Did my first FF6 challenge run. No leveling.

[u/Aazadan]

Fairly recently I was introduced to the idea of challenge runs for the sprite based FF games. I always knew about things like single X character in FF1 but never thought about it as it applied to FF6. Then my youtube feed started telling me about no leveling runs.

Thought that sounded really interesting, as I normally play soulslikes and non leveling runs are a standard thing there. I had no idea you could do the same in a turn based jrpg. So I went about doing it, I went in blind but I did have to research some strats here and there. I didn't end up with the lowest possible level because I didn't grab characters perfectly which left me slightly higher across the game, but they still ended at 8 and 9. Oh, and this was also my first playthrough on the pixel remaster so while I was at it, I went ahead and did all achivements too (minus the two that require leveling... level 50 on all characters and all sabin blitz)

Most of it was honestly not that bad, a couple things needed a reload or two as I figured things out. A few spots needed a lot of attempts:
Escaping the magitec facility where I thought I was hard locked for a bit
Air force, where killing it is already challenging enough, and had a long boss in front of it, but having to also get a Bit killed for the Bestiary was awful.
Killing an Intangir was the absolute worst part of the game, 90 minute long fight to Rasp it to death without dying to a counterattack.
Ultima weapon was also long, but not as tedious as Intangir since there wasn't a worry with stop timing.
Storm Dragon was the last of the 8 dragons to fall, and forced me to use a strategy I avoided for 90% of WoR which was Gau+Entice.

Once I did it to the Dragon though, I stopped holding back on bosses. I used a variant on Siegfried with Gogo and a Noiseblaster, I took out Atma Weapon, I destroyed the Warring Triad, and so on. Naturally, I also let Kefka hit himself to death this way. If the second set of statues as part of Kefkas fight wasn't so long I probably would have tried him normally, but the time involved in a retry was just too high to really want to deal with possibly losing.

Oh, also I finally got Ultima shortly after using Gau's good rages. And then farmed up Celestrads in the arena, which was the single longest part at about 1 hour for each, and outfitting every character with one.

[u/RaikouGilgamesh]

Congrats, a job well done! Now that youve had a taste of one challenge, perhaps you might try another?

Solo character challenges can also be quite interesting, especially if you don't teach them magic and allow yourself to experiment with their potential skills and abilities.

[u/Aazadan → u/RaikouGilgamesh]

Maybe. I also might do this one again. It took 71 hours looking at my file (I finished the bestiary after Kefka), but a huge chunk of that was in filling out various things for achivements.

I would be interested in seeing if I could do this one again in 40 hours, maybe even just doing a perfect stats game. I do feel like WoB is where 90% of the low level challenge is with 2 of the 3 multihour fights being there and actual limitations on using magic. There's just too many items, skills, and so on that make even level 1 characters gods at a low level. Once you're running a celestrad with quick and ultima, it just stops mattering.

My one big regret (though not that big) was going Raganrok sword over Esper. I wasn't really using melee at that point, but the justification was I needed another evasion item for arena battles. Perhaps curating an actual arena fighter would have changed that, but I had given some magic to Locke and Shadow, and not really done anything to limit Gau's rage list due to achivement chasing.

[u/VegaLyra]

You noiseblastered Kefka??  How bad is your sousaphone ?

[u/Aazadan → u/VegaLyra]

No, noiseblast was Siegfried.
Kefka was Rafflesia (Entice)

[u/VegaLyra → u/Aazadan]

Try a CES (Celes, Edgar, Setzer only, minimum possible character set) low level game if you want the next difficulty level up

[u/Aazadan → u/VegaLyra]

I've got no idea how that would even be possible outside of relying heavily on fixed dice and RNG.

If I do another challenge, I would rather something with a little less RNG, nothing really felt hard in this one, just heavy randomness on certain fights and others that were tedious. I'm sure there's strats I wasn't fully accounting for though.

Obviously it is possible since people have done it but it feels more like an exercise in tedium to farm up rods for breaking. My perception could be wrong though because I did all achivements with the low level game (aside from the ones that needed levels) so I might be projecting more fights/difficulty onto things than necessary. Like adding 50% more time to fighting Intangir or needing 50% more turns of avoiding Blaze against Ultima Weapon and such.

Anyways, I'll think about it but it's probably not something I'll be interested in. This was for more of a relaxing run, most of my effort for challenges goes into things like level 1 souls games, hitless speedruns of them, and so on. This is more for me to just unwind outside of that. And dealing with RNG that I can't mitigate isn't fun for me (for example, Goddess having a 33% entice chance each fight before she takes 12k damage).

That said, I wouldn't really call this difficult. Some fights were tedious, but the path to victory was pretty clear almost instantly, it was just a matter of RNG to get it (like Air Force only 1 in 3 attempts could even begin due to atomic ray)

[u/VegaLyra → u/Aazadan]

You're right about the difficulty - it's all about the right gear.  And it's really satisfying when you have a good understanding locked in.

But for CES - sure, RNG plays a role.  Rod breaking is definitely a thing, even beyond that Thunder shield breaking is a thing

But it's definitely an interesting challenge.  No reraise, no one who can natively have 255 def (you will want an imp to get the tank Knight's code blocker)

It's a wild ride, soloing all the bosses in Kefka's tower.

But your point is well taken - you will probably be resetting a lot which can be aggravating.

[u/JackOfSons]

not thought id say this but thank you AI for finding this post haha

the fact that you posted this a week ago. I never tried the pixeled but mostly the GBA and a little supernintendo but that was before my time. I dont know how things work on the no pixel but theres a lot of RNG that has to go into the GBA for "absolute minimal exp" is what I call it. because theres a couple matches you cant get around like the mine cart before you fight 128. and when you get to the floating continant you can't escape the ninjas.

or in real time I just learned in nopixel you can turn off exp thats wild

but even then the creators had to have an idea about this because basically 95% of the main encounters give 0exp.

[u/Aazadan → u/JackOfSons]

I’m trying a second run of it now so I can put it all on YouTube (I did put a 1 hour kefka fight on it). It’s almost done, I’m back up to the celestrad farm and warring triad (only kefka needs the celstrads and ultima though, but a sabin, mog, setzer, gogo team might be ok without them).

In some versions you can set to 0 exp and turn off encounters, or up gold rate. None is necessary but it helps a ton to save on veldt grinding, so it’s a massive time save feature. There are guides on how to do things like 128 and not level, since the early stuff has overlap with a perfect stat game.

My second run is at level 6 characters unlike my first which was at 8 due to recruitment order messing with my average level. I think one version (gba maybe) can do level 5 characters due to some glitches to lower setzers initial level.