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In April, 2026, I completed a no-exp run of FF6. Here are some highlights and tips.

Note that no glitches were used in this run. I used the Pixel Remaster version, which allows the full turning off of EXP from the start of the game so that no one ever gains a single point of experience.

Final Fantasy 6 is one of my favorite retro-RPGs. I got it when it released in North America as FF3 and have played it so many times that revisiting it had become difficult. There was very little left for me to learn and absolutely no challenge. And yet, here at 42 years of age, I found myself wanting to play it again. As it happened, the algorithm read my mind and started sending me videos and reddits of FF6 challenge runs. And that is when I decided to try a no-EXP run.

Before we begin, this is the foundation of strategy you need to know in order to understand the approach to this game. When you are facing an FF6 no exp run, you quickly learn that levels affect damage output more than defensive capability. For the entire game, we can boost our defense by simply putting all characters in the back row, using relics like Reflect and, eventually, magic (like Vanish, which cancels all physical attacks aimed at you). Equipment also helps immensely and can seriously boost evasion and defense to levels where you cannot take damage from physical attacks. So really, our focus has to be on how to deal damage, because the attack command will basically be useless for most of the game (except one key place I'll mention later).

Also, be VERY VERY careful about what you sell. Some weapons are needed for coliseum bets, later on. This isn't a full list, but you want to hang onto a Regal Gown, a Holy Lance, and a Murakama.

The Phases of FF6

Final Fantasy 6 can be broken down into four different game phases.

The first phase is from the beginning up to the Opera house. This part of the game is defined by enemies mostly using physical attacks and having low magical defense. Here we will focus on abilities like Blitz, Rage, and Tools to deal damage, as well as Terra and Celes' magic. Edgar's Noiseblaster is particularly useful as a surprising amount of enemies are susceptible to Confuse. Nothing here is too difficult with one exception that we'll get to.

The second phase is once we arrive on the Empire's continent and lasts until the end of the Floating Continent. Here magic starts to get used against us a lot and physical attacks become more deadly. We'll be using a mix of Vanish and Reflect Rings to get through these parts of the game. Our ability to deal damage begins to taper off and we have to switch to relying on Strago's Traveler Lore (we'll talk about this ability a lot) and using Rods, because Rods have their own Magic stat that multiples based on the Magic stat of whomever uses it -- basically, it's always going to be stronger than any magic we can cast naturally. We also gain access to magic that casts status effects, which is key for many bosses and encounters. That said, this is by far the hardest part of the run, with several bosses that require careful planning and sometimes luck to defeat. Even the supposedly pre-determined story fights, like General Leo vs Kefka, can be lost here in a No EXP run.

The third phase is the World of Ruin up to the point where we can get Mog and the Snow Scarf. This is another tricky piece of the game because we are very limited in our character choice (Celes, Sabin, Edgar, Setzer) and have to work out how to survive and deal damage. Thankfully, much of this phase is fought against undead -- which can be one-shot by Holy Waters or Phoenix Downs. And many enemies use magic, which Reflect Rings stop. And enemies are still vulnerable to status effects like confuse.

The fourth and final phase is everything after getting Mog and the Snow Scarf. Mog with the Snow Scarf (and a couple other key equipment choices) gets his defense stat up to 255, which reduces ALL physical damage to 0. Then you slap a Knight's Code Relic on him and he will block EVERY physical attack thrown at the entire party. Give everyone in the party reflect rings and you block 90% of the game's entire attacks. This leaves us free to collect party members and decide how we want to tackle Kefka. The game really becomes yours at this point and there are several ways to set up for the final fight, which I'll go over later.

It is easy to assume that the game gets harder the further you progress, as naturally the designers are assuming you have ever higher levels -- but actually FF6 has an odd difficulty curve, where the hardest parts of the game are the places where you have the least options. Because of this, I'd rank the difficulty curve more like this:

Phase 1 (Hard): very limited in character choice and abilities, though the enemies are also weaker. One key roadblock, Ultros, bumps this up to hard.

Phase 2 (Hardest): a huge spike in difficulty, even in a normal playthrough. The hardest bosses in the game are here, for a low level run, and you can accidentally mess up your ability to use Traveler, which means you have to use much harder strats to win

Phase 3 (Easy): less options, with the hardest part being solo Celes, but it is short and it gets easier as you add party members

Phase 4 (Easiest): tons of game breaking options

So with that out of the way, we can start talking about specific moments in the game which are uniquely difficult and require strategizing around. Assume every other fight isn't very difficult, has exploits through status effects, or has a lot of different approaches.

First Ultros Fight

"Muscleheads... Hate 'em!"

Welcome to one of the hardest parts of the game.

This area has a lot of problems. First, at this point in the game you are severely limited in what you can access. If you have already left Mt. Kolt, you cannot return to it (it is blocked by imperial soldiers). I'd forgotten this and saved over my pre-Mt Kolt files, oops. I could farm gil by wandering around outside the Returners HQ but all you can buy there are potions, high-potions, and a handful of status ailment cures. You can't even buy Phoenix Downs and I believe I had about six to my name at this point. I think MAYBE you can steal some Phoenix Downs from enemies here but I didn't try it because I am bored to death by loot grinding.

The river itself poses a bit of a challenge in that one of the enemies, the Wyvern, can cast fireball randomly and if they decide to do this you have no options and are instantly dead. So RNG, yay! You cannot run from these fights and as an added bonus you have to keep Banon, leader of the Resistance, alive.

Let's talk about Banon. In a no exp run, dude is level 2. That... isn't good. If he dies, you do not get a chance for a phoenix down, the game ends instantly. And as it happens, UItros will kill him in one hit and will always target him around turn 10 or so. This effectively puts a time limit on the battle and you have to deal 3000 damage in that time.

For a long time, people thought this was impossible and got around it by killing everyone except Banon, turning EXP back on, then taking him around the infinite leveling loop in the river until he was high enough to survive a single Ultros attack. It was considered a viable work around. Sometime later, it was discovered that you could keep a level 2 Banon alive with a VERY specific set up of Knight's Code and having him at critical health (meaning someone else would take the hit for him -- usually Sabin). The problem is, this relies on getting good RNG prior to going to the Ultros fight and there isn't a way to save (not even quick save) right before the fight -- you have at least one encounter prior and usually two. Meaning this was very tedious.

More recently, a new method was discovered and it is wild.

Anyone who has played FF6 will recall that Ultros is a talker. You actually use this against him. By maximizing your party's agility through equipment and setting the text speed to very slow and battle speed to fast, you can end up stacking a ton of turns while Ultros is yapping at you. By doing this in a very specific order, you can guarantee a win out of the fight. I'll link to a Reddit post that goes over this in detail. I love these out of the box strats, that involve literally changing the game's configurations to manipulate the ATB bar.

Until I found this method, I thought my run was going to be over. I could not get the Knight's Code method to work and the frustration of restarting not at Ultros but two fights before him (one of which contains Wyverns and thus an instant death chance) was quickly sapping my stamina. Even after discovering this method, I despaired, because I decided, "why not set the speed to Very Fast instead of Fast" and it turns out this messes up the whole process. It won't work on Very Fast, it throws everything out of sync and Ultros just goes too fast for the human fingers to counter.

This was the first time I nearly quit the run and it was demoralizing that it happened so early in the game. I died about thirty-seven times before I realized Very Fast was the problem and after switching it to Fast, beat Ultros on my very next attempt and didn't run into any other problems for a long time.

But boy when I did, I really did.

Magitek Facility

"Gestahl has grabbed our friends and is trying to drain them of their power. I, too, suffered my turn in one of the glass tubes..."

Between Ultros 1 and Ultros 2 at the Opera House there isn't much to cover. Kefka human version is the one boss people tend to think of as tricky but it really isn't -- Celes can use Runic to nerf the fight while Sabin and Edgar and Gau go to town with damage. This is a good time to mention that Sabin, Edgar, and Gau are going to be your main damage dealers for a while. It is also a good time to mention that you cannot take all three with you to the Opera House -- you are forced to bring Locke and Celes, leaving you to decide which of the three heavy hitters to leave behind. I chose Gau and Sabin. And it cost me 8 hours of gameplay.

See, the problem I'd forgotten was that after the Opera House you do not get the option to switch up your party again until you head to the Sealed Cave and so you are stuck using whomever you brought to the Opera House (including Locke and Celes). This isn't terrible until you get through the Magitek facility, lose Celes, and hop on the mine carts to face big ol' purple man, #128 with only three characters.

This guy is a remix in some ways of the Baigan fight from FF4. He's got multiple bodyparts all of which attack separately, he's super fast, and he regenerates his arms if you kill them... so you are stuck trying to take down the main body before he can end you. There are very few ways to do it on a no exp run. One involves the Acrophies Rage to cast net on the boss' arms but this requires some RNG to work. The more reliable method is to use Vanish to avoid the physical attacks for long enough to beat the damage curve/action economy.

Buuuut you just got Phantom, who teaches you Vanish, and have no way to learn the spell before the mine boss. So instead you have to count the number of forced fights during the mine cart and on the very last one before #128 use Phantom to Vanish everyone. This means that you go into the #128 fight pre-vanished and have one more use of it available through the Esper during combat. With that, you should have enough time to survive the first magic attack, recast Vanish, and deal the 3200 damage needed to kill the boss.

That is, if you brought Edgar and Sabin. Edgar's Drill and Sabin's Blitzes are basically necessary to deal consistent damage before you are left without Vanish and vulnerable to the boss' ridiculous barrage of physical attacks. Gau can deal good damage depending on your rages but it relies on him targeting the body and not the arms, which every round he only has a 1/3 chance in doing. Dying means replaying the whole much too long mine cart Mode 7 part and doing the proper set up for the boss and that is a recipe for despair.

I tried this so many times with my original Gau, Locke, and Sabin party and just couldn't stack enough damage because of Gau's randomness. Eventually decided to reset to a save before the Opera House and switch Gau out for Edgar. It was the only major reset I would end up doing in the run but it was worth it -- I won on my third attempt with the new party.

Considering that there is a fool proof strat for dealing with the 1st Ultros, I think #128 takes the place of the hardest boss in the game. The cranes that come after him are also not easy but you can grind out AP in the little Vector runway before facing them and thus set up your party optimally -- it helps if you have Ice Rods left. They are still annoying because if you fail the cranes you have to watch a cutscene every time you want to have another go at them. But that's nothing compared to the full mine cart run you have to endure every time you want to face #128.

Air Force

I hate hate hate hate hate hate... hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE YOU!

One thing that is a common theme throughout these fights I'm focusing on is that you can't save right before them for quick retries and have to go through a series of battles before getting to try again. That makes these fights feel more daunting and harder to experiment with for good strategies.

Such is the case with Air Force. This boss is fought after a gauntlet of Imperial Sky Armors (which can be taken down without problem with the right set up, a little luck, and silencing them before they can attack). Then you can Quicksave but you will always have to face Ultros and Chupon before having a crack at Air Force.

They aren't hard -- you can set up your party to take 0 damage during the entire Ultros and Chupon fight by casting Vanish on yourself and Silence on Chupon. Ultros only does physical attacks and Chupon only uses magic so... you've won! But it still takes a while and that can be really demoralizing when the next boss, Air Force, is another multi-limbed boss fight with a chance to one shot you before you get to move.

By this time in the game, you have access to Strago and need to get the Traveler Lore from an Unseelie outside of South Figaro. This is critical to the rest of the run. Traveler does damage based on how many steps you have taken in the game, dealing one damage for every 32 steps and capping out at 9,999 damage at 319,968 steps.

Why not just grind out those steps now, you ask?

Three reasons.

First, it is a mind-numbing slog that takes 10-15 hours of just walking back and forth to accomplish.

Two, the final encounter of the game is easier if you AREN'T maxed out on Traveler damage (we'll get there later).

Three -- and most importantly -- Traveler's MP cost is equal to the minutes you've played divided by 30. This can be an ALL CAPS ALL BOLD PROBLEM for this point in the run because if you take too long grinding before the Floating Continent you end up with a spell that is beyond Strago's MP ability to cost, kind of like Tellah in FFIV. We will later get a work around for this but that's not available until the World of Ruin. This can be a run ender.

So what you want to do for now is not grind steps unless you have to. Traveler should be dealing at least 2-3k damage just based on your normal playthrough and that will be enough to handle the upcoming fights.

Back to Air Force, if you can survive the initial attack, you have a very limited window to take out the Laser Bit with Traveler and Thunder Rods (your own thunder magic won't be powerful enough), then you have to take out the Healing Bit, and then you have a very short time to unload everything on the main body while it is literally counting down to your doom. Beat it before it reaches zero and you've essentially won this fight. It's one of the more RNG based fights in the run and that can be demoralizing.

Atma Weapon

"My name is Atma… I am pure energy… and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, GO!"

Quick note on the Floating Continent, this is one place in the run that the attack command becomes useful. Shadow is forced into your party here and if you equip him with the Genji's Glove and a couple Assassin's Knives, he has a good chance of instant killing everything he hits -- as long as they aren't immune. It can make the Floating Continent a great place to farm AP -- though keep an eye on your time for Traveler's MP cost! If you feel pumped enough for Atma and want to just run through here, Smoke Bombs can be purchased en masse in Thamasa. They'll be useful for the same reason later in Kefka's Tower, letting you instant run from almost every non-boss fight in the game.

Atma Weapon leaves an impression on most everyone who plays FF6. He has a boss theme we haven't heard before, he looks impressive as hell, and he starts by giving you a talk down worthy of a god. He also kicked most of our asses when we first played FF6 and definitely has the ability to do that here, though I was surprised that I was able to beat him at my first attempt.

Atma is in many ways a luck battle and I got lucky, no two ways about it. He has two attacks which instantly wipe you (Blaze and Meteor) and you have to hope he doesn't cast those. He also has a massive status dealing attack called Mind Wipe which, depending on the statuses, can be a party kill via petrify or confuse or sleep. He also can cast Flare and Quake but you can stop these through setup.

So your goal is to deal as much damage as fast as possible while limiting how many times he gets to attack. You want to cast Slow on Atma. You want Reflect Rings on everyone. You want to case Float (which you can do even if you have Reflect Rings) as soon as possible. I had Strago wearing Hermes Shoes so he had Haste on him and the same for Shadow, so he could keep pumping Strago with enough Ether to keep casting Traveler at max speed (which is kind of a funny mental image, some ninja just holding the ether cloth over an old man's face while he blasts blindly with Blue Magic). Relm was using rods every turn and Edgar, if he wasn't healing, was going to town with Drill. The truth is, Atma didn't get to take that many turns before he went down -- I think he got four or five total. That's the goal, just blitz through him to limit the number of times you have to play Russian Roulette.

Even with my good luck, I wouldn't have been as demoralized dying at Atma as I was by previously tough bosses because you can literally Quick Save right before him. This makes rerolling the RNG not nearly as painful and this boss ultimately -- though based highly on RNG -- not as bad a fight as the others.

Note that people online share a way to manipulate Atma's weaknesses if you managed to steal a Debilitator (which creates random elemental weaknesses) during the Air Force fight -- this can make him even easier, as the magic damage he reflects to himself, under the right weakness, is immense. I wasn't able to steal, so I didn't get to test this.

World of Ruin vs World of Balance

If the "Light of Judgement" burns down our town 100 times, we'll rebuild it 200 times! Wait, does that even make sense?

The transition to the World of Ruin marks a complete change in the game's challenge. The game becomes essentially open world and you gain access through stealing and the coliseum to a near infinite supply of every item and relic and equipment in the game, depending on how long you wish to spend grinding and what you want your final Kefka strategy to be.

However, before we get there, we are thrust into an odd section of the game where you play as solo-Celes, slowly adding Sabin, Edgar, and Setzer in that order before the game opens up.

I had not used Celes for a while and so she was woefully behind in AP and equipment when I hit the World of Ruin. This did cause a bit of a problem, as I couldn't really survive any battles and had to book it to Sabin as fast as possible, basically running from all encounters until he joined my party. At that point, we start to run into the issue of not being able to deal a ton of damage against enemies who suddenly have a tremendous boost in HP and defenses. This will remain a problem until we can teach Sabin Phantom Rush and even that will only just manage to get to Gau or Strago, with their access to Traveler, or to Mog who can set up his tank defense.

Thankfully, there are only two mandatory bosses before the world opens up and each has a useful exploit.

Figaro Tentacles: the trick to the tentacles is they will only grab a character who is slowed. If you wear the Hermes Shoes relic, you will always have haste and so cannot be grabbed. This makes the battle very doable, as long as you focus on keeping your health high and reviving Edgar anytime he dies (so he can act as a decoy for extra damage).

Daryl's Tomb: Note that most enemies here can be insta-killed with holy water. The boss, Dullahan, is a problem with his nasty ice attackls. He wiped me out more than 20 times until I realized you can get the Minerva Bustier for Celes, which negates ice damage. You have to go north from the tomb to the coliseum and bet a Regal Gown, the first of many times I used the coliseum.

With those two bosses dead, the game truly opens up and you have a lot of options for what to do and how much to do. I recommend at least doing the following, in this order. We'll talk about why in a moment.

Get Gau and learn the Fafnir Rage

Get Mog and the Snow Scarf

Get Relm and then immediately Strago

Get Phoenix Esper for Re-Raise

Get Gogo (you'll want him to farm Celestriads)

Get Soul of Thamasa from the Mage's Tower (you'll be turning this into a Celestriad)

Get more Celestriads

As a side note, if you do want to run around and do more side quests or grinding, I recommend getting Odin/Raiden once you have a Celestriad. A shocking number of enemies in the game are susceptible to Odin's one-hit kill attack and with a Celestriad and Odin you can, for the cost of 1 MP per battle, insta-win most non-boss combats in the World of Ruin.

In my run I ended up doing every side quest, just to see if there were any other tricky bosses to talk about, but I didn't run into any further trouble until Kefka. The basic approach of tank defense + traveler + celestriad made everything up until that trivial.

Preparing for Kefka

I am GOGO, master of the simulacrum… My miming skills will astonish you.

There are two characters we can be sure of needing in our final party. Mog and Strago.

Mog I've talked about: he is one of two characters that can wear the Snow Scarf, an armor with massive defensive stats that, combined with certain shields and other armors, can put a low level character to the "reduces-all-physical-damage-to-0" 255 defense.

(Gau is the other character but it will require using a relic like White Cape to fully get him there and that means he can't also wear both a Knight's Code and Reflect Ring, which means he can't be the party's tank.)

Strago is also important. There are two primary ways to take down Kefka, one using damage output and another by targeting his magic. The first requires Traveler and the second requires Force Field, both Lores. So Strago has to be present -- or Gogo using the Lore command. But I go the Traveler route and so prefer to use both -- with Strago and Gogo in the party, you have to do a lot less step grinding with Traveler that way and any time I can avoid walking back and forth in a town for hours I will.

We absolutely need Re-Raise, because Kefka's Forsaken attack bypasses our Reflect Rings and will one shot the whole party, and the statues before him have similarly deadly attacks. Worse, some of the statue battles can end with an instant kill attack and if that party member doesn't have Re-Raise, they will be left behind and won't move forward in the battle (insert foreshadowing here). We also want Re-Raise to be able to tackle the Mage's Tower and not die to Ultima at the top, netting us a celestriad.

Getting the Re-Raise Esper from the Phoenix Caves can be tricky since you are forced to use two parties and probably don't have two teams equal in power. You can get around this with Smoke Bombs (purchased in Thamasa for pretty cheap). These insta-run items can get you past any tough dungeons, especially those where you are forced to split up and use groups that aren't equipped for survival. We'll use them in Kefka's tower, as well.

With Re-Raise in hand, we run into two other problems. The first is that Traveler costs more MP the longer the game goes on and can easily balloon out of our casting range by the time we get to Kefka. Re-Raise also casts a hefty 50 or so MP. So to make keeping it on all party members viable we need Celestriads, a relic that reduces MP costs to 1. I recommend getting at least two, one for Strago and one for whoever is going to be using Re-Raise, and you'll need three if you want to double Lore damage with Gogo as well.

Getting the first Celestriad isn't tough but getting more was tricky for me to figure out. The first we get by winning the Mage's Tower and collecting the Soul of Thamasa. This unique item let's you double cast spells and in a normal playthrough you wouldn't bet that at the coliseum but here its ability is useless to us and betting it will net you a Celestriad.

But now what? More Celestriads can be gained by stealing them from a Galypedes but there are only two places to find one, the Phoenix Caves and the Veldt in certain enemy groups. I ran into a big problem here. While the drop rate isn't Final Fantasy IV levels of terrible, it is still low enough that you want to guarantee your encounters. I thought I could achieve this through quick saves but it didn't work. In the Phoenix Caves, the encounters with Galypedes are rare and even quick saving every few steps until I got into a battle with one, when I would reload would not guarantee that fight. I ran into the same problem on the veldt. Using amazing guides online, I could guarantee the right group of encounters that COULD include a Galypedes but wasn't guaranteed one would be in that group.

I thought i was stuck because a loot grind is basically a run ender for me, I just don't have the focus for it (it's what has ended my FFIV no exp run for months after reading the moon in less than 14 hours).

But I didn't give up. I scoured resources online and eventually discovered that Galypedes can be triggered at the coliseum and in fact is well known as part of a loop that can get you infinite celestriads. The basics are, bet a Murakomo (one of Cyan's swords) to fight a Galypedes. By equipping Gogo with all steal commands and a brigand's glove, you can (by saving before the fight) quickly guarantee a steal of celestriad. Also, when you beat the Galypedes, you'll get a Holy Lance, which can be bet to win a Murakomo... and the cycle repeats.

But here is where I had a HUGE problem. In a low level run, Gogo is not beefy enough to get even one turn off against a Galypedes before dying. There is also absolutely no way to win the fight -- but that at least we get grace on because any items you steal you get to keep even if you lose the fight. This meant I just had to survive for enough turns to get some steals in.

But I couldn't do it. Your steal rate is very very low at level 1 and nothing would keep Gogo alive long enough to usually even get a single steal, let alone enough to get the celestriad. Galypedes have a regular attack (instant kill at level 1), cyclonic (reduces target to 1/16th of their HP), and shamshir (reduces health by 1/2). The problem is their speed and the frequency with which they use the basic attack. You'd think Vanish would be the answer, but this is quickly negated by shamshir and cyclonic and then BOOM you are open to physical attack again.

I tried everything. Different combinations of armors and Relics and weapons to boost Gogo's speed, give him as high a defense as possible, increase his evasion... nothing worked long enough to get more than a steal or two off. I was about to despair. There were no guides online for this, very few people have the very specific problem of a level 1 Gogo taking on a giant death bird in order to steal its goodies.

Then I found the Mirage Vest. This item, only winnable at the coliseum, casts Image/Blink on the wearer at the start of battle, which is effectively a Vanish with a 25% chance of disappearing after an attack misses. This would give me the edge needed to get past the steal barrier. Only problem was, to get it I needed to bet a Thornlet, which was only stealable from the boss Hidon, whom I had already defeated. So again I was fuc---

Wait. Hidon can be refought?

In all my years of playing FF6 I had never known this. But it's true. If you talk to Strago's friend in Thamas over and over, eventually he'll say Hidon reformed. The developers did this to ensure you couldn't miss Strago's Grand Delta lore. But here it gave me access to the item I needed.

So, the rest of the story is pretty shortly told. I got the Mirage Vest, using the nigh indestructible Mog to destroy the Aspidochelon you fight for it. With that, Gogo stole the Celestriad. Then I used a Holy Lance to get another Murakama and repeated to get my third Celestriad. I was finally set for the tower.

Kefka Fight

This is sickening... You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet.

For all the tactics we've used to get this far, Kefka's Tower is not that difficult. The best strategy is to enter it three times, using your primary Kefka Killer party in a different position each time to kill all the bosses (don't forget to learn Force Field Lore with Strago, although in my strategy I didn't need it for Kefka, it gives you options). Then set yourself up for the final fight. For me, I just sent my team of four in: Mog acting as tank, Gogo and Strago as Traveler damage dealers, and Relm as ether and Re-Raise support.

The fight against Kefka is very doable with this set up but there is a lot at stake. First you have to watch one of the longest cutscenes in the game, then fight three very long battles against the godly statues, before you get to the Kefka fight, where a misstep can lead to disaster.

Of the statues, it is the final one that causes the most problems. It is made of two parts, Rest and Lady. Lady has to be killed first, or Rest will be revived by her. And Rest you have to make sure you don't drop below 10,240 HP unless you can kill them that same turn, or else they will start spamming Meteor and you are basically effed. This can be tricky to count, because Lady frequently heals Rest, which throws off the count.

The first time Rest is killed, they will cast an instant death spell on one of your party members. This isn't a problem if you have Re-Raise but if you don't, and this is the end of that Statue fight, that character is kicked from the battle. If you don't have someone set to take their place, you end up facing Kefka with only three characters.

This is what happened to me. I had miscounted, Rest's insane mode triggered Meteor, my Re-Raise brought the party back, I killed Rest, and it cast Repose on Relm. Welcome to Kefka with only three characters.

As it turned out, Relm was the best character I could lose (if I had to pick one). Mog was 100% necessary as the tank, and Strago and Gogo were my Traveler damage dealers. They could also Re-Raise, so Relm was really just a bonus.

Here is how the Kefka fight goes with my Traveler strategy.

Kefka has set phases based on his HP. He starts with 62,000 and has the following phases:

62,000-32640: Kefka can't kill you during this phase. He can use Heartless Angel to reduce you to 1 HP but every other attack is either blocked by Mog or reflected by Reflect Rings. Use this time to set up Re-Raise, keep Mog's health high so that he keeps using Knight's Code to block, and start stacking damage on Kefka.

32640-7680: Kefka also can't kill you during this phase, as long as you pay attention. It can get tricky though. He starts using Forsaken, which is a full party wipe -- but Re-Raise will bring you back from that. However, he also casts Trine and Vengeance. Vengeance removes Re-Raise and Trine can cast silence. So you have to be very careful about when you are choosing to do damage, so you do not get hit by Forsaken while your Re-Raises are down. You have one goal, which is to bring Kefka to low enough Hit Points so that he can be killed by a double casting of Traveler but doesn't get a chance to take an action in Phase 3. You also want to keep him above 10240 hit points, because after that he starts countering with Ultima 33% of the time and you don't want to give him the chance.

>7680: You are dead. No, seriously, if Kefka gets a single attack off here, he begins his pattern of jumping between Meteor and Forsaken and there is no time to recover. It is an unescapable death spiral for a no exp run.

And that's the game! Seeing the credits roll had never felt quite this emotional, not since the very first time I'd beaten the game as a pre-teen. Playing FF6 this way was quite the experience, one that forced me to use strategies I'd never considered before and dig deep into nuances of status effects and elemental armor absorption and to care about stats in a way that went beyond big number = good. It also highlight how open-ended the FF6 experience is. My method isn't the only way to kill Kefka -- another is to linger in Phase 1 and slowly osmose all of Kefka's MP away, which does result in him dying. But he has 38,000 MP and I believe this takes literally hours.

Hopefully my little write up has been entertaining and maybe it's encouraged you to give this challenge a try. In case it has, I'm also including below some links that I found essential in planning my run.

Resources Used

1st Ultros no EXP Guide

No EXP, no gold, no encounters guide

Veldt Guide

No EXP FF6 run on Youtube (RagnarAlvarr)

Kefka Boss Patterns and HP

#FF6 #Final Fantasy 6 #No EXP #Guide