This session was the most difficult of my entire run in Final Fantasy so far.
After the Tower of Owen, I headed up to the Dwarf Island, where some
dude named Gutsco was being a pain in the ass. He stole their sacred ice
horns (...) and after I killed him and got them back, he turned to have
been only mostly dead, stole them back, and took the power of the Fire
Crystal.
That's when the shit hit the fan.
I got to the bottom of his magma cave and found him with the crystal. He
turned into a pretty goofy-looking dragon, or "Salamander," and proceed
to kick my ass six ways from Sunday. Died 3-4 times the same way. My
party (warrior, thief, red mage, white mage) was doing okay, and then he
fire breathed me down, killing everyone shortly after.
Eventually, I stopped trying to heal efficiently on my white mage and
just tried to stay up by group healing with the level 1 cure every round
and Cura when necessary. Blew all my cooldowns, including Antarctic
Wind and Zeus' Wrath, but eventually made it through with both mages
dead and my warrior and thief on low health. But a win's a win!
The Fire Crystal got me a new set of jobs. WOOHOO!!!! Especially if the
next two crystals each grant even more jobs, this game will have easily
the most replay value of any of the first three. The problem is that
they only give the briefest and most summary descriptions for what the
jobs do and what their strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities are.
For the moment, I'm trying this:
Knight
Monk
Geomancer
Scholar
Some questions:
-What does Knight's "Defend" do? Is he anything more than a more defensive alternative to the Warrior?
-Why are the Geomancer's weapons ("Luminous Bells") so weird? I love her
terrain attacks so far. The variety is pretty cool, as long as she
doesn't get those always-fail instant death abilities during boss
fights.
-Does the Scholar suck as much as he seems to at first? Because he seems
to suck big time right now, beyond situations where I need to see enemy
weaknesses.
The big question:
Is a white mage always necessary basically? The others feel
interchangeable to some degree, but I worry that it's a mistake to not
keep the White Mage the whole time. In a non-plot-spoilery way, I'd love
to hear your experiences with parties that leave out the White Mage.
---
Next up: Going to go help that town that got looted and pillaged by Argus.
EDIT: Another question: do you guys recommend picking a party and
sticking to it, or building up a variety of class options for each
character?
