Final Fantasy V Walkthrough
Written by Djibriel
Contributor
3.9: Fork Tower
Enemies: Goblin, Mani Wizard, Bandersnatch, Ricard Mage, Tiny Mage, Chrono Controller, Flaremancer, Dueling Knight, Iron Muscles, Berserker, Minotaur, Omniscient
Treasures: 
Defender, Ether, Hi-Potion, 
Wonder Wand
"The tower on the left is the magic path. Even if you've got muscles, enemies just laugh."
Flawed poetry describing cardboard means of gaining power; how neat does it get? The Fork Tower is located on Crescent Island, or what once was Crescent Island I guess. It's a thing surrounded by a desert so small it's pretty much just a pile of sand. There are two towers on this thing. The left one is the Black Tower; every enemy here will rip you apart the moment you attack with anything but Magic attacks, so you have little choice. The right tower is the White Tower, where muscles mean awesome and spellcasting is for the sissies.
First, you'll have to split your party into two parties. It would seem only logical to send two characters to each end of the tower. Know that once you have a
Reflect Ring, the entire Black Tower is a walk in the park. It's the Tower of Power that can get you a little trouble, so you could choose to split 1/3. At any rate, neither of the two towers are very hard and only the guardian of the 
Holy spell presents some actual challenge, so you decide.The Black Tower of Magics is to the left, the White Tower of Prowess is to the right.
You start in the Black Tower, so let's talk about the wizards here first...
The Tiny Mage is the White Mage of the Black Tower; it casts only White magic, making
Confuse its only dangerous attack. Normally, Mini would be bad to you, but since it only affects physical attributes and you'll be casting Magic exclusively anyway, ignore the status. The spells the Tiny Mage uses include: Cura, Confuse, Shell, Mini, Libra, Dispel. When struck by a non-Magic attack, it will retaliate with a single Encircle attack, removing one of your characters from the battlefield. Don't.The Chrono Controller is the Time Mage of the Black Tower. The spells it can cast are:
Graviga, Slow, Regen, Float, Gravity, Comet, Slowga, Old, Banish and Hastega. Of these, the only really bad one is Banish, which it won't use it until its fourth turn, so you should've long since dispatched them by then. When struck by a non-Magic attack, it will counter with a Meteor spell, which is bad business. Should you want to steal a 
Healing Staff, note that Steal causes a Meteor counter. The Chrono Controller can be Silenced, so use that to your advantage.The Flaremancer is the Black Mage and the most dangerous opponent of the Black Tower. It's one of the four demons the Necromancer Job can summon later in the game, when it uses a
Flare spell. It can cast Fira, Blizzara, Thundara, Bio, Break, Firaga, Blizzaga and Thundaga. When struck by a non-Magic attack, he'll counter with two Strong Fight physical attacks doing 9999 damage. The Flaremancer has a rare 
Blitz Whip you can steal. Useless, but if you really want to go for one you'd best Berserk the Flaremancer before attempting to touch the creature's possessions, as it'll counter your !Steal attempts.Since I already have addressed them elsewhere, I'm sure you won't mind if I don't discuss the Ricard Mages and Mani Wizards.
With
Reflect Rings, no attack will ever touch you. Make absolutely sure to never, never use anything that's not !White, !Time, !Black, !Summon, !Red or !Blue on the opponents here. You should quickly rush to the top. The path is very straightforward; on the fourth floor you'll find an Ether; on the seventh floor you'll find the Wonder Wand.The
Wonder Wand will cast the weakest White spell (Cure) and work its way up from there, skipping Libra, up to Holy and Dispel. It'll even cast these spells if you haven't bought or found them yet. When done with all White spells, it'll start with Black spells from Fire to Flare and Death. When prepared right, this Rod can fire off Firaga, Thundaga, Blizzaga and Flare in four subsequent turns, even when the character wielding the Rod is Silenced, can't cast any magic due to Mute or has no MP. The Wonder Wand also casts Return when used an item without breaking, so in the very, very few battles where Mute is present from the get-go, you can still cast Return with the Wonder Wand. Note that there is only a single byte that governs what spells are 'up' for casting for any given Wonder Wand; should you get another one (which is possible), the list of spells is shared between Wonder Wands. To make it even more clear; Dual-Wielding Wonder Wands will get you two subsequent spells, e.g. Cure with the right hand and Poisona with the left hand.When you reach the eighth floor of the Black Tower, it's almost time for the switch. Now is your chance to equip and prepare for the boss of the Black Tower! Once you reach the top of the Black Tower, you'll skip to your party in the White Tower. So, time to discuss what you'll find over there!
The Dueling Knight is the only enemy that will respond to you using Magic; the White Tower is far more lenient when it comes to the rules. When struck by Magic, the Dueling Knight will say that Magic is forbidden and counter with four physical attacks you'll easily survive. The Dueling Knight also has a rare
Flame Shield you can steal; getting up to four in your inventory is an unnecessary luxury, but there is a future battle where Fire resistance is very important and you may not want to muck about with Flame Rings.Iron Muscles is big, fat and stupid. It hits. Kill it. The same goes for Berserker, though they can be more easily forgiven for their silliness since they occasionally drop
Death Sickles.
Mirage Vests, Hermes Sandals and powerful weapons will get you through this location easily. 
Yoichi's Bow, the Gaia's Hammer and the Dragon's Whisker/Fire Lash are powerful weapons which deal equal damage from the back row, protecting their users.The White Tower mirrors the Black Tower in lay-out. On the fourth floor you'll find a Hi-Potion, and on the seventh floor you'll find a chest containing a
Defender, a new Knightsword. The Defender tends to see little air-time since it's likely you already have either a fully powered Brave Blade or the legendary Excalibur, but the Defender is actually a very decent weapon. You could've stolen them earlier from Sea Devils or Landcrawlers, but here it is lying around in a chest. It has the same inherent 25% evasive abilities the 
Main Gauche has, it has a very solid Battle Power and it casts Protect when used as an item without breaking.At the top of the White Tower, you can fight Minotaur, the brother of Sekhmet and the guardian of the ultimate White spell,
Holy.Minotaur  Bestiary #291 |
Type |
Level |
HP |
MP |
Gil |
EXP |
Speed |
Humanoid | 37 | 19850 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 35 | |
Strength |
Attack Mult. |
Magic Atk. |
Evasion |
Defense |
Mag. Def. |
Mag. Evade |
|
99 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
Stolen Items |
Dropped Items |
||||||
None | |||||||
Command Immunities | Elemental Immunities | ||||||
Catch, Control |     | ||||||
Elemental Absorb | Elemental Weakness | ||||||
| None | ||||||
Blue Magic | Status Immunities | ||||||
None |              | ||||||
Strategy | |||||||
Just like you, this beast can only use physical attacks. However, you're different in that you can short-circuit this restriction through clever use of items like the Defender, or !Mix to up your defenses as you slog it out physically. | |||||||
The Minotaur attacks physically only. Within the battle, the effects of Mute will be set so you can't cast Magic at all. The key here is protection from physical attacks. The
Mirage Vest is a great asset, as is the Knight's !Guard and Cover abilities. You'll never employ Counter in this fight, so the !Guard/Counter combo won't work, sadly enough. The Defender is a grand equip in the fight; you can 'cast' Protect with it, which would otherwise have been more difficult to achieve and require the !Drink or !Mix ability.With the Magic Lamp, you can summon Golem, who is a blessing in this fight. The !Image ability also helps a lot as you can use it to nullify up to two attacks. The
Wonder Wand, in addition to the Defender Sword, allows you to set Protect on a character, which is definitely a plus. You might want to equip the Wonder Wand anyway so you can try to get the Fuma Shuriken from the Minotaur. Should that be the case, I suggest a Red Mage with a 
Lamia's Tiara equipped; when you don't need the Wonder Wand, you can equip the Dancing Dagger and attack physically, dealing about 3000 damage. If you have a Rune Blade, that's an easier option to consider.The Minotaur is a tough fight since its attacks are powerful and you don't have a full party, but, since all of his attacks are relatively easily countered, you can defeat him without much trouble. When Minotaur dies, he'll attempt to cast
Holy but lack the MP. (Fun fact: with an Ether you could've allowed him to actually cast the spell; it doesn't do over 1000 damage to a single target.)Within a second or five, you'll have to interact with the red sphere to engage in a fight with the Omniscient, or else Fork Tower will explode in a fashion similar to how Karnak Castle would have exploded if you let the timer run out.
Omniscient  Bestiary #292 |
Type |
Level |
HP |
MP |
Gil |
EXP |
Speed |
None | 53 | 16999 | 30000 | 0 | 0 | 26 | |
Strength |
Attack Mult. |
Magic Atk. |
Evasion |
Defense |
Mag. Def. |
Mag. Evade |
|
100 | 20 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 20 | |
Stolen Items |
Dropped Items |
||||||
None | |||||||
Command Immunities | Elemental Immunities | ||||||
Catch, Control | None | ||||||
Elemental Absorb | Elemental Weakness | ||||||
None |  | ||||||
Blue Magic | Status Immunities | ||||||
None | | ||||||
Strategy | |||||||
Get reflective status on, pronto. Once you do that, you can defend all of Omniscient's attacks aside from Drain while you pick away at the wizard with your own magic. | |||||||
Omniscient, the all-knowing archivist, randomly casts any of the above spells. Of course, there's a certain pattern to it, but it's not of any importance. When Omniscient hits 4000 HP, his attack pattern changes and he won't cast anything but fifth-tier Black magic, which deals over 2000 damage to a single target. Upon defeat, Omniscient will cast
Flare.When wearing
Reflect Rings you'll be immune to all of the wizard's attacks, disregarding Drain. This, however, does not guarantee your victory, as Omniscient's Regen casting will keep him healed from any spells that reflect off you. His weakness to Wind-elemental attacks cannot be exploited with !Gaia, but 
Aeroga and Syldra's Thunderstorm - boosted, naturally - really hurt him.The notable thing in this fight is the
Kornago Gourd. There are only two of them in this game, and this is the second. To obtain it in this battle, you'll have to exploit a loophole. Every non-Magic command is countered by a Return spell by Omniscient. Every non-Magic command? Nah, just for the occasion, and because you've finished your plate like a good boy for the past three years, Square made an exception and you get to use !Steal without the boss using Return. So, a Thief with !Blue or !Summon (a Thief can equip the Air Knife) is awesome to bring into the battle. The Reflect Ring takes priority over the Thief's Gloves so you might find yourself missing a few Steal attempts, but eventually you'll wade through all the Potions and get your Gourd. Note that using the Judgement Staff to 'cast' Dispel will cause Omniscient to counter with Return.If you lack
Reflect Rings, by the way, you can set it with Reflect, Carbuncle's Ruby Light or Dragon Defense (Dragon Fang + Phoenix Down), but you'll have to make sure it stays throughout the fight, as non-inherent Reflect tends to fade off after a while.The fight with Omniscient isn't a difficult one, and when it's all over Fork Tower fades from this existence to pass into another. The Catapult, resting place of the airship, is now freed so we can free Cid.
Holy is a massively powerful spell, and your only source of Holy-elemental damage. Its power can be boosted by the Sage's Staff and the 
Rune Chime, the latter of which you probably haven't had access to (it's a rare drop in the final dungeon). Flare is non-elemental and therefore weaker than boosted black third-tier elemental spells. It does almost entirely disregard the target's Magic Defense, though, and it looks pretty spiffy. Both new spells are also available as Spellblade effects. Holy is just like Firaga and the like, but Holy-elemental. Flare adds 100 to the blade's Battle Power and allows the attack to ignore all but 25% of the target's Defense; Flare is the only Spellblade effect that simply powers up the blade (significantly!) without having to check for elemental properties.When you're done, the Tower will have disappeared and the Catapult will be open once again. Fly your Airship into it to find Cid (more specifically, go down the stairs into the room with that button that opened the hole all that time ago). Cutscences, cutscenes.
Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy V
Version 6
©1997–2024 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.
Version 6
©1997–2024 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.