In the course of randomly entering strangers’ houses in Cid’s town, we came upon a woman, whose lover (I think) went into the mountains to the east to hunt down a dragon, but has never returned. We nicely decide to find him, so once again we have had some good fortune in figuring out what to do next.

At the moment, however, I think we’re a little inexperienced for dragons, and we can’t afford any of the new weapons and spells in this town. To earn some cash and experience, we march back to the formerly cursed town and explore the mithril cave in the southern part of the town. It was here that mummies wiped us out in three rounds of combat the last time we fought.

This time, however, we extract revenge. We stomp all over our enemies, find the secret passage at the back of the mine, and hack our way to some treasure chests. Inside lie two mithril swords, which our warrior happily equips.

Unlike Final Fantasy I and II, the random encounters in Final Fantasy III are—so far—much less frequent. As a result, we still don’t have much cash to buy stuff in Cid’s town. I think I’m going to spend an hour or so wandering the countryside to build up some combat skills and earn some cash before attempting to fight the dragon.

Status: A grinding we will go
Time: 4+ hours
Experience: Level 8

Sure enough, after a little wandering about the now uncursed town we bump into Cid, who is ecstatic about coming back into human form. He decides to let us keep his flying ship, on the condition that we fly him back to his home town.

You guessed it, things aren’t so simple. It seems that there is a huge boulder blocking the mountain pass, and Cid wants to mash it with his flying ship. We get our gear together, board the ship, and fly straight into the boulder. This destroys the rock…and our ship. We all fall sprawling to the ground. Good one, Cid!

Amazingly, we all survive intact, and promptly fight our way to Cid’s town on foot. There, he thanks us profusely and decides to build us another flying ship. We’ll move forward by exploring this new town tomorrow.

Status: Window Shopping

The crystal babbled to us again about being the chosen ones in a large battle between the Light and the Dark, and anointed us the Warriors of the Light (or something like that), then promptly sent us on our way.

We headed to the cursed town to check things out, but everyone was still in gingerbread form. Humm. Off to the castle, where we meet then tag along with the king’s daughter as she throws the mithril ring into a sacred pool to break the curse! Viola! All is saved, and the world returns to normal.

With this, we can now choose jobs! I chose a warrior, a black magician, a white magician, and a monk, but I may change the monk to a red magician soon. I’m not really sure what we’re supposed to do next, but I figure that will come in time, as the game has pretty much beaten me over the head in pointing me in the right direction. For now, we’ll buy some gear and explore the now uncursed town.

Status: Making Progress

With the Whiteslayer sword in hand, our party boarded Cid’s flying ship and headed north from the castle, to the cave where the king’s daughter was reportedly taken. Once inside, we promptly started battling our way through some undead nasties. Armed with the Whiteslayer, we took down enemies quickly: our sword could take one foe down with one hit, and rarely did they come at us with more than two attackers. As a handy backup, we could damage undead with our healing spells.

In no time, we stumbled upon the king’s daughter, who was in fine shape and apparently looking to recover the mithril ring from the Jinn herself. She joined our adventure and gave us some valuable hints on the way.

After some more exploring, we found the evil Jinn. We parlayed some, then got busy trying to obliterate each other. The Jinn took a bit of convincing, but in fairly short order, he surrendered and gave us the mithril ring we needed to break the curse. At that point, strangely enough, we vanished…

…and found ourselves back in the cave with the all-powerful Crystal!

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

With an impending battle against undead forces in our near future, we thought it would be a smart idea to get the sword that lies in the tower on the western side of the castle. One of the castle gingerbread thingies told us it has special powers against the undead.

We quickly and easily made it to the top of the tower and grabbed the powerful Whiteslayer sword. Coming back down, however, was not so easy, as we had to fight our way through an assortment of more powerful enemies. Still, we hacked our way out efficiently, then headed back in to the castle to rest and prepare to assault the cave where the king’s daughter lies.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose