WARNING: This blog is SHAMELESS with its spoilers for the original Final Fantasy VI. Changes present in the T-Edition romhack are shown off and only the strategies for overcoming challenges have spoiler tags.

The Ancient Castle

Picking up where I left off, I went to the Ancient Cave next, the one underneath Figaro Castle. Right enemies we awful but I had gotten used to experimenting with status effects and after realizing Couerls are susceptible to Stop, those battles got a lot easier. On the other hand, a Couerl can open the fight with Blaster and take out a few party members if not the whole squad! And this is why I use save states.

Omega, a superboss originally from Final Fantasy V, is strutting around here and I teased a battle knowing full-well this guy was going to obliterate me. Just wanted to see what the carnage was like. Look at that, Omega did a single all-party spell and wiped my whole party. And this is why I use save states.

The enemies inside the Castle are even worse. They take awhile to destroy and they use stronger attacks more frequently. The Ward Bangle that’s supposed to cut down the encounter rate doesn’t seem to make a difference. Moving from one room to another inside the castle was like sneaking around corners.

There’s a few bosses in here. Odin, originally a Magicite you just have to pick up, becomes a fight when you check his petrified figure in the throne room. I banged my head against that fight a few times and couldn’t figure out an edge to the fight and gave up for the while.

Samurai Soul, the monster-in-a-box, put up a fight but went down without an exorbitant amount of trouble. Like in vanilla FF6, the prize for beating it is Offering (also called Master’s Scroll in other translations) which turns the regular Fight command into Barrage where a character attacks 4 times at random at half the strength. Already a good ability, but I got the idea of combining Offering with Dancing Dagger and the results were great! While the randomness can lead to healing an enemy, getting a couple elemental attacks in a row can lead to devastating damage.

There’s also the Blue Dragon down in the Ancient Castle. This guy hit so hard with his party attacks and I used up a lot of my Phoenix Downs but I held tight and beat my first Dragon. Seven more to go. The boss drops a very good headgear– the Lambent Helm which halves all elements and teaches Dispel.

T-Edition adds a new room behind the throne. In the back of the Ancient Castle is a room with 12 legendary weapons– inspired by Final Fantasy V. When I returned here later with the means to open it, I skimmed all the weapons and they seem pretty great with interesting abilities like the Masamune– a katana for Cyan with Auto-Haste, that increases the chances of Preemptive strikes and eliminates the chances of being Pincer’d or Back Attack’d.

After leaving the place I went back to Banon and then talked to a scholar in Figaro Castle to learn that across the world there are four elemental crystal hiding and if I obtained them, I would be able to unlock some of those legendary weapons. The hunt was on!

Grinding

Feeling underpowered for pretty every thing, I caved to my instincts and started grinding. I got the Cursed Shield from an old man in Narshe and the thing about that item is you have to fight 250ish battles to turn it into the excellent Hero Shield (which in vanilla FF6 absorbed all elements; in T-Edition it nullifies all of them instead). I fought these weak critters on the Solitary Island Celes wakes up on at the start of the World of Ruin to also grind out some spells. Lots of spells were learned and a Hero Shield was got’d.

Around this time I felt confident I could beat Deathgaze so I flew around with the emulator at max to provoke battles and while it does get very cowardly and Flee quicker as its life goes down, I vanquished it and was given its claw as a prize. Nothing I could do with that on its own but taking it to Owzer nets me a Floral Fallal– an accessory that teaches Curaga.

I decided it was time to introduce Sabin to Duncan but while in vanilla FF6 you bring Sabin to Duncan and you get his ultimate Blitz, in T-Edition you have to– you guessed it!– fight a battle. Vargas is still alive and you have to win a one-on-one battle to learn the technique. Vargas’ Burst Fist’ took Sabin out in one shot so I gave Sabin an accessory that gives him Protect and Shell at the beginning of battle. The Hero Shield took care of most kinds of damage so I kept healing my HP with Cura and Vargas eventually went down.

Although I had attempted to fight the Mist Dragon before, I tried again and beat it. The prize was a pretty good Magicite, one that taught Holy and Blink (a very useful buff that makes physical attacks miss completely).

I gave that South Figaro Cave sidequest a try again, and I still couldn’t beat it. Those Deep Ones at the end of cave are too hard with their powerful magic and tricky ailments. And also the fact that they can destroy your MP stores. After that I went exploring for those crystals I needed for the Legendary Weapons and the water one inside Veldt Cave leads to a new dungeon not found in vanilla FF6. Who to show up but those Deep Ones as random encounters? I noped out of there but nearby was the Gold Dragon and I was able to take that one down. Six dragons to go.

Another crystal is up in Mt Zozo. I forgot a chest and I never beat the Storm Dragon so I gave that one a shot but my magic was too limited with my party to deal with the fury Storm Dragon gave me, even if I had plenty of armour that protected against Wind. Tiamat is just past where Cyan has his little dwelling. Wasn’t able to beat that one either. I would have to come back when I had a party with more spells learned.

I did beat Lich in Darill’s Tomb and got myself the Earth crystal. I brought it back to Ancient Castle and go three Legendary Weapons for it. Being decked out for a fight against an Earth Boss, I went to the Opera House to see if I could beat the Earth Dragon. I defeated him but just barely. Towards the end of the fight, it gets very violent and starts doing some murderous attacks and I only had so much MP for Blink recasts.

I went to Phoenix Cave to find the fire crystal but its guardian, Marilith, proved too difficult. And I had come all this way too. Likewise, the Red Dragon near the end of the dungeon was a no-go, too. The monster-in-a-box fight I passed up earlier was a success though. Proserpine was pretty easy once I got past their trick: drain all their MP and they can’t heal. I likely would have been able to beat them the first time around.

Grinding and Final Thoughts For Now

After putting on a few levels, the Ancient Cave and Phoenix Cave were quite easier. Weirdly enough, level factors in a lot of damage formulae so even getting four or five levels boosts damage output a lot. It makes me confident that no matter what I will be able to surpass any challenge simply by grinding. I don’t want to resort to that because that can cheapen the experience, but it gets me thinking.

How much grinding needs to happen? I want to use all my characters relatively equally and that means experience has to go over a larger body of people. Leveling is slower and some characters are still learning basic spells. I was probably doomed to grind at least a little bit. It’s not too bad especially with a fast-forward feature on the emulator.

In terms of spell-learning, a lot more equipment in Final Fantasy VI T-Edition provide spells to learn and in this late-game, a lot of these spells are not on Magicite Espers, like learning learning Dispel from the Lambent Helm or learning Curaga from the Floral Fallal. It’s quite the twist and something I’ve never seen before in any romhack.

I’ll leave it there for now. I might burn out on T-Edition but I’m happy to keep playing for now. Til next blog, stay tuned!