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Lenophis
2010-03-20 10:36:55 pm
0-10
Quote from Winkwonle:
- do Ice cave (pick up Ice armor, Ice shield, 20,000 gold 1B; skip Flame sword, 40,000 gold in SW room)

Getting the ice armor seems a bit risky. I guess it's for the fire defense for the volcano, but is that really needed?

Quote:
- get to SLAB, leave room, WARP, finish Sea shrine (pick up Opal bracelet, Opal helmet, Opal gauntlet, Ribbon; skip the rest)

I generally get the Opal stuff on my first trip to the "second" floor, but that's more personal preference. I don't think either way will really be that faster.

Quote:
The motivation for changing the FFRW route after class change is that the second R is useless against Chaos after the first turn, whereas the W isn't (because of Hel2). Indeed, one character has to be deprived of Ribbon.

Luckily the Dragon Armor can make up for some of that. Generally, Gas Dragons will be the monsters to expose that hole.

Quote:
Anyone has an opinion on that new post-Lich route?

I'm guessing there's no more room for it, but would the White Shirt give any additional assistance? Aside from that, everything depends on things going correctly. Cry
Tuff_fish
2010-03-21 02:03:37 am
I watched your FFRW run in bits and pieces and thought it was a very good run.  I have some comments on it although I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get around to it if we're already working on a new route ;D.  Anyway I think the reviewers comments were vastly blown out of proportion.  For a 4+ hour SINGLE-SEGMENT run with such a huge amount of variance and randomness with battles, deaths, etc., I thought you played extremely well.  The routes in the towns needed some work though (thinking especially of one of the earlier Elfland trips here).  Reading the review thread, I got the impression that some of the people that rejected the run didn't have much of a clue what they were talking about.

For example one of them suggested skipping the Castle of Ordeals entirely, which we all know is technically possible in this game.  But the zeus gauntlet and heal staff are borderline broken, thats how strong they are.  The ice sword on a fighter is dominant for a good chunk of the game and the gold bracelet is the best armor for a mage at that time by a long shot.  Most of the best equipment in the game requires the class change, like excalibur and opal stuff to name a few (among many others).  I think you handled that one a lot better than I would be able to.

Also I know the team was questioned quite a bit (unfairly), but just getting the run submitted in and of itself is impressive, considering the single-segment thread has been around for almost 5 years and nobody else has to my knowledge.  anyway, enough of that.  Cheesy


Thoughts on your FFRR route post-earth cave...

- I like the early encounters you suggested

- Ice cave gives good XP and gold with the undead and wizards.  Enter at level 9 for 3 shots of FIR2 per red mage and you can go FIR2/zeus against undead then switch when one guy is out of charges.  Wizards go down in 2 rounds with zeus+attacks.  This should be good for level 11 if nobody dies (a big if).   

I'd love to skip the ice armor since that floor of the ice cave is one of the worst in the entire game but it's such a valuable piece of equipment.  If you could skip it you'd have to pick up the opal armor in the sea shrine though.  I like the way you have it.  The 40k gold in the SW corner of that room can be skipped, I think.  1b treasures, Cardia chests, and agama farming should (?) get you what you need.  Plus there is a lot of gold in the sea shrine/waterfall if needed.

- I think the second fighter should be kept alive for agama farming, if you choose to do that.  I also think the ice sword is worth picking up.

I did another little test on the agamas starting at level 11 with fighter (ice sword)/fighter(ice sword)/red mage(heal staff/silver sword)/dead. 25 fights took a shade under 10 minutes (!).  All but 4 ended in the first round, and that's with the living red mage manning the heal staff for a lot of it.  The key is that level 11 fighters with ice swords get 3 hits each.  I think trying this with F/R results in a lot of 2 (or even 3) round fights and ends up wasting the time you would save anyway. 

Even killing off the 4th member of your party doesn't save a whole lot of time, maybe a few minutes.  But in this route that character has very little value after class change and before chaos.

- You're buying Warp and bottle (obvious) after the volcano.  Can you explain the 1 proring?  Is it just for defense?  I'll be honest, I don't know exactly where the proring is needed anyway.  A lot of people use it for eye farming.  Normally there's such a huge surplus of gold at the end of the game it's easy to just buy 4 of them and not think about it much. 

- Same thing with the ribbons.  I also used the idea of a 'throwaway' character against chaos, although I didn't intentionally let them die off for a while (I think it's a great idea in this route though).  It's just that there's only 3 ribbons (needed vs Chaos), 1 opal bracelet, etc.  Where specifically is a ribbon needed where Dragon/Aegis isn't good enough.. Phanton, Lich2, and Chaos?  Where would an opal helmet be useful for the extra absorb where a ribbon isn't needed?  Genuine questions.. I don't know.

- There should be a lot of places you can utilize houses.  The first one outside astos's castle and the second one between earth cave runs are obvious.  With extra cash (or miscellaneous ones like in Ordeals) you should be able to pick some up at item shops.  Using one outside onrac saves something like 40 steps by not having to go to the inn. 

- This is mostly obsolete in this route with agama farming and RR being petrified for ToFR, but I love the idea of giving a red the best sword if it helps him get over the next hit threshold.  E.g. dragon/coral/silver swords at level 6 for 2 hits or defense/sun swords for 3 hits at level 12 and 15, respectively. Of course this only applies if you plan on using it (and not say zeus/heal staff)

- Realized red wizards can equip silver gauntlets.  D'oh moment

- Sea shrine is still incredibly easy even with 3 players, but what is your plan vs ghosts?  What about something like defense - mage staff- fir2?  The mage staff is so little out of the way and will probably help in a handful of fights, likely worth it IMO.  You can also use it with thor/FIR2 to burn through packs of vampires or green medusae for huge XP in one round fights.

- Interesting decision taking black shirt over white shirt, although I understand with having the reds petrified in ToFR and losing the armor spot since the last mage can't wear it.  Also there's nowhere to put it on the fighters unless you want to give up an even more useful armor slot.  I think it would be more useful vs chaos though but I'm not sure.

- It's amazing that just a pair of level 15-16ish fighters can blow through the ToFR as easy as they do.  The balance in this game makes no sense at all Smiley

- To my knowledge, ribbon/proring don't affect help vs status effect hits, so you can put the reds in full armor at the front to get petrified.  You should double check this of course.  Defense/Ruse the fighters in the back.

- I also thought about the lack of ruse later on due to the level 1 spell decisions but I don't think there's anyway around it.  Plus with the 2 reds the boss fights are typically a breeze since the fiends go down so fast.  In the ToFR it looks like they are petrified anyway for most of them.
Winkwonle
2010-03-21 07:26:12 am
About the Ice armor: it is risky in a risky part of the game, so it would be nice skipping it if possible indeed. The alternatives are 1) Flame armor and 2) Opal armor. Flame armor leads to about as much of a risky fight as the Ice armor, but in a dungeon that is really not dangerous at all otherwise. The only problem that it may generate is that Agama farming will be limited to one fire-protected fighter. That being said, the red mage is already without proper protection to fire, and survives quite well, so it shouldn't really be a problem. It just costs a little extra time to go off-battle and use Heal potions from time to time. And if we farm with just one fighter + one red mage, then that issue doesn't come up. Also, Flame armor is a little more out of the way than Ice armor (a matter of 30 seconds or so, not to be worried about). I like skipping Opal armor if possible. It's much more out of the way, on a floor with common no-run encounters (Ghosts and WzSahags), somewhat later in the game (well... all goes so fast anyway). I think it should only be considered if we're planning on having two charges of WARP: one for going back from the Opal armor room, and one for the trip back from the SLAB floor.

About the Ribbon vs Dragon armor + Aegis shield + ProRing combo, it seems that there is a little confusion. There are 8 elemental categories in FF1: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth (ex: QAKE, CRACK), Status (ex: INK, DAZZLE), Poison (ex: BANE, POISON), Time (ex: STOP, ZAP!), Death (ex: RUB, SQUINT). Dragon armor protects against Fire, Ice, Lightning. Aegis Shield protects against Poison. ProRing protects against Death. On a fighter equipped with these, Status, Time and Earth effects remain effective. For the Phantom and Lich2, Time effects are the problem. For Chaos, Earth effects (well, just CRACK in fact) are to be feared. For the rest of the game, pretty much, you don't need to Ribbon up your front fighter. Personally, I find that protecting one of your two fighters (main damage dealers) against CRACK is worth it when it comes to Chaos.

About keeping two fighters alive for Agama farming, we'd have to compare carefully. I would think that both ways the time end up close to the same, although I tend to think that it is faster (yet riskier) with two characters. First, instead of fighting 20 Agamas with two characters, we would have to fight 30 Agamas with three characters. I don't recall having to spend three rounds killing a lone Agama with the two character configuration, but it is very common to spend two rounds indeed. Also, three characters ask for an extra detour for picking up the Ice sword in Gurgu. On the plus side, having both fighters at higher levels make Lich2 risk-free. The only other thing that it changes is that if you decide to skip Masmune, you get two 4-hit fighters instead of just one for Chaos (make sure to use Defense and Xcalber, not Sun sword and Xcalber). Finally, on the run looking good perspective, which seem important to the reviewing process, I believe that killing off two characters is more impressive because it makes you finish the game at a lower average team level.

Entering the Agama farming process at level 10 instead of 11 doesn't make much of a difference. It does take level 11 to do 3-hit attacks with the Ice sword. So you'll do 2-hit attacks between level 10 and 11. That is at most four fights, and on average a little under two. I don't know how much faster it is to farm exp in the comfortable setting of lone Agamas as compared to earning it with irregular undead fights in the Ice cave. It does seem like burning an entire screen of undead monsters in a single round shouldn't lead to a speed deficit (although that exp gets split over all four characters).

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the status effect hits go through armor elemental resistance. I'm not sure that having those unequipped helps at all. Will have to check about that though. Anyway, it is very feasible to keep the armors on while getting petrified, and that's what I do most of the time anyway. I think in my YouTube run I just wanted to be conservative. Also, RUSE is not as useful with FFRR as it was with FFRW, where boss battles are longer. I agree with you that it can be skipped without regret.

About Black shirt and White shirt, I was mainly asking myself on what occasions these would serve. We're keeping in mind that both red mages remain petrified for the whole ToFR until (in principle) right before Tiamat2. Note that we're skipping all fights inside the Sky castle and that we're busy casting FAST during the Tiamat1 fight. So, the question is: which is better against Tiamat2 and Chaos? White or Black? I lean toward Black. I don't think that White is worth the trouble of using against Tiamat2, who seldom attacks physically. For Chaos, the strategy is going all-in on offense, so here again, I wouldn't go for White. With FFRW I would pick up both shirts, but the strategies for bosses are not the same. With FFRR, when I pick up both shirts, White just ends up sitting there doing nothing.

About Mage staff and Ghosts, I'm keeping in head the perspective of skipping Opal armor and everything on that floor (and using WARP to go through it only once). That makes the likelyhood of getting a Ghost fight much lower than it would be otherwise. They can still be encountered on floor 4B (visited twice). I did a little job of step counting just for the fun of it (tiles with no encounters do not contribute to step count):
- Floor 2B, skip everything and WARP on way back: 65 steps
- Floor 2B, also pick up Opal armor only: 2x49=98 additional steps (using WARP there will save 21 steps)
- Floor 2B, pick up Opal armor and Mage staff: 49+73=122 additional steps
- Floor 2B, pick up Opal armor, Light axe, and Mage staff: 49+2x7+73=136 additional steps
- Floor 4B (first time), straight up: 64 steps
- Floor 2B (little square room): 14 steps
- Floor 4B (second time), pick up Ribbon: 51 steps
- Rest of Sea Shrine (except SLAB floor), skip everything: 249 steps
- Total steps (my route): 443
- Total steps with possible Ghosts (my route): 194
- Average number of fights (my route): 13.84
- Average number of no-run fights (my route): 2.84
- Average number of Ghost fights (my route): 1.14
- Total steps (with 3 items pick up): 579
- Total steps with possible Ghosts (with 3 items pick up): 330
- Average number of fights (with 3 items pick up): 18.09
- Average number of no-run fights (with 3 items pick up): 4.44
- Average number of Ghost fights (with 3 items pick up): 1.93

I'm happy to receive your comments on my posted run. I'm aware of the planning errors that I had, especially in Elfland. I was stressed and a little confused from other routes that I was testing at the same time. Next time I will use a cheat sheet for what to buy when and what to equip when. I've also got the impression that some reviewers didn't know the game well and still went on throwing strong affirmations about my strategy. Thanks for being on my side on this. I did consider skipping Ordeals and I voted strongly against it. It takes around 10 minutes to complete (was part 12/28 on the YouTube video) and it helps a great deal. I hope they didn't have the TAS in mind when saying that. As for questioning the team, they didn't sound like they were reading the forum discussion very much. In fact, I was a little insulted because they made it look like I hadn't thought about my strategy very much. In fact, I tried a LOT of different routes before that one. Ultimately, I went for a team that focused on stability rather than absolute speed. I was content to get a successful run at all, after so many failed attempts. For the record, I still think that FFRW is more stable than FFRR. But hey, your suggested route may save a whole half hour overall, so there is no way that I'm not going to give it a serious try.
Lenophis
2010-03-21 04:18:47 pm
0-10
Quote from Winkwonle:
About the Ice armor: it is risky in a risky part of the game, so it would be nice skipping it if possible indeed. The alternatives are 1) Flame armor and 2) Opal armor.

3) Get the proposed 40k to skip and use it for Steel Armor. Same defense as the two elemental pieces, 24 more points of evade penalty, and only 8 points less defense vs Opal Armor. You could pick it up on the same trip as Warp.

Quote:
Flame armor leads to about as much of a risky fight as the Ice armor, but in a dungeon that is really not dangerous at all otherwise. The only problem that it may generate is that Agama farming will be limited to one fire-protected fighter.

Are you doing the waterfall and Onrac in succession, or are you making a second trip to the area? If a second trip, you could potentially just do the waterfall to pick up everything there then do the volcano, which would give 2 members fire protection. I don't see you doing this, though, so I guess make proper use of the heal staff.

Quote:
About the Ribbon vs Dragon armor + Aegis shield + ProRing combo, it seems that there is a little confusion. There are 8 elemental categories in FF1: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth (ex: QAKE, CRACK), Status (ex: INK, DAZZLE), Poison (ex: BANE, POISON), Time (ex: STOP, ZAP!), Death (ex: RUB, SQUINT). Dragon armor protects against Fire, Ice, Lightning. Aegis Shield protects against Poison. ProRing protects against Death. On a fighter equipped with these, Status, Time and Earth effects remain effective.

Aegis protects against whatever "stun" falls under. Poison is the one unprotected (which is why I said the Gas Dragons would be the monster to expose that hole earlier).

Quote:
For the Phantom and Lich2, Time effects are the problem. For Chaos, Earth effects (well, just CRACK in fact) are to be feared. For the rest of the game, pretty much, you don't need to Ribbon up your front fighter. Personally, I find that protecting one of your two fighters (main damage dealers) against CRACK is worth it when it comes to Chaos.

If one character is indeed expendable, you could swap the ribbon to one of those fighters for that battle, leaving the expendable character indeed expendable. Tongue

Quote:
About keeping two fighters alive for Agama farming, we'd have to compare carefully.

If you didn't have to go through hell first, I'd say you could do the farming on Kary's floor in the temple of fiends. Sad

Quote:
Entering the Agama farming process at level 10 instead of 11 doesn't make much of a difference. It does take level 11 to do 3-hit attacks with the Ice sword. So you'll do 2-hit attacks between level 10 and 11. That is at most four fights, and on average a little under two. I don't know how much faster it is to farm exp in the comfortable setting of lone Agamas as compared to earning it with irregular undead fights in the Ice cave. It does seem like burning an entire screen of undead monsters in a single round shouldn't lead to a speed deficit (although that exp gets split over all four characters).

The Agama's are safer than any battle with undead in the Ice Cave during that initial trip.

Quote:
About Black shirt and White shirt, I was mainly asking myself on what occasions these would serve. We're keeping in mind that both red mages remain petrified for the whole ToFR until (in principle) right before Tiamat2. Note that we're skipping all fights inside the Sky castle and that we're busy casting FAST during the Tiamat1 fight. So, the question is: which is better against Tiamat2 and Chaos? White or Black? I lean toward Black. I don't think that White is worth the trouble of using against Tiamat2, who seldom attacks physically. For Chaos, the strategy is going all-in on offense, so here again, I wouldn't go for White. With FFRW I would pick up both shirts, but the strategies for bosses are not the same. With FFRR, when I pick up both shirts, White just ends up sitting there doing nothing.

I was mainly wondering about white for the times that Tiamat and Chaos will physically attack instead of use magic. Chaos does about 300 damage, Kraken can do 400, and I believe Tiamat does in the area of 150. While keeping with the all-offensive mindset, the expendable character could be using the white shirt two or three times before dying, which would give 120 more evade. Then again, that expendable character is likely one of the reds (or is the red), so you'll need to be casting Haste. Haste is far more valuable than reducing 1 hit from these guys.
Winkwonle
2010-03-21 06:42:46 pm
Quote:
3) Get the proposed 40k to skip and use it for Steel Armor. Same defense as the two elemental pieces, 24 more points of evade penalty, and only 8 points less defense vs Opal Armor. You could pick it up on the same trip as Warp.


I must agree and disagree at the same time. The proposed 40k is even more dangerous to pick up than the Ice armor (in my experience). That Ice cave floor is just wicked. I must insist on skipping that gold. Nevertheless, your suggestion of relying on Steel Armor has taken me by surprise and looks very good. I don't know when, but at some point (years ago) I had completely excluded that possibility because of the money it costs versus the almost inexistent benefits it gives over Iron armor between Melmond and the Ice cave. After the Sea Shrine, Mirage Tower and Sky Castle, when money is plenty and danger finally shows ahead (ToFR), buying Steel armor would be perfect. Although, come and think of it, the two active fighters could always share Dragon armor and Opal bracelet until Tiamat2, and then Iron armor doesn't look too awful (Tiamat2 doesn't hit frequently and Chaos hits too hard to bother using armor).

Quote:
Are you doing the waterfall and Onrac in succession, or are you making a second trip to the area?


Again, a question that feels bad but isn't. I was almost excluding the possibility of making two trips, but it just takes something like 1-2 additional minutes to do so. The idea would be to do 1) Sea Shrine, 2) Gurgu with Agama farming, 3) Waterfall with WARP. This can save a trip to Melmond by combining Unne with the buying of WARP. Also, the Sea Shrine offers a Ribbon as well as good armor for the red mage. Finally, it would be a reasonable occasion to buy Steel armor if I elect to do so.

Quote:
Poison is the one unprotected (which is why I said the Gas Dragons would be the monster to expose that hole earlier).


I would be very surprised of that. Gas Dragons usually do 100-200 damage per character with their poison gas ability. Using a Ribbon or an Aegis shield reduce that to 40-60, which is still a lot, but makes it possible to survive. I never saw my Ribbon-less fighter take amounts of damage as high as the lack of protection against Poison elemental would suggest. Also, Aegis protects against Poison according to http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=522595&topic=41701255.

Quote:
swap the ribbon to one of those fighters for that battle


Yep. That's the plan.

Quote:
If you didn't have to go through hell first, I'd say you could do the farming on Kary's floor in the temple of fiends.


The farming is pretty much only used to have access to WARP. Since that spell saves 10 minutes total, it is always a good idea to farm if it uses less than 10 minutes. Also, like you said, having level 16 or so with fighters is required to survive Lich2, so Kary's floor is too late for that. Might be OK to go from 16 to 18 in Kary's floor, to get the 4-hit threshold for Kraken2. I don't plan on doing that, but its there amongst the possibilities.

Yeah, the only place where White shirt could be used would be Tiamat2. I don't allow myself to use a charge of FAST there, because Tiamat2 is not dangerous. Also, the expendable red mage is not expendable during Tiamat2.

Well, I'll have to give these new ideas a couple of thoughts and a small playtest. To sum up, 1) skip Ice armor, 2) do Sea Shrine without WARP (before Gurgu), 3) grab WARP while talking to Unne, and also buy Steel armor. Thanks for the suggestions.
Lenophis
2010-03-21 08:06:45 pm
0-10
Quote:
That Ice cave floor is just wicked. I must insist on skipping that gold.

I believe you can get some very easy-to-get gold in the waterfall then (25,000 for selling the wizard staff, 20,350 total in the three other chests) to make up for that...unless you were planning on using it for something else.

Quote:
I would be very surprised of that. Gas Dragons usually do 100-200 damage per character with their poison gas ability. Using a Ribbon or an Aegis shield reduce that to 40-60, which is still a lot, but makes it possible to survive. I never saw my Ribbon-less fighter take amounts of damage as high as the lack of protection against Poison elemental would suggest.

Perhaps my memory of the situation isn't correct then, and FFHackster can be helpful only to a degree. I wish I had a save file at the end handy to test that.
Tuff_fish
2010-03-21 09:58:17 pm
Geting steel armor is an intriguing idea.  I'll add that on one of my runs in ToFR, my second fighter with full HP wearing ice armor got 1HK'd by Kraken2.  I'm not sure what the probability of that is (likely fairly low), but the only armors better are dragon/opal.  Interestingly enough, both reds were petrified, but the front fighter basically solo'd kraken2 no problem, after getting 3xdefense off.  One of kraken's crits even got through though (i.e. rolled a 0 on the 0-200 scale). 

Thanks for that clarification on ribbons/prorings.  I know from my many playthroughs that the Aegis shield protects from gas D's poison, no question about it.

Good points on the agama farming, but I think at a certain point you have to ask yourself if saving a minute or two while adding danger to the route is acceptable.  I couldn't give you a strong opinion either way right now, but dying somewhere around the marsh cave and dying in ToFR are two very different things for obvious reasons. 

One idea I did have a while back was to delay Gurgu until later, temporarily skipping the waterfall, and going straight to oxyale/sea shrine.  Then you power through that quickly, fighting a lot since ice/ice/zeus kills stuff so fast, then getting warpe before going to the waterfall.  It's still a bit of backtracking.  I think I decided that it was inferior but probably worth mentioning.

^^ Actually I see you mentioned this in a later post, although I think the idea would be to SKIP agama farming.  I think agama farming is faster, though. 

Regarding undeads in the ice cave, I can't imagine not fighting them.  Zeus - Fir2 kills almost invariably in one round, gives good gold and XP, and is very safe.  Assuming we enter the ice cave somewhere around level 9, our luck stat still isn't very high and that's compounded by stun attacks if we try to run.
Tuff_fish
2010-03-22 06:55:53 pm
If you skipped gurgu temporarily and went to the sea shrine first, you wouldn't have the ice sword.  Flame sword would be the obvious choice then.  I can see how thinking about/planning different routes can lead to confusion  Grin
Winkwonle
2010-03-23 04:14:10 am
Flame sword, or just Silver, or even Light axe.

I don't like earning exp in the Ice cave and Sea shrine very much. I know that it's not dangerous, goes fast, and the random encounters are there even if you don't decide to fight them. Yet, it uses spell charges that can serve for healing (thus saving potions), and it gives exp to useless characters. I don't know, you may be right too... it's just a feeling, really. If we're going to talk about optimizing the exp acquisition plan, then I'd prefer having something more reliable than random encounters. I agree that level 9 in the Ice cave is a little low for running purposes. I'd fight undead monsters up to level 10.

The whole Sea shrine, backtrack to Melmond with Steel, Gurgu, then Waterfall thing has not been very convincing when I tried it. It works fine I guess, but it doesn't make the Agama farming much different (having a Ribbon and all), which I believe was the idea. If not, building exp to two fighters and a red mage up to level 15 seems a little too much. At the same time, that route removes the possibility of using WARP to go back from the SLAB room.

You know, Tuff_fish, what you said make me think again about going solo fighter for the ToFR until Tiamat2. It makes Gas D encounters almost impossible, though. It also make Water encounters very dangerous. On the other hand, you don't have to worry about a weaker character for Lich2 and Kraken2. I'm just saying this for fun, haven't given it a serious test try yet, but just look at this.

I would farm exp with Agamas with one F and one R up to level 15. Then I would go with two fighters and a red for the waterfall and sea shrine, leaving R to die once he used WARP the second time. Skip opal armor in B2 and opal shield in the SLAB room. Use just two fighters until ToFR. Skip Mirage tower 1F treasures. Loot Mirage tower 2F though (Thor hammer, Dragon armor, Sun sword), as well as most of Sky castle 2F (Opal shield, Ribbon, Black/White shirt, ADAMANT). Ideal levels after Sky castle would be 16, 13, 15, 10. Petrify all but the lead fighter, unpetrify all but the weaker R after getting Masmune, WARP, beat Tiamat2, reach Chaos, then unpetrify the R. Ideal configuration for Chaos would be
- R level 10: with almost no equipment, 1 charge of FAST,
- F level 18: Xcalber, Dragon armor, Opal shield, Ribbon, ProRing,
- R level 15: Sun sword, Opal bracelet, Ribbon, ProRing, (Black shirt),
- F level 13: Masmune, Gold bracelet, Ice shield, Ribbon, Opal gauntlet.

Because of the weak R being dead for so long, we can add a couple of goodies to carry around for other characters. I'd keep Zeus gauntlet and the Opal helmet. Maybe get the White shirt after all. If looting Mirage tower 1F, then of course Heal helmet is good. Just make sure that that weak R remains petrified for Tiamat2. During the Chaos fight, use FAST first, and then use White shirt (or Heal staff) for the few rounds that the weak R survives.

I'm worried that that plan may be too risky to be applicable, but if it works, imagine how perfect it would look. Skipping so much stuff. Making levels fit exactly with the weapons' 4-hit and 3-hit thresholds. Going from level 16 to 18 in ToFR with a lone fighter requires just 2-3 battles.

I still wonder about an important detail that also bothers me for other routes. When can we buy two ProRings? Should we buy two ProRings, in fact? There is one forced trip to Gaia for OXYALE. When I get there, I usually have access to 20k of extra gold, so I buy one ProRing. Any ideas on where to get another 20k apart from the SW room in the Ice cave? Are there good chests in Gurgu that are not out of the way? I'll look into that if no one else does, but I'd be interested in suggestions. I'm currently picking up 20k in Ice cave B1, all the gold in Ordeals, and 20k in Cardia.

Anyway, I won't have much time to test routes this week. All it takes really is testing all these suggestions. Sometimes I load an old saved state and I start a new game from Reset instead of Power, just to simulate the randomness of the encounter table offset. Otherwise, a lot of games end up very similar. Then it's easy to get the wrong idea on how dangerous a route is (or how tight on budget, which can also become a problem).
Lenophis
2010-03-23 03:18:30 pm
0-10
To me, getting ProRings is a no-brainer. Same defense as the Opal gauntlets, 2 points less evade penalty, and the instant death protection. They are the superior piece of armor for the glove slot.

Suggestion, since you're getting the Dragon Armor anyway. Dump the Zeus Gauntlets and pick up the Thor's Hammer, since weapon slots are bound to be much more excessive in quantity. Cheesy If your budget prevents you from getting ProRings for everyone, keep the Zeus and maybe get Thor's anyway. It sounds like you don't need a backup Lit2 item caster, and if not, disregard.
Winkwonle
2010-03-23 04:11:40 pm
Absolutely, ProRings are the best! I intended to say: how to buy two ProRings on the first trip to Gaia, so as to avoid going back there a second time later? Also, Zeus gauntlet would be for the Sea Shrine only. After that, yeah, dump it alright. 8)

Sorry if that wasn't very clear...
Lenophis
2010-03-23 05:27:15 pm
0-10
Ahhhh, my apologies. With the limited budget, I don't think avoiding a return trip will be unavoidable. You'd need to pick up every gil chest everywhere in the Ice and Earth Caves, the Waterall, all of Cardia, Ordeals, and possibly the volcano. This is also assuming you need the 50,000 for the bottle. Cry

What's a good source of gil at that point, monster-wise? I'm thinking mummies, but they are more for experience than gil... How much do the agamas give?
Tuff_fish
2010-03-23 07:15:48 pm
I think the idea of running through ToFR with a solo fighter needs some testing.  I'm very skeptical though.  There are a lot of encounters that would cause problems and I'm not even sure how much battle counting would help.  If you could find a relatively 'safe' window that might work, but would most likely require the entire game to be planned out battle-wise.

The no run encounters are especially tough.  Gas D's, Zombie D's (stun), worms, fr giants/wolves earths, waters, are some that I can think of off the top of my head.  Would the plan be to defense up and attack with excalibur on things like packs of water? (I can't help but to use the full names for these anymore).  Figure the fiends will generally be difficult as well.  But all the equipment you can skip does seem interesting.




Anyway, in another playthrough my level 17 2nd fighter wearing ice armor again got 1hko'd by kraken.  Even if it's close he can still get wiped by LIT2.  I think the only way that character will reliably survive is to be fully leveled AND wearing opal armor, which of course we'd rather not get.  More on this in a bit. 



Re: ice cave encounters.  It can't possibly be right to finally get a bunch of fir2 charges (3 for each red) and zeus... then run away from the undead.  Packs often give in the range of 2k-3k gold and take 1 round to kill, safely (as opposed to trying to run and possibly getting stun locked).  You can plan to get there at level 9 so the XP division thing isn't an issue.

I think this will help the gold issue a little bit.  We still need to shoot for ~100k after gurgu if we want to get 2 prorings before the sea shrine.  To clarify, is that just for good defense and eventually better odds vs Tiamat, without having to go through Gaia again?

We can skimp on equipment in Crescent Lake to an extent.  Silver helmets only give a 1 absorb upgrade over iron helmets, definitely skip those.  Shields are a +4 upgrade, keep those.  gauntlet is a +2 upgrade, maybe buy one only for the front fighter.  Regarding weapons, dragon/coral is a straight trade-in to 2x silver which I probably wouldn't mess with.  You could not cap off heal potions (yet).  99 is only needed in ToFR anyway. 

I normally do mass shopping in elfland AFTER ice cave and floater, but we could really budget here.  Instead of buying cur2 for all 4, lit2, fast/ice2/pure etc, just buy what you really need.  Definitely skip pure, maybe skip cur2 for the fighters and lit2 for the reds.  MAYBE ice2 on the strong red, but I doubt it.  When is it helpful except vs waters really?  Also I'll add here that you *CAN* buy spells for dead people, although they have to be alive to use inn and replenish the charges.

Agama farming gives some gold.  However, doing all that (and following the F/R/dead/dead route), I still came up short.  Hence I propose....



Just keeping your damn second fighter alive for agama farming (I think just about every gf I've ever had has called me stubborn at one time or another ;D)

I figured since I already tested agama farming with 4 players and 3 I might as well do 2.  Setup and results:

- Started at party level 10-10-10-11 (F/R/F/R)
- front 2 players were at 1hp, armor unequipped, red out of cure/cur2, and died in the first fight
- back rdm is lvl 11 XP:17366 (about 4k above the rest of the party).  I picked the fighter with the higher luck to survive.
- fighter (knight, whatever) had ice sword, iron armor, ice shield, silver gauntlet, iron helm
- red had silver sword/heal staff, gold bracelet and zeus gauntlet

- killed 18 agamas in 9 minutes for RDZ level 15.  Most lasted 2 rounds.
- had to use all of the strong RDZ cur2/cure between fights (in addition to using the heal staff a decent amount) and had to use about 10 heal potions.  Being in the second slot and without ice protection the red takes a small beating here (the fights are longer as well), even with gold bracelet and zeus equipped.


By comparison, here is the data from the 3 party formation (the 4 party info is a few pages back and likely not relevant):

Quote:
I did another little test on the agamas starting at level 11 with fighter (ice sword)/fighter(ice sword)/red mage(heal staff/silver sword)/dead. 25 fights took a shade under 10 minutes (!).  All but 4 ended in the first round, and that's with the living red mage manning the heal staff for a lot of it.


Since XP levels did not start off the same (the 3 party formation would have needed 2 more fights in this specific test, and 3 more in your route), we'll say that is a wash with the fact that we had to dip into heal potions with the 2 person team.  In all, you save ~1 minute fighting the agamas and the trip to the ice sword, which if I recall correctly is something like 50 steps out of the way (~25 both ways).  I maintain that it is better to keep the fighter alive and get the ice sword.  I think there is also gold in that room, which along with the extra agamas you fight, should give enough gold for the bottle, warp, and 2 prorings.

I think in a perfect game your strategy is better.  However after surviving Ordeals and ice cave, I think something along the lines of an extra ~2-3 minutes can be forgiven if it improves our chances in so many spots (sky castle, lich2, kraken2, probably more). It might also help us kill some fiends and unrunnables faster too.


If that doesn't work, and the early 2nd proring is important enough, maybe consider selling the gold bracelet.  Run through the sea shrine with chain+zeus on the red, and replace the gold bracelet with iron armor on the fighter against Chaos.



Also, one last thing I wanted to point out.  The defense sword might be better for the red mage than the sun sword against Chaos, even at level 15. (if the defense sword item/ruse is part of the strategy, ignore this)

Figure the lvl15 red will have somewhere along the lines of 18 strength, so he'll have a base attack/hit% of 9/35. With defense (30/35) he'll be at 39/70; with sun (32/30) he'll be at 41/65.  Against most monsters I'd agree that the sun would be better in this situation, but Chaos has 100 absorb and thus all normal (i.e. not critical) successful attacks by the red will result in 1 damage.

However since the defense sword has a higher weapon index number, it has higher chances for a critical.  I can't seem to find the relevant list, but we should be able to determine based on the probability of a critical and the damage each would do (the additional damage of a critical is unaffected by absorb) which one would be better for that fight. 



Finally, while I don't support intentionally skipping the masamune, there is a spot I might consider it.  If the strong red has to use life to revive a fighter, he won't have a shot of warp.  I think in that situation it might be better to just wing it.

I like the weak RDM using the white shirt after he gets his charge of fast off and before he dies.  Mostly because Chaos can really mess your strategy up by getting a lucky stun against the masamune user (status attack, can't be blocked with equipment). 
Winkwonle
2010-03-24 07:57:09 am
My god, so many good remarks!

The most important point of what you said is the timing comparison for Agama farming with F/R vs F/F/R. Here is a quick summary of the tradeoffs:
- F/R: skip Gurgu chests, 9 minutes of Agama, lack 20k for second ProRing (or ~1 minute for a second trip to Gaia), skip Mirage tower 1F chests, ToFR with solo fighter
- F/F/R: ~1 minute Gurgu chests, ~11 minutes Agama, affordable second ProRing, OHKO at Kraken2 / grab Opal armor, ~1 minute Mirage chests, more ToFR battles for level 18.

I was reticent to F/F/R because of the ~3 minutes that are lost in Gurgu, which are only directly compensated with an increase of safety in ToFR. I do think that something in the order of 5 minutes start counting on the total game time.

I tested solo fighter in ToFR for fun, without even counting battles, and it was alright (though a little risky). I started at level 16, and because I didn't arrange to avoid no-run fights, I ended up at level 21 for Chaos. Anyway, ZombieD repeatedly didn't stun me. FrGiants are no problem at all. Worms are no problem in 1F, but are in Tiamat2's floor (where they appear in groups of 3-4). Gas Ds and Waters are deadly, no surprise (although I managed to survive). I used Defense for Earths and Waters. Heal potions were not a problem at all. I ended up with 30 extra and never used Heal staff. Anyway, I felt like it was risky and I wouldn't like it in a single segment run unless I'm sure that the encounters are carefully planned ahead.

In view of the risk factor and of your other good arguments, I'll suppose that we opt for F/F/R in Gurgu and F/F in ToFR for the rest of this post. I tried my luck against Kraken2 with 20 test fights with F/F. The strategy was to put the strong fighter in front and use RUSE once. The second fighter would be in fourth row with Defense and would use it three times before starting to fight. So out of 20 battles:
- 14 were straight victories
- 4 were victories with one dead character
- 2 were losses
Both fighters were at level 17, using Xcalber and Sun sword respectively. I didn't try equipping Defense like you suggested, since it was already convincingly winning.

I invite you to repeat these tests. Just be careful to 1) load the saved state, 2) skip a couple of frames, 3) save the saved state, and 4) start the combat. This avoids leaving the random number generator in the same position from one try to the other. Also, I recommend keeping a saved state of somewhere before entering the combat, just in case you need to review your strategy. But I'm sure you were already doing all that. I'm just saying.

About the ProRings, yes, it's just for good defense without having to go through Gaia again. It may not seem worth anything, but that defense will stick with you through the whole Waterfall, Sea Shrine, Mirage Tower and Sky Castle. I wouldn't bother going without the second ProRing. I'm mostly wondering if it's easy to fit in the budget. I've been thinking for a long time that selling Coral and Dragon to buy 2xSilver was a no brainer. It's not. Silver swords sell for 2k, so when you do sell them, you lose 2k for each (compared to selling Coral or Dragon). Since one red mage will probably end up using Zeus all the time, I may consider keeping one of Coral/Dragon for Ordeals and the Ice cave. I prefer this to skipping Silver gauntlets and such. Good evade may save your life against Sorcerers. Not capping heal potions seem OK. I wouldn't get Lit2 for anyone, but I would get Cur2 for all characters (it saves lives in ToFR). Ice2 is not worth the trouble, like you said, since the red mages will be inactive in the ToFR, where Gas D's and Waters dwell.

I don't really like selling the Gold bracelet, unless we get the Ice armor. I don't mind using Iron armor for Chaos either, but I doubt it'll come to that. I'd give Opal bracelet to the second fighter and Gold bracelet to the strong red mage. I'd leave the weak red mage unarmored. The only thing that I like about the Iron armor is that it would be very ironic. That armor would have seen the Rapier and the Masmune on the same character.  Roll Eyes

About skipping Masmune, it's another good point for the F/F/R option. We can expect the two fighters to have level 17-18 after Tiamat2, so in situations where Masmune has to be skipped, we can just do one or two more battles to get to 18.

In the last test run that I did, with the two fighters tandem for ToFR (starting level 16), I reached Chaos with levels 18, 17, 15, 10, using Xcalber and Masmune at 4-hit each. I didn't encounter any Gas D, nor any Earth, nor any Water. I had 4xZombieD as well as 2xFrGiant+2xFrWolf, and later on I got 3xWorm. If you're interested, I can find the encounter table offset that I was at when I entered the ToFR.

One last thing. Battle counting is very hard in my experience. It requires a lot of concentration. It leads to hesitation which looks bad. BUT. It can make the solo F work. It can make Ordeals and the Ice cave almost danger free. If we're doing it, I don't mind spending a minute or two going in circles in front of the Temple of Fiends just to align the encounter table offset correctly. The worst thing about battle counting is the additional time required set up the initial table offset correctly. If you die against 4xWizard in the Marsh cave, you have to spend a lot of time just to start over again. It's a real pain. Even though it may prevent you from dying stupidly at the end of the game, it's much less enjoyable than going through the game again. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not sure that I'm willing to do battle counting even this time around. I know I mentioned a couple of times that I would, but really, it's very messy.
Breakdown
2010-03-24 04:40:45 pm
Haters gonna hate
Just wanted to chime in to say I watched the run on youtube and found it very enjoyable.  I can see why it got rejected, but at the same time I think the decision was rather harsh.  It's definitely not a run that would've brought shame and disgrace to the site or anything.  Very glad to see you're working on an improvement, I'm definitely looking forward to it.

And while the bulk of the discussion here is a bit over my head, I do have one suggestion that might trim some time.  Would it be possible for you to buy a heal potion before going to fight Garland?  That way long as you don't run yourself down to zero at any point it's the first item selectable on your item list and would save you some time in menu.  Even if it's only something like 2 seconds for every 3 potions that'd still add up to a couple minutes over the course of the run.
Lenophis
2010-03-24 06:28:54 pm
0-10
It's early enough in the run so a death against him would mean a reset, but otherwise it would probably take too much time to pick it up. Undecided
snorlax
2010-03-24 07:53:43 pm
zzzzzzzzzz
I think it's a good idea that makes a lot of sense personally; you could just exit out of the east side of town to save a little of that time.  In order to keep it at that spot though, you'd have to never run out of potions, which maybe isn't a huge issue.  In the same vein, you should definitely make sure to buy the most used spells at each level before the other ones, most likely the cure spells, though that might not be as obvious a time savings.  Perhaps you already did that in your run, which I haven't watched yet but will soon.
Winkwonle
2010-03-24 10:31:23 pm
OK, I'm stopping this discussion right here: it doesn't work that way. The items are not positioned in the order you bought them. They have a predefined order. Heal potions always come before Pure potions, and always after House. Also, the LUTE will always occupy the first position once you got it.

Spells do work the way you're thinking, though. Buying Cure before Lit for the red mage is a good thing to do in general. It was one of Tuff_fish's remarks that his FFRR route would  misplace the spell order, but hey, whatever, it basically saves as much time as would be needed to cease progress in the game, fight monsters for 100 gold, buy Cure, and then proceed with the normal plan. What I mean by that is that the budget at the beginning of the game is very very tight, and Cure isn't needed until after the Marsh cave with such a powerful team.

Thanks anyway for throwing ideas. Suggestions are always appreciated. Smiley
Winkwonle
2010-04-04 02:38:25 am
I finally took the time to watch the Japanese version real time attack properly (which uses FFRR). I think the strategy used doesn't apply to an SDA single-segment run planning though. The main source of time saving is the fact that he buys a total of 100 tents and use them to avoid every single encounter on the world map aside from those he uses for farming exp. He not only counts his battles, but he plans ahead his exact steps. He wouldn't go around a wandering bat in the Earth cave, so as to not disturb his planning.

He levels up to 6 with the whole party before leaving for the Marsh cave, then 10 at PNEOP before leaving for Earth cave, then 16 with the whole party at Agamas before doing the Ice cave, and gradually gets to 18 before entering the ToFR. This gives him his 4-hit threshold for the bosses. He basically crushes every dungeon without even having to go to the menu to heal himself. He has excess WARP charges wherever these are needed. I'm guessing that he aims for such high levels so that he doesn't have to vary his route in the slightest manner because of a bad luck requiring an extra trip to a village. The video was very very impressive in terms of the amount of preparation it must have required. I suppose that proper step counting leaves very little room for risky strategies. However, in the rules of SDA, abusing the Reset button during the game is not an option, so I don't believe that times like 3:37:14 are even possible. To compensate, extra flexibility allows for lower levels and lower levels limit the spell accessibility.

I've been thinking about all this a lot lately. I trained with the FFRR route that we discussed in the last threads, and I kept dying against undead and against Lich. I know this may sound like I'm progressing backwards, but I'm still thinking about the best choice of team. I've been trying to consider teams using only one fighter. (Using none would be ridiculous.) My basic idea comes from the observation that the "white mage party" challenge is in fact not much of a challenge. The thing is that the white mages never really need a fighter for the earlier bosses: wizards don't cast spells so can be RUSEd, Astos MUTEd, Vampire and Lich HARMed. After that, spell casting items do the job. Remains Chaos.

So I've thought to myself: hey, why do we insist so much on Fighters? (Yeah, I know, because they're just too good, but please bear with me here.) The best team for a speed run should be aimed at making the run possible at levels lower than those required by the real time attack. I don't want the "overall" best team, I want the team that is best at the highest number of individual bosses and dungeons through the game. The fighter is best in easy dungeons. That is not useful.

I've played through the game a couple of times with FRWB, with the idea of hitting the Waterfall at level 12 and beating Chaos at 18, 13, 13, 13 or so. This team has the 2xICE combo for Astos, HARM for screens of undead, early access to WARP (and LIFE), as well as the capacity to tolerate dying characters in the ToFR. I would use my solo Fighter with a red mage up to Lich2, then solo Fighter for Kary2, followed by Fighter+Black mage tandem for Kraken2, and finally use 2xLIFE to get the entire party for Tiamat2 and Chaos. I would give Xcalber to the Fighter, Defense to the Red mage and Masmune to the White mage. The capacity to use FAST with two characters in the fight against Chaos makes it likely to kill him before he has time for CUR4. Having higher levels doesn't really seem to make a difference there. The ToFR is very hard though.

I should mention also that FRWB offers a comfortable intro: don't buy anything for the W, place him/her in front, have him/her die against the first Ghoul or Garland right after. Kill the 2xOgre near Pravoka, then Bikke, then buy 2xICE and Inn. Go grab the Dwarves' 1k gold and stop at Coneria on the way back. Revive W and shop for spells and equipment there. Plus buy potions. Levels are 4441. Travel to Elfland. Fight 2-3 battles, Inn, buy LIT2 (Black mage) and various armors, then leave for Marsh cave. Levels are 5553. Then run from everything that isn't undead for pretty much the rest of the game. Levels 6665 or 7775 for Vampire. 7776 for Lich. Grab LIFE on the way out. Try leveling-up on Zombie D's in Ordeals, until about 11-12. (Kill Kary last with a solo fighter, after controlling his level to 15 with agamas.)

I think that FRWB has a high potential of being faster and more stable than FFRR. The main problems being addressed are 1) early undead and 2) cheap FAST. In bonus, we have 3) cheap LIFE.

I've played with FRRB too. The intro goes: full-equip + 1xLIT before Garland, then 2xLIT. Beat ogres before Bikke, get 2xICE (or 1xICE) and then beat other ogres. Go back in town for 1xICE (or 2xICE), and then leave for the dwarves. The main problem that I have is the possibility of losing the B before the Wizards. That seems to be rather frequent. Also, the undead are still a problem at the Marsh cave. The Earth cave goes well, slightly better than with FRWB even, and very much better than with FFRR. I don't mind wasting B's LIT2 charges on Wizards on the way, since those and the undead are the only battles that I don't run from. The B will die occasionally on the way to Lich, but the R's still stand a (poor) chance. After class that, the rest looks a lot like FRWB until the ToFR. Then things get messy. Either you train a Red mage to level 15 to have access to LIFE, or you go solo Fighter until Tiamat2. That option I do not like at all.

My third consideration was FFWB, which isn't a one-fighter team, but I thought I would go for it anyway. Intro: kill off W, blablablah dwarves' 1k gold, revive W at Coneria (Levels 4441), 2-3 battles at Elfland (Levels 5553), buy LIT2, cross fingers for the B to survive, House before Astos, duel him with the B while the rest of the team basically do nothing useful, blablablah browse through the Earth cave (piece of cake with the W, really), try not to lose the B before Lich otherwise you're pretty toast, then farm Zombie D's in Ordeals followed by Ice cave and then Agamas for levels 15, 15, 12, 12. Do the ToFR with both Fighters until Tiamat2. The lack of two black magic users make the fight against Chaos harder than with FRWB or FRRB. From what I've gathered, the best strategy with that team is to give the non-ribbon to the front Fighter (with Xcalber and best absorb), and Masmune to the second fighter. At levels 18, 17-18, 13, 12-13, the fight is about average difficulty. It is one of the sad facts of single-segmenting this game, that the final boss has such a high chance of killing you without it being your fault at all.

Finally, I went for FRRW. I liked that team a lot. Kill the W for the intro, revive at 4441, Elfland for 5553, skip through Marsh cave like a charm (because of HARM), use 2nd row RUSE against Wizards, blast Astos with ICE duo, get a good laugh in the Earth cave, Lich is no problem at all with three solid spellcasters, buy LIFE on way out, make level 11-12 against Zombie D's, stop by Elfland for 2xFAST on the way to the Ice cave, get level 15 with F and one R with Agamas, class change, buy WARP, blablablah, petrify RW, lose R at/before Lich2, solo Kary2, activate second R and lose him at/before Kraken2, revive all for Tiamat2 and Chaos. I don't like it, but I went FRRW with no ribbon on the F and Masmune to the W and the battle was repeatedly easy. Anyway, I'll do 20 rows of combats with various other characters not having the ribbon in due time, because frankly this is the only team where I can see a lot of working possibilities. The other most likely good strategy would be WRFR, leave the W to die, and give Masmune to the strong R, Defense to the weak one (placed in second row).

I'm aware that my explanations are somewhat cryptic. I hope there is still interest for this discussion. Hopefully there will be time for actual running on my part in about a month. That is if I'm convinced of holding the best strategy.
Lenophis
2010-04-04 01:44:47 pm
0-10
Back to the discussion of "what's the best speed running team." Since running is bugged, a Thief serves literally no purpose (at least for the NES version), and a black belt won't be a power house at those low of levels. It's up to the four remaining classes.

Personally, there is no "best" team of the remaining four, just use what you feel the most comfortable with, and what you feel will give the best results. Totally not helpful, right? Grin

Might I make a suggestion? Make a run of your old team (FFFR?) and a run of the new team (FFRR). Yes, it's impractical, but it's also the only way you'll know for sure which was the overall faster. This game is hard enough to single segment, and I know what I say when I suggest to run it multiple times. Take it with a grain of salt. However, it's also the best way to erase all doubt.

That said, a mage-heavy group depends on a lot to get right. Are you sure you could depend on that in a single segment?
FionordeQuester
2010-04-04 07:45:26 pm
Since running is bugged, a Thief serves literally no purpose (at least for the NES version), and a black belt won't be a power house at those low of levels. It's up to the four remaining classes.

Not true.  If anything, that makes the Thief MORE useful (remember, the bug only kicks in when the Thief is in the 1st or 2nd slot).
Lenophis
2010-04-05 03:58:27 am
0-10
But that's the problem with the Thief, he's only good for running. He's the worst of the fighter-types, his ninja magic is a perk, but if you have a black mage or red mage he's nigh-useless.

Am I missing something?
Winkwonle
2010-04-05 07:48:14 am
I don't think you're missing anything. I did not seriously consider the Black belt and Thief either.

The thief works much better if he's in 1st or 2nd row due to the bug that you guys mentioned, but he's too weak to hold that position before the Marsh cave. After that, pretty much all characters run well. As for the ninja, he only has an advantage of a few points of absorb over the red wizard, whereas he has a large disadvantage of spell repertoire. Not worth it I think. Also his charges of FAST are much more scarce.

The Black belt on the other hand needs level 10 to get 4-hit attacks and become useful. That won't happen before Ordeals/Ice cave, where physical hits are not needed. The only way I can imagine using the Black belt would be in the perspective of skipping Ordeals. Then I would keep him dead until the Gurgu, pump him with a fighter to level 15 and then solo to 21 (to access 6-hit attacks), and keep him around for Lich2 (lvl 21 => hp > 400), and face Chaos with the relatively solid, FASTed, Fighter (w/ Masmune) + Black belt combo. Of course that means not having access to WARP. I don't really think it is worth considering either.

So it's really just Fighter, Red mage, White mage, and Black mage. And even the Black mage is borderline.
Tuff_fish
2010-04-08 03:25:41 pm
Sorry for going AWOL.  I've been pretty busy lately. 

I watched the japanese RTA a while back as well.  It's definitely interesting but it's sort of a hybrid run combining different principles of a single-segment run and a segmented run, due to the reset abuse. 

I've tried many different parties in the context of a single-segment run and I agree that the thief and black belt are not workable.  The fighter is just so blatantly overpowered in this game.  The balancing was bad to begin with and most of the games many bugs either directly or indirectly benefit the fighter in some eway. 

The thief is so weak early in the game.  He has to be put in the first or second row to take advantage of his only positive (running), but has low HP and can't wear any good armors.  He's a worse attacker than a red mage/wizard for the nearly the entire game.  The black belt is always weaker than a fighter, both offensively and defensively, at relevant levels.

The black mage frustrates me so much.  Honestly, as much as I love the character in the final fantasy series, I'm *leaning* towards a black mage not being workable in a single segment run.  He does have a few small advantages over a red mage.  There are major negatives of course.  The non-existant attack and healing can be forgiven; however, he's just so fragile and dies over and over and over (and over) again.  Seriously, I've tried working him into many parties but he can get 1-shotted in so many spots.  The low HP/low magic defense also hurts. 

One party that I tried many times before writing up my preliminary FFRR route was FFWB, which I noticed you also mentioned.  Even ignoring how often the black mage dies, agama farming is just so efficient which (largely) nullifies the black mage's primary advantage-- early warp.  Also you only have 1 black magic caster and have to get level 5 before leaving elfland and work LIT2 into the route.

I have always come back to some form of 2 fighters, 2 mages.  The FRRW suggestion you gave intrigues me though.  I tried playing through it the other day but had some problems.  Playing through Astos was easy, but I ran into some problems in Melmond/Earth cave.  First, the party is a little more expensive to equip, so you have to make some sacrifices (white mage probably needs silver bracelet, silver armor would be helpful on the first red mage, and you need more heal potions). 

The red mage in the second position took a beating.  You're giving up so much there compared to a fighter with iron everything.  Ditto with the underleveled white mage, even with the silver bracelet.  Wizards were a big problem because of the weakness in the second position, and only having 2-3 good attackers (depending on what you keep) instead of 4.  I probably went 0/10 or so on the earth cave playing from different points in the random encounter cycle.  It may be a combination of poor equipment selection and bad luck though.
Tuff_fish
2010-04-08 03:40:40 pm
Actually there is one thing that I wanted to mention about the thief.  If you were battle counting, you could rearrange your party so that he would be in the second slot when you want to run, and 3rd/4th slot when you want to fight.  Even in that specific case I wouldn't think it's worth it, but if I throw enough ideas out there some are bound to stick.  8)