💎 Final Fantasy 1 - Week 9

[simias]

Final Fantasy 1 Beginner Club W09

Week 09	2025-10-24T15:00:00Z
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Next week	💎 Final Fantasy 1 - Week 10
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Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:

Final Fantasy I Club

Stopping point

Find the Dragon King. Prove your worth. Collect your reward.

Be careful that this is technically a side-quest (arguably the only one in the game), so you may accidentally progress the story if you roam around. Two new towns become accessible this week: Onrac (North West, in a forest near a coast) and Gaia (North East, in the middle of mountains). Take the time to investigate what’s going on in Onrac but leave Gaia for next week.

If you don’t know how to reach these places with the item you found last week in the Ice Cavern, go talk with the good people of Elf Town. Or read below:

More details

In the ice cave last week we found the Floating Stone. With this item we can unlock the ultimate vehicle in the game: the airship. In order to do this, visit the round desert south of Crescent Lake. There you will have to use the Stone to summon the airship (this will happen automatically in the Pixel Remaster but in other versions you may have to select the Floating Stone in your inventory).

With the airship you can now access the entirety of the world map! As mentioned above though, you’ll want to ignore the city in the mountains in the north east this week. Feel free to snoop around the rest, although if you want to save yourself some trouble you can just focus on the area visible in the map below.

First you have the town of Onrac, where the NPCs will have all sorts of mysterious and lore-relevant stories to tell you.

Then you can investigate this archipelago (群島, a surprisingly useful word in RPGs in my experience) with strange holes in the ground.

Eventually you should stumble upon the Dragon King who will promise a reward if you prove your courage. In order to do this you’ll have to visit the Castle of Ordeals to the east and bring proof of your success back to the King.

Be mindful that the Castle contains some extremely valuable pieces of gear, but not necessarily in the way you’re used to. Read the “special effect items” section below to find out more.

Map

This is the area of interest this week. Onrac is visible on the west side.

Miscellaneous

Special effect items

In the Castle of Ordeals we will encounter our two first pieces of gear that have a special side-effect: the Gauntlets and the Heal Staff.

These two items function like normal pieces of gear, but they’re not particularly amazing as such. On the other hand, they have a secondary function that you can trigger by using them in battle (you don’t need to have them equipped, you just pick them in the item menu). The Gauntlets cast Thundara, the Healing Staff casts Cure.

The amazing thing is that anybody can use the items this way (not just mages) and it doesn’t use any magic charge. You just cast the spells at will for free!

In the original Famicom game your inventory is very restricted and you have to allocate every item to a single character, so it adds some layer of compromise when you decide to hoard these magic items, but in the Pixel Remaster there are no inventory constraints and all items are shared by everybody, so it’s even more overpowered.

It’s a bit strange that the game waits so long to introduce these magic items, but from now on we’re going to find a bunch of them all over the place. I have noted every item with a side-effect in the spreadsheet, so have a look there if you’re not sure (although in the Pixel Remaster the item descriptions are pretty explicit too).

The Dragon King

The dragon Bahamut is going to become a recurring entity in future Final Fantasy games, often in the form of an extremely powerful summon.

In Islamic folklore, Bahamut is… a giant fish, or possibly a giant whale: Bahamut - Wikipedia

“Bahamut” as a legendary dragon is a creation of Dungeons&Dragons: Bahamut | Forgotten Realms Wiki | Fandom

So this is yet another instance of the FF devs copy/pasting D&D lore.

A strange castle

There are a few odd things going on in the Castle of Ordeals:

• In the original Famicom version two chests are “linked”: you can find the Gauntlets in two different chests, but if you pick it in one the other chest becomes empty. This effectively gives you two chances to pick the item if you miss it the first time.

• In the pixel remaster those chests become unlinked, and you only get a potion in the first one you find instead. A rather bizarre mechanic frankly.

• There’s this dude welcoming you at the entrance (who is he? Why is a human involved in the dragon’s trial?) and he tells you that you can enter the Castle because you have the Crown. Why is the Crown relevant? It’s not like you can reach this part of the game without having it in your inventory, so it’s not a gameplay thing.

• And finally on the floor with all the teleporters, there’s one straight horizontal corridor with a teleporter that’s completely unreachable from anywhere.

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

[JupiterJesus]

I think I accidentally passed the N1 exam just by doing the spreadsheet translations for this week.

I don’t know which version of the script you used for the spreadsheet, but you also commented above on the word for archipelago, 群島. The pixel remaster uses 諸島 instead, and I have the screenshots the prove it. I have no idea what the difference would be, or why they would change it (nothing else in the sentence appears to be different).

[simias]

Oh, I think that was in legend of legaia then.

The script in the spreadsheet is from the PR unless otherwise mentioned.

[JupiterJesus]

That’s the thing, 群島 is actually in the spreadsheet. shrug

[Akashelia]

@simias

Special effect items

Thanks for that section, I hadn’t noticed that! I kinda dropped looking at the items other than looking at the stats, oops, maybe I should pay more attention.

[simias]

Oh. Feel free to correct it, I must have changed it without noticing while transcribing.

@Akashelia

maybe I should pay more attention.

There’s another possibility.

[Daisoujou]

Fun stuff (week spoilers)

Ok tracing my way to the patch of land you’re allowed to drop the airship on to go into the castle is so funny. Literal shitpost world design where it wraps around for so long until you reach the tiniest inch of clear land at the absolute edge of a peninsula. + .5 to this game’s score for this moment alone; this is my favorite part of the game. I wish the walk was longer.

Very cool week. On the aesthetic side the airship perspective tilt these old games do is cool and I love hanging out with these little Pokemon dragons.

Something is going on with the perspective, what in the world is this enemy’s body shape?

And then we get a teleporter maze! I wasn’t expecting dungeon mechanics like that to pop up until 2, how fun. Unfortunately enemies are mostly toothless now, probably Pixel Remaster’s impact. Instant death still hurts though! The level at which I’m finding this dulls its impact but I feel like I have to still call this my favorite dungeon so far.

Really cool to see how Bahamut originally appeared in this series; I loved this week.

My iconic design though! It’s gone! I love how this transformation gave everyone the same face.

[Akashelia]

Replies to Daisoujou

@Daisoujou

I wish the walk was longer.

Me too!

@Daisoujou

I love hanging out with these little Pokemon dragons.

Haha true, cute Charizards.

@Daisoujou

And then we get a teleporter maze! I wasn’t expecting dungeon mechanics like that to pop up until 2, how fun.

I made an amazing Paint drawing to figure it out, I should have saved it to share it here

@Daisoujou

I love how this transformation gave everyone the same face.

The transformation came as a big surprised for me! I had gotten used to our tiny heroes. Look like they are all grown up now. Was a fun one (even though I didn’t figure out by myself what the point was)

[simias]

@Daisoujou

the airship perspective tilt these old games do

AKSHULY that’s the SNES/Super Famicom mode 7 and it’s therefore anachronistic in this game.

@Daisoujou

what in the world is this enemy’s body shape?

This may be my favourite enemy sprite in the game. I want a plush.

@Daisoujou

Unfortunately enemies are mostly toothless now, probably Pixel Remaster’s impact.

The original is slower but not much harder. We have some tough bosses ahead though.

@Daisoujou

My iconic design though! It’s gone! I love how this transformation gave everyone the same face.

Yeah I don’t really like the new classes visually. The ninja is cool though, for those who picked a thief.

[Akashelia]

@simias

There’s another possibility.

To pay less attention?

[Akashelia]

@simias

The ninja is cool though, for those who picked a thief

Oh interesting, need to look up how the not used class look like.

[Daisoujou]

@simias

AKSHULY that’s the SNES/Super Famicom mode 7 and it’s therefore anachronistic in this game.

I WAS thinking of SNES games I’ve seen it in so I have it right in my heart even though I didn’t catch that no one was doing it this early. Does the airship just keep the same perspective on the original; how does it look?

[Daisoujou]

@Akashelia

I made an amazing Paint drawing to figure it out, I should have saved it to share it here

I love this; making real notes to manage your way through games is a lost art. It grounds you so much in the experience when you’re needing to go to that level of engagement with it. I wish you had saved it, please do so if that sort of thing happens again! I managed this one in my working memory but I was definitely second guessing in a few spots, haha.

[Akashelia]

Haha, I’ll do next time!

[simias]

@Daisoujou

Does the airship just keep the same perspective on the original; how does it look?

Yeah it’s like the boat, but it does have a shadow on the ground to tell you where you will land. Although since there’s no true alpha transparency on the Famicom it’s done by blinking the sprite every other frame and I got unlucky with this screenshot:

Here are all 3 vehicles:

[Akashelia]

@simias

Here are all 3 vehicles:

That’s a nice family picture

[Daisoujou]

It’s an ironclad rule with these sort of clubs that when someone brings attention to a word, it’ll be spotted elsewhere the same day. Here is 諸島 in The Silver Case (near the bottom) amidst this big explainer on plants that eat insects. Unfortunately it doesnt all fit at once.

[simias]

I was starting to wonder if I had hallucinated 群島 in legend of legaia and it’s a really niche term but no:

I wonder what the nuance is.

[Kelsyy]

The long awaited haircut is here … !!!

Not much to say about this week due to the fact my dudes are so strong we just one-poke everything lol.

[Akashelia]

Very satisfying that the one red mage is in the front