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

Correct answer: 4 white mages who each buy Cure, Harm and Fog...

That's the worst it can possibly get, but no matter how strong your convictions are about not promoting... you can always just go promote. The option is there, I mean; you don't have to re-roll the party.

But if we're talking about solo games and unpromoted runs, we're already outside of normal play territory.

Okay, yeah, no, this is the worst it can possibly get. Definitely not unplayable, though!

In any case neither FF nor FF3 have the gall to offer "Goof-Off" as a class. Square didn't dare players to assemble a party of goof-offs until FF8.

Clearly you never played FF6 with a party of Umaro, Gogo, Gau, and Strago. They look like a walking circus troupe together! And it's quite funny to have Umaro piloting the airship, too.

Thanks, I think I've got it down now.

6/15/2010 - Old Man Dorga



Back to the status quo. Ringo takes on the mantle of the mighty Viking since we've got a couple hammers on hand from random chests.



Thank god. Now that we've liberated Salonia we finally have access to Katie's Life spell and a bit more leeway in regards to exploration since a partial wipe no longer means having to run all the way back to town.



A free Salonia also means a free public library!



The Book of Owen
I
My attempt to float the continent in the sky was successful...
I think I will name the tower where the reactor is the Tower of Owen, after myself.
II
I can't believe the Light is going to flood. I'm going to cryogenically freeze my son Desh. If anything happens to the Tower, he will awaken and fix the problem. Desh... I'm counting on you.



Ancient Book
I
The Four Statues. They will annihilate any who try to pass them. They will protect the Crystal. The key to them is the Four Fangs. Only we can pass through freely.
II
The Floating Continent has been completed. It will be placed west of Dalug's cross-shaped promontory...
III
We've overused the Light. The power has grown out of control, and not even we can stop it.
IV
Four Warriors came from the Dark World and stopped the Flood of Light. The world has been saved...

The Library holds much of the back story to Final Fantasy III. Its interesting to see that at one point the Light had overwhelmed the world in much the same way as the Darkness does now.



I wonder where exactly they're referring to? It'd be a nice place to find for an upcoming dungeon.



Its a shame we've never heard of any of these. I guess ours would be on the "worst airships of the year" list as "smoldering pile of wreckage 1" and "smoldering pile of wreckage 2."



There's another hidden treasure room in Salonia, but nothing exceptional. Just another pair of FenixDowns here.



Who is this archmage and why should we care?

In the room opposite of the wizards are Salonia's engineers. They gladly hook us up with an airship, obviously delirious given our flying record.



♪♪ Go Above the Clouds! / Eternal Wind ♪♪

And here's the Nautilus! It is without a doubt the fastest airship in Final Fantasy III.



♪♪Let Me Know the Truth♪♪

West of Salonia we find a nondescript cave that just so happens to have one of the three people mentioned by the wizards of Salonia as having inherited the power of Archmage Noah. She's locked in a deep slumber, though, so there's nothing else we can do at the moment.



Further south (where we're supposed to be) is the previously impassible peninsula. Thanks to the nautilus, the winds are no issue, though.



FFIII is the only game (to my knowledge) in the series where you can get in random encounters when flying the airship. Thankfully, it is only in certain isolated areas such as this.



♪♪Let Me Know the Truth♪♪

At the end of the mountains we find a large mansion which, according to the title in transition, is home to the second of Noah's inheritors Dorga.

♪♪Danger!♪♪

Immediately after entering his mansion, though, we're attacked by a group of Moogles! I mean, until Dorga gets a closer look at us.



Like we didn't already know this from some of the previous bosses, Dorga reiterates that Zande is behind the chaos currently befalling the world.



Well, no wonder he's such a pissed off fiend. When you go from being immortal to being human, and your training partners inherit the power of magic and dreams respectively, you've got to feel more than a little cheated.



It turns out that Goldar's crystal was just a fake that turned things into gold, so we're a lot better off than we thought we were. We've still got to find the Earth Crystal, but at least its not gone forever.



Oh great, another friggin midget cave. Here's to hoping that it'll be one of those ones where we can change back after entering.

Dorga's House is home to another great spell for Katie, Haste, that will come in handy with some of the coming bosses. If for some reason you missed Life in Salonia you could pick it up here as well.



Even the moogles seem disappointed that Zande couldn't just enjoy his life as a human.



The entrance to the cave is hidden back in the deepest room of Dorga's House, with the entrance hidden by a switch on the candle.



And here we are, another mini dungeon!



Ugh...you can't even change back to normal size.



Fuck this, I'm going to have to change Ringo back to a Black Mage before I even think about taking this dungeon on.

Next Time: Magic Submarine

I'm with X/Zande on this one. Dude got mega-shafted.

I don't even remember getting into random encounters aboard the Nautilus on the DS version, but a slower, more heavily-armed vessel would get assailed once every few seconds.

Noah was kind of a dick when it comes to handing out universe-throttling power.

I don't remember this being in the ds version. Now things actually make some sense.

How did he even think this could possibly be a good idea?

Fair point, let me revise my earliar statement:

Gods and godlike beings seem to keep having this crazy idea that dying is awesome. (It is not)

Sounds like Square forgot their "But he fell in love with a human woman, and gave up his immortality to be with her" clause.

6/21/2010 - Under the Sea



♪♪The Dungeon♪♪

OK, so remember, another bullshit mini dungeon. Before this would have been solved by a combination of Ringo being a Black Wizard and luck.



This time, however, I'm exceedingly lazy and swap Ringo back to Thief. This grants me the Escape ability, that will 100% escape from any monster that is possible to evade. Not only that, it doesn't drop our entire party's defense to zero like using the plain old Run command.



Three uneventful floors later we find ourselves at our destination. There isn't a single treasure chest between here and the entrance.



♪♪Let Me Know the Truth♪♪

Not much longer to live? I thought you were immortal? Irregardless, we now have a magical submarine airship now!



It looks like our next destination is the Temple of Time, to recover Noah's Lute and awaken Unne (who we had discovered sleeping last update). Our ultimate goal is to take Unne and find the Great Ship, which I'm assuming is the penultimate airship.



Warping us to the outside, Dorga leaves us and begins his search for the key to Eureka.

♪♪Deep Under the Water♪♪

The Nautilus lives up to its namesake and is now a submarine. For every bit it gains in its versatility it loses in speed when descending below the waves. Take note that there are random battles when under the ocean.



♪♪Beneath the Horizon♪♪

Our real destination, though, is this cape south of Salonia and the Temple of Time that lies beneath.



The enemies here aren't nearly as bad as the last dungeon thanks to us being normal sized.



The Temple of Time is filled with locked doors, making the fact that we reverted Ringo back to Thief is perfect. There is a full set of Diamond gear down here, which is the best defensive gear that we can get for SL at this point.



Behemoths make an appearance in this dungeon as well (they first appeared in FFII, not III, though).



The remainder of the Diamond gear, and the defense enhancing Defender sword. There was also an Orialcon knife down here, which is the dagger equivalent of the Blood Sword.

Even the door to the final level of the dungeon requires either a Thief or a Magic Key.



There was a Bahamut palette swap dragon here as a random encounter as well, but its a total pushover.



♪♪Lute of Noah♪♪

We find the lute loot in the final locked door. The thing insists on playing itself before we're allowed to take it.



There's no magic circle exit here, so I hope you brought a White Wizard. Next stop, Unne's place!



♪♪Let Me Know the Truth / Lute of Noah♪♪

The lute seems to be doing its thing, wresting Unne from her endless slumber.

Unne is rather energetic for one said to have slept for ages; I guess magical sleep powers prevent muscle atrophy? Before she does anything else she takes a couple laps around the perimeter of her bedroom.



Just like everyone else, Unne is shocked (shocked!) that Zande is taking this whole "mortality" thing so poorly.



The Light Warriors don't really seem to know what to think of Unne and her incredibly forward demeanor. She's going with us to our next destination, though- the Ancient Ruins.



She also gives us our third fang, the Fire Fang, before departing. Only the Earth Fang remains, but that's hidden beyond a place inaccessible to anything but the Great Ship.



Just west of Salonia lie the Ancient Ruins and our next dungeon excursion.

Next time: FUCK THIS SPLITTING BULLSHIT GAH

Good times.

Good. Times.

Awww, you missed the big secret hidden in the waterfall room! (to be honest, I don't remember what it is...I think a geomancer's bell or something, but it's somewhat good) It's really just fun to find because of how well it's hidden.

edit: Turns out it's a Lamia harp and 2 protect rings.

I actually went through the middle one and didn't find anything, so I thought I had just remembered wrong about something being there.

6/30/2010 - GAAAAAAAAAH!



♪♪The Dungeon♪♪

So! Ancient Ruins! It sure will be nice to have the big airship at the bottom of this place.



A palette swap of one of the previous bosses is roaming about, but he's no big thing.



End of the line I guess, those scholars are doomed.



Unne proves her worth by vanishing the adamantite to the cleft of dimensions, cluttering up that void, rather than doing something useful like sending to the dwarves to make a sweet sword.



Before heading in, though, we take a quick detour to Dorga's Village, hidden in the mountains and accessible only by submarine. This is your one stop shop for most of the magic in the game.



Unne takes a quick break to complain about Zande's ungratefulness just like everyone else.



The only things new here are another level of spells for Katie and some summon magic. FYI- Wall in this game is really Reflect.

Since I know that the upcoming monsters are a total pain with physical attacks, I decide on a whim to make PERCY a Conjurer. This is like the Summoner's crappier little brother class.



He has a 50% chance of doing an attack and a 50% chance of doing a buff with each of the monsters as a Conjurer. Luckily, I've been getting mostly attacks with him.



Not to far in we find the misplaced scholars.



Also, an inexplicable set of shops with some really good (but really expensive) items.



Once you hit the second floor of this dungeon you come across the absolute worst part of Final Fantasy III - splitting enemies. Each time you hit a monster with a physical attack* they'll split into a second monster with an equal amount of HP. You can eventually strong-arm your way through this, but it takes forever.

*There is one exception we'll get to eventually.

A bit further in we start coming across more difficult splitting monsters.



Really more difficult. And even Ringo's 100% Escape move doesn't work against these guys, so you have to fight every single monster you come across. We've barely scratched the surface of the Ancient Ruins to boot.

I need some time to grind before I can take this on.

Next time: A New Airship? Maybe?

Not only is this dungeon filled with the biggest assholes in the game (besides Noah), but they're hidiously ugly to boot.

Been a while since I checked out this LP. Already got three of the four elemental fangs needed to get past Zande's lawn ornaments? I remember my first encounter with those, on DS, before knowing they could kill me, and on Chocobo to add insult to injury.

And wow, that splitting cave looks brutal in the Famicom game. The DS's three monster limit* in battles was a joke compared to this.

*Well okay, you fight four frogs at one point, but they're the exception.

Update coming next week, as I took a short hiatus for my birthday last week and a vacation this week.