Boss Battle: Chaos

Having restored the power of the elemental crystals you can now travel 2,000 years into the past, to the Temple of Chaos as it used to be, where the real arbiter of Earth’s distress resides. To reach him you’ll have to defeat each of the elemental fiends a second time, and to make things interesting, each fiend has been given increased stats and had their weaknesses removed. Still, the strategy for defeating them remains much the same. Cast Haste, Saber, Shield, Invis and Nul, and then tear into them with physical attacks and strong magic. Heal, rinse, repeat. In the Southwest corner of Tiamat’s floor you’ll find the Masamune, the strongest sword in the game. It’s usable by anyone, for a change. Make sure to snag it.

When you reach the heart of the temple you’ll discover that the monster who’s been causing you so much trouble is actually Garland, the Cornelian Knight that you killed in the opening minutes of the game. After his death the elemental forces sent him into the past where his hatred festered and Chaos consumed his spirit. From 2,000 years ago he sent forth the elemental fiends to enact his revenge, thus touching off a time loop that’s destined to repeat forever unless you can stop it. It’s really a fairly interesting concept. If only Square had developed it more during the game.

After revealing the mystery behind the game’s events Garland will transform into an embodiment of Chaos, and battle will ensue. Its go time! Chaos comes fully stocked with all of the major elemental spells that you’ve been seeing from regular enemies in the Temple: Blaze, Ice Storm, Lightning Storm, Poison Gas, etc. If you have a White Mage, please feel free to cast NulAll. If you’re like me, white mage-less, I would actually advise against casting Nul spells. You’re going to get hit with at least one large spell before you get all three Nul’s cast. Your time is more wisely spent casting Shield and Invis, or simply casting preemptive heals. Chaos doesn’t have quite the magic resistance that some of the elemental fiends did, so go crazy with your Black Mage and use up all the Flares and level III attack spells that you can.

Combine with Haste/Saber physical attacks and, with any luck, you’ve just beaten FF1. Congratulations!

Boss Battle: Tiamat

Reaching the Flying Fortress where Tiamat lives is the closest this game ever really comes to offering you a puzzle. Several steps are required, and you’ll need to obtain the Rosetta Stone, Warp Cube, and Bell Key items in order to succeed. I won’t describe the process here, if you’re stuck please feel free to use my link to Gamefaqs.com. If you make an effort to talk to all of the various villagers in the towns you visit and are able to put two and two together, you won’t get stuck.

There’s a good deal of treasure chests scattered throughout the fortress, some more valuable than others and not all of which you need to collect, but I wouldn’t leave without at least securing the Adamantite that’s lurking on the second floor. After exiting the fortress you can take said Adamantite to Smyth, the dwarven smith and he’ll reward you by forging Excalibur, the second strongest weapon in the game. Note: Only Knight’s can use the Excalibur, so if you don’t have a Knight in your party you don’t really need the Adamantite except as a completion item. This game is very discriminatory with its equipment.

Tiamat’s on, well, you know which floor. He generally opens the fight with Lightning Storm (or something to that effect), which looks impressive and can do a decent amount of damage, but can easily be mitigated by casting Nulbolt. He’s also capable of casting Fire II and Ice II, and you’re welcome to cast the appropriate defenses to these if you wish. Honestly, if you don’t feel like wasting a lot of time and effort on this fight, he’s susceptible to Break; cast it until he dies. If you don’t want to use Break then I recommend Haste and Saber for your physical attackers combined with your strongest attack spells. Heal when necessary and you won’t have problems.

Boss Battle: Kraken

Warning: The process of reaching the Sunken Temple will cost you a minimum of 50,000 gil. Just FYI.

You’ll enter the Sunken Temple on the third floor, and from there can either go up or down. I highly recommend you go up first, as the fifth floor is home to the Mermaids and thus devoid of enemies. There’s also a good deal of treasure, including a full set of diamond armor that’ll make you smile if you’ve got a warrior along. I didn’t, so the whole set was useless to me and I did not smile.

Backtrack to the third floor and continue down. You’ll find the Kraken on the fifth floor, which seems to be the standard floor for boss battles in FF1. I recommend healing as close to full health as possible before battle begins.

The Kraken is ugly and he hits like a truck. I highly recommend casting Shield II and Invisibility II at the onset of battle, if possible. That aside, cast Haste and Saber (or use the Giant’s Gauntlets to get the Saber effect) on your primary physical attackers and go to work. It's sort of a race to see which of you can deal out damage faster, but with Shield II and a decent amount of HP you should come out on top.

Boss Battle: Marilith

Marilith resides on the bottom floor of Mt. Gulg, a volcano located on the South Eastern continent, and reachable only by canoe. Much of the floor inside the volcano is covered with lava, as you might expect from such a place, and walking through the lava will deal a small percentage of damage to each of your party members with each step. You can't be attacked while walking through lava, however, so you have something of a choice between taking random amounts of damage from encounters or taking fixed amounts of damage from the environment. Either way, I would argue that reaching Marilith is actually more difficult than defeating her.

My Monk bit the dust about 60 seconds before I reached the boss. As I chose to undertake my quest using a Red Mage rather than a White Mage, I was unable to cast a Life spell to revive him. (The Red Mage cannot learn Life until he upgrades into a Red Wizard.) I'm sure you can understand why I was loath to exit the dungeon, row my way back to town, revive the Monk, row back to the volcano, and climb all the way back to the bottom floor. So I decided I would simply kill the boss with only three players. Marilith is capable of casting Fire II as well as some specialized ability that causes Blind (I can't think of its name now,) but the only thing you really need to watch out for is her physical attacks. She hits five or six times per swing and can deal upwards of 200 damage.

Fortunately for you she has a single, easily exploitable weakness.

Marilith is susceptible to paralyze. It took me four or five tries to figure this out, and another four or five tries to get her successfully paralyzed before she had killed one of my three surviving warriors. Once I got her chained down with everyone still alive, however, I was able to dish out enough damage to kill her before the paralysis wore off. Obviously Ice I and II are the strongest black spells, and hopefully you found the Ice Brand tucked away in one of the treasure chests earlier in the dungeon. I recommend casting Nulfire while in the processing of trying to get her paralyzed, just to mitigate her Fire II spell. Don't be upset if it takes several tries to get your Bind spell to work; it will eventually, and after that she's cake.

Congratulations on restoring your second elemental crystal.

Boss Battle: Lich

Villagers in Melmond will try to tell you that a vampire has taken up residence in the Terra Cavern to the South and is subverting the power of the elemental Earth Crystal found there, thus causing the land to sicken and decay. Well, as is often the case, the villagers are only partially correct. There is a vampire lurking in the Terra Cavern, but one good hit with Fire 2 will send him permanently to the grave, and you won't see hide nor hare of the Earth Crystal until you do some more digging, pun intended. The real fiend responsible for the decaying soil is the Lich, and one spell is not nearly enough to send him on his merry way.

It only took me one try to defeat the Lich, so I can't swear that he follows a set pattern the way that Astos did. I can tell you that he possesses all of the rank two black magics: Fire 2, Ice, 2, Bolt 2, Sleep 2, Haste 2, and Slow 2, and will make ample use of them. I attempted to cast slow once and silence twice and all three attempts failed, leading me to believe that he's immune to at least those if not all status effects. He also takes depressingly little damage from physical attacks, so be prepared to burn through your spells. Fire does the most damage, and Ice the least.

At least from my one experience, the secret to defeating this guy is to cast NulIce, NulFire, and NulBolt as quickly as possible. Without these protections the Lich's spells will deal out around 100 damage to your entire party, and keeping up with healing won't really be possible. With protection the damage is cut to 30 - 50, and a potion or Cure 2 here or there will keep you alive. Not once during the fight did the Lich hit me with a physical attack, I assume you don't need to worry about such a thing.

Burn through your spells and hope for critical hits from anyone doing physical damage and you should be able to outlast the gruesome corpse with the protection spells and a decent supply of healing spells or potions. Put the Lich in his place and then restore power to the Earth Crystal and you will officially have proved yourself a warrior of the light.

Boss Battle: Astos

Astos. King of the Dark Elves. Responsible for the theft of the witch Matoya's crystal eye and the eternal slumber spell that has kept the King of the Forest Elves in stasis for the last five years. Finally, a boss! Technically Garland, the corrupted Cornelian Knight is the first boss of FF1, but the fight with Garland lasts about 2.5 seconds and I'm confident that you don't my help in defeating him. Astos might be a different story.

The fight with Astos commences when you attempt to return the stolen Crown from the Marsh Cave to the oversized King of the Western Kingdom. The polar bear proportions of the chubby king might have tipped you off that he isn't altogether wholesome, but in event that it didn't, he reveal his true intentions when you attempt to hand over the crown.

Astos is virtually immune to physical hits, so if you haven't bought along either a black of red mage you're going to have some difficulties. Critical attacks will still deal substantial damage, but the average physical attack is going to be sadly ineffective. Fortunately black magic users make up 1/3 of the total available character classes, so chances are high that you've got one in toe.

Unload with your most powerful spells from turn one, no particular element is more effective than any other. My attempts to sleep, silence, slow, or blind Astos all failed, and while I don't know for sure that he is immune to these status ailments the use of them was surplus to victory. Hit him with spells and he should die in relatively short order.

Offensively Astos follows a fairly simple pattern. (I only fought him twice, but his actions were identical for both fights.) He begins the battle by casting an instant death spell on a member of your party. If it hits, simply reload and start the battle over again, as you don't really want anyone to miss out on experience for this fight. If it misses, which it did in both battles for me, he'll follow up by casting Slow II on one of your characters, and then Haste II on himself. At this point if you have a red or white mage with the NulFire spell you'll want to cast it, as Astos will follow the Haste II spell with Fire II, and this can do some damage if you're not prepared (though it wasn't enough to kill any of my party members even without the use of the NulFire.) After the Fire spell he'll begin using physical attacks, but by this point in the battle, if you've been using black magic each turn, he's nearly dead. Get in your last hits and congratulate yourself on your first real boss fight.

Your reward for dethroning the Dark Elf King is the Matoya's crystal eye. Take the eye to the witch in her cave to the north and she'll reward you with a Jolt Potion. The Jolt Potion can be used to awaken the sleeping Elf King, who will then reward you with something of actual value, the mystic key. Hurray! You can now open all of the Sealed doors that you've been encountering - assuming you remember where they all are.