A Whole New World: The Overworld Map

"Take a few steps... you're bound to run into one!"

Yes, the random battles on the Overworld map. Now that you practically start with the Falcon before you've explored much of the Overworld Map, you never actually need to fight these guys. However, there are quite a few monsters here you won't find anywhere else, so even if it's for something as trivial as a full Rage list or just for the sake of meeting them, I'll try to give a run-down on which enemies appear where. Editor's Note: With that in mind, note that any time this guide says anything about "right now," or "do this later," we're assuming that you're doing this exploration immediately after getting the airship. The savvy gamer will adapt the advice based on how powerful they are.

In other words: Needless violence against grazing animals! It's a shame there's no option in this game to simply stay on the Falcon while blasting level 3 spells on defenseless livestock down below.

For the record, the grasslands are the green tiles, the wastelands the grey ones.

Southeastern Continent

Harpy attacks physically with Battle and !Grip. Harpy, on occasion, uses Aero to attack as well. When hit by a Magic spell, it might counter with a Battle or Cyclonic attack.

Gloomshell is weak to Ice-elemental attacks and acts like the Hermitcrab monsters you faced earlier (with Celes most likely, trying to save that kid in Tzen); Battle and the Stop-setting Net attack are used, and when a single Gloomshell is non-fatally damaged it may use !Rock, which sets Petrify.

Prussians use nothing but Battle and !Bear Hug to attack physically. Prussian is pretty boring, though it does have an awesome Rage to offer (Land Slide, no elemental weaknesses), so make sure you meet one.

Southwestern Continent

Reach Frog: This here frog is pretty famous among the FFVI bug hunters; with the broken Rippler attack that swaps more statuses than it should (such as cuties like Morph, Rage, Dance, and Shadow's Dog Block) and the ability to use a Jump attack, this is probably the most bug-infected opponent you'll ever have the pleasure to face. You shouldn't notice them if you're playing 'normally' though. He uses Battle or !Tongue (Seizure) the first round, a Jump attack the second, he'll come down the third turn, and uses either Battle or Rippler the fourth. Loop from there. Reach Frog is weak to Ice-elemental attacks and vulnerable to instant death attacks, so do whatever floats your boat there.

Without over-leveling, Hoovers are strong enough to kill you. They give 5 Magic Points and quite a lot of Experience Points, but you probably want to stay out of the desert at this moment. Hoovers are dangerous and prone to cause you pain, death, and mild discomfort. They're big defensive weakness is their lack of Death Protection, which should be exploited. Causing HP damage is just going to cause mean double Sand Storm counters and their amount of MP is too large to deplete every time you encounter one. Note that Hoover is protected from Petrify, so the fact that Break's Hit Rate is superior to Doom isn't going to help you. Avoid percentage-based attacks, as they allow counters. You may think that I'm being anal about these counter-attacks. This is entirely justified, make no mistake. While Sand Storm is an attack that is easily evaded, it's still three times as dangerous as Hoover's standard physicals. You'll simply want to evade it. If you have all characters protected with Thunder Shields, Paladin Shield, and/or Minerva or an MBlock% of 128, it doesn't really matter what you do as you'll laugh in the dusty, non-existent face of Sand Storm. What has an eye, but no face? A tornado. Amaze your friends!

Cactrots give 10 Magic Points, which make them great spell teachers. However, not every character can easily dispatch them, and since they share the desert with the Hoover enemies, reaping the benefits at this moment may be too dangerous for your team. Cactrots are little 3 HP buggers who use Blowfish on you every turn (and ten times Blow Fish in a single turn if you take too long killing them). At this stage in the adventure, Edgar can easily take care of them with a Drill or Chainsaw attack, or have Sabin unleash a Pummel Blitz technique. Setzer's Dice work too. Everything else misses if it can, or will do only 1 HP worth of damage.

Crawlers stand out because they are so very, very annoying. They rank up there with those guys who chew their gum too loudly, or obnoxious girls who just don't get that, yes, you can be too pushy. Crawlers use Battle and !Feeler, which sets Poison. When alone, Crawlers start to use the level-halving Dischord attack and Raid, which drains HP from you (if that isn't obvious). Ice-elemental attacks and instant death attacks are their bane, and multi-target Confusion (such as the NoiseBlaster) is a great move, as they will start using Step Mine on each other.

If you Confuse a Sprinter, they start using Cyclonic on themselves! Sprinters are vulnerable to such instant-death attacks. They may use Pearl Wind to restore HP, !Drainbeak which strangely enough drains MP (it tends to do nothing since they hardly ever consume their own MP), or just attack physically too. They may drop (1/8 chance) an Imp's Armor, a piece of armor that absorbs Water-elemental attacks and has extremely grand Defense and Magic Defense, although it only grants the Defense aspect when the wearer has the Imp status. There's more to learn about this situation.

Another land-roaming lizard, Geckorex stands out due to it being the source for another piece of Imp equipment, that being the Tortoise Shield it rarely drops. Geckorex is a basilisk of some sort; it attacks physically and uses !Petriglare to set Petrify. In Rage, Control and Sketch attacks, petrification abilities run rampant. It's immune to Petrify, obviously. Ice-elemental attacks, as usual, (all lizards are weak to the element) and non-Petrification inducing instant death attacks work too. Geckorex have 5000 HP and are quite sturdy, so you might want to take advantage of that last bit of advice.

Spek Tor is a ferocious little critter that pounces into combat despite the fact an emo singer's bad hair day could knock it out cold. With 250 HP and no special amount of defenses, Spek Tor won't be long for the battlefield. When you confuse them, they may use Acid Rain, which kills them all. Spek Tor grants Ragers a great skill in the Blaster attack, which is a single- or multi-target instant death attack that, unlike pretty much every other instant death attack, doesn't check for Stamina. This doesn't mean much except for the fact that Stop/Blaster and Sleep/Blaster combos do always work. Spek Tor attacks physically only, by the way, so nothing to mention there.

Theoretically, Mantodea is merely Battle/Special cannon fodder. I should mention here that Mantodea's Battle attacks have the power to one-hit destroy a single character by pure damage output. You'll want to avoid that, and when hunting in these regions, the Clear status is definitely a plus. !MindReaper just takes away MP, but since Mantodea never uses MP-reliant moves, it'll always do 0 damage unless you used Rasp or Osmose on the massive mantis.

Triangle Island

Yeah, you'll want to lay the Zone Eater for a while. Not that it's going to kill you, but strangely enough, it will transport you to a dungeon where you'll run into plenty of monsters that probably will kill you at this stage of the game. There's no good reason to dive in there now. It's an odd monster indeed. It absorbs Ice-elemental attacks, is weak against Pearl-elemental attacks, and nullifies all other elements. And all it seems to use is a rare Demi spell and the Engulf attack. Engulf is pretty much the same as Sneeze; it removes a single character from battle. If you run away with some characters 'in the body of Zone Eater', you'll just find them in your party at the end. If you kill the thing after some of your characters have been eaten, likewise.

However, if your entire team fell victim to the Engulf attack, you'll find yourself in one of the worlds this Zone Eater ate; a cave, filled with humans (or at least, humanoids) bent on your destruction for some reason that doesn't involve logical thinking. Best to be on your guard.

Northeastern Continent

The Brachosaur is the strongest random encounter in the game, and you absolutely, positively don't want to mess with one at this time. It has the properties you'd expect: Over 46000 HP, extremely high level (77), immunity to every single status ailment you could throw at it (including instant death attacks) and a very, very strong Special in !Swing (Battle * 6). Next to Battle, which you'll normally see (and which leaves quite a bruising all by itself), it can use some very strong attacks and spells, including Disaster (which it can multi-target, sets Dark, Imp, Condemned, Mute, Muddle, and Float), Meteor (non-elemental barrier-piercing spell that hurts a lot), Sneeze (a god-send in this battle, as it means you get to embrace the sweetness of life for a little longer), and Ultima. Ultima is like Meteor only so much stronger it'll do over 5000 HP worth of damage to every character you have. Unless your party is a single character, in which case you'll get to see this novelty of a monster inflicting 9999 damage to that poor soul. In the future, you can beat Brachosaur with Relm's Control skill, a few other dirty tricks or just plain kill the bastard with old fashioned violence before it can do the same to you. There's a decent enough reason to do so too, as it has a rare Ribbon for Stealing and a rare Economizer drop too (sets the MP cost of every Magic spell and Lore technique to 1). At the moment, however, this is not an option.

The opponents in the fabled Dinosaur Forest are tough. Brachosaur is a rare freak occurrence, while Tyranosaur are dangerous enough as-is. Tyranosaurea have incredible physical strength, which is especially bad since not only can they channel this in a !Bite attack (Battle * 8), they also occasionally double-team your party from both sides, which is not a fun time. When a monster attacks from behind, its physical attacks will do more damage and become unblockable (although Interceptor and Golem can block these attacks, the Image status is useless in this context). On top of that, Tyranosaurea have the power to cast the Meteor spell, which damages the entire party for over 1500 HP.

To stop this madness, cast a combination of Sleep and Slow on these dangerous dinosaurs and pound away with magical attacks. Ice-elemental attacks are the bomb, so Ice 2 and Ice 3 spells and Tritoch's Tri-Dazer really put the hurt on these babies.

I wouldn't advise going in the Dinosaur Forest right now, but if you must have an Imp Halberd immediately, Save beforehand and make sure you know how to make your opponents snooze the battle away. If not, there's no chance you'll survive an encounter.

TumbleWeeds are strange creatures that fall easily to L.5 Doom attacks, though you won't be able to cast it if you've followed the walkthrough so far. They use Battle and !Blinder, which sets Dark. When alone, a Tumbleweed may use Lifeshaver to recover HP. They're weak to Fire-elemental attacks and vulnerable to instant death, so take advantage of the knowledge I have now given unto you.

Northern Continent

Not much more to say about these now!