Final Fantasy V/The Fire Crystal

Walz (return)
Go back to Walz for clues on what to do next. In the town, you learn that the king was wounded and is recuperating in the castle. The soldier you saw trying to protect the crystal is now at the castle as well. Go to the castle and find the king in his chambers, left of the throne room. The king tells the party that a meteor also fell in Karnak, so they must go there to protect the Fire Crystal. Now go to the barracks, located in the 2nd floor, and talk to the soldier who's also recuperating in bed. He says something about warping from Karnak while examining the meteor there. A mountain range around Tule blocks the air route, so it looks like the only way to get to Karnak is to warp in the reverse direction from the meteor in Walz.

Go back to the meteor and through the open door to go inside. At the innermost point is a warp tile similar to the one in the Wind Shrine. Step on the tile and, after a short cutscene, you're taken to a similar tile in another meteor. Get back outside to find yourself opposite the Tule mountain range.

Town of Karnak
Head west, then north following the shore, turn left when you reach a gap in the mountain, and follow the valley south. You reach the Town of Karnak. There are a castle and a boat nearby but you can't enter because of guards.

Go to the inn on the east side and rest for 20GP. The Item shop is here and has the standard inventory. Go west to the pub where you can pick up some interesting gossip and complete another part of the Pianos subquest. After doing everything else here, go shopping.

The magic shop is closed but the weapon and armor shops are both open, just south of the pub. When you peruse the inventory you may notice that the prices seem too good be true. That's because they are too good to be true and the shops were meant to lure you in and be captured by soldiers. A cutscene begins.

Karnak Castle
The soldiers accuse you of being monsters from the meteor, which is, admittedly, half right. You find yourself in a prison cell. After a few moments, an old man in the next cell blows up the wall between you. Talk to him to learn that he was trying to escape but broke into your cell instead. He introduces himself as Cid, the inventor of the crystal amplifier. Cid was trying to warn people about the Fire crystal being in danger of breaking, but was thrown in jail for his efforts. You show Cid one of the crystal shards to prove that you too are trying to save the crystals before it's too late. The chancellor enters; it appears that the crystal is showing signs of stress and they can't shut down the amplifier that's running the Fire Ship. Cid offers to go shut down the ship and says he needs your help to do it. The chancellor agrees after a bit of blackmail from Cid.

You are now free to go. Talk to the guards on the way out to learn that someone called the Werewolf has been seen in the area, and the Queen of Karnak has gone missing. You may notice there are several chests and doors that are visible but can't be reached because there are fires in the way. As you leave, the Werewolf appears at the gate but soldiers scare him away.

Town of Karnak (return)
Return to Karkak to update your spells and equipment now that the shops are open for real. There is Mythril armor to replace the Iron armor from from Walz. Don't buy the Fire Rod as you don't need it right away and you'll get at least one for free very soon. The magic shop, located in the southeast corner, has so many spells that they need three counters. There are quite a few new items and you might not be able to afford everything, but keep in mind that your next enemies are likely to be Fire based so your spells should probably be Ice based to counter them.

The dungeon coming up is a bit of a challenge, but you can prepare yourself a bit by stocking up on Eye Drops and having the SilvrGlasses equipped on your main fighter. When you're done, exit town, save, and head for the ship south of the castle.

The Fire-Powered Ship
When you enter the ship, Cid welcomes you and explains that the engine is still drawing power from the crystal, and that monsters are present in the steamship. He leads to you the door to the cabin. Unlike the Walz towers, finding your way around the ship is tricky and if you're not careful you'll wind up hopelessly lost inside. One type of monster here uses a Flash attack when alone, which inflicts blindness on your entire party, and which a Blue Mage can learn. The SilvrGlasses picked up in Walz will make a character immune to blindness; that pair is the only one in the game so far, so use Eye Drops on the rest. Mages don't need to see to cast spells, so you don't need to cure them right away, but fighters will be pretty much useless until they can see what they're attacking.

The MottleTraps found in the bowels of the ship might self-destruct on you. If they do, the Blue Mage can pick up Exploder for his list of spells. At this point, though, it's a huge risk because these mechs have higher HP than the party does. Make no mistake, you will die!

The first two rooms have wooden floors and nothing in them at the moment. Continue down to a room with a brown metallic floor where you will start to encounter random monsters; call this "the first hold" for reference. There are four ways out of the hold, not counting the way you came in. All except one are dead ends, though all lead to treasure at least. There is a door near the entrance in the southeast corner, a ladder to a catwalk in the southwest corner, a hatch on the east side which you have to circle around and approach from the north, and a door in the northeast corner which is the way forward.

The last door opens to an elevator. Check the lever on the left to go up to the next level and exit to a catwalk. Follow this to the northwest corner then ride down another elevator and exit to another large room, call this "the second hold". This room is divided into a number of sections; you start in the center but the others can't be reached at the moment. Climb the ladder to an air duct like the movie cliche. Follow this and eventually you come out in the southwest section.

Take the door here and ride a third elevator up to a small room with three doors on the north side and four air vents on the south side. Call the room "the hub"; this is where things start to get confusing. It simplifies things a bit to know that you don't need to explore any of the doors; the one on the left you just used to come in and the other two allow you return to this room after traveling through the air ducts. All the air ducts drop you onto a room full of conveyor belts. You don't have any control while riding them so you just hold on until you land somewhere.

The extreme left air duct takes you back to the southwest section of the second hold, you then have to retrace your steps to get back to the hub. The middle left air duct takes you to the south east section of the second hold, the stair here leads to treasure and the door leads to a small room with two doors. Here, the door on the right opens to an elevator taking you back to the hub, and the left is the way forward. Go right for now since there is more to explore here.

The middle right air duct in the hub takes you to the south central section of the second hold. Grab the treasure here and take the conveyor belt to the central section, then retrace your steps back to the hub. The extreme right air duct takes you to the north east section of the second hold. Enter the air duct on the right and follow it until it eventually takes you to the northwest section of the second hold. Grab the treasure and ride the conveyor belt to the northeast section; the door here opens to an elevator to the hub.

When you've explored everything, take the middle left air duct again and this time take the left door in the small room to find a save point. Save, use a tent if you've done any fighting on the way, and continue north.

The next room is a maze of platforms but there is only one way in and one way out so it's just a matter of getting through. The idea is to activate the levers which cause the platforms to move around and create a path to the exit. You should be able to find the way by flipping the levers more or less at random but here are the details just in case. Start with the lever directly in front of you and ride the platform north. Flip the lever here; this doesn't actually help you get out but you need to activate it to reach some treasure. Now go south, circle to the west and flip the lever there to extend a platform across the room. Cross and activate both levers at the other side; one retracts the bridge and the other opens a path south. Follow the path and flip the lever to the north while standing on the platform next to it. (The lever to the south allows you to get back to the start and if you do this you'll need to reset the room by leaving and coming back.) There is another lever when you're done riding the platform but this is only to get back as well. Grab the treasure (assuming you activated the switch that allows you to reach it) and exit.

You enter the Power Room where the Queen Karnak can be seen standing in the center. Approach and she is suddenly enclosed by a shadow and speaks to you as if possessed by some evil force. Flames come out of the engine and attack.

The queen is released from the spell after you defeat the monster, but she falls to the floor. She says something about being controlled by a dark, evil force trying to be reborn, then points to a pipe that leads to the Fire Crystal.

Head north into the pipe.

Fire Crystal
Continue until you reach the Fire Crystal, a cutscene begins. The Werewolf breaks in and recognizes Galuf. Bartz tries to scare him off but it turns out he's friendly and trying to save the crystal. A soldier comes in and starts tampering with a lever in back of the room; it seems he's possessed by an evil force as well. You rush to the lever but it's broken. Then pipes start connecting themselves to the crystal starting an overload. The Werewolf tries to slow down the process and warns you to make your escape while you can, but you attempt to help him anyway. Unfortunately the floor starts to go and you fall through to the floor below. The fire Crystal finally shatters and the Werewolf disappears in the flames. Meanwhile, you notice that the flames that were continually burning have died away. You quickly go back upstairs to see crystal and the Werewolf are gone. realizing you the castle is about to blow, you rush back out, through the floor below and into a room with a save point.

Karnak Castle (escape)
Starting now you will have 10 minutes to escape from the castle. It's a good idea to save your progress here in case things go wrong since you don't want to have to repeat the previous boss battle. It only uses a few seconds to save because the timer doesn't run while you're in the save screen. You can also, in a glaring lapse in continuity, use a tent to heal overnight. It's better though to go back to the previous room and use the urn to restore your health.

While it is not difficult to escape the castle, the challenge is opening as many chests as possible within the time limit. Chests with money inside work normally, but chests containing an item also have monsters. Fleeing these battles may take less time than fighting them, but then you don't get the item from the chest. So unless you are strong and can wipe out these enemies very quickly, you'll need to pick which items to go after and avoid being too greedy. You may have random battles with an enemy called Sergeant; you can use Flee to escape from these battles, but the normal escape seems to take much longer than usual with these. Remember to allow several minutes to defeat the final guards. Any chests left closed will be lost forever.

Don't obsess about getting every item since all will be found later in the game as well. So it's really a matter of when you get the items and how many you want to own by the end. One item you can definitely skip is the LgtningSkill since it will soon be available in a shop for a reasonable price. You can't have too many Elixirs, but there are others to be found throughout the game so it may not pay to go after them unless you have time to spare. Which of the remaining items you go after depends on which Jobs you're planning to concentrate on. For example you shouldn't bother going after the Shuriken if your not going to use Ninjas. Since you will probably develop the W. Mage job no matter what, you'll probably want to make the Esna spell a priority. Seven of the chests trigger a battle with a Gigas. Since these drop a Giant Drink each time it may be worthwhile doing some of those chests for that reason alone.

Continue to the next room, which you may recognize as the jail where you met Cid. There are chests in two of the cells here; check the cell doors to open them. The room after this is a kind of library with chests on either side. Now go up two levels to the 1st Floor. There are two doors here that connect to the 2nd floor. Each door leads to a different section and the sections are connected to each other by a small outside ledge to the south. there are a total of seven chests here. Also, in a corner of each section is a stairway to the roof, and winding routes back down to the lower levels where there is a chest. There are two final chests on either side of the 1st Floor as you exit.

You are met on the steps of the castle by Sergeant and his pets. This time you can't escape.

Note, if you find yourself with time left over you can go back into the castle to grab some chests you may have passed by.

Aftermath
There is now nothing left of the castle but three crystal shards. You collect them to learn three new Jobs, Trainer, Geomancer, and Ninja.

When you get control of your character again you'll find only a bit of rubble to mark the location of the castle. More importantly, the wall that separated Karnak from the region to the west was partially destroyed and you can now reach a new area. But first visit the ship again. Cid is there and, upset over the turn of events, runs off. The ship is unchanged except that the duct from the power room to the crystal room has been destroyed.

Now go back to Karnak to find a few changes. All the flames that were burning earlier have gone out allowing you to reach some treasure you couldn't get to before. You can find Cid in the upstairs room trying to drown his guilt with liquor. You try to get him to snap out of it but he's too far gone. Next go the the weapon/armor shop to find a new weapon merchant wandering around. Finally, go to the inn; you'll need to rest up for the next journey anyway. The chancellor is there and Queen Karnak is in a bed upstairs, delirious from her ordeal.