Let's Sperg Let's Sperg: Final Fantasy 3 - Tedious JRPG Autism

[AngeloTheWizard]

As we enter the town of Tokkul, something paralyzes us. Soldiers show up to take us to Castle Hein, the floating tree thing we saw earlier. At least that solves the problem of getting in the damn place.

A fair bit of warning: Castle Hein is a one time dungeon, any loot not gained or monsters unfought are lost forever, you have been warned.

So, this castle is:
A: Controlled by a mad wizard
B: ALIVE
C: Big enough to be a full on dungeon.

This is the most "fukkin' metal" of all FF3 dungeons, which is ironic because it's made of wood.

This is King Argus. He laments that Hein has brainwashed all his men, and he asks us to go kick Hein's ass. Well, I was planning on it anyway, but for you, I'll kick it twice as hard.

In the next room over, talking to one of the soldiers has him turn into a demon and try to kill us. He's actually really easy, seeing as Demons are a common encounter here in Hein. Killing him opens the door and lets us move into the next room, where a dying soldier hands us a Mini spell and tells us to use it to get into the castle proper.

Castle Hein is pretty easy all told. No major gimmicks and the monsters are barely an upgrade from what the Molten Cave tossed at you. The only difficult part is that the monsters aren't all weak to an easily obtained element, but that's no problem when you're packing new jobs that can put a damper on their day. If you took the time to get a few job levels in them-like I did-it's even easier.

There's even three Phoenix Downs to find-two here, one in the next room. The third level contains a few rooms that all have a damage dealing item, which is very useful because of Hein's gimmick. The game has already told you before hand, but I neglected to mention-Hein changes his weakness with Barrier Change, which is why a Scholar is handy so he can always be up to date on what kills him. Combine this with the Scholar's power to get double the effect of items...and you see why Scholar is, if nothing else, great in this dungeon.

This, on the other hand, is why you bring a Knight. Sure, Warriors can use it to, but it just doesn't feel right unless a Knight is using it. Plus Knights have better armor choices.

Bless their hearts. They're trying to make Rangers relevant.

Anyway, time to deal with Hein.

Please tell me he only started looking like this AFTER his corruption, cause otherwise Argus...what the fuck, bro?

Luckily for us, Geomancer Terrain attacks are all considered "non-elemental", meaning it goes right through the barrier. Hein actually is weaker then the Salamander-4,500 HP versus the Salamander's 5,700-and is only a danger because of his gimmick. So the strategy is to have the Scholar Study every time he Barrier Changes, then have him and the Thief (at least, in my case I have one) throw items at him, unless the barrier is weak to Lightning in which case Luneth just punches him. Arc attacks endlessly, and spot healing happens when needed as both him and Ingus have Cure.

Alternative strategy? Four Geomancers. Their attacks can hit him for 700-800 damage a piece, meaning the fight can literally be over in two turns.

Once he's dead, the tree speaks to us. After thanking us, he sets back down in the Living Woods, and we get...

The Fang of Wind. Two down, two to go, much like the crystals.

Next Time: A new Airship, and a Frozen World!

Bonus: Castle of Hein Theme

I swear to god if any of you make a "Hein's Moving Castle" pun I'm going to reach through the Internet and slap you.

 

[Sable]

I originally went for four geomancers for Hein.

They scale rather well, so the strategy works for a long time, until you encounter the Garuda.

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

I originally went for four geomancers for Hein.

They scale rather well, so the strategy works for a long time, until you encounter the Garuda.

Geomancers are weird in this one. In the original Famicom release, they could hit themselves if their attacks all missed their opponents, but here they don't have that and because of it are quite possibly one of the most powerful jobs, only losing out to what you get from the Crystal of Earth. Even then, grinding to really high Job Levels can keep them relevant-not only does job level determine how powerful their stuff is, but also determines your chance at getting the damage-cap hitting Shadowflare. The only real reason they lose to Maguses in the end game is because random Flares don't hold a candle to repeated Flares.

Now, we return to Tokkul to collect the accolades of the people...and also because I left my ship there. You can visit the Living Woods earlier, but there's nothing there but the Fairies bemoaning the loss of the great tree, and once Hein is killed, you can't return. We can also collect the third letter from Princess Sara at this point.

A return to Castle Argus gives us the Wheel of Time. It's the airship engine we need, and now, we can leave this continent and head to the surface.

Before you leave, head through the secret passage and visit the left tower. A researcher there gives you 2 Elixirs for free. Not bad at all!

Returning to Cid has him turn our ship into an airship, meaning that we can now invoke "Enterprise, Engage". He also says that we'll be going to "our world". Welcome to exposition city, population, us.

It was at this moment that darkness engulfed the land, and his airship crashed into what would become the floating continent. The only survivors were Cid...and the party.

And so we must return home. For the future of everyone!

By the by, our new airship refuses to land on...well, land. As a sea ship before, it only lands in the water. Still can't fly over mountains, however. The only thing left to do, aside from hit up the few side towns if you haven't yet, is to fly off the edge of the map to a new world...

Uhhh...I have no idea what happened with this shot. Well, I guess I'm stuck explaining: The darkness doesn't want us coming, and is trying to kill us before we get to the new world. While things look bad for a bit, eventually, we push through.

To THIS. It's actually quite creepy. The entire land is frozen in time, there is only a couple of landmasses which are very far away, and the theme is haunting.

It's even creepier in this version. In the DS version, you at least had the map on your other screen to tell you "don't worry, there's somewhere to go". Here, you don't know until you pop Sight or Gnomish Bread.

But there is a place to go, and so we head there. Two places actually. We need the shipwreck first. Also, the entire surface world except for those two places counts as "water", so we can land. No encounters either. Very scary.

We get the Blood Sword on the Wrecked Ship, but it's different this time. The ones in FF2 worked off of dealing percentage damage to enemies, here, it's just a standard 55 Attack sword with an extra effect. The life drain also isn't as good as FF2's was. Still a good sword for now.

We also meet Aria, who is dying. If we give her a curative (I gave her a Hi-Potion), she wakes up. She also immediately hits on the fact that we're the Warriors of Light, so no need to explain that.

Aria comes up with an idea to restore the flow of time, by going to the Water Crystal and restoring it. She becomes our newest guest star, one we haven't had since the Tower of Owen however many fucking updates ago.

We head to the other landmass, and first we stop at the Temple of Water, where Aria claims a crystal shard that still has light within it. The plan is to use the shard to rekindle the Water Crystal. Good a plan as any, it seems. She also explains that the shard was created specifically in case this happened. Yes, someone on the hero side was prepared, for once in the entire history of Final Fantasy.

I love Aria, I really do.

The Cave of Tides is, well, a cave and not much more. There's also only one loot chest, despite the cave being twisty, turny, and topsy turvy. While there isn't a lot of side paths, it twists enough to be confusing.

This is the major reason we need Aria. She is a priestess of the temple. Possibly the last one.

In battle, Aria will either pop off a party wide Cura, or a Protect. Both are pretty useful, unless she protects repeatedly-which she does on occasion.

The third floor splits right off, and taking the staircase up leads to the one treasure chest. It's not a bad one, at least.

The fourth floor is partially submerged, and is a giant circle. The final room, the crystal room, is...surprisingly devoid of a boss monster. Aria just walks up and starts praying.

The prayer and the shard actually work, restoring the light of the Water Crystal. Phase 2 is us reaching out and touching the crystal, the light we carry joining with the Water Crystal's and truly banishing the darkness.

But, it's not going to be that simple, is it?

Aria takes a shot from...something. It's basically a "taking the bullet" scene, but with a poisoned crossbow bolt. The fiend responsible quickly reveals himself instead of...you know...reloading?

Hey, good to see you're still finding work after getting beaten in FF1...by the...Warriors of Light. Well, time for a repeat performance!

Got any of these? Unload all of them as early as possible. The Kraken is weak to Lightning and strangely, slightly weak to Ice as well. The Kraken has 8,000 HP, so a few Zeus's Wraths will not go amiss. If you're using a Black Mage instead of a Geomancer, they can crack out Thundara for more damage. In case it isn't obvious, Aria will not be helping out in this fight. The Kraken can also cast Blind and Blizzara, and his physical attacks can inflict Blind as well. Heal as much as you can while fighting him, and don't be afraid to go through a few Eye Drops for your main physical attackers. Hilariously, he doesn't check who's Blind before casting it, meaning he can waste turns trying to Blind your mages even if they're already Blind.

After the battle, well...

Aria blesses us with the power of water, and asks us to banish the darkness with her last breath. An earthquake soon shakes up the Cave, forcing us to leave Aria behind, turning the Cave of Tides and the Water Crystal's Altar into her tome.

We black out, and Luneth gets a dream from a mysterious old woman telling us to seek out Doga. We then awaken in an unknown town, with a new host of problems: Namely, our ship's been locked up!

Next Time: A Brave New World!

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

And now for some Job Sperging:

We get the Dragoon, the Viking, the Evoker, the Bard, and the Dark Knight.

Dragoon: Damn near required for the Garuda battle, but pretty good regardless. Can equip a multitude of spears and some solid armor choices. The Jump ability removes them from the field for a turn, only to come crashing down next turn to do a ton of damage.

Viking: Tanks. They get hammers which all do Lightning damage, but their real ability is the"Provoke", which causes an enemy to focus on them if it hits. A popular tactic is to strap two shields to the Viking and have them Provoke all the time, allowing others to do their thing.

Evoker: Our first chance at Summon magic, Evokers get a random effect from two for each summon. Most are pretty good, some aren't so great. Completely useless once we get the Sage and Summoner from the Crystal of Earth-the Sage can use almost all magic, while Summoners get a "High" summon effect from the summons (which are the attacks you're familiar with-Ifrit uses Hellfire, Shiva uses Diamond Dust, you get it).

Bard: Practically useless. The Sing ability has variant effects depending on the Harp they have equipped, the best of them being the free party wide healing. Loses out to the Devout in terms of raw healing, though.

Dark Knight: Uses Dark Swords and is nearly required for the cave where the Crystal of Earth lays, as the enemies are weak to Dark Swords and will Split if they aren't hit with them. That said, the engine limitations of FF3 make the Dark Knight less useful, but their Soul Eater attack (hit everyone for major damage at the cost of some HP) is fucking sweet.

You can continue to use your current jobs, or use one of the new ones. I swapped Luneth from Thief to Dragoon just so I could get the boy some decent HP, and maybe he would stop dying in every boss fight.

 

[Sable]

Next proper boss has the worst style ever.

 

[LegoTugboat]

I'm curious as to how an octopus can use a crossbow.

 

[Sable]

...pulling the bowstring with his tentacles.

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

I'm curious as to how an octopus can use a crossbow.

Do recall that at least a couple bosses (Medusa, Gusco round 2) have had humanoid forms before suddenly turning into gigantic monsters for their boss fight. That being said, yeah that makes no sense.

Next proper boss has the worst style ever.

I guess you're not counting Goldor? Because I assume you're talking about Garuda. And yes, Garuda is a bitch. I'll discuss why when we get there, which may not be for a while-every guide I've read recommends level 30, and that's 8 levels away from me right now. Poor Luneth ended up tanking the floor for the last two bosses as well, so he's significantly behind on XP, hence why he's a Dragoon at the moment.

 

[Sable]

No, I meant Goldor.

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

We've got dopplegangers.

In the town of Amur, where we currently are, four old men are absolutely convinced they're the four warriors of light.

We then go ask the Elder for permission to the sewers, so we can get Levigrass shoes and access Goldor's mansion. The four men show up and decide to try and slip in before us...bets on if we'll have to save them?

The elder leads us right to the sewers, but we're not going in yet. There's a few items to grab-an island on the outskirts of town with no bridges leading to it (Amur is basically a city of canals) has some armor items, and the veggie field has some Gyashl Greens.

The sewers are...well, the sewers. At least they ain't brown. There are also no Giant Rats, which is a positive.

On the third floor, we find the 4 old men being harassed by 4 Gigantoads. Yes, for one boss fight, we get four toads! And nowhere else! Really, this one is easy, just kill them.

At least the kids had youthful curiosity to blame for them being stupid. These guys just decided to get in a dick-measuring contest with us, and even Refia's is bigger. At the very least, they are happy to drop the idea of them being the four warriors of light now that the genuine article has appeared, and that makes me happy.

The fourth floor is straightforward, with a couple treasure rooms that present a good argument for using your older jobs (a Kaiser Knuckle, combined with the Cat Claws earlier, and a Poison Dagger), while the Fifth Floor brings us face to face with Delilah.

Delilah doesn't believe us, and the shoes she's offering right now are actually a trick. The four old men save us by telling us to watch out when she chucks them.

The men flat out order her to hand over the real ones, and we can now access Goldor's mansion. Why do we need to? To get the key that allows us to get our ship back, of course! The old men aren't done, one of them actually knows Teleport-a level 3 White Magic, so maybe there's more to those guys then we thought...regardless, we have a mission in mind. And a new Mognet contact!

Next Time: The Golden Mansion!

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

I'm standing here on the bog in front of Goldor Manor. No, you cannot go around it because invisible walls. Attempting to walk on this bog without the shoes causes a short cutscene in which your lead party member sinks into the bog and you get a Game Over screen.

Goldor Mansion itself is made of solid fucking gold on the inside. So wait...if everything's gold, does that make Goldor into Donald Trump?

Practically every door is locked, but that's fine-we have a Thief, and we only care about one locked door. The Library (which is unlocked), and the room that leads to the Master Bedroom (which is locked). That room is in the northeast, but we're going to get some sweet lootz first.

Awesome, a Golden Sword! I can't wait to see how powerful it-

Yeah, FF3 decides to go realistic with how strong gold is as a cutting weapon. There's 11 of them in a line of chests, with a Wyvern Claws at the end. The Gold Swords are incredibly expensive, selling for thousands of gil easily, but are otherwise useless.

The northeast locked room leads to a passage that leads to the North Wing, which is a bit of a maze. Just go towards the northwest, and eventually you'll find the stairs to the Master Bedroom. Heal up before approaching the boss, though.

You know, I don't foresee the God-Emperor of Man wearing armor like THAT.

Though, that is a wonderful cape.

Goldor's super-reflective armor makes him highly resistant to magic. Maybe that's why Trump's been immune to every wiccan curse being thrown at him...he's also got Confuse (great for running rings around the press), Protect (to shield himself from fake news), Silence (also good against the press), Blind (which I choose to believe is not magic and just the reflection off his armor), and if that all doesn't work, he calls in his VP Mike Pence for a powerful Thundara attack. And he can throw a punch, just what I want in my Presidents!

The plan is easy: Either uncork your most powerful magic if you have a Black Mage, or just smash him in with Geomancers and Dark Knights-Souleater hurts, and Geomancer's Terrain doesn't count as magic, so it goes right through his gold armor. Heal as needed, and smash through his 9,000 HP.

After the battle, Goldor runs up and breaks the Gold Crystal! Oh no, what do we do, how can we get our next set of jobs and you're not buying a second of this, are you?

Yeah, this is a moment that's lost in translation, and is probably why the Earth Crystal is last. In the west, we're familiar with alchemy, which started with four elements-Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth. Some Eastern philosophies, however, have five "elements"-Fire, Water, Wind, Wood, and Metal. In this case, the Gold Crystal is a possible "Metal" crystal. That all being said, if you've played FF1, you know this is a fake, and if you have a walkthrough open (which you probably do, considering how rough this game gets), you also know this is a fake.

Goldor leaves behind the key we need to unlock our ship, which we actually have to grab-if you just teleport out, you have to go right back in to get the key. So grab the key, THEN teleport out.

Key in hand, we can go get our ship back. We have a few things to do before the next major content update-and trust me, you want to do as many things as you can, because *FUCK* the next major content update...

Next Time: Sidequesting and Sightseeing!

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

We get the final letter from Sara at this point. She implores Ingus to find someone who can help repair the pendant she wears. Ingus says he won't rest until the pendant is restored, which is a lie because we can frog-march him right up to Sara's bed and have him sleep in it.

If Takka is your first thought, you aren't wrong. However, the pendant is made of some super material that he's never seen before. So, we have no leads.

On the surface world, the small town of Duster in the middle of the map has a bunch of Bard Harps for sale, as well as some sweet armor upgrades for your non-physical combatants.

This is the Ancient Ruins, we'll be coming here later to get the airship Invincible. We can't get very far right now, and the monsters will kick our asses. Sad, too, cause there's some sweet gear in the secret shop that we can't get to.

Up north, we find the summoner town of Replito. If you really want to use an Evoker, you can get the first five summon spells here. The other three require us to fight them first, and even then, I think they're only sold in Doga's Village. Which we can't get to yet.

With our towns visited, and nowhere to find a smith to repair the pendant, all that is left is Saronia...

Next Time: Saronia!

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

The Saronia chain of events is where a lot of people throw their DS through the fucking wall. There's been some talk about Garuda, who is a fucking cunt, but we'll get to him.

The chain of events starts with your airship being destroyed, locking you in Saronia until this plot point is complete. Saronia is a gigantic city split into four sections and a castle. We see a civil war about to break out in the castle, but we can't go anywhere except out, and can't proceed further until we find a certain person.

So where is this person? In the southwest.

Because he is. Meet Prince Alus, whom you meet in an unmarked pub.

Arc shows a little bravery, though considering he's been my heavy armor dude since this game began, he really shouldn't be stuttering. The dudes turn out to be Gold Knights, and you may or may not have killed a few of them in Goldor's Manor. They go down easy.

Alus joins us, as he's as confused by this turn of events as we are. His dad kicked him out of the castle, you see, right about the time the Civil War started. This civil war doesn't feature Robert Downy Jr or Chris Evans, and is infinitely suckier because of it.

Alus casts Confuse and Aero randomly, by the way.

Slipping into the canals of Southwest Saronia and talking to this dude on the center island gets us some sweet gear for Dragoons. Helpful, because none of the shops are open, except for Item Shops.

No shops. This part would be so much easier if we could actually get the gear we need. That said, there is a weapon shop in Northeast Saronia that allows us to buy Spears, which is definitely good for equipping our Dragoons. Grab Wind Spears. We need them.

Southeast Saronia has an extra mini dungeon, a tower, and on top of that tower is a bunch of good Dragoon Gear. Enough to turn our entire party into Dragoons...

Returning to Castle Saronia has the king let Prince Alus through. Hooray!

Why, I get the feeling this is a bit of a trap. Arc and Alus have a bit of a conversation during the night, as neither can really sleep. I mean, Arc is trying to sleep in heavy armor without the proper feat selection, so no wonder he can't sleep.

Called it.

This is Gigameth, the treacherous advisor, and the reason behind all of this nonsense. He's actually Garuda. So guess who we're about to kill?

King Gorn stabs himself, because Prince Alus can't run the fuck away. Gorn then taunts Gigameth, telling him that ordering Gorn to kill Alus is what broke the mind control Gigameth had on him. A reminder to young hypnotists-never give your victims orders that go against their nature. Don't order the protective dad to kill his own kid!

He's not kidding. I walked into this with a party of level 30s, with high enough job levels to do tons of damage, and even then, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it.

All Garuda has is a hard hitting physical attack and a Lightning attack that does massive damage to the party. That's all he needs. Going twice, especially with a random turn order, can cause massive damage, and with only Cura, our White Mage will have some trouble. Basically, your only recourse is to out-damage the fucker. He's got 10,000 HP, and more then enough strength to wreck your shit. Good luck.

I managed to do it on my first go, but I did it by abusing Geomancer Terrain and the stock of Arctic Winds (which casts Blizzaga) I had. Even then, Luneth went down because Garuda went first on the second turn instead of last like he did on the first. Fucking bird.

Gorn explains that he was under Gigameth's mind control, and he exiled Alus in an attempt to keep him safe. Since that didn't work, he turned his knife on himself to safe Alus's life. Now Alus is king of Saronia. Gorn's final words? "I love you, Alus."



We now have the freedom to explore Castle Saronia and get all the gear, and also buy shit from all the shops. I recommend flipping Arc (or whoever your fighter is) over to Dark Knight now, it's going to help.

We acquire the ship "Nautilus", which is actually really fucking fast, and fast enough to get through that barrier. With out next objective in front of us, it's time to head on out again.

Next Time: The Dalg Continent!

EDIT: Bonus content! (We haven't had new music in a while, sorry)

Saronia theme:

(Changes back to Return of the Warrior when you've beaten Garuda)

Also, a bit of trivia: The engineers mention that the Nautilus, despite being excavated from Ancient Ruins, was originally designed by a genius engineer of Saronia who was on an airship when the world was covered in darkness. This means two things: One: Cid made the Nautilus. Two: Cid is an Ancient. He too must beware of white haired men with overcompensating melee weapons.

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

Mognet time!

Takka finally sends us the final letter of his chain, which tells us about the legendary smith. We find her in Northwest Saronia.

The smith agrees, and fixes it right up for us.

We pay with a sidequest. Orichalcum is believed to have been a legendary metal in use in the city of Atlantis, but that's just the real world legend-in truth, in our world, orichalcum is just an alloy of copper and zinc. But this is a magical fantasy land and fuck your reality. We will find the Orichalcum in the culmination of Cid's letter chain.

That's a little down the line, though. Once we complete Cid's letter chain, not only will we have a sweet weapon, we'll also open up the chance to get Job Mastery Items, some of which are very sweet-like the Devout's, which casts Curaga, letting us use a free Curaga every turn. How awesome is that?

Edit:

Who guessed this, show of hands?

This concludes our brief Mognet sidequesting.

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

At this moment, there's only one place we can go to on the Dalg Continent: Doga's Manor, which is pretty fuckin' sweet all told. Let's see if we can't find Doga, shall we?

Doga initially orders his Moogles to capture us, which makes sense, we did just sort of invite ourselves in. But, when he gets a good look at us, he realizes who we are and invites us in deeper. He also tells us about Xande, a former apprentice of the Great Magus Noah-like Doga was. When Noah died, he gave Doga supreme magic power, gave Unei (another apprentice) power over the Dream Realm, and Xande was given...mortality.

Xande stopped the flow of time to prevent his own death, but with us having restored the Water Crystal, the flow of time has returned. Xande is now rocking up to stop time again. What a dick.

Mortality, by the way, may sound like a silly gift, since Doga and Unei are both immortal. However, the immortality in question is the kind that DOESN'T come with eternal youth, meaning that Doga and Unei are both old, arthritis stricken fucks. Add the usual problems of immortality, and it's small wonder that Doga and Unei are both of the opinion "Who Wants to Live Forever?"

Also, Doga tells us that he made the crystal Goldor destroyed, and it was only good for making gold. Kind of hilarious. He only tells you this if you chat him up.

We can pick up level 6 magic, both white and black, here, as well as Curaga and Raise if you didn't get them back at Saronia.

Don't worry about adjusting your party. There's no boss in the Cave, it's just a run to the end. So just put everyone in the back and run from every encounter.

Doga will drop some heavy magic. He knows Flare.

At the end of the circle, Doga casts a spell that allows our Nautilus to go underwater. It's what we need to progress, thankfully.

This game is so much better at telling us where to go.

We need the Lute to wake Unei up, so we can acquire the airship the Invincible. He teleports us out, being possibly the shortest time we've spent with backup.

Next Time: The Temple of Time!

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

Welcome to the Temple of Time. Like the Cave of the Circle, there's no boss. Unlike the Cave, there's a lot of loot and we can actually fight the enemies. It's probably worth it to grind a bit inside the dungeon.

The monsters are also pretty rough. There's Behemoths in there, which are bosses without being bosses-brutally difficult, no full heal after killing them. The doors are also locked.

In the waterfall room, there's a secret room accessible by passing behind the waterfall. Behind it is...

A Blood Lance (the spear version of the Blood Sword), a Lamia Harp, and our first Protect Ring. The Protect Ring raises all stats by 2, raises resistance to just about every element, and has a pretty hefty defense. Useful for your healer. We can get them as rare drops from a King Behemoth, but that's a ways off.

And thus marks the second time a Lute has been helpful to our quests throughout these games.

What a fantastic melody.

We must take the Lute to a little cave Southwest of Saronia, and play the Lute to awaken Unei, the lady sleeping in front of Luneth right now.

Unei is...ridiculous. She's actually rather physically fit, able to run at the same speed as we are and can even jump the two feet onto her bed, something we can't. She also lays down some smacktalk on Luneth for the brief moment he doubts her physical ability. In a fight, she will either Haste the party or drop MOTHERFUCKING HOLY on whatever enemy looks at her funny. Quite simply, she's a beast and possibly better at our job then we are.

Well, she would be if my party wasn't packing some insane gear and high job levels.

With Unei with us, we can now explore the Ancient Ruins more fully and find the airship Invincible, the only airship capable of going over mountains-and even then, only some of them. No skipping to the final dungeon, boys.

Next Time: The Ancient Ruins and why we don't actually need Dark Swords.

EDIT: Music!

Underwater Temple (The Temple of Time theme)

Doga and Unei (Plays in Unei's cave)

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

This is why we need Unei, because NPCs aren't smart enough to excavate the Adamantite and sell it for massive profits.

While I seriously doubt we need fucking anti-matter to handle this...Unei knows best.

With them destroyed, we can access the shops. We already have the weapons that are for sale, making it only useful if you want to duel-wield or you want a stock of Medusa Arrows. There's also an inn, making the Ruins great for grinding.

This dungeon has a bunch of enemies that divide, but they're all weak to Dark Swords. We do not HAVE Dark Swords and I must have checked every fucking weapon store up until now knowing that they were fucking coming, but I can't find them anywhere. That's fine, though. The whole "3 enemies" limitations make this fights piss easy in the end, so don't even worry about it. They give out plenty of gil, but crap EXP, probably because someone got the bright idea to exploit it. Fuck you, random guy.

Anyway, the floor right after the inn splits off and has a lot of treasures in side rooms, while the rest of the dungeon is a straight shot. Let's get our Invincible, shall we?

Once we're on the Invincible, Unei gives us the tour. It's fully stocked, with an inn, shops, and even an appearance by the item storage of Fat Chocobo, not that you will ever fucking use him. Unei then departs to go help out Doga, leaving us with a massive ship that never lands. Yeah, the Invincible never lands, we just jump out like we're X-COM dropping from the Skyranger. Also, the Invincible can fly over small mountains, allowing us to access the last few dungeons.

The Invincible is a gigantic, slow moving beast. We have to hit Space to actually go over the mountains, but at least we can go over certain places.

Before we go to the next cave, we need to go to Falgaabard, a secret town we haven't been able to get to because of mountains. It's southwest of Saronia.

Here, we can actually get the Dark Blades we need.

Next Time: The Cave of Shadows and the Fang of Earth!

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

We're going to hit up another sidequest before we handle the Cave of Shadows, because Odin is technically lower level then the boss of the Shadow Cave, and I need to get a few levels anyway.

The Saronia Catacombs can theoretically be reached right after Doga gives the Nautilus the power to go underwater. Realistically, it's best to approach it after getting the Invincible, because you should be at a level where you can handle the challenges it presents.

Grab your Nautilus and sink before the waves southeast of Saronia. It's right there.

The first couple of floors are straight shots, but there's some good loot to be found on the third floor. This Aegis shield is one of the nicer pieces. The fourth floor is also packing 4 each of Phoenix Downs and Elixirs...

...and are guarded by our first honest to the Light chest monsters we've fought in ages. I have hit every single treasure chest and this is the first since Castle Sasune. 30 FUCKING LEVELS AGO.

These guys aren't hard, you'll barely notice them. There's a palette swapped degraded version of Kraken you'll fight about 60 million times, my Thief can one shot him.

Odin is polite enough to wait for us to talk to him first. How sweet of the guy.

Odin himself is just a bit meat slab with 31,000 HP, physical attacks, and Zantetsuken which does NOT instant kill the party but does hurt like a bitch. As always, he goes twice in a round. He has no weaknesses or resistances so just smash him with whatever you got. Your White Mage should have some buff spells by this point as well, to make the fight easier.

Oh, and do what I'm doing in the picture above to get the awesome Gungnir spear. It's one of the best spears in the game and definitely worth the effort. You can only get it if your thief is job level 70 or higher, though. Luneth is. He's maxed out.

Once he's dead, he will award himself to the party in the form of the spell Catastro. If used by a Summoner, he will attempt to kill every enemy on screen, while Evoker versions just to heavy damage or cast a buff, which is the one time the non-Summoner version is much better. Still, good to see our origins for summoning.

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

The Cave of Shadows is happy to open with some bones strewn about as if to say "this place is super dangerous", but seeing as it's a character select gimmick dungeon where you need Dark Knights, and actually not even that, it just doesn't have the punch when you know none of the trash is really going to hurt that much.

If you're thicker then a gravel milkshake, the Dark Knight here hands you a dark blade and the game basically tells you "USE A DARK KNIGHT YOU FUCKING CLOD". What a coincidence, Arc already is one.

Let's just go over the mechanics, though, and understand why in the end we actually don't need Dark Knights if we're built properly. Enemies only divide if they survive a basic, physical attack from a non-Dark Blade source. Luneth does use basic attacks but deals 6k damage with every round of dagger murdering, while Ingus (White Mage) and Refia (Geomancers) use magic items and pseudo-magic Terrain respectively. Arc uses Dark Blades because his Knight setup just wouldn't work.

I just know I'm going to get humiliated for saying this, but I guess I've broken this game so hard I can just ignore the mechanics.

Hope you've been keeping up on your secret passage finding, as the whole damn dungeon is littered with them. You will be able to easily spot the holes in the wall at least, but plenty of passages lead to dead ends or just circle around.

One dead end room has a chest in it (for a Tranquilizer), but the main path has all the goodies so if you've found a chest, you're on the right path. We acquire these gloves, the Genji Helm and the Genji shield in this dungeon, as well as a stronger Dark Blade. Genji gear is basically shorthand for "approaching End-Game", so I hope you're ready.

The spine pictured here is the final room before the boss. The Genji helm waits at the end of the dungeon, and so does the Hecatoncheir. Well, actually, he's in the next room, but you get the idea.

Now THIS is a proper lead-up to a boss arena.

Our boss fight for the Cave is surprisingly restrained, only attacking when we have our grubby mitts on the Fang.

The Heca fight is actually very similar to the Odin fight, so if you got one, you can probably do the other. Heca (I refuse to type out that long and un-intuitive name every time) mostly uses physical attacks twice a round until he's low on health, where he mixes in a party-hitting Quake, at which point you should just finish him off and fuck the healing. If you're quick, he won't even get a Quake off.

In the end, he's pretty much just Odin. Lots of health, hits hard, no tricks or traps.

Once he's dead, Refia grabs the Earth Fang, and declares that we should return to Doga's Manor. Next Time: Return to Doga's Manor!

 

[AngeloTheWizard]

If I seem a bit behind in my MogNeting, it's because I didn't realize something. Takka has a FIFTH letter and I hadn't seen it yet. It's a letter about Orichalcum, and once received, Cid finally sends his final letter, the cunt. The wiki is also colossally wrong, and says we can only get the fifth letter after reaching Eureka, and that's a gigantic lie as shown by the fact that I have it.

We need to return to Cid's place, as there's something in the basement.

This, to be exact. An "Aeon". It's got 10,000 health and by now, if you can't do that in one turn, you disgust me.

The boss drops an unknown metal, which is identified by Cid.

Oh hey, wasn't someone looking for that?

Now comes the part where we actually need to open up Eureka, the secret bonus dungeon hidden in the Crystal Tower. The Ultimate Blacksmith only surfaces in Falgabard after we do so. Yes, not in Saronia where she was before, but in the secret village.

But, we're getting closer to ending this particular series of sidequests.

EDIT: Covert Village Falgabard theme!