Playing Final Fantasy 1 need help

[bradhig1]

I got to Elfland and can't figure who can learn spells and use certain weapons. Was using a guide on Gamefaqs but I am still confused.

[Tanooki]

@bradhig1 My suggestion to you, since this is in the NES space, would be to take the fairly easily found PDF scan of Nintendo Power V17 which is when they ran while in being bimontly, four months of straight up strategy guide issues with nothing but that.  #17 is and only is FF1 with everything detailed very well with heaps of images.

https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_Power_V17

 

That's the contents, what it looks like, but the PDF is on you.  I will say it can be had fairly easy, perhaps if you know how to look at the archive.org site perhaps?   I've got the original here, re-claimed it a couple years back now and it's a solid guide.

 

 

I will add this on an edit.  There are white spells and black spells, it's clear who uses what there.  If you have the red mage, they can use BOTH, so you'll have to decide what is most important as you don't get twice the space.  Weapons though, that's a bit nastier.  The monk/blackbelt if you have it, no weapon, fists of fury there.  The thief it uses fast blades and daggers best.  The mages, kind of depends, usually white works with hammers/staff and black uses daggers/wands.   The red mage is a watered down multi-wannabe, so it can use some warrior/thief weapons or the piddly stuff of the other mages, same with the armor leaning more towards the thief side (light vs heavy gear.)

Edited June 7, 2021 by Tanooki

[Austin]

Yeah, I concur with just looking at the Nintendo Power official strategy guide for the game. It's an excellent tool. So many of us used it while playing the game growing up.

[Lord Mushroom]

When I played the Final Fantasy Origins version (PS1), I came to the conclusion (correct or false) that the best strategy was to use 4 warriors. By the time

Spoiler

they became knights and could do magic,

I was fed up with the game.

[+jeremiahjt]

That is easy. Turn the power off on the NES, remove the cartridge, insert Dragon Warrior, turn the power on, and enjoy.

[ChildOfCv]

18 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I will add this on an edit.  There are white spells and black spells, it's clear who uses what there.  If you have the red mage, they can use BOTH, so you'll have to decide what is most important as you don't get twice the space.  But note that a few of the upper-level spells can't be used by red mages either.

 

Weapons though, that's a bit nastier.  The monk/blackbelt if you have it, no weapon, fists of fury there.  The thief it uses fast blades and daggers best.  The mages, kind of depends, usually white works with hammers/staff and black uses daggers/wands.   The red mage is a watered down multi-wannabe, so it can use some warrior/thief weapons or the piddly stuff of the other mages, same with the armor leaning more towards the thief side (light vs heavy gear.)

I remember getting most of the way through the game and being so disappointed in my Black Belt, because there still wasn't anything better than an iron nunchuck for him to use, and his damage potential made him a serious liability.  Finally I read in the manual that he fights without a weapon, so tried removing it and.... !@#% he's hitting harder than my fighter!  Of course more recently I heard that there's a bug in the original release where he actually grows LESS quickly once he becomes a Master.  So in that sense, he's still a liability.  WTF?  Maybe they fixed it in one of the remakes though.

[Lord Mushroom]

2 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:

I heard that there's a bug in the original release where he actually grows LESS quickly once he becomes a Master.  So in that sense, he's still a liability.  WTF?  Maybe they fixed it in one of the remakes though.

I sure as hell wouldn´t know. ?

 

There was plenty of stuff wrong with the PS1 version. I don´t know if those were present in the original too. Here they are:

 

1) I spent an eternity wandering aimlessly around in the beginning, not knowing what to do, before finding out that you had to go to the left or right when in the first city to actually enter the city. And without having been in the city to get weapons, combat was really, really tough.

 

2) As mentioned, it seemed optimal to use an all Warrior party, which is boring. I started out with a diverse crowd, but they all sucked except for the warrior, so I restarted with 2 Warriors and the other classes I hadn´t tried. They sucked too, so I ended up with 4 Warriors. A role-playing game without magic is like a platform game without jumping.

Spoiler

There was an enemy (some kind of blob?), which I think was almost immune to Warriors. Warriors could only do 1 damage per strike or something to them. Imagine how fun it was to meet them... 

 

3) 

Spoiler

It seemed to matter in which position your heroes were positioned in terms of who was attacked the most. Expecially the top position (or was it the bottom position?) would be hit much more frequently than the others. If you happened to have a vulnerable class hero there, you would probably need to start over. Of course this wasn´t a problem for me...

 

4) Too much grinding necessary. Trying to go somewhere, only to have to turn back in order to survive. And I had to do it many times before I succeeded. Too many times. Or simply grinding in order to improve or earn money because you know you wouldn´t make it otherwise.

 

5) 

Spoiler

The cheapest healing accommodation is the most cost effective. So even though you need to heal a lot, you have to do it using motherfucking tents. ? Which takes forever. Only late in the game when I had more money than I knew what to do with did I use some of the other ones.

 

6) Late in the game,

Spoiler

suddenly beating enemies is a breeze, and it is all about solving puzzles and "find person A, then go to city B, there person C will tell you you need to see person D, who will give you a fairy, give the fairy to person E, then start looking for barrels". ?

Oh my god! I couldn´t take it anymore at that point.

 

There is probably more, which I have repressed. I liked

Spoiler

the music in the Western Keep/Ruined Castle, though. It is an improved version of what I think is the main theme:

 

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[NE146]

3 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:

I remember getting most of the way through the game and being so disappointed in my Black Belt, because there still wasn't anything better than an iron nunchuck for him to use, and his damage potential made him a serious liability.  Finally I read in the manual that he fights without a weapon, so tried removing it and.... !@#% he's hitting harder than my fighter!  Of course more recently I heard that there's a bug in the original release where he actually grows LESS quickly once he becomes a Master.  So in that sense, he's still a liability.  WTF?  Maybe they fixed it in one of the remakes though.

nah man 4 black belts completely naked is a great way to go and everyone should try it once.. They start off slow and having to use armor/weapons but then boom (around lvl 8? I forget), you just take off all their armor and weapons (you never really have to worry about it again) and they start punching everything to death 

[Tanooki]

3 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:

I remember getting most of the way through the game and being so disappointed in my Black Belt, because there still wasn't anything better than an iron nunchuck for him to use, and his damage potential made him a serious liability.  Finally I read in the manual that he fights without a weapon, so tried removing it and.... !@#% he's hitting harder than my fighter!  Of course more recently I heard that there's a bug in the original release where he actually grows LESS quickly once he becomes a Master.  So in that sense, he's still a liability.  WTF?  Maybe they fixed it in one of the remakes though.

I never liked the character or the red mage.  People always when I'd bring it up say I was dumb getting the thief as he's hard to keep alive earlier on, but once you get deep into that and honestly after you hit a point where his job class changes, that's when that character only then truly shines.

[ChildOfCv]

And since I was reminded... (warning, some NSFW language)

 

 

Also, defeating the game with 4 white mages in 1 hour 30 (and with the help of a computer to precisely input controls)  Spoilers, obviously.

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by ChildOfCv

[bradhig1]

On 6/6/2021 at 7:40 PM, Tanooki said:

@bradhig1 My suggestion to you, since this is in the NES space, would be to take the fairly easily found PDF scan of Nintendo Power V17 which is when they ran while in being bimontly, four months of straight up strategy guide issues with nothing but that.  #17 is and only is FF1 with everything detailed very well with heaps of images.

https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_Power_V17

 

That's the contents, what it looks like, but the PDF is on you.  I will say it can be had fairly easy, perhaps if you know how to look at the archive.org site perhaps?   I've got the original here, re-claimed it a couple years back now and it's a solid guide.

 

 

I will add this on an edit.  There are white spells and black spells, it's clear who uses what there.  If you have the red mage, they can use BOTH, so you'll have to decide what is most important as you don't get twice the space.  Weapons though, that's a bit nastier.  The monk/blackbelt if you have it, no weapon, fists of fury there.  The thief it uses fast blades and daggers best.  The mages, kind of depends, usually white works with hammers/staff and black uses daggers/wands.   The red mage is a watered down multi-wannabe, so it can use some warrior/thief weapons or the piddly stuff of the other mages, same with the armor leaning more towards the thief side (light vs heavy gear.)

I had all the Nintendo Power issues in PDF format but lost them after a hard drive crash on my first laptop years ago.   I would love to own the first ten issues but they are expensive on Ebay.

[bradhig1]

That strategy guide looks like the Super Mario Bros 3 one I had years ago. 

[newtmonkey]

I played through this a few years ago and had a blast.  I used a fighter, two red mages, and a white mage.  I didn't need to grind at all (neither EXP nor gold), though I had to tackle a couple of the dungeons over two attempts.  I could see needing to possibly grind up gold to equip your party if using more than one fighter, though.

 

It definitely blows the first Dragon Warrior out of the water (DW1 is far too simple and actually does require some grinding about halfway through the game), though I'd rank it slightly below Dragon Warrior II.

[Lord Mushroom]

15 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

5) 

  Hide contents

The cheapest healing accommodation is the most cost effective. So even though you need to heal a lot, you have to do it using motherfucking tents. ? Which takes forever. Only late in the game when I had more money than I knew what to do with did I use some of the other ones.

 

I forgot about Sleeping Bags. I was using Sleeping Bags!

[Lord Mushroom]

7 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

I could see needing to possibly grind up gold to equip your party if using more than one fighter, though.

Yes, insufficient supplies was my main problem. I have read that the monsters have more HP in the PS1 version, and that didn´t help. I was also playing on the hardest settings.

[Tanooki]

12 hours ago, bradhig1 said:

I had all the Nintendo Power issues in PDF format but lost them after a hard drive crash on my first laptop years ago.   I would love to own the first ten issues but they are expensive on Ebay.

Well I just found it and all the guides from NP Magazine and related from before they started doing actual guides in the early 90s for SNES.  It's up on archive.org  just go to /details/NESGameGuides and then grab the individual file from where you can split the listing.  Your answer is there, took me under a minute to locate it.

 

I do agree about the cost of the issues.  I dodged that huge bullet a couple years ago.  Local guy sold 40 issues for a $1 each, took them, then having some holes I found another bundle on ebay I talked down to like $5/issue due to some having condition issues and the sort, and between them short of maybe 5-10 1-2 at a time grabs since I got all but like 3 issues between 1-74, and the lowest missing is in the low 50s.  Yeah those bundles had the originals, including #1 where the cover was detached but I used some care and basic restoration tactics to re-attach the front page and bind the cover, sadly a couple needed strips of clear tape on the inside and it looks went from a 1/10 to maybe a 6/10 after so I was thrilled.  Never made sense to me why that one is so expensive and #2 drops off, that one is the rarest of the entire bundle because it was the first PAID issue, 1 was mass printed many times over as a give away at stores, over the phone, to anyone with Fun Club(which I had.)  2 came with #1 and looking at dumb WATA stuff I bet it would grade around an 8 it's that nice.

 

Those old magazines are special.  Not just nostalgia, but each one given the relative smaller size of games then, you got multiple full game guides all done with pictures and lines to an icon showing you what was where, anything needing more had a box with a screen cap and description.  The magazine was just brilliant in its usefulness in an era before guides were made alone.

[bradhig1]

Been working the Swamp Cave.   Got a long sword out of it.  Can't deal with paralyze no items to cure it.  At level 8 with all characters.  

[TheGameCollector]

Rpgclassics.com has walkthroughs for all the old RPGs. As well as lists and item locations. Many if the walkthroughs have pictures.

Edited June 9, 2021 by TheGameCollector

[7800Knight]

Elfland marks a significant jump in difficulty.  Expect to spend some time grinding to build up your levels, earn money for equipment plus magic and to take on the Marsh Cave.

 

Walkthroughs are your best friend here.  When you are ready to tackle the Marsh Cave, stock up on Heal Potion to the limit (with some Pure potions for good measure) and use a tent to save outside the Marsh Cave before heading in.

[NE146]

Also if you haven't figured it out already, in FF1 the "Peninsula of Power" is the spot to be for early levelling up. It's where you cross into a small section of the map and meet some enemies from a later part of the game that'll give you a bunch of experience.. if you can beat them. Just make sure to save. 

 

 

And I

[digdugnate]

This one can be rough if you're not used to the way the old ones worked on the NES/FC or had forgotten in your old age.  I know it took me a little bit when I replayed FFI and Dragon Quest I to remember how the games flowed a bit.

 

Grind, grind, grind, lol.  You'll win when your math is higher than theirs and like mentioned above snag a walkthrough if you get hung up on geography.

[bradhig1]

I have a fighter ,white mage ,black mage , and black belt at level 9.    Can't figure what armor and weapons are best for all but the fighter.   Is there a better way to read pdf files because Microsoft Edge won't let me zoom in far enough to read the small text?

[Tanooki]

@bradhig1 There really isn't anything for armor on the magic users you have.  Basic cloth/robe type stuff, they don't do leather and above.  Weapons at that point, hammer works great for the white, dagger for the black.  Due to the atrocious magic system you'll be swinging weapons a good bit if you're away from town to save your very limited magic shots for boss fights in dungeons.  Once you hit provoka for the mages you can add gloves. Elfland for them would be the copper bracelets and large dagger for black mage.

 

Edge should zoom, if you like hold CTRL and roll your mouse wheel it will zoom the entire page/document 10% each time.  The other issue sadly could be a bad scan but that should only apply to the tiny print on the screen cap boxes.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Tanooki

[NE146]

See that's why I dig the Kung Fu / Black Belts.

 

No armor, no weapons, no magic, no worries.  You just go and beat up everything, NAKED.  

[7800Knight]

Yep, around Elfland, the Black Belt can just drop weapons in favor of his fists.  As the game progresses and after being promoted, the Black Belt/Master becomes capable of dishing out lots of damage!