At Moore town awaited the tools to awaken the White Mage from pathetic mortal to near godhood. The spells available here provide a ton of options to command what happens on a battlefield. Cure 3: now he can instantly heal himself to full on demand without elixir farming. Reflect: now White basically wields permission over what spells hit whom, including the ability to bounce his own spells to hit through enemy walls. And Berserk: neutralizes almost all random monsters and even some bosses, plus can be used to increase White's own damage.

Then in the forest White also claimed his wonderful Morning Star weapon, three times as strong as the Flail. Holy crapoly, 800 damage is a miracle from heaven itself. The Crystals fight was cake as usual for a solo character: damage the Fire crystal until it starts casting Fire 3 to collect free healing via Flame Ring. I even had White cast Berserk on himself for extra damage on the last crystal.

Then White even pulled off a victory that none of Sullla's solos ever has!

Thanks to Shell and well timed Reflect spells, Galuf legitimately won his solo fight against Exdeath!

He still died though.

Krile took up the mantle of the white mage, and her first job was an errand to Ghido's cave. White needed to collect Light Staffs from Metamorpha enemies, to break for Holy spells into Exdeath's elemental weakness. Fortunately, these fights were cake to win. They are vulnerable to Berserk, which cuts off all the morphing shenanigans and leaves them with a weak physical attack. White would berserk the enemy, armor herself, berserk herself for the extra damage, and collect a staff a minute later. Didn't take long to turn up two of them which is all we need. (I did not think of this myself; Sofis mentioned it in the Realms Beyond thread, and Marty the Time Mage used it too.)

And in Exdeath's Castle, I actually fought most of the random encounters for the first time in forever. You know those scary Yellow and Red and Blue Dragons? All vulnerable to Berserk! So in the back row with Armor spell on, there was no danger at all from these foes. It was a wonderful feeling to be PLAYING the game again rather than grinding items and levels and bosses out of magic points!

So let's see how much damage the Holy spell in the hands of a level 64 mage deals to an enemy weak to it.

All together now... OVER NINE THOUSAND!

White was actually under a Doom clock in that screenshot. She actually could have outraced it if I'd farmed two more staffs for Holy, but that wasn't necessary. On the second try, Exdeath skipped Doom and the two Holy spells got him to the less dangerous AI routine. The Reflect Ring bounced everything back at him. And White cleverly hit Exdeath with a Reflect spell too, in order to bounce Armor and Shell and Cure 3 spells off Exdeath back at herself avoiding her own reflect ring. So White won this fight easily.

Berserk was the answer to Antlion, locking him into only physical attacks and not the Sonic Wave debuff. Berserk also answered the Gargoyle twin bosses, preventing them from reviving each other.

And White went on to pretty much demolish all the encounters in the Pyramid. Lots of monsters like the mummies and Lamia Queens (BlandLamia) were undead and dropped to the Healing Staff. The scary Machine Heads were vulnerable to Berserk!, shutting off their Surge Beam attack. So were the ZephyrZone enemies, so no scary summoned D.Chimeras or Red Dragons or other crap. I did have to skip the Statue/Objet d'Art encounter on the Crystal Armor chest; White could not defend against their stoning attack.

But White added lots of good equipment in the Pyramid as usual. A Lamia's Tiara helmet to protect against Confuse status; a Protect Ring; and Black Robe armor. But the Cursed Ring (kills you 50 seconds into each battle) would be a terrible idea.

White had no cheap answer to Merugene. Berserk would not work. Confuse worked but she would not cast spells on herself. Reflect wasn't a good idea as she would heal herself with reflected spells. White had to work her down the long way with Morning Star hits, but was never in any danger with Shell and Cure 3.

Airship access to the third world now opened up yet more top-end power for White. First a Running Shoes accessory from Mirage for the oh-so-coveted permanent Haste status. Also the Dispel spell. And the Sage Staff from the legendary weapons. This weapon has some very unusual properties according to the algorithms guide. It deals physical damage as a MAGIC attack, with a multiplier based on your magic power, subtracting out enemy MAGIC defense, and very conveniently ignoring PHYSICAL Evade. It is strong versus undead enemies with an 8x damage modifier, the same modifier as Aqua Rake versus desert enemies. In different situations, either the Sage Staff or Morning Star might deal more damage; the Sage Staff generally preferred overall as a more reliable weapon without the star's miss rate.

Stalker in the Island Shrine killed White once, with the cheese combo of Mind Blast HP leak and Hurricane drop-to-critical. I then figured out the right combo was to wear the Running Shoes and continuously refresh the Wall spell to bounce the Mind Blast. Spending one out of three turns on Wall while Hasted still created more useful turns total than not being Hasted. This worked and Stalker went down in about thirty Morning Star swings.

Fork Tower, the last obstacle. This was the other reason I leveled Bartz for the Purobolos fight. Here I can send both white mages up each side of the tower, truly beating every fight with a solo White Mage.

The Minotaur fight was actually cake. I was a bit worried that it would take a lot of Elixirs without access to the Armor spell or Cure 3, but he only dealt 300 damage against the back row and that was easily out Healing Staffed. The Sage Staff dealt over 900 damage and ended the fight quickly. I alertly swapped Krile back to the Flail for the last hit, so that the Healing and Sage Staffs would both be available for the Omniscient fight.

But how can a White Mage beat Omniscient? Without the Holy spell, there's no way for a white mage to deal magic damage to him. (I thought that farming more Light Staffs was an option in the third world, but it wasn't. Ghido's cave still exists, but only the bottommost floor where he lives, not the floors with monsters.) Magic Lamp doesn't work, Omniscient does cast Reset in response to summon magic.

Well, got a loophole. He is actually vulnerable to Berserk, which shuts off his ability to Reset the fight, so Bartz could win with a Reflect Ring and any weapon. Right?

OWWW! Holy crap that's one big physical attack! Dang, do I have to do this the forever way of running him out of MP? A Reflect Ring by itself doesn't kill him - he outpaces his own reflected spells with regeneration and cure spells.

Nope. Dispel removes his Regen status. Then slowly but surely he did kill himself. I slipped in a few Magic Lamp summons on occasions when he bounced a Mute off Bartz into himself. Syldra in particular dealt 4000+ damage thanks to his Air element weakness.