In
the first session, I completed about 30 quests of what was 116 at that time. On August 4th, I continued. With a few new additions from GameFAQs, there are now 125 quests.
I started out by realizing that the Battle Axe I was eligible for was probably worthwhile, so I scooted up to Pravoka to grab it. While I was there, I did a quick quest.
Title: Ableism Awareness
Story: Matoya's blindness has left her particularly keen with regards to auditory information... in fact, she finds loud noises particularly annoying. Avoid disturbing her with noisy equipment and she will be able to help you learn a new trick.
Requirement: Visit Matoya, starting from Cornelia or Pravoka without using the ship or airship. From the time you step foot in the forest near her cave, avoid carrying any loud, rattling equipment, including Chain, Iron, Silver or Steel armor, helmets, or gauntlets, as well as the Iron Staff / Crosier and Iron Nunchuk weapons.
Unlocks: (b)Focus
I had labelled this quest as "abandoned" so it wasn't showing in the list, but I realized it might be useful for other quests. Some quests are specified as pre-requisites of others, after all! And given all of the trouble I had getting Thunder, I may as well learn Focus. I was at Pravoka anyway and this was pretty simple.
Next, I went to the Marsh Cave. I had a few false starts caused by quick battles that went wrong. I bought lots of Antidotes and Potions for the trip. I sure fought a lot of wolves! Perhaps in a bit of foreshadowing, sometimes it seems like I just get the same encounter over and over. In the Marsh Cave, I grabbed the free Dagger, which I'm eligible to use, so Vivi wielded it.
Shortly after getting the Dagger, Locke died in a fight with Gargoyles. I figured I would get a quest done and back out instead of reloading entirely (partly because reloading complicates my quest tracking).
Title: Take This Copper!
Story: The Elves have learned to work with copper to make protective gear, but their methods are very unorthodox. To craft the perfect bracelet, they need some ingredients.
Requirement: Kill a Green Slime and a Grey Ooze.
Unlocks: (a)Copper Armlet
I happened to get into a fight with some spiders, a Green Slime and a Grey Ooze on the way out. Vivi wiped them with Fira and that made it easy.
Title: Pure Bodyguarding
Requirement: Starting from the empty room at the dead end in the first level of the Marsh Cave, return to Elfheim with at least one living party member taking no damage.
Unlocks: (w)Poisona
It turns out that dead end is just a dead end with no empty room - FlamingXP or I had mis-remembered - but I think I covered this by intent. I went to the end of the dead end, then walked back to Elfheim. Locke was dead, Cecil and Lenna took damage, but Vivi didn't, staying at 113 HP and effectively bodyguarding the skittish elven child!
Back in Elfheim, we revived Locke and healed up and got Copper Armlets for the three of our party members that it might be an asset for. We also grabbed Poisona. I visited the NW Castle (Western Keep) to start one of the Double, Double, Toil and Trouble quests, and then to run into Ghasts I chose to do this:
Title: Appreciating Nature: Elfheim Edition
Story: When travelling through the Elfheim region, it was said that Wood's companions were able to convince him that nature needed no further appreciation because the elves are a bunch of tree-hugging hippies. Wood travelled through the Elfheim region, hiding his tears, as his companions urged him toward their destinations. It would put Wood's nature-protecting soul at ease if someone were to carefully inspect and appreciate the forests of Elfheim.
Requirement: In a single trip, step in every single contiguous forest tile in the area west of Elfheim / south of Northwest Castle.
Unlocks: (w)NulBlaze
Wouldn't you know that one I had activated a quest asking me to defeat Ghasts, that they never showed up again? I had seen them
before going to the castle, but I don't think I met a single one after! After another round of healing, I went back to the Marsh Cave, where this happened:
Title: How Can You See In That Thing?
Story: Helmets can be very useful, but not if it impairs the wearers vision. The party's fighter must get used to fighting in the dark before becoming comfortable wearing one.
Requirement: Kill 4 enemies with the party's fighter while he's inflicted with the Dark status.
Unlocks: (a)Great Helm
It's funny, but there are relatively few enemies in this game who can inflict the Dark status, and it doesn't stick around after battle. This means you need to do this during the battle where you get afflicted with blindness. It turns out the early-game Shadow enemies are perfect for this, because their damage and general threat level is very low. I just sat there waiting until they blinded Cecil, and then had Cecil clobber them all with his eyes closed. This happened in two consecutive encounters with 3 Shadows.
Title: Chain Is Great But Steel?
Story: The party's fighter was walking through Cornelia when a guard called them over. They had a conversation about the value of chain armor compared to iron plate. "Legend has it", the guard drew nearer and whispered, "that in a chest in the Marsh cave there is a suit of Iron Armor for FREE.".
Requirement: Gain access to the Ship and Chain Mail. Go into the Marsh Cave and retrieve the Iron Armor from the chest.
Unlocks: (a)Iron Armor
This is one of the weirdest ones. I am not sure how effectively I'm playing by the rules here, because it turns out the Iron Armor chest has been fully removed from the Pixel Remaster version of Final Fantasy. I had recently played the GBA Dawn of Souls version and I had even said, when I played that I looked for Iron Armor and couldn't find it. In fact, one of the chests that used to hold Iron Armor now has a Phoenix Down... which didn't even exist in the original Final Fantasy!
With this in mind, I think getting this Phoenix Down - which, by the way, I'm not using - meets the requirements for this quest. If it
doesn't, then this quest is now impossible (and it
seems like this isn't the only one where subtle but significant changes in the game caused impossible quests). I got another Iron Armor from a chest shortly after in the locked Cornelian treasure rooms anyway. So... I marked it complete! Come at me, I guess?
The Piscodemons - or WIZARDs - were up next. In this version of the game, instead of being a "spiked square" they are a monster-in-a-box.
I got four of them. I had Vivi cast Fira to soften them up, which helped a lot. Despite his robust defenses, Cecil was utterly clobbered. But we won and got the Crown.
Before leaving, I kept checking every room I could in the Marsh Cave still seeking Iron Armor but it wasn't there. I left and it wasn't too bad getting out safely without Cecil. In fact, this might present an opportunity!
Title: Pity of the Guard
Story: The guards of Cornelia are among the most consistently well-equipped in the land. And given that Garland has left, the rest are mostly well known for their compassion as well. They won't mind the discipline that they'll take for misplacing their equipment if it means helping out someone in desperate need.
Requirement: Speak to any guard in Cornelia with a character who can equip an Iron Shield having 1 HP.
Unlocks: (a)Iron Shield
Reviving Cecil got him set to 1 HP, which made it pretty easy to enable the Iron Shield. In fact...
Title: The Gift of Life
Story: To truly master the power over life, you must be aware of the value of life and how each life is different. You must observe life beginning and ending; only then will you hold power over it.
Requirement: Each party member must die and be revived in a clinic at least once.
Unlocks: (w)Life
I let Lenna die as well. Each character had died and been revived once now, so when the time comes I'll be able to make use of Life or Raise or whatever it's called.
For fighting Astos, there were three quests where the first spellcasting enemy you can face made opportunities to complete quests. Really, I think this might be the last opportunity before Lich? So I thought I should take advantage. One in particular I wanted to do was this:
Title: The Princess' Secret
Story: In another universe (or timeline or something), the black mage's journey with the princess of Alexandria started off with clumsiness, coincidences, and plans gone awry. As part of this, the black mage accidentally let loose a fire spell that singed the white cloak of the princess of Alexandria, revealing her identity to the masses and throwing a wrench in the plans of his eventual companions. The black mage wishes they had used any other spell, or perhaps one that could put the fire out!
Requirement: The party's white mage must be hit by a fire-element spell or special attack while the party's black mage is alive and has no negative status effects. Both characters must survive the battle.
Unlocks: (b)Blizzara
When I went into the Astos fight, I was really hoping he would cast Fira, and I intended (at first) to cast NulBlaze to mitigate it. But, when I opened my spell list, I saw Silence there, and I got tempted! So what actually happened? On turn 1, Astos cast Fira, and then Lenna successfully landed Silence. I couldn't have hoped for a better result! Without all of his other spells, Astos was nearly completely helpless.
We also wanted to do this one:
Title: You Runed My Day
Story: One of the rune smiths in town has practiced channeling magic into weapons, but he needs the magical energy of an evil creature to recharge his runes.
Requirement: Use a bladed weapon to kill an enemy that can cast spells. Then drop the weapon used to kill the enemy before another encounter.
Unlocks: (e)Rune Blade
Cecil landed the finishing blow on Astos with a Saber! You can see that Lenna was using "defend", and that's because she was the only character not using a bladed weapon. Since this version of the game doesn't allow dropping weapons, I unequipped the Saber and sold it reasonably promptly, which is as close as I can get. (Don't worry, I wasted tons of money in other ways to compensate for the financial difference.)
This also means we get the Crystal Eye, allowing us to do tons of game progression and the quests that go with that.
While I was dealing with Matoya, I did this:
Title: The Sound of Nature
Story: Let us follow in the footsteps of Wood the fighter once again and recall that his interest in nature was the product of someone who adored being able to magically restore one's voice. There is a lot of quality nature outside of Matoya's cave, and oh how she hates loud noises. If you appreciate her nature and scare some of the birds and monsters away from her cave perhaps she will help you restore your noisiness as well.
Requirement: After giving Matoya the Crystal, in a single trip, step in every single contiguous forest tile directly outside of Matoya's Cave.
Unlocks: (w)Vox
...and this one happened accidentally as I did it:
Title: An Old Man and his Horses
Requirement: After completing An Old Man and His Worms, defeat a group of 4 Crazy Horses in a forest.
Unlocks: (a)Leather Shield
This is the one that I had to fix up because there were two quests that unlocked Helm. At some point that must've been a typo or a copy/paste error on my part, because on the original post with that quest it had said Leather Shield all along. Anyway, I've got a better shield already... but there's always a chance this could matter later.
Having had some success letting party members die by leaving all of their armor off during sea battles, I decided to invest in this:
Story: To truly understand the power of death, you must become death and feel its hold falling over everyone you hold most dear. Recall the story of Tick the fighter and his companions, who were compelled to face each of the four fiends with a different member of the party having already succumbed to the beyond, each of them marked upon Tick's soul as an "X".
Requirement: Finish four consecutive battles each with a different light warrior dead at the end of the battle.
Unlocks: (b)Kill
This is the level 8 "power word-style" spell originally called XXXX. It's kind of neat to unlock this so early although I certainly won't be using it for a while. In a way, I'm sure it's easiest to do this while the team isn't amazingly buff. I actually died once in the course of this, but when I reloaded my save I managed to carefully have four consecutive battles where each had a different dead warrior. First was Locke, then Cecil, then Vivi, then Lenna. It helped to have them all start unequipped and then after I revived each of them I gave them all their gear so they could carry the team somewhat. For some reason it didn't occur to me that I ought to re-order the team.
I continued my Mystic Key looting after this. Elfheim and Cornelia were done, so I went to the Temple of Chaos yet. I was surprised that the spiked Gargoyles were gone. I got the Rune Blade, which was a fantastic upgrade for Locke the thief. Next, I headed to the Dwarf Cave. As I hit the port there, I noticed something.
Story: The Titan guards an axe that's usually pretty unimpressive... at least in this game. In another game where it's a little bit better you can simply buy this axe at a port. Let's suppose you can do that now.
Requirement: Have 15,500 GP on hand and step on any port tile.
Unlocks: (e)Great Axe
I happened to have just barely crested 15,500 Gil! This is a reference to the Great Axe in Final Fantasy XII which I think is at Balfonheim Port. Then I talked to Nerrick. I also got the Great Helm here, which I could use because of what I did with the Shadows earlier.
I was also able to do this one, mostly:
Story: Whether or not your nickname is "crocodile" you can still get a bigger knife. The dwarves don't get to work with silver as much as they'd like, so they're eager to help.
Requirement: Drop a dagger/knife and any item made from mythril/silver in the room with the dwarf smith. You may purchase/find a locked item for the purposes of dropping it in this quest, but it cannot be equipped or used in battle.
Unlocks: (e)Mythril Knife
To do this, I needed to consider my new Mythril Hammer "dropped" - e.g., ensure it's unequipped and then sell it. There was a hitch here where I had accidentally equipped the Mythril Hammer recently when I re-equipped Lenna. I feel a bit bad about that but it was a pretty minor oversight over a fairly short span of time so - although I wish I'd been more to-the-letter with the rules - I'm not going to dwell on it too much.
Title: Double, Double Toil and Trouble II
Author:
beege_man (2020)
Story: The witch in Cornelia mentioned an even more powerful witch in a cave up north. After visiting her, she tells you to bring her the eye of a Lizard, a Warg Wolf's tooth, pus of Gigas Worm, and a poison sac. With these she can teach you to do more than just put things to sleep.
Requirement: Visit Matoya, then kill 1 Lizard, 1 Warg Wolf, 1 Gigas Worm, and 1 Tarantula or Cobra, then visit Matoya again.
Unlocks: (b)Dark
I had actually been waiting for
ages to encounter a Lizard and finally ran into one. These Double, Double, Toil and Trouble quests are mostly linked so I'm really glad to get another out of the way; it had been feeling like a bottleneck. As I did this, I had Vivi in the leader of the party for a quest called
Story: The party's black mage is growing frustrated at being relegated to simply support and wishes to prove that they are a valuable member of the party.
Requirement: With the party's black mage leading the party, win battles with a Goblin Guard, a Sahagin Chief, a Crawler, an Ogre, and a Grey Ooze in any order. The black mage must be in front for the battle and also land at least one physical strike on said monster, and survive.
Unlocks: (b)Temper
This required a mini-backtrack into the Marsh Cave. During all of this I had been hoping to encounter Green Slimes and Ghasts for another quest but they absolutely refused to show up. Also in the course of this, I tried going to the Mystic Key doors at the bottom of the Marsh Cave but I had a terrible time with Scorpions, leaving Vivi dead by the time we fought Anacondas (the ones that were COBRA on NES). Thankfully this particular quest was already complete.
We stayed here quite a while looking for both Green Slimes and Ghasts but neither appeared. I eventually got sick of waiting so we just won't have some of those Double, Double, Toil and Trouble quest rewards for a while. Those were mostly status effect spells. These enemies also appear in the Earth Cavern, I believe, so I'll probably still finish it without a terrible grind eventually.
I talked to Dr. Unne to start another quest and I got the Life spell. I popped over to Crescent Lake, mostly to get a Mythril Sword for Cecil, but I noticed when I fought Minotaurs and Trolls that they were worth over 1000 experience points altogether.
With that new info, I stripped Cecil down and did this quest:
Story: Arylon is one of the most talented and beautiful dancers in the known world and she holds others to a fairly high standard. There is no reason you can't fight evil while looking good, and she will reward warriors who can prove this.
Requirement: Win any battle with total experience over 1000 while only wearing defensive equipment each with an evade penalty of -2 or less, then talk to Arylon.
Unlocks: (a)Silver Armlet
With Cecil's bad armor situation he actually did get knocked out by Trolls once before I pulled this off successfully.
Y'know what's strange? The Cornelian dancer is unnamed in the Pixel Remaster version!
I actually didn't talk to her at this point chronologically; I did that after completing the next big quest. After that first visit to Crescent Lake, I decided to complete this:
Title: The Great Barrier Reef
Requirement: Circumnavigate the entire southern continent by circling it with the ship, without entering a town or dungeon. Outside of battle, at least one tile of coastline should be visible at all times.
Unlocks: (e)Coral Sword
This took a really long time and wasn't very fun (
bad quest maker!), but it's nice that it is done. In terms of dedicated time for a single quest, this was probably the longest besides fighting 32 Goblin Guards.
Story: The dwarven blacksmith is known for his ability to craft quality hammers for metalwork, and the crude iron hammers made using salvaged iron is questionable for the kind of work he would normally undertake. If you can provide 5 pieces of fine elven mythril or silver, he'll be able to create much improved hammers that will surely help you down the line.
Requirement: With access to at least one Hammer, bring 5 pieces of Silver or Mythril equipment to the dwarven blacksmith and drop these when you speak with him.
Unlocks: (e)Mythril Hammer
This one was kind of dumb. While I was in Crescent Lake, I grabbed 5 Mythril Gloves. In getting those for 2000 gil each instead of Mythril Knives for 640 gil each, I wasted a ton of money that ought to pretty well make up for any I should've dropped instead of selling in the early game. I sold those Mythril Gloves and thus effectively completed this quest.
Story: Bikke's pirate are woefully underprepared for any serious battle and the light warriors learn this first hand. If they're ever going to be an effective pirate crew again in this crazy world, they'll need to seriously upgrade their gear. You can start by showing Bikke a selection of traditional pirate weapons that have more than 10 attack power.
Requirement: Talk to Bikke while carrying a Broadsword, a Sabre, and a Longsword. Carrying these, but not using them, is allowed for the purpose of fulfilling this quest.
Unlocks: (e)Longsword
Well, this was easy. Pointless, but easy.
I got a few more consumables, including some Gold Needles to prepare for Cockatrices in the Earth Cavern. Then I rested and saved up in Melmond.
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buttonsbeadslace) wrote2025-08-10 08:35 am
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