Final Fantasy 4 Beginner Club W05
| Week 05 | 2026-07-24T15:00:00Z |
|---|---|
| Previous week | 🐋 Final Fantasy 4 - Week 4 |
| Next week | 🐋 Final Fantasy 4 - Week 6 |
| Home Threads | FFBC / FF4BC |
Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:
Please be extra-mindful of spoilers, as these games become more and more plot-driven it’s important to avoid revealing even minor details of future events, characters and locations. If you’re not sure if something is spoilery or not, better just throws it in a [spoiler] just in case.
Stopping point
After you’re brought back to your bedroom.
週刊完璧主義通信
ゾットの塔 can’t be revisited, so treasures and bestiary entries can be missed if not collected this week. I couldn’t find a good list of monsters unique to this location online but scouring the fanwiki I believe it’s the following entries:
More details
Last week we returned to Baron, with mixed results. We found Cid back and got a ship, but we also lost Porom and Palom. On top of that we got blackmailed into stealing the Earth Crystal for Golbez in order to save Rosa. Let’s head for トロイア町, in a forest North-West of Baron, and figure it out.
Note that you can land right next to the town to visit it, no need to look for a remote landing spot, this isn’t FF1:
森と水の都トロイアへようこそ！
I recommend going to the castle first, it makes more sense to explore the town once you know what you’ll have to do next, since it will influence your choice of gear. Once inside the castle, you want to do two things: go find the 神官 and inquire about the Earth Crystal, then explore the castle to find a familiar face who will give you an important item: the ひそうひ草. If you find this word confusing, it’s a pun on ひそひそ (whisper) and 草 (weed/grass).
At this point you should know what’s ahead of us: the Crystal was stolen by the Dark Elf who dwells in a cave in the North East. He’s weak to metallic weapons but the cave has a strong magnetic field that makes it impossible to move with metallic gear. So now you should know what kind of gear you want to buy in town…
Speaking of, let’s explore Troya’s town. There are a few fun interactions to be had, of particular interest is the 酒場. There’s a 会員証 for sale for quite a lot of gil that leads to an optional area. There’s nothing particularly worthwhile there, so feel free to ignore and save your cash, although apparently in the 3D versions you can get an “augment” there that boosts gil drops from enemies, so that may be worth getting eventually.
There’s also a building to the North East that hosts black chocobos, and the information you learn there will become very relevant very soon.
When you’re ready, leave Troya, board the ship and fly towards the island to the North East where the Dark Elf’s cave entrance is located. And you’ll find that… there’s nowhere to land. This is getting complicated. So what do we do? Well, we learned in town that black chocobos can fly, cross water and land in forests, and we can find them in the chocobo village North of Troya, so go there:
Recruit one of the chocobos and now you can reach the magnetic cave.
As explained in Troya, anybody using metallic gear will be unable to fight, so make sure that you prepare accordingly. Fortunately Troya has a selection of non-metallic gear, should you need it. I recommend keeping your good metallic gear in your inventory to be able to reequip it as soon as you’re able to do so.
Once you’re done with the cave, you can use テレポ to return to the world map, then ride your black chocobo back to the mainland. Once there, you can report back to the Troyan matriarchs. You can also visit our friend Gilbart.
After the cutscenes, return to your ship to trigger the next sequence.
Once you’re in the tower, note that you can return to the world map using the platform surrounded by spheres at the very start. テレポ however won’t work.
Tips for the top of the tower: there will be a room with save point, and then a boss after that. You can return to the save point after defeating the boss and before continuing. This can be a good idea because it’s not over yet….
Once you’ve completed the tower, return to the world map and save.
Map
Miscellaneous
L'art de vivre
In Troya’s castle there’s a hidden path that lets you access the moat around the castle, with a bunch of frogs. Talking to the frogs isn’t particularly interesting:
But there’s one specific frog that actually says something:
This is apparently an easter egg that references a comic strip made about Final Fantasy 3 (for those who haven’t played it, FF3 forced you to cast トード on your own party in order to turn your Warriors of Light into frogs to access some locations):
More details here: The Secret Talking Frog in Final Fantasy Games « Legends of Localization
Spoilers for this week below:
The legacy of Astos
Once again we have some callbacks to the Famicom Final Fantasies, in particular FF1:
The Troyan 神官様 are reminiscent of Crescent Lake’s circle of old men (although there were 12 of them and only 8 in Troya, and they’re all women).
The Dark Elf is also clearly a retread of Astos in FF1, although it’s a bit scrambled:
- in FF1 the elf prince is bedridden due to Astos’ curse. Here we have Prince (King?) Gilbart who’s recovering in bed, but it’s somewhat coincidental.
- In FF1 Astos steals Matoya’s crystal eye and tricks us into fetching the Crown for him, here the Dark Elf steals the Earth Crystal and he uses trickery to prevent us from using our best weapons and ambush us in the cave.
- Both Astos and the Dark Elf can shapeshift.
- And of course the appearance and posture of the Dark Elf is similar to Astos:
There’s also a fairly rare encounter in the magnetic cave with an enemy called the Mindflayer that closely resembles FF1’s psychodemons who were guarding the Crown:
Apparently it has a very small chance of dropping the Mindflayer summon…
Track of the week
哀しみのテーマ
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
