💎 Final Fantasy 1 - Week 7

[simias]

Final Fantasy 1 Beginner Club W07

Week 07	2025-10-10T15:00:00Z
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Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:

Final Fantasy I Club

Stopping point

Once you get your hands on a new means of transportation.

I find this part really difficult to figure out without a guide, it’s not really clear what you have to do. If you want a hint: seek the crescent lake.

If you want more details, read below:

More details

Last week the wise Sarda gave us the Earth Staff and told us to seek the source of the corruption in the depths of the Earth cave. Time to do that! It’s a long hike to the bottom of the cave, don’t forget to stock up on healing items before you go.

Once you’re done with the Earth Cave, the game does a pretty bad job of telling you what to do next. It turns out that you have to visit the town of Crescent Lake, located on the other side of the continent, to the far-east of Elf Town.

The town is bigger than it seems: if you go to the top right corner of the main area you’ll see that there’s a path that leads you through trees to a meadow with a bunch of people waiting to dump lore on you. See what they have to say.

Map

This is the region we must explore this week after we’re done with Melmond

Miscellaneous

The donut world

You may have noticed that, while sailing your boat, you can cross through the edge of the map. Going through the east and west sides wrap you to the other side, which is how you would expect a world map to function. This means that we’re not merely seeing a portion of the world, this is in fact the entire world of Final Fantasy I.

What’s a bit more surprising is that crossing the north or south borders of the map also wraps you to the opposite side. This is not how a globe would work: if you travel straight north from Sweden you end up in Canada, not South Africa.

That means that the topology of the world of Final Fantasy (and I believe all Final Fantasies up to IX at least) is not a globe, but a torus:

This example uses the map of Chrono Trigger instead, because this is a feature shared by many classical RPGs. Of course in practice the reason it’s done this way is that wrapping the coordinates around the edges is extremely easy to implement in code, whereas proper spherical coordinates would be trickier to handle and not worth the hassle.

Some games “cheat” by projecting the map on a sphere to fool you into thinking THAT THE EARTH IS ROUND BUT I KNOW THE TRUTH WAKE UP SHEEPLE THEY ARE TRYING TO MANIPULATE YOU THE EARTH IS A DONUT

Participation

• I’m playing along
• I will catch up later
• I’m still playing but I haven’t reached this section yet
• I’m a filthy preplayer but I’m here for the discussion

[Daisoujou]

I wasn’t sure at first because the system is so different, but I like spell slots a lot actually. MP efficiency questions tend to lead to spells just getting totally replaced, but this system keeps me looking at all my spells a little differently. I’m evaluating any one against the 2 alternatives that I’d be losing out on by not using it, which can make some feel more costly or the inverse. Obviously this game doesn’t have the most combat depth, but it’s a cool system to keep me thinking about what I use, and I feel like there’s a lot of potential to put it in a game that demands a higher level of fight strategy.

This week

I was thinking about what a formality every enemy in the cave is; a lot are doing literally 1 damage unless they hit a squishier member… but then the boss almost smacked me back down. Weak little vampire it is not. The paralysis on my warrior turn one kept him from acting essentially all fight (I thought I’d have the means on me to cure that but I guess I don’t right now, oops), and the high damage aoe spells led to some deaths and a really close call. Managed to make it through just barely, though. My time spent buffing unfortunately didn’t pay off much, between hasted people getting paralyzed or killed, and the evasion buff not seeming to help us much.

With such a long dungeon before it, it was nice to get a little shock of danger, but it’d be nice if the dungeon wasn’t so easy relative to the boss now.

Afterwards, I suppose they want you to just explore what’s newly open to you, but yeah, I didn’t see any direction from the NPCs I talked to. Like I said at some point, I’m kind of shamelessly checking what to do because the long week gaps + my attention being pulled between so many games has me always forgetting bits of context. If I was playing the game straight through maybe I’d be better able to search around, but ehh. This way has been fun enough so I’m fine with it.

Proud to say I recognized 輪廻 right away, which probably says something about the sort of stuff I read, haha.

[simias]

I agree that the slot system is pretty decent and completely changes the way you strategize spell uses. I think one of the drawbacks for devs is that it’s trickier to balance: you can’t just tweak MP costs to nerf or boost spells, you have to mess with the whole hierarchy.

@Daisoujou

Afterwards, I suppose they want you to just explore what’s newly open to you, but yeah, I didn’t see any direction from the NPCs I talked to.

What makes this even more aggravating IMO is that you could have visited the town earlier, triggered all the dialogue and have no idea that one random dude now has a new line and suddenly gives you a canoe for no discernible reason.

There’s no logic to follow here, you just have to trigger all dialogue again and again or use a guide.

[Daisoujou]

I had sorta wondered if this meant it was possible to do them in the reverse order or something, but oof. A little prompting from someone to push you towards the canoe guy would be nice, but also it’d help the experience going there too early a lot if they just included a line telling you to come back once you’ve dealt with the earth crystal.

[Akashelia]

Globe or donut, whatever, flat earthers are gonna hate this game

Week 7

@simias

Once you’re done with the Earth Cave, the game does a pretty bad job of telling you what to do next.

Alright now I’ll tell you the real reason I filthy preplayed so much. I remembered that you complained about someone really hard to find, that you had to look through the whole map basically at random. But the name was in spoiler tags so I didn’t look so I wasn’t sure if it was Lukan or someone else.
Also, as I had planned on playing along with the club, and knowing that I’m bad at remembering things from one week to another, from week 1 I had decided to take notes, in form of a check list.
So in week 1, someone had said that Lukan went to the crescent moon, I had noted it down and not resolved it yet.

Around week 5, I looked at the map and realized that there was a crescent moon on the bottom right corner… … …

So I didn’t find it hard at all to know where to go. Then I just kept going with playing the game, thinking I’ll get stuck at some point but never did xD
Anyways. This was fun. Did you not have a map in your version? Or did you not reread the script for week one? Or circle back to talk again to every NPC?
I think I’m around level 50 and maybe at around week 13 content with this big quest of getting stuck lol, but I’ll calm down and wait now I swear

[JupiterJesus]

As I said in another thread, talking to all of those weirdos hanging out wearing robes in the middle of the forest is itself a full week of study… yeesh.

[JupiterJesus]

Oh damn! When I was doing translation for a previous week, I noted that I had no idea WTF the guy was talking about. Quote:

I’m pretty lost on this translation. What the heck does aiming for or heading for the crescent moon mean? Is he actually leaving to head toward the moon (???) or is he keeping an eye out for it? The subject of the second half isn’t clear - did Lukhan leave after saying something, or did someone (some people) leave because they heard him? と言って can just be て form of という, connecting the two sentences, but it also exists as its own common phrase that might translate as “because he said…”.

So, he was literally heading for the crescent moon… lake.

[Akashelia]

Reply

Went to the awesome-spreadsheet to find back the sentence:
予言者のルカーン様は三日月を目指すと言って、この町を出ていってしまわれた⋯。

Breakdown:
予言者のルカーン様は - The prophet Lukan
三日月を目指すと言って - I go to the Crescent moon he said and
、この町を出ていってしまわれた⋯。- this city left

I guess the tricky part is 目指めざす, since it has many meanings.
to aim at (for, to do, to become)
to try for
to have an eye on
to go toward
to head for

[JupiterJesus]

I’d say the tricky part is that if a guy says he’d going to the moon, I assume that either I don’t understand what he’s saying, or things are about to get wiiiiiiiild. This isnt FF4, after all.

Yes I did get tripped up on that word though. But if he said “Crescent Lake Town”, I’d have had no trouble translating. He said he was going to the moon for chrissakes!

[Akashelia]

spoiler tags are a bit buggy, they don’t like it if one of them is on a new line and the other one is not

Reply

@JupiterJesus

He said he was going to the moon for chrissakes!

I disagree, that’s exactly not what he is saying. If he had said that he was going to the moon, he would have used 月. So the fact that it was a 三日月 was just very specific to the shape. Then seeing the same shape on the map just made it click.

[simias]

@Akashelia

So in week 1, someone had said that Lukan went to the crescent moon, I had noted it down and not resolved it yet.

I’m impressed, 月夜!

I absolutely did not connect the dots when I first played the game. It doesn’t help that the guy in Cornelia spells crescent in kanji as 三日月 even though the town uses the English loan! Also I had no idea I should be looking for him at this specific point anyway.

@JupiterJesus

I had no idea WTF the guy was talking about.

Yeah it’s just so oddly obtuse… Him saying straightforwardly that Lukhan was headed for a town called “crescent moon” wouldn’t have spoiled anything.

[Sisthra]

Week 7 content

Did the Earth Cave, that boss was THOUGH. The more physical fighters were either paralized or were doing pitiful damage, so my black mage put in the work by blasting it with Fire spells. Thankfully remembered that I had bought Firaga so I nuked him with that right after my white mage had completely ran out of healing. Still have to head for the lake.

Meanwhile, I’ve found my new favourite enemy:

“OH SHIT DID I LEAVE THE STOVE ON??”

[Akashelia]

@simias

I absolutely did not connect the dots when I first played the game

I guess you’ll have to work harder if you want to be my ワトスン

@simias

It doesn’t help that the guy in Cornelia spells crescent in kanji as 三日月 even though the town uses the English loan!

But did you have a minimap? I went there without knowing what the town was called

[simias]

I did not study the map closely enough, I didn’t notice the shape of the lake and it’s only when I saw the name of the town that it clicked into place.

[JupiterJesus]

I’m even more basic. I just went to any towns I was allowed to go to and talked to everyone I could talk to. I didn’t even make the moon connection until an hour ago.

[VikingSchism]

Complete agree on the spell slots. I really like having one whole level on my white mage basically just dedicated to being the poison remover

It gives much more incentive for me to be free with using spells because I know I have other levels to use up

[Daisoujou]

Yeah same! I was thinking the same earlier, the antidote sitting in a slot without a lot of competition the way I have it set up right now makes it very nice to freely use. I think the system makes a rough first impression when you are going out on a whole adventure with a mage who can use their abilities, like, 3 or 4 times ever until you return. Which must partially factor in why the game takes a while to give us something that feels like a real dungeon. It’s developing so nicely, though.

[Kelsyy]

Oh boy.

About this week

Lich seriously kicked team sticks for brains into next week. As all the team could do was stab and hope for the best, the slow spell was detrimental to their poking abilities. YEET was forced to use magic of all things to keep the other 3 idiots alive! His cover was blown.

After two failed attempts of poking, the team managed to etch out a victory on the third go. Whew. Afterwards they went and got the canoe, ending this weeks jabbing party.

[Akashelia]

@JupiterJesus

I’m even more basic. I just went to any towns I was allowed to go to and talked to everyone I could talk to. I didn’t even make the moon connection until an hour ago.

Valid strategy too! Got that happened to me with content that it’s one of the upcoming weeks, I’ll ask when we get there, I have no idea how we were supposed to know what to do but somehow I was at the right place at the right time so it worked out.

[simias]

visual design

I really like the visual design of Lich:

I think in general the monster sprites in this game are really good, even in the original 8 bit version:

If I was to criticize one thing is that, while individual sprites are good, they don’t always feel like they’re in the same game. Some enemies look cartoony, others more typical of what you’d find in fantasy game, others have clearly more of a traditional Japanese vibe.