Get a job! - Let's Play Final Fantasy III

Why can't people accept that every single numbered game takes place in a different world.

because Shinra

4/26/2010 - Desh's Sacrifice



♪♪Tower of Owen♪♪

Back to the Tower of Owen. This intersection looks suspicious, maybe we should try our new spell?



Unlike the aggravating mini dungeons, you only need to be Toad to get in to this one (thank god). Our arrival is greeted with an ominous warning.



Desh seems to recognize the place, but it does nothing to stave off the creepy voice.



PERCY picks up another Red Wiz-specific weapon and immediately puts it to use thanks to his MUTE status (and the fact that stores don't seem to be selling EchoHerbs).



We come to a seemingly dead-end floor and are ambushed by a group of four Ohishuki. These monsters aren't particularly tough vs physical attacks, but magic barely scratches them. Needless to say our magic-heavy setup quickly bites the dust.

A retry finds our exit from the floor, but meets a similar fate. After a quick run back to town to stock up on Potions (in case of Mute) I make a third run.



The higher you go the more the color palette changes. We find our first EchoHerb in a random box, so we're set to at least de-mute our healer if it comes down to that.



This place seems to go on forever...



As if SL wasn't already overpowered compared to the rest of the party, we find another nice sword and flame-resistant body armor for him on the next to last floor of the tower.



The tenth floor features a quite obvious boss, so I burn through one of my super-rare FenixDown to bring PERCY back into the fight (honestly, I probably could have done it without his help). I use the couple of EchoHerbs I found on Katie and PERCY because I figure healing will be more important than attack magic if the boss is anything like the rest of the monsters here in the tower.

♪♪Boss Battle♪♪

Its Medusa! Who's Zande, though? Could this be a hint at our true adversary on this journey?



Medusa is quite the pushover (assuming you're lucky) because she wastes all her turns trying to turn your party to stone with Break. After a half-dozen or so rounds of our Fighter doling out 200+ damage a turn its all over.



Conveniently, Desh's memory returns in time for him to find out that the reactor is going to blow!



Wait, what? Floating continent?



Desh tells us that the power of Fire should be in the land of the Dwarves, somewhere beyond the whirlpool that the Tower of Owen was maintaining.

♪♪The Requiem♪♪

Jumping straight into the fire, Desh sacrifices himself to save us.



At least we got a free trip outside for once. Now that we're got free reign to explore, we head to the southwest to find another town.



♪♪Veggies of Gishal♪♪

I just going to wander a guess that this was translated as "Gysahl" in the DS version? Like the Chocobo greens?



The town seems somewhat overrun by sheep.



It becomes pretty obvious that this is not the town I should be in after buying some spells. Poor PERCY doesn't even have a single charge for the Ice 3 that I bought for him.



♪♪The Dancer♪♪

Oh look, another dancer.

♪♪Let's Play the Piano!♪♪

We kind of suck at playing the piano...



Gishal is the first town where you can summon the fat chocobo. Fat chocobos are essentially item lockers, because your field inventory is finite. We've still got some room in ours, though, so I'm not going to bother with summoning one yet.



This is the equivalent of the developer's room in FFIII. Its kind of small and lame compared to the one in FFIV.



Gishal also sells Magic Keys, but we don't have a lot of use for them at the moment. I buy one just for the hell of it, though.



Someone should probably fix that hole in the wall before all of the chocobos escape.

Returning to the boat and sailing further clockwise brings us to a dead end, so I guess its back the other way for us.



♪♪Dwarf Cave♪♪

Just barely to the west of the Tower of Owen is the Dwarf Cave. Lali ho!

It seems the dwarves have been robbed of one of their horns. I wonder who this "Guzco" guy is?



The dwarves mention a couple places of interest, once of which we've already visited.



Their stores are also much better stocked than previous towns, including the previously unique swords that SL and PERCY are sporting. I won't be buying anything at the moment, but should I need some Ice armor I'll be sure to return.



There seems to be a way to continue on in the dwarf cave, but it requires us to be frogs once again. What could be down there?

Next time: Betrayal!

So are you keeping these roles for a strategy, a request of this thread, or just bloodymindedness? Would it have been worth switching to more physical roles for the last part or all mages for the mini-dungeon? I guess equipment costs would be a factor. Just couldn't remember if you said you would not be switching.

I was just planning on sticking with the jobs until I either:

-Get new ones
-Get to a point where its necessary to continue (like the part later on with the dragoons)

This is to minimize grinding time necessary to decently equip new jobs after every dungeon.

That would be correct, sir.

5/2/2010 - Into the Volcano



♪♪Village of the Ancients♪♪

I should be going here, to that dungeon that we left off at last time. Instead, I travel to the south west and enter the Ancients' Village.



The town is filled with old men intent on telling the story of how the Dark Warriors pushed back the saturation of Light in ye olde tymes. Its like our current situation only in reverse.



There is also a kid who will give you a prize for riding around the continent on a chocobo. Where could they be?



Could it be this incredibly obvious mini forest directly outside of town?



♪♪Chocobos!♪♪



All for a worthless item!

I bet midget bread tastes delicious! and it's bite-sized!

The real reason I'm here is for the lv3 magic, though. Luckily, I didn't have to pay for any of Ringo's spells since he was fully decked out from the cache in the Viking Base.



Wait, so one person says that a machine is what keeps this island aloft and then the other says we shouldn't rely on them? Talk about mixed signals.



♪♪The Dungeon♪♪

Anyways! Back to the Dwarf Cave and the Underground Lake.



The monsters here are nothing special, but I brought along a stack of softs in case a Boulder happened to land break on one of us.



Deep in the heart of the...dead end third basement lies our opponent, the dreaded Guzco. He's got the Dwarves' other horn and isn't letting it go without a fight.

He's really quite the pushover, especially with Ringo having a couple charges of Ice 3. His most damaging spell is Fire 2 and even PERCY can live through that.



We manage to recover the Dwarf Horn, but have somehow acquired a guest "_" character. "?" indeed.



Well, whatever. After a quick cast of Exit by Katie, we're ready to return the horn to its former altar.



Or not. I guess the "_" was Guzco all along. Figures.

Thanks a lot for stopping him as he ran straight through you guys and then through a wall. Stupid dwarves.



♪♪The Dungeon♪♪

Next stop, Flame Cave (aka volcano).

The flame cave is filled with lava, but its totally fucking worthless lava that might as well be water- you don't take a single hit of damage when walking over these tiles.



The volcano is full of a few monsters that are now FF mainstays, like bombs (aka balloons) and flans (aka mallows). None of them are that dangerous, but our low damage output tends to result in huge party damage when one of the bombs explodes.



The most important item in this entire dungeon is the Ice Sword, which does additional damage to fire-type enemies.



These lava falls are the only four tiles of lava in this entire place that do damage. They do an astounding 1 HP damage each, though, so its not like they're any kind of a threat.



PERCY manages to bit the dust about half way through the dungeon, so I Exit out, revive him and give it another go.



Basement 3 is home to our old friend the magic rock, which opens a secret passage to the next section of the dungeon.



Fire Crystal? I guess that's what everyone meant by the "power of fire" then? This fight finally gains some meaning, as a new crystal surely means some new jobs are right around the corner.



Of course Guzco beat us here, though, so we're not getting those new jobs without a fight.

Ringo and SL are putting out respectable numbers (200+), but nothing could keep up with Salamandr's flames for more than a turn or so. There's got to be something I'm missing...



Oh yeah, duh, Ice armor. This should make the fight a piece of cake.

And I turned PERCY into a Monk because I figured it was more helpful than being dead weight all the time. I know he's just going to get stuck in a shit job come next update anyways...



He does manage to get himself petrified on the way to the boss, though.



PERCY is still totally outmatched by SL and Ringo, but its more the fault of being under-skilled as a Monk than any particular job deficiencies.



Everyone manages to die to Salamandr's Flames once again, except for SL that now takes pitiful damage from them thanks to the new Ice Armor. After a few rounds of shrugging of flames, SL puts Salamandr in the ground.



Hurray, new jobs!

Before exiting the cave I switch SL over to a Knight, a more defense-oriented version of the Fighter. Thankfully, he uses the exact same gear as the Fighter at this point.



Thank god for the free exit since Katie is down.



A random guy contacts us upon our return to the Dwarf Village, asking us to save the village of Tokkle. In case you've forgotten, that was the place where everyone was afraid that we were going to take their babies or whatever. I wonder how we're going to get aboard that tree without an airship?



HERE'S WHERE I NEED YOUR HELP TALKING TIME! We've currently come upon four new jobs. Feel free to foist one of these on PERCY and/or Ringo for the coming assault on the flying tree:

Hunter: Think archer. They're back line, ranged attack users that require ammo to be of any use. For whatever reason they can also use white magic through lv3, so this might be a good choice for PERCY.

Knight: This is what we've already got SL rocking. This is a defensive style take on the Fighter class, with the added bonus of a cover ability to protect other party members from attacks when they're low on HP.

Thief: Unlike their FF1 equivalent, Thieves are pretty awesome here. Pretty good speed, an (almost) guaranteed escape ability, the skill to unlock doors without a magic key and the only job until Ninja that is able to equip long-ranged boomerangs. Oh, and Steal, but that isn't really worth even wasting a turn over most the time.

Scholar: Quite possibly the most situational job in the entire game. Scholar has two abilities, peep (check the enemy HP) and scan (check the enemy weakness), both of which are pretty worthless 99% of the time. They can use no magic and attack with books instead of conventional weaponry.

Everyone and their mother in-game has suggested checking Hyne's wall change with Scholar, but if you switch Ringo's job away from Black Wiz. we've go absolutely no reason for it. Whatever you decide, I'll try my best.

Next time: Floating Flora Infiltration

Since Brick refused to do so I insist someone, probably Percy become a Thief!

This is the appropriate choice.

I concur.

On other job changes: I like keeping the white mage for Exit (unless the hunter can cast exit? do you need the healing that bad?), but I'd like to see the Black Mage switch to HUNTER so we can ignore that upcoming elemental weakness stuff, yet keep the ranged nuker archtype going.

If you're going to have a thief, he needs to be named Ycrep. Rejoice, boss! I found some items!

I think Percival should be a Scholar. Since Scholars are horrible and so is he.

I agree completely.

You probably had better not change Katie or Ringo or else you won't be able to make any progress.

I like thieves in any game that has them. On the DS version, I took a thief all the wa to the end-game. His speed was so high by the end that he was doing max damage on pretty much everything, and he stole so often I never bought a single healing item.

Thieves rock, and are too good for Percy. Make him a hunter because hunters are lame.

(You can get past this trick boss without attacking its weakness, right?)

Ironically, the best thing I remember about the hunter from my NES play through is that you can stock up on elemental arrows pretty easily (as well as holy arrows), much like FFIV. I used a hunter a good bit and the main strength is also hitting elemental weaknesses, at least in the NES version.

I vote for hunter because it's awesome.

In the DS version Scholars were absolutely fucking gonzo. I swear he was my hardest hitter for a long time because he'd equip two electric books and trounce over everything. WITH KNOWLEDGE. Because knowledge is power!

Well, the pen is mightier etc.

Also more conductive.

I dunno about you guys, but I saw the list of options and my mind immediately gravitated toward Percy changing his job to Thief. Certainly there's no hidden meaning behind that thought.

If nothing else, he could make a boss drop its stuff.