Final Fantasy (NES) – Solo Thief Run Temple of Fiends (2022 Fall of Chaos Event Video #5)

I decided to try some solo character challenges for the original Nintendo cartridge game. I have to say the dynamic is certainly different with the seemingly more powerful critical hits, negated weapon element effects, and bugged spells like “Sabr”. Compared with the “Origins” remake, I was surprised how much smaller the temple of fiends was, the trip down to Chaos takes roughly half the time. The bosses seem a lot easier without the doubled hit points.
I think the solo thief run is definitely one of the more challenging runs because he doesn’t have any magical edge and his physical attacks are average at best. The equipment at his disposal is lackluster as well. Getting him levels early on is a pain since he has some trouble with stronger enemies and the weaker one that he can defeat tend to start running away when he gets proficient enough to kill them. By the time he gets to the temple of fiends though, I only have to worry about the gas dragons, multiple hit fiends, and of course Chaos’ Slo2 spell landing in the final battle.
During this run, I made it to the Temple of Fiends, using only a single thief. I always refrain from undergoing the class change to increase the difficulty and stay true to the solo thief challenge. This means the character battles Chaos as a thief and not a ninja. You will note that the other white mages, ironically named “Dead”, are deceased and shown to have no experience points generated at all. This was accomplished during the first battle of the game where I let the Imps kill off everyone except the thief.
I begin this video traveling to the template of fiends where I begin the long, one-way trip down through the temple to Chaos. I have found on countless solo runs that the hardest part of the temple is the first three floors. The path forces you to take the longest path around these areas to get to the first basement. As always, the main issue in the begging are the frost and green dragons. To keep my resources high I decided to run away from the frost dragons with my level 49 thief but had to fight the gas dragons on the third battle. This wasn’t too hard after casting ruse with the defense sword and then going to town with the coral sword. It would seem that the battles could be predicted from several previous journeys through the temple. I bypassed the next fight with the mage and fighter group with another escape.
I took the time to utilize the defense sword’s RUSE spell a couple times when I encountered the Phantom. I had my thief go to town with physical attacks to put away the phantom once I had reduced the threat from his physical attacks. In fact, the thief’s fighting proficiency allowed me to handle the remaining fiends in a similar manner. The Lich isn’t much of a physical fighter, unlike Kary, Kraken, or Tiamat who come at you with very damaging multiple hit attacks. In the rare case with the Lich, I forwent the initial defense buffing at the start of the battle and just went straight to the assault phase.
As I continued down through the temple, I made a few minor decisions that made a great impact on the success of my journey. I choose to swap out the mage staff for Thor’s hammer on Kary’s floor to better deal with the fire-based enemies. The hammer was also a great choice for the water-based enemies on Kraken’s floor, which immediately follows the fire floor. I also took the lengthy journey to obtain the Masamune on Tiamat’s floor. The Masamune makes the battle with Tiamat a lot shorter and makes it possible to tackle Chaos in a timely manner on the final floor.
By the time that I arrived at Chaos, my thief had grown to level 50. I actually felt confident fighting Chaos with the solo thief because of his decent attacking power and only had the dreaded Slo2 spell to worry about. With that in the back of my head, I began the battle with Chaos by using the defense sword three times. As luck would have it, the dreaded spell missed and I began to start the physical onslaught once he used his Cur4 spell. At this point, it was a race to hack away at the 2000 hit points before he reduced my hit points or cycled through his spells again to get another Cur4. The thief was able to do anywhere from 73 to 418 points of damage with the Masamune and Chaos was defeated after eight consecutive attacks.