Part 7: One Cannot Survive on Gimmicks Alone

We've rescued the dwarves' stupid horns so they have something to stare at while they contemplate their lack of purpose. Let's get some good shit.



What the



Man: Tokkuru... the soldiers have already taken everything, so they set fire to the village... Please! Help us!




Hain's one of several infamous bosses in this game. He's the first boss to change his weakness, which will be fun to deal with using only one character.



The dwarves give no fucks about random men dying in their hallway. It happens all the time.




I take back everything bad I've said about the dwarves.






There's a lot of great stuff here, including more Scholar equipment. I'm only highlighting what's relevant for Knight Stalin, though. That Gauntlet in particular is welcome, as we haven't had a glove upgrade since the Mithril one.



As a Knight, Stalin has a much higher Vitality, which means the current enemies can barely dent him. Stalin can definitely take more of a hit now.




More importantly, the additional Vitality gives Stalin huge HP boosts at level up. He's now averaging around 80HP a level, which is fantastic, and means by L25 he'll be hitting quadruple digits. Enemies soon won't be able to catch up to him.





Alright, I've got the new jobs, and I've got a Hi-Potion. Let's see what our perverted translator has to say.

Onion: The most basic job. Can use only a few weapons and no magic.

Fighter: Standard battle job. Can use most low-level weapons and armor, but no magic.

Monk: A battle job that focuses more on inner strength; bare-handed attacks are powerful.

White Mage: A recovery magic user. Can use all white magic spells, but has only mediocre MP.

Black Mage: A battle magic user. Can use all black magic spells, but has only mediocre MP.

Red Mage: A "balance" job. Can use some equipment as well as some white and black magic.

Hunter: Attacks with bow and arrows. Can be placed in the back row to reduce damage.

Knight: A more powerful Fighter. Can also protect allies who are low on HP.

Thief: A high-agility job. Can steal items, flee from battles easily, and more!

Scholar: Has the ability to analyze an enemy's defenses.

Pretty much sums it up. A few things to note about our four new classes:

*Hunters can also use low-level white magic. Not enough to really make effective use of it, but hey, it'll save some potions.
*This is the first game in the series where we can steal items from enemies. Unfortunately, it's all crap. Thieves are more useful for not sucking ass at running away and for having some decent weapon choices later on. We can't really use them effectively here, though, and there's no reason to really use one over a Knight in a solo game.
*Thieves can unlock doors without Magic Keys. Eh.
*Scholars have the worst Vitality in the game, which means shit HP gains from level ups. If it weren't for that, their books would actually make them half-decent fighters that would wreck enemies with elemental weaknesses.
*Knights are ballin'.



--ITEM SUMMARY--

Potion: Restores some HP.
Hi-Potion: Restores more HP.
Elixir: Restores HP and MP to maximum.
FenixDown: Recovers from death (HP 0).
Gold Pin: Cures Stone.
LadysKiss: Cures Toad. (think "Maiden")
EchoScrn: Cures Mute.
Mushroom: Changes to or from Small.
Eyedrop: Cures Blind.
Antidote: Cures Poison.

Notes about restoritives:

*You can't buy FenixDowns. There's only a limited amount, though you'll find enough that it won't be a huge problem unless you die a lot. Of course, that's not a big deal for this LP.
*Elixirs are the only items that restore MP. There are no Ethers in this game. You can't buy them, either.
*Mushrooms will actually turn you Mini, which means less time switching to a Red Mage to cast it on ourselves. It also works on dead people.

"The battle items all correspond to different magic spells, as shown in the list below:"

Notes:

*Haste is the best, fuck everything else.



Now that that's done, let's mess around before we continue the plot.



Huh. Well, that sure is something.



The Msg.Speed normally only goes up to 8, but by holding Select you can move it to 9, a feature exclusive to this translation. I stick with 6 because, hey, I can (and do) speed over the tedious stuff. This game also keeps track of the number of times you save. I've saved 52 times so far. I'm not using any save states because this is a fucking challenge run, dammit.



I tried that Up+A thing in the intro screen, but all it does is lock up the game. Meh.

Alright, enough of that. Let's go kick some ass.




Or they could cheat like the total cowards that they are.







So here we are, locked up in Hain's Castle.



Argus: My soldiers are all under Hain's control. Hain used to be my trusted advisor, but now... ...cough, cough...
Stalin: Are you all right, Your Majesty?
Argus: Yes, I'm fine. In any case, please defeat Hain for us!



Oh yeah, Hain's Castle is a living tree. I wonder if some of this was inspiration for FF5's ExDeath.



Can floating continents even get earthquakes? Because literally every single bad thing that happens in the world can be attributed to that fucking earthquake, and I'm no geologist or anything, but I'm pretty sure floating continents can't get earthquakes.



In more relevant news, there's a sword upgrade in this dungeon. That's all I need to know.



Then he gives us a Mushroom and dies.




Chump.





Fortunately, we only need to be small to pass that hole. We do the rest of the castle at our regular form.



Lamias and Pharaohs can inflict Charm on you, Lamias being much more likely to do so. Amusingly, Stalin won't do anything if Charmed, so I'm assuming Charmed characters can't hit themselves. These enemies are more annoying than deadly.



There's also Wraiths, but they're non-entities.




That's an odd enemy. It actually takes two hits to die.



There's more of those fodder demons as well.



Hell yeah. Now I'm rocking the King and Freeze swords.




It's time to take on Hain.







Let's talk about Hain, shall we?



First of all, he has high evasion. You can hit him, but you'll land two hits at most and won't really hit him for much. With two hits, I average around 125HP.




He will use L2 Black Magic spells. Keep in mind that Stalin's still wearing an Ice helmet, so fire damage is reduced here.



Did you know ice equipment makes you weak to ice? While Fire2 does laughable damage, Ice-2 hurts. It's managable with Hi-Potions, but I didn't bring that many with me because they're still pricey at this point.



Every third turn, Hain will change his elemental weakness. The two he's not weak to will be absorbed. This is why I kept all those useless spell items, but it turns out they only hit for ~200 damage while I have no way to tell what his weakness is, so I just ignore them and slowly chip away at him.

The "proper" way to do it is to have someone be a Scholar, use their "Peep" ability to check his weakness, and then have your Black Mages and other characters lob spells/spell items at him until he changes. Fuck that, though.



For a good idea of what Hain will usually do to you, there's his Lit-2 spell damage. It's much scarier with four evenly-leveled characters compared to one over-leveled character.



I have around 12 Hi-Potions, which I need to use to counteract those Ice-2 spells. I burn through a lot of them in this fight.



It takes awhile, but I manage to beat Hain with having to deal with his stupid gimmick. Suck it.





Voice: I am the elder of the Living Forest. I was cursed by Hain, but you have removed the curse. Thank you.





Elder: There... You may leave now.
Stalin: Let's go!

So by kicking Hain's ass, we save a kingdom and a tree. Neat.







Our reward is another stupid fang that takes up inventory space that we can't give to the Big Chocobo. Hooray.

Elder: I will sleep until the injuries inflicted upon me by Hain have healed. No one will be able to enter this forest for the next thousand years. We will be safe. Light Warriors, we owe you our deepest thanks. Go now, and destroy the darkness. I am confident you will succeed.

Whatever.





And we end up at this forest to the northwest of that one invaded town we just went to. We could've gone here earlier and listened to the fairies whine about the elder tree being missing, but eh.





Everyone here loves us, but unfortunately they don't have anything of value to reward us with.




King Argus, a monarch who isn't a tight-ass, gives us something much more valuable than a fucking canoe. At least, a Time Wheel sounds more valuable than a canoe.



I'm also appreciative of the two free Elixirs.

Now to go a little bit east back to Cid's town. I guess you can access it as soon as you get the ship, then.







I'm not complaining. We have a fucking airship now!








Thanks to Cid's engineering, we have the airship Enterprise! Why does that sound familiar?

The Enterprise can only land in water, and it can't fly over mountains. Still, it sure as hell beats fighting the same weak-ass encounters and speeds up the travel between the Ancients Town and Gisahl. Plus, you know, fucking airship.

There's no new locations on the Floating Continent we can access with the airship. However...



We are free to leave the Floating Continent. Other that side-quests, we're finished with the Floating Continent. That said, the continent itself is pretty huge, so I'm excited to see how vast the actual world is.



(Listen to this)

Welcome to the main world of Final Fantasy III!




Huh... Land is pretty far away.



Better use a Tiny Pan to see where the closest land is...



...Huh.



...Oh.