HSUP B TCELES - Let's Play FF1! Again!

♪♪ Mt. Gulg ♪♪

Far to the west of Melmond is the Giant's Cave. Sadda lives on the otherside, but some big stone asshole stands in the way and won't let us through. GRR. We're two for two as far as dungeons go this update!


The only other location we can get to on this continent is the Cavern of Earth, the second most obnoxious dungeon in the game. Most of it isn't that bad; it's B3 that really grinds my gears. You have to pass through B3 three times during a playthrough, and that one floor is about as long as the entirety of the Marsh Cave. In an NES playthrough the name of the game is to get in, get out, no sightseeing.

DoS, however, doesn't let you lose a run to RNG misfortune. Since I'm not in danger of botching anything, I'll take some time to show off more of the dungeon than I'd usually visit. Right away on the first floor you have a lot to choose from. This was a dungeon you were meant to mull over, making multiple trips in and out. Getting more efficient with your path and gaining experience the whole way.

The Marsh Cave tries to do that too, but neither dungeon is very good at it, and here's why: too many game overs. It's one thing to apply pressure to the player, test his resources, find out what he's made of. It's another to stunlock his entire team in a surprise attack full of undead. Plus, the walk back to town is extremely long, and Melmond in particular sucks as a home base: no church or item shop. If someone gets killed or petrified and you don't have anything to fix it with, you have to go all the way back to Elfheim for a remedy. That's a long fucking hike, especially considering they don't let you get the Teleport or Exit spells yet.

The DoS version fixes some of this, but not all. The game has much friendlier dungeons later on; I have no idea why they front-loaded the difficulty so much.

RANT OVER, EARTH CAVE NOW.


Taking the left path from the exit brings you to the Hall of GIANTs, or I guess the Hall of Hill Gigases as it should be called now. This is a hallway where every single square is spiked with battles against green giant dudes, who are absolutely nontrivial opponents. Here we see one punching Zach in the face for quite a bit of damage, all things considered. Imagine what he could do to Ika.

There is no reason to farm this hallway, ever. It's just here to screw with your head.


Level-ups, you say? Why thank you kind sir I don't mind if I do.


Many of the treasure rooms in the Cavern of Earth are spiked with Earth Elementals. These guys are relatively tough and can hit pretty hard, plus have a lot of HP. If I'm just mashing my way through it takes two rounds to bring one down. You can avoid these guys simply by skipping the treasure in the dungeon, which you probably should since none of it is particularly good.


See? I got more gil from the monsters I killed on the way to the goddamned chest than I did from the goddamned chest.


The other paths contained an Antidote and some more gil. AWESOME YEAH GREAT THANKS.


The levels just keep on a-rollin' in. Ika decided to change his name to something a little edgier.


The exit to the first floor is directly to the right of the stairs, and you should go straight there because the treasures suck and so do Hill Gigases.

B2 is a maze of small, square rooms which, tile for tile, is identical to the NES version. Simply altering some of the obstacle graphics, though, is enough to make it seem a lot more confusing. Back in my RPGMakering days we called this the "two-tile effect". NES RPGs were essentially built with two tiles: a ground tile you could walk on and a wall tile you couldn't. It's easy to glance at a two-tile dungeon and immediately see where you can and can't walk; there's no real sense of place. In DoS, some of the walls are replaced with outcroppings of rock, tricking the player into thinking the floor is tougher to navigate when it really isn't.

Ika reaches Magic Level 5 once he catches up to the rest of the gang, the first major upgrade we've seen in a while.


The Coral Sword is the only even halfway-decent treasure in this dungeon, and as you can see, it's not even that big of an upgrade. I could see getting it if you're playing a party that really can make use of all four of these magic swords, but if you're playing the NES version I'd still skip it and just leave my fourth dude with a Silver Sword instead.


I admit though it does look pretty badass. I wonder if it impresses mermaids!

The rest of the treasure on this floor is shit. There's even a Leather Shield in here somewhere. That's just an insult.


Mo' levels mo' problems.


B3 is the troublesome level. Though our goal is mere tiles away, we have to circle all the way around to get there, fending off constant attacks from Piscodemons, Cockatrices and gobs upon gobs of undead. Lots of Fira and Thundara are recommended if you intend to fight your way through.


There's at least one useful treasure here: an item that heals Petrification. I, uh, should have stocked up on these back in Elfheim before coming here. But I didn't, because I'm stupid, and I only have like two of them. Things will get interesting if a bunch of Cockatrices decide to have their way with me.


lollertrices!

Down to my last Gold Needle. I decided not to abandon the run if somebody dropped, but if somebody is gonna drop it'd better not be Ika. The upcoming mini-boss is actually somewhat tough without magic.


I had to wait for this bat to get out of my way for what seemed like years. I grew a big old man beard and developed arthritis. I had to turn the LP over to my fucking grandkids.


This was very nearly a game over. If Ika hadn't gotten lucky and pulled Fira out when he did, this would have been a stunlock death for sure. Now imagine you're playing the NES version, and had to get all that treasure again. Why even bother, right?

Or you could just do what I'm doing and make sure to save the game after every treasure room. Then you'd only lose a minute or so of walking. Thanks for being considerate, DoS!


This room doesn't have any treasure in it, because it hates you.

I'm sick of this dungeon, let's go find the boss.

Apparently they can, ass-butt!

Not pictured: BlBelt scored a pretty outrageous critical hit, making Fira unnecessary. Which is probably for the best, because Ika only has three more doses of it and I still have to walk back out.


♪♪ Mt. Gulg ♪♪

Upon finding a priceless gem hidden in the vampire's room, the boys reach the end of the line. Obviously the vampire wasn't the cause of the earth's rot, since their crystal remains curiously unlit.

At this point I could either 1) go all the way back to Melmond and screenshot the NPC who tells you "the giant in the cave likes to eat rubies" or 2) assume you already know that because I've already LP'd this game twice.

I'm going with #2. Back to Casa de Giantsville.


On the way out I manage to somehow allow a pair of Werewolves to survive longer than one round, allowing them to show off their awesome regenerative abilities. Remember: all you have to do to take down werewolves is somehow manage to clear more than three damage per round.

I don't know whether or not monsters regenerate like this in the NES version, since there's really no way to test their HP totals. I guess I could go at them with a solo Wh.MAGE and see whether or not the fight ever ends.


Once safely outside the boys pitch a tent so Ika can get some MP back.


In the NES version the Giant (Titan) just takes your Star Ruby (RUBY) and evaporates. In DoS your little guy actually offers the glimmering jewel up, and then the Giant stomps off with a full belly.

It's a touching scene, is what it is.


The Great Axe offers a small boost to ATK at the expense of several points of ACC. Not a trade I'm willing to make.

Actually, if this constant nattering about ACC makes it sound like heavy weapons are always a bad idea, I should make it clear this is just my playstyle at work. Your ACC is really only super-important at 32-point intervals. If your new heavy weapon isn't so heavy that it will cause your guy to drop below one of those intervals (and therefore lose a hit in battle), by all means, go ahead and take the extra few points of ATK. This just means you have to do a little extra bookkeeping on your end, though, and make sure he doesn't level up to his next hit while you're still using the heavy weapon. I'm more of a fire-and-forget kinda guy; I don't like swapping weapons constantly just to eke out a few bare points of advantage. YMMV.

The Mythril Helm, on the other hand, is unequivocably better than Zach's old Great Helm, and is worth equipping. The treasure room in the Giant's Cave is notable for being absolutely pointless unless you have a Warrior in the group, although you do end up getting a decent amount of gil out of it.

♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

Out the back door of the Giant's Cave, we head south to the Sage's Cave, where Sadda lives. As you can see, dude sure loves his POT!!

See, it's funny because I used the term "pot" as a euphamism for marijuana, when really they are actual literal pots. It's also funny because one wouldn't expected a wisened old sage to have a substance abuse problem. It was a pun plus a total subversion of expectations.


The only bright spot in Sadda's sad existence is to give us the earth rod, the only use of which is to unlock the second half of the Cavern of Earth. When you simplify that equation, it's really just an excuse to make you traverse B3 of the dungeon two extra times.

That's right: Sadda is in league with the Cockatrices.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Ika really needs to hit the inn and the magic shop, so we'll make a pit stop in Melmond before tackling the Cavern of Earth again. Along the way: level whatever-this-is!


Melmond's inn is pretty shabby. The spider webs and the cracks in the building's foundation aren't the fault of any magic beast in any cave, just poor property management.


With Firaga, Ika is now fully equipped to handle tough undead. Which is lucky, because the next boss is... tough! And undead!

A few adventures later the boys arrive at B4, another maze-like floor with a couple treasure rooms. Mostly just gil, but there's also a Staff down here in case you needed one. You know, the weapon Ika started the game equipped with? They cost like 4 gil each in Cornelia? Because that's what you wanted, this deep in the Cavern of Earth.

"Shit guys... I thought we were goners. But now that we have that Staff, we're home free!"


Trolls are interesting because they're the first enemy sprite that was actually redrawn. The NES version of TROLL was green instead of red and faced the camera rather than the party. They still held their hands to their heads though.

Here we see BlBelt pick one apart with his bare hands, because he's BlBelt, and that's just how he rolls.


A for-real decent upgrade, for once. There really is a lot of Warrior-only equipment in this game, which makes sense as heavy armor is supposed to be one of their defining traits. This is almost unnoticable in the NES version since tons of broken shit make every other class's defining traits pointless, but in DoS it's kind of the only thing the class has going for it. Isn't it nice to have a version of FF1 where making a well-rounded team is an actual winning strategy? And people have the gall to hate on this game for being too easy. Shame on them.


I took a picture of this battle for no reason other than I thought it was a somewhat curious mix of bad guys... but I'm glad I did, because it provides context to the level-up I received immediately after! I love it when a plan comes together.


Finally, way down on B5, we arrive at the final room of the cave and approach the Crystal of Earth...

First thing's first: gotta get those Hastes up. Lich doesn't take a lot of damage from physical hits, so Ika will be my main damage dealer throughout the fight... but if I don't get Percy and BlBelt buffed I won't have anything to fall back on should Ika get planted. Remember: this team has no healing.


In the NES version Lich only has 400 HPs, so the combined efforts of Percy and BlBelt would have been about half the FIEND's life. He's been pumped up considerably in DoS, though.

The reason Ika focused his Hastes on my second- and third-slot warriors is that the first-slot guy has the greatest chance of getting Paralyzed by Lich's regular attack. Sure enough, Zach is put out of commission for most of the fight.


The star of the show is Ika, rockin' the ill beats of that fresh Firaga jam. Lich is undead, so fire hits his weak point pretty well. I think he's also flagged as a spellcaster, so the Rune Sword would have been a good choice if I cared enough to swap my gear around some (hint: I didn't).


Lich can't eat too many Firagas before evaporating into a fog of pixels. As you can see from my HP totals he didn't put up much of a fight... like Astos before him, he decided not to cast any spells at all. Well done, boys!

♪♪ Mt. Gulg ♪♪

The vaguely urine-colored Crystal of Earth shines again! The boys celebrate by opening their mouths victoriously.

Ika doesn't have a mouth so he opens... his heart.


Meanwhile, the curiously Lich-shaped statue barring the entrance to Earthgift Shrine disappears! Looks like there was a connection after all!


The boys warp out of the Cavern of Earth and save their game. Looks like their adventuring days are roughly one-fourth complete.

Next: Er... I'm not sure! There are a couple ways to play this, none of them ideal.

See, this game doesn't really have any postagme content, the way the other Final Fantasy Advance titles do. Instead, there are four pseudo-random dungeons which become available upon defeating the four elemental Fiends, of which Earthgift Shrine is the first. Each of these dungeons contains four tough bosses and a great deal of awesome treasure... brokenly awesome in some cases.

Anyway, here's the trouble: if I were to do these dungeons in the order they open up, even if I don't use any of the gear inside, I'll be so overleveled that the rest of the main game will be a snap. But if I hold off until the main game is done to show off the dungeons, the dungeons themselves will be a snap. (The stuff in the second half of the main game is pretty brokenly awesome as it is.) While there are some interesting ideas in place in some of these dungeons, there's really no way to make them challenging; they're just dungeon slog.

So I'll leave it up to you guys. I'm going to put together a post explaining the random aspects of the dungeons, so expect that within the next few days. In the meantime let's see if we can't come to a consensus on how I tackle these dungeons, and when.

Go for each bonus dungeon as soon as it's available and clear them completely! Clear out each of the bonus bosses in them too!
why yes I am trying to get you killed against Omega and Shinryu

When I played through the GBA version, I think I went through Earthgift Shrine right after clearing out Lich. Or maybe I delayed it to after beating Kary Marilith? I say go and get the Airship and Class Change first, then alternate between bonus dungeon and plot dungeon. I guess that's basically taking in the bonus dungeons in the order they appear, huh?

I would argue that you seem to be making the main game not much of a challenge anyway, so why not show off the optional dungeons as you go along? It would be more appropriate that way.

Man, I was able to beat those two easily. They won't even be speed-bumps to Mr. Brickerton.
Deathgaze, however, he reamed me.

Anyhow, since the rest of the game is pretty easy-breezy anyhow, might as well do the side-quests as they come up.

This plz.

What good are stupidly broken sidequest weapons if you don't use them to murder the final boss? I say take the challenges as they come, and then make Chaos your bitch. The real challenge/reason for this LP I would think are the new dungeons. The original game is just a framework that we've already been over a couple of times.

OK, this is bugging me. Shouldn't this title of this thread technically be TCELES B HSUP? Normally I wouldn't care, but for some reason this is bugging me. Or was this done on purpose to give a hint that the 4/1 content was all a giant RUSE?

Edit: had to fix the last word, that word works better in the thread.

They're supposed to, but by now I shouldn't have to explain why they don't. Yet another freaking glitch!

I'm pretty sure you could have just... pushed it out of your way. I mean, it was worth a try, right? Unless you had something better to do. Waiting, for example.

Just sayin'.

I love this LP. I'm currently stuck in the Earth Cavern on the iPhone version of the game. I ran into the Hall of Hill Gigas-es and I wanted to tear my hair out.

I do find it interesting that the Hill Gigas sprite looks a lot like Maduin from Final Fantasy VI.



"hey madonna how do you know about the size of an esper's wang til you find out for yourself lol"

I concur. I don't think you need to do the multiple runs to fully clear them if you don't want to, but enough to show them off a bit I think.

Also: does class changing work the same way as vanilla FF1 with respect to stat growths? That is, would it be better to stay unpromoted for longer or does DoS change things so that it would be better to promote sooner rather than later?

Savestate cheat to show off all the bosses, please! Take whatever's the best, but don't do multiple runs.

Debating about when to promote in FF1 is a little like debating what espers give you the best stat-ups in FF6: it's purely academic and has virtually no bearing on the actual game experience.

It always annoys me when you can only get the Ultimate Weapons at the very, very end of a game (and don't get me started on post-game-only UWs.) So I think you should do the optional dungeons ASAP and tear the mid/endgame a new one.

Turn your tiny men into tiny men wearing more outlandish clothing.

Then get your magical flying boat so I can pretend you're playing Skies of Arcadia.

Then do every bonus dungeon right after the regular dungeon.

Finished a solo THF run not too long ago, so not sure about the other classes, but in DoS at least you will not gain MP on Ninja (or Knight, I would imagine) until after promotion, so it should be best to promote asap.

I'm wondering what the hell is up with that pose. Can hill giants fly? Is that what the propeller beanie's for?

Because I'm a bad gamer or whatever, DoS was the first time I ever really played through FFI, and I stumbled into the Earthgift shrine right after I beat Lich. And I was super confused. "This dungeon isn't ending... and seems kind of random... could the NES do that?" And then I think I got killed by a boss of some sort. Then I realized that was probably the bonus content, and stayed away from the rest of those dungeons.

I dunno, I just wanted to share.

I think you should do the special dungeons as soon as you can Brick, because, you know, we have seen FFI several times, and that is the new stuff. Keep up the awesome work! Then I will be able to keep reading the awesome work.

Additionally, as another aside, if I may ask, Nadia, is the iPhone port any good? This LP is really kind of making me want to play through FFI again, but I know myself well enough to know I'd never get through it. On my iPod, though, I might make more progress. I thought I had heard something about it having silly long load times or something.

I vote you do all that stuff they said. Also promote because if I remember correctly the Bl.Mage doesn't end up with a weird mohawk in this version.

I think someone else mentioned it, but maybe doing a savestate showcase of the bonus dungeons would work? That way you don't worry about unbalancing things for your play-through, but are able to give us an idea what they're like.

It's like how no one can ever figure out if Zatanna speaks sentences or just words backwards....

Just do the bonus dungeons as they come up - after all the LPs, they're all that's important with this run anyway.

What they said. Just do the bonus dungeons now. Otherwise it'll be all "Hey, remember 17 pages back when I beat Lich and opened a dungeon? Let's go there now!"