Job pools by crystal

I include Onion Knight in each pool for additional flavor! More on that justification later.

Wind Crystal:

Day	Job name	Ability	Notes/tips
	Onion Knight	None	Terrible HP growth, no abilities, no real combat effectiveness outside of onion gear. Good as a statue or item thrower. Does get access to crystal gear, so it can be quite tanky eventually.
	Warrior	None	Very strong early and mid game. Doesn’t get any non-elemental weapons beyond mythril or iron arrow, so it is almost entirely useless in the late game outside of wearing crystal gear and getting hit hard.
	Monk	None	Village of the Ancients sells Headband and Kenpo Gi, which is a huge boost after Nepto Shrine. Tokkul has a hidden sansetsukon but unarmed ends up being better than weapons quite early. Cannot get armor that resists flame! Salamander numbers: job level 51 did ~350-480 damage with antarctic wind. Unarmed attack also doing about 350-450 damage (job level 40+, player level 20). It’s a 3 round win with everybody alive every turn; one physical turn and good turn order would do it. Unarmed is not a weapon type, so Hein/Amon/Garuda don’t resist it! Monk scales super well into end-game, but gets very frail.
	Black Mage	Magic	Fire/Ice/Light rods boost their elements by 20%, Omni Rod from Ancient’s Maze boosts every element. Bio is non-elemental and smashes fools. Black Mage is super good, no real issues.
	White Mage	Magic	Free win. Good multi-target healing, good leveling options with Light Staff (bought in Village of the Ancients). Bad late-game offense, mostly uses Golem Staff for Break or gradual petrify.
	Red Mage	Magic	Learns curaga but not curaja. Very good healing and also very good offense until late game. Can use rods to boost magic and also staves for free casts. Rune staff/ice rod is great after Saronia.

Fire Crystal:

Day	Job name	Ability	Notes/tips
	Onion Knight	None	Terrible HP growth, no abilities, no real combat effectiveness outside of onion gear. Good as a statue or item thrower. Does get access to crystal gear, so it can be quite tanky eventually.
	Ranger	Barrage	Free win. Barrage is unbelievably strong, and ranger gets access to fire/ice/lightning, a source of gradual petrify, and an extremely strong non-elemental weapon. Also relatively safe in the back row. Can farm the scripted Demon encounter in Hein’s Castle for a Yoichi Arrow if you want to waste time and steamroll the game.
	Knight	Cover	Very fun job. Gets elemental weapons, break blade, and the best endgame weapons. Can backrow with moonring blade. Shields are very good, especially heroic shield which protects against paralyze and petrify at a critical part of the game.
	Thief	Steal, Scram	Thief is wonderful! Scram is a guaranteed escape from battle. There are two hidden rooms in the Amur sewers with Main Gauche and Orichalcum; Orichalcum is a draining weapon and makes Thief pretty unstoppable for a long while (and there’s a second in Temple of Time). Re: stealing, the item you are able to steal from an enemy (4 tiers of “rarity”) is based on job level: 1-30, 31-70, 71-98, 99. You can steal anything in your current job level tier or previous tiers (i.e. job level 99 can steal anything, job level 50 can steal the two most common items). There’s some super nice stuff available! Notably, you can steal Arctic Winds from Sorcerors in Saronia to help with Garuda beginning at job level 31. Loads of late-game enemies have Lilith’s Kisses (drain item) in the 71-98 pool. King Behemoth has Protect Ring and common Elixir, all colored Dragons (Yellow, Green, Red) have Elixirs.
	Scholar	Scan	Items got 2.5x multiplier at some point at or before job level 27, and 3x multiplier somewhere at or before job level 57. Didn’t track it super closely. Raven’s yawn would be devastating for Garuda, but most other items are too scarce to be super useful without a thief. Scan is mostly useless outside of Hein/Amon.

Water Crystal:

Day	Job name	Ability	Notes/tips
	Onion Knight	None	Terrible HP growth, no abilities, no real combat effectiveness outside of onion gear. Good as a statue or item thrower. Does get access to crystal gear, so it can be quite tanky eventually.
	Black Belt	Boost, Kick	Free win. Not much help is needed here, this job smashes ass. For fun, Kick can apply the special properties of claws, which means a multi-target instant death kick with Faerie Claws equipped. Boost can be used twice (third use self-destructs) for big damage, but frankly just doing normal attacks is sufficient unless you’re trying to avoid a boss’s low-health attack pattern. If you get a boosted crit, it is wasted damage.
	Viking	Provoke	In critical health (<25%) Viking gets a ridiculous damage reduction based on job level (appears to be close to 1 percentage point per job level). His Provoke ability always goes first and forces the enemies to hit him if they choose to use physical attacks, if it is successful. Success rate is based on job level, and seems to be 100% at job level 99, even against bosses. Against Cloud of Darkness, taking a full magic defense build (2x Aegis Shield, Ribbon, Protect Ring, Reflective Mail) reduces particle beam to ~70 damage at max job level!
	Dragoon	Jump	Blood lance is in the Sunken Cave (SE triangle island) in the top-left of four hidden chests in the final floor. Also for sale in the Ancient Ruins shop. Extremely strong job.
	Dark Knight	Bladeblitz	No weapons available until you get The Invincible, and all of them except moonring blade are “dark blade” element so they are resisted by most of the endgame bosses. With weapons, Dark Knight is quite strong and very efficient at leveling, but so are many others.
	Evoker	Summon	The outcomes of the summons are random, and seem to be roughly equally likely. Of note, Ifrit (Heatra) can use a great full-party heal, Odin (Catastro) can cast reflect on the entire party, and Bahamur can apply haste to the entire team. Both Leviath outcomes are multi-target and instantly end most encounters. Extremely funny job.
	Bard	Song	Songs are unlocked based on job level. Paeon always goes first and heals around 20% of the party’s max health at job level 99.
	Geomancer	Terrain	Terrain magic is all non-elemental, so it remains usable on all bosses, though not particularly strong. Terrain magics are random based on area, but there are only 6 of them so most areas have the same selection. Bells are unbelievably powerful weapons, so geomancers are actually pretty physically powerfully.

Earth Crystal:

Day	Job name	Ability	Notes/tips
	Onion Knight	None	Terrible HP growth, no abilities, no real combat effectiveness outside of onion gear. Good as a statue or item thrower. Does get access to crystal gear, so it can be quite tanky eventually.
	Magus	Magic	Just a better black mage, but with the notable improvement of more charges of drain and access to level 8 magic.
	Devout	Magic	Better white mage. More charges of higher level magics.
	Summoner	Summon	Extremely powerful job, and has enormous stats which give high magic defense. In back row with best gear, summoner is very tanky and churns out 6k+ damage per turn. No healing, but wins most damage races.
	Sage	Magic	Learns every spell, so this is a free win. Curaja if you lack healing, Bahamut for farming, flare/bio for damage if you don’t want to use Bahamut. Even gets aeroga so you can unlock Bahamut more easily.
	Ninja	Throw	Can use every piece of non-onion equipment and can throw shurikens for ridiculous damage. Can sell all your equipment to buy shurikens in Eureka for a free win, or you can do it the fun way with blood lance and rune bell. Black robe is recommended for magic evade, crystal gear for two-headed dragon.

Justification for Eureka jobs and Onion Knight

Onion Knight is a job in this game just like all the others, with a very strong identity. Just because it is unlocked by default (and often useless) doesn’t feel like an excuse to omit it from this challenge. I feel like having the additional onion risk gives a lot of shape to the playthrough and I personally like the job. Hahaha. Banking on a strong water crystal job and getting onion really hurts the mid game, but guarantees a strong earth crystal job. Similarly, getting onion at earth crystal means it will basically only be useful as an elixir thrower or a statue. Getting an onion early hurts HP growth, but it means you’re going to get help at water and earth crystals, and will be max job level for throwing items or if you need to get onion gear and carry.

As for rerolling dupe Onion Knights, I’ve done a 4 Onion Knight playthrough and had a lot of fun with it, but it really, really sucks to have multiples of them in your team if you’re just looking for a fun and short playthrough. I guess it’d make sense to use it in the same vein as Berserker Risk if you want the danger of a 50 hour playthrough.

For Eureka jobs, Sage and Ninja are the “super jobs” in this game, and are devastating. It initially felt wrong to include them because they are so much more powerful than the other jobs. After some consideration, though, rolling a Eureka job means you don’t get the power spike at earth crystal, and have to defeat Doga, Unei, and Scylla with your existing team. If you’re already capable of beating those bosses without a new job, then either your team is probably already strong enough to win without them, or you’ve struggled enough and earned some relief.

Allowable exceptions for white magic

If you don’t roll white mage or red mage at the start, you’ll need to switch to white mage temporarily in a few places. For these exceptions, I switch jobs at the inn, rest, use Toad/Mini, switch back, and then walk to the dungeon in that state. All of the required state changes:

• Mini: Change at healing spring in forest north of Tozus, walk through Tozus and the tunnel to Viking Cove. Can change back at the Inn in Viking Cove if you’re not heading straight to Nepto Shrine (Mallets not yet available).
• Mini: Change at Viking Cove Inn, walk to Nepto Shrine from there. Can change back at this same inn after clearing Nepto Shrine.
• Toad: Change wherever you want before sailing to Tower of Owen. I prefer the Castle Argus healing font. Can Maiden’s Kiss the party back to normal after entering the hole in the tower.
• Toad: Change in the Dwarven Hollows Inn, enter the Subterranean Lake, can use Maiden’s Kisses after entering.

For any other mini dungeons after this (Castle Hein, Doga’s place, uhh…any others I might be forgetting), just use Mallets to mini your team. They work outside of battle, even! Can buy them in Dwarven Hollows or Village of the Ancients, and probably elsewhere idk.

Some other lessons I learned the hard way

-Job levels are gained every 4 actions (sometimes 5?), and only 1 job level can be earned per battle. Defend always goes first, so a defending party member always get job experience.

-Petrified party members still get experience but won’t get job levels because they’re not taking actions. They can still be targeted by enemies. It is often the best use for jobs lacking equipment or underperforming, or for sections with very dangerous enemies. It does still split healing effectiveness, though. Full party heal with 1 dead party member heals more than a full party heal with 1 petrified party member.

-Giant Rat without a mage (warrior, monk, or onion start) requires using offensive items. He has 1050 HP, and antarctic wind/zeus rage can do ~200-250 damage at the right job level with the right job (usually at least jlvl 40+). Best option, I think, is to grind in the Nepto Dragon gulf. You can get in the boat and fight in the water there before clearing the Nepto Shrine as long as you don’t try to leave to the ocean. Most of the enemies can drop antarctic winds, which also help against Salamander.

-Salamander without healing is hard to beat in a sustained fight, so bursting him down with items is easier if you have spare antarctic winds, or farmed the outer sea for arctic winds (almost every enemy here drops them). A warrior with freezing blade does a ton of damage, as does an unarmed monk, but they also might need item support from allies. Black/Red Mages can use learn blizzaga by then.

-Most non-dragoon team comps struggle with Garuda because multi-target healing is scarce at that point and Garuda resists all weapon types besides spears and arrows. Thieves can steal arctic winds from sorcerers (job level 31+), so you can stockpile those and try to burst him down if he opens with a physical attack. Without a thief and without healing, the nuclear option is to use an earthen drum (from Duster) to very quickly farm for a raven’s yawn or two from needle monkeys or sorcerers. Enter battle, use one to win, reload if they don’t drop a raven’s yawn.

-Best EXP grinding places are in Sunken Island (underwater dungeon under the SE triangle) and first screen of Bahamut’s cave. Lake Dohr is also very good if you have access to multi-target lightning, but the enemies have mean status effects if you lack protection. All of those are far better EXP rate than any of the final dungeons. It seems far better to level to ~50 in Bahamut’s cave than to advance to World of Darkness early because leveling there sucks.

-Ahriman always opens with Meteor, then a single target turn, then quake, then another single target turn. Every 4th turn (second single-target turn) has a chance of curaja. Sometimes taking a petrified party member into the fight and hoping the single attacks hit them once in awhile gives just enough reprieve to recover. It is also usually wise to put reflect on Ahriman (via shining curtain or white magic) to benefit from his curaja turn.

2024 completed runs

Here are all the runs I finished in 2024, some as test runs before the official event, and then a few for the event itself.

[Table is pending]