The Magic of Scheherazade 110 Rupia Challenge Guide Version 1.00 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents: I. The Challenge II. About This Guide III. Essential Tricks You Might Not Know IV. The Guide 0. General Tips 1. Chapter 1 - Water World Mooroon 2. Chapter 2 - Desert World Alalart 3. Chapter 3 - Forest World Samalkand 4. Chapter 4 - Flower World Celestern 5. Chapter 5 - Evil Magician Sabaron V. Variations VI. Special Thanks VII. Contact/Copyright --------------------------------------------------------------------- I. The Challenge The 110 Rupia Challenge is to beat The Magic of Scheherazade from start to finish, collecting only 110 rupias total throughout the course of the game. You start with 50 rupias, and you may play and collect the remaining 60 rupias in any manner you choose consistent with the following rules: - You may not win any turn-based battles. Winning such a battle and making off with a luxury item like bread kind of defeats the purpose of this challenge. Note that you may still take actions during turn- based battles, including even killing some enemies, as long as you eventually escape from the battle before you defeat the entire enemy party. - Password saving is not to be abused as a free hotel. When you continue from a password save, the HP and MP of you and your allies are fully restored, so you may only password save under circumstances where refilling HP and MP will not help you in any significant way. - Dying is discouraged, but since it is possible for the game to screw you over (e.g. getting Moniburned by an enemy army when you are having trouble escaping), I will not consider dying an automatic disqualification. However, in the spirit of the previous rule, you should not die just as a lazy way of refilling your HP. Also, you may not continue through a Game Over since it affects your number of coins (not to mention, there really is no excuse for dying 3 times). Now that the rules of the challenge have been established, you are free to try to figure everything out for yourself if you want. So, why did I create this challenge? Simple. Most popular RPGs have various challenges (low-level runthroughs, fewest steps challenges, etc.) to make the game more difficult for the die-hard fan. The Magic of Scheherazade has always been one of my favorite RPGs, but I felt it had gotten too easy, so I decided it needed an extra challenge of its own. Of course, a low-level runthrough is impossible since your level automatically goes to the next multiple of five after beating each chapter. Instead of putting a limit on experience, I put a limit on money, allowing only the amount of rupias needed to beat the game (and stay consistent with the other rules of the challenge). The result is a new, much more difficult version of The Magic of Scheherazade, which is not only challenging to execute but challenging to figure out as well. If you want to figure out most of the challenge on your own, but you are stumped as to how beating the game with only 110 rupias is even possible, you can look at section III of this guide, "Essential Tricks You Might Not Know", for a couple of quick hints. --------------------------------------------------------------------- II. About this Guide The purpose of this guide is to present the 110 Rupia Challenge, then provide a walkthrough of it. The walkthrough takes the reader through what I have found (thus far) to be the best way of doing things for this challenge, and I generally try to explain the reasoning behind what I suggest. Of course, sometimes there are several ways of proceeding, so a different player could come up with a different strategy for certain parts. Note that this is not a walkthrough for first-time players. This guide assumes a general familiarity with the game, and if you have never played this game before, much of this guide will be meaningless to you. You should beat the game on your own normally before you even think about attempting this challenge. Also, this guide is not intended to be a map. While directions are sometimes given to screens of particular importance to this challenge, in general basic directions such as how to get to certain towns are not included. --------------------------------------------------------------------- III. Essential Tricks You Might Not Know So, you can't figure out how you could possibly get all the required items, class changes, etc. with only 110 rupias? The following little-known facts are likely what you are missing. - When you level up and reach certain level numbers, you receive a key, but only if you have no keys at the time your level rises. These "key levels" are 5, 6, 16, 18, 19, 22, 24, and 25. Since there are a few parts of the game where you need keys to proceed, taking advantage of these key levels will allow you to minimize your expenses. - If you use Moscom before you have Rainy and/or Gubibi, whichever of those two allies you are missing will join you at that time, regardless of your class (before or after). --------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. The Guide 0. General Tips This challenge permits you to get only the minimum amount of rupias such that it is still possible to beat the game without allowing items from turn-based battles. This means you will not be able to spend any money on niceties like bread, hotels, universities, and so on. Since you will be without these options, it will be very important to watch your HP and MP when you are not near an MP star. Magics like Defenee, which cuts the damage you take in half, and Ramipas, which minimizes the number of enemies you will see, will be very useful. Also, since you are only allowed to pick up 60 rupias throughout the course of the game (in addition to the 50 rupias you start with), pace yourself. The last time you will spend any money is near the end of chapter 3, so you should aim for getting your last rupias around then. From the beginning, it is not necessary to go out of your way to avoid picking up coins in the overworld, but at the same time you should try not to get them too quickly. If you pick up too many coins early on, it will inconvenience you later by forcing you to avoid coins earlier than necessary. For the same reason, you should avoid picking up money bags (20 rupias) since they will cut down the number of coins you can casually pick up. Of course, once you spend your last rupias in Chapter 3, you will not be able to pick up any more coins for the rest of the game without going over the amount allowed by the challenge. This is not as difficult as it might sound, though it can be very frustrating if you get careless and accidentally pick one up. One good way to minimize the risk of picking up coins is to avoid killing enemies whenever possible, only attempting to level up in your designated leveling-up spots. You can also use Ramipas to reduce the number of enemies you will see, and if you use your sword, you can normally kill an enemy and walk past it before any dropped item appears. Be especially careful when walking just above a coin, as the game will give you the coin if you get too close even if you are not actually touching it. It is a good idea to go to a mosque occasionally and password save (or if you are using an emulator, save-state wherever) just in case you slip and pick up a forbidden coin. Items other than coins which are dropped by enemies in the overworld will be very helpful, and you should pick these up when you can. This is the only way you can get amulets in this challenge, and the HP and MP drinks (which recover 20 HP and 20 MP, respectively) are always nice. Finally, while you will be able to get out of most turn-based battles before the fighting begins, there will be the occasional battle where the game doesn't seem to want to let you escape. If you are about to go into a battle, you should bring along two allies you won't specifically need during the current chapter. This will allow the enemies' attacks to be spread among 3 characters, minimizing the damage you take, and if an ally dies, it is no big deal since all allies will be revived and restored at the beginning of the next chapter. If you or one of your allies gets low on HP, it could be a good idea to spend a round Pampooing yourself and/or killing off a few of the enemies before you go back to trying to escape. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ 1. Chapter 1 - Water World Mooroon ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Before the first chapter starts, you will be asked to choose your class. You will need to be a Saint in chapter 3 to get Pukin, so you need to choose Saint now, as otherwise you would have to pay to change your class later. Unfortunately, this means both your rod and sword will suck for the first two-thirds of the game. Oh well, at least it adds to the challenge. Once you gain control of your character in Meshudo after talking with the imam, go left to the shop. Buy one mashroob, and be sure to ask for the discount so you only pay 10 rupias. (This shopkeeper will always give the discount to a Fighter or a Saint, but he will boot Magicians out.) You will need this mashroob for Curly in Chapter 2, so be sure not to use it accidentally before then. Wave goodbye to the shopkeeper since it is the last you will ever see of him, and leave Meshudo. (If you are worried about using up the mashroob accidentally, you can put off buying it until as late as Sudari, but I prefer to go ahead and get it now.) You will now have 40 rupias, so once you get to 100 rupias, you will have collected all the coins this challenge allows. (By now you have probably figured out that these 100 rupias will all go to a certain blue ally you meet in Chapter 3.) Now that you are out in the overworld, it will be important to conserve your HP and MP. Chapter 1 is the only chapter which has no MP star, so you will need to rely on MP drinks dropped by overworld enemies if you want to refill your MP. In fact, since you start with only 16 MP, getting MP drinks at some point will be quite necessary. Equip either the sword or the rod, whichever you are more comfortable with. There is nothing useful to do in Rudoria or Poponoll, so you might as well walk straight to the time door on the pier. Use Oprin to reveal the entrance to the past, which will bring you down to 11 MP. To avoid accidentally wasting more MP (especially if you're like me and tend to jump for no reason while you walk), switch your 'A' button off Oprin as soon as you have used it. Once you are in the past, walk straight to Horen and get Faruk. Even though you will pass just a few screens away from two weapon upgrades in Rudoria, the university is prohibitively expensive (i.e. not free), so you will have to do without. There is also no reason to enter the maze since using Monecom is very, very much forbidden in this challenge. If you had not already learned Pampoo before going to the past, you will certainly learn it on the way to Horen. Pampoo gives you 10 HP for a cost of 2 MP, so you will be using this magic quite a bit for the rest of the game. However, you should be careful using it here since you will need 5 MP to get back to the present. If you go below 5 MP in the past, you will need to walk around and kill overworld enemies in the past until you get an MP drink. Once you've gotten Faruk, head back to the time door. When you get there, make sure you have at least 5 MP before using Oprin, as otherwise you will use up your mashroob and have to start over. Again, take Oprin off once you use it. Go in the secret entrance and return to the present. Now, normally you would go to the North Cape and jump right in. However, this time you will not have all the breads and mashroobs you would normally have, you have the rod instead of the Flame, and you will be fighting Gilga as a Saint, not as a Magician. So, do not even think about fighting Gilga before you reach level 4. If you did, each eye would take four hits with the rod to kill, and you would not be able to use Defenee, so you would get wiped out by Gilga's thunder. Once you reach level 4, your rod becomes stronger (so each eye takes two hits to kill), and you learn Defenee. You therefore need to find a good place to level up. Fortunately, the best place to level up in Chapter 1 for this challenge is nearby. From the screen with the time door, go up two screens, so you are on the screen directly south of Poponoll. Walk back and forth between this screen and the screen to the left, killing enemies with your rod (or sword if you prefer). You only get 2 experience points per enemy, but this is still the best place to level up in this chapter for a number of reasons. First of all, you do not need to worry about turn-based random encounters since there are none here. Also, the lack of trees at the bottom of these screens gives you more maneuvering room, making it easier to avoid both getting hit and picking up too many coins. It is true that in the maze, you would get 5 experience points per enemy, but you would lose 10 HP each time an enemy hit you, which you could hardly afford. Furthermore, in the maze you would not get the necessary HP and MP drinks (see the next paragraph). You will reach level 4 once you get to 240 experience points. While you are leveling up, be sure to pick up any HP and MP drinks the enemies drop (but avoid the money bags). From my experience, the drinks here will alternate: the first drink will be an HP drink (orange), the next drink will be an MP drink (the color of your armor; blue in this case), the next drink will be an HP drink, and so on. I prefer not to leave this area until I get 2 MP drinks, and the second MP drink usually comes right around when I reach level 4. Once you have gotten to level 4 and are happy with your HP and MP, go on to the North Cape. (There is no reason to stick around until level 5 since your rod doesn't get any stronger, and I'm sure you don't want to keep killing these same wimps all the way to 560 points.) Jump in, go to Horen, get Kebabu, and go to the Aqua Palace. The palace is pretty straightforward, but be aware of the fact that there are two doors in the palace which lock after you pass through them, so once you pass them, there is no turning back. Also, if you find you are taking a lot of damage, use Defenee. Each Defenee use costs only 2 MP (the same as Pampoo) and reduces the damage you take by half while it lasts. Eventually you will come to the screen with the stone statues. Pampoo yourself until you are near full health (which is 74 HP at level 4), and if you are low on MP for some reason, you might consider going back and killing some regular enemies until one drops an MP drink. When you are ready to fight the statues, use Defenee (as otherwise the statues will take off 20 HP each hit) and equip your sword. I find that the safest way of fighting the statues is to hit them with the sword, then take a few steps away while they are flashing, then walk back to them and hit them again, and repeat. Once you have disposed of the statues, it is on to Gilga. Before you go into the demon's room, Pampoo yourself to near full HP, use Defenee, and equip your rod. I find that having full HP and 20 MP going in is more than enough, but if you have less than 20 MP, you should be careful. For Gilga's first form, shoot each eye twice with your rod. If your HP gets low use Pampoo, and renew your light armor with Defenee if it expires. When you get to Gilga's second form, use Defenee again, and take out one eyeball with your rod at a time, moving around a bit to dodge the fireballs when possible. The stone magic will take off 15 HP each time, assuming you have the light armor up, so always be sure you have at least 16 HP. Be sure, however, not to use your mashroob accidentally. If you run out of MP, you are better off risking a death than using up your mashroob and blowing the challenge. After you beat Gilga, you will automatically attain level 5. Notice that you now have a key, as 5 is the first key level. If you are playing on a cartridge and want to save now, there is a mosque in Malart at the beginning of Chapter 2 where you can do so. Watch the cut scene and go on to Chapter 2. ----------------------------------------- - 2. Chapter 2 - Desert World Alalart - ----------------------------------------- Before you start Chapter 2, let's do a little calculation. Curly's first form takes 8 hits of Flamol1 to kill. Each Flamol1 attack uses 20 MP, so you will need to use up at least 160 MP in the battle against Curly. At level 10, your maximum MP is 115, and your one mashroob will give you 50 extra MP for a total of 165 MP. This means that you will have to level up all the way to level 10 (1800 experience points) in order to beat Curly, and even then you will have at most 5 MP you can use on Pampoo, Defenee, etc. during the battle. Amazingly enough, you can easily get all your leveling done in a few minutes before you even reach Copanes. Unless you want to password save now, there is nothing to do in Malart, so walk to the right and begin the trip to Copanes. On your way, you might as well pick up Raincom (up three screens and to the right one). From here, go to the right two screens, and you will be on a screen mostly covered in quicksand. Usually there are three monsters camouflaged in the quicksand here which attack when you walk in the quicksand. Each of them takes only one hit to kill and gives you 10 experience points. What I prefer to do is walk one more screen to the right, then repeatedly walk left onto this screen and shoot the quicksand monsters with the rod. You should reach level 10 in not even five minutes, and after you do, walk on up to Copanes. You can talk to Gun Meca here if you wish (you don't actually need to right now), then walk south all the way to the time door. Unlike Chapter 1, this chapter has an MP star, and it is conveniently located near the time door in the past. Once you have entered the past, go right and up to find the MP star. Pampoo yourself to full health, use Defenee, and walk onto the MP star to refill your MP. I would recommend doing this each time you go through the time door. Beware, though, as sometimes a Grim Reaper will appear when you walk onto the star. (This is the case for all MP stars, and I have no idea why. He seems to appear about 1 in 8 times.) If one appears, kill it with your rod, walk off the screen and back on, Pampoo and Defenee yourself again if necessary, and walk back onto the star. Now walk to Alart, talk to Lah, and go back to the time door. (You can cast Corbock whenever thief enemies become an annoyance on the way.) Return to the present, pick up Gun Meca in Copanes, and go back through the time door again. In the past, walk to Alart and talk to Lah so he forgives Supica. Then leave Alart and walk to the maze (which can be reached by going west, then south several screens, then west as soon as you can go west again). In the maze, to get to Supica, you will need to get by some traps, which I usually pull off just by jumping up the left side of the path where the traps are located. Once you have Supica, the quickest way to exit the maze is simply to go back the way you came and fall in a trap. Walk back to the present, making sure you heal and use the MP star before going back through the time door. If you are fortunate enough that there is a solar eclipse right now, you should first go in the time door, use Raincom in the present, then go back to the past and refill your MP. Raincom will still be active when you return to the present. Once you are in the present, walk back to Malart, where you can password save if you wish. (Though you will need all your MP when you fight Curly, it is fine to use some along the way, as you will get it all back in the palace.) Then go west and follow Supica through the maze desert. There is no point in going inside Sudari unless you did not buy a mashroob in Chapter 1, in which case you can get a mashroob for 10 rupias with the discount in one of the stores (the one with an actual entrance and a sign). Go on to the palace (and be sure not to go in the secret entrance where the woman gives you 50 rupias!). Navigating through the palace is quite simple. While being a saint sucks in general, one of the advantages is that you can walk all over the damage zones in the palace with impunity. The first time you have a choice of which direction to go, go right, and follow the rooms until you get Epin in a secret entrance. Before you fight Curly, you will need to refill your MP all the way to 115. (If nothing else, you used 5 MP to go through the time door, and you just used up 5 MP to get Epin.) Fortunately, Epin and his strange whistle are up to the task. When Epin uses his whistle in battle, it raises either your MP or the MP of the ally in the first slot by 10. Your next step, then, is to get into a convenient battle so you can refill your MP via Epin's whistle (and your HP via Pampoo) before escaping. From the room where you found Epin, go down, right and down. Walk back and forth between this screen and the screen to the left until you get into a turn-based battle. There are three battles that come up at this transition: Pandarm x4, Air Squad (Pandarm + Corsa), and Basido Squad (Amaries + Corsa). Basido Squad is your safest bet, though if you have trouble escaping from an Air Squad battle, you might as well stick with it. When you are up against either Basido Squad or Air Squad, you should put Supica in the first slot and Epin in the second slot. (Don't just choose the "Aries" formation, which places Epin ahead of Supica.) Supica is a good choice for the first slot since he knows Seal (to stop Corsa from using Seal on you) and his attacks are weak, so he is able to "waste" turns. Kebabu is an acceptable choice as well, but since you have had her since the beginning of the chapter and have not stayed at any hotels, she will still have the low HP and MP she started with at the beginning of the chapter. Of course, Epin should be in the second slot rather than the first since there is no point in allowing Whistle to raise his MP instead of the MP of your other ally. If you are up against Basido Squad, kill the Amaries as quickly as possible, and have Epin use Defenee early as well. One possibility for the first turn is to use Flamol1 (which does 10 damage to each enemy and only uses 7 MP in battle), have Supica use Seal on Corsa, and have Epin attack Amaries. Once only Corsa remains, use Pampoo to bring your HP to full, have Supica "pass" by either using the arrow (as long as Corsa has enough HP) or casting Seal, and have Epin use Whistle. When your HP and MP are full, escape from battle (but do NOT kill Corsa and win the battle, as this will void the challenge). If you are up against Air Squad instead, treat the battle the same way, but be absolutely certain to use Flamol1 on the first turn. Pandarm is weak against Flamol, so Flamol1 will kill Pandarm in one hit. However, the reason Basido Squad is preferable is that while Pandarm is alive (along with Corsa), Air Squad can use Gygatorn, which can screw you over (and if they use Gygatorn, they attack first before you can kill Pandarm). If you or Supica died from Gygatorn, it would be annoying, but if Epin were to die, you could no longer beat Curly and would have to return to your last save. In any case, once you have full HP and MP, you are ready to move on to Curly. Walk to the left and then up to find the stone statues waiting for you. Here you have a decision to make. You have 5 extra MP which will not be used up by Flamol1 against Curly's first stage, and this MP will almost certainly be best used as two Defenee casts. If you tend to take significant damage against the stone statues (which take off 20 HP per hit without Defenee), then you should probably use Defenee here, leaving you with one Defenee use against Curly's second form. However, if you use your sword and start by attacking the rightmost statue from the right, you should be able to get by the statues taking no more than two hits. This would leave you with two Defenee uses against Curly's second form, which is nice since the spikes she drops normally take off 20 HP apiece. If you have less than 100 HP remaining after defeating the statues, especially if you used Defenee, you may consider going back and refilling your HP and MP again using Epin's whistle in battle, then facing the statues again. Otherwise, proceed onward to Curly. Against Curly's first form, do not use Defenee. Instead, simply cast Flamol1 8 times as fast as you can, being sure not to allow any time in between casts to let Curly use the star magic against you. (Beware: once you have used up your mashroob, there is no turning back since you cannot simply buy another one.) Curly's second form ("true colors") is straightforward yet can be quite frustrating. Use Defenee to minimize damage from falling spikes, and shoot Curly's arms with your rod while dodging spikes the best you can. It may help to stand near the bottom of the screen, especially when fighting lower arms. The lag is annoying, as is Curly's ability to heal herself, but if you are careful and persistent, you should ultimately prevail. After watching the cut scenes, you will move on to Chapter 3. Unfortunately, there is no mosque in Nubia, the town where you start, so if you want to password save now, you will need to walk up to Kasimeel. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + 3. Chapter 3 - Forest World Samalkand + +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ You might have found last chapter to be a bit technical and unforgiving. If so, you should be glad to know that, at least in regards to this challenge, this chapter is much simpler and leaves plenty of room for error. However, keep in mind that you will need to have exactly 100 rupias when you get Mustafa, so pace yourself accordingly. Also, once you get over 80 rupias, be absolutely certain not to pick up any money bags, as these will put you over the limit immediately. There is nothing useful in Nubia, so go ahead and begin your journey into the forest. After initially going left, if you go up a few screens, you will come to a dead end where Coronya instructs you to use Oprin. This is a room where a woman gives you 50 rupias, so do not follow her advice! If you see this dead end, leave immediately and keep on walking. Most of the enemies you will see in the overworld are harmless, with exception of the evil trees. When you see a tree enemy, cast Defenee if you haven't already, as otherwise you will lose 18 HP each time you are hit (and you might take several hits in a row if a tree gets on top of you). The sword tends to be more useful than the rod for fighting off trees since you are better able to prevent them from hitting you. Soon you will walk left onto a screen where the bottom half is covered with water. This is an excellent place to level up. Use Defenee, equip your rod, and walk back to the screen to the right. Usually an evil tree appears here, and if it does, stand at the the left side of the screen and fire your rod wildly at it. If you think you are about to get hit, simply walk off the screen and back on. There are no turn-based battles at this transition, and you are near an MP star if you get into trouble (go left as far as you can, then up a few screens). Each individual tree gives you 10 experience points when you kill it, so you can get up to 60 experience points every time you walk onto this screen. You will gain several levels in almost no time. You should reach at least level 13 here, or 3000 experience points, since both your rod and sword will become stronger (and I'm sure you're just dying to learn Shrink, which is better than Corbock because ...uhh...I have no idea). If you want, you can get up to level 14 (3800 points) or even level 15 (4800 points) right now, though this is unnecessary. Once you are satisfied with your level, walk west, and use the previously mentioned MP star to refill your HP and MP. From here you will need to walk to the time door, go to the future, walk down to Nubia, walk back to the time door, and walk back here, all without refilling your MP, so watch your HP and be careful not to be too wasteful. (If you do get into serious problems, you could always get into a battle and use Epin's whistle to refill your MP, though I'm sure you won't want to do this if it is not absolutely necessary.) After leaving the screen with the MP star, the next thing to do is to walk to the time door. On your way, be sure to talk to the newborn Cimaron tree, who gives you the password "chocola" (or "chocolate" if you find it easier to remember). You can visit Kasimeel first if you want to password save, though there is nothing else to do there. Once in the future, talk to the Cimaron tree again, and give him the password "chocola". Congratulations, you just got the Cimaron, your first weapon upgrade of this game! (Unfortunately, since you are not a magician, you won't notice much difference now.) Now begin the trek down to Nubia. If you are not careful, your HP can take a pounding from the evil trees, which are quite common here in the future. To minimize the damage you take, always keep your light armor up. (Normally you would have the R. Armor by this point in the game, but since it requires paying to attend the university in Kasimeel, you must do without it this time.) Also, if a tree enemy appears, it is often a good idea to walk off the screen and back on in the hopes that the tree will not appear again, though there are some screens where it seems the trees always appear. The most difficult screens you will have to deal with are the ones with evil trees where you enter and exit vertically, since you have little room to avoid the trees before they reach you. Just before you get to Nubia, there is a dead end screen where you get Spricom (the same screen where the woman who gives you 50 rupias is in the present). Spricom costs 20 MP to use, but it fully refills your HP, prevents you from taking gradual damage from the cold, and reduces the number of enemies you will have to face. I think it is worth the MP to use if the solar eclipse occurs at a decent time, though it is not necessary. In Nubia, talk to Supapa and get Pukin. Then turn around and walk all the way back to the time door. Once back in the present, the first thing you should do is return to the MP star so you can refill your HP and MP at long last. If you have not reached level 14 yet, do so now at the same spot as before. When you reach level 14, you will learn Flamol2, which will be useful against Troll's second form. It uses up 25 MP per use instead of 20, but it is far stronger. (Case in point: it takes three casts of Flamol1 to kill evil trees, but Flamol2 wipes them out in one hit.) If you want to level all the way up to 15, you will learn Ramipas and your Cimaron rod will get a small boost (it will take 18 hits instead of 20 to beat Troll's first form...woohoo), but you should be fine at level 14. Once you are finished leveling up, swing by the MP star again to refill your HP and MP. If you are playing on a cartridge, I would recommend going over to Kasimeel and password saving at the mosque there before continuing. This is the last time this chapter you will have convenient access to a mosque, and it will be nice to be able to return here if you accidentally pick up too many coins or otherwise mess up. Now walk toward the west until you reach the maze. You should attempt to save a good amount of MP for Troll, but you do not need to be nearly as frugal as in the previous chapter. You should probably plan to leave yourself enough MP for three Flamol2 uses against Troll (that's 75 MP), keeping in mind that you will need to use Pampoo and Defenee against Troll as well. In the maze, use Defenee and equip your sword, which will kill the enemies in one hit (as opposed to the rod which takes two hits). You have the option of getting Kashim here, your first sword upgrade. It is a bit out of the way, but it also fully restores your HP. In case you forgot the way, start by walking to the right from the maze entrance, and follow the path. Eventually you will walk up a long vertical corridor in the middle spanning three screens. Once you reach the top of this corridor, if you want to get Kashim, walk left and keep following the path, get Kashim, then return. Then walk down the right side of this corridor until you are able to take a path to the right. Follow this path until you exit the maze. If you do not yet have 100 coins, pick up however many you need outside, then go into Passora and get Mustafa. (You cannot enter the room with Troll without Mustafa, so you do in fact need Mustafa in order to beat the game.) Now you should have 0 coins left, and according to the rules of this challenge, you are not allowed to pick any coins up for the rest of the game. Watch your step! Walk on over to the palace. After the first room, you will have a choice to go up or right. If you go right, you will have to fight Changarl as a saint. You are much better off going up, where you will fight the much more manageable stone statues. When you get to the statues, use Defenee, equip your sword, and start by attacking the lower right statue from the lower right corner of the screen. This way you should be able to defeat the statues while taking at most a few hits. (Be careful not to pick up any coins they drop.) Shortly afterward you will come to a screen with a dragon enemy which shoots fireballs at you. You will need to kill this enemy in order to unlock the door leading up. Use Defenee and kill the dragon with your rod, being careful to dodge his fireballs, then proceed up and go in the secret entrance there. There is no choice about where to go from here on, so simply keep walking. You will have to fight Mardul, but fortunately, he is rather easy, even with you being a saint. Just shoot him as fast as you can with your rod and dodge the things he shoots at you. Hopefully you have at least one amulet right now, but if you don't and he transforms you before you can beat him, simply ring out and try again. Once you beat him, leave without picking up the money bag he drops, and keep going. When you have to walk down two screens, be careful the second time since there is water just below the entrance. Finally, you will reach Troll's room. Abcabra! For the first part, use Defenee, stand halfway between two of the images of Troll (so your rod will hit either one), and shoot your rod upward repeatedly. Each time you hit him, he will release thunder, which will take off 10 HP assuming your light armor is up. Be sure to pay attention to your HP and Pampoo yourself up (though not necessarily to full health) if you get low. Try to leave yourself with at least 75 MP for Troll's second form. After hitting Troll 20 times (or 18 if you reached level 15), the real Troll will appear. Here your HP is unimportant, so don't bother using Pampoo or Defenee. (If Troll runs into you, you flash, but you don't lose any HP.) Simply shoot Troll as fast as you can with your rod, making sure not to miss him since you will have to wait for the rod to go off the screen. When he uses Shrink on you, finish him off with Flamol2 (two hits should do it easily). Now it is on to Chapter 4. ******************************************* * 4. Chapter 4 - Flower World Celestern * ******************************************* At last, welcome to the chapter that makes this challenge truly a challenge. At the end awaits Salamander, whom you will have to fight without any bread or mashroob, without R. Armor, and with a weaker rod than usual (Cimaron instead of Crystal). Thankfully, you will get to change your class before then, as otherwise defeating him would be virtually impossible. There is nothing you can do in either Yufla or Pao, so walk straight on down to Chigris. (In case you don't remember the way, once you get to the desert go right, then down as far as you can, then left and down.) Here you can password save if you want. Then if you feel so inclined, walk down to the Fire Palace and rescue Gubibi (you could just get him later when you get Rainy, where later means 3000 years earlier). Make your way back around to time door. Once in the past, you have the option of password saving in Farvil if you did not in Chigris. From Farvil, start walking as if you were going to the town of Lava (in the general northwest direction once you reach the place where the music changes). However, getting Rainy in Lava requires being a fighter, so you won't actually be going there. When you reach the screen where going left leads you to the Lava Cape, go up instead, and after crossing the bridge go in the eastward direction toward the Yufla Palace. Just before you get to the palace, there is a bridge going north which leads to an MP star. Pampoo yourself to full health, use Defenee, and restore your MP here (you know the drill). If you are not yet level 16, you should be very close (you need 5200 points), so go ahead and reach level 16 by fighting the ifrit (the blue guy who shoots out a ring of fire) which appears on the screen below. Each time you beat the ifrit, you will gain 50 experience points. It is now time for you to throw off the shackles of sainthood at long last. This will be done by using Moscom, which you get in the palace, so walk on over there, and try to hurry if there is currently a solar eclipse. After entering the palace and going up a screen, you will have the choice of going up or right. Up leads to a fight with Warhammer, so go right. This way you will have to beat five stone statues, but you should be an expert at this by now, and in any case you don't even need to conserve MP this time. Make your way through the palace, and once you go down two sets of stairs, you should come to a screen with a locked door and a dragon enemy. The door, however, leads to a dead end, so simply go down, then right, then up. The wise man is behind the locked door here, so you will use up the key you got at the end of chapter one. Once getting Moscom, simply wait around on the same screen for the solar eclipse (if there isn't one currently). When a solar eclipse occurs, use Moscom. Rainy doesn't go out with a brave fighter, so change your class to...magician! Amazingly, after you change your class, the imam simply sends Rainy along with you! (Apparently this old imam in a mosque which isn't even real must be Rainy's idea of a brave fighter...?) If you did not save Gubibi before, you would get him now as well. Take a second to bask in the glory of your new rod, which for the first time this game is not completely awful. However, not all is fun and games yet: if you tried to fight Salamander now, you would be in for a rude shock. The first time Salamander makes the fire field, Rainy would already be "really exhausted". This is because when Rainy was given to you, he had 1 HP and 0 MP. Without any MP, Rainy cannot summon the rain to make Salamander reappear. Obviously, you will need to restore his MP before you even think about fighting Salamander, and staying at a hotel is not an option. The MP star only refills your stats, not those of your allies, so that won't work either. You will therefore have to rely on Epin and his trusty whistle again. (As a side note, this would be an example of a time where you are not allowed to password save. If you refilled Rainy's MP automatically by just password saving and continuing from your save, I would not consider you to have beaten this challenge.) Fortunately, it is almost as if Culture Brain had this exact situation in mind when designing this chapter. At this very screen (you should still be on the screen with the locked door leading to Moscom) is the perfect battle for you to refill Rainy's stats: Gilas Clan. Gilas Clan consists of a Pharyad, which is fairly harmless by itself, and 6 Miniyads which just sit there and use Pampoo on the Pharyad the entire time. Not only will you not take much damage against this formation, but the Miniyads keep the battle from ending by keeping Pharyad's HP up, allowing you all the time to need to refill Rainy's MP. Before you attend to Rainy's MP, however, you have a more urgent matter to attend to - Rainy's HP. If Rainy were to be attacked while still having only 1 HP, you would have no way of bringing him back to life. Furthermore, when Pharyad attacks, he hits twice, so his first attack will hit you and the ally in the first slot - right where Rainy would be if you were using Epin to refill his MP. I prefer not to take this risk, so I would recommend first putting Rainy in the second slot for a Gilas Clan battle and using Pampoo to give him some HP (see the next paragraph). You could still get screwed here if Pharyad uses Bolttor3 on the first turn and goes before you can use Pampoo, but this is unlikely (and I don't see any way to avoid this risk). Use Pampoo to bring yourself to full HP, then walk back and forth between the current screen (below where you get Moscom) and the screen below until you get into a battle with Gilas Clan. There are a few other enemy formations which appear at this transition, and obviously you should not put either Rainy or Epin in harm's way if you have trouble escaping from one. (Watch out in particular for Fire Regiment, which knows Moniburn.) Once you get into a Gilas Clan battle, you have a choice as to who to put in the first slot. If you want to minimize your damage taken with Defenee, choose Coronya, as she has the added benefit of also knowing Mymy. If you would rather have someone who knows Seal to try to stop Pharyad from using Bolttor3, go with Kebabu or Supica. In any case, put Rainy in the second slot, and spend a few turns using Pampoo on him. When he is out of immediate danger, escape. Now walk back and forth across the same transition until you get into another Gilas Clan battle. This time, put Rainy in the first slot and Epin in the second slot. On your first turn, use Flamol1, have Rainy attack a Miniyad with the rod, and have Epin use Defenee. Flamol1 will take all the Miniyads down to 2 HP, where Rainy can then pluck them off with the rod one by one. For the sake of speeding up the battle, you will want to take out all but two of the Miniyads, leaving two to heal the Pharyad. For the rest of the battle, Epin should use Whistle, which will always either refill your or Rainy's MP by 10. From my experience, Whistle is nowhere near completely random. In fact, it seems the character who gets the 10-MP boost is almost always the one who used MP most recently. (Losing MP to Pharyad's shout does not count as using MP, and if you both use MP in the same round, it does not seem to count the later one to act as being more recent.) Once Rainy gets some MP to start with, you can take advantage of this fact by having Rainy cast Matato for one turn while you attack Pharyad (fight or rod). Follow this up by having both yourself and Rainy attack Pharyad for several turns, and Whistle should give Rainy's MP the boost most of the time. Of course, be careful not to kill the Pharyad, and if you use Fight, keep in mind the possibility of clean hits. At level 16, Rainy's maximum MP is 148. Once Rainy has maximal or near-maximal MP, escape from the battle. Now you need to walk back to the MP star to finish leveling up. On your way back through the palace, after going up one set of steps, you should pick up Rostam (located in a secret entrance accessed via Oprin), which fully restores your HP and conveniently places you on the other side of the lava when you leave. After reaching the MP star and refilling your HP and MP, proceed to level up on the ifrit just as before. Make sure Defenee is always active, as otherwise ifrit's fireballs will take off 20 HP each hit. Also, there is a little trick here that should make this part go much more smoothly. If you simply come down from the screen with the MP star and shoot the ifrit with your rod, there is usually a lag when the ifrit is forming and shortly after when you cannot shoot. As a result, by the time you shoot you might already have been hit, and you will likely get hit two or three times before you finally defeat the ifrit. The trick is to use Pampoo as soon as you walk down onto the screen with the ifrit, while it is forming. It should sound almost like the Pampoo noise is part of the introduction of the overworld enemy music. This enables you to shoot the ifrit as soon as it forms, and sometimes its ring of fireballs won't even appear after it has formed if you shoot it quickly enough. You need to reach level 19 (8800 points) here before moving on. At level 19, both the sword and the rod gain strength, and the stronger rod is crucial to have against Salamander. Also, at level 19, Rainy's maximum MP reaches 180. Rainy uses up 10 MP each time he summons the rain to make Salamander reappear, so at level 19 you will be able to make Salamander reappear 18 times. If you want, you can beat the ifrit 40 more times to reach level 20 (10800 points), but this would not help you much. Your rod doesn't gain any strength, and Rainy's maximum MP only goes up to 185 at level 20, which still allows him to make Salamander reappear 18 times. Chances are, the minor increases in your HP and MP maximums you get from leveling up again will not be the difference in whether you successfully defeat Salamander or not. (Also, when you reach level 18, notice that you have a key once again.) When you are finished leveling up, you will need to use Epin's whistle to bring Rainy's MP up to his new maximum. You could find a Gilas Clan battle at the same place in the palace as before, but there is a much closer place. Go down two screens from the screen with the MP star, then walk back and forth between this screen and the screen to the right, and you should eventually get into a battle with Gilas Clan. (Again, there are other formations that show up here as well.) Fill up Rainy's MP using Epin's whistle just like before, though this time you should probably leave 3 Miniyads alive since you are stronger and your attacks will do more damage to the Pharyad. Get Rainy's MP to 180 (at least) and escape. If your HP and MP are not in good condition, walk back up to the MP star and fix them. You should strongly consider walking back to Farvil and password saving now if you are playing on a cartridge. You have just done a significant amount of work, and there are several things which could go wrong coming up (dying in or botching a fight against Salamander, accidentally picking up a coin, etc.), so it would be good to have your progress saved. Once you are fully prepared, walk back to the palace. This time you should be able to defeat Warhammer with ease, so after the first room, you can choose to go up and fight Warhammer or go right and fight the stone statues again. Either way, keep making your way through the palace. Before you fight Salamander, you will have to fight Barzil twice in a row, but he is very, very easy - simply dodge his fireballs and shoot him with your rod as fast as you can, just as you would expect. After the second fight with Barzil, Pampoo yourself to full health, and prepare for the big showdown. (If you are using an emulator, saving state here could prove quite handy.) (The next several paragraphs build up a strategy for beating Salamander. If you just want to try your luck against him yourself or come up with your own strategy, you can skip them.) For the upcoming battle, your big constraints will be Rainy's MP and your HP. (Your MP is pretty much irrelevant, as the only magics you will be using are Pampoo and Defenee.) Rainy's MP obviously matters since he uses it to make Salamander reappear. As for your HP, Salamander has two ways of hurting you: the fire magic and his falling fireballs, each of which does 25 damage assuming you have Defenee up (and a whopping 50 if not). If you tried to fight Salamander without a planned strategy, you would often find yourself having to decide whether to keep attacking or to stop and use Pampoo. Even though the screen freezes when you cast Pampoo, time still elapses in the battle, and Salamander will still make the fire field after roughly the same amount of time. This means whenever you use Pampoo, you are missing opportunities to attack him before he goes back in the fire field. Furthermore, when he reemerges from the fire field, he regains some health. Thus, if you spend too much time on Pampoo and not enough time attacking him, you won't even be reducing his health overall, a waste of time you cannot afford due to Rainy's limited MP. You will need a method which lets you minimize the amount of attack time lost from using Pampoo. First of all this means minimizing the damage you take, so you should avoid Salamander's falling fireballs and always keep your light armor up. One Defenee use lasts for two rounds (where a "round" refers to the time between one emergence of Salamander and the next time he emerges), so you should be sure to use Defenee automatically every two rounds as well. Right after you use Defenee, there is a short time when you are unable to shoot the rod, so this would be a good chance to use Pampoo a few times. Here is the strategy I have found to work best against Salamander. Obviously you should use Defenee right before walking into the battle. The battle will then mostly consist of two types of rounds which alternate: Odd rounds (including the first): Simply shoot Salamander as much as you can with your rod, being careful to dodge his descending fireballs. Even rounds: Quickly shoot your rod twice (just in case you might hit him), then use Defenee even if your previous light armor has not yet expired. Immediately begin using Pampoo repeatedly as fast as you can until Salamander uses the fire magic, at which point you go back to shooting him. (Note that the fire magic removes all existing fireballs from the screen, temporarily leaving you freer to move about.) The net result of two consecutive rounds should then be that your HP stays the same or goes up slightly, and Salamander's health goes down slightly. In fact, since your HP can go up as a result of two rounds, you could refrain from using Pampoo during the second round (the first even round) and shoot Salamander immediately after using Defenee to damage him more and speed up the battle. Once Salamander's health gets critically low, forget about using Pampoo and just attack the hell out of him until you beat him. If you are unable to defeat Salamander before Rainy runs out of MP, you have no choice but to ring out of the battle. You then need to refill Rainy's MP using Epin's whistle in a Gilas Clan battle just as before. You can do this in the exact same place as you did the first time, right where you got Moscom. (Of course, if you password saved in Farvil before, you could just start again from your old save. You would have to walk all the way back from Yufla, though, so this would likely take even more time.) Once you do beat Salamander, congratulate yourself on making it past what is by far the most difficult chapter in this challenge. Whew! Only the relatively simple Chapter 5 remains. ========================================== = 5. Chapter 5 - Evil Magician Sabaron = ========================================== If you made it through the previous chapter, this chapter should seem like a cakewalk. Goragora is much easier to defeat than Salamander, and unlike last chapter, you will be fighting him with fully upgraded equipment. Almost no leveling up is required, and once you learn Marita at level 21, you rarely ever need to worry about your HP again (and you can say goodbye to those long Pampoo sessions). Other than avoiding coins and always escaping from battles, what you do in this chapter should not be much different from what you would do if you were just playing the game normally. Looking ahead for a moment, you will need to use 2 keys during the course of this chapter: one to get the Legend sword, and one to talk to Sabaron. You should have one key currently, and the next key level is 22, followed by 24. This means that unless you want to have to grind all the way to level 24, you should be sure to get the Legend sword before you reach level 22, so you can then get the key for Sabaron upon reaching level 22. Really, the only way you would reach level 22 before getting the Legend sword would be if you specifically tried to level up before then, so you should be fine if you just walked there normally. The only MP star in this chapter is near the very end, so throughout the chapter you should watch your MP use. However, you can get the great magic of Libcom, which can be used during a solar eclipse to refill your HP and MP (as well as revive all allies and restore their HP/MP), so you have plenty of leeway. You should be fine as long as you refrain from needlessly using MP guzzlers like Bolttor3 and Flamol2 in the overworld. Besides, if you do get into a tough situation, you can always use Epin's whistle, or even Hassan's Caraba spell (as long as it doesn't kill all the enemies), to get yourself some more MP. The first thing to do is to walk into Yufla to pick up Hassan. Then walk south to Chigris, where you can password save in case don't want to risk having to fight Salamander again. From there, go to where the time door was last chapter to get Libcom from the wise man. Now walk to the fire palace, enter the maze, and navigate your way through it until you reach the time door. The time door takes you to the light palace, where you will find the Legend sword. To reach it, you will have to walk through one jar. If you find the screen where the old man says "There is only one jar that you can go through", go right, and the aforementioned jar will be on the third screen you reach which is divided in half by jars. Once you pass through the jar, random turn-based encounters will be extremely frequent (including some rare ones such as Gorla and Fire Party), so don't let your HP get too low in case you have trouble escaping from a battle. When you find a door that requires a key to go through, walk through it and get the Legend sword. You will need to bring this sword back to Pao, so find the jar you walked through and go back through it. If you want, you can gain some experience by walking around killing the little skeleton enemies for 12 points apiece, and you won't have to worry about any turn-based battles this side of the jar. However, there is a better place to level up later, so don't spend too much time here. Go back through the time door, and once you are back in the maze, walk straight down to fall in a trap taking you back to the palace. Leave the palace and begin walking toward Pao. If there is a solar eclipse now, you might as well walk to where you got Libcom, use it, then get it again for a free HP/MP refill (this applies on your way back to the palace as well). Once you get to Pao, you can talk to Kaji if you want (you don't need to), then go south between the two trees and across the magical bridge that suddenly appears to get the light armor. With Isfa's light armor equipped, you will take only a fourth of the damage you took with your normal blue armor. Defenee now does nothing if you use it on the overworld (though it still cuts your damage in half during turn-based battles). With this new added defense in addition to Marita, you can afford to be much more cavalier about getting hit by overworld enemies, though you still should not get careless. Begin walking back toward Chigris, and if you want to level up, the best place is on the way. You will need to be at least level 22 (12550 experience points) when you fight Goragora, and from my experience, this is enough. However, if it usually takes you more than two rounds to beat Goragora, you should aim to reach level 23 (14550 points), when your rod and sword gain strength. If you decide you want to level up, from the screen directly to the left of Chigris, repeatedly walk up and kill the ifrit that appears for 50 experience points at a time. You can use the "Pampoo trick" from Chapter 4 if you want, though your defense is so solid by this point that it is more MP-efficient simply to attack him normally and occasionally use Marita (or perhaps do the "Marita trick" every 6 or so battles). If you are playing on a cartridge, this will be the last reasonable opportunity to password save, so you should consider password saving in Chigris. Then walk down to the fire palace and go back in the maze. Navigate the maze as if you were going to the time door, and the entrance to Sabaron's palace is located just before you get to the time door. Make your way through Sabaron's palace until you reach Sabaron's room, where Coronya will warn you that Sabaron is inside. You may have to fight some wizards along the way, but they should all be easy by now. If you are not yet level 22, you will need to walk around and kill some skeleton enemies in the palace until you reach level 22 so you can get a key. (Warning: if you see a locked door requiring a key to enter, and Coronya does not warn you about Sabaron, DO NOT go in - it is a woman who gives you 50 rupias!) When you can, go inside and talk to Sabaron, and answer his question with "Coronya". From here on, you will have Isfa's awesomely powerful rod at your disposal. If you walk down a couple screens from Sabaron's room, then go left, you will reach the MP star. Refill your HP, cast Ramipas (assuming you are done leveling up), then walk onto the star to refill your MP. Now you are off to face Goragora and return peace to the human world, so navigate the palace until you reach the strange, dark area where the music changes. (When you fight Barzil going right to left, you are getting very warm.) You will need 200 MP against Goragora, so be sure to keep your MP above that amount. Once in the dark world, walk up a screen so the walls turn red. Then go right, up, left, and follow the path up from then on. When you reach the pillar, first use Marita to bring yourself to full health (assuming it won't put your MP below 200), then switch your magic to Bolttor3. Shoot the wall with Isfa's rod standing on the red moon, then the white sun, then the star when it turns blue, and Goragora will appear. For Goragora's first form, cast Bolttor3 five times as fast as you can, at the same time walking away from him to minimize the chance of getting sucked in. Each Bolttor3 use will cost 20 MP, so this will require 100 MP. When Goragora is in his second form, two spheres rotating around each other moving around the screen, stay near the bottom left corner of the screen and shoot him with your rod as fast as you can to drain his energy. You only have enough MP to face him twice in this form, so you need to take down at least half his health now before he returns to his first form. When he does, use Bolttor3 five times again to make him revert to his second form, then shoot him mercilessly with your rod until he dies. If he changes back to his first form a third time before you are able to beat him, you will have to ring out, refill your MP by walking to the MP star (or by casting Libcom if there is currently a solar eclipse and you did not use it before), and come back and fight him again. When Goragora goes down for the count, there is nothing left to do but sit back and enjoy the ending. Congratulations, you have successfully completed the 110 Rupia Challenge! --------------------------------------------------------------------- V. Variations Here are a few ways you could tweak the challenge if you wished. 1. 100% Magic Completion Perhaps just beating the game under the conditions of the challenge is not enough for you, but you want to finish with a complete list of spells as well. This would require you to collect and keep all the great magics as well as reach level 23 to learn Flamol3. You would have to go through the maze very carefully in Chapter 1 to get Monecom. You would also need to have Spricom when you leave Chapter 3 and Moscom when you leave Chapter 4, and getting Moscom again would require using another key, so you would need to take advantage of another key level. (You could afford to leave Chapter 2 without Raincom because of the random wise man who gives it to you in the past in Chapter 4.) 2. 100 Rupia Challenge You may have realized that you could beat the game with only 100 rupias instead of 110 if you allowed yourself to get the one mashroob by winning it from a turn-based battle. Of course, this would require some luck which is beyond your control, since an enemy army would have to drop a mashroob before dropping anything else and before you accumulated 100 rupias. 3. 110 Rupias Spent You may like the idea of trying to beat the game with the fewest items possible, but the thought of tiptoeing around to avoid coins might not seem appealing to you. If you so preferred, you could restrict yourself merely to spending 110 rupias, allowing yourself to accumulate any amount of additional money as long as you don't use it. (Obviously using Monecom would still be forbidden.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- VI. Special Thanks RockMFR, for his guide on the Magic of Scheherazade appearing on GameFAQs. The level-up chart was especially helpful to me in coming up with my strategies. FlyingOmelette, for The Magic of Scheherazade Shrine (http://www.flyingomelette.com/mos/mosindex.html), which is an awesome website about this game (and which specifically provided me with some names for enemies). JDavis, for submitting the first guide on GameFAQs for this game, a guide which predates this one by nearly 12 years. --------------------------------------------------------------------- VII. Contact/Copyright If you have any comments or suggestions, you can email me at borrasgigas@yahoo.com. Copyright 2009 Tim Rankin. This guide may be not be reproduced without my permission except for personal, private use. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders (duh). This guide is in no way affiliated with either Nintendo or Culture Brain.