Catch up on Part 3 here!

VIII: You're Going the Ronka Way.

Welcome back to the Four Job Fiesta.

As you may recall from last time, Butts wrecked his airship and roadside assistance sent him a purple bird that can bench 450lbs. as a replacement. It's almost time to face the music from Cid, but before we do that, our heroes have a couple of pit stops to make. The black chocobo is unique in that it can fly over mountains thus gaining access to the entire world map, however it can only land in forests. Luckily, the places we want to go are both right next to forests.

Our first stop is Istory in the very top left corner there. This is an optional little town with a few interesting items, but the reason I personally came here was to grab the next Bard song, Romeo's Ballad. This is the song that casts Stop on all enemies in battle. If you don't know what that means, basically when I use it, enemies can't do anything. I can sit there and wail on them and never worry about being attacked. That is of course, if they're vulnerable to it. I end up using it in almost every random encounter from here on out with mild to great success. Istory is also the home of the Toad spell, which I'll never use, and some really powerful rings that are way too expensive. Also, Ramuh, a summon, is camped out in the woods to the east, but since I don't have a Summoner he is free to live out his days.

Our second stop is Lix, Butts' home town. His childhood friends are here to greet him and we learn more about Butts' backstory. Upon returning to his home, we learn that Butts' parents have passed away. His mother contracted a fatal disease and died in his youth, and by means of a flashback, we discover his father, Dorgann, was played by Marlon Brando.

The song Alluring Air can also be learned here. I believe it confuses all enemies, but I never used it because Stop > Confuse. The real reason to come to this town is the hot sale happening in the shopping district. Seeing that this is Butts' hometown and all, he gets half off at the drug store. Score!

The party returns to Cid to break the news about the airship and Cid is surprisingly chill about it. In fact, he was some interesting news to share. King Tycoon, Lenna's father, has been sighted traveling to the ruins of Gohn to the south. This also happens to be where the Earth Crystal is located. The problem is getting there. As stated, our chocobo can only land in forests and there's apparently no way to just like, have it fly close to the ground and then jump off or whatever, so by foot we go! The major obstacle in the way is the Desert of Shifting Sands. Normally, there's no feasible way to cross the desert by foot, but Cid and Mid have a plan. There's a giant Sand Worm that lives there and our resident nerds have the brilliant idea of "if we kill the Sand Worm we can use its body as a bridge." GENIUS. The problem is killing it. Well, so far nothing has really put up a fight. We can just crack a rod and...

You realize you're talking to three wizards and a lady with a harp, right? What do you mean we'll be sorry?

As it turns out, Mid is partially lying, magic works fine on the worm. What he's trying to tell you is to not target all three holes with your spells. The way this fight works is, if you attack one of the holes that the worm is not in (and he likes to move a lot), he counters with a pretty powerful gravity spell which cuts your HP in half. Combine that with his sandstorm attack, which deals mild damage but has the added effect of slowly draining your HP, you can find yourself in trouble fast. Fortunately, cracking rods deals so much damage to early bosses that I simply outpace the worm's damage.

After traveling across the dead worm's rotting corpse, our heroes arrive at the ruins of Gohn and play hide and seek with the missing king.

I mean, when the first crystal breaks at the beginning of the game, he appears as a ghostly figure to Lenna. Who wouldn't think he was just that, a ghost? Anyway, King Tycoon pulls an ACME style trapdoor trick and sends the party down into the depths of the ruins. They discover some pretty amazing technology down there and I'm not saying aliens, but aliens. They arrive at a room that is basically Cerebro from X-Men and get transported across the world to similar ruins underneath Crescent Island, where our airship was sucked up by the ocean. You see where this is going.

Like all things awesome, the device explodes after use. Cid and Mid travel back to the Crescent Forest to...return the chocobo, I guess? Plot convenience? Sure. While exploring the ruins underground, Butts discovers a switch with a ridiculously specific purpose.

Also located in these ruins is our boat! Apparently, it wasn't just sucked underwater it was carefully docked in a black void of nothingness.

But wait, there's more! The dock is also home to yet another ship! And this one has propellers! Butts sends Cid and Mid to work while he and the others catch some shut eye, as heroes are want to do. After a quick cat nap, Cid is finished with the new airship and our heroes can now travel back to Gohn and find King Tycoon and the Earth Crystal. Of course, in Final Fantasy V, nothing is ever that simple. Upon nearing Gohn, we once again are greeted with a rumbling of the earth. This time, something is coming out of the ground instead of going back in.

The flying city rises high into the atmosphere. So high, that our airship can't handle the pressure...or something. In any case, we're going to need some help here. Reporting back to Cid and Mid, they send Butts on a fetch quest to find some Adamantite to reinforce the hull of the airship. Conveniently, Galuf remembers seeing some near the meteor he arrived in this world on. The party travels to the meteor and find the adamantite...and the Adamantoise guarding it. Oh, what's that? The programmers forgot to make the adamantoise immune to instant death? Well, I can't use instant death, but this thing only has 2000 HP so a single Frost Rod does it in. Returning to Cid and Mid, the airship is outfitted with some sweet rims and we can finally reach the flying ruins. However, the ruins have a defense system in the form of laser cannons and flamethrowers.

The Sssssoulllllllllll Cannon is actually mildly difficult...if you let it get that diffusion beam cannon off. The launchers can fire missles at you and inflict the old status, which makes your party weak as shit. Unfortunately for it, I brought a stack of Thunder Rods.

Hey, Black Mages are really powerful. But they're about to get not so powerful.

Butts enters the Ronka Ruins (there's a name) in search of a king and a crystal. By the way, the Earth Crystal is what's powering this flying behemoth. It's also about to explode under the pressure. We should hurry. The ruins are full of distractions though, in the form of invisible floors and obnoxious traps.

As they reach the center of the ruins, the party finds King Tycoon staring down a snake...bird...thing. He then sics Butts on it.

So, okay. This thing sucks. The first phase of this fight is fairly simple. Archeoaevis has four different forms. They aren't so much forms as they are the same creature with a different weakness and HP value. When its HP hits a certain point, it will silently transform to a new weakness. The trick is to scan it with the Blue Mage ability Scan, and that will tell you what it's weak to. I can't do that. I have to guess. Meanwhile this thing has some nasty attacks. In particular, its Malestrom attack reduces the HP of whoever it hits to single digits. Let me paint this picture for you. Potions heal for 50 HP. Hi-Potions heal 500 HP, but there's nowhere to purchase them yet, so I only have about 8 from drops and chests. I also have 12 Elixirs that fully heal me, but elixirs are rare and valuable in the late game. But desperate times force me to use them. In other words, not having a White Mage to heal sucks. Limited resources force me to end this battle quickly. Too bad there's another trick to this fight.

When you kill it, it comes back in a new fifth form. This form is completely immune to magic. It also has 2500 HP. So therein lies the problem, I need to kill this thing fast, but the only way I have to damage it is the couple of daggers and the slightly better dagger I have. The good dagger does 60 damage, the rest do 20. This thing killed me hard. I lasted fairly long with the resources I had but it wasn't enough.

So I struggled with this for a bit, trying to figure out how I could possibly kill this thing with a party that could only poke at it with knives. Eventually, I decided that I needed better knives for everyone else. If everyone could do 60 damage, I could conceivably kill it in 10-12 turns provided it was nice to me with the attacks it used. I left the ruins, went to the town that sold Mythril Knives, bought three more for my other party members and came back for Round 2. I managed to beat it after using up all of my hi-potions and about 10 of my elixirs, but there it is. I later learned that Black Mages could use a Flail that would've probably made it way easier, but whatever.

King Tycoon thanks Butts for removing the obstacle and continues to the Earth Crystal. At this point is clear that this dude is possessed and protests from his daughters ain't helping. He knocks the party out and prepares to destroy the Crystal when a tiny girl busts through the wall like the Koolaid Man and knocks the king out.

The girl reveals herself as Galuf's granddaughter, Krile, and Galuf finally is fully cured of his amnesia. Krile came from the other world by another meteorite cause apparently it's super easy to get a loan for one of those things over there.

Our heroes are too late. The crystal is too weak and shatters before their eyes. This is bad on multiple levels. Not only have the crystals that govern the forces of nature shattered, oh by the way, an evil warlock named Exdeath was sealed by the crystals and now that they are gone, Exdeath is free.

King Tycoon uses the last of his energy to save the party from Exdeath and restore some power to the crystal shards. FINALLY. We got all of our jobs! Now I just need to find out what my final job is. My first roll was Dragoon. Well, since I really didn't want to use any of the classes I used before, I donated to get a reroll. I got Dancer. Damn. Okay, we'll give it one more shot.

Knight!

Okay, I can work with that. Knight isn't the most interesting class, but it has some nice perks. It can equip powerful swords and armor that most other classes can't. It can use its Guard ability to completely negate any damage done to it and its Cover ability lets it take hits for critically wounded allies. Not to mention that it can learn Two-Handed which doubles a weapon's power at the cost of having no shield.

Great, now we have access to all of our jobs meaning we can make someone a Samurai as well.

You may be wondering where Galuf went. Well, now that his memory has returned, he explains that Exdeath was an evil warlock from his world that he and three other guys, named the Warrior of Dawn, sealed away when Exdeath came to Butts' world to destroy the crystals. Butts' father, Dorgann, was one of those Warriors and he stayed behind to watch over them. But things went awry and once they realized the crystals were in danger, Galuf ...flew the meteorite to Butts' world to fix it. Unfortunately, meteors don't have seatbelts so he banged his head and got amnesia. Fast forward to now. Galuf decides to return with Krile back to his world to fight Exdeath and bids Butts, Lenna, and Faris farewell.

The End?

Not even close.