Final Fantasy/The Crystal of Fire

Treasure: 10 Gil, 155 Gil, 750 Gil, 795 Gil, 880 Gil, 1250 Gil, 1455 Gil, 1520 Gil, 1520 Gil, 1760 Gil, 1760 Gil, 1975 Gil, 2000 Gil, 2750 Gil, 4150 Gil, 7340 Gil, Potion x2, Antidote x2, Gold Needle, Tent, Cottage, Staff, Claymore, Mythril Axe, Ice Brand, Mythril Helm x2, Flame Mail, Mythril Shield, Flame Shield, Mythril Gloves, Canoe.

Crescent Lake
Head back to Crescent Lake to heal and save. Exit the town and fly west a little was and north until you see the volcano. Land on the grass in front and head in.

Floor 1
The first floor is just a very large circular room with lava practically everywhere, save the few little dots of safe ground here and there. There's no treasure here, and more importantly, no enemies that will give you any real trouble. The obvious path to the next floor would take you down around the bottom, then back to the top around the left side of the floor. An easier choice would be to just cross the lava field to the left of the entrance to Mt. Gulg. You'll take some damage but generally no more than you would if you took the first path. If you went through the Trials already you'll have the Healing Staff, which can counter the damaged caused by lava.

Floor 2
Floor 2 is, in a nutshell, a long corridor connected to a very large room which coincidently has a large cache of treasure, but almost all of it is guarded by some rather annoying enemies, such as Pyros and the other Pyrolisks. Pyros are tough, but weak against Ice spells, so use them and they'll die rather quickly. Pyrolisks are nothing without a group as they are "pack hunters" so to speak. They are pretty weak but they use the instant-kill spell Glance often, and when you're dealing with a group of Pyrolisks, this means trouble. Use a strong spell or the Gauntlets that can hit multiple targets to get rid of them easily. Once you've collected the treasure, the stairs to floor 3 are at the far end of the aforementioned corridor, which you can reach via the two doors near the far bottom left corner of the large room.

Floor 3a
Ho, hum... just another inane floor checkered with lava patches. There's no treasure here, just head to the right and you eventually see the stairs to floor 4. The path to the left of the stairs leading back to floor 2 is a dead end, so don't bother.

Floor 4a
There are actually two separate sections of floor 4 (and floor 3, for that matter), so you'll have to go down, up, and back down to get to floor 5. You'll appear in a wide lava field with occasional "islands" of safe ground to step on There are no chests here so just hotfoot it to each island and you should see some stairs at the bottom right side of the floor that head back up.

Floor 3b
This floor is a lot like the floor 3a, except that the entire floor is broken into a series of small rooms and some long corridors with wide lava pools. Have one of your characters use the Healing Staff every turn and the damage from the lava won't accumulate. There's nothing here that you haven't dealt with before, so walk (or run) left past two of the rooms, then go all the way down, then go all the way to the left again. Stairs that go back down? Yes!

Floor 4b
Unlike most the other floors here, this one has lots of treasure, including the vaunted Ice Brand. It's the strongest sword you'll have for quite awhile. Too bad for the stupid sound it makes (it almost sounds like it's going to break every time you use it). The stairs to floor 5 are at the very bottom. It shouldn't be very hard to find.

Floor 5
Well, you're finally near the Fiend of Fire. There's a choice of direction here. Actually eight directions but the two of interest are the southwest path and the west path. Head down the west path first for a nice piece of equipment, guarded by a Red Dragon. Once you've collected the contents of the chest, walk down the other path to find the orb. Heal up and touch it.

Marilith
Marilith has strong physical attacks that can do more than 100 damage to a Warrior and well over 200 to a White Mage or Black Mage. In addition to that, she has several mid-range spells that can wear you down easily. The first thing you should do in this battle is cast NulFire and NulBolt to lessen the amount of damage caused by her spells. After that, your White Mages should cast Blink, Shld2, Invs1/Invs2 until Marilith can't hit you anymore.

As for your Black Mages, they are out of luck. Marilith has a good resistance to all of his spells, even ice, which you would think she would be weak against. Just use up your strong offensive spells like Ice2, Ice3 (if you have it), and Bind, which will work well if she continues to pound on your mages. Curiously, Fire3 actually does decent damage to Marilith. Your physical attackers will be doing much of the damage here so also use your Mages to boost their attacks. After all of that, she should bite the dust soon.

Touch the crystal again and then enter the warp to get sent to the surface.

Chapter 8: The Crystal of Water >>