Final Fantasy VI Walkthrough
Written by Djibriel
Contributor
2.18: The Caves of Narshe
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Umaro's Room |
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Enemies: Tonberry, Onion Dasher, Anemone, Illuyankas, Knotty, Tzakmagiel, Tonberries, Yeti
Lore: 
Traveler
Party: Edgar, Sabin, Celes, Setzer, Mog
Whom to bring? Mog is ideal, as he's needed to obtain the 'sasquatch muscle' you meet later on. Otherwise, the same people that did well in when you first arrived in WoR Narshe will do well again here; the main danger posed by the cave monsters you'll find ahead is Imp-setting, which can be prevented by the
White Capes/Ribbons you already have anyways.Knotty are Mu palette swaps. Like Mu, they're un-Meteor Strike-able; I continue to wonder if they're just sitting in holes in the ground or ripple into our existence from a maddening rift in the space-time continuum. If this question doesn't confuse you, the Knotty'
Stone attack may; they have a 33% chance of using it in their second turn. Not only does the Stone attack set Confuse on a successful hit, it will also completely make you to eat dirt if your characters are level 33; it's the same level as Knotty, and as you know, Stone deals 7.5 as much damage when the level of the caster and the target as equal. Just make sure this doesn't happen by taking them out ASAP; they're weak to Fire, so make use of either the Rising Phoenix or the newly acquired 
Valigarmanda. also works like a charm. A multi-target charm, to be precise.Another theory for which I'd like to credit Suonymona mentions that Mu/Knotty are this game's version of Final Fantasy V's Nut Eaters/Skull Eaters. They're both squirrel-like in appearance the colors are consistent (brown for the weaker, grey for the stronger). Since Sabin has a childhood fear of 'Nut Eaters', maybe the Mu' and Knotty' non-Meteor Strikeable nature doesn't come from the fact they are unable to be lifted, but rather comes from the fact Sabin can't bring himself to perform the attack on them. This wouldn't explain Gogo's behavior, though.
Tzakmagiel are boring. Their Special, !Peck, sets Imp. Weak against Fire like everything in the cave, it doesn't really matter if you torch them or just use other kinds of violence. The Sketch command has a 3/4 shot at pulling Cyclonic from this freaky bipod, which works against both Tzakmagiel and Knotty. Tzakmagiel are called 'leaders of the little monsters' by the Anthology Bestiary. What that's supposed to mean is left to anybody's imagination.
Illuyankas are pretty sturdy with inherent Safe, Death protection, and the ability to absorb your Lightning-elemental attacks. They're weak against Fire and really don't do anything special AI-wise (Battle and !Pal Maker, which sets *gasp* Imp), so take your time, they're not very dangerous. They have a mouth-watering Rage, though (inherent Safe, Lightning-absorption, instant death protection, Giga Volt).
Tonberry. The Tonberry. The notorious creatures that look like they're waddling over for a hug yet actually intend to flay the flesh from your skull while you're still alive. They have a lot of Hit Points (8000) for a normal monster and possess two very strong attacks. Each round, this foe will use
Traveler. Since Traveler is unblockable, non-elemental, and barrier-piercing, there's no protection from it. I can't predict how much damage it will do to your party, but 1700 is a fair estimation, I'd say. Every time you damage a Tonberry, it will counter with a !Knife attack, which is eight times as strong as its normal Battle attack (which he never uses) - an incredible blow - and another Traveler attack. This thing slaughters you left and right! How to deal with one? The trick is the Imp status! Turn it into an Imp with the spell of the same name or Bad Breath. It'll start to do automatic criticals now, so if you aren't under the influence of Clear this is the time to set it. Now, you can just pound away without fear. The quickest ways to a dead Tonberry are Fire-elemental attacks and the Deepeye Rage. Since Tonberry is immune to instant death attacks but not to Petrify, most petrification attacks will fail where Dread Gaze will work. These enemies have a rare Tintinnabulum drop, which is pretty spectacular, but as a Tonberry encounter in itself is rare enough, it's hardly a good way to obtain them.Anemone are pretty passive enemies. When with other monsters, they will use !Imp Touch every now and then, which sets Imp. If they've been damaged, they will heal themselves a little with Megavolt; they absorb the element, so don't try to use it against them. If an Anemone will start to use Giga Volt on the party every turn if it is by itself, so you'll want to avoid that. They are weak to Fire, as you suspected.
Onion Dasher are monsters I find especially annoying for no specific reason. Their Special is called !Dash, and it doesn't set Imp; it sets Haste! That's why they use it on themselves every second turn, too. Otherwise, you just have to worry about physical attacks when they're with others or Imp Song when they're alone. Given that you've only seen Imp Song as a counter-attack so far, I should point out that Imp Song is actually a multi-target attack.
So, in general, slap on as many
Ribbons as you have and give White Capes to the other characters. You don't want to be turned into an Imp, and Ribbons are nice in the aspect of Confuse-protection for Stone. Summon Phantom at some point or just cast 
Vanish a couple of times; invulnerability is the goal here. Knotty' Stone isn't cast until the second round and Giga Volt and Imp Song only when the enemies in question are alone (don't allow it). Tonberry's Traveler is unavoidable, but you can set Imp, possibly revive the fallen characters, and quickly re-apply Clear. Fire-elemental attacks rule here, but the only strong one you probably have at this point is Valigarmanda's Tri-Dazer. 
Firaga spells clean house, though.Umaro's Cave is a cave with two themes. The first theme is out-of-battle, and it's pitfalls. Bloody, bloody pitfalls. They're not there to make you land on poisoned spikes or anything, but they do keep you from getting treasure. The other theme is Imp. Every monster here has the ability to turn you into one of those blasted Kappa water sprites.
When you land, you will have access to three parts of the cave. The far right one just leads you to a pitfall, so you have no business there. The one in the middle leads you to a chest with a Hi-Ether (the upper chest). Grab it and then return to the first cave you entered. Now, enter the far left cave-mouth. Make sure you don't stand on the two dark tiles there, as they are pitfalls. Walk around until you get a random battle. Make sure to end it with four characters with the Clear status.
Siren is nice to equip as well, but only necessary if you can't set Imp or Mute in any way. Now, open the chest. As you may have guessed, 'tis a monster-in-a-box.Tonberries are the more powerful yet more easily defeated version of Tonberry. The three of them simply walk up to you and use Battle every time they take a step. If they have taken eight steps, they use !Switchblade and return to their original position. If you hit them with a Magic spell, they counter with
Holy. Their Holy spell is fairly weak and not even a direct threat, but it does remove the Clear status, which opens you up to their physical attacks.When you fight them, do whatever you want, so long as you make sure you stay under Clear. Mute the lot, cast a multi-target
Bio, and cast a Hastega spell on them to speed up the Poisoning. They're weak against Fire, so the newly acquired summon attack, Tri-Dazer, packs a nice punch. The battle really revolves around staying invincible. Gau's Io Rage is really grand, as the Tonberries' level is really high. You know what hurts by now, I assume. If you have a character with the Steal command, you could try to nick a 
Minerva Bustier if you don't have two yet; the only situation in which you need more than one Minerva Bustier is a team that features both Terra and Celes, but it doesn't hurt to have the extra around. Do know, however, that due to the Tonberries' high level and the Minerva Bustier being a rare Steal, it really makes for a small chance of success.Once you're done, you'll have cleared the entire top floor, meaning that it doesn't matter if you go back to the first cave, enter the middle cave-mouth and descend the stairs to the lower level or just drop through a pitfall. Regardless, find the
Gauntlet in the chest here and push on. It's an easily maneuverable cave and you should reach the stairs before long. Ascend to find a switch. Ignore it; it triggers a pitfall right where you're standing. The next switch also does this, but allows you to enter a new part of the cave.This is the room of the sasquatch that Mog and various townspeople from Narshe were talking about earlier. The stairs up just lead to the point where you could see Umaro (the sasquatch) in the WoB and force you to fall down from there. It's a long hike back, and we still have work to do here, so don't mess around. Examine the bone carving in the middle of the room to find a piece of Magicite in it! Once you choose to remove the remains of
Midgardsormr from the carving, an enraged yeti comes for you! You should know better than to mess with art...Yeti  Bestiary #322 |
Type |
Level |
HP |
MP |
Gil |
EXP |
Humanoid | 33 | 17200 | 6990 | 10 | 0 | |
Strength |
Magic Atk. |
Evasion |
Defense |
Mag. Def. |
Mag. Evade |
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25 | 11 | 0 | 100 | 150 | 0 | |
Stolen Items |
Dropped Items |
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None | None | |||||
Status Immunities | Elemental Immunities | |||||
      | None | |||||
Elemental Absorb | Elemental Weakness | |||||
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Lores | Command Immunities | |||||
None | Control | |||||
Strategy | ||||||
So, you've had three major battles against relatively easily defeated monsters with a weakness to Fire. Yeti is no different: a relatively easily defeated monster with a weakness to Fire. Yeti employs all kinds of freaky attacks to try to damage you. Normally, he'll use Battle, !Tackle, and Blizzard. He uses physical attacks only when one of your characters is remains, but I see no reason for that to occur. Every 40 seconds (when 2 or more characters are alive), Yeti will either use Snowball (an unblockable ID attack that halves the target's current HP and sets Seizure), Surge, or Lode Stone (ID attack that takes off 75% of the targets current HP). Yeti may counter Fire-elemental attacks with either !Tackle or Blizzard, and every other kind of damage with !Tackle. Every third time Yeti is hit by a Magic spell, he'll use a Jump attack. The interesting part of this fight is the Green Cherry Item. When you use it on him or he uses it himself (automatically when he reaches 10240 HP), he will glow red. This means that Yeti sets Safe, Shell, Haste, and Regen on himself. Sadly for Yeti, he has Seizure immunity, so you never get to see Regen in action. The appearance of the Green Cherry means Dispel time for you! Dispel will remove all of his power-ups (so will Strago's Rippler Lore, by the way).Yeti is a very easy opponent. Since he has Berserk vulnerability, you can set it with the Berserk spell, summon Phantom, and effectively win the match right there. If this is not one of the options in your playbook, combining Sleep with Slow should really cripple him too. If status ailments are too cheap for you, Umaro is simply weak enough to defeat with damaging (so long as you heal when appropriate). Fira spells work just fine, as does Sabin's Phantom Rush, Dragon Horn Jump attacks, you name it. Expand Full Strategy | ||||||
After the battle is over, Umaro will be sitting in a corner looking sad and pummeled. But hey, you broke his statue and, I dunno, pummeled him, so I guess that makes sense. Don't be afraid to walk over to the brute; he won't attack you again. If you didn't bring Mog, he'll just go "Ooh..." and continue to sit there. If this happens, you can just return with Mog and talk to him later; he'll still be sitting there.
If you did bring Mog, though, he'll go talk to Umaro on behalf of the party. In a stunning display of taking advantage of the mentally disabled, Mog orders Umaro to join your cause. He'll stomp off to find the Falcon and wait there for you. You don't have to have Mog in your party to use Umaro, and using a Green Cherry on the character Umaro has no special effect over removing Imp like it always does.
Umaro, as a character, is generally considered the weakest character in the game. His stats are awesome: that's not the problem, and his Tackle and Character Toss attacks are nothing to scoff at. Not to mention the fact that with the two Relics made specifically for him (the
Berserker Ring and Blizzard Orb) he absorbs Fire and Ice while nullifying Lightning, taking care of the three basic elements in the game. Then why is Umaro still considered the weakest link? First off, you can't access his equipment. He's stuck with a feature-less, non-elemental 
Bone Club in his right hand and the Snow Scarf. Granted, the Snow Scarf is arguably the best armor to be 'stuck with', but this means that Umaro cannot adapt to a situation. Any character needs at least one Relic slot for sufficient damage output, which doesn't help here. He can't learn or cast Magic like all the other characters (not to mention that he can receive no Esper boosts either, as he can't equip them). He's uncontrollable from the beginning, so he can never react to a surprise KO with a Phoenix Down or fall back as a utility character.In short, Umaro is a completely one-dimensional character. This immediately explains his popularity with many first-time players; it's hard to go wrong with him. Every other character in the game can be tweaked to be superior to Umaro, but you would have to know how to do this in some cases, whereas it's impossible to really go wrong with Umaro: you bring him into battle, he'll do impressive damage.
For now, if you've followed the walkthrough so far, you'll have neither the
Berserker Ring nor Blizzard Orb, so the best Umaro right now is one equipped with an Gigas Glove (Hero's Ring works, but Umaro won't benefit from the increase in magical damage) and a Gauntlet. Since Umaro comes without a shield anyway, the Gauntlet raises both the offense (his normal physicals only, not Tackle and Character Toss) and defense of the raging snowman.Now, you can just cast the
Teleport spell to get out. Or walk, do whatever pleases you. The path Umaro took is the only way to leave Umaro's caves. Note: You just obtained Midgardsormr as well. Midgardsormr isn't as powerful as Valigarmanda, almost nothing is weak to the Earth element and he doesn't hit Floating targets, but Midgardsormr's Earth Aura is stronger than your level 2 spells so it's a nice Esper to summon for Terra/Celes/Relm/Strago if they haven't learned any truly powerful magic yet.
Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy VI
Version 6
©1997–2025 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
©1997–2025 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.