Introduction Starting Out
This is a guide I'am making to help anyone who wants to get op early on so nothing is a challenge to you. Why? Cause its fun and this game is open ended enough to do it.
First things first, buy a cure spell for maria, blizzard magic for firion, and you can keep guy the same or buy a sword for him if you like those more than axes. Once you have these things, go outside. Get into a battle with any old enemy, easy is good you won't be fighting them anyway.
Cure for Maria is a must early on.
You can pick off all enemies cept 1, now that the 1 is left, you can boost stats.
This is about how to get to this point fast, so I will be explaining how to reach optimal power as fast as possible with as less grinding as possible. What you want to do is use firions magic on all characters. Don't worry its still level 1 it shouldn't hurt.
Now you can target all characters with marias cure. And with guy, either defend or if he has enough hp and you're feeling brave make guy attack himself.
Everybody beat up Guy, don't worry he can take it.
It could kill him first round, if it does don't worry you can revive him in town at the church. You will also get stats for firion and maria. After some rounds of this, end the battle whenever you want. Your magic, cure, elemental spell, and hp should all go up. If guy survived his own heavy attacks he should get a huge hp boost.
Guys HP will skyrocket, dude is an oldschool tank.
The others should also get an hp boost from the magic attacks, raised magic defense, and ups for their spells. Be wary as higher level spells will cause a lot more damage. If one of your characters is low such as maria, simply buy a new elemental spell at level 1 and target her with it. It should lower her measly hp without killing her.
Marias HP is low, so use low level magic to boost her hp early on till she's strong enough to take a hit at around 100-200 hp.
Once this is all setup and you have boosted enough stats, move onto the next town (Gatrea) north of the starting town. In this town you will come across the very useful pheonix down, you won't get the life spell for a while and this can come in very handy.
May need some phoenix downs, but they are 500gil each so only get 1 if you think you need it.
Don't worry to much about status heals at this moment, this games not to punishing with the status effects like other FF's. Also here in this town, the bow, you will want to buy 2 more bows and equip them to everyone. You will be pushing for the mega powerful early on firebow so it would be wise to start powering up your bow skill early on. If bows are not your thing you can simply keep teaching maria the bow skill and focus on whatever you want for the guys. But to make it easier I would recommend equipping all with the bow it will make things faster.
Can buy 2 more bows at Gatrea, Maria should be equipped with the 1st one at the start of the game.
Stat Grinding
After you're done in the second town move back down to the first town. But first move north up to the river. See that wall you can barely see at the top, that's where you want to go. But don't even go across the bridge yet there's some pretty strong enemies past that point and you want to be prepared.
See the wall at the very top, that's where the firebow is.
Move back to the starting city, as you travel and build stats you may notice maria has ran out of mp for cure. Well there's no mp boosters early on so what do you do? Well after all this grinding you should have enough gil for 2 more cure spells. Move back to the first town and buy 2 more scrolls for guy and firion. Also get an elemental spell for each of your characters. Now you can start stat grinding. Keep using magic, and cure on your team. Until your HP is built up to over 100 for each character. Now comes the heavy stat grinding. Once you are above 100 hp for your characters you can safely start shooting yourselves with arrows. Which will build your defense (not just magic defense), physical defense will be important when you're finally able to face the enemies with the flame bow you want.
You should also keep using magic and cure when you can, you will need those advanced magic spells as they cause a lot more damage early on once they are high level than the weapons you are getting now.
At 4 hits I cause 0 damage to this troll. Melee and long range attacks just won't hurt early on cause of the weak weapons. Magic however will hurt a lot.
But also try to lower your hp with heavy physical attacks it will make your stats skyrocket especially guy. Once you have all those things you need at the starting town, it also doesn't hurt to buy some helmets and gloves to up your defense a bit. Move back to the northern town. If you have any gil left phoenix down is a good investment altho not totally necessary.
The next phase will take some stats so keep using the methods I've described. I suggest getting ice, cure and your bow skill up. Ice because it seems to damage the enemies more least to me.
Moving On
Now from here I suggest buying some antidotes from the 2nd town. You will need them for the wererats.
Wererats have some nasty status effects, be careful with them.
They cast a different kind of poison spell that will stick with you after battles so you will want to get rid of that as soon as possible. Wererats are good training so you will wanna buy as many antidotes as possible.
This is the guy with the antidotes.
When ready and after you have guy around 300 hp, move across the bridge and head north. Also try and get blizzard to at least level 2-3 for all characters. North you will encounter ogres, wererats, a turtle type of enemy, and ogre mages. From here on out, when you face these enemies, only cast a single blizzard on each target. Do not spread it won't kill them fast enough and single blizzard will take out each target at a time. They were harder targets on NES but in the pixel remaster they are even easier so you shouldn't have a problem. You can still use regular attacks on each other with the bows to boost hp and defense but might not want to try that against the harder northern targets like ogres.
Harder targets, one reason I recommend blizzard as your primary attack spell is cause of the turtle enemy. He takes huge damage from blizzard. Should kill him in one shot if your blizz is abover level 3 or 4.
The thing about these harder targets, they boost your stats a lot higher than attacking weaker targets, and you can make blizzards level skyrocket. So keep grinding them and heal with antidotes whenever wererats poison you. And continue leveling cure as well.
Sometimes these enemies can also drop useful magic scrolls.
The Captain
So if you keep grinding these enemies, casting blizzard exclusively and cures, you will very rapidly be able to move as far north as you want. You will encounter new enemies, including warlocks with very strong magic attacks. But if you focus on blizz and cure you should be able to kill them.
Blizz messes them up!
Save and use caution you never know what can happen. Before to long however you will be able to move east to where the 3rd town is, altho its more of a castle city.
The firebow is here, held by a strong captain.
This is where you will encounter the very powerful early on foot soldiers. The idea of this area if you're taking the fast route was to avoid the soldiers as they are extremely strong and can wipe you out easily. But since we powered up our HP, blizzard, and cure, we have a chance at beating one.
As you can see he is no push over. I still survived this encounter with no phoenix down so don't give up, stay calm, and use blizzard.
I had guy about 700 hp for this battle, firion and maria about 400 plus. And blizzards all at around level 4. It was pretty easy just cast blizzard, and cure when he hits hard enough. He did cause about 400 against guy in one hit. And about 300 on firion luckily he survived at red hp. After enough blizzards he finally fell. Did he drop the firebow? Nope... Its not a super common drop you may need to try multiple times to get it. On my 2nd attempt after beating the first captain I got unlucky and guy actually died, but I still managed to kill him with firion and maria. And I got the flamebow on the 2nd attempt. I however had to go back to town to heal guy.
These are the kind of stat ups you can get from the captain, so you don't just get a good weapon.
So don't take the captain lightly, it helps to have a high cure, high hp, and maybe some phoenix downs, but chances are if he's killing characters the phoenix down isn't gonna help much unless you follow up with a fast cure. Its better if you're having trouble to just grind some more hp and defense. Well we could stop here with the guide but you want 2 more firebows right? Well if you plan to farm the captains I suggest getting some cottages so you don't have to leave the castle area. The good thing is the captain will continue to boost your parties stats for you while you're farming this potent early weapon.
50 whole damage points, plus fire element. You won't find many weapons this good for a long while.
And That's It
So keep beating up the captains and you will get everyone a firebow. You can also sell it for tons of cash. Whats the point of this? To make the game a breeze so you can enjoy the story and beat it easily. Of course there's other reasons, I love the freedom this game gives you especially out of the early FF's. Being able to op yourself like this early on really gives an open ended feeling to the game and multiple ways to play. You can of course not do this method at all if you prefer a challenge but hey its an rpg we all play rpgs cause we like to get strong right?
A little extra note, the enemies north of the castle also drop some good magic scrolls you can't get unless you make the long journey to some of the neighboring cities outside the northwest continent. Feel free and farm for them, of course once you get 3 firebows there's little point in doing anything cept moving on with the story. Nothing will be a challenge now.
Well that's how you break FF2 early on, within an hour or so.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2878757447
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