FFV NINMNFNCM Challenge: Part 0

FFV NINMNFNCM Challenge:
No Items, No Money, No Freelancer, No Class Mastering

I'm looking forward to the Four Job Fiesta this year, but while waiting for it to start I wanted to do something different with the game.  I wanted to do a challenge with all classes on the table that garnered its difficulty from the restrictions, forcing clever use of the many classes of FFV to work around, similar to Sullla's Ironcore Team (no party wipes), and T-Hawk's Nudists (never equip anything, ever).  Both of these teams utilized Phoenix Downs to great effect.  What if I removed those?  Actually, let's go all out.  No Items, I haven't seen that done with FFV yet.

No Items in this context means never consume an item, ever.  The only exception being using a Tent to progress the story upon reaching Galuf's world.  This removes Potions, Ethers, Elixirs, status restoring items, rod breaking, !Throw and !Mix, as well as Ramuh and Golem from play.  More annoyingly with the other big restriction, no Tents.  Key Items consumed to get even more items (i.e. endgame tablets) are allowed to be used.  No Items was still much too simple, and GilToss was still accessible.  So I stole a restriction from FFIX, where there's not much to restrict...


No Money was the result.  Never take an action that causes your funds to go down.  No GilToss any more, but the other implications of this are huge.  You can't buy 95% of White, Black or Time Magic, being limited to Esuna, Holy, Toad, Flare and Meteor (and  possibly Mini, I don't remember).  This also removes a lot of weapons and armor from play, along with every source of haste that isn't the Masamune (unless I can steal/drop Running Shoes).

Of course, X-Fight would still break the game.  How to take that off the table...No Class Mastering.  This also removes some other abilities that might be overpowered, in addition to removing the Chemist's !Revive.  Great, no early reviving.  I realized this also limited grinding except wait Freelancer, so I tacked on No Freelancer.

Thematically, this team is The Hoarders.  Never let a single item, piece of gold or AP go to waste.  I think this should be a pretty interesting challenge forcing me to rely on each jobs strengths and weaknesses to dispatch encounters before they dispatch me!

With the restrictions in place, you might be wondering how I can even heal.  Well, there's a few methods of restoring HP within the rules.
-Healing Staff
-Free beds throughout the game
-!Critt (Nightingale and technically Unicorn, though I doubt I'll level that high)
-!Dance (and the Dancing Dagger)
-!Lance
-Flame Sabre/Flame Rod+Flame Shield/Flame Ring (they can be stolen)
-Any other Elemental Absorption
-The Bard Regen Song
-Blue Magic
-Chakra

I can restore MP with:
-!Dance
-!Lance
-!Critt (Unicorn)
-Summoning Phoenix
-Lilith Rod
-Blue Magic
-Free beds throughout the game

I can heal statuses with:
-Esuna
-!Recover
-Reviving the party member as below

I can revive with:
-Free beds throughout the game
-Phoenix
-Wonder Rod (prepped for Raise or Arise-could be used for HP or MP, but not worth it)
-Wonder Rod Reset (within the encounter itself)

Yikes, Vampire, Chakra and the Healing Staff for early healing, no status healing until Karnak, and no revives until halfway through the Merged World!  This isn't going to be easy...but then again, that's exactly what I wanted.  A challenge, and that's what I've cooked up-somehow even going in an entirely different direction than any other challenge I've seen for the game yet.

Unlike the Team Sidequest run last year, I'll be recording the boss fights for The Hoarders and uploading them to my Youtube channel, linked at the bottom of each.  Any important preparations/sequences (like Phoenix Tower) will also be recorded.

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