I've decided to play through Final Fantasy VI yet again, this time with all permanent party members stuck at level 1 throughout the entire game. This presents some unique challenges. For example:
-The only spell Terra will naturally learn is Cure, and Celes will only naturally learn Ice.
-The only Blitzes Sabin can learn are Pummel and Bum Rush.
-Until his sidequest is completed in the WoR, Cyan will be limited to using Dispatch.
-Everyone's natural max HP is around 40-50, and max MP is 5-15.
-The max damage Setzer's Fixed Dice can do is 2692.
-GP Rain will do a whopping max damage of 30.
There are a few upsides to being level 1, though:
-L3 Muddle, L4 Flare, and L5 Doom will do nothing against you.
-L? Pearl will only hit if your GP ends in 1
-Stone will do massive damage to Vomammoths, for what it's worth.
Keeping everyone at level 1 is accomplished through some light ROM hacking. I changed Terra's initial level to be 1, and made it so the other characters started at the party's average level (which will always be 1). I also made it so that some unavoidable enemies (like the Mag Roaders) don't give EXP. This run is almost entirely done in real-time, with some save-states used to prevent me from having to repeat stuff over and over again.
I've played through the game like this before, and it took twenty hours and change, so I'm only uploading the boss battles to YouTube for this run... sorry if you wanted to see me learn magic on the Veldt or anything like that. I'll edit in YouTube links for each battle as I upload them.
Whelk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4vh24w3fnw
Marshal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ColU1SMvGw
Magitek Armor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEo5DPOmos0
Vargas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uYES7QKOww
This is one of my favorite FFVI challenges because it forces you to come up with highly unorthodox battle strategies. Like I said above, I've finished this challenge once, but I've decided to run through it again to try out some new tactics I've thought up.
Rayas wrote:
Dunno if I'm really clear. I need to drink more.
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adelikat wrote:
The idea was to kill off my family to avoid lost time to them getting sick and other inconvenient things.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
I get the feeling that this will be literally impossible later on unless you seriously glitch your stats from Level 1. That, or manipulating misses on full party auto-spells.
Just thought I'd pop in and say that this challenge is on hold due to the destruction of the computer that held the movie files and savestates, and my own stupidity in not making backups of my SNES stuff. When I take up this challenge again, I'll probably just start a new game, get to Ultros, and start recording from there.
Zurreco wrote:
I get the feeling that this will be literally impossible later on unless you seriously glitch your stats from Level 1. That, or manipulating misses on full party auto-spells.
Huh, I didn't even know anyone replied to this topic. So much for reply notification...
Anyway, I'm not doing either of those things. FF6 is perfectly winnable at level 1 if you have the right strategies. There is only one battle that borders on "impossible," and I have some new approaches that could win the day without having to do anything that relies on luck too much, like using random Magicite items. I won't be exploiting any game-breaking glitches (such as the Sketch Glitch), and I'm doing this run as close to real-time as I can, so I won't be manipulating luck. I've completed this challenge before, but I want to do it again in order to test out some new strategies, and because my old movie file bit it along with my other computer.
I should also add that I'm only going through Kefka's Tower once, and using all three parties for the battles within, instead of going in, fighting with a "dream team," and leaving after each battle. It just so happens that my endgame strategy lends itself perfectly to a three-party setup.
Rayas wrote:
Dunno if I'm really clear. I need to drink more.
<br>
adelikat wrote:
The idea was to kill off my family to avoid lost time to them getting sick and other inconvenient things.
Instead of forcing a level 1 challenge by hacking the ROM, why not just do a "no EXP" challenge? It comes to basically the same thing, and if it's interesting enough, you could refine it and submit it.
