Final Fantasy III Classic Jobs Part II
Oct. 4th, 2023 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingThis next session was played on August 28, 2017.
If you're watching the video, the audio mix seems pretty flawed at the beginning and it's partly fixed (though still not ideal) a couple of minutes in. It is rather hard to hear me throughout.
I started at Sasune Castle, where I had rested for no particular reason other than proximity. Ingus is still a freelancer with knightly tendencies because the knight job is unlocked later than the others. I eventually found and visited the Village of the Ancients and got some nice elemental staves that both Arc (white mage) and Luneth (black mage) can use, as well as a couple of spells. I was interested in some armor too, but I was all out of money.
I found Castle Argus again a bit after that, which solved a lot of the money issues given that I looked a bit deeper and found tons of treasure chests. Next it was onto the Gulgan Gulch, which gives us access to the Toad spell. I was pretty surprised that Toad is classified as a white magic spell in this game!
After another short shopping trip, it was time to head for the Tower of Owen. I was grateful for a second Spark Dagger I found partway through. I am not sure if it's normal, or if I'm overequipped, or overlevelled, or what, but pretty well every battle was rather trivial here. Several floors up, we also got a Salamand Sword for Ingus to wield.
Finally, we ran into Medusa. After all of those fairly trivial encounters, Medusa stood out. She attacks twice, and where Refia was doing a fairly consistent ~400 damage to random enemies she was doing only about ~100 to Medusa, so I guess high defense is in play. Medusa also had a Thundara spell for about 200 damage herself. By targetting Refia wih an attack and a Thundara on the same turn, she managed to KO Refia.
Arc got her back on her feet and Ingus took out Medusa just a turn later. Luneth definitely contributed the most damage.
With this, Desch, uh, left the team. We are now able to sail our ship North to get to the Earth Crystal. We grabbed an Ice Helm in the Dwarven Hollows which apparently Refia can equip, which may help with some of the fiery hazards I'm expecting in the near future. I also sailed to Gysahl. I didn't want to sell everything despite not using lots of things, such as bows and arrows in this playthrough (I am not sure whether I can justify that...), and thus I didn't have a ton of money for their new spells (level 4 ones!). Fearing my eventual run in with a certain boss, I did make sure Arc had Libra.
We headed back to the Dwarven Hollows and toadified ourselves to enter the lake to follow Gutsco. The Stalagmite enemies - which do not resemble stalagmites - have a petrification-causing attack. That's a pretty nasty feature especially so early in the game. The party's experience had been pretty even to this point but Arc ended up a little bit behind because of it. That said, it's not a big worry; since Refia is using Steal every so often we've got a pretty good stash of most of the consumables including Gold Needles.
Gutsco, like other bosses in this game, gets multiple actions per turn and depending on how those stack up it can swing the fight considerably. We tried Blinding him but that didn't pan out. He mostly just attacked and didn't seem to have an obvious weakness, where all of the -ara tier spells were doing ~500 damage to him. Even the itemcasts from our Light Staves were doing ~275, so after a bit I just used those instead. In general, it was much easier than Medusa.
We reclaimed the Horn and had a pretty obvious invisible friend join us.
We progressed the story (such as it is) by trying to use the Horn and proceeded to the Molten Cave. Using Ice Rods kept the battles here pretty fast. Walking in lava wasn't particularly damaging - closer to the 1 HP per tile from FF1/2 than the huge damage of FF5. The frequent minor healing did, however, provide an opportunity to appreciate the very large number of low-level magic charges a mage can gain in this game. It's sure a far cry from how you need to budget them in FF1.
Through the Molten Cave I found myself attempting to run a lot more, perhaps because I was very ready for Ingus to finally switch to his knight job. I was really surprised that Refia's Flee command still seems to have a failure chance. That's pretty lame. Well, at least the thief can open locked doors in this game, which had already come in handy once at Castle Argus.
Finally, we ran into Gutsco at the Fire Crystal, and he turned into a fierce, cross-eyed dragon. Ingus was dealing 300 damage with physicals, Arc's Aero spell was quite ineffective, and Luneth's Blizzara was capable of doing 800+ damage. With two actions per turn, it was pretty manageable when he used physicals and worse when he breathed fire. Ingus and Refia weathered the fire waaay more effectively with their Ice Helms. That didn't end up helping when two Fire Breath attacks came out in a row. Refia was the only survivor; she tried to bail herself out with Hi-Potions and Phoenix Downs but there proved to be no way to keep up. Darn.
Since I was dilly-dallying and considering a bit of a grind to make Gutsco's Salamander form easier, I wandered a bit. I went back to Gysahl to see about getting some of those level 4 spells I didn't pick up earlier. This was seriously more of a time sink and a way to give purpose to random battles than an actual strategy; I didn't think level 4 spells were going to make any kind of difference.
When I got back to Salamander, I started differently. I had Refia used a Bacchus Cider on Ingus to boost his attack, which I thought would be really smart, but the difference didn't seem huge. The strategy ended up being similar to last time, but with a bit more care in the use of Cura and Hi-Potions. With that, we won!
I bet we were actually quite close on the previous attempt.
Finally, Ingus was able to become a knight, never to change again. This didn't mean much in terms of equipment or anything. His stats were mostly higher, but since "job level" is the basis of several features including the number of hits it actually reduces Ingus' effectiveness, at least for a while. Knights have abysmal agility and they look pretty stupid.
For now, I'm using Ingus' Guard ability in random battles until he gains enough job levels to be more useful.
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If you're watching the video, the audio mix seems pretty flawed at the beginning and it's partly fixed (though still not ideal) a couple of minutes in. It is rather hard to hear me throughout.
I started at Sasune Castle, where I had rested for no particular reason other than proximity. Ingus is still a freelancer with knightly tendencies because the knight job is unlocked later than the others. I eventually found and visited the Village of the Ancients and got some nice elemental staves that both Arc (white mage) and Luneth (black mage) can use, as well as a couple of spells. I was interested in some armor too, but I was all out of money.
I found Castle Argus again a bit after that, which solved a lot of the money issues given that I looked a bit deeper and found tons of treasure chests. Next it was onto the Gulgan Gulch, which gives us access to the Toad spell. I was pretty surprised that Toad is classified as a white magic spell in this game!
After another short shopping trip, it was time to head for the Tower of Owen. I was grateful for a second Spark Dagger I found partway through. I am not sure if it's normal, or if I'm overequipped, or overlevelled, or what, but pretty well every battle was rather trivial here. Several floors up, we also got a Salamand Sword for Ingus to wield.
Finally, we ran into Medusa. After all of those fairly trivial encounters, Medusa stood out. She attacks twice, and where Refia was doing a fairly consistent ~400 damage to random enemies she was doing only about ~100 to Medusa, so I guess high defense is in play. Medusa also had a Thundara spell for about 200 damage herself. By targetting Refia wih an attack and a Thundara on the same turn, she managed to KO Refia.
Arc got her back on her feet and Ingus took out Medusa just a turn later. Luneth definitely contributed the most damage.
With this, Desch, uh, left the team. We are now able to sail our ship North to get to the Earth Crystal. We grabbed an Ice Helm in the Dwarven Hollows which apparently Refia can equip, which may help with some of the fiery hazards I'm expecting in the near future. I also sailed to Gysahl. I didn't want to sell everything despite not using lots of things, such as bows and arrows in this playthrough (I am not sure whether I can justify that...), and thus I didn't have a ton of money for their new spells (level 4 ones!). Fearing my eventual run in with a certain boss, I did make sure Arc had Libra.
We headed back to the Dwarven Hollows and toadified ourselves to enter the lake to follow Gutsco. The Stalagmite enemies - which do not resemble stalagmites - have a petrification-causing attack. That's a pretty nasty feature especially so early in the game. The party's experience had been pretty even to this point but Arc ended up a little bit behind because of it. That said, it's not a big worry; since Refia is using Steal every so often we've got a pretty good stash of most of the consumables including Gold Needles.
Gutsco, like other bosses in this game, gets multiple actions per turn and depending on how those stack up it can swing the fight considerably. We tried Blinding him but that didn't pan out. He mostly just attacked and didn't seem to have an obvious weakness, where all of the -ara tier spells were doing ~500 damage to him. Even the itemcasts from our Light Staves were doing ~275, so after a bit I just used those instead. In general, it was much easier than Medusa.
We reclaimed the Horn and had a pretty obvious invisible friend join us.
We progressed the story (such as it is) by trying to use the Horn and proceeded to the Molten Cave. Using Ice Rods kept the battles here pretty fast. Walking in lava wasn't particularly damaging - closer to the 1 HP per tile from FF1/2 than the huge damage of FF5. The frequent minor healing did, however, provide an opportunity to appreciate the very large number of low-level magic charges a mage can gain in this game. It's sure a far cry from how you need to budget them in FF1.
Through the Molten Cave I found myself attempting to run a lot more, perhaps because I was very ready for Ingus to finally switch to his knight job. I was really surprised that Refia's Flee command still seems to have a failure chance. That's pretty lame. Well, at least the thief can open locked doors in this game, which had already come in handy once at Castle Argus.
Finally, we ran into Gutsco at the Fire Crystal, and he turned into a fierce, cross-eyed dragon. Ingus was dealing 300 damage with physicals, Arc's Aero spell was quite ineffective, and Luneth's Blizzara was capable of doing 800+ damage. With two actions per turn, it was pretty manageable when he used physicals and worse when he breathed fire. Ingus and Refia weathered the fire waaay more effectively with their Ice Helms. That didn't end up helping when two Fire Breath attacks came out in a row. Refia was the only survivor; she tried to bail herself out with Hi-Potions and Phoenix Downs but there proved to be no way to keep up. Darn.
Since I was dilly-dallying and considering a bit of a grind to make Gutsco's Salamander form easier, I wandered a bit. I went back to Gysahl to see about getting some of those level 4 spells I didn't pick up earlier. This was seriously more of a time sink and a way to give purpose to random battles than an actual strategy; I didn't think level 4 spells were going to make any kind of difference.
When I got back to Salamander, I started differently. I had Refia used a Bacchus Cider on Ingus to boost his attack, which I thought would be really smart, but the difference didn't seem huge. The strategy ended up being similar to last time, but with a bit more care in the use of Cura and Hi-Potions. With that, we won!
I bet we were actually quite close on the previous attempt.
Finally, Ingus was able to become a knight, never to change again. This didn't mean much in terms of equipment or anything. His stats were mostly higher, but since "job level" is the basis of several features including the number of hits it actually reduces Ingus' effectiveness, at least for a while. Knights have abysmal agility and they look pretty stupid.
For now, I'm using Ingus' Guard ability in random battles until he gains enough job levels to be more useful.
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