This year's combo. #ff1 #jcdff1
Dispatched Garland (two Fighter strikes and two FIREs per round is nasty). Dealt with Bikke's crew - used SLEP, because when else is SLEP halfway useful? That's enough for this morning. #ff1 #jcdff1
Been slowly picking away at this. Did the Marsh Cave, did Astos' castle, did the post-mystic key loot grab. Bought FIRE3 for my black mages, maxed out my heals, ready to start looting the Earth Cave. Just going to do some treasure-grabbing today. C. is still sleeping. The last few nights have been very rough. #ff1 #jcdff1
Couple days without playing. Before work today, dove down to the third floor of the earth cave, defeated the vampire, grabbed the ruby, gave it to the titan, talked to Sarda, got the ROD. Ready to finish the earth cave, but I'll do that another day. So far this is a very fun combo (that can deal an absolute ton of damage), though expensive. #ff1 #jcdff1
Earth Cave beaten. LICH lead with ICE2, which was painful, but then cast SLO2 and FAST, so there was only the one round of damage. The black mages cast FAST on the Fighters and then spammed FIR3. Off to get the canoe. Tomorrow I'll go do the Castle of Ordeals. No Bl. Belts, so I want to get the class change as early as possible. #ff1 #jcdff1
Ordeals done, Ice Cave done (not a single sorceror this time, just packs of murderous mages and RUB). Class change at level 16 with less than 200 exp TNL. Some housekeeping stuff to do this morning (get Knight spells, buy the bottle from the caravan, release the fairy, get the OXYALE) and then I'm done for the day. #jcdff1 #ff1
Tuxley was stirring and up early. Let him and Wally out, then did the volcano, the top half of the sunken shrine, grabbed the slab, talked to Dr Unne, went to Lefein, got the chime. Finished the sunken shrine. Saving the mirage tower for tomorow, and chaos' temple for Monday. #ff1 #jcdff1

Did the floating castle, then thought, screw it, let's finish up this morning. Finished the game at level 27. The temple of fiends was pretty straightforward - much less healing required when you've got a pair of knights in the first two slots.

Ended up using very little magic. Just FAST on the fighters when fighting the fiends (one casting per), then FAST and NUKE for the final fight.

Thus concludes my annual game of Final Fantasy for 2026.

#ff1 #jcdff1

General thoughts:

- This was one of the easiest combos I've ever done
- Two fighters is powerful, and two black mages can help a ton in the early game (marsh cave especially)
- Two knights requires so much less healing than my usual two Masters
- It's nice being able to use all the fun swords!
- I spent so much gold buying spells
- Next time: all swords? Fi/Fi/Thi/RM? We'll see.

#ff1 #jcdff1