Final Fantasy 3 Beginner Club W09
| Week 09 | 2026-05-22T15:00:00Z |
|---|---|
| Previous week | 🧅 Final Fantasy 3 - Week 8 |
| Next week | 🧅 Final Fantasy 3 - Week 10 |
| Home Threads | FFBC / FF3BC |
Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:
Stopping point
Once you have collected the Fang of the Earth.
Side-content
- サロニアの地下の迷路
This is the dungeon I told you to avoid last week. You can do it immediately at the start of the week or leave it for later.
New side-content will become available on the flying continent. I’m going to ignore it for now, we already have a busy week ahead of us!
週刊完璧主義通信
In the 3D version you have a unique chance to obtain the spear Gungnir from the boss in サロニアの地下の迷路. Here’s what the wiki says:
The spear can be stolen by a Thief with a Job level of 71 or higher. The weapon also has a 0.3% chance of being dropped, allowing for a small chance to obtain two Gungnirs.
More details
サロニアの地下の迷路 [side content]
I recommend doing two passes in this dungeon (especially if you don’t use version that autosaves all the time). The boss at the end is significantly harder than the dungeon, so it makes sense to first go and loot every chest, then do a 2nd dive just for the boss.
You may still find the boss very difficult at this point and the reward for beating him is not all that great, so don’t insist too much if it’s frustrating, you can always return later.
There’s a fake wall on the right hand side of the area with the stairs leading to the boss:
It leads to some chests with valuable treasures.
古代遺跡
I hope that Une enjoyed our little trip but it’s time to go to our next objective: the Ancient Ruins. They are located in a valley West of Saronia, in the complex mountain/river system.
This is half a dungeon and half a “village” since it contains shops!
There are a bunch of undead enemies in this dungeon, so prepare accordingly. There will also be a bunch of enemies who replicate. Don’t underestimate those, they can easily prove deadly.
Attacking replicating enemies with normal weapons will cause them to replicate, while spells wont. The Ancient Sword that you could have found in the optional underwater dungeon last week and can buy in this dungeon can prevent them from splitting when it inflects the まひ status effect.
Fleeing is a valid strategy. I took a thief and とんずら’d as soon as one of those splitting enemies showed up. Unfortunately some of these encounters seem impossible to flee… This dungeon is quite hard on the Famicom, it took me 5 tries before I survived all the way down, but they seem to have nerfed the duplicating enemies on the Pixel Remaster.
The game will give us a way to deal with splitting enemies soon but only after this dungeon, which is a strange design decision.
Anyway, reach the bottom of the ruins and you’ll be able to leave this wretched place for good!
ファルガバード
This is technically optional content, but not doing it will make the next dungeon so much harder that it would be silly to skip it.
With our new ship we can now cross some mountains by jumping over them. We can only cross narrow one-tile ranges. That will let us reach new land, including Falgabard in the mountains South-West of Salonia.
This village is home of to the edgelords 魔剣士. They sell gear for them and you can find some related loot in the cave at the back of the village. There’s also a secret path that leads to the waterfall, and of course you’ll find a secret area behind it:
You can also explore the river downstream and find more hidden treasure on the small island:
So what’s the big deal with those demon sword knights anyway? Well you see, the dark swords that these knights can use have the interesting property of not allowing the replicating enemies from splitting. That’s why we need them, because the next dungeon (and also the cave to the back of the village) is full of them.
Also this job can use low level white magic, including Cure and Cura, which is pretty nice. NOTE: only true on Famicom apparently. But the other versions have special attacks instead.
Anyway, once you’re geared up you can explore the cave to the back of the town. It’s absolutely trivial in the Pixel Remaster because you can see all the paths clearly:
But that’s not how it was originally, the paths are supposed to remain invisible, meaning that you just have to blindly find your way, only having those small “holes” to give you an idea or where the path could be:
It’s trial-and-error all the way.
Anyway, this small dungeon is just a warmup, return to the Invincible and head for the Cave of Darkness.
暗黒の洞窟
In order to reach the cave you have to go North-East of Amuru (the village you woke up in after the unflooding) and find a valley leading to a mountainous area. There, you have to use the Invincible to play hopscotch and find a path to the center of the region, where the Cave of Darkness entrance is located.
The cave itself is effectively a bigger version of the dungeon in Falgabard. Use your 魔剣士 and mages to push through until you collect the Fang of the Earth. Remember that you can rest and fill up on consumables in the Invincible. I recommend stocking up on High potions.
On Famicom it’s really painful to navigate without a guide since so many paths are invisible, I just cheated by looking at the maps here: https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Cave_of_Shadows#Gallery
Peak FF3 gameplay.
Note that you won’t automatically be teleported back out of the dungeon after you collect the Fang. I recommend making sure you always have at least one ラッコの頭 in your inventory. You can buy them on the Invincible.
Map
Miscellaneous
募集・魔剣士
The 魔剣士 is called “dark knight” in the English localization, which seems like a confusing choice to me. For one thing, they can use low-level white magic (much like the Knight of FF1) so they’re technically more similar to paladins. There’s also the fact that there was a prominent Dark Knight in FF2, which was ダークナイト in Japanese.
But the main problem for me here is that FF3 also features 闇の戦士 as part of the plot, which have nothing to do with 魔剣士, but in English they become “Warrior of Darkness” and “Dark Knight” respectively, which I find absurd.
Apparently in other FF games the 魔剣士 is translated as Warmage.
As mentioned above, the 魔剣士 can use low-level (1-3) white magic in the Famicom version. That’s mainly useful for Cure and Cura. Apparently they lose this in the 3D version, not sure about the PR. In those versions they do gain a special attack that didn’t exist in the original, however.
The main advantage of 魔剣士 over the knight is that they can use dark blades, which don’t trigger the replication effect of some enemies.
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
