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

Does the Chaos boss music remind anyone else at least a little bit of The Extreme?


Unlike the fiend rematches, Chaos does not mess around. He's at least as tough as the Hellfire Chasm bosses, in that he has a lot of highly damaging attacks and a mountain of HPs. His physical attack isn't as devastating as Omega's (or even Kraken's), but it's still worth layering the White Robe and some Protect Drinks to take the edge off of it.

In fact, I'm going to spend more time getting my defenses up than I normally would. The plan for this fight is twofold:

1) Make Zach and the gang 100% invincible.

2) Humiliating Chaos by killing him with one attack.


Once his physical attack has been nullified, the most harmless of Chaos's attacks are the -aga spells. Nothing a single aplication of the Rune Staff can't fix.


Once all my defenses are up and it's time to start buffing BlBelt, Zach will spend any turns where the Rune Staff isn't required dumping Strength Tonics down the poor Master's throat. Hopefully this stuff tastes better than Red Bull!


In addition to -aga magic, Chaos has one super attack each for the four elements: Earthquake, Blaze, Tsunami and Tornado. This is all stuff we've seen before, thanks to the bonus dungeon bosses. These spells hurt a bit more than the -aga spells, but are still nothing major to worry about.


For some reason Tsunami is notably more damaging than Blaze. This spell also carries an insta-death risk with it, and nothing short of a Ribbon can reduce water-based damage, which is why Cagnazzo was such a pain all those dungeons ago.


Chaos's final trick is to cast Curaja on himself to completely replenish his HPs. Well, that was true in the NES version, at least, where he only had 2000. Now that he's got ten times that amount, 9999 may not always be enough to get him up to max.

...actually, I don't know whether or not that's true. It might be Curaja is always set to refill the target's HP, but the game engine is only coded to show healing up to 9999, which means that's what you'd see even though the boss was restoring more than that. It's a moot point in this case anyway, since Chaos was already at max HP by the time he used this spell.

The graphical glitches on my side of the battle are, again, caused by the constant blink-y effects of Invisira. My guys are phasing in an out of existance as a side effect of their defensive buffs. I did my best to keep them onscreen in these screenshots, but this time everything below Ika's hat slipped by me. Whoops!


Zach's INT is a little too low to really make good use of the Rune Staff, but Ika and Percy are both using their rounds casting Temper. BlBelt, meanwhile, is rubbing the Giant's Gloves all over his hunky, supple frame to get the sweet, stackable ATK and ACC boosts.

If there's a damage cap in this game, we're by gods going to reach it.


This spell actually summons a tornado to sweep my dudes off the screen and drop them to the ground for heavy damage. Slightly less painful than Tsunami, since there's no insta-death risk, but again, there are no spells or items to reduce its damage. That's why Barbariccia was such a pain.


Before too much longer Zach has gotten down to his last Strength Tonic, and Percy has gotten down to his final casting of Temper. I could use a Dry Ether on him and keep buffing, but let's see about where we're at.

KAPOW, BIZNATCH!!

Damage cap? We don't need no freakin' damage cap.

...although, there really is a damage cap, of sorts. 15530 is about as much damage as BlBelt can ever put out in a single round. Repeated applications of Haste, Temper and Saber won't do anything, because his STR and ACC are already maxed out. There's still a little bit of damage fluctuation here, because more or fewer of those 64 hits will be criticals, but this is right about the limit of human achievement.

That's about 242 damage per single hit, which is way stronger than anything else in the entire game. BlBelt would have to do more than 312 damage per hit in order to dish out the 20000 required to take Chaos down in a single shot.

Just to be certain, I dropped a savestate here, speed the game up, dropped a Dry Ether on Percy and ran his entire MP pool back down for another 24 rounds of Temper/Saber/Temper. That caused BlBelt to deal 15530 damage again, which didn't kill Chaos because he'd used another Curaja in the meantime.

But no amount of Curaja could save him. BlBelt had punched the shit out of a two-headed dragon, about nine different flavors of floating death eyes, an evil turtle complete with unbreakable shell, the king of all dragons, two unstoppable civilization-ending death machines, octopus royalty, suplex'd a train, and then completely obliterated the five-digit barrier.

Chaos was goin' fuckin' down, regardless of how mean a face the bird on his crotch made.

At the end, you get to save your Game Clear data, which gives you a fancy star next to the file and enables you to start a new game with your Bestiary info in tact. In this way you can rack up more kills with a new team.

In fact, thanks to the Bestiary screen, I just happen to know that Zach, Percy, BlBelt and Ika's collective kill count is:

581 Black Goblins
219 Skuldiers
204 Gloom Widows
158 Desertpedes
104 Goblins
93 Wild Nakks
79 Pythons
78 Death Elementals
62 Wolves
54 Revenants
51 Ogres
57 Cobras
50 Goblin Guards
50 Elm Gigases
48 Warg Wolves
47 Sahagin Chiefs
46 Gargoyles
45 Air Elementals
43 Cockatrices
41 Fire Hydras
41 Sahagin Queens
41 Shadows
40 Black Knights
39 Lava Worms
39 Sahagin
36 Mindflayers
36 Werewolves
35 Piscodemons
33 Ghasts
31 Knockers
30 Sea Snakes
29 Anacondas
28 Catoblepases
28 Green Slimes
28 Ogre Chiefs
28 Tarantulas
27 Fire Lizards
27 Mummies
27 Scorpions
26 Manticores
25 Gigas Worms
23 Lizards
23 Medusae
23 Vampires
22 Earth Medusae
22 Hill Gigases
22 Wights
22 Wraiths
21 Duel Knights
21 Water Elementals
20 Killer Sharks
20 Nightmares
20 Sea Scorpions
19 Ankhegs
19 White Dragons
18 Buccaneers
18 Clay Golems
18 Reapers
18 Sahagin Princes
18 White Sharks
17 Crocodiles
17 Dragon Zombies
17 Green Dragons
17 Yellow Ogres
16 Ghouls
15 Dark Wolves
15 Poison Eagles
15 Rakshasas
15 Specters
15 Winter Wolves
14 Black Flans
14 Death Manticores
14 Guardians
14 Minotaurs
14 Minotaur Zombies
14 Silver Dragons
14 Skeletons
13 Chimerae
12 Dark Elementals
12 Sharks
12 Stone Golems
12 Weretigers
12 Yellow Dragons
13 Fire Elementals
13 Hydras
13 Zombies
11 Dark Wizards
11 Earth Elementals
11 Ghosts
11 Gray Oozes
11 Ochus
11 Pyrolisks
11 Sea Trolls
11 Spirit Nagas
11 Vampire Lords
10 Bigeyes
10 Horned Devils
10 Hyenadons
10 Ogre Mages
10 Red Piranhas
10 Saberteeth
10 Trolls
9 Bloodbones
9 Blue Trolls
9 Desert Barettas
9 Neochus
9 Pirates
8 Black Widows
8 Death Knights
8 Lesser Tigers
7 Evil Eyes
7 Hellhounds
7 Piranhas
7 Squidrakens
7 White Crocs
6 Blue Dragons
6 Earth Trolls
6 Fire Gigases
6 King Mummies
5 Crazy Horses
5 Earth Plants
5 Holy Dragons
5 Ice Gigases
5 Red Dragons
5 Sphinxes
5 Unicorns
3 Crawlers
4 Blood Tigers
4 Bloody Eyes
4 Dark Fighters
4 Ochre Jellies
4 Red Flans
4 Rock Gargoyles
3 Black Dragons
3 Dark Eyes
3 Water Nagas
2 Astoses
2 Atomoses
2 Deepeyes
2 Gilgameshes
2 Krakens
2 Liches
2 Mariliths
2 Rhyoses
2 Sand Worms
2 Soldiers
2 Tiamats

and one each of:

2-Headed Dragon
Ahriman
Allosaurus
Barbariccia
Basilisk
Cagnazzo
Cerberus
Chaos
Death Eye
Death Gaze
Death Machine
Devil Hound
Devil Wizard
Echidna
Garland
Mad Ogre
Omega
Prototype
Remorazz
Rubicante
Scarmiglione (two forms)
Sekhret
Shinryu
Thomas the Tank Engine
Typhon
Uncle Ulty
and Undergrounder.

There were sixteen blank spots left in the Bestiary, most of which would have been filled up had they run through Lifespring Grotto and Whisperwind Cove a few more times each.

...and, well, that's it! We've come at last to the end of our adventure.

I've shown you how to crack the NES version like an egg, joined McDohl in showing the methodology behind two of the trickier solo challenges, explained in detail how unfairly bad the THIEF solo is in particular, and finished up with a complete showcase of what I consider to be the definitive version of the game. I have nothing more to give. After three years, you all have finally finished drinking from the deep well of my Final Fantasy knowledge.

Thank you everyone for giving me another opportunity to be awesome!

Next: One to be born from a dragon...

Amazing. Just amazing. Thank you Brickroad!

Man that was a delicious well of knowledge.

Always found it interesting that they flip-flopped the difficulty of these two.

Or, at least, Omega's defence is a lot tougher when you're not set up with Elemental Sword magic and X-Fight.

!!!

I stand corrected. I had said when I was doing my Solo FUKT twitter thing that the damage cap was 9999. I don't think it would be possible for a SOLO character to hit that point, as Chaos would be gleefully blasting you with destructive explosions.

Wow. That's a weird damage cap number. But I'm sure that's because your stat caps limited it to that.

This youtube link is relevant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep6Xn...eature=related

Well, played, Brick Road. See you in Final Fantasy Month which is in...14 HOURS!

I wuv it.

BRAVO!

And now, on to my (nostaglia tinged) favorite in the series!

Holy shit, they really did throw way too many of those at you in the bonus dungeons!

Good job! Its about time someone gave me proof to point and laugh at correct the people chastising me earlier in the thread about 9999 being the cap. I'm beginning to think the 19992 I managed to hit that one time was a fluke, though...

It's possible to get higher numbers if you get more criticals. So if you were to equip a weapon with a huge critical chance (like Vorpal Blade or Masamune) you might be able to high higher levels of consistent damage.

20000 might be a stretch, though.

well done, sir.

My hat, sir, is off to you.

The LP's finally over? It's a post-Decemberween mackeral, you guys! And I'm sure there's always more challenges to be found from FFI, even in the remakes. After all, Red Mage got appropriately nerfed.

Anyway, looking forward to your LP of that game you're always talking about. You know, the one with the half-spaceman and the dragon suit man and the half-naked white mage lady and Mecha Garland.

Fantastic as always, sir!

I take it they fixed the crit as weapon index bug in this version? Any idea what the highest crit % weapon is, and where BBelt's fists rate?

Well, I have to say this LP of Dawn of Souls Final Fantasy I did give me a greater respect for that tiptoe through the flowers the difficulty's (mostly) become. Well, that and getting pissed off at all the missed hits I kept seeing when fighting against groups of SAHAGS in the NES original.

Yeah, I think I'll try that Forever Red run in DoS after all. The Red Mage is nerfed enough to make it a challenge.

And that is now to end the game on pure epic win! What a show.

I'm sure you'll hear this a lot, but thank you for doing such a kick ass LP of this version of the game. This is actually the LP (along with poor FUKT) that brought me to this forum, so double thanks for that.

Brick, I know you don't want to LP FF1 forever, but I would be curious to see some more gameplay/information about the classes we didn't use here, just for comparison's sake. Mostly how Red Mage holds up later in the game with his nerfed stats.

And at the last moment, 2010 suddenly sucked just a little less.

Well done, Brickroad! With all of your FF1 LPs combined, you've taught me that FF1 was a much deeper game than I ever could have imagined beforehand, and you actually made it pretty fun.

Now I demand a solo-endgame-Edward run of FF4 Advance.

Probably because The Extreme is based on music from FF1.

Great LP, Brickroad. It made me really appreciate Dawn of Souls.

This reminds me that the localizations of the remake didn't censor the hexagram—Japan's go-to generic symbol of Western mysticism—out of this room's layout like the American NES version did.

There was a hexagram? I've never even noticed when playing different versions of Final Fantasy. Heck, I'm surprised Nintendo of America caught and edited it in the NES game; it's not like you'd ever see a zoomed out view of that room in-game.

Ah, but I'm sure there was a map of the room in here:

Bravo, Brickroad, and good show.

Well, that's true. I also remember one of NP's multi-strategy guides had a screenshot of Jaquio's pool of blood from Ninja Gaiden II. I'm surprised Tecmo got away with that on NES.