FF6 Fewest Steps Challenge

Lately I have been trying to complete Final Fantasy 6 using the fewest number of steps possible.

I’ve been surprisingly successful so far, and even given up once, only to return and find a way. Right now I am in Kefka’s Tower (with only Edgar, Celes, and Setzer, of course) and I need only to beat Poltergeist with Edgar before moving on to (finally) reunite my team members and try (surely in vain) to defeat Kefka, and I am quite stuck.

Has anyone else tried this challenge before (mathematically fewest steps, or just fewer than normal)? Any successes? What were your scores?

I hate math

hehehe….
no, i haven’t.

that sounds hard, therefore, I am not gonna try it…

I was considering doing a fewest steps challenge. Doing it with only Setzer, Celes, and Edgar makes sense, I suppose, but why not add Gau too? For the addition of maybe 100 steps in the Veldt, you can pick him up and have a fourth warrior on your team.

Actually, you could get Terra too with very few steps added onto your score. Unless you’re going for absolute mathematically fewest steps.

The more I think about it, the more I like the sound of this challenge. It requires you to be very inventive in many different aspects of the game. I haven’t tried it yet myself, but here are some things to consider:

Travel. You’d need to find every single way that you can travel throughout the game without increasing your step count. I believe all of these ways don’t increase step count in any way:

– Riding a Chocobo
– Lete River
– Serpent’s Trench
– Sailing the Seas
– Airship

Items. If you’re going for a game with the minimum number of steps mathematically possible, that also means that you need to skip a lot of shops and villages. However, fortunately, you have a thief on your side. Get him stealing as much as possible, and you shouldn’t run out of tonics or potions.

EXP. Just how do you gain EXP in a game like this? You can’t just wander around the Dinosaur Forest for hours on end. All of your moves are ideally going to be from point A to point B with no deviation. Here’s some suggestions I have:

– In the very beginning, kill off Vicks and Wedge as soon as possible so that Terra gains as much EXP as soon as possible. Her higher amounts of EXP will influence everyone ahead of her. In the same fashion, it might be wise to have parties of two or three in some places instead of four for the EXP increase.
– The Lete River EXP building trick. By now, you’ve likely heard about how you can earn loads of EXP on the Lete River by just going around and around in circles. Well, it works here too, because your step count will never go up! While I don’t recommend you leave your SNES running and earning EXP all the way to level 99, an hour spent here would definitely be helpful to your cause.
– Once Celes has joined you permanently in the WoB (after you get Strago and Relm), keep her in your party at all times. Celes’ level in the WoR is what helps to determine everyone else’s level there too.

Decisions, Decisions. You want the fewest steps possible, but that means missing a lot of treasure chests and items that are out of your immediate route. Sometimes, the item in the chest or shop will be too important to resist. Here’s a few items I’d make sure to get, even if it’s a few steps out of my way:

– Thief Knife: Locke stealing AND attacking in the same turn? Sweet! Probably Locke’s most valuable weapon in the game, especially when we’ll hardly ever be buying merchandise. Oh, and Shadow can use it too.
– Sprint Shoes: For those timed scenarios, it’s hard to pass the game without them.
– Running Shoes: Casts "Haste". Probably a must-have, particularly when Celes and Edgar are fighting the Tentacles.
– Noiseblaster: I’m sure you could get by without it, but this weapon can be an absolute lifesaver. Plus, a group of five Pipsqueaks all casting Quartr on themselves is funny.

There’s other points to bring up, too. Like, do you stick with only Celes, Edgar, and Setzer in the WoR, or do you take the extra steps to get easily accessible characters like Gau, Terra, Sabin, and Mog? In the Imperial Base, when you must talk to as many soldiers as possible, do you do it, or do you wait out the four minutes and lose the potential items? Plus, keep in mind that you’ll only get thirteen espers (fourteen if you get Terra in WoR).

Is it really fun though?
Youd be insane to do it on your first try of course but then you know what your missing.
It would just bug me if i try’d to do it. The constant " oh yea theres a elixer in that clock, but wait thets Five more steps." would do me in. >:O
I couldn’t do it, id give up in no time. 🙁

It’s just like any other challenge. Natural Magic Game, you can’t use Espers; Low Level game, you gotta run from everything.

I’ve started a Fewest Steps Game… I’ll let you know how far I get on it.

I really think it would be a nice idea , hehehe i am surely up to the challenge and i’ll send you my step record like in 3 or 4 days. The trick for succes is obiously the lete river exp trick to reach level 99 in like 3 days. but it would be surely helpful to have a turbo controler and to customize the battle screen so terra attacks, edgar uses autocrossbow and bannon uses health. but for killing bosses without making much effort you could use the vanish – doom trickto kill enemies instantly with low level characters, learning vanish or doom won’t cost any steps since shoat and phantom are available at the magitek research facility. and the magic can be learned during the game. Also if you have a Snes it would be very helpfule to use the sketch bug for infinite items on zone eater, ice dragon or master pug so you can sell the unuseful and sell them to make GP.

GP hasn’t been a problem so far. Remember, fewest steps also means very few opportunities to actually buy anything.

I won’t recommend doing Lete River up to level 99, however I will say that it’s a good idea to level up enough that Banon has at least 250 HP. Two reasons for this: one, Ultros’ Tentacle attack on a single character takes 250 HP from your life… this would normally kill Banon (since, if you’re doing fewest steps, you won’t have True Knight at this point in time to protect him), and two, Banon gets 250 HP at about the same time that Sabin hits level 15, and Fire Dance is a great attack to have for the Phantom Train.

Yes i agree with that, that is why gp would help a lot, you’ll only have to stop to shop like once or two times depending how many items you need specially tents and status curative items.

Also the lete river trick is only thinking that terra or edgar would get to have a high level on the world of ruin, therefore it would be a lot easier to beat certain botering enemies like the mantodea or other undead enemies that would be imposible to kill by using vanish – doom. But i totally agree with you not leveling unp until lv 99 with a turbo controler on SNES because it would be a source of many bugs and even could come to delete the file in SNES on the playstation you may have the disadvantage that the infinite item bug won’t work.

Actually, it’s more than that. When a new character is added to your party, the way that character’s level is calculated is based on the levels of your other characters. That’s why, when you get Mog, he’s always 4 levels higher than the rest of your characters’ average level. So, levelling up on the Lete River helps all of your future characters as well.

You make a good point about the shops, though. Get enough GP, and you can buy 99 Potions or something like that.

For anyone who’s interested, I’m at the battle in Narshe against Kefka, just after finishing the three scenarios. Terra’s standing on the savepoint, and my step count is 3846. If I had planned a bit better, and taken no wrong turns, I could have shaved that down by at least 120.

I’ve recently taken up the challenge again… and if you’re trying this, you may want to know that by the time you are standing outside the Opera House, the lowest number of steps you can possibly have is somewhere in the 4600 range.

I wish there was some sort of compensation for completing it to a certain point with a certain number of steps. I couldn’t do this challenge, as I, for some reason, like having them run around for no reason. In any FF game. 😉

Also, for the future: Don’t post 3 posts in a row. Just edit your last one.

Yea thats like me to. I just walk up to EVERYTHING and click X(or circle) just to see if the game says anything or i get an item.

Sorry about posting three in a row. I’ve still been trying the challenge, but the problem is that there’s no area beyond the Lete River when you can get EXP without having to use up steps too.

I now know that it’s possible to reach Kefka’s Tower in less than 11,000 steps. However, unless you spent several hours levelling up on the Lete River, you’ll never survive the tower. I powered up until Sabin was at level 15 on the Lete River… by the time I hit Kefka’s Tower, the average level of my party was 25, and I had to split my six characters into three groups of two (none of them knowing any major magic spells). With such a weak party, I don’t think I’ll be able to get through Kefka’s Tower.

I might make a FAQ on GameFaqs about this, but there seems to be very few people interested in it.