Welcome to the Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta 2021 thread! In its ninth year running, this thread will be the SA headquarters for the Four Job Fiesta, equal parts to keep us from taking over the FF Megathread as well as a single point of action for trading tricks and trips, cursing Gilgabot's lack of mercy, or whatever Fiesta-related discussion you may want. Much like the years before, we hope to bring lots of victories, lots of donations, and lots of berserkers from the Berserker Tree!
Quick Links: Goon Discord, Official Website, Official Blog, Official Subreddit (yes, yes, I know, but it's official)
So Kyrosiris, what IS the Four Job Fiesta?
Every year, RevenantKioku and his trusty sidekick Gilgabot (or maybe it's the other way around?) organize the Fiesta as a charity drive for Child's Play and as a gathering for all FFV fans to celebrate the game. Mechanically, the Fiesta challenges you to play through Final Fantasy V using just one job from each Crystal. Hard Mode ups the ante, allowing Gilgabot to pull from past Crystals - you can, for example, get another White Mage from the Fire Crystal, or a Berserker from the Earth Crystal! In 2012, the Berserker Risk option was added as a way to pump up the difficulty even more - for every $10 raised prior to the Fiesta's start, every Berserker Risk participant was assigned a mandatory Berserker! Enough was raised to stick every participant at Risk with at least one Berserker, and SA member Rosalie_A ended up with what was considered the nastiest team of the Fiesta - a Knight and THREE Berserkers! 2013 renamed Hard Mode to "Random Mode" which is honestly more accurate, and added the new Team 750/No-750 and Natural modes, adding extra fun and challenge. 2015 upped the stakes and added the much-beloved Chaos Mode, which was what we all wanted from Random all along - any job is possible from any crystal, and duplicates are possible, leading to a handful of Chaos Riskers ending up with
FOUR. FREAKING. BERSERKERS. (RIP Everhate, The Chosen One) 2016 graced us with Pure Chaos, which is Chaos without repeats and with Mime and Freelancer in the character pool. 2018 gave us the interesting and GBA-only Forbidden mode - at the cost of permanently losing one of your other three jobs, you can earn the right to use one of the GBA-only jobs - Oracle, Gladiator, or Cannoneer! 2019 gave us Fifth Job - Krile is her own character! Why shouldn't she get a job? She takes Galuf's job and dunks it in the trash (you can't use ANY of its abilities or passives!) and brings her own! Hope you weren't attached to that Geomancer, she's a Berserker now!While the challenge is not one regularly "recommended" for those new to Final Fantasy V, there have been several goons who challenged the Fiesta as their first playthrough of the game and triumphed! That said, the challenge will definitely require a bit more aptitude and awareness of the game's mechanics and neat combos than a game where you plow through everything with !X-Fight, !X-Magic, and other powerful combos (that is, unless Gilgabot is merciful and gives you those combos). It goes a long way to help snap the decision paralysis that plagues a lot of first-time players of FFV, though.
Well, I've never played FFV before. Should I try anyways?
Absolutely! Like I said, lots of goons have earned their first victory in FFV through the Fiesta - either combinations of the restricted job access giving them real focus to finish the game, or getting advice from the litany of Fiesta veterans that haunt this thread and Discord, or for whatever reason. Plus, FFV is fun, and you're playing for charity (via either your donations or runs that you finish that trigger other people's pledges)!
How's this all work, then? What're the rules?
An example team would be mine from 2012 - I got Thief, Summoner, Ninja, and Samurai. From the Wind Crystal on, I had to have a full party of Thieves. Once I finished the Water Crystal, I got to choose a configuration of at least 1 Thief and at least 1 Summoner, and then the other two could be either Thieves or Summoners, with no limit aside from having at least one of each. The Fire crystal was the same - I had to field at least one Ninja, Summoner, and Thief at all times, and my fourth character could be what was best suited of my three job options. After the Earth Crystal, that was it - everyone was locked in. You can switch jobs around as is necessary, but you've gotta adhere to those guidelines. If you want your Ninja to learn some Summon Magic, that Summoner has to switch to being a Ninja too.
Note that for Natural and Chaos runs, you use Freelancers until you have obtained your assigned jobs. A Ranger/Samurai/Dragoon/Chemist Chaos run would use Freelancers until you get the Black Chocobo, and a White Mage/Time Mage/Bard/Chemist Natural run has Faris as a Freelancer until the same.
So who the hell is Gilgabot?
Gilgabot is the Twitter bot that does the backend paperwork of the Fiesta. You tweet keywords to him (@FF5ForFutures) at certain thresholds in your playthrough and he will do whatever those correspond to. For example, you can tweet "@FF5ForFutures #Water" to note that you've reached the Water Crystal. Gilgabot will then reply (maybe - he hit the daily tweet limit several times last year) with your Job assignment for that crystal. You can see a full list of his commands here. (link this to letsplaying's commands page when the site's back up)
Twitter? Ewww, I don't do that social media bullshit.
Tough. Don't blame Gilgabot, blame yourself or God. If you wanna Fiesta (at least officially - no one's stopping you from doing your own using random.org or similar), you gotta tweet. Worst case scenario, you make a throw-away account you use just for the Fiesta and then ignore it. Many goons do this every year.
NOTE THAT IF YOU HAVE A PROTECTED ACCOUNT, YOU WILL HAVE EXTREME DIFFICULTY FIESTA-ING OFFICIALLY. Consider making a throwaway account. Help! Gilgabot gave me a shittacular job combo and $BOSS is kicking my ass!
Relax. Rosalie got through the entire game and even the optional superboss Shinryu in 2012 with a Knight and three Berserkers. You can beat the focus of your ire too, with some strategy and tenacity. That said, we're not going to leave you in the lurch - lots of FFV pros participate in the Fiesta, and in 2012 we came up with a veritable compendium of knowledge, tactics, and advice (which got loving additions in 2013 and 2014, too!). You can find it here, but be aware it contains story and boss spoilers, as well as a significant amount of mechanical information for the game. Other resources include Alcharagia's Primer to FFV's Jobs, Sulla's Solo Single Class Challenges, Mega64's Resource Page, and the FFV Algorithm Guide (for SNES and GBA)! We'll all be prattling away on Discord!
Enkibot is also back and better than ever! It has moved here and now supports GBA jobs and Mime/Freelancer!!Science is scary and I can't use !Mix, the most powerful ability in FFV! Help me!!!!
Relax. Learn the true power of
here. Don't glitch Exdeath! (especially since your victory won't count 
)Alright, I'm in! What do I do?
Get on Twitter and send Gilgabot (@FF5ForFutures) a pre-registration tweet. This will look something like "@FF5ForFutures #regpurechaos #BERSERKERRISK". Then, just wait for the Fiesta to start!
What's New for 2021?
(I'm out of clever predictions)Trivia and Infographic Nonsense!
Every year, RevenantKioku puts out an infographic for the year's Fiesta, covering a lot of trivia and data, distribution of classes, stuff like that (as well as how fair and balanced Gilgabot was, which he always is). They're pretty neat, and are img'd below - click the year (or expand the image, but they're really big) for big.
2011 Infographic:
2012 Infographic:
2013 Infographic:
(Thread) 2014 Infographic:
(Thread) 2015 Infographic:
(Thread) 2016 Infographic:
(Thread) 2017 Infographic:
(Thread) 2018 Infographic:
(Thread) 2019 Infographic:
(Thread)
2020 Infographic:
