fun planning, analyzing, and executing this challenge, despite the completely anticlimactic ending. It was much harder than the equivalent FF1 run: there, I more or less followed the obvious strategies, corrected a couple of overly risky decisions I made, and won. This run took a lot more engineering to even have a chance to succeed. Oddly, I felt the random factors were more under my control than in FF1.

I feel like I ought to be able to wring more variant play out of DW3, but some of the obvious variants are more awkward than they look. All-X variants have to deal with the fact that you can't not use the hero and still have a full party of 4 in DW3. Three fighters is obviously doable since you can easily manipulate luck to beat Baramos as my testing proved. I think that three pilgrims and, obviously, three sages are probably doable, though the first 20 levels of three sages will be as annoying as all get out because you'll have to get two goof-offs to level 20. (Either that, or farm Books of Satori at 1/2048 chance from Blue Beaks---good luck with that, I'd rather take the goof-offs.) Since three fighters is doable, three soldiers is also probably doable but will be a lot harder because there's such a limited selection of good weapons for soldiers. I doubt three wizards is doable, seriously doubt three merchants is doable, and am almost certain three goof-offs is impossible.

The other obvious variant is solo. On the GameFAQs boards, I've read threads claiming that solo hero and solo sage have both been won, but without details; I don't know how, for instance, people handled the 20 levels you can't be a sage at the beginning of the game. Darkwing is streaming his attempt at solo fighter and discusses it at the GameFAQs DW3 board, but I'm not that masochistic.

[Iainuki]

In the category of hilarious, but annoying things, I did a bit of research today on solo challenges for DW3, and discovered a thread that discusses how to get to do a real solo challenge for DW3, without having the hero dead in the party. Since that thread is a little confusing, I'll summarize. There is a bit that gets flipped in your save file when you beat Zoma and finish watching the credits such that if you reset, you can leave the hero behind at the place where you normally drop off or pick up party members. When you reset, you're returned to where you last saved the game. If you last saved the game at the very beginning, before leaving the first town, you effectively just started the game over, can drop off the hero, and play a real solo or single-class challenge. Of course, what challenge could encompass going through the game without ever saving? Ironcore. Of course, I saved at one point in my ironcore game. Oops.

[Iainuki]

In retrospect, three other optimizations I could have made but didn't:

1) I don't think you actually have to turn the golden crown into Romaly's king to trigger any future events---Darkwing just bypasses it entirely in his speed run. The golden crown is a helmet that a wizard can equip, which would have made Anann just a little more survivable early on.

2) Zoma takes damage from healing spells, so since Iainuki learned Healall at level 33, it would have been faster to kill him using Macha to heal with the Sage's Stone, Badb to attack, Iainuki to cast Healall, and Anann to cast Healmore, because I wouldn't have had to waste turns recasting Sap and BiKill after Zoma dispelled.

3) I could have used the Noh Mask to get Anann through the Navel of the Earth as a wizard, speeding up time to class change some.

[Iainuki]

For my next variant, as a hopefully-gentle introduction to the solo challenges, I tried solo hero: this is exactly what it says on the tin, you take the hero and solo the game. Because you get the same experience four characters would normally get, it's not quite as brutal as it sounds, but it's brutal enough, no question. I used emulator save states to abuse the game, in particular, reloading after dying to avoid losing half my gold (I expected to die a lot/i], and I was right) and manipulate level-ups while grinding and seeds, to maximize MP most of all and secondarily to maximize Strength and HP. I did not use save states to make dungeons easier, save while grinding: e.g. I did Necrogond, Baramos' Castle, and Zoma's Castle all in one pass each on my successful attempts.

I started off by recruiting seven soldiers and selling their equipment for a total of 1196 gold. I bought a leather shield in Aliahan, then a chain sickle in Reeve, then sold my copper sword. I got level 2 from enemies on the way to Reeve, with +4 HP and +4 MP, which is pretty good at that point in the game. I bought three medical and two antidote herbs and set off for the Promontory Cave, not expecting to make it. I did reload from a save state once after making a boneheaded decision that I knew was boneheaded, trying to take eight Slimes and a Froggore. Larger numbers of Slimes were by far the most dangerous enemy groups I could meet since everything did 1 damage to me, or sometimes missed, and I couldn't kill Slimes fast enough. I ran after reloading. Use of medical herbs and judicious fighting saw me through. I gained up to level 5, to 36 HP and 17 MP, plus learned Heal, and got all the minor treasure from the Promontory Cave.

I got the leather helmet and level 7 from the Tower of Najimi; level 7 taught me Return and brought me up to 53 HP and 22 MP. Rather than Masked Moths, the most dangerous enemies turned out to be groups of Babbles: aside from the poison, they could do 2 damage to me. (Masked Moths missed often and the 5/8 miss rate didn't slow me down in killing them much.) None of it was really that threatening. The Cave of Enticement was an entirely different can of worms, though. I had to keep casting Return because I kept getting poisoned by Babbles on the way to the Cave, and I didn't want to go in with less than two antidote herbs. When I finally made it in, I destroyed the barrier and then Returned so I could fill the slot the Magic Ball had occupied with a medical herb. (Count the inventory slots at home, kids: I'm going to be doing this for the rest of the game.) I will always need four slots for my weapon and armor, leaving four slots for everything else. I needed the Thief's Key, so that left two slots. I picked up two antidote herbs and a medical herb.

Magicians are bad when you're a low-level solo character: I couldn't kill them in one hit, whereas every Blaze could do 10 damage to me, which is lethal when you have 53 HP. Running from them wasn't possible, and they're immune to Expel. I died to one group of three Magicians even outside the Cave of Enticement, and it took me four tries before I avoided dying to a group of Magicians right on the second floor of the Cave. Amazingly, on that fourth attempt I succeeded at making it through, which I imagine involved a huge amount of luck because I didn't see any more groups of Magicians in the Cave, period. (Note that I didn't save state in the Cave.) After Magicians, I worried about Spiked Hares, but I didn't see many of them. When they appeared in small numbers, e.g. one or two, I had no trouble killing them; I took out two from a group of four before they put me to sleep, but the others ran away, ending the battle long before they killed me. Since they could only do 2-3 damage a hit, they were surprisingly not threatening. I actually considered Babbles more dangerous than Spiked Hares, as more poison than I had antidote herbs could kill me. I got poisoned four times in the dungeon, but the chest containing another antidote herb and a fortunate Babble drop kept me ahead of the poison. In retrospect, I had plenty of healing, so I should have brought three antidote herbs. Demon Anteaters were a relaxing break compared to the rest of the monsters: they only did 3-4 damage, went down in one hit, and didn't have any nasty abilities.

I had gained two levels by the time I made it to Romaly, taking me up to 63 HP and 27 MP. Selling the Magic Knife took me up to 1718 gold. After thinking about it a bit, I decided to buy a broad sword on the theory that it would speed up grinding: better armor would help more with forward progress, but ultimately I would need both. I explored whether I would be able to make it to Kanave and met a group of four Putrepups and a Masked Moth that slaughtered me and put paid to that idea. I fought Caterpillars, Poison Toads (necessitating constant trips to the House of Healing), Magicians (with a broad sword, I could kill them in one hit), and Spiked Hares around Romaly until I could afford the best armor available at Romaly, a cheap chainmail (480 gold, 20 Defense, an improvement of 8), and an iron shield (700 gold, 12 Defense, an improvement of 8), which I would have to make it to Kanave to buy. I wasn't sure at that point if I wouldn't be better-served skipping the cloak of evasion and going for higher Defense. I gained level 10 and learned Firebal.

My next attempt to reach Kanave died to a group of four Killer Bees, who numbed me, which is fatal to a solo character, with their first attack. (I'll note that Killer Bees never numbed me in all of my ironcore practice and runs.) When I finally made it, I bought my iron shield and decided that I was definitely going to need to get half-plate armor and then full-plate armor ASAP. After having to turn back once, I made it to Noaniels, but on the way back to Kanave a group of two Poison Silkworms, a Putrepup, and a Rogue Knight killed me. The next time I saw that group, I just Returned in combat.

My next goal was the 384 gold in the Tower of Shanpane. The first I tried, I made it to the first floor of the Tower only to get numbed by Killer Bees. The second time, I had to Return to Kanave after dealing with a group of three Putrepups and an Army Crab who summoned help once. Third time, I had turned around on the first floor when I met a group of three Army Crabs and had to use Firebal against them twice; on the way, I mostly fought Humanabats but right at the entrance, I met a group of four Killer Bees and was on pins and needles killing them. I succeeded and walked out to cast Return. I'd earned so much money I could afford half-plate armor (1100 gold, 25 Defense, an improvement of 5), so I bought it. Fourth time, four Killer Bees got me again. Fifth time, I turned back after using two Firebals and three Blazes to kill four Putrepups and a Masked Moth. Sixth time, I Returned after a Rogue Knight dropped a copper sword a few steps outside Kanave. Seven time, four Killer Bees got me, again. Eighth time, four Killer Bees... oh you know what happened. Ninth time, Killer Bees. Tenth time, Beeeeeees!

When I finally made it back to the Tower itself, Beeeeeeeeees! struck again, and I reloaded state. Luckily, with my new levels and half-plate, Humanabats were fodder by this point, only able to do 1-2 damage, and I could even kill Rogue Knights without much trouble. I got the gold, jumped off the Tower, and Returned to Romaly. There was no point in even attempting Kandar: at level 12, with 90 HP and 36 MP, and the equipment I had, he would just straight up kill me. My next big improvements would come from more levels and the Meteorite Armband, so I went to get it. The trip to Assaram only involved a fight with two Caterpillars, trivial at that point. I Returned away from three Wild Apes, died to four Madhounds, died to four Vampire Cats, died to four Mummy Men (almost killed them with Firebal, except they all acted before me in the second round), Returned from three Wild Apes, died to four Vampire Cats, and then finally made it to Isis. The enemies in the desert were actually much easier for me to fight than Wild Apes or Vampire Cats: Flamapedes and Demon Toadstools were both not much of a threat, and I could kill Mummy Men as long as I didn't get unlucky.

I picked up the Meteorite Armband first, as it's obviously one of the most key pieces of equipment for any solo. I'd gained level 13 on the way to Isis and was up to 100 HP and 40 MP; the Meteorite Armband brought me up to 68 Defense, and I had 1818 gold. I sold my broad sword and bought a battle axe for the 7 Attack improvement. Mummies had the highest Attack in this range of enemies at 60, which 68 Defense would reduce to 13 expected damage. The full plate armor would give me another 7 Defense and, after looking at the bestiary entries for the enemies I'd be facing in the mid game, 60 Attack was about as high as they would go for awhile. My Defense would continue to increase from Agi gains, which meant that it might be reasonable to get enemies down to dealing minimal damage. This looked better than a cloak of evasion, under these unusual solo circumstances.

I had two choices of where to go next, as usual: the Dream Ruby Cave or the Pyramid. I attempted the Pyramid once, died horribly, and decided that I would need full plate for it. That meant it was the Dream Ruby Cave or grinding around Isis, and I opted for the former as less boring. I took an antidote herb and a medical herb, and realized after I'd made it to the dungeon, after several false starts, that I didn't need the Thief's Key and could pack another medical herb. While Deadly Toadstools continued to live up to their name, what enemies were dangerous looked a bit different with a solo hero: Madhounds, in particular, were very bad because they took two hits to kill and cast Defense, halving my Defense, when most of my ability to win fights came from Defense absorbing damage. Vampires cast Icebolt but weren't that dangerous because they sometimes went down in one hit, and didn't use the spell that often. On my first trip, I kept an okay-but-not-great level at 14 because I learned Outside at the lowest part of its range: Outside made dungeons much easier since if I kept 16 MP in reserve, I could always cast Outside and Return to escape. I also picked up the 288 gold chest and the acorns of life, which increase max HP. As I was poisoned and down to 16 MP after getting the latter, I cast Outside and Return there.

I had enough money to purchase full plate, so I did, maxing out my pre-ship equipment available from shops. Unfortunately, getting the ship would require beating the second Kandar, which I did not anticipate as at all easy. I went back to the Dream Ruby Cave after stashing the Thief's Key and buying a wyvern wing, a medical herb, and antidote herb. Leveling up let me start killing Madhounds in one hit sometimes, which made my life a lot easier. There ensued a series of attempts on the rest of the Dream Ruby Cave treasure. The first died to five Deadly Toadstools, the second turned back after a Madhound and three Vampires ran out of MP trying to kill me, the second died to five Deadly Toadstools, the third died to five Deadly Toadstools, and the fourth made it to the treasures on the second floor, a magic knife and a strength seed. I cast Outside and Return, sold the magic knife, used the strength seed, and bought items for the next pass. On my way to the Cave, I got a lucky drop: an agility seed from an Avenger Raven (1/64). I saved (of course) outside the Cave, and then died immediately to two Vampires and three Deadly Toadstools inside. I made it to one of the third floor chests because a group of Masked Moths starting summoning help and I had to Firebal them to kill them and then cast Outside because I didn't have any more MP. On my way back to the Cave, I got Beeeeeeeees! again. Finally, at long last, I managed to make it to the cave, walk down to the third floor, and clear the rest of the third floor chests without dying or running out of MP. I fought several groups of Man-Eater Moths and discovered that once they cast Surround, it was very random whether I could kill them faster or they could flee faster than they summoned help.

After all of that nonsense I'd gained three levels, putting me at 16 with 139 HP and 47 MP. I had no intention of getting the Dream Ruby, which was useless to me in the present and the future. I bought two medical herbs and a wyvern wing for the Pyramid, since it doesn't have any poisoners inside or on the way there. King Froggores' Sleep spell proved to be a real aggravation in the Pyramid. I found the best way to deal with mixed groups of Mummy Men and King Froggores was to kill the Mummy Men first if the Froggores predominated, since they could do 6-7 damage while I was asleep, but King Froggores only 2-3 damage, but to kill the Froggores first if there were only one or two to stop myself from being put to sleep in the first place. On third floor, I discovered that the combination of Trick Bags and Mummies were brutal to deal with as a solo character: Mummies summoned Horks faster than I could kill the Mummies, and meanwhile Trick Bags could steal my MP.

I'd gained another level, to 17, putting me to 149 HP and 52 MP. The only actual improvement I could get before attempting the Pyramid again was to fight Kandar the first time and try to get the Golden Crown. It took me two tries to get the top of the tower because I needed to carry the Thief's Key and so could only fit one antidote herb; luckily, by this point I sometimes resisted Poison Silkworm breath, otherwise it would have taken a lot more tries. I'd say there was strategy to the Kandar battle, but there wasn't. The Kandar Henchmen are not grouped together so the only way to kill them was to beat them to death with attacks one after the other, two per Henchman. I tried Sleep on Kandar but it didn't last more than a turn. Otherwise, I only attacked and cast Heal. I didn't have any trouble outlasting him since he could only do about 10 damage to me, and his Henchmen half that. Kandar gave me level 18 and Stopspell, plus the Golden Crown.

The Golden Crown actually made a noticeable difference against Mummy Men, almost halving their damage, and even made it possible for me to take on Mummies. I was quickly learning that summoners are a huge problem for solo characters, especially since I didn't have any decent mass-damage spells at this point. The best way I found to deal with groups of four Mummies was to use Firebal followed up with attacks to make sure every Mummy died in one hit, but one group still managed to summon two Horks and put me in a world of hurt because Horks were strong enough to do damage despite my high Defense. I retrieved the Magic Key and the vitality seed (to be sold for cash), then retreated and went for the treasures in Aliahan and Isis. I was discovering that I had a very different attitude to what constituted treasure in this solo run: seeds and acorns of life were a big deal and could make noticeable differences in my power, e.g. every Agi seed gave me 3 more Defense via the Meteorite Armband. Meanwhile, money was useless to me, and there wasn't any gear I could equip anyways. While walking outside Isis to provoke nightfall, I realized that Stopspell was very useful against Infernus Crabs, since blocking Increase meant I could beat them to death rather than using expensive Firebals to kill them, and Masked Moths, since it could intercept Surround and speed up the whole battle.

It also proved handy in the Pyramid against groups of King Froggores, though I seemed to be resisting their sleep more often anyways. By this point, I could usually kill Mummy Men in one hits, but only occasionally kill Mummies in one hit. With their Hork summoning, they remained the bane of my existence. Mummy Men also could barely hurt me, which made clearing the fourth floor chests trivial; the only real risk came from tremendous blows, but as long as I kept myself healed, I could absorb up to two and still be fine. I cleared all the chests and then on my way out to pick up the flashy clothes and jump off the top, I met a bunch of Mummies. I drained the last of my MP, past my normal Outside reserve, to kill them with Firebal, beat down the Horks they summoned, and heal afterwards. I jumped off the roof and landed with 86 HP to spare, after a pair of Flamapedes ambushed me outside the Pyramid right as I landed.

The Pyramid took me up to level 20, with 183 HP, 63 MP, 100 Attack, and 104 Defense. I wyvern winged to Romaly and prepared to head east. I was prepared to have to reload, again, when I met a group of five Deadly Toadstools on the way. They put me to sleep, and then... they all ran. It was bizarre. The trip to Baharata was uneventful, but that left the question of what to do next. The sooner I got the ship, the better off I would be, but to do it, I had to pass the second fight with Kandar. His Defense isn't that high, 40, but he has 50 regen, and I still wasn't clearing 50 damage after his Defense. I would have to find an efficient grinding location and gain levels. The Tower of Garuna would be ideal, if I could kill Metal Slimes. I doubted it, but I decided to find out, expecting Garuna to kill me.

In the Dhama region, enemies ranged from extremely dangerous to easy. Simiacs were the primary threat: they had 75 Attack and summoned, which made them basically perfectly suited to killing my character, and no spells would help with their 179 Sleep resistance. I sometimes had to run when I saw them, though I discovered to my surprise that sometimes I could kill them in one hit and that was good enough to overwhelm them, though they still hurt a lot. Rammores did a surprising amount of damage between Firebal and attacks, especially since I had to take two hits to kill them. Nevs cast Surround, which mattered, and Chaos, which didn't, since confused solo characters act normally, but were more annoying than dangerous. Catulas presented little threat but their MP draining and summoning were an automatic reset button for any attempt to walk to the Tower. In the Tower itself, Great Beaks were great grinding fodder, as they didn't do much damage at all and gave decent experience. However, my new least-favorite enemy award went in a tie between Stingwings, who have a numbing attack that's again could instagib me, and Sky Dragons, who could do about 40 damage per turn with their breath and breathed almost every turn, or so it seemed. Worse, they appeared in groups together, so I could roll the dice with instant death or take gazillions of damage from flame breath. I decided at this point the Tower wasn't even remotely doable.

At this point, I decided two things. First, I wanted to retrieve the Golden Claw because it was clear I was about to need to do a metric fuckton of grinding, to get enough levels to deal with Kandar, and the Golden Claw would speed that up a lot. Second, since the Tower of Garuna's iron helmet was inaccessible, I broke down and bought an expensive one in Assaram for 2000 gold, since no matter else was true, it didn't seem like cash was going to be a major problem this game. Fetching the Golden Claw was no trouble, and once I had it I set down to grinding around Dhama: I wasn't clearing the enemies much faster anywhere else (you can't beat one hit, and most everything that wasn't a Rammore was dying in that) and no other enemies that I had access to gave much better experience.

There ensued a great deal of grinding. I actually managed to get a rare Metal Slime encounter outside Dhama, and then amazingly luckily landed a tremendous blow on one. A lot of enemies were running away from me, and while all of them had the flee command in their scripts, I wondered if my level had something to do with it. In any event, I leveled up to level 26, my goal level, to get Zap. I looted the treasures from the Kidnappers' Cave, then went back while running from everything hoping to hit Kandar with as much MP as possible. My stats going in against him were 233 HP, 95 MP, 126 Attack, and 130 Defense. It took two tries, a lot of high damage rolls on Zap, all my MP, and one final finishing attack, but Kandar went down. I earned level 27 on the way out.

With the ship, suddenly my giant stash of 25k gold didn't look so large anymore. I wasn't planning to do Necrogond any time soon, so my first purchase had to be a dragon killer for 15k gold (77 Attack, an improvement of 37), the penultimate weapon for the hero in the first world barring rare monster drops. (The Thunder Sword being the ultimate weapon.) The other items I wanted were a silver shield for 8.8k, which I would be using until I defeated Baramos, and an iron mask, which I would be using until the end of the game. Of course, the dragon killer and silver shield were only available in Samanao, and getting there involved the Final Key and surviving the trip---I decided there was no time like the present.

I did my standard Final Key sequence. I got a merchant for New Town, sailed west from Portoga, dropped off the merchant at New Town, sailed to Soo for the Staff of Thunder (I had just learned Firebane---once again, the Staff of Thunder surpassed my native spellcasting), sailed south to the Pirates' Den for a strength seed and the Red Orb, Returned to Aliahan, sailed to Lancel to buy an invisibility herb and an iron mask, Returned to Portoga and sailed to Eginbear for the Vase of Drought, and finally Returned to Aliahan to sail to the Sunken Shrine. I skipped the leaf of the World Tree, of course, since there's no point in a solo game. On the way, I discovered another enemy that takes on a whole new meaning in a solo game: Man O' Wars have a numbing attack and summon.

I was surprised that I was able to handle the enemies around Samanao without many problems even without new gear, though I did have to burn some MP doing so. Kongs and Tortragons couldn't do that much damage to me, and while Voodoo Shamans were as annoying as ever, they weren't dangerous. The only real damage came from Old Hags, who could cast Firebane in addition to healing themselves so I had to block them with Stopspell, and Infernus Knights, who could hit terrible blows. I burned a lot of MP, but with new gear I was confident I could grind there if necessary. In Samanao, I bought the dragon killer and silver shield and sold my old gear, leaving me with 2.6k gold.

My next stop was the Navel of the Earth for the Armor of Terrafirma and the Blue Orb. I was amused I would be wearing this normally-forgettable armor for a long time, as to reach Necrogond and the Swordedge Armor I would have to beat the Boss Troll's 100/round regeneration. The Navel of the Earth itself was trivial, as the enemies are about as challenging as those between Baharata and Dhama, and I'd been soloing them for ages. After that, I went to Tedanki to get the Lamp of Darkness, Green Orb, and an acorn of life. Because of inventory constraints, I had to drop each orb off individually at the Liamland shrine, which I did.

The remaining orbs were the Silver Orb past Necrogond, the Yellow Orb, only accessible after having acquired all the others, and the Purple Orb, behind the Orochi. I couldn't beat the Orochi or the Boss Troll, which left only three things for me to do: finish Garuna, the Tower of Arp for acorns of life, and the Samanao Cave for the Mirror of Ra. It was evident, though, that as I was nowhere close to strong enough to beat that regeneration, that I was going to have to grind. Luckily, I had an evil grinding trick in mind: on the top floors of the Tower of Garuna, sometimes you'll meet groups with one Sky Dragon and a large number of Metal Slimes, up to seven.



Breath attacks don't have the same restrictions on killing Metal Slimes that physical attacks do, so if you [i]confuse the Sky Dragon, sometimes it will breathe on the Metal Slimes, killing all of them and giving you a huge amount of experience.



I had no access to Chaos, but poison moth powder is a store-bought item with the same effect. My first poison moth powder, on a Sky Dragon and seven Metal Slimes, was good for two levels when the Sky Dragon went second, before the Slimes, and breathed. It cost 500 gold per shot, but I had 10k and little need for gold until Alefgard, so it was well worth it. Obviously, this is more efficient if you have the spell Chaos, but it's a wizard spell, or the Sword of Illusion, but you can't get that until after beating Baramos. (Sadly, all the best tools the hero gets for grinding come after Baramos.) Meanwhile, the rest of the enemies in Garuna were much less of a threat to me than they used to be: I could kill everything in one hit, even Sky Dragons courtesy of the dragon killer, almost no physical attacks could hurt me, and I had enough HP to absorb Sky Dragon breath and Firebane from Garudas. The only real danger was Stingwings, and I could run from them most of the time. It's also worth noting that the other enemies gave pretty good experience: in particular, Sky Dragons are worth 800 experience per, more than almost any other enemy I had access to at that point in the game.

In an amusing sidenote, while grinding I had a Hunter Fly drop a cloak of evasion---first time that had ever happened for me. Of course, under the circumstances it was totally useless. Sky Dragons also dropped two two acorns of life. I grinded up to level 40, one level before my target level since I expected to get some experience from doing actual dungeons rather than just walking back and forth in the Tower of Garuna, for all the spells except for Lightning and 213 Attack, 206 Defense, 402 HP, and 164 MP.

I raided the Tower of Arp for its acorns of life. I went back once to get antidote herbs after I got poisoned by Venom Zombies, then only saw one more Venom Zombie, and it didn't poison me. The main enemies I met were Lethal Armors, naturally, who could be dangerous if they got Defense off: I started every battle with Stopspell, but even if blocked three the fourth had an annoyingly high rate of opening the battle with Defense. If Stopspell blocked all of them or they didn't cast Defense, though, I hammered them.

I had a new strategy for dealing with Voodoo Shamans in the Samanao Cave: run. Because my level was so high, I could successfully flee all sorts of things that I never would have escaped in my ironcore game. The dragon killer gets bonus damage against Tortragons, which helped dispatch them, and their sleep breath proved to be no more than annoyance given my massive Defense, HP, and killing power. The Cave and the Tower of Arp didn't quite bring me to level 41, so it was back to the Tower of Garuna for the last experience I needed. I took a not-so-great level just because I learned Lightning and was tired of grinding.

Lightning costs a huge amount of MP, 30, but does an average of 200 damage to all enemies and few enemies resist it. In particular, the Boss Troll, the Orochi, and Baramos all have zero lightning resistance. 200 damage obviously clears 100 HP regeneration, particularly if it rolls high on damage. The Boss Troll ate three blasts of Lightning before keeling over. There followed one of my least favorite activities in DW3, using the Staff of Change enough times for it to randomly select among its dozen or so forms the one form (the dwarf) that the Elf Village item shop will trade with so I could purchase wizard's rings. I had over 50k gold; I bought eleven wizard's rings, more out of impatience than anything else. After that, I traded the Staff for the Sailor's Thigh Bone, got the Locket of Love from the Phantom Ship, used it to get the Sword of Gaia, and tossed the Sword into the volcano to open the way to Necrogond.

No two ways about it, Necrogond was going to be a pain in the ass. Marauders have 77/256 lightning resistance and were too high level for me to run from reliably, so I was going to have to settle for unreliable. Both they and Hologhosts had the potential to instagib me. Though I was reasonably confident I could kill everything else, on the whole, I was expecting much sadness. The only preparation I could make was to take the stone of life with me as protection against Hologhosts, so that's what I did.

Of course, I had the easiest time in Necrogond ever. I ignored the gold and went straight for the Thunder Sword and the Swordedge Armor and killed one Hologhost after picking up the Thunder Sword. I failed to run from another group of three, they broke my stone of life but didn't kill me, failed to run again but they failed to kill me again, and then succeeded at running on the third round. I encountered another group of three Hologhosts and ran on the first turn. I didn't meet any more, luckily, while picking up the Swordedge Armor and hightailing it off the first floor. After that, I flew through the dungeon at top speed and met few encounters. The only thing that was dangerous was a Marauder, the only one I saw in the entire dungeon, and two Lionheads on the last floor, which I nuked to death with a preemptive Lightning strike since I had plenty of MP and didn't feel like dying at that point.

That left only the Orochi, who went down in two quick casts of Lightning both times. (Not enough HP, you see.) I picked up the Purple Orb and offered it; went to New Town for the Yellow Orb, a luck seed, and a dragon mail; and offered the Yellow Orb to wake up Ramia.

I had obviously spent some time developing some tactics for Baramos. I considered Stopspell. As far as I could tell, Stopspell converts his eight-step attack pattern into an attack-breathe-attack pattern. Blazemost was bad because it did much more damage than anything else in his attack pattern, but Limbo and Chaos were good because a solo character is immune to them. I crunched the numbers, figured his attacks would do about 59 average damage, and computed that with all of his attacks active and dragon mail on, he'd do about 102 average damage per round, and that Stopspelled he would do about 119 average damage per round. Stopspell wasn't worth it. Sleep wouldn't be worth it because every turn I cast Sleep would allow him to heal 100 HP. My only chance was to charge ahead, hope that my attacks could outdamage his healing, and then use Lightning as a finisher. The math suggested that with only 229 Attack, I just didn't have even close to enough Attack to keep up with him. I'd have to cast Healall every three or four rounds to stay alive, which I meant I needed another 25-33 damage above and beyond the amount I needed to beat his regeneration. With four shots of Lightning, even with great damage rolls I'd be looking at maybe 500 damage over four turns after regeneration. Someone claimed to have done this at level 45, and I was starting to think they were smoking something; at best, they got really lucky with Strength on all their level-ups

(I'll just comment here that a lot of the solo runs have been executed on the GBC version of the game, and it is extraordinarily easier for solos. Just specifically on Baramos, Swordedge Armor works on his attacks, which transforms the battle to make it much more favorable for the player. Worse, they changed the game so he doesn't regenerate and has more starting HP, about 3000, so wearing him down is a viable strategy. If you can land Stopspell, keep healing, and get in some attacks, you just win.)

That meant more grinding. I considered going back to the Tower of Garuna, but decided instead to try an experiment: I needed, more than anything, more Str so I could reach farther above Baramos' regen, and that meant strength seeds. With the Golden Claw and the Lamp of Darkness, I could get a good rate of Grizzly encounters near the leaf of the World Tree location, and while they weren't great experience, they were certainly okay experience, and had a 1/64 chance of dropping strength seeds. Some of the other encounters in the area, Elysium Birds and multiple Sky Dragons, were good for experience. I grinded up to level 46, getting one strength seed along the way. I should mention at this point that DW3 has a very strange and complicated stat growth mechanic. Two features of this mechanic are that for the hero (it's different for other classes), for levels past 45, 47, 45, 50, and 50, Strength, Agility, HP, Luck, and MP growth all slow down dramatically. There's also a soft cap on how high stats will go that dramatically decrease stat growth. I had hit the cap on Str at level 46, plus of course my stat growth was now slowing down. What this came down to was that gaining more levels would not benefit me much. At this point, I had 479 HP, 196 MP, 255 Attack, and 227 Defense. I still didn't expect to have any chance at Baramos, since I barely beat his regeneration on average given my need for healing, but maybe enough attempts would let me force it through by a series of high damage rolls and Lightning.

Testing showed me I was right. (Incidentally, I started each attempt here from outside Baramos' Castle and ran from all encounters inside it on my way to Baramos.) It also told me a couple of other things. First, the Swordedge Armor does not work on Baramos, as I thought I remembered from my ironcore practice run. (The Swordedge Armor has a very small selection of enemies it works on: for instance, Sky Dragons and Marauders both take damage from it. It seems to be random whether it works or not.) Second, Baramos' AI doesn't work quite as I expected: he doesn't even try Limbo, maybe because the hero is immune or because I was solo. He also doesn't use Chaos after Confuse lands. This plus the damage variance from Explodet and Blazemost meant that Stopspell was useful. My best shot seemed to be to cast Stopspell until it stuck, use the Orochi Sword three times to reduce Baramos' Defense from 100 to 13, and then use the wizard's ring I got in the castle to restore MP until it broke or I was full, healing as necessary. After that, I tried attacking and then casting Lightning alternated with casting Lightning and then attacking. I didn't get close with either strategy. The problem was, as I had expected, that I was healing about every four turns, while my average damage per turn was about 125, which all worked out to zero given Baramos' regeneration.

Of course, there was one more resource I hadn't used yet, the Noh Mask. Its 255 Defense would nerf Baramos' attack damage to almost nothing, letting me fit in more attacks between casts of Healall. The Noh Mask confusing you in combat doesn't matter for a solo character, since you can act as normal, but it prevents spellcasting and item use outside of combat, which means that afterward I would have to destroy the Mask to continue the game. With the Mask, I killed him on the first try. After defeating Baramos you have to cast Return (or use a wyvern's wing) to continue, as Ramia disappears from outside the Castle. The only way to do that is to exploit a poorly thought-out feature: if your inventory is full and you pick up an item, you can choose to drop any other item you have, including a cursed one like the Mask. Baramos' Castle has two convenient chests for just this purpose. I don't know if I would have been able to beat Baramos at level 41 with the Noh Mask; I doubt it only because at level 41 my attacks were barely clearing his regeneration.

I was confident I wouldn't need the Noh Mask against Zoma himself: Healall easily clears Zoma's regen and doesn't require any buffs to use, so I could just alternate healing myself and damaging Zoma as long as I didn't run out of MP. With 200+ MP, as long as I could restore it before the fight, I would have enough. I wasn't as sure about his boss rush before I tried it, though obviously I did make it.

I wanted to test the Swordedge Armor a bit more to get an idea if any other enemies might be randomly vulnerable to it, though I was most curious if it could help me during Zoma's boss rush, and that was a long ways off. The results were disappointing: in my entire circuit of Alefgard, I found that only Scalgons and Ghouls also took damage from the Swordedge Armor, though an important sidenote is that Baramos Gonus belongs to the same category of monster as the Scalgon. On the overworld map, I used Lightning to blow away the enemies since I had access to the inns at each town and am lazy. I gathered the Rainbow Drop components at Tantegel and the Rain Shrine, replaced my silver shield with a shield of strength (40 Defense, an improvement of 10, and the shield of strength also casts Healmore when used in combat) and got the Oricon at Hauksness, traded the Oricon for the Sword of Kings and picked up the Fairy Flute at Kol, and then went into the Tower of Rubiss. The Sword of Kings was more valuable for the Infermost spell it casts when used than for its Attack power since I could use it to clear groups of Scalgons, Ghouls, Leonas, Goopis, Green Dragons, and assorted other chaff quickly without burning MP. I grabbed the Armor of Radiance, Returned to stash my previous armor because of space limitations, and then went back for the Sacred Amulet. On the way up, Vile Shadows got a preemptive attack and killed me with Beat before I could act, so I had to reload, but after that I got the Sacred Amulet without any more trouble. On the way to get the Rainbow Drop, a Darthbear dropped an agility seed when my inventory was full, so I dropped my iron mask to make room, that's how little money meant to me at that point.

I used the Rainbow Drop to create the bridge to Zoma's Castle, then cleared the Granite Titans out of the first floor using Sleep and Lightning. The only monsters I encountered that were annoying were Boss Trolls, which I couldn't kill without using Lightning because of their regeneration. Finally, I picked up the Shield of Heroes and another stone of life from the cave northwest of Tantegel---one might think that a cave with no magic allowed might have proved a problem because of healing, but the shield of strength's Healmore functions inside as does the Armor of Radiance's 1 HP/step.

I wasn't sure which gear would be optimal for Zoma and his preceding bosses, but for my first attempt I settled on the Sword of Kings, a shield of strength for 0 MP healing in even though the Shield of Heroes gave 10 more Defense, the Armor of Radiance, and an iron mask. The fighting I'd done before had taken me up to level 51 for a grand total of 295 Attack, 267 Defense, 519 HP, and 221 MP. I'd hit the cap on Agility, 255, with the Meteorite Armband, so I couldn't increase that stat further. I would get a little more HP and MP with further levels, plus 1 Strength per level, but those benefits were minimal, at best. In other words, I was about as strong as I was going to get without insane amounts of grinding. That left gear selection. My armor and weapons plus the Meteorite Armband took five slots. The Sphere of Light and the Final Key, also both required, took two more slots. I had a total of one slot to play with, and I filled it with a wizard's ring.

My first couple of attempts, always starting from outside Zoma's Castle, went poorly. I ran from all the enemies I was guaranteed to be able to run from, but there... weren't enough of them. Among things I couldn't run from, Putregons, Swordoids, Lionroars, and Salamanders weren't that dangerous, I could beat them to death and then use the shield of strength with the last one to recover. Archmages were a huge pain especially if they came in numbers greater than two since they would just revive each other; the only way I could deal with them in numbers was to use the Sword of Kings to cast Infermost, since they have 0/256 infernos resistance. I could kill one Barog, as long as it wasn't paired with an Archmage, but I had no reliable way of stopping two or more Barogs from killing me with Defeat; my best option was to lead with Stopspell and pray. Granite Titans were a real annoyance because they took three or four hits to kill and were the only physical attackers that could get through my Defense; when paired with Archmages, they were that much worse.

My first try died to an Archmage and a pair of Barogs: I Stopspelled one of the Barogs, killed the Archmage, and then the other Barog cast Defeat and that was that. I died on my second attempt when I encountered a group of Goopis that just keep repeatedly summoning Granite Titans, and one of the Granite Titans criticaled me. On my third attempt, same deal, only I died to the Granite Titans while trying to kill the Goopis. On my fourth attempt, I finally made it to Zoma, only to screw up against Baramos Bomus---I forgot that he has 77/256 lightning resistance, and didn't use Lightning multiple times to force the issue. My fifth attempt ended when I accidentally opened the wrong treasure chest and picked up the Sage's Stone after my wizard's ring crumbled. On the sixth attempt, I made it to Zoma but ran out of MP for Healall, partly because of bad luck, partly because I fumbled a Healall that should have targeted Zoma at the beginning of the battle. On my seventh attempt, I tried taking the Swordedge Armor in to see if it would hurt any of the bosses. It did return damage to the Putregons and the Swordoids, but to my surprise, Baramos Gonus was immune. (I guess I shouldn't have been surprised---why would I expect any gear in this game to be useful? All the bosses are immune to the Swordedge Armor even though it's not very useful except in solos. If it was just the bosses, I'd assume that the designers intended for it to be useless, but the randomness of the normal enemies it doesn't work against suggests it could be a bug. Between the quality of DW3's coding, its sometimes-questionable design decisions, and that the Swordedge Armor works against everything in the GBC remake, I have no idea whether it's a bug or deliberate.) Zoma was also immune, which was annoying because for once I'd managed to get to him with full MP and a wizard's ring still in my inventory; anyway, he overwhelmed me with attacks because my Defense was lower.

It was on the eighth attempt that finally everything went right. King Hydra took awhile to kill him, but wasn't hard in any sense: on average, I could keep ahead of his regeneration, so as long as I didn't screw up and forget to keep my HP up, I was bound to win eventually. Because Baramos Bomus has 200 Defense and I had no room for the Orochi Sword, I opted to use Lightning to kill him. It took four hits because he resisted one; in retrospect, I'm not sure this was necessary because even with his 50 HP/round regen, I could probably have Stopspelled him and beat him to death with attacks, though I'm not sure it would have been more efficient because of his powerful breath attacks. Baramos Gonus was easy, as always, because he doesn't regenerate. My wizard's ring didn't break while recharging my MP after any of these fights, so I was able to get to full before tackling Zoma himself. Zoma parried the first round while I used the Sphere of Light, then I cast Healall every turn for the rest of the battle, on myself when I needed to and on Zoma the rest of the time. The only question was whether I ran out of MP before Zoma ran out of HP. I made it with 24 MP to spare, out of 227 total. I finished the game at level 54, but I could have done it earlier. Finishing at 46 would have been challenging because I only had 196 MP, but finishing at 50 when I had 219 MP and good levels for MP increases had ended would have been entirely reasonable. All the people who suggested absurd amounts of grinding for this challenge are smoking something.



On the whole, solo hero felt a bit... mechanical. I think some of this came about because all the strategies were so obvious. The best gear was always the item with the highest Attack or Defense available, the tactics were straightforward, the spells I needed to progress were obvious, and the boss fights were all endurance. I had a lot more fun with ironcore, partly because it didn't require so much grinding and partly because the optimization landscape was bigger and more interesting.

[Iainuki]

Okay, I lied---they worked on one computer, but not on another.