Final Fantasy VI Walkthrough

Written by Djibriel

Contributor

2.34: Into the Ancient Castle

Formations
6/16	Enuo	1
	Devil	1
	Figaro Lizard	1
5/16	Enuo	2
5/16	Devil	1
5/16	Figaro Lizard	2

Enemies: Figaro Lizard, Devil, Enuo, Master Tonberry

Lore: Tsunami, Lv. 5 Death, Lv. 4 Flare, Lv. 3 Confuse, Traveler, Dischord

Party: Optional: Terra, Cyan, Shadow, Edgar, Sabin, Celes, Relm, Strago, Setzer, Mog, Gau, Umaro

If you had paid one hundred thousand Gil to one of the thieves at the foot of the Fanatics Tower, you'll have heard of an ancient castle somewhere under the desert of Figaro, which is supposedly loaded with treasure. Hopefully you didn't, as you'll feel pretty foolish now that I've told you anyways. Now we're not greedy, but what kind of RPG-player would you be if you didn't take a look?

Whom to bring? The theme of the next dungeon will be magical resistance. The caves leading to the castle and the castle itself will be filled with monsters boasting inherent Reflective tendencies and crazy Magic Defense, making any non-barrier-piercing magical attack useless. The Holy element is very strong here, though: Lance

Holy Lance Dragoons in particular are great. So is Sabin with Claw

Dragon Claws on each hand, despite the negative impact on his Defense. Gau and Umaro are decent choices too, as their uncontrollable nature is no hindrance whatsoever in the next part of this fine game. Strago can learn

Rippler,

1000 Needles, and

Dischord here, which is hardly worth mentioning due to the fact that he can learn all three on the bloody Overworld Map too. He can, however, also learn

Lv. 3 Confuse,

Lv. 4 Flare,

Lv. 5 Death, and

Traveler here (if you missed it earlier), as well as a Lore that's probably new to you,

Tsunami.

Make your team and fly the Falcon over to Figaro Castle, which is probably on the Kohlingen side of the sea by this point. Send it over to the Figaro desert, and it will reach a bumpy part of the journey where the old man piloting the castle will ask you if you want to investigate. Boy, do we ever! Walk over to the castle dungeons, where the sandworm hole that freed the Crimson Robbers is still present. You can use it to exit this castle and enter the caves leading to the Ancient Castle.

Figaro Lizard are entirely too much like Crawler enemies, only much harder to take down. !Venom causes the Poison status, and they'll use either Leech or

Dischord. Figaro Lizard doesn't have a weakness to the Holy element, so I would suggest barrier-piercing magical attacks and physical attacks of any kind; instant-death attacks such as Gau's Coeurl Cat-induced Blaster attack,

Banish, and Cyan's Oblivion technique will get the job done. Remember that Figaro Lizard is Reflective though, meaning that

Death and

Break will bounce.

Devil is a nasty enemy that delights in attacking physically, and with some force I might add. Battle isn't that tough, but !Swipe (Battle x 4) really packs a punch. Whenever a Devil is alone, he will start casting

Lv. 3 Confuse,

Lv. 4 Flare, or

Lv. 5 Death every second turn, with a chance at using Blaze somewhere in between. Its Control, Sketch, and Rage are filled up with level 3 spells, too. A Devil's Defense is horrid, so their fairly-respectable 5555 HP isn't so bad as it seems. Abuse Devil's weaknesses by attacking with Lance

Holy Lances, Claw

Dragon Claws, and Rod

Holy Rods. The random

Holy spells won't do anything, but the physical strikes themselves will get the job done nicely. Instant death attacks work as well.

Enuo is a boiling glob of slimy mucus with certain powers over water. Normally it'll just attack with Battle or !Slime, which sets Slow. When an Enuo is alone, though, it'll use

Aqua Breath or

Tsunami, a new Lore for Strago. Wretched Defense and a weakness to Holy and instant death attacks are two of the many downsides to being a heap of mucus; abuse them at your heart's content.

Tsunami is a multi-target Water-elemental Lore for Strago. You're probably wondering why you need another one of those, given that you already have

Aqua Breath. There's three benefits to this:

Tsunami isn't partly Wind-elemental
Tsunami hits both sides in a Pincer attack
While Tsunami is weaker, it doesn't split damage on multiple targets, making it stronger than Aqua Breath versus multiple targets

Aero beats both by far, so this is more or less trivia knowledge, but hey, now you know. In the room you first enter, there are two chests. To the left is a chest containing a Special

Wing Edge, the strongest 'Special' weapon for Locke. Its main selling points are +7 to Speed, the Dirk

Assassin's Dagger and Gambler

Viper Darts's X-type instant death property, and the fact it deals the same amount of damage from the Back Row. The chest to the right contains a Hi-Ether. There are three exits below; it doesn't really matter which one you take, but the middle one and the far right one take you directly to a monster-in-a-box while you have to walk around a bit in order to leave via the left path. If you came in through the middle door, don't fret; you can walk through the wall to reach the chest you see. The chest to the top-right of this cave is the chest containing Master Tonberry, the toughest monster-in-a-box you'll find in this game.

Master Tonberry

Bestiary #328

Type

Level

Gil

EXP

None

22000

1200

Strength

Magic Atk.

Evasion

Defense

Mag. Def.

Mag. Evade

100

165

Stolen Items

Dropped Items

Common: Megalixir
Rare: Elixir

Common:

Gladius

Status Immunities

Elemental Immunities

None

Elemental Absorb

Elemental Weakness

Variable

None

Lores

Command Immunities

Traveler,

Tsunami

Control

Strategy

Master Tonberry is very mean. He'll start the battle off with a Battle attack, and after this the madness will begin. Every 15 seconds, Master Tonberry takes a step forward; after seven steps, he'll use !Knife on a random character and retreat halfway back, meaning that he'll have to take just four more steps after that to reach the !Knife position again. Every step is accompanied with the ever-frustrating Barrier Change attack. Master Tonberry casts spells of the type opposing his current weakness, not unlike Number 024 way back in the day. Each time he changes his weakness, he has a two in three chance of using a magical attack that will indicate what his new weakness is. This will give you a chance to load up on that weakness until it changes again.

Indicator Attack	New Weakness
Firaga	Ice
Blizzaga	Fire
Thundaga	Wind
Bio	Holy
Tornado	Lightning
Holy	Poison
Quake	Water
Tsunami	Earth

One of the worst parts of this battle, though, is Master Tonberry's

Traveler counter to every damaging attack you perform. Depending on your actions and style of playing this game, this move can do a lot of damage.

The way to victory lies in the enemy's status ailment vulnerabilities. Cast

Sleep on Master Tonberry, and pair it up with

Slow as well. If you have enough people with control over the

Rasp spell, you might try removing all his MP first; better safe than sorry, right? If you're done with that or simply don't want to bother, start attacking him with magical attacks. Physical attacks will wake him; stick to magical ones only. It's highly possible you may manage to kill him before he even wakes up once. If he does wake up, just cast

Sleep again; Strago's

Bad Breath Lore also works (sets Poison too, by the way). Expand Full Strategy

When you're done, you win a Dirk

Gladius, a Holy-elemental Dirk that can be equipped by pretty much everybody. It's a powerful weapon but doesn't have any interesting properties. Its Holy-elemental nature can make it useful in this dungeon, though.

The only other chest in this cave contains the Gambler

Death Tarot, Setzer's most powerful 'normal' weapon. Like the Special

Wing Edge, it deals the same amount of damage from the Back Row and has the Dirk

Assassin's Dagger's X-type instant death property, but it doesn't boost any stats. In the PSX releases, you'll find the Gambler

Viper Darts here; it's the same weapon, but called Gambler

Viper Darts in the recent releases (while the WoR Kohlingen store-bought Trump is called Doom Darts there).

You'll want to exit to the left of the screen to find another cave with two chests. They contain an X-Potion (to the left) and a shard of Magicite (the one to the bottom). The main feature here is the grand stairway leading into a random encounter-less room with a Save Point and another stairway going up.

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Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy VI
Version 6
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