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

Of course there is tech in the FF world. Where else does that Warmech come from?

It evolved from naturally occuring gears, levers and pulleys.

There was a fire-crystal powered steamship in FFV and it's pretty strongly implied that the wind ORB is the source of all wind in FF1 as well as the source of the sky castle and airships' power (all that's stated is that the Lefeinish/Lufenian "used the power of wind" to create them, but why is the crystal's altar/recharge-thingy sitting in the sky castle to begin with?). That doesn't explain how they manage to still work, but there's also no explanation for how you manage to sail a ship in FF if the wind has stopped.
The fact that without the crystal the lufenians just kind of sit around in huts (fairly crude-looking huts in DoS) would also support the idea that their non-magical technology isn't too impressive.

I think we're on the cusp of a working cosmology.

I'm not denying that.

Not denying that, either!

Our non-magical tech probably wouldn't fare much better if our civilisation were destroyed by Cthulhu, who kept watch on us from our own sky fortress, four centuries ago. Anyway, the rest of FF1 has more then enough magical artifacts to justify the existence of magical telepillars in an ancient castle containing a rat's tail guarded by an undead dragon. Why there would be functional, high-tech (apparently self-powered) teleporters in such a place is, I think, slightly harder to explain.

But there's another civilization not far off that managed to keep a submarine working for 200 years after losing its harbors and being ravaged by octopi and monsters and fairy-snatching pirates and... oh, fuck this game already.

What is final fantasy?

We just don't know.

Hey, if the first Ultima game can have space shuttles, blaster rifles, and TIE Fighters in it alongside swords and sorcery, why can't Final Fantasy? Vast leaps in technological capabilities in a span of less than a week's time are par for the course with RPGs!

Apparently all RPGs take place on the planet Krikkit.

(Anyone?)

That book wasn't funny.

YOU aren't funny!



Eh, none of the books were as good as the first, which isn't even for everyone.

At least it's not Tales of Symphonia.

Good times.

Honestly, I like the fifth one the most.

I'm ashamed to advance this argument with anything approaching seriousness, but Gilgamesh showing up in FFXII pretty much proves that travel between the various worlds in the FF Multiverse (for lack of a better term) is possible...

... but there's various robots / teleporters / etc. in that section of the game, so whomever built the Mirage Tower simply had access to that type of tech at one point. Warmech's just a rather negligent defence system.\

Yes, because if there's one thing dragons lack, it's a solution for lighting lots of things on fire in a cave made of non-flammable stone.

Fair point - I attribute that to blocking VIII out of my mind. I once more renew my call for Crisis of Infinite Cids.

(But not a fighting game. Stupid Japanese companies always making those ideas into fighting games....)

Yeah, Gilgamesh is a special case, having been explicitly thrown into a "cleft of dimensions" on his first outing.

(He also *sort of* shows up in IX, but looks nothing like his other incarnations, making it more of a Cid-type meta-appearance.)

Are Siegfried and Yojimbo related to Gil, or are their similarities just a coincidence?

Sigfried is so freaking random that I've always sort of suspected that.

Hey it's time for more of that Let's Play I'm doing.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

Here we are in the Sunken Shrine. This is really two dungeons in one: one path leads down to the boss, the other leads up to mermaids and glorious treasure. Guess which way I'll be going.


Equipped with his Cat Claws, Ika is actually scoring pretty decent damage now even without magic. Not, like, fantastic damage, mind you. But decent. His turn is still better spent waving the Healing Staff around.

Then... some level-ups happened!


The Sunken Shrine has lots of treasures, but as you can see a few of them are duds. I'm not really sure why this game has so much bogus treasure in it. No player, anywhere, has reached this box and been like "Dude! Twenny bucks! Fuckin' A righteous, broseph!" It's just a waste of time and energy.

And if you have a friend who talks like that, please punch him. That's annoying.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

Percy knows Thundara, but hasn't yet earned enough MP to actually cast it. Not that that's a big deal, since he can use the Gauntlets to fire off a free one whenever he wants. Once he's got the mana to hack it, this team will be capable of three Thundaras per round as long as the MP holds.

I've mentioned in this and other threads that the easiest party I've ever used in Dawn of Souls is four black mages. The reason for that is that nothing -- absolutley nothing in vanilla outside of a boss fight or a WarMECH Death Machine can survive three consecutive blasts of -ara magic. So once your team of destruct-o-wizards hits Elfheim you can literally mow down the entire game, resolving every single combat in the very first round. By rotating your party and keeping your MP about even you never have to stop or slow down. By the time you're up against the big boys and you need concentrated damage, you can pick a mage and stack Saber/Haste/Temper/Temper on him in a single round. That right there is good for a couple thousand damage, depending on what the wizard is equipped with. (Cat Claws are great, but a Masamune is fine too. And there's stronger stuff in Dawn of Souls than even the Masamune.)

Strictly speaking there are probably better parties, especially for a beginning player. But I have yet to see one as mindless as that. 90% of the game, literally, is watching Thundara strike. It's hilarious.


Meanwhile, every single goddamn monster in this dungeon is "Sea Something".


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

Decent armor upgrade for Zach. But the real story here...


...is that Percy can now wear most heavy armor! You want to be careful here, though. Do you want the superior DEF offered by Zach's heavy hand-me downs? Or the superior EVA offered by the Armlet? We're going to be meeting more and more monsters who can score multiple hits, which means EVA is going to start being less effective. Trading up to the Ice Armor isn't a bad play here; -9 EVA for +10 DEF is a net gain in defense.


More spellcasting weapons! The Light Axe casts Dia, which deals a little damage to undead. The Mage's Staff casts Fira, which... deals a little damage to undead. Nobody's going to equip these, but they'll be nice to have layin' around in case I need them.

Which brings me to yet another interesting digression. In FF1-NES you are constantly selling off your old gear. Even if you don't need the gil, you only get sixteen spots each for weapons and armor, and that's including the stuff your guys are using. In Dawn of Souls, though, the communal inventory means you can carry as many of as much as you want. I'm the type of guy who never sells anything EVER, so my endgame inventory is pages and pages of just pointless cruft. And yet I can't rid myself of it. I might need help.


Arriving at the top floor of the Sunken Shrine, the boys stumble across an entire community mermaids-in-distress. The thing is, we're in no big hurry here. Kraken's already been awake and active for 200 years, so if he hasn't finished draining the Crystal of Water by now he's sure taking his sweet time about it.

Also on this floor: amazing treasure. This new Armlet gives Percy the DEF benefits of heavy armor plus the EVA benefits of an Armlet. Score!

Alternately, I could give Percy the Ice Armor and roll the Diamond Armlet down to Ika. (Not BlBelt; he doesn't get hit more often than Ika, but he has way more HPs. Ika is in more dire need of the defense boost.) Point is, there's some room to play here and lots of space to make good decisions about who to arm, and why. Personally I like to have my top slot dudes as strong as possible.



I think the implication here is that the blonde spirit lady we met topside is a former mermaid who went to find help. But there are other NPCs in Onrac who are every bit as fascinated by legs as the sea-folk are, implying they too are former mermaids. What I want to know is, since mermaids can just spontaneously grow legs anyway, why don't these broads just all decide to walk to safety?


I like to picture this mermaid swimming frantic circles in her cell while yanking out fistfuls of hair and screaming at the top of her lungs. Meanwhile Zach is all chill, talkin' 'bout "Damn, woman. It's a fantasy game. It's all magic and shit." And BlBelt is all like "Word, yo."


I find this statement to be highly unlikely!




This place continues to be a Knight's paradise, absolutely loading Zach down with the wicked-strong gear. As you can see, though, nothing tops his Protect Ring. That, he's gonna keep on.


And finally, the boys find what they came in here for.


Thanks to Ika's brand new Teleport spell, they don't even have to walk out! Now that's convenience! (It's actually less convenient than I'm letting on; Teleport only backs us up one floor at a time. So Ika has to cast it over and over until he and his pals are totally clear of the dungeon. If Ruga had tagged along instead, she could just cast Exit once and have done with it.)

♪♪ Victory ♪♪

After a quick recharge, the boys pack up and head off to another nearby dungeon for good-golly even more treasure hunting. (Not to mention more level-ups!)


♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

Rowing a good ways north from Onrac...


♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

...brings us to the Waterfall Cavern. This is a decently-sized dungeon, large and maze-like, though it is only a single floor. (That just means Ika can get us out with a single Teleport, though!)


I'll take any excuse I can get to show off a dashing young Black Wizard punking a whole gaggle of Cockatrices.


Meh, this dungeon is boring. Let's cut to the chase. Head up-ish, then left-ish, then down-ish and you'll eventually come to this door-ish.


Through the door is a pretty great treasure room. First up: a spellcasting item that casts Confuse. Not... not that it's ever really beneficial to try and Confuse something, you understand. It's just... I like having the option. I might use it. You never know. Right?

Right?


Now we're starting to get to the really good stuff. The Ribbon provides insanely good protection against all sorts of magical attacks. There are enough of these in the game to go around, but Ika, having the fewest HPs and being the team's most reliable healer besides, gets the honor of wearing our first one.


Next up is a tiny little upgrade for Percy. I could have given this to Zach as well, but Zach can already cast Blink on himself. By giving this to Percy (or, once Percy upgrades, just leaving it in the inventory) I can get my front two ranks Blink'd in the first round of combat. Very handy!


Finally, ol' R66-Y here bestows upon us the warp cube, which we'll need later to enter the lair of the final fiend. Which is actually a little out-of-order, considering we don't have the thing we need to enter the dungeon-before-the-lair-of-the-final-fiend just yet. In any case, the robot breaks down and the Waterfall's empty, so Ika Teleports us out.

♪♪ Airship ♪♪

That about wraps it up for treasure hunting this session. There are a few minor errands we can see to now, though. First we catch a flight back to Melmond, as there's a pretty smart cat there what can do something with our shiny new Rosetta Stone.


♪♪ Town ♪♪

It only takes Unne about half a second to decipher the dead language of Lufenian by studying the stone, and then another half or so to teach us to speak it fluently. Remember, kids, this only works in a very carefully scripted video game environment.


♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

Now that talking to the locals can do us some good, we need to fly up to Lufenia. Like most locations on the northern continents, though, there's no airship parking anywhere near it. You have to land the ship so far away from town that the walk there just about constitutes a dungeon in its own right, albeit one without any treasure or boss fight.


♪♪ Town ♪♪

Retcon ahoy! Though he doesn't appear in the game, Cid does get a nice little namedrop here. As expected, he's the guy who built the airship we're riding around in. You'd think that with such a healthy appreciation for aviatics the Lufenians would maintain a landing field nearby. You know, just in case. I'm sure Cid would agree.


Man, all this braggadocio is making me wish I hadn't learned their stupid language. I bet these assholes are the type to lift their pinky finger when drinking anything.

Of note: no Lufenian women. Which means this dwindling civilization still clings to at least one of their miracles: homosexual reproduction.


This is actually one of FF1's cooler little mysteries. The Lufenians, tired of fighting their losing war against Tiamat, decide to take the fight to the evil entity pulling Tiamat's strings. They sent their five bravest warriors out on their last airship (now my airship), only to never hear from them again. Pretty poetic stuff!

If only Clownhead McChucklefuck weren't standing six tiles away to completely spoil the ending for us! Grr!


Anyway, we now have both keys required to get to the final fiend's lair: the chime gets us into Mirage Tower in the desert, and the warp cube gets us from there to the wondrous and ancient castle in the sky. Oh, but we're not done in Lufenia yet...


Semi-hidden in the northeast corner of town is a path leading to a pair of magic shops!


♪♪ Shop ♪♪

Inside? The most powerful black magic spell. This is the absolutely pinnacle of magical warfare. Ethers are plentiful and cheap in this game, so Ika can pretty much spam Flare to his little heart's content. And yes, I did a lot of this in my BLMx4 game.

(Next door is a white magic shop that sells Arise, which is actually useful now that it can be used during combat. Alas! We have no White Wizard to cast it.)

Hmm... oh, what the hell. Percy, let's give the folks one more level up.



Next: Not all places can be reached by boat.

I feel just slightly ashamed for getting that reference. Not because of what it's from, of course; it's just such an obscure, useless piece of trivia.

R-66Y
That is my name
But you can call me anything

(Anything)

Not around here, it isn't.

That song holds a very special place for me. It served as my introduction to the game remixing and arrangement community. I can't even remember who originally linked me to it any more, but I'm glad they did.

Flare bugged me in this game since it cost a heap of MP and was dealing less damage then my wizards physical attacks.

I have to say I was slightly dumbfounded you just went and left Kraken for another time. But I also admit I haven't followed your previous FF1 LPs to this much detail - is this as normal as (usually) leaving the volcano for last?

I ran my own game of Dawn Of Souls a few months back and had loads of fun. I ended up rolling both a Thief and Red Mage along with my typical Fighter/Black Mage combo, as I wanted to see how both of those classes fared in a non-broken state.

The Thief/Ninja was awesome...and really broken at the end! He ended up being a buff machine at the end and could also deal his share of damage. As for the Red Mage...at least DoS contains special swords that made him at least somewhat useful at the end.

Anyway, I got to one-shot Kary with a buffed-up Fighter - and that's what counts.