newcomer_guide - Career Day Wiki

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====== What is Career Day? ======

Career Day is an open world randomizer for Final Fantasy V.  Items, abilities, jobs, and even bosses are shuffled up, to provide a fresh playthrough each time.  However, those aren't the only changes: you're given vastly greater freedom to roam the game's world in an order you decide on.  Your goal is to successfully collect the Four Tablets, which will unlock doors within the Cleft of Dimensions. To do this, you'll go around the world, checking chests and shops for items, abilities and jobs, and defeating bosses to obtain [[key_items|key item]] checks. When you've progressed with enough key items, you'll gradually gain access in the Cleft of Dimensions, and you can challenge the final boss to claim victory. 

It is suggested that you have played through Final Fantasy V normally at least once; however, it isn't required.

====== How do I play? ======

You will need a rom of the SNES release of Final Fantasy V - either the original JP rom, or with the RPGe 1.1 translation patch applied.  Upload that rom at [[https://www.bigbridge.studio/careerday/ | the randomizer's page]], set your [[randomizer settings|preferred settings]], and then hit 'generate' to create a .zip file.  Download and extract that - it contains the randomized rom, as well as the .asm patch for that specific seed, and a spoiler log file.  The spoiler log contains the details of exactly what the game now contains where - if you ever feel completely stuck, you can look it up, but you shouldn't need to.

====== What major changes are made? ======

Aside from the randomization, Career Day has a variety of changes, big and small, to how the game progresses.

You begin the game with your full party, and immediate access to the airship.  You also possess an extremely important item called the **WarpShard**.  Using this item from your inventory will teleport you to a warp zone, where you can freely teleport to other worlds (You may need to unlock World 2/3 based on your options).  When you arrive in the worlds, your transportation will always be right next to you.

The game is progressed through tracking down and defeating Bosses.  Every [[boss locations|Boss Location]] in the game is still active.  After defeating a boss, you will get either a high-power piece of equipment, //or// a [[key items|Key Item]].  Key Items are how you progress - these finds allow you to open new locations with more bosses.  Bosses are randomized based on their location - a complex boss tiering system determines how the HP, boss stats, and AI each location has. The general idea is that although bosses are shuffled, their relative power will change based on where they appear in the game - World 1 has easier bosses, whereas World 2 and 3 get progressively more difficult. 

All rewards (which refer to event rewards, such as collecting Job Crystals, and chests, such as those in dungeons) will have randomized contents as well. Depending on your settings, these rewards can either be completely randomized, or they adhere to a logical tiering system that gradually places better items throughout the game. 

Similarly, shops have settings for completely randomized or a tiering system. 

Your ultimate objective is to find all four Tablet key items, which allows you to progress through the Cleft of Dimensions in World 3.  The 4 Tablets are required to fully access the final dungeon, the Rift of Dimensions. However, upon accessing World 3, the player can enter the Rift of Dimensions immediately. Each of the 4 Tablets will give progressive access to deeper parts of the dungeon, solely based on the number of Tablets you have (i.e., the player does not need specifically "1st Tablet" to enter the first door). Once the player has all 4 Tablets, full access to the Rift is granted. 


====== What's randomized and what isn't? ======

Career Day randomizes the following things:

  * Your starting Job and gear
  * The contents of shops.  You can now find and purchase Abilities and Jobs!
  * The contents of chests.  These can also be Abilities and Jobs now.  Monster-in-a-boxes are also randomly shuffled in their locations.
  * All rewards given by events and NPCs - Including ones that formerly gave Jobs!
  * //Almost// all bosses are shuffled.  They are scaled based on their new location.
  * Omega and Shinryuu have randomized ailment/elemental weaknesses, stats, and AI, if you want an extra challenge
  * Optional: Enemy drops and steals can be shuffled
  * Optional: Color palettes for player characters

Career Day does **not** shuffle the following:

  * No Exdeath fights are changed - they're in the same places and have the same capabilities.
  * Items, Spells, Jobs, and Abilities still do exactly what you expect of them.
  * Jobs still teach the same list of Abilities to individual characters as they always did.
  * Areas of the game have not been moved or changed - the layouts remain familiar.



===== How to approach a seed ======

The following notes are designed for a World 1 locked seed. Although most concepts apply to all seeds, keep in mind that World 1 locked seeds have the most standard progressive qualities (easier things before harder things to progress). 

The goal of the game is to collect 4 Tablets to access the Void and challenge the final boss, NeoExdeath. In order to do so, you must challenge bosses to attempt to collect those 4 Tablets. Therefore the game is won by powering up your party, taking down bosses in general strength order, following key item progression, collecting Tablets and challenging the final boss. 

Starting out a seed, the first goal is to get your party ready to challenge a boss. You'll be given a starting job, some equipment, and if it's a magic based job, a starting spell to use. You'll have to gather Collectibles from events, chests & shops to try to scour for equipment, job crystals, abilities and magic in order to further your power. 

Because most players leave the default 4x EXP/ABP multiplier on, it is common to not have to fight many random encounters throughout a seed. To be clear, in Career Day, bosses have been given EXP based on their location. Unless the early bosses are incredibly difficult for the seed, gearing up your party will likely be enough to challenge the first few bosses even at level 1. 

A general piece of advice is to use a tracker for bosses, and to take notes, especially for shops. There are many shops in the game, and especially in a race scenario, notating to yourself can save a lot of time and unnecessary revisits to areas. Possible scenarios include shops having: 1) Collectibles you cannot afford right now but will later want to buy, 2) Collectibles you can't use right now (such as Blue Magic spells) that you don't want to buy, but will want to later (such as if you find Blue Mage Crystal or !Blue ability) or 3) healing items such as Phoenix Downs, Tents, or Hi-Potions that you'll possibly revisit shops for

A common starting strategy is to raid the pots & chests within Tycoon Castle, head to Tule nearby to check the shops and the Beginner's House for Collectibles of value, then challenging the first few bosses at the Wind Shrine (1), Torna Canal into Ship Graveyard (2), and North Mountain (1). From there, depending on how strong your party is, you can go into immediately fighting other bosses, or you can decide to check a few more dungeons and areas for Collectibles. Such areas include visiting the rest of the World 1 towns for their shops, for which there are many unique shops in World 1. For free Collectibles, visiting areas with chests such as Pirate's Cave near Tycoon or immediately accessible dungeons such as Ancient Library are options, as well as events such Black Chocobo crystals near Crescent Island (which is particularly nice because of its relatively higher Reward tier). 

If you find yourself stuck, a common level grinding strategy is to go to the forest immediately east of Karnak and fight the 5 Wild Nakk formation, which are relatively easy fights for decent EXP. Realize that almost all of the bosses of FFV have weaknesses or exploitations, so it's very important to review the bosses to know what you can pull off with your current party. But power leveling a little bit will certainly help. Make sure you fully understand all of the abilities given to you - a good example is that one might overlook the !Throw command if they don't have many throwable damaging items for bosses, but fighting 5 Wild Nakk formations with a few Flame/Water/Thunder Scrolls either found in chests or shops can yield fast EXP. FFV has a large variety of abilities and magic to pull from, so it's important to truly consider your options.

After tackling a number of the World 1 bosses, eventually you'll get the "Adamantite" key item, which allows access to World 2. World progression looks like:

  * World 1: Accessible from the beginning of the game  
  * World 2: Accessible upon collecting the key item "Adamantite"  
  * World 3: Accessible upon defeating Exdeath in World 2, which requires "Anti-Barrier" and "Bracelet" key items  
  * Void:    Accessible upon collecting 4 Tablets  

So, accessing World 2 becomes available after finding the Adamantite, which is guaranteed to be in World 1. The player can decide what they'd like to do once collecting the Adamantite - they can head to World 2 to challenge higher level bosses, or they can stay in World 1 and complete all bosses. Every boss is equally likely to have a key item, outside of following key item logic chains, so it is perfectly acceptable to stay in World 1 and clear the bosses. However, one could argue, with a strong party, going to World 2 to defeat higher level bosses will yield more EXP, making revisiting World 1 bosses that much faster to defeat in a race setting. 

Key items are progressively unlocked to both allow access to new worlds, but also to more and more areas. For example, the player could unlock Walse Tower Key on Hiryuu Plant location in World 2, requiring the player to revisit World 1 to go to the newly accessible Walse Tower. Then, in Walse Tower, the Galura location could grant the Submarine Key, which now gives the player access to Barrier Tower in World 2, and will grant access to the Great Trench and Istory Falls in World 3. As you collect key items, remember to revisit areas that were previously inaccessible and clear bosses. 

After finding the rhythm of completing bosses in World 1 and unlocking World 2, the same is true for World 2 -> 3, and World 3 -> the Rift/Void. However, moreso in the mid-game, the player must start to consider what they need to complete the game, which is a combination of being able to both beat higher tier bosses in the Rift/Void, but also to defeat NeoExdeath. Although there are many strategies to defeat the final boss, it is entirely dependent on your party's setup and what the randomized seed has to offer, for what you can do to prepare. This will be tough for newer players, especially in race settings, but it is incredibly important to start to consider what bosses are left, and what realistically needs to happen to complete the game. This is also why tracking which bosses have been defeated can be particularly helpful, as it can help you predict which bosses will appear in the late game on difficult locations. 

In the late game, when trying to collect the final Tablets and access the Rift/Void, the player should be checking higher tier Rewards if necessary (such as Pyramid, Moogle Village, Mirage Village) to round out the party's equipment and battle power. If your party is strong enough to tackle most of the bosses in the Void, you can opt to do so without bothering with World 2 & 3 Collectible checks. Specifically, in the Void, defeating the Necrophobe location will grant the player the ability to warp back to that save point at any time via WarpShard. So any final preparations needed to be done for NeoExdeath will not require a full visit back through the Void. 

NeoExdeath is a challenging final boss. There are a number of guides for vanilla FFV that cover NeoExdeath in its entirety (especially Four Job Fiesta related resources), so if your goal is either for racing or for playing more than one seed, it's a good idea to understand how the final boss operates (this applies to all bosses, really.) 

Of course, ask any questions in our [[https://discord.gg/6Yw6HbK|Community Discord]], for which you can find a link to in the main page of this wiki. Many players are around and willing to help answer basic questions.
Trace: • tiering • newcomer_guide • misc_resources • randomizer_settings • key_items
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