Both awesome.
Even better!
I won't be using the Power Peninsula at all. I'll show it off after I get my AIRSHIP for those who are curious about it, though.
Of course, I can't actually cast LIT2 yet, so even if I make it all the way to my goal in the Marsh Cave I'm not going to be able to beat the boss. The plan now, then, is to hike over there and grab a few treasures while gaining some EXP along the way.
Still, it's worth coming out here for the treasures: a Large Dagger, a Short Sword and 1300 GOLD. The Large Dagger does me no good, but the Short Sword is a noticable buff above the Scimtar. I'd give it to ADAM, but he can't use it, so BOSS takes it instead.
I'd like to grab the rest of the treasure, but unfortunately ADAM is Poisoned by a SCUM and I'm out of PUREs. It's back to town for me, braving the god-awful buzzing noise the game drills into your head to remind you someone is Poisoned. I've got enough doses of CURE to get ADAM back to Elfland alive, tip a PURE down his throat and he's as good as new.
I skipped HARM because there's no undead to speak of to cause any trouble in the first areas of the game, but I'm going to start running into them soon. HRM2 is one of those situational spells that you might never use, but can save your life in certain fights. It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. SKUB can't actually cast this until L5, which is still a couple hundred EXP away, so I'm going to have to just pray I get lucky and don't run into any undead on my way to finish looting the Marsh Cave. I haven't decided whether or not I need any HEAL spells yet. I'll skip HEAL for sure, and will probably never need HEL2 or HEL3, but by the time I'm able to buy them I'll have enough money to spend on redundancies. We'll see.
I don't have anyone who can equip Iron Armor, but it'll sell for 400 GOLD. The Copper Bracelet is the first piece of armor worth putting on SKUB, but only because it's very slightly inferior to the Wooden Armor ADAM's already wearing. I would much rather give ADAM an extra point or two of ABSORB and leave SKUB naked, but that's just not the way the chips fall.
Some groups can tackle the bosses of the Marsh Cave at L5, but this one can't. A three-FIGHTER group can do it at L4 with a reasonable amount of luck, and any group with a Bl.MAGE can do it at L5 thanks to LIT2. I don't have either of those things. I'm out of places to explore now and there's no real reason to go to the Marsh Cave a third time, so there's nothing for it: I'm going to have to grind out a level here on the ocean.
Some guides will tell you to fight OGREs to level at this point in the game, and some will direct you to the PNEOP. OGREs hit hard and only come once in a while as you're fending off large amounts of ASPs and ARACHNIDs. The PNEOP (peninsula northeast of Pravoka, also called the Peninsula of Power) is a fool's game, completely unnecessary, of no use at all except as a curiosity. When it comes to pre-Marsh Cave powerleveling, the ocean is where it's at. If you can cast LIT2, farming the ocean's bounty is probably the best way to level at least until you get your AIRSHIP.
Now, FF1 pretty much trained me in how to play RPGs, and in order to avoid Ineffectives I learned to spread my attacks around, a practice I still use to this day. Younger players who learned their skills from those newfangled games go back and try to play FF1 and get tripped up by it because, in any given round, two of their guys will attack and two will whiff because of Ineffectives. The "learn to spread your attacks out" vs. "the game should just autotarget" brouhaha was most noticable (to me anyway) after the release of Golden Sun for GBA which uses the oldschool method of Ineffective attacks. I don't mind the Ineffectives, and I admit it's always amusing to see people complain about them. They're easy to avoid if you're willing to unlearn a couple of your ideas about how RPG combat should work. In fact, I had to purposely force this one just to get the screenshot. Going into this round I knew either EDIT or ADAM would kill the target and the other would whiff.
Incidentially, this is the first useful thing SKUB has done in the adventure so far. I'll be sure to point out Useful SKUB Things (USTs) as I go to try and further illustrate my point that Wh.MAGEs suck and they have no place in any respectable FF1 party. Yes, this particular fight would have been my ruin if not for my Wh.MAGE, but I saved right outside the cave anyway and I would much rather have to reset once or twice during the course of the game than drag a usually-useless character through every fight. Undead also have a weakness to FIRE spells, so if I didn't have a Wh.MAGE handy I would have bought FIR2 for one of my RedMAGEs instead, which has the same effect. Even though this is UST #1, it's not something unique that only SKUB can handle.
That's the difference that one single level made. At L5 this fight would have been impossible, but at L6 it was trivially easy. Actually, I could win as low as L2 if I put SKUB in the back, had him RUSE twice, and then killed the WIZARDs over the course of the next twenty or thirty rounds providing they didn't land any criticals on me. Winning the fight that way would take longer than I spent on the ocean getting to L6, though! For the record, WIZARDs are the only monsters I think actually have cooler names in the updated versions of FF1, where they are called Piscodemons. WIZARD is somewhat of a misnomer anyway since they don't have any spellcasting ability.
The WIZARDs are on a spiked square, so I can fight them as much as I want. I don't have any more LIT2 charges, but if I had a Bl.MAGE on hand I might trigger the battle again to reap the EXP/GOLD reward. I'm done here in any case, so it's back to Elfland with me. Next: You have no more business here. Go!! |