Once you confirm your party and press A one more time, you will be taken to the overworld of the game. This will place your party right outside of Coneria (while you could be playing a more advanced flagset where Coneria town isn’t actually Coneria town, for the sake of this guide, for now, we will assume that option is not turned on). Your first step, once getting into the game proper, is to take your team into town and get them ready for the adventure ahead.
¶ Check Your Starting Equipment
The first step is, if you have flags set that could grant you gear in your inventory, you should verify what you have. If provided, weapons and gear should be equipped now (so you don’t have to buy anything in town if you don’t need to). If you have a random Area of Effect (AoE) item in your flags, check to see what it is. Most presets on the FFR website have starting gear (Explorer Pack) turned on. Some have the random AoE item as well. Familiarize yourself with what you have before you give your party the rest of what they need.
¶ Buying Magic
In town, your first goal should be checking spells (in Coneria, for example, the spell shops are in the upper left corner of town). Magic is the key to getting through the game, whether it be early spells to help clear out the start of the game, AoE to help you manage unrunnable packs in the mid-game, or buffs and debuffs to use against the bosses in the end game. A player needs to make sure they pick up magic when they can, getting ready for all phases of the game as possible.
Ideally, at the magic shops, you can either buy, or at least note, what spells are available so you can plan out your end-game. Spells you should be on the lookout for are:
- Black Magic: NUKE, Level 3 Elemental Spells (ICE3, LIT3, FIR3), TMPR, FAST, LOCK/LOK2
- White Magic: FADE, HRM3/4, HEL3, CUR3/4, LIFE/LIF2, INVS/INV2, RUSE, WALL
There are other spells that can be useful through the early and mid-game as well. The Level 2 Elemental Spells (ICE2, LIT3, FIR2), for example, can be useful for enemy pack management. XXXX is a great spell to use against single targets, and will erase most low- and mid-level enemies. There are also instant-death spells (QAKE for Lich, BRAK for Kraken and Tiamat) and status spells (against KARY) that can be useful in certain circumstances as well. As you learn the spells in the game you can find uses for a number of them beyond the late-game.
On the white magic side, also make sure you know if “Life in Battle” (under the Shops & Magic tab on the site) is on (and if it’s LIFE or LIFE/LIF2) so you can use that appropriately. Meanwhile also check for Improved HARM for White Mages (under the Classes tab), as this flags makes it so that white mages can cast the HARM family of spells (HARM, HRM2, HRM3, and HRM4) against all enemies, not just the undead. This helps to up the firepower of the white mage, making them a more useful combatant on the team. Note that this flag allows HARM spells to work against all monsters, but it can still only crit (do it’s full, true damage) against the undead.
Bear in mind that, depending on what towns/shops these spells are in, you may not be able to learn all of them immediately. Some spell slots require class change, so you may have to come back for some essential spells once your characters can learn them (or you might have to skip them if you also skip class change). And, of course, the White Wizard can learn all white magic while the Black Wizard can learn all black magic.
Spell Slots Table:
| Coneria (Level 1) | Pravoka (Level 2) | Elfland (Level 3) | Elfland (Level 4) | Melmond (Level 5) | Crescent (Level 6) | Onrac (Level 7) | Gaia (Level 7) | Gaia (Level 8) | Lefein (Level 8) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White Magic | ||||||||||
| WM | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 - 3 4 | 1 2 | - - | - - | - - |
| RM | 1 - 3 - | 1 2 3 4 | 1 - 3 - | 1 - 3 - | 1 - - - | - - - - | - - | - - | - - | - - |
| RW | 1 - 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 - 3 - | 1 - 3 4 | 1 2 - - | - 2 3 4 | 1 - | - - | - - | - - |
| KN | 1 - 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 - 3 - | - - - - | - - - - | - - - - | - - | - - | - - | - - |
| Black Magic | ||||||||||
| BM | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 - 4 | 1 2 3 4 | - 2 | 3 - | - - | - - |
| RM | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 - - 4 | - - - - | - - | - - | - - | - - |
| RW | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 - - - | - - | 3 - | - - | - - |
| NI | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | - - - - | - - - - | - - | - - | - - | - - |
There are eight towns in the game and (as noted in the table above) magic is neatly broken up across those towns. Unless spell shops are shuffled (an uncommonly used flag) the town you’re in will also dictate what magic is available.
Note, if you’re ever unsure if a character can learn certain spells you can always hover over them in the shop. Characters (by default in the randomizer) will raise their hands up whenever there is a spell they can use. This is a quality of life feature from later Final Fantasy games that the developers have ported into FFR.
- Info on Spells (Game Corner)
- Final Fantasy Spellbook (Sheets)
One more piece of advice for magic is to think about the order you buy your spells. Especially in race situations, you want to be able to consistently and quickly navigate your spells. General advice is to buy your damage spells first for a level, then buffs, and then WARP/EXIT. That way you can quickly navigate down in your menu to your attack spells, and you also know where your buffs and transit spells will be. By the same logic, if you have a black mage and a red mage in your party, try to buy the spells they both use on the same slots so your brain doesn’t have to work too hard when navigating spell menus. Consistency is speed.
¶ Buying Gear
As far as gear is concerned, by default all the basic weapons and armor are shuffled in the randomizer. This will be standard, shop-purchasable equipment (not elite weapons or armor, usually with some kind of magical property attached). You can buy some weapons and armor for your melee characters, but don’t spend too much money on this as, soon enough, you’ll likely find better gear in treasure chests. Armor for your mages is a good idea, although again you might very well find good gear for them in chests, too, so when it comes to buying essentials or buying armor, buy the essentials first.
If you’re curious how good a piece of gear may be, you can check it in the shop, or in the equipment screen (by pressing Select while hovering over a potential piece of equipable gear). Chests will also show this information when you find gear (although there is a flag to turn this off, if you so choose).
Note, if you’re ever unsure if a character can equip certain pieces of gear you can always hover over them in the shop. Characters (by default in the randomizer) will raise their hands up whenever there is a piece of gear they can use. This is a quality of life feature from later Final Fantasy games that the developers have ported into FFR. You can also check gear already in your inventory by pressing Select while hovering over a potential piece of equipable gear. This will then show you abbreviations (FI, TH, BB, etc.) to designate what characters can use what gear.
- Info on Weapons (Game Corner)
- Info on Armors (Game Corner)
¶ Buying Items
Finally, you need to check the item shop in town. One of the shops (be it any of the item shops in towns plus the Oasis, but not Melmond or Lefein as they don’t have item shops by default) will have a Key Item. We’ll discuss Key Items in a bit, but because (in most flagsets) the Oasis Key Item (where it first appears for sale in the vanilla game) will be shuffled into the various items shops, you will need to find that item for progression.
To reiterate: make sure to check all item shops until you find the key item for sale.
With all of your shopping completed, you are now able to head out into the world and begin your true quest.
- Detailed Town Maps (Mike's RPG Center)
¶ Advanced Concepts
¶ Blursed Gear
As with classes, it is also possible to “blurse” your gear. Inspired by magically enhanced weaponry from other RPGs, FFR allows a player to turn on randomly upgraded, and downgraded, gear. This can be set (at the low end and high end) from anywhere between -9 and +9 on all weaponry, and it will affect all gear in the game (not just the items in shops).
Those numbers convey specific advantages (or disadvantages) for the gear. For each point up or down:
- Weapons: Damage +/-2, Hit +/-3 (capped max of 50%), Critical Hits +/-3 (0.5% per hit)
- Body Armor: Absorb +/-2, Evasion +/-2
- Other Armor: Absorb +/-1, Evasion +/-1
Note that values cannot go below zero, so even a sword with a -9, no matter how bad the base sword may be, cannot have negative stats. And by a similar metric, evasion can never “go positive” on armor as the floor is zero.
- Blursed Weapons Guide (Sheets) (Contributed by Darindrise, DemonRHK, and Jat)
¶ Weaponizer and Armorcrafter
These two options, Weaponizer and Armorcrafter, in effect will make new sets of weapons and armor when turned on. The weapons and armor will conform to the various standard types as found in the vanilla game, but their names, stats, and potential magical abilities will be randomized. It’s best to make sure and check their stats before using them because gear, even with similar names, may have unexpected stats.
¶ Mixed Spellbooks
The randomizer can allow for the shuffling of white and black magic between the schools. The characters will maintain their usual learnable slots (see the table above) but the magic potentially available in their schools could be very different. This is a fun feature if you want to rebalance the usefulness of the White Mage and the Black Mage.
¶ Spellcrafter
And then you can also have the randomizer make an entirely new set of magic. Spellcrafter completely rewrites all the magic in the game, changing spells, adding in new ones, and creating whole new power levels as well. Note that in the process of making this new magic the randomizer also assigns different spell slots in an attempt to rebalance the new magic against the old game (although you can turn on “Keep Permissions” to restore the vanilla spell slots from the table above).
The key points of Spellcrafter are that it makes new kinds of spells that can, in various ways, prove useful. There are more damaging spells, both single-target and area-of-effect, pulling from all the elements featured in the series. There are also far more instant-death attacks added, again pulling from the various elements of the series. And there are a host more buff and debuff spells to play with. All of them will be arranged from levels 1 through 8, with the most powerful spells (levels 7 and 8) providing effects far beyond what even the magic in the base game would produce.
Spellcrafter is fun, but complicated, so make sure you understand the feature, and all the magic it can create, before turning it on.