Final Fantasy V Walkthrough

Written by Djibriel

Contributor

3.8: The Solitary Island; the Wind Tablet

Enemies: Prototype, MechaHead, The Damned, Executor, Red Harpy, ShadeDancer, Slownin, Tote Avis, Covert, Pantera, Stoker

Treasures: 9000 Gil, 12000 Gil, Whip Beast Killer, Helmet Circlet, Helmet Crystal Helmet, Dark Matter, Dragon Fang, Elixir, Ether x2, Potion, Hard Body, Accessory Protect Ring, Boomerang Razor Ring

Blue Magic: L2 Old, L3 Flare, L4 Qrtr, L5 Doom, Condemnd, Guard Off, ????, Missile, Burn Ray, Exploder, MindBlst

"One rests within an island shrine, kissed by wind..."

In the middle of the World Map there's a large sea. On the southern edge, you can see an island which turns out to have appeared right in the middle of the Big Bridge. The Solitary Island existed earlier, but, surrounded by mountains, you had no way to enter it. Now, the path is open.

Guarding the doorway are two s. You've fought them earlier, so you know how to deal with them. Remember: Yes to , no to ! Thus, and the are out. With Syldra at your side, Faris' old buddy is without a doubt the easiest way of clearing out the battlefield; boosted by an , or possibly even or , the post-mortem plesiosaurus deals great amounts of damage.

used to hide in Pyramid of Moore chests all the freaking time, but they're loose now. What's the deal with The Damned, anyway? They went to Harvard. They practice law in prestigious New York firms. They're undead pests, vulnerable to . All this is common knowledge. But deep inside, what really makes them tick?

enemies will use every level-based Blue spell, ranging from ,

L4 Qrtr and to . The Flare variant was slightly problematic to obtain earlier, so you may want to learn it here. All these spells can be Reflected, so that's a good way to defend yourselves if you find your team vulnerable to the or attacks.

L3 Flare itself is a great way to get rid of Executors if you want to give them a bun out of their own oven.

is the source for s, as you can rarely Steal one from these enemies. They may appear in large numbers, so you should have no shortage of opportunities. Armor

Mirage Vests are great in combination with , as you'll end fights before the Image status can be challenged twice. In the GBA version, these monsters are called Oisearare; "Oiseau rare" is french for 'rare bird'. Considering is neither a bird nor infrequent in the slightest, this is a case of dadaist humor not often found in Japanese video games. They can cast spells on the first turn; , s, the and protect you from auto-mutilation.

The Armor

Mirage Vest sets a one-time Image status on the wearer. (Note that the spell and the Ninja's !Twin action ability both set the Image status for the next two attacks, whereas the Armor

Mirage Vest just sets one.) In quick battles such as random encounters, they grant physical immunity to some extent; the battle will most likely end before a character can be hit twice. In longer battles, a bug may be exploited; Armor

Mirage Vest's Image status is re-loaded every time equipment is switched in-battle; switch a Thief's dagger from the Right to the Left Hand slot, and the Image is back. Try it out, amaze your friends! Remember that by switching equipment in-battle, you also lose the powers of , , , , and . Nobody cares!

is a tub of lard. It has 33090 HP, and is both Heavy and protected from Death attacks. It has no elemental weaknesses, but it absorbs Wind. You will be fighting these things for a while. As a common steal, it has the Bow, which always scores a Critical Hit on the Aevis type (big birds). Why would a big bird carry its own death warrant? The questions of life are difficult to answer indeed. Tote Avis may set Petrify with Beak, attack physically and use Breath Wing. Since Tote Avis strikes hard, is a great way of keeping you Not-Dead, the preferred state. As you can see the Tote Avis is vulnerable to the

Muddle status, but you'll want to resist the temptation, since Breath Wing heals the enemy substantially when turned on itself. When you're done, you get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. Except, maybe, possibly, you get another Bow

Ab Splitter.

The Bow

Ab Splitter is far more powerful than the , and is a decent alternative to seeing as how Tote Avis enemies appear here and are such a humongous drag. Bow

Ab Splitters suffer no abnormal miss chance, so setting

Bersrk with this Bow will not make it miss. That's a good thing to know.

s will attack physically, but may also use Dancehall Daze to inflict Sleep on a single target. They have a rare for stealing. There is no reason why you should want one, but they're fun and you have only had one chance to obtain it so far.

samurai have a rare for stealing! They're great in Knight Single Job Challenges, helpful against the boss fight of this place and generally good to have. Now that the exciting stuff is out of the way, the Numb Blade sets Paralyze with !Sslap. See! The !Sslap which the Samurai Job learns after 10 ABP is supposed to set Paralyze. I told you. These Samurai have no other special features.

Being able to use !Steal successfully is a great thing in this dungeon, so you'll probably want a Thief around. + !Mug is a great idea you might wish to employ. Syldra boosted by an is exceedingly powerful at the moment, so use it for crowd control. What's left here is the challenge of the Tote Avis, so rise to meet it. Buff spells and an Bow

Ab Splitter are great weapons. Since this fight takes so long, you might even find use for the buff Songs from the Bard. Prepare against

Muddle spells with

Muddle-resistant equipment or s that also help against the Executor's spells (but remove the as an option).

Push through the heavy doors of the Solitary Island to find another apparently featureless room. With Secret, you can see a hidden passage to the right which takes you to a chest containing 12000 Gil.

The next room will take you to a pipe, which will suck you in. Here, in the room with the switches, two treasures are hidden from you. On the wall to the left, one tile above the bottom-right tile, you can find a . In the bottom-right corner, on the right wall, you can find an . Useless items, but they're there and if you miss them you'll have to cry yourself to sleep, I suppose.

The switches you now see behave as follows: Up/Up means back to the entrance. Up/Down takes you to a chest containing an . Down/Down takes you to a chest containing 9000 Gil. Down/Up takes you further inside.

Raid both the Elixir and 9000 Gil chests before pressing on; get back to the switches room, flip the left one down and the right one up and get into that inviting tube. Here, there's a chest containing either Covert or Pantera. Both monsters are exclusive to being a monster-in-a-box in this specific chest, so you'll never be able to defeat both on the same file (though you can see both by opening the chest and running away a few times). Neither has a Bestiary entry, so no worries there.

The Covert is a red-clad ninja who may attack physically or use either Wind Slash or Blaze. It has 7000 HP. When you kill him, he'll go "Illusion" and summon two of his kind before passing away. Since they overlap perfectly, you won't see the first one die and the other two appear. Now, you'll have to fight two additional Coverts, though you'll only see one on the battlefield. After you've killed the other two, the Covert will say "That's far enough!" and die. Golem is nice.

The Pantera is a super-Coeurl. It attacks physically and may randomly use Blaster, which sets either Paralyze or Death, 50-50 chance. Sadly, the Pantera battle is bugged. See, what was supposed to happen was this. When you allowed Pantera to live for two turns, it would summon two images of itself. "Illusion!" One of them would randomly be the 'real' Pantera and take damage. The other two would be invulnerable to harm. You'd be attacking decoy targets a lot as the real Pantera often switched. Once Pantera would have died, the two images would Flee. Rather than starting this switcheroo, however, the extra Panteras will actually self-terminate as a first turn after multiplying.

Regardless of its guardian, you'll get a from the chest for you trouble, which is basically an upgraded version of your : a Thief- and Ninja-specific weapon which deals the same amount of damage from the Back Row. It is not a bad weapon, but it is considerably outperformed by the many other great weapons you've obtained (magic-boosting ones, Knife

Chicken Knife, ). It is also Aerial, so it will always hit those monsters that cannot avoid Aerial weapons (which includes most Floating enemies). You'll want a Thief in here anyway, and, coupled with the Strength coming from Barefist, the Boomerang

Razor Ring will deal respectable amounts of damage.

Continue for a Save Point. Welcome to the 2nd Floor. To the left, you can find a chest with an . To the right, a secret passage detectable by a Thief will lead you to a chest containing a . Both are useless. In the middle of the room is a chest containing either a or a . The former is one of those mechanical menaces you found in the Pyramid of Moore; the latter was the undefeatable thing you Controlled and ed for s back in World 1. For whatever reason, bring a Sorceror; the MechaHead will instantly fall against spellblade effects, and the Prototype is vulnerable to Petrify, so spellblade effects kill it instantly. You'll get a for your troubles; this will be your third if you've been following so far. Press on.

The third floor will place you directly before a door. Go in and grab the chest's contents, a Whip. Lame! We got those a century ago, but it is still a good Whip if you never got the . On the rest of the third floor, some trap halls exist which can drop you down to the second floor. Evade them with the Geomancer's Findhole to protect you from the ridicule of your peers. does not work against pitfalls. Note that the third floor can pride itself on supreme Red Harpy density, so if you're Armor

Mirage Vest hunting, here's the place to be.

The fourth floor is featureless.

The fifth floor has two chests: another Ether and a . If you approach these chests directly, you'll find pitfalls instead; go around to grab them and proceed. There are pitfalls around the exit.

The sixth floor is another Save Point.

The seventh floor has two chests: a Dark Matter to the left and a to the right. In the middle, however, lies another tablet. This is the tablet that will release the most powerful White spell and most powerful Black spell to you in the form of entrance to Fork Tower. Cid, like Mid told you in Crescent, is trapped underneath the tower, so we could both augment our own power and help a friend in the meantime.

Oh yeah, and there's a boss battle. Stoker, one of The Eleven of the Rift is here to pull off two things Pantera could never hope to accomplish. First, a successful trick of invulnerability and deception. Second, sweet bloody victory.

Stoker Boss Monster	Type	Level	HP	MP	Gil	EXP	Speed
	None	7	20000	8192	0	0	40
	Strength	Attack Mult.	Magic Atk.	Evasion	Defense	Mag. Def.	Mag. Evade
	65	10	10	0	10	20	10
	Stolen Items			Dropped Items
	Common: Dark Matter			None
	Command Immunities			Elemental Immunities
	Catch, Control
	Elemental Absorb			Elemental Weakness
				None
	Blue Magic			Status Immunities
	MindBlst
	Strategy
	Stoker has four targets, but only one of them is real. The real one will move around each time he takes damage, too. However, the first attack you make will always land, so make that first one count big. Since the fight will go more than one round, though, have something that absorbs ice to minimize the damage you take, and stay away from water attacks.

I'm not sure what Stoker stands for. A blue-ish apparition of a naked man with a club and something strange on his forehead. He's like Dr. Manhattan, but a bad guy.

The Stoker has four bodies, but only one of them is vulnerable to harm. Every time he takes HP damage, he'll jump to a random body and set his current HP to all four targets. For the fake targets this doesn't matter, since they're invulnerable to harm. This will at least ensure that Stoker has only 20000 HP, and any damage you do to whatever body he's in will count down on the same 20000 HP. Whenever you use a multi-target attack (even those that deal no damage, such as ), all three decoy bodies will retaliate with Frost. An exception here is the katana's Gale Cut attack, but that's not exactly a solid strategic choice. The switching of bodies doesn't start until you first hurt Stoker, so the first strike will always land. This makes it a decent idea to, say, release a at the start of the battle in order to hit for a lot of damage. The 'official' Stoker body (the one whose HP actually matters) will be the one with the most damage taken in this initial attack.

The Stoker may randomly use an attack called . This magical attack is non-elemental and barrier-piercing, and it sets both Paralyze and Sap. It's a Blue spell that'll be of use later on; it's very cheap, both Paralyze and Sap can hardly ever be set by your characters and, since it's non-elemental, it can't be absorbed (it is Reflectable, though). It's a Blue spell! If you're set on learning it, don't use . His other attacks are not as noteworthy; Hurricane misses very often due to Stoker's low level, as does

Muddle. His attacks look like the , even though he carries a spectral club. How delightfully eccentric!

The Stoker's attacks are little and weak, so it's just a battle against the annoyance of having to target up to three enemies before you hit the right one. s and the Shield

Ice Shields you can steal in this very room both nullify and absorb the Frost attack; in the Shield

Ice Shield's case, Sap will still be set.

MindBlst (also,

Muddle) can be reflected, so Carbuncle is a good idea. This combined with Golem, and you're only a short way from winning the battle. If you're not one for games, apply (Mix a with some ) or Shield

Ice Shields to everybody, then let loose with your best multi-target attacks (likely boosted Syldra and/or !$Toss). If you'd rather play it 'fair', it's best if you have some power behind your blows; having a Bard buff you during the battle is not a bad idea, specifically since you just got the Bard's Best Song In The World not too long ago. Single-target boosted Black elemental spells are quite powerful.

Another status ailment you can set is Sleep. Putting fake targets to sleep will not cause retaliation with Frost attacks, nor will the 'real' Stoker jump to another body if it is asleep. If you set Sleep to all targets at the start of the battle before dealing any damage and provoking the body-switching, you can just unleash powerful multi-target magical attacks to all four opponents.

From the battle you can learn what could be your second-to-last Blue spell, Mind Blast. Not if you got Carbuncle all up in your business, obviously.

Now that you have the , you can return to the Sealed Castle and obtain three more Legendary Weapons. For the next dungeon, may prove useful due to its blocking nature while Bow

Yoichi's Bow is a powerful physical weapon that allows the Back Row. Since the

Holy spell becomes available before you obtain the next Tablet, the is another good option. Note also that the Armor

Mirage Vest is a godsend in the Fork Tower; might want to get at least one (you'll get one from that NPC in the Mirage).

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Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy V
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