Final Fantasy VI Walkthrough
Written by Djibriel
Contributor
2.34: Into the Ancient Castle
Enemies: Figaliz, Goblin, Enuo, Master Pug
Lore: 
Clean Sweep, L. 5 Doom, L. 4 Flare, L. 3 Muddle, Step Mine, Dischord
Party: Optional: Terra, Cyan, Shadow, Edgar, Sabin, Celes, Relm, Strago, Setzer, Mog, Gau, Umaro
Whom to bring? The theme of the next dungeon will be magical resistance. The caves leading to the castle and the castle itself will be filled with monsters boasting inherent Reflective tendencies and crazy Magic Defense, making any non-barrier-piercing magical attack useless. The Pearl element is very strong here, though:
Pearl Lance Dragoons in particular are great. So is Sabin with a 
Dragon Claw on each hand, despite the negative impact on his Defense. Gau and Umaro are decent choices too, as their uncontrollable nature is no hindrance whatsoever in the next part of this fine game. Strago can learn Rippler, Blowfish, and Dischord here, which is hardly worth mentioning due to the fact that he can learn all three on the bloody Overworld Map too. He can, however, also learn L. 3 Muddle, L. 4 Flare, L. 5 Doom, and Step Mine here (if you missed it earlier), as well as a Lore that's probably new to you, Clean Sweep. Make your team and fly the Falcon over to Figaro Castle, which is probably on the Kohlingen side of the sea by this point. Send it over to the Figaro desert, and it will reach a bumpy part of the journey where the old man piloting the castle will ask you if you want to investigate. Boy, do we ever! Walk over to the castle dungeons, where the sandworm hole that freed the Crimson Robbers is still present. You can use it to exit this castle and enter the caves leading to the Ancient Castle.
Figaliz is short for Figaro Lizard. They're entirely too much like Crawler enemies, only much harder to take down. !Gunk causes the Poison status, and they'll use either Raid or
Dischord. Figaliz doesn't have a weakness to the Pearl element, so I would suggest barrier-piercing magical attacks and physical attacks of any kind; instant-death attacks such as Gau's Wild Cat-induced Blaster attack, 
X-Zone, and Cyan's Cleave technique will get the job done. Remember that Figaliz is Reflective though, meaning that Doom and Break will bounce.Goblin is a nasty enemy that delights in attacking physically, and with some force I might add. Battle isn't that tough, but !Zap (Battle x 4) really packs a punch. Whenever a Goblin is alone, he will start casting
L. 3 Muddle, L. 4 Flare, or L. 5 Doom every second turn, with a chance at using Blaze somewhere in between. Its Control, Sketch, and Rage are filled up with level 3 spells, too. A Goblin's Defense is horrid, so their fairly-respectable 5555 HP isn't so bad as it seems. Abuse Goblin's weaknesses by attacking with Pearl Lances, Dragon Claw, and 
Pearl Rods. The random Pearl spells won't do anything, but the physical strikes themselves will get the job done nicely. Instant death attacks work as well.Enuo is a boiling glob of slimy mucus with certain powers over water. Normally it'll just attack with Battle or !Slime, which sets Slow. When an Enuo is alone, though, it'll use
Aqua Rake or Clean Sweep, a new Lore for Strago. Wretched Defense and a weakness to Pearl and instant death attacks are two of the many downsides to being a heap of mucus; abuse them at your heart's content.Clean Sweep is a multi-target Water-elemental Lore for Strago. You're probably wondering why you need another one of those, given that you already have Aqua Rake. There's three benefits to this:- Clean Sweep isn't partly Wind-elemental
- Clean Sweep hits both sides in a Pincer attack
- While Clean Sweep is weaker, it doesn't split damage on multiple targets, making it stronger than Aqua Rake versus multiple targets
Aero beats both by far, so this is more or less trivia knowledge, but hey, now you know. In the room you first enter, there are two chests. To the left is a chest containing a 
Wing Edge, the strongest 'Special' weapon for Locke. Its main selling points are +7 to Speed, the 
Assassin and 
Trump's X-type instant death property, and the fact it deals the same amount of damage from the Back Row. The chest to the right contains an Ether. There are three exits below; it doesn't really matter which one you take, but the middle one and the far right one take you directly to a monster-in-a-box while you have to walk around a bit in order to leave via the left path. If you came in through the middle door, don't fret; you can walk through the wall to reach the chest you see. The chest to the top-right of this cave is the chest containing Master Pug, the toughest monster-in-a-box you'll find in this game.Master Pug  |
Type |
Level |
HP |
MP |
Gil |
EXP |
||||||||||||||||||
None | 73 | 22000 | 1200 | 0 | 0 | |||||||||||||||||||
Strength |
Magic Atk. |
Evasion |
Defense |
Mag. Def. |
Mag. Evade |
|||||||||||||||||||
13 | 9 | 0 | 100 | 165 | 0 | |||||||||||||||||||
Stolen Items |
Dropped Items |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Common: Graedus | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Status Immunities | Elemental Immunities | |||||||||||||||||||||||
       | None | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Elemental Absorb | Elemental Weakness | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Variable | None | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Lores | Command Immunities | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Control | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Strategy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Master Pug is very mean. He'll start the battle off with a Battle attack, and after this the madness will begin. Every 15 seconds, Master Pug takes a step forward; after seven steps, he'll use !Cleaver on a random character and retreat halfway back, meaning that he'll have to take just four more steps after that to reach the !Cleaver position again. Every step is accompanied with the ever-frustrating WallChange attack. Master Pug casts spells of the type opposing his current weakness, not unlike Number 024 way back in the day. Each time he changes his weakness, he has a two in three chance of using a magical attack that will indicate what his new weakness is. This will give you a chance to load up on that weakness until it changes again.
One of the worst parts of this battle, though, is Master Pug's Step Mine counter to every damaging attack you perform. Depending on your actions and style of playing this game, this move can do a lot of damage.The way to victory lies in the enemy's status ailment vulnerabilities. Cast  Sleep on Master Pug, and pair it up with Slow as well. If you have enough people with control over the Rasp spell, you might try removing all his MP first; better safe than sorry, right? If you're done with that or simply don't want to bother, start attacking him with magical attacks. Physical attacks will wake him; stick to magical ones only. It's highly possible you may manage to kill him before he even wakes up once. If he does wake up, just cast Sleep again; Strago's Sour Mouth Lore also works (sets Poison too, by the way). Expand Full Strategy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
When you're done, you win a
Graedus, a Pearl-elemental Dirk that can be equipped by pretty much everybody. It's a powerful weapon but doesn't have any interesting properties. Its Pearl-elemental nature can make it useful in this dungeon, though.The only other chest in this cave contains the
Doom Darts, Setzer's most powerful 'normal' weapon. Like the Wing Edge, it deals the same amount of damage from the Back Row and has the Assassin's X-type instant death property, but it doesn't boost any stats. In the PSX releases, you'll find the Trump here; it's the same weapon, but called Trump in the recent releases (while the WoR Kohlingen store-bought Trump is called Doom Darts there).You'll want to exit to the left of the screen to find another cave with two chests. They contain an X-Potion (to the left) and a shard of Magicite (the one to the bottom). The main feature here is the grand stairway leading into a random encounter-less room with a Save Point and another stairway going up.
Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy VI
Version 6
©1997–2025 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.
Version 6
©1997–2025 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.