well soloing isn't as hard as it sounds because you can level up so quickly, particularly with the black belt you can get powerful very fast. The black mage must have been a challenge, but i'm not sure if just 1 white mage is even possible. I guess the white mage could equip the masamune, wonder if that would be enough.

BTW what makes 4 thieves so easy? they can't equip good weapons, and they don't have good defense. I'm assuming your playing the NES version, because there are no good potions. Those wizards are kicking my butt even on level 9, they nearly take away half my life with each hit while i deal 10 damage and miss half the time. the best weapon i can equip now is this crappy sabre.

4 thieves. My ex-roomate has done 4 Black Mages already, easy. 4 White Mages are easy once you get the Zeus Staff (free healz + free lit spells = uber turtle.)

But 4 thieves? What do you do with them?

thieves are awful, they don't have any special abilities besides being able to run more easily and evade attacks more. they can't equip all the good armor and weapons, and they have no spells (unless you upgrade to ninja, which i won't).

after getting lucky and fighting only 2 wizards i was able to beat them.
I'm fighting astos right now and i'm doing 1 damage per hit. If i get really lucky i get a critical for 21 damage.

Having problems with Astos? Hmm. Thieves can equip the Falchion in the early game, which is a pretty decent weapon (10 damage/15 hit percentage). Thieves also get pretty good strength upgrades in the early game; I think they get a point to their strength for each of the first 10 level ups. If all four of your Thieves are using falchions, they should be reaching 2 hits around level 9 or so. (If you aren't at least at that point, you need to do some more fighting!) Let me go check some quick math...

OK, at level 10 a Thief will have 14 strength, which gets halved and added to the damage stat from his weapon (10 damage in this case, from a falchion) for a total of 17. You're correct; that won't be enough to get through Astos' defense, which is on the high side at 40 absorb. If getting 2 hits with each character, that comes out to 8 damage per round of combat... but Astos will cast the SLOW spell at some point, which will knock everyone down to a single hit. Not an easy battle by any means! Thieves do have decent armor (you can get up to 12 absorb at this point in the game) and pretty good hit point growth as well.

Your best hope is to run the fight a number of times and hope to get lucky on the critical hit rolls. Your thieves won't be able to cut through Astos' absorb until reaching level 18 at the very earliest, and that's just too late. Interestingly, once you get past the bottleneck of that battle, the game should become a bit easier (you'll have access to the Rune/Dragon/Coral swords which do decent damage). I'm sorry if I underestimated the variant earlier, I thought that Thieves were able to use the Silver Sword in the early game. Whoops!

I think you'll find the party hard, but not very much fun. Also, it will be hard for the wrong reasons -- there wil be a few monsters here and there in the game which you can't seem to defeat because you need fire or ice or lit to defeat them. 4 of anything except fighters will be a pretty hard party, and having the high level end spells is fun.

How about Red Mage, Black Belt White Mage and Black Mage? The biggest disadvantge of a party like this is finding all of the cool items you can't use.

Maybe instead of getting the hardest possible party, what about trying to beat the game within a certain time period? If you allow yourself to prepare well for certain parts of the game it will be easy, of course, but if you have very limited time the game will be hard.

Also, thinking back to Final Fantasy 1, the map and the charts of which monsters were weak against which types of magic, I feel a lot of nostalgia. Back then you could really use your imagination to see the worlds in which you were playing. These days, the games are so rendered in so much detail that you can imagine almost nothing, taking a lot of the wonder away from them.  I think this is a big part of the reason I stopped enjoying Final Fantasy.  That, and now there is way too much lame, lame story.

It's a shame.

hold on, where do i get falchions? I don't think I can buy those until i get to the next town. Right now i have copper bracelet, gloves, and caps on all my thieves, for weapons everyone has sabres.
Astos continues to kick my butt, i think the best i've gotten is 3 criticals in 1 battle, then everything else is just 1 damage. I probably did about 110 or 120 damage in that battle but I think he has more like 150 life.

BigFatJ, any party of four is not really that difficult. Four Fighters is obviously laughable, but so is a group of four Black Belts (who serious kick some major behind once they hit lvl 21 and pick up their 6th hit) and four Red Mages. Four Thieves can be rough in the early going, not quite so bad once you reach the middle part of the game. Four White/Black Mages requires a lot of creativity with the spell usage, but the White Mages can RUSE their way through much of the game, while the Black Mages have enough damage output to kill enemies before they themselves can be killed. The real question is simply how tough you want things to be. I beat the game with a solo Black Belt (I linked to my game report above in an earlier post), so a Black Belt with three mages doesn't sound all that hard. It might be a lot of fun though! I've also done games where no one equipped weapons (all damage done with fists) and games where no one was allowed to equip armor. Now those were some entertaining variants! Really though, it all depends on what kind of game you're looking to play. :p I agree with you on the old Final Fantasies and the use of imagination in setting the atmosphere. Probably an inevitability as graphics improved, but still somewhat sad to lose that feeling. johnsobas, I was incorrect about the Falchion (which I think is called a "Falchon" in the original text); it is actually sold in Crescent Lake, not Pravoka. However, I wasn't totally wrong - I was thinking of the Short Sword, which *IS* sold at Pravoka. It's slightly better than a Sabre (5% higher hit percentage), although there's not a great deal of difference. And why are you using Copper Bracelets? The Wooden Armor is MUCH cheaper and has double the Absorb (8 versus 4)! Now I know I wasn't wrong on that! Astos has 168 hit points - hang in there, you're not too far away. If all else fails, advance a level and try again. Thieves get a "strong" level up (more hit points) at lvls 9, 11, and 13 . Those may be good times to try again if you're running into problems. My solo black mage died about three dozen times before killing the pirates in Pravoka, so I feel your pain.