Ironcore Team: Part Three

The Great Trench dungeon that followed is probably the toughest location in the third world, at least until the final Cleft of Dimension. There are lava floors everywhere (better bring a Geomancer), the Unknown enemies are all in permanent Armor status and don't get hurt much by physical damage, and finally several of them have nasty, nasty counterattack moves. The "Blob" Unknowns will remove a character from your party entirely with their Circle spell, while the "Skeleton" Unknowns will cast Condemn. (O how I hate thee, Condemn!) Fortunately, I could turn to my secret weapon: Spoony the Bard!

All of the enemies in the Great Trench are undead. All of them, including the boss at the end. They are very strong against physical attack, but they crumble to two things: Holy element damage, and the Bard's Requiem song. I assigned Faris the Blue magic ability, to increase her Magic Power stat, and then equipped the Running Shoes accessories and Chicken Knife, the weapon purely for its +5 Agility boost. With this setup, Faris could get off *TWO* Requiems before the enemies even had a chance to act, dealing roughly 5000 damage to all opponents in total. The Unknowns... never even got a chance to act. They were completely blown away by the power of the Bard's music. I was leveling up jobs like Beastmaster and Dragoon in here, because there was absolultely no danger from random encounters. Just had to make sure to turn Lenna back into a Geomancer for those lava floors!

You can see that I brought along Faris in her bard attire for this battle, as Requiem would again be a powerful weapon. These three bosses will revive each other endlessly if you kill just one of them, so the idea is to wear them down and then finish off all three at once with Summon magic or something similar. Other than Faris the Bard this was a pretty normal job setup for me, although I should point out that Bartz's Double Gripped Excalibur was doing massive damage against these undead foes, on the order of 4000+ with each attack. There was one dangerous moment when the bosses simultaneously hit the party with Bio, Snowstorm, and Fire 3. Together they did some 700-800 damage to each party member, and if I hadn't cast Mighty Guard earlier, it very well could have been a party wipe and game over. Yes, it is good to get those Blue spells and put everyone in Shell status!

The most dangerous enemies in Istory Falls are the Tonberris, pictured above. They appear as a random encounter, have a whopping 40k health, and deal incredibly damaging physical blows with their "Cleaver!" attacks. You're better off just not fighting these guys, as they don't give much in the way of rewards either. I specifically brought Time magic as Lenna's extra ability just so that I could run away with the Exit spell. (Of course that meant that I had to give White magic to Cara, and not sub-assign Dragon Sword, preventing her from casting much attack magic.) Everything else inside this area was a piece of cake, and yet for some reason these easy foes provided large amounts of gold, experience, and ability points. I don't get it - FF5 is really strange in that regard. It did allow me to level up some of the weaker job classes, like Lenna's Beastmaster job seen above.

I prepared the group for Leviathan by equipping the two mages with Coral Rings, which would defend against his Tidal Waves. (I would have given all four characters Coral Rings, but only had the gold to purchase two of them in Mirage.) That largely shut down the boss' most dangerous attack, although there was one point where Bartz and Faris were hit by a triple Tidal Wave for some 1200 damage each. Good thing I had Shell status from Mighty Guard, or they both would have died there... Offensively, the biggest damage dealer was Lenna, with her Bolt 3 + Thunder Rod combination. 7000 damage per spell! This is one battle where the Black Mage was clearly superior to the Summoner. Wowzers.

I went to the Phoenix Tower next for the (duh) Phoenix summon spell. It made more sense to get Phoenix first, so that my characters would be at a slightly higher level before taking on Odin and Bahamut. The enemies in the tower were surprisingly difficult, all of them programmed with deadly counter-attacks any time they were hit with the "Fight" command. I don't have too much practice with this area, and I was a little bit unprepared; Faris was training as a Monk, for example, when it likely would have been better to have her using the Capture command with some other job. Everything did work out OK in the end, although much White magic was used before reaching the end of the dungeon.

There's no boss in the Phoenix Tower, so I headed over to North Mountain and Bahamut next:

I was worried about this battle somewhat, not sure just what would happen if he got off a full-damage Mega Flare against my party. Even with Shell status, that could potentially deal 1500 damage or more to all party members! Well, as it turns out, Bahamut was a complete and total wimp on this particular occasion. He stuck to his weak physical attack, and that was easily shielded through use of Golem. The Ironcore team opened up a huge can of whoopass, and Bahamut went crying home to his mommy. He never even used Mega Flare at all! Wanted to capture a picture of it reflecting off of Carbunkle's Wall spell, but no such luck.

I did go and get the Mimic job from the undersea Worus Tower, but you don't actually fight the Gogo boss at the end, so I didn't bother to record it. There's no point in watching a video of my team standing around doing nothing for two minutes.

I was dreading the Odin battle something fierce, which is why I put it off until literally the last possible thing before entering the final dungeon. You have exactly one minute to defeat the boss, and if you don't complete the battle in time, he uses "True Edge" and kills everyone. No dodging, no avoiding - once the timer hits zero, your party is dead. For a variant challenge like this one, that meant an enormous strain on me, as a player. If I screwed this up even a little bit, game over. Start from the beginning again, urp!

I set up the Ironcore group to be as offensive-oriented as I could make them. Bartz would use two Ninja weapons along with Flare Sword for his best possible damage (at least without reverting to the Bare job, which I refused to do before facing Exdeath). Lenna's only goal was to cast Haste 2 and then spam Meteor. I thought about the Quick spell, but I honestly don't know if the timer would keep ticking down when Quick was in operation, and I couldn't risk experimenting on my only attempt. I planned to have Cara throw down a Golem summon and then cast Syldra, while Faris would attack with the Chicken Dagger + Capture. And yeah, it would have been more optimal to have Bartz using Chicken Dagger + Flare Sword, but that would carry a 25% chance of him getting the Flee effect and doing nothing. I could not risk that!

Everything went according to plan starting out, only that timer kept racing away in the corner of the screen. I realized immediately that the Golem summon had been a mistake: it ate up some 7-8 seconds and Odin didn't bother attacking. Should have been a Syldra summon instead! Lenna's Meteor similarly did great damage, but the magic animation was slow, so slow. More precious seconds ticking away... And while Bartz did almost 7000 damage on his attack, that Flare Sword animation cost me more precious time. Oh God! Odin's attacking now! I only have time for one more Bartz attack and one more Lenna Meteor!!!

Bartz's attack got it done, and I guess I had some room for error since Lenna's Meteor would have done another ~4000 damage. Nevertheless... QUITE a tense moment there! That's as exciting a battle as you're going to see in this game. Glad I was able to capture it on video.

Now it was time to head into the Cleft of Dimension, there to win out and finish the game or die trying. The initial "desert" section features the difficult Land Crusher enemies, however I had already faced a couple of them while venturing to Phoenix Tower, and was not unduly disturbed. The White Flame enemies in the forest had me stymied briefly, since they absorb Holy-element damage and I had both Excalibur and the Holy Lance equipped at the time! Problem solved pretty easily through means of a weapons swap, of course. On to the start of the ending boss gauntlet:

These first two bosses are not particularly difficult. Although Calotisteri (Wood Sprite) has strong defenses, she doesn't possess any attack spells worth mentioning. Old and Drain are the extent of her offensive magic, and that ain't too scary at this point. The only noteworthy event to take place during the fight was my own silliness in casting Holy when Calotisteri had a Wall up, reflecting back on me and killing Lenna. Whoops. Didn't change anything in the larger scheme of things. Apanda has a weakness to Fire, and that meant that he wasn't going to last long against Fire 3 and Fire 3 Sword. My team downed him in less than 90 seconds, including the dialogue that preceded the battle. The biggest danger in this area was posed by the wandering Omega robot:

"Touch Omega and the party dies. Don't screw up!"

The Apocalypse battle did not go the way I anticipated. I planned to have Faris cast Aqua Rake and Magic Hammer, which would "teach" Apocalypse those spells and have him follow a less-dangerous AI routine than his standard one. However, Apocalypse hit Faris with a Mind Blast spell right at the outset of the battle, paralyzing her and rendering that whole idea useless. The boss further hit Bartz with Condemn, introducing some time pressure to finish the battle quick. And yet none of that mattered, because I had given Bartz the Double Lance + Chicken Knife combination, and when I piled Bio Sword on top of that (taking advantage of Apocalypse's weakness to poison element), Bartz started banging out 9999 hits!!!

Wow. Did not expect that. Two such attacks and it was all over. As for poor Catastrophe, I sent the team into battle with Float status, which prevents his Earth Shaker attack from working. Catastrophe responded with "Gravity 100" which removed the Float status, but then Faris' Mighty Guard replaced it a second time. Meanwhile, the rest of the team was pounding the living daylights out of the boss with Holy and Meteo and so on. Catastrophe never did even a single point of damage.

Alte Roite/Jura Avis
Bartz	Lenna	Cara	Faris
Level 38	Level 37	Level 39	Level 39
Ninja L4	Black Mage L6	Dragoon L2	Blue Mage "Master"
Equip Swords	Time L6	White L6	Capture

Usually I don't face the Jura Avis battles, as they only give you a couple of pieces of Dancer-only equipment. However, I could not in good conscience pass up on these fights and claim that I had fully beaten the game, so I went ahead and did all six of them. I was most worried about the "Circle" attack that the Alte Roite form of the boss can do, as it removes one of your characters from the battle entirely. If two of them were to hit, I could be in some serious trouble. Because there's a save point in the same room of the dungeon, I could go crazy with magic points and break out my strongest spells without fear of consequence. I had Lenna cast Quick/Flare/Flare, which would always kill the Alte Roite and proceed to the less-dangerous Jura Avis. (I used Flare because of the high Magic Defense of the boss; Flare penetrates Magic Defense, and so would do more damage than Meteor in this situation.) Then back to the save point to use a Cottage, rinse and repeat. This is why you bring 35 cottages into the final dungeon - just in case you need them!

Halicarnassus
Bartz	Lenna	Cara	Faris
Level 38	Level 37	Level 39	Level 39
Ninja L4	Beastmaster L3	Summoner "Master"	Blue Mage "Master"
Equip Swords	Time L6	White L6	Capture

Halicarnassus has one difficult move in her employ, an extremely powerful Holy spell that she breaks out at the end of her AI routine. I was pretty sure that that would only hit one out of the four party members (and thus would not be a threat to destroy the overall group), but better safe than sorry - my goal was to kill her before that attack ever appeared. The Ironcore team tore through the boss without much trouble, except that occasionally she was countering with a "Strong Fight" which would do some obscenely high amount of damage (4000 or so!) and off one of the party members instantly. I didn't know what was going on until I checked the code and saw that Halicarnassus is programmed to respond that way when hit by Summon magic. Ooops, didn't know that. In any case, I had Carbunkle set up to reflect a Holy spell, but the boss went down first. Pretty simple even with my mistake of casting Summon magic.

Twin Tania
Bartz	Lenna	Cara	Faris
Level 39	Level 37	Level 39	Level 39
Ninja L4	White Mage L6	Summoner "Master"	Blue Mage "Master"
Magic Sword L7	Time L6	White L6	Capture

I prepared for the Twin Tania battle by giving all four characters Coral Rings. This boss will counter with Tidal Wave attacks when hit by physical attacks, which neatly negated that threat. Twin Tania counters magic damage by responding with Mega Flare, and so I didn't cast any attack spells until I had another Carbunkle summon in place to reflect the damage back. Since I wasn't at all sure I could survive a casting of Giga Flare (even with Mighty Guard in place), I needed to win this battle quickly before it appeared. Fortunately, I could exploit Twin Tania's weakness to Holy element: Bartz had the Chicken Knife + Holy Sword combo (instant 9999 damage), while I had Lenna bang out the Quick/Holy/Holy combo for a cool 19,000 total damage. Twin Tania never even got close to using Mega Flare - this was one of the slickest battles I can recall fighting. Every monster attack until control, my team prepared for everything that headed their way.

Necrophobia
Bartz	Lenna	Cara	Faris
Level 39	Level 37	Level 39	Level 39
Mystic Knight "Master"	White Mage L6	Summoner "Master"	Thief "Master"
Double Grip	Time L6	White L6	Blue Magic

Honestly, I was hungering for this battle with Necrophobia. This guy has tormented so many of my solo characters for the past few years, between the long walk over from the previous save point and his ridiculously unfair Hurricane/Vaccuum Wave combo. I knew exactly how to take old Necro down, and that's precisely what I did. It's amazing how much less dangerous the four Barriers are when they spread out their damage across four characters instead of concentrating it on one... Bahamut was the key to downing them, and then everyone piled on their strongest elemental attacks against Necro himself. There were a lot of 9999s appearing on the screen at the tail end of this fight. Very entertaining stuff. I also made sure to Steal the Genji Armor (pictured above), which was the only reason Faris masqueraded as a Thief for this encounter.

Part Nine

And that brought the Ironcore team to the last battle in the game. Finally, I could change everyone back into the Bare/Mimic jobs and make use of those skills they had laboriously built up during the course of the game:

Neo Exdeath
Bartz	Lenna	Cara	Faris
Level 39	Level 37	Level 39	Level 39
Magic Sword L7	White L6	White L6	Capture
Double Grip	Time L6	Black L6	Blue Magic
-	-	Summon L6	Sing

Bartz mastered the Knight, Mystic Knight, and Ninja jobs - just barely, as he finished the Ninja job on literally the last random encounter before Necrophobia. Guess I had a good estimate of how many ability points you get in the course of a normal game! Lenna mastered the Black Mage job only, although she learned all the spells associated with White Mage and Time Mage. Lenna came up 100 points short on her Beastmaster job, due to disappearing for that stretch in the Pyramid. That was a shame, too bad I couldn't get her just a few more ability points. Cara mastered the Summoner and Dragoon jobs, and as a Mimic I was able to give her the full spell repetoire for White, Black, and Summon magic. Finally, Faris mastered the Monk, Thief, Blue Mage, and Bard jobs. She was my most versatile character from start to finish.

I started out the Exdeath battle by powering up with the usual buffing spells (Haste, Mighty Guard, etc.) and then paused for a few moments to let Faris further increase everyone's level by means of the Hero Song. (Yay! Go Bard job!) While this was going on, Exdeath kept using White Hole - and it was surprisingly effective, because I had stupidly forgot to equip my characters with Ribbons. Argh. Poor Bartz was hit with White Hole three times in a row... THREE times in a row! At least it gave my two White magic users something to do, although I could have skipped the whole problem if I had remembered to equip those Ribbons.

Eventually, I woke up Faris from her Singing (having Lenna attack with the weak Knife weapon) and began attacking in earnest. Bartz was doing 9999 damage with his Flare Sword, Faris a little bit less at 5500 damage Capturing with the Chicken Knife, and Lenna/Cara threw in their typical magic spells. Very quickly the party moved on to the Neo Exdeath part of the battle, where I eliminated Part #4 with the Magic Lamp as usual. Probably didn't have to do so, but I wasn't going to take foolish chances at this point. I had everyone concentrate on Part #1, as one extremely unlucky Grand Cross could theoretically wipe out the party. Unlikely, true, but what if all four characters rolled Condemn status or something like that? Fortunately, we were able to elimiate Part #1 before it ever got off a Grand Cross. After that, it was a matter of equalizing the damage between the remaining two parts, to take them down together at the same time.

Challenge complete:

Final stats and total abilities from the ending sequence:

Well, what a ride it turned out to be. I had a lot of fun doing this challenge, and learning how to edit together commentary videos for the first time. My team played out pretty much the way I planned them, a balanced party that could adapt to whatever circumstance required in each battle. I had a bit of a soft spot for Faris on this team, who often might have seemed out of place without the pure damage output of Bartz or Cara, or the healing power of Lenna, but who could do some of everything with the extremely versatile Blue magic. I won't forget that Faris was the only one who survived in the Exdeath battle, and saved the rest of the party from destruction!

The Ironcore team finished the game at Level 39 (a little lower for Lenna), with no grinding or leveling up. They tracked down every single magic spell in the game: White, Black, Time, Summon, Blue, Magic Sword, and Song. I opened up almost all of the treasure chests; I'm sure I missed one or two, but I did get something like 98% of them. The only bosses that this group did not slay were Prototype, Gil Turtle, Omega, and Shinryuu - all the optional super-bosses. I probably could have defeated Prototype and Gil Turtle, and maybe even Omega, but those battles were simply too risky, and I don't think I could reasonably be expected to take them on. Not in a game with no grinding, in any case.

The Ironcore team will be retiring here, still undefeated, never having lost a battle. I find it amusing that it took me two tries to get the whole thing right, just like T-Hawk's team from the original Final Fantasy. I think he had the more difficult task out of the two; FF5 may be significantly longer, but at least I didn't have any insta-kill Sorcerers popping up in random encounters to worry about. Obviously I can't 100% "prove" that I did this game without dying, but I swear to God that things played out just as I've described here. I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort with the Red Dragon otherwise.

Part Ten - Final

I completely owned you, Final Fantasy 5! Wanted to do this for the past two years.