It's like chocolate in my peanut butter. Let's Play Final Fantasy V: The Ancient Cave

Hello everyone, and welcome to the best romhack you've never played: Final Fantasy V: The Ancient Cave.

What, you might ask, is Final Fantasy V: The Ancient Cave? "I know about Final Fantasy V, we had like 40 people playing that game last year. And we have some special Fun Club. I ran it on ZSNES .400 back with Windows 95, right in the folder where I had Nesticle and my Napster files!" Yeah, we all know about FFV.

You probably have also heard of The Ancient Cave, the randomly-generated, 99-floor almost-a-roguelike bonus dungeon featured in Lufia 2. The one where you start with no equipment, experience, or skills? Yeah, you remember that. You might have even seen the one in (pour one out with me now) Turnip's Lufia: The Legend Returns LP.

Final Fantasy V: The Ancient Cave is just that: the Ancient Cave from Lufia 2, copied and pasted right into Final Fantasy V. Now, it's not quite as random because the maps are all lifted from various areas in the game. But everything else about the hack is randomized. And since FFV offers much more variety to players with its wide array of jobs and skills, in my most humble opinion this hack kicks the shit out of any Lufia game.

Let's see what this game is all about.



The patch comes with four identical save files. Loading one up, we find...



ourselves in a desolate valley, entirely different from the aforementioned promised cave! What gives! You stupid little desert, let's rock! Put your dukes up!



FIGHT IT OU



Buh?

Instead of a fight, we end up in this funky little tavern where a kindly frog couple and their three beloved children eke out their meager living, here in this godforsaken valley hundreds of miles up in the mountains. But they're well-stocked!



With this jar of EXP-removing elixir! We decline to take a swig.



And this barrel is chock full of Drought of Remove AP! We humbly decline a taste.



And this other jar that is filled with application forms for getting a name change. In a fit of impulsive pizzazz, our svelte little hero changes his name to Zazaza. Sung to the tune of the classic Trio hit from 1982.



Mama Frog kindly offers to reset our levels to 1. We can't get into the cave otherwise!

We also have options for running away:



"Make it so that you can always run away?"



"Make it so that you sometimes can't run away?"

The jar on the left side of the door makes the "Fight" sound effect and the "Escape" sound effect. The former means you can run 0 times and the latter gives you 255. I was able to run from a fight so I must've put it on 255. If you don't examine this jar (I never did before this LP) I assume you can run as much as you want.

Edit: I was wrong as hell about this jar! It sets your run counter for Chicken Knife and Brave Blade purposes. That makes so mich more sense than what I was thinking!

We can also alter the dungeon:



"Make it so that the dungeon is only the odd floors between 1 and 99?"



"Return the dungeon to its original form?"



"Reset all flags?"

Finally, there is this guy, who will fix your game for you when you emerge from the dungeon. If he doesn't, the story will not proceed as normal as no events will take place.



Resetting our levels and heading down the stairs hidden behind the counter, we find ourselves at the entrance to the Ancient Cave. Who knows what wonders await us inside!

As I mentioned before, the maps in FFV:AC are pulled randomly from a bank of various maps from throughout in the game.

What do we get for our first floor?



Why, it's the shipwreck level!



Since this is the first floor, we encounter groups of the weakest enemies in the game. Our team of level 1 Freelancers make sort work of them, despite only having a single broadsword and two daggers between the four of them.

Notice the ten-minute timer? That's there to keep us from grinding on any one floor for too long. We don't have to worry about it too much on these early floors, but it might cause us some stress later on.

Part of the strategy of getting through the Ancient Cave - or any roguelike, for that matter - is knowing how long you should spend on each floor. Since we walked into the dungeon with a mere ten potions, five ethers, and three phoenix downs, we don't have much time to linger around fighting bees and squirrels. We're going to have to look for a more steady form of healing.

Unfortunately for us, the shipwreck map only has one treasure chest.



But this time we got a Moonring Blade! With an attack power of 32 and the ability to hit from the back row for max damage, this is a huge boon to our weak little team of jobless losers! You can bet your bottom dollar I forgot about that back row thing too, and left everyone up front for this update. Whoops!

Every single item has a chance to spawn in a chest or as a random drop throughout the dungeon. Finding out-of-depth weapons and skills isn't uncommon at all. In fact, you will come to see over repeated attempts at the Ancient Cave how your strategy depends on which boons the game decides to grant you, and how you utilize them. But I'm getting ahead of myself.



Floor 2 is much more generous with the treasure, and nabs us our first job! Here, we're getting White Mage.



The chest on the other side gives us Summoner! Now all we need are some skills to go with those jobs...



In a fit of good manners, Zazaza decides to go ahead and close the chests he so hastily opened (and nudges back the clock after synchronizing it to his expensive wristwatch). This chest has an iron helmet in it, while the other two had a gold armor and mythril sword. Lenna and Faris are now fully equipped with a piece of armor in every slot and a good weapon in their hand, and we're fighting groups of stray cats. We take a moment to gain some quick levels but no AP.

So I thought I could get away with putting the screenshots out of order. So what?

More powerful than when they came, Team Zazaza heads to the next floor...



And wins an Elixir in a random drop from some hapless enemy on the way!



The third floor is this bridge from the Hiryuu valley. There are no treasure chests, but we do find a rod stuck between this poor Hiryuu's ribs. We crack open the skull to find an ice-cold hero drink, and that looks like all we'll get from this floor...



Except a couple of enemies drop another elixir and an Icebrand in our hands! Things are looking up for Zazaza.

Floor 4 is this spacecave from what I believe is the final dungeon.




Sweet! We got Dancer and Berserker! We also got our first spell, Libra. The other chests contained a leather armor and a gold needle. That might not sound like much, but you have to remember that we can't just buy 99 of every healing item like we could in the main game. This might end up to be the only gold needle we find, and it might make the difference between another floor survived and a full-party wipe.

I didn't grab a screenshot, but we managed to win a Coral Ring from one of the enemies. That will definitely come in handy. Floor 4 is full of enemies from the sunken ship.



Stepping on the teleporter, we move onto...



Score! Whatcha got whatcha got



Black Mage!



Aaand Cure!

This was a good floor for us. We also found a winged helmet and a mage masher.




This brings us to the end of our first update. We have a party of level six freelancers with a handful of jobs, skills, and good equipment.

Now, since the goal of this LP is to get to the bottom of the Ancient Cave in one piece, what do you say, Talking Time? What is the safest path for these guys to take? Let me hear your most well-informed advice, and we'll see you next time.

You'll definitely need White Magic at some point; your items are going to run out eventually and being able to cast Life or Esuna will save you when you're really in a pinch. Switch Krile (Cara?) to the job and keep her in it until she masters it, as she gets a cute lil' cat hood and the others don't.

Other than that, there's not really much you can use right now. Dancer might not be a bad option since you have knives you can equip, you can bust out some serious damage with Swords Dance, and (with a little bit of luck) you can also restore your HP and MP with Jitterbug Duet and Mysterious Waltz as well. You don't have any spells to justify Black Mage or Summoner yet though, and Berserker really needs a decent amount of support (read: healing) from the rest of the team to really shine.

So, to sum up: a team of Freelancers/Dancers and White Mages seems like the optimal choice to me right now, at least until you get a few more jobs under your belt. You're a bit pressed for offensive options, but that might change if/once you get a decent axe to use for a Berserker or a few more spells for the other classes.

Loving this LP so far. This ROM hack is absolutely brilliant, and I'd love to see it get more exposure.

Is there an English patch for this in the works? That'd be swell. I don't know FFV quite well enough to decipher all the moonspeak for everything.

Can you ever save the game when you're playing this? I know that goes against the spirit of a Roguelike, but 99 floors x 10 minutes is one hell of a long game to play in one sitting. Also, is there any reason you didn't assign people jobs as they started coming in? Might as well earn a few levels on some of the more important jobs right away, no?

This is madness. I can't wait to see how your shit gets wrecked eventually

So what do the shops at the beginning do? Do you get to carry over anything for later runs?

If there ever is an English patch I might have to try this. I think I would have fun with FFV with limitations.

EDIT: Also curious if there are town floors, or at least inns.

White Mage and cure was a stroke of luck! I concur, make Krile a sassy cat. And say get Butts Zazaza into that Flaminco getup post haste! And a Mage Masher too why not.

The goal is to get to the bottom of the cave? I thought it was to make your life miserable?

Anyway, I suck at rogue-likes so best to ignore my opinions on anything.

I would like to see an English patch of this patch though.

I'll avoid giving actual advice for now, since I've actually played this, but did you forget to grab the two free chests in the tavern?

And I'm pretty sure there are a couple items that can't be found in random chests. The Brave Blade/Chicken Knife and Ragnarok are in the game, but I've never seen them in random chests. You have to do things for them.

Also the other barrels/jars in the room do things too. The sound effect one on the left will set your number of retreats to 0 or 255, for obvious reasons. The color flashing one will alter your auto sort. I forget which is which, but one color will be normal, and one will ignore the first four rows of items when you sort things. It's useful if you want to have certain weapons/items at the top for quick access.

And could you talk to the upper right kid before the next run? I thought I knew what he did, but his options haven't worked how I expected while testing it, so I probably misinterpreted something. Specifically, I thought he switched the game to and from having a random chance to fail at retreating to having the standard retreat rates. No matter what I set it to, it seems like it fails randomly, even with the Thief's Flee ability. Also the Thief's Vigilance passive doesn't seem to work, possibly because of one of those options? I thought it was working during my first attempt, but I may be misremembering.

This is crazy. How did someone manage to hack a random dungeon generator into FF V?

Looking forward to seeing more.

This is pretty darn cool. I'm not very good at roguelikes at all, but I keep playing them anyway because I feel like eventually they'll click. I think I could probably hack it out a little better in one that plays like a Final Fantasy game.

That said, you definitely got the chocolate/peanut butter analogy right.

I tried over and over to get this patch to work with no luck until I realized I needed a HEADERLESS rom

now it works and I'm havin fun!!

Speaking of which, I tried to get this to work for a hell of a long time as per Pappy's instructions in his original post about it.

It wasn't until an hour or two later that I actually paid attention to the screenshot and realized it wasn't a patch for the GBA version at all. Damn you, Pappy!

OH MY GOOOOOOOOD

How did I not know that two of my favorite RPG experiences had been combined into one perfect patch? Oh my god. I feel the floor spinning away from beneath me. Oh whoa. Breathe, man, breathe. Pull yourself together.

I've been holding off playing this because I figured someone would translate it. But I guess not.

Find me a ROMhacker up to the job and I'll do it. There's not that much to translate anyway. Most of it could be more or less transplanted from FF5A's translation in terms of items and job names.

This is awesome and I would totally love if you could translate it Sky Render.

Thanks everyone for posting so far.

Since there are no save points throughout the Ancient Cave, we'll be relying on savestates. I did not assign any jobs as they were coming in as a way to get people involved in the discussion. So I had to go down a few floors and get some treasures to give the people something to work with.

Trust me on this one, doing several runs of the dungeon is certainly fun to do, but will not make for a good LP. I do realize we like to make life hard on our LPers, but this time I think it will be detrimental to the overall writeup. Please help me get to the bottom of the cave this run.

Krile = White Mage
Everyone else = Dancer

One person may change jobs to Berserker if weapon availability demands it.

And I shall join the chorus of people dreaming of a translation.

Oh. In that case, Make Lenna and Krile a Dancer and White Mage. Switch them once one learns Dance. Having two White Magic casters helps a lot, even if you only have one switch over to the ability to cast on the field every once in a while. Dancer is a decent, if somewhat unreliable way to restore MP, and you absolutely need some way to restore MP. If Dragoon turns up sometime before you get Dance, go for Dragon Sword instead.

Faris and Zazaza should stay Freelancers for now. You can't switch back to Freelancer until you find the class, and the damage you get from the Icebrand and Moonring Blade at this point will help a lot more than getting some AP for any of those other classes.

Spoony, since you've played before, please spoiler your advice. Sorry, but you just gave away the next update.

Sorry!

Thank you Spoony!

Could everyone else that has already played this hack also spoiler their advice? Thanks in advance.

I think I won the early levels of the cave.



That's Esuna, for those not versed in Japanese. (Or S-Nul, if anyone could ever translate it correctly; even I never did back in the day, so some slack is in order.) Found it on level 12 or so. On the way I also managed to nab Cure, Cura, two Death Scythes, some very nifty mid-game armor, and a whole lot of Holy Water for some reason. Randomizer really loves giving me that stuff.

oh my god

my life is over now that I know this exists

My advice before reading the spoiler:
A mage and her dance crew is the way to go, as !Dance is your primary means of doing basically anything at this point and that needs to be learned asap. (on top of that, when !Flirt works, it really works)
Once you get a hammer/axe or enough good knives to feel comfortable sticking one on a Berserker, make somebody Berserker right quick. The ability to equip a Berserkers strength stat may be 500 AP away, but Berserk is only 100. You're bound to get Knight or Ninja sooner or later, and pairing innate Two-handed or Two-weapon with Berserk will give you a great wrecking ball. Remember folks, this is FFV. Don't accept 150% damage when you can double 150% damage.

Right now the two most troubling things are that you can't equip good gear and gain AP at the same time, and that you're gaining levels without any way to top off your hp/mp.

My thoughts after reading the spoiler:
I hope that it's a spoiler because you gain a spoilery thing, rather than being denied a spoilery thing.

OK, nobody's asked the Most Important Question yet (except that one person who phrased it differently). Is this PROPERLY in the spirit of Lufia 2's Ancient Cave, in that most stuff only lasts you the single run, but rare special chests have permanent items you can keep from attempt to attempt? Because that would just be really amazing.

I doubt it has anything resembling the Iris treasures but that would be pretty neat.

Unfortunately, the game does not have any special unique treasures that you can take with you in and out of the dungeon.

I can't wait to do the strategy discussion post!

Mwahahahaha

Funny thing is, I didn't realize it was the SNES version either until after I tried patching it myself. The stupid small screenshot size threw me way off - the only time I've seen that small a resolution was with the GBA LPs like Fire Emblem and Summon Night: Swordcraft Story.

EDIT:
I'm surprised the hacker didn't do this with the Sealed Weapons - they're important enough and cover enough classes that they'd make an excellent stand-in for the blue chests.