This topic is to discuss my second test run of Lufia & the Fortress of Doom. I've finished my research and am ready to go. I'm still thinking about writing a full, written walkthrough for it. If you're interested, please let me know that I have your support.

I've also created the first draft of my notes. There's still a few details that I want to work out, like whether or not I want to go to certain places earlier than intended. For example, I believe you can get all the way to Medan when you reach that continent. I'm not sure whether I will want to or even can afford the best equipment once you get the ship. Also, I'm not sure when I will go to the Old Cave at each interval. IIRC, when I tried going through the last floor at Level 30, I was woefully overmatched, and needed to wait until Jerin learned Blizzard to be able to handle the tougher enemies there, many of which are weak to ice. I also have a few questions.

1) Who should use the creature type rings and when?
I would guess that the Hero should use them, since Aguro will usually want a ring that boosts Magic Resistance. Even then, how many enemies in an area should be affected by the ring for it to be worth using? For example, it's pretty obvious that the Ghost Ring is amazing in the Ghost Cave, as just about every enemy there is susceptible to it. However, what about situations like the final area? Two of the toughest enemies there are dragons, but there's a lot of other enemies there too. Would it be worth using the Dragon Ring in that situation?

2) Does Aguro always want a ring that boosts Magic Resistance?
I'm pretty sure this is yes, but thought I'd just ask.

3) Are any rings useful for Lufia, besides the Water & Flash Rings?
I don't think so.

4) What rings are useful for Jerin?
Increasing attack power might be useful for her bows, but I usually like the Frost Ring on her. Maybe the Flame Ring in the right situation.

5) Who should I give the stat boosting potions to?
Last time, I gave them to whoever was furthest behind on those stats. Now, I'm not so sure. I think Spell Potions (MP) should go to the Hero for casting Vigor and other great healing spells. Speed Potions should go to whoever needs it (probably Aguro). I would think the rest (HP, ATP, INT) should go to Jerin. I don't think the Great Potions (ATP) on the guys really makes that big of a difference, because of how high their attack power already is. It would probably make a bigger difference mid-game on Jerin. Giving her all the Power Potions (HP) would greatly help improve her survivability late-game. Her INT stat is rather behind too.

Thanks for the discussion.

I was looking at Artea's spells, and was thinking, "Why does he have the Warp spell... oh... right..."

I decided to give writing the walkthrough a try. Here's a link to it:

http://tinyurl.com/2b5qpfu

The only problem I noticed was that when uploading the text document to Google Docs, it would do all my carriage returns twice for some reason. I had to manually remove them to make the document look normal. Also, the line spacing seems much greater than it is in the original document for some reason.

I figured this would be enough to give you guys an idea of how I would write a walkthrough with boss strategies, shopping lists, equipment setups, and so on. Currently, I'm not adding a tutorial section and other additions that would normally be in a walkthrough until after writing the bulk of it, should I decide to continue with it. Also, I would normally add HP values for boss strategies, but since I didn't have Erim's information, I figured I would just leave it out for all the Sinistrals for the sake of consistency, and the lack of its importance there.

The big differences in this walkthrough compared to others on GameFAQs is that I will have a complete treasure list, I will have all the elemental weaknesses for the enemies, and I won't have mega-paragraphs that are hard to read. I hope this works for you. Let me know what you think.

It looks good so far, but for boss battles, I was thinking that there may be a category for things to look out for, like annoying special attacks and statuses.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind when it becomes pertinent. That's why I mentioned using Mirror against the appropriate Sinistrals. Although I want my walkthrough to be thorough, I also don't want it to become too overwhelming. In a game this simple, a good walkthrough should be able to tell you how to defeat a boss in a paragraph. Personally, I don't like it when walkthroughs get ultra-detailed with individual stats and everything like that. Just get to the point.

Wow, that didn't take long.

1) Just in my experience, I've never found the creature type rings useful.

2) Aguro wants a ring that boosts his Speed, ATP, and MGR. He has the highest HP in the game, easily able to reach 900+ if you give him the HP potions, and 800+ without them(highest level). The ideal rings for Aguro are the Green Ring from the tower section, and then that's his best ring up till the White Ring. If you're uncomfortable with the White Ring, I believe the Black Ring gives more MGR, but you lose out on increased speed and atp.

3) The Blast ring. Use it in conjunction with Bang, Blast, and Sunder = 100 damage Bangs, 200 damage Blasts, and 300 damage sunders.

4) Flame or Frost. ATP sadly as I learned from my recent playthroughs is actually almost useless for Jerin. Even with a Zirco rod, maxxed STR from Great potions, the Heavy ring, and drain and trick applied in a boss situation, she'll never get above 270 a swing. I like the Flame Ring personally as a lot of monsters are weak to fire, or are non resistant to it. Frost rings good too, but I believe she learns Vulcan first in the high tier, so I've always had Flame on her.

5) HP and INT potions to Jerin. MP Potions to the Hero. STR and AGI potions to Aguro. This is the optimal way to spread them out. Giving the AGI potions to the Hero or Jerin is pointless. Jerin needs HP to live late game, and she needs INT to boost up her Vulcans/Glaciers to the 300 range. STR isn't useless to the Hero, but I find in most important situations he's a debuffer/healer rather than the offensive guy. Offense and Item use is really all Aguro can do, so STR to maximize his damage and AGI to maximize damage and utility of items in an emergency.

1) Agreed. The rings are a nice touch, but there aren't enough of each type in a specific area to make it more useful than a stat-boosting ring.

2) Black Ring gives a bigger SPD boost(6 points) than the White Ring. But you lose out on the 30 ATP the White Ring gives. Since Jerin's HP is lower, the 20 DEF the White Ring offers is more useful to her than 40 MGR to her already high resistance. So I go with Black Ring for Aguro and White Ring for Jerin.

3) Blast Ring is a good choice too. Not sure if Lufia can OHKO random mobs with it, but if she can, than it's definitely a winner. Otherwise, the decision comes down to OHKO one enemy with a Flash spell or weakening all enemies with a Blast Spell.

4) If not the White Ring, then the Frost Ring. The Flame Ring is a good choice, but I'd rather be able to hit all enemies at once.

5) Pretty much agree with you there. Though I might give the INT potions to Lufia, since spells is all she can do. Just like all Aguro can do is swing a sword. Jerin tends to be too busy casting healing spells in boss battles, and Lufia is a beast with the Flash Ring.

1) And I thought I was a bit silly :P

2) If you want a defensive Jerin for survival purposes, use the Hi-Daze Ring. The ATP on the White ring better serves Aguro. If you want defensive rings on them both, use the Hi-Daze Ring on Jerin, and the Black or Yellow Ring on Aguro.

3) She can OHKO all enemies on the screen or just about do so at the time you get the ring with Blast or Sunder. I just can't remember where you actually get it right now.

4) Group style killing is usually better unless you are using both Glacier and Blast, which becomes a non-option after Lufia is abducted. If you use an all targeting spell it'll sometimes render attacks from the Hero or Aguro useless, or the Hero and Aguro will have already attacked and killed making the spell a waste of MP.

5) That might be a good idea to give Lufia the INT potions. You only lose her for pretty much 1 dungeon/area and 3 bosses. Might be able to get her Thunder to do over 500(with the Flash ring of course). On a side note, Lufia can use the attack command, though it's even more useless for her than for Jerin. Aguro literally is the only party member lacking a command, which is why I enjoy to focus on making him as strong as possible so he can make up for that, rather than have him sit there and be a slow and nearly useless MP sponge.

I got the Maberia back today. I really hate those Goblins. They're probably the hardest boss fight in the game, besides the final boss. I was even able to defeat them without level-grinding, so I think I can do that throughout the entire LP.

One thing I was thinking about. Might it be a good idea to give Jerin the Speed Potions? The idea being that a substantially large enough agility increase would allow her to sustain three Mirror shields against the final bosses, instead of just two. This would dramatically improve my survivability against them. Sometimes you can sustain three Mirrors, but it's not very reliable, and keeping Jerin's mirror up is top priority.

The only time I really felt like I needed to grind was against the Guardian at the Tower of Light. Basically so someone could learn Boost. I wasn't sure if I was really just underleveled or not, but I could not find a way to survive that battle without it. So you might need to grind a bit there.

Giving Jerin the Speed Potions sounds like a good idea in theory, though I don't know how well it'll actually work out. I would give it a try and see if it works.

I don't know. I'm a tad skeptical that mirror can be reliably held on three people anyway. The maximum duration of it seems to be 3 turns after Jerin casts it, and by turns I mean anyone's turn. From the way I play and spread out my potions, I always keep it up on Jerin and Aguro, so that Aguro doesn't swing like a truck and kill my other members. That fight is 50% lucky anyway, because if the boss starts off with Figual, then you're lucky if you get a Mirror up on Jerin. Giving her the speed potions might gurantee that mirror being up in place before his first move though. It also might not.

Given that agility doesn't appear to be an incredibly important stat, I think it's worth a try to give them all to Jerin.

Usually, I try to keep up Mirror on Jerin and the Hero, not Aguro. Sure, Aguro can really hurt someone else, but so can the Hero. Plus, I need to keep the Hero alive, so that he can cast Valor and/or Rally.

Speaking of agility, I was fighting the Apprentice today, who was getting in 2-3 attacks per round after casting Fake a couple times. After several failures, I equipped the newly found Sonic Ring to slightly boost my agility, which brought the Apprentice's attacks down to 1-2 per round, which made the fight much more manageable.

One thing to be aware of with buffs and debuffs, though I am sure you're already aware of it, is that in Lufia 1 they rapidly degenerate. They are also all percentage based on your total in that stat. I might be wrong in saying all of them, but I am right about the rapid degeneration in all of them. Every time you casted fake, immediately the next time it was the Hero's turn he had lost 1/4 of what he had gained, and your next buff was weaker, because the more you use a buff the weaker it becomes. In fact, every time you use a buff it is almost cut in half in potency. This means that self buffing is exactly like keeping mirror up almost. You'd have to focus on it to make it effective.

I'm interested in you giving the speed potions to Jerin, so keep us posted on how that works out. :) Never hurts to learn a better/new way to skin the cat.

Yeah, I'm aware of how they degenerate. I'll keep an eye on that. So far, Power Gourds seem worth it. I've heard their bonus is percentage based, so hopefully it will remain useful.

They are better than Trick if I haven't said it already.

The walkthrough draft is great, I'm thinking on playing both lufia games now... dammit HC you make me wanna play every game

I agree. HC's guide is great, and it made me think about Lufia, and I started a Lufia 2 quest. Just for fun I decided not to do purchases ever, and to just rely on armor gained from caves. So far at the Regal Goblin boss fight, and no trouble yet. The Regal Goblin can be a bit tricky if he summons too many mage goblins though, so beware! Haven't grinded yet either.

So you're not buying magic and items either? Or are you just not buying weapons and armor, but still purchasing magic and items?

Never mind about the Mummy Rat enemy. I'm pretty sure it was just a typo from a source I read. There are Mummies and Poison Rats around Belgen, but no Mummy Rats. If there were, this game would be a lot scarier. So, only the Mini Crab (which I did confirm exists separately from Baby Crab) is missing from the Bestiary. I do know that Mini Crab is weak to Thunder from empirical testing.

I bought Strong in Sundletan after the first dungeon. Then I bought Fireball and Trick in the town before Bound Kingdom later on. Some spells I'll have to buy, but everything else has been only from dungeons and random monster drops. Made Camu battle a lot more interesting. Of course, by the time you get past Gades in Gordovan tower, items from dungeons pretty much start to become the best stuff in the game almost anyway, so I think the entertainment of doing what I am doing is going to fizzle out.

Edit - To directly answer your question, some magic, no items except for a few to beat Gades in Gordovan tower, and no armor or weapons.

Kind of an odd challenge. I think the difficultly is going to arise in raising your Capsule Monsters. I always remember they wanted the most random things to eat and I just ended up buying tons of cheap gear to evolve them. But that was like 10 years ago at least.

Plus a no magic challenge is always hard, especially if you don't have access to a steady supply of healing items.

It's not really a challenge. It's just something I'm doing, because I want to see if buying gear is even necessary. Strong is definitely necessary if you aren't buying gear in the beginning after the first dungeon, because >_> when you face 2 Eagles... They will kill you! Really though to clear things up, it isn't a challenge, if I need or want something I will buy it. I'm not a fan of challenges like that personally.

I made it through the Blue Tower today and made an interesting observation. According to the bestiary, a lot of the enemies in the tower are weak to fire. Yet, I noticed that they are also quite susceptible to explosion-elemental spells. Might enemies that are weak to fire also be weak to explosion? It would be consistent with my observations, especially considering that the bestiary does not say that any enemies are weak to explosion. I'm pretty sure explosion is not considered quite the same as fire-elemental, because the Flame Ring does not work with it. You need the Blast Ring for that.

I've never played Lufia. But the later Dragon Quest games count 'blast' type spells as being the same as thunder elemental spells. I'm not sure why an enemy weak to fire would also be weak to lightning and I have no idea what the context is for that area but it's all I have.

I'm probably talking out of my dumper here, but it always seemed to me that Blast type spells were non-elemental. Always seemed to do the same amount of damage no matter the creature type to me.

Sometimes less I suppose, if the creature type has naturally high magic resistance, though most do not.

Nevermind about my speculation about explosion-elemental spells. It just deals good damage.

must have completely missed those enemies in the list. Ill Look it up.

Explosion and fire are two different spells. I listed the weaknesses of monsters when they had a stat at an element. It might just be that Explosion does a lot of damage and as such are just effective without a weakness.

I organized the list in the order in which you will encounter the enemies when following the game plot for a most efficient overview without much scrolling looking enemies up. I used a duplicate entry for some enemies when you re-encounter them much later in the game again so you don't have to scroll way down the list for their stats. I liked this way of organizing more then an alfabetical list where you'd constantly have to look up enemies all over the guide. This was more of a list to keep open while playing the game, constantly having the relevant data right there as you encounter the enemies and you can scroll down at the speed you are progressing through the game.

In case you didn't see my earlier post, I don't think Mummy Rat exists. I think it was just a typo in one of the walkthroughs I read. Mini Crab definitely exists and separate from Baby Crab.

Mini Crab:

30HP, 0AP, 17XP, 7Gold, Item:Pot(low chance), Weak vs:Thunder, Strong vs:Water. Type: Generic monster(no special type)
And because I have the time :P: 46Atk, 26Phys def, 0Magic def, 12agi.

Thanks a lot. The Bestiary is now complete. In case you didn't know, I'm writing a walkthrough, since I don't really care for the ones on GameFAQs. I'll credit you for your help there and during the LP.

Dutch, you sir, are awesome!

Cool, np.

Just checked VGmaps and it seems all the Lufia maps are finally up now.

I'm personally looking more forward to Lufia2 tho, I'll admit :P It's in my all time top 10 of most enjoyable and rewarding RPGs.

I'm in the middle of testing using the Speed Potions on Jerin. Right now, her agility is 30 more than the next person, and I'm already observing a marked difference. She may not always get her turn first, but she definitely appears to be getting her turn more often during longer battles. Plus, she seems to take her action sooner, despite having input her command after the others. I'm hopeful that this will allow her to easily upkeep three Mirrors during the final battle.

That says to me something fairly interesting, because when I give them all to Aguro the same thing happens, except with Aguro. The priority and speed system is really interesting. Do you have any speculations beyond the STR effecting how much weight effects your speed and what not? To me it seems like all of the characters were given growths in AGI and STR that deal with their gear weight, so perhaps increasing anyone's AGI and/or STR past a certain point would essentially make them outrun anybody else who still has that base/weight speed to deal with. I'm curious on yours and other's thoughts.

Yet another benefit of giving all your Speed Potions to Jerin: she can cast Confuse more quickly and repeatedly to keep those high EXP enemies (in my case, Mimickers) from running away as quickly. Despite the low Hit% of confuse, it seems to hit just often enough to allow me to kill at least one per battle.

I got the Falcon (the ship) today and am now considering how to spend my money on the best equipment, since nearly the entire world is available to me now. At this point, I have nearly 100k Gold.

The best weapon available for the hero and Aguro is the Grand Blade (38000G). However, we do find one much later in the game on the way to the Oil Cave. Between that and the high cost of the weapon, I think I would only purchase one Grand Blade for Aguro. Meanwhile, the Hero can find several upgrades along the way, saving a lot of money. Lufia hardly ever attacks, so I'll skip on the Catwhip for now, until I have more money than I care to have.

The best body armor available for the hero and Aguro is the Carbo Plate (10800G), so I definitely want to get two of those. I would also like to buy a Clear Silk (10000G) for Lufia, but not Jerin, since I'll find another one in the Old Cave 7th Level soon.

The best shields available for the hero and Aguro is the Carbo Shield (6000G), so I want two of those. The Silver Wrist (2800) is the best for Lufia and Jerin. Even though we find one later, it's so cheap, I might as well buy it now.

The best helmet available for the hero and Aguro is the Carbo Helm (8900G). Since we find one in the Herat treasury later, I'll only buy one for the Hero for now. Similarly, the best helmet available for Lufia and Jerin is the Carbo Cap (8500G), but since I'm going to procure the Might Helmet for Jerin soon anyway, I'll only buy the one cap.

Sadly, this means I'll need to skip on the Sword Shoes for the hero and Aguro (11000G) as well as the Cat Heels (11400) for Jerin for now, but their boost is rather minor. Lufia is best on the Tan Shoes, as she doesn't care about AGL or ATP boosts. If I get a ton of gold from the early Tower of Light raid, I may decide to buy them now, and possibly even an extra Carbo Helm or Catwhip. To sum up, here's my current shopping list.

1 Grand Blade (38000)
2 Carbo Plates (21600 total)
1 Clear Silk (10000)
2 Carbo Shields (12000 total)
2 Silver Wrists (5600 total)
1 Carbo Helm (8900)
1 Carbo Cap (8500)
Total Money Spent: 104600

Between my voyage around the world, collecting towns for Jerin's Warp spell, and the equipment that I'll be reselling, I should be able to buy all the important equipment that I need. Let me know what you think.

1 Grand Blade (38000)
2 Carbo Plates (21600 total)
1 Clear Silk (10000)
2 Carbo Shields (12000 total)
2 Silver Wrists (5600 total)
1 Carbo Helm (8900)
1 Carbo Cap (8500)
Total Money Spent: 104600

This list is usually what I go with. I mean it would be nice to optimise your characters, but I usually don't have the money to buy everything, so I usually move on with the game, and save up for better equipment (like all of the zircon armor, I try to buy all of that when the time comes). This list is just fine, I get through the game easily without buying the best equipment all at one.