The technique detailed in section 2 has always worked exceptionally well in the original Final Fantasy for the Nintendo. FF:DoS has made some major changes to the magic system, however, which makes it a lot easier to take advantage of this method. The blawgpost assumes you have a working knowledge of the game.
1. Magic system overhaul observations.
2. Power-leveling near Pravoka.
3. Recommended dungeon/area order.
1. Magic system overhaul observations.
The old FF used a magic point system similar to the one used in the recently released Final Fantasy III: instead of a pool of MP to cast all spells from, a magician has a number of spell levels and a number of spell uses per level, up to a maximum of nine (note that FF3 increases this greatly - some of my characters have in excess of 40 uses of level 1 spells). The fact that you can only use nine spells of each level puts a lot more emphasis on using weapons and armor in battle - not only can these items be "used" in battle by any class, several items have spell effects identical to often-used magical spells. For example:
Item Name | Use Effect | Zeus Gauntlet | Lit2/Lightning 2/Thundaga on all enemies. | Black Shirt | Second-level ice effect on all enemies. | Light Axe | Second-level holy/harm/"kills undead stuff but nothing else" effect on all enemies. | | Heal Helm | Heal (a low-level white magic spell) on all party members. | | Heal Staff | " | | Thor Hammer | Lit2/Lightning 2/Thundaga on all enemies. |
By no means comprehensive, merely a list of items I frequently used and can remember off the top of my head. There are others. Point is, several of these items replicate spells that are heavily utilized midgame through endgame, and with the limits of the magic point system, such items are absolutely essential. With the new magic system, I found myself relying on the Use command a lot less, depending on party configuration.
The new magic system in FF:DoS is a hybrid of the old FF system and the MP system used in FF2 and FF4-6* - magic-using characters now have an MP pool, but they're also restricted in the spells they can use by a "Magic Level" indicator in the character status screen, which increases as the character gains levels (and increases further after the character "matures" - some spells can only be cast by Wizards). The MP pool is the big thing here, as it allows for the use of any spell any number of times until it's depleted. No more running out of Cure2 and having to fall back to Cure; no more running out of higher level black magic spells. The MP pool means the party has a much longer loitering time in the field, and, if you have a White Mage in the party, it eliminates the need for the Heal helms and Heal staff. If you don't have a White Mage in your party, you're boned - while this wasn't a problem in the original FF (merely a massive inconvenience), many enemies in FF:DoS have been "rebalanced" to do craploads of damage to all party members, practically mandating the need for a White Mage (later Wizard) with the highest level Heal spell. If you don't have one in your party, you'll find that Chaos is a right BASTARD to defeat. This is why I mention the Use/Effects items above - without a White Wizard in the party, I found the final battle boiled down to one character fighting while the other three Used the Heal items repeatedly. With a White Wizard doing the heavy lifting using a high-level Heal spell, the remaining characters are free to attack, making the final battle that much shorter.
In some respects, the MP pool is a great change to the game, as it makes the "tip" detailed below a real breeze to employ. In other respects, as detailed above, the rest of the game has been rebalanced around this adjustment. "Rebalanced" might not be that good of a word for it, really - in FF:DoS you need a White Wizard or you need to go item-scrounging through the bonus dungeons to build enough stamina (read: HP) to stand a chance against Chaos, while in the original FF, a Red Wizard was just as effective as a White in the final battle.**
While the game changes that accommodate the MP pool range from well-balanced to frustratingly bone-headed, the MP pool makes it extremely easy to Power Level, which is the whole point of this post.
2. Power-leveling near Pravoka.
Requirements for there to be any point to doing this : Black or Red mage. Optimally either a Red and a White or a Black and a White. {Fire2|FIR2|Fira} is required for this to work well. Harm2 is optional but handy.
Pravoka is the town where you get the boat. If you're playing the game normally, the standard procedure is to make your way to Pravoka, get the boat, then grind around that area and Elfheim (due South) until you can scrounge up enough gil to get the weapons, armor, and magic available in Pravoka and Elfheim. By the time you can afford the equipment and spells, you'll be strong enough to storm the Marsh Cave (which is the first step of the Crown -> Crystal -> Herb -> Key -> TNT -> Out Into The Rest Of The World quest that forms the first bit of the game). The problem with this is that Ogres, spiders and wolves (oh my!) give jack shit for experience and a pittance for gil. You'll be grinding for at least a couple of hours if you're the sort of completist who insists on leaving an area with all characters properly equipped. There is a better way - it's a pain in the ass at first, but if you put in the same amount of time on the peninsula north of Pravoka as you normally would grinding against Ogres and whatnont around Elfheim, you'll be wearing moneyhats, and you'll be much higher level - tough enough to sail through the rest of the game, providing you continue to smite everything that crosses your path.***
Far to the northeast of Pravoka is a long finger of land that points accusingly to the northern continent - the area of the game where you pick up the Chime and the best of the level 8 magic. What makes this peninsula so damned important - and what makes power-grinding possible at this stage of the game - is that the monster encounter table for the south-eastern section of the north continent overlaps the topmost four tiles - which are as far up as you can go until you blow open a canal with TNT a bit later in the game. We're talking Zombie bulls (weak against Harm and Fire), trolls, frost wolves (really, really weak against Fire), dinosaurs (a real pain in the ass) and giants here, folks - and you can hit them at a point in the game in which ogres are still giving you shit. Naturally, these bad boys are going to grind your balls into a fine paste the first several times you encounter them. The key here is to pick your battles and perform hit-and-run operations until you're strong enough to linger. The enemies are worth a good amount of experience and a serious amount of gil- a sustained grind in this little section of the map will make you so beefcake that you won't even start to feel the baddies until you hit the tower and the space fortess.
The key here is a little bit of preparation and a little bit of pre-grinding. When you hit Pravoka and get the ship, don't blow all your cash on magic. Stock up on a couple of weapons but make sure you have plenty of cash left over. Grind in the ocean and Elfheim until your Red or Black mage has access to third level magic. Buy Fire2 (Fira, FIR2, etc), rest up, save the game and haul ass. Harm2 on the White Mage will help as well, but the only things in the area weak against harm are the zombie bulls, so Fire2 is where you want to be spending your money. Blow the rest of your cash on potions and maybe a sleeping bag or two.
The rest is obvious to anyone with some RPG experience under their belt. Walk up to the northeastern peninsula. Save your game just below the top four tiles. Enter the top four tiles and pace back and forth until you hit an encounter. At first, you'll want to reset and reload if you run into anything other than Zombie Bulls or Frost Wolves, but later on you'll be able to take on everything in the area with ease. One Fire2 blast will do in an entire pack of Frost Wolves, regardless of your level - a combined assault of Harm2 and Fire2 will smear out Zombie Bulls in little to no time at all. If you can survive even one engagement at this point, you'll find you've instantly leveled up and have earned enough to buy more spells and equipment. Rest, Save, repeat - keep doing this until you have to trek back to Pravoka to recharge your MP and restock. Hit Elfheim to buy magic and equipment. A few rounds of this and you'll find that you've stocked your magicians and bricks much quicker than you would have grinding around Elfheim - and by this point your characters will be a good 5-15 levels higher than they would have been had you run around beating Ogres for money. This is one of the few points on the world map where the enemy experience and gil ratio is nice - unlike the area around Onrac, in which your'e beset by enemies that are both a pain in the ass and nearly worthless in terms of gil/exp.
Keep doing this until it gets boring, or until (in my case) your characters reach level 30-35 - by which point they're more than capable of handling all of the enemies in the area, and are strong enough to plow through multiple battles without saving or resting. If you can stomach the tedium and bother to grind up to level 30 or so, you'll find that you now have a huge amount of gil and some very tough characters. All you have to do to keep the ball rolling after this is win every subsequent encounter - you'll keep your edge in experience and stamina, and you won't need to screech to a halt in order to gain a few levels before plunging into the next dungeon - which is what you'd have to do if you were playing any other Final Fantasy****.
I've found that the changes made to FF in FF:DoS make it possible to linger in this area for much longer than it was possible in the original - in FF for the NES (where I first developed this technique), power-leveling in this area was a matter of running up to the spot, getting in no more than three or four battles (max), running back down to rest, and repeating. Given the mechanics and limitations of the original FF, there was little point to the peninsula grind after you'd scraped up enough cache for level 3 and level 4 magic for all of your mages.
Conclusion : A few hours of level-grinding northeast of Pravoka will save you many, many hours of grinding (or worse, dying) at several other points in the game, especially the ice cave. Given the choice between getting it out of the way early and stretching it out through the rest of the game (slowing everything down as a consequence), I prefer to get my grind out of the way now, before the need for it starts to hamper plot progression.
3. Recommended dungeon/area order.
The Nintendo Power Players guide and several other sources suggest running the game this way: Earth Crystal -> Fire Crystal -> Ice Cavern -> Castle Of Ordeals -> Water Crystal -> Cube Cave -> Air Crystal -> Chaos. If you've bothered to level-grind into the 20s - and even if you haven't - there's no point to doing the volcano (where the Fire Crystal is) until late in the game, as by the time you can access the volcano, you can also (with a bit of effort) access several other areas containing vastly superior equipment. My recommended order is Earth Crystal -> Castle Of Ordeals -> Ice Cavern -> Cube Cave -> Water Crystal -> Fire Crystal -> Air Crystal -> Chaos. I'd put the Fire Crystal before Chaos, but it's nice to have a breather in between the Water Crystal and the Air Crystal - you need to go back to the southern continents to get the SLAB translated before you can get into the tower anyway, so you might as well whackafiend while you're down there.
My recommended party used to be Fighter Fighter Red Mage Red Mage. Since the Red Mage now SUCKS BALLS in FF:DoS, I've changed my thinking to a Fighter, a White magician, and anything else in the other two slots (though you need a Black or a Red Mage to power-grind as detailed in section 2).
* I forget how magic functions in FF7, as I haven't played it since 1997. All I remember about FF8 magic is that the draw system sucks, and I didn't play FF9 long enough to actually use any magic.
** The Red Mage/Wizard is another one of those things that got "rebalanced" in FF:DoS. Instead of being a slightly weaker fighter who could effectively wield most of the magic arsenal, the Red Mage/Wizard in FF:DoS is now visibly weaker than a fighter, and his spellwork is moderately to massively less effective than that of his White and Black counterparts. As I remember it in the original FF, the Red magic was just as effective as White and Black - the major difference is that White and Black magicians got all of the high-powered awesome spells and more spell points, while the Red magician petered out lower and earlier. FIR2 would do, say, 100 damage cast by a Red and 100 damage cast by a Black in the original FF - in FF:DoS it's more like 55-70 for the Red and 100 for the Black. The class has been weakened to the point of being a handicap in the remake, much to my {surprise|chagrin}.
*** My second time through FF:DoS, I ground in the location I'm about to describe until all characters were at level 35. By the time I'd reached endgame, everyone was between 55 and 60, and I never broke a sweat doing it.
**** Except for FF2. I intend to BLAWGZ about that at a later date. |
