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

YES! We barely squeeked by with our final casting of Titan after Lena managed to dodge two Tail attacks in a row with her Elf Cape! I tried to get a picture of the action but failed, and here is proof.



After using one of my few Phoenix Downs, Krile does a little overtime to get everybody back up on their feet.



After running from another dino gang and picking up Reflect and Flash, we find a Genji Shield! We make it off the floor without having to deal with any of the nastier bosses here, where I would have definitely gotten wiped out.



It's on the next floor that I suddenly remember I can kill enemies with items! This particular group drops a big fat gob of AP, but I use up half of my Gold Needles.



FROG KRILE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT FROGGINESS



FROG KRILE STEALS YOUR MP



The difficulty hit a spike for this party at the dino floor, but help has arrived. Here is the mainstay summon of the latter half of the dungeon, Syldra. Now if only I could find the other necessary ingredient to make this work.



I find Carbuncle on floor 47 and call it a night on floor 48. I'd really like to say goodbye to Monk for now, but I'm afraid it's not quite time for that.

Floor 29. I have Lance on 3 of 4 people (not enough spears to do all at once). I do not have Monk. Which jobs should I be aiming to master?

Options: Knight, Thief, Dragoon, Ninja, Berserker, Ranger, White Mage, Black Mage, Time Mage, Summoner, Blue Mage, Red Mage, Bard, Dancer

Bartz has been concentrating on magic, with black and white at 5 and summoner at 2. Nobody else has magic.

Knight is a VERY solid job for a variety of reasons.

What we're going to see as we get into the latter half of the dungeon is that it doesn't matter so much which treasures and skills we pick up - the luck-of-the-draw stuff is all frontloaded - but rather what jobs we choose to master as we head towards the bottom floors. You have a lot of options here and it really depends on what you want to end up like.

I would say if you have the proper elemental equipment to beef up Titan or Syldra, you're going to want to have a Summoner with Lance for mob control at all times.

Your magicians are going to want to master Red Mage eventually so they can dual cast on the lower floors. I would say prioritize white magic over black because white has Holy and healing, but then again black magic has the MP bonus abilities, so it's kind of a wash.

For your melee characters, you're going to eventually want to master Ranger, Thief, and Ninja.

You're going to want X-fight from the Ranger eventually, and their Animals ability is also decent.

Thief is a good class to master for the speed bonus they'll give you later, and you might find them a little lacking in the offense department to contribute to fights on the lower floor. Consider Mastering it with one of your melee characters.

Ninja would be second best to start working on for one of your fighters after Ranger.

Knight is another great option that really helps a team move forward due to their durability and cover ability, but their viability would also depend on what your best sword is. In my practice run, I had a knight dualhanding a Defender on floor 5. If you only have a Mythril Sword, then you might want to reconsider.

One of the most impressive aspects of this hack is how the game throws you for loops as you progress through the dungeon. What works on floors 1-20 won't work for 20-40 and the same all the way down. Up until now, we've been able to get pretty far on lucky treasure drops and cowardice, but this is the update where we see Zazaza's bad decisions start to catch up with him. I would say that this is where no one treasure chest will change your game, but



We find an Air Knife on Floor 51.



Our offenses have been outpaced by the enemies for quite a while now, especially since we're still draggin around a White Mage, but Lena is able to make up for that with Syldra + Air Knife.

Unfortunately for us, the coming floors are an MP desert. A few of the enemies are undead and many of them have no MP whatsoever.

Using summon magic for crowd control, Lena quickly runs out of MP and we are forced to rely on mediocre Monk damage to see us through. If we keep pressing further down the dungeon, we will eventually run into leechable enemies again, but we will miss out on EXP and AP in the meantime, which we can't afford to do.




We pick up Sasuke's Katana and win a Dancing Dagger, but who knows if we will survive long enough to ever use these?



Floor 55, boss floor time. I think it's Floor 55.



The normal enemies here seem benign, but then pull the ground out from under you. Underestimating a group of four of them could leave us on the ground if you don't have the proper defenses prepared.



Knowing full well he can't even hold a candle to the boss (I don't think I have ever beat him in vanilla FFV, either), Zazaza hightails it to the next floor.



In a stroke of amazingly good luck, we manage to find Holy on flor 56. Now Krile can get in on the action and deal about 2500 damage to any one enemy.





On the later floors, AP gains really start to ramp up.



I mean, really. The question is, will it be enough to cover the AP we missed by rushing through the first 20 floors?



We manage to find a Staff of Light.





On Floor 58, we find an Aevis Killer and a Holy Lance. I would definitely use these if I wasn't in such a hurry to finish up Monk!

These guys could really mop the floor with us.



We can take some of them, but for most of the dragon fights around floor 60, we have to run.



We find Phoenix and White Wind on Floor 60 itself.



And we finally run into some enemies we can steal MP from!



Of course we take the time to stock up.





We find Bahamut and a Ribbon, but nothing else noteworthy.



On floor 63, Krile finally masters White Mage! Since Red Mage was requested earlier in the thread, that's where she goes.



On Floor 65, we start to run into enemies from the Fork Tower. If we get greedy and try to Lance these guys, we get to suck down a heaping helping of Meteo!

I suppose we could use Osmose to stock up instead, but unfortunately for Zazaza I didn't think of that until right now!



So Midget Lena cleans up with Syldra instead.



Fairy Bow? What the hell is this? It's probably some stupid mid-level bow that charms enemies with 43 attack that you find somewhere in world 2. Onto the pile with you!



How weak our team is is really starting to sink in. Lena and Krile are out of MP so Zazaza's Kaiser Knuckle-powered fists are our only notable offense to speak of, and we're completely out of Lance options.



To top it all off our AP goal is so, so close! We're almost done with Monk and Summoner, but we just don't have the firepower to push us over the edge! The enemies are mopping the floor with us, our magic users are too tired, and our fighters are too weak! How are we going to get out of this?

I'm not convinced it's worth mastering Monk. Hop in there, get Counter, hop out. Same for Samurai (except Blade Grasp instead of Counter).

It's worth it. Remember, endgame FF5 your best bet is Freelancer. Why would the Ancient Cave be any different?

Also, Fairy Bow is hardly a bad find. It's... well, not from the SNES version. We'll leave it at that.

Yes, but endgame HP is not as important as endgame muscle.

It's not particularly hard to get both.

Yeah, all you have to do is master Monk!

Oh, I forgot to ask this earlier.

Are you getting the four hidden chests in this room? Above and below the spot you're standing on each side. It took me a few runs before I noticed them.

I freaking hate you, and love you, all at the same time.

Nope! Next time.

Oh god, why is it almost 4 am. I'll catch up on the posts at some point, but I have to both hate you and love you for introducing me to this (also thanks to sky? for the partial translation and anyone else involved). This is amaaazing (even if the game decided it should give me both black and white magic and the time mage job).

Edit: Ok, I love you again game, white mage job + heal staff, sure!

Good luck Kjara, the heal staff is definitely special. I hope you love FFV as much as FFV loves you.

I wonder how many people have joined/delurked because of this LP and the translation effort.

I keep burning out around floor 30. I don't die but the difficulty ramp up ruins the fun. Anybody know a code to freeze the timer or something? I'm not going to get any further without removing that stress element. (Though this romhack has inspired me to restart Azure Dreams.)

I actually joined because of it. I've never heard of here until someone brought this hack up on RHDN.

Also, I've been messing around for a while, and I figured out something interesting about the way the treasure in the game works.

The RNG for the treasure is time based. The group of treasure that you can get from a treasure chest changes with time. If you, for example, save state before a chest, then keep loading and open it a few times, you'll notice you get roughly the same stuff. But if you load your state, and then wait a few seconds and save again, you'll get a completely different set of stuff.

~DS

If I recall the Object de Art (Statues you killed with Gold Needles) are level 45 so a blue mage can mop the floor with them. (Thusly scuffing up the floor due to their stone bodies).

Of course I do. Though this might derail my 4th 4jf run this year. It was getting boring throwing gil at everything anyhow.

Well, the lets all play of ffv got me to delurk last year, so we can at least attribute it to ffv.

We’ve pushed ourselves into a corner by neglecting early-game AP gains and now we’re on a mad dash to play catch-up on the lower floors of the dungeon. Our current characters are too weak to come out on top in head-to-head fights against their opponents, and our Summoner is all out of juice. None of the enemies are Lance-able. If we want to get through this, we’re going to have to change the game.

It’s too early to give up though. Not everyone is out of MP, so Zazaza slips on his white robes and casts Curaga on the party.



After that, it’s time to bring out the most powerful party I can, based on my current weapons. I have a few Sasuke’s Katanas and a handful of Twin Lancers, so Ninjas are our best bet in damage. Zazaza dons the armor of the Knight to add that extra bit of durability. Faris takes a detour into Chemist because we don’t have enough weapons to go around, and we need someone who can Mix.



Not all the enemies are completely lacking in MP, it seems, so it’s time to stock up and top off those last few classes. I change Lena back into a Summoner so she can take advantage of the more powerful Lance, and when she is ready to unleash Syldra again I make Zazaza and Faris back into Monks so she can get them the AP they need.



After another floor, Zazaza has mastered Monk and will put it behind him forever. He then picks up the mantle of the Ninja once more.



The enemies around Floor 70 are all undead from the Great Sea Trench. If only there was something that could wipe out huge groups of the undead in no time at all, and for free! If only.



Lena and Faris are done with Summoner and Monk, so it’s time for them to switch to jobs that will take us into the endgame. I make Faris a Ninja to take advantage of my surplus of powerful weaponry. After a moment of indecision, I decide to make Lena a Chemist.



On the very next floor, we find the meat and potatoes of the Magic Knight class: Flare. This will see lots of use after we’re done with Ninjas.





We finally pass the endless waves of undead Unknowns on Floor 74, where we find an Enhancer sword for our future Magic Knight. With AP gains like this, we will be moving through the classes in no time!




There are few treasures at this level that will make a difference in our endgame, but here are two of them, side-by-side: a Bone Mail and Haste Shoes!



We even pick up the other useful Blue Magic spell, Mighty Guard!



In our mad rush for AP, we end up with only a minute left to finish Floor 76.



In a panic, I summon Bahamut in a desperate play to finish this fight and get off the floor…



YES! What you are seeing here is Zazaza throwing himself down the stairs with a mere four seconds left on the clock. With this kind of luck, nothing can stop us now!!



Except Floor 77 is a boss floor.

After two crappy treasures hidden in the dragon skeleton, I remember someone suggesting a full team of Bards earlier in the thread, and right now seems like a pretty good idea to do that. Since I only have 3 harps, I leave Lena as a Chemist.



Good call! The first fight we have is against the undead boss from the Great Sea Trench! Let ‘em have it, Krile!





HELL YEAH

Seeing’s how we’re completely out of MP, we leave our party the way they are in anticipation of more terror triplets. This floor will be a cakewalk anyway.



Time to raise your voice and see how many seconds you can hold the word, "Fuck."

I take it you can't run from Tonberries in this game?

This, right here? This is my problem with roguelikes. Doin' fine...doin' fine...OH NOES!

I don't know if they are all flagged that way or not, but I'm pretty sure I set the difficulty to "Make it so you sometimes can't run away" when I first visited the bar on accident.

Actually I made a number of mistakes on purpose this run to help everyone learn the game　(then a patch came out and from the looks of the thread in Gaming, everyone figured out all my tricks on their own). Look forward to the next run, and in the meantime, feel free to discuss what should have happened to make this run turn out better!

Slammed up against a tonberry in the end, huh?

Oh well. Knife try anyway.

(but in all seriousness, I need to add requiem to my toolbox...)

Oh no! Woulda been pretty amazing if you'd made it on the first run. I guess that's just how these things go though.

Did Lenna not have Mix? Seems like you could've found an easy way out via chemistry.

Tonberries should never kill anyone with access to instant death in FF5. Unlike later entries, they are not immune to the wiles of Odin or a good Death Potion.

I want to say the boss floor Tonberry is actually a new monster. I tried using Odin several times on it, and he always went for Gungnir. The ones I ran into before that always go down no problem.

And the run settings seem bugged as hell. No matter what I put it on, or even if I don't talk to the guy at all, it seems like run attempts will still randomly fail.