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

Reese's for breakfast?!

My friend once ate a bowl full of Pez with Sprite poured over them for breakfast.

That would be far more interesting if he poured spite all over them.

Brickroad will have to teach as many toddlers as possible to play the game within one week. Bonus points if he puts them up to solo thief runs.

For a sequel, he can use the homeless!

Whoa guys I think we took a wrong turn somewhere cause we've gone from "absurdly challenging" to "clamoring for Brickroad to perpetrate crimes against humanity".

To be fair, he has some experience with the subject. After all, he did play 8 eyes.

Just a super-short update today, ladies, so's I can show off another very minor alteration between the original Final Fantasy and the Dawn of Souls remake:

♪♪ Build that Bridge! ♪♪


The 15-puzzle is activated by mashing A and B a bunch of times while you're sailing in the ship. It works exactly like every 15-puzzle you've ever solved in your entire life.


In the NES version you won some paltry amount of gold. In Dawn of Souls you get real prizes!


If you beat any of your own records you'll start winning things like Fangs (which cast -ara spells) and Curtains (which cast Nul- spells). So this is another thing I could have done to take out the bosses in Earthgift Shrine early, if I really felt like plugging away at it for a while.

Of course, in the time it would take you to win all the relevant Curtains you could probably just power through a dungeon or two and come back with better gear... or reroll with a White Mage and blast your way back through Lich. Anyway, it's just a thought.

Next: I've been after the levistone for ten years...

I hope to update frr rllz on Thursday. Fingers crossed!

Thought pulled from the cloud of randomness:

Wouldn't it be neat if FF1 allowed you to ape Final Fantasy Legend and give you the option to swap a party member out completely if they're dead?

I don't think I've ever beaten the 15-tile puzzle in any version of this game. I've just never been that bored.

Brick should play FFI with a Guitar Hero guitar.

Eat a... Rhesus!?

There is, but it involves vagina dentata.

Sure, but not in FF1. The little thieving jerks make a great meal of Rhesus Macaque Biscuits in Dwarf Fortress, however. Or as we call them on the DF forums, Rhesus Pieces.

♪♪ Town ♪♪

This here guy complains that he wants to go off spelunking, but his wife won't let him. Something about a cave to the north? Whatever, that sounds boring. I have a much better idea. But first: shopping!


Here are some awesome spells none of the boys will ever be able to cast: Protera and Invisira. Protera reduces the damage they take while Invisira increases their rate of evading attacks. Either of these spells would have taken the teeth out of the 2-Headed Dragon fight back in Earthgift Shrine. We can get a reasonable facsimile, though...


...but first: leveling up!

(But first, but first! This update is awesome.)


♪♪ Shop ♪♪

Back in Elfheim the boys stock up on some essentials: a whole wagonful of Potion, plus Ika's Slowra spell. The goal is: return to Earthgift Shrine and get Slowra to stick on 2-Headed Dragon. If we can pull that off he will scarcely be able to damage us, and we can pick him apart with Hasted attacks.


♪♪ Mt. Gulg ♪♪

In we go! No need to rehash the walkthrough, so I'll just hit some of the treasure highlights. In particular we should be able to put this Blue Curtain to good use; it'll lessen the damage from Cerberus's lightning attack. With a little luck we should have what we need to kill two of the four Earthgift bosses. (Echidna and Ahriman are going to remain beyond our reach until we find some way to deal with the constant insta-death attacks.)


This second Black Cowl would be nice, but nobody on the team can wear it except Percy. Nerts!


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

Down on the desert floor the boys get into some trouble with a curiously difficult random encounter! I'd... I'd actually never seen one of these things before. At least not as I can recall. I knocked hundreds of HPs off of it, but...


...a series of rough one-shots was enough to plant me. If I'd gone in knowing how tough of a fight it was going to be I'd have had Ika treat it like a boss fight, and make with liberal use of Slowra and Haste.


Dying in the bonus dungeons doesn't give a game over, though, so a quick Inn stay to get us back on our feet and we're back in business. The next run yeilds some nice goodies on the desert floor: a Silver Apple and an Elven Cloak. The Silver Apple raises someone's max HP by 5 (I let Ika eat it, though I'm not certain he has a mouth); the Elven Cloak is a unique shield in that pretty much every class can equip it. The only other shield we've seen so far that Percy or Ika could use have been the Leather Gloves, which give a minus to EVA. These cloaks are absolutely awesome, and since you have to run Earthgift Shrine several times you might end up with a couple of them. I'd like to get another one for Ika at the very least.

♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

This time we make it to the bottom floor without incident and are ready for our rematch with 2-Headed Dragon!


Ika gets Slowra to stick in the very first round, but not before 2-Headed Dragon can take a big bite out of Zach. Is it enough to ensure victory?


Oh yeah, we got this. Sufficiently defanged, the boss can't do anything to touch me now, and before long...


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

...hurrah!


The celebration is a little premature; 2-Headed Dragon is the easiest of the new bosses, and his reward is nothing fantastic. This will at least hold Ika over until we can get him a new Armlet, I guess.


Once you've killed a boss you have no choice but to exit the dungeon. This means it takes at least four runs through Earthgift Shrine to clear all the bosses.

Hey, you know what we haven't done in a while? Make a stupid totally preventable mistake! Let's see how big of a fool I can make out of myself.


Next run through the dungeon gets us this White Curtain. This might help against Echidna and her ice spells... but she's got Flare and some other bullshit tricks besides, so let's forget about her for now.


This isn't "another" Silver Apple. This is the same Silver Apple, from the same treasure chest as before, just generated on a different map. Which means, of course, there's "another" Elven Cloak here too! Ika takes this one, which when combined with his Bard's Tunic upgrade gives him a sizable increase in DEF.

Climbing to L33 gives Ika access to L7 magic. Of course we can't access any L7 magic shops until we get our airship...


♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

Percy fails hard on getting the Blue Curtain up before Cerberus rapes us with his lightning attacks. So... take two!


This time the plan goes off without a hitch, but as you can see cutting Cerberus's damage in half still leaves us pretty well and truly raped. There's no way we can win the damage race if he keeps this up...


I do have one Hi-Potion, which is a precious and valuable resource. This helps keep Ika in the fight at least long enough to get everyone's Haste up, but it's still a losing battle. I had a string of fights like this, all pretty much the same: NulShock goes up, Ika casts a few Hastes, someone feeds Ika the Hi-Potion, then we slowly get electrocuted to death.


Echidna, of course, is still a bitch-ho.

So at this point I thought for sure I would have to abandon my lofty goal of clearing Earthgift Shrine early. The plan was to do the Ice Cave and get the Airship, which would give me access to Gaia, where I can buy as many Hi-Potions as I please. I was keeping one eye on the forum while playing this segment, though, and happened to see this post...

I was just about to post something about how Aeonus is retarded and how they don't sell Hi-Potions there and how I'm the FF1 guru here, Jack, so don't you dare question me... but hell. What did I have to lose by just running over and checking, right?


♪♪ Shop ♪♪

Well I'll be broom-jiggered.

Anyway, Aeonus totally saved the LP and I guess I owe him/her an apology for almost calling him/her retarded.

♪♪ Mt. Gulg ♪♪

Back in the dungeon we generate a new treasure: some kickass armor for BlBelt. Remember, since BlBelt gets so many hits that single point of ATK is a noticable increase in his damage output.


Plus more level ups! Cerberus is going down.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Oh look, he went down.

The fight played out about the same as all the previous ones did, except I was able to assign Ika (and Percy, if needed) to permanent Hi-Potion duty. Cerberus still could have won this fight; his lightning attack deals about a Hi-Potion's worth of damage to everyone on the team in the best case scenario. His AI isn't smart enough to know that, though, so whenever he decides to use a physical attack I can get ahead in the healing a little. In just a few short rounds Zach and BlBelt finish the job and win a neat looking sword.


A sword, which, as it happens, is a stupidly good upgrade over Percy's current weapon. Percy's been stuck with the Wyrmkiller since before the boys escaped the Newbie Sea, and he'd been lagging behind Zach in the damage for a while now. No longer. The Kotetsu is a great buff and should put keep Percy competitive right on up through his promotion.

Echidna and Ahriman will have to wait for another day, but the upgrades I've got so far have made my team a lot stronger overall. We'll be back to mop up once we have some way to deal with those insta-death spells...

Next: "Clothes obtained from the chest!"

Huh. Guess I should have made more of an effort at getting through Earthgift early, as I was packing my usual super-party of Fi/BB/RM/BM on my first time through the game and haven't really gone back to it. By the time I got to it, I'd raided the Waterfall and rolled through it.

Damn straight.


And what's the deal with those Abyss Worms, anyway? I managed to beat one pre-volcano/ice cave, but only by landing a lucky Hold spell before he devoured my Black Mage.

Abyss Worms are like out of depth encounters in a roguelike, sort of. I have the player's guide for this version of the game, and when I saw the Abyss Worm's stats, my initial reaction was 'seriously?'. I think the intent is that fully exploring the desert level is risky, or something like that, maybe (they only show up there).

Reminds me of Black Sigil, actually. If you stray away from the path the game lays out, you get attacked by a sand worm.

I so desperately wish that they had made Black Sigil not completely tedious to play.

There was an enemy exactly like that in FF5, the Landcrawler:



You only fought them if you wandered off the very obviously telegraphed safe path in the desert. They're absurdly powerful, and beating them gets you basically nothing but bragging rights.

*cough* I beat one. *cough*

BUT THAT WAS WHAT MADE IT SO GOOD

(according to people on the Internet who wouldn't know good game design if it ran them down in the street)

My mom (who absolutely loves old school RPGs and is awesome to the point that she did all the sidequests in FF IX without a strategy guide) tried to play Black Sigil. I had to crawl up that game's ass at least once a week trying to figure out how to work around the game breaking glitches before she finally gave up in disgust.

You are discourteous! And costing money!