No Spending Gold Challenge! (no Inn or Shop use allowed)

I'd never done this challenge before on the first game, so I thought I'd give it a shot and write about how it goes. I've tried it on the second game but only made it to Venus's world before I think I lost the save file when a friend borrowed the game and forgot to mention what save slot to use, oops. I was going to try it again on the second game using the hardest team for this possible, 4 Humans, but then I decided hey, why not start by doing it on the first game too?

I'm going to be avoiding spending any money whatsoever (except at one point where you're forced to do so in order to advance the plot). This includes no staying at the Inn or buying anything from Shops, and I'm going to avoid the Inn even when at full health which would cause it to cost 0 GP. Unlike the second game where humanoid enemies can randomly drop items in their ability list, letting you get a large supply of Long Swords and Punches in the first world, the first Final Fantasy Legend / SaGa has no item drops from enemies. However, we can stockpile vital equipment by using the Guild to recruit members, then let them get killed off so we can replace them. This is important enough that I'll likely have one member weaker than the rest at all times who I'll be using to suicide in order to get items from the Guild.

Unlike the second game, you need to use the Clinic to revive dead members. Since this costs money, I obviously can't do this. However, the character you start with is considered the main character and cannot EVER be retired at the Guild. You always have to resurrect them using the Clinic, and if you use the Clinic enough times as them, you'll be forced to purchase the expensive Heart items so they can resurrect again. Because I can't use the Clinic at all, the only way I'll ever be able to resurrect my main character is with the three Revive items you can find late in the game, so I have to be very careful not to let them get killed which will essentially lock a dead character into that slot for a huge chunk of the game.

Enemies that can inflict Stone are also terrifying since there's no Needle items to cure Stone to be found. I'm not sure if you can cure petrified characters using Elixirs (there's at least one later on) or if something else can fix Stone (I don't think Mutants get an ability for status ailments, and I'm pretty sure Anubis's Care ability doesn't fix Stone). If you can't fix Stone and the Guild doesn't allow you to replace characters affected by it, I'll be in trouble if anyone turns into a statue. I'm gonna try not to rely on saving and reloading to avoid this sorta thing, it'd be nice to see if we can avoid having to reload saves to bypass this, let alone avoid gameovering.

The races we can use are:

• Human: Useless for actual combat because it'll be impossible to level their stats up, but they come from the Guild with handy equipment. In World 3 and onward, Mutants do not come with weapons we can steal, so we're going to need to recruit and steal from Humans, especially later on for the Silver Swords and L-Sabers they've got.

• Mutants: They have fast growth, natural abilities, and can use 4 pieces of equipment. They will be the main race I use to beat the game because of their sheer usefulness.

• Monsters: It's possible to level them up to their second-highest tier in the first world, but it requires a tedious and specific order of eating meat. Monsters are pretty decent and are better early on than in the second game I find where it can be a struggle to level them up. Monsters also can recharge abilities by eating meat, but without the Inn you're also forced to eat meat periodically to recharge which can be a nuisance.

I started with:

ZRoo - Mutant M
Hart - Mutant M
Sly - Monster (Albatros)
Slim - Mutant M

Slim was designated as my suicide to get items guy and got to frontline and die repeatedly as I tried to powerup a bit, respawning him from the Guild and stealing a stockpile of Hammers. A few others died and needed replacing, but fortunately poor ZRoo hiding in the back wasn't targeted much early on. Having the main character get killed early would mean we'd have a dead member we'd have to drag all the way to the jail in the third world where the first Revive item appears.

I feel bad for all the guides that claim ESP is bugged or worthless; it was an absolutely crucial skill that allows one person to dodge physical attacks like a high-tier shield and as soon as it appeared on Slim we had an official team tank leading the front who couldn't be hit. Fortunately, ESP stuck around for a long while, and Hart got Gas which seemed a good time to deal with the P-Frog in the Bandit's Cave, who we beat up without having anyone get killed. Barrier ability layered on the team meant it could only damage us with its poison skin when we smacked it with weapons, and the damage was fairly minimal.

Everyone was under 20 HP though, and nobody had any natural healing skills. The cave has a worthless Strong Potion, a Bronze Shield (not sure how useful this'll be, ESP is better when we have it), and an all-important Potion. I decided I didn't want to lose progress with my team and have anyone killed off yet, using the Potion split across my three Mutant members. This meant they couldn't be one hit killed by the KingSwrd when we went to deal with him. Sly the Monster had changed into a Gecko by this point, which felt a good time grab the sword.

With King Armor equipped, ZRoo was essentially invulnerable, so I put the leader at the front where he'd both be safe, and acting as the designated tank. The only stuff that could threaten him could kill anyone easily, so as long as we didn't run into Karateka in King of Sword's castle we were safe. And fortunately, my luck held out, and KingSwrd was uneventful. He got a few hits in on ZRoo for 6 damage a piece but was downed quickly.

From here, the original plan was to power level my leader using the combination of King Sword + King Armor. Enemies could occasionally target my back row characters though, and I didn't want to lose progress on my other Mutants yet. Since I didn't have a Mutant or Monster with natural healing, this meant I needed to get to a healing pool in the tower to heal up), so I decided to deal with Gen-Bu. With HP in the 40s, I could just barely survive a hit of Gas potentially and I had multiple mutants with spell abilities. I even picked up P-Blast naturally for the first time ever!

Gen Bu took lots of damage from spell abilities but in a very scary moment managed to drop ZRoo to exactly 1 HP. Natural stats were good and I had the Ice ability on ZRoo with enough Mana to hit hard with it. Despite a Slime killing off Slim, we managed to barely reach the first healing pool in the oasis room, bringing the remaining members all up to full health. I now had two Mutants with over 200 max HP, who also had enough Str to hit quite hard with Hammers and the Mana to deal good damage with abilities when they had them; things were going very well.

After going back to the first world to farm some Hammers from the Guild then properly revive and level up Slim, we made it up to the second world. At that point Sly was a Red Bone but I grew weary of having a Monster; I was having fun playing with the various random abilities that popped up on my Mutants and decided if I wanted to get a Monster later in the game it'd be much faster then to get them the meat needed to power them up compared to levelling a Mutant up from that point, so I decided to get Sly killed off and revived at the Guild as a Mutant M. Shapeshifting reincarnation, hooray!

Long Swords and Sabers became available from the second Guild; I had Slim DIE FOR ME repeatedly so I could steal some new gear. Nobody had a Str score above 50 yet, but ZRoo has an Agl stat in the 80s and Saber hit monstrously hard on enemies, so it made sense to grab some of those. We also have armor now in the form of Bronze Gauntlets; sure, they're only 1 point of Def, but hey, it's something! Natural Def does go up on Mutants, but it takes a while to see significant growth. Sei-Ryu shouldn't be too bad to tackle next with some levelling and hiding our damage dealers in the back, it's just it's a very lengthy slog to get there without any healing (and I want to avoid using the Cure Book found there if I can, need to save it for later). My inventory's now piled full of weapons stolen via Guild recruiting and I'm currently grinding so I have the max HP to survive the trip to Sei-Ryu (300s to 400s hopefully should be safe, I can run sorta reliably from stuff).

I'd be too scared to leave there first world without an end game monster.

It's certainly tempting to get a few monsters such as Fireman or BoneKing with O-Change simply to minimize the risk of petrification. The biggest threat to this run is having to drag around several statues for the remainder of the game and the run turning into a Mutant Duo or Solo. I don't have another save file to test with, so I don't know if there's any way to cure petrification in this without using the shop. The healing pools don't cure status effects as far as I know, so the question is does the Elixir item cure Stone, and does the Guild allow you to replace a character affected by Stone?

Failing that, just make sure I max out my Agl stat and try to kill anything that can petrify me before it gets the chance.

Update time!

Raided the castle, finally have a proper suit of armor for a def stat of 22. Also took the Grenades and the Cure Book, didn't want to have to run all the way back here for them. Octopuses were a pest but fortunately I managed to avoid having anyone get blinded by Ink which woulda left them in bad shape for using melee attacks for the rest of the game. May have forced me to swap them out? Or maybe Blind is kinda useless in FFL but more troublesome in FFL2, can't recall. The leader has massive Agi, was hitting for 230 on Sei-Ryu with a Saber, killed in 2 turns, one Mutant has nearly 99 mana and can oneshot everything whenever an attack ability appears.

OH NO, SPENDING MONEY! We're forced to buy a Battle Sword at this point after Sei-Ryu. ;w; Threw it away after getting the Sphere, tried talking to the old man without one in inventory beforehand (he's implied to be Ryu-O) - HE DEALS 10 DAMAGE TO YOUR LEADER IF YOU DON'T HAVE A BATTLE SWORD! I'd never noticed this before, rude. Time to grind more before the third world. Getting there is hard enough and is the first area with petrifying enemies who may potentially "lock" party members in place if they can't be swapped at the Guild when petrified, and can't be cured with the few Elixirs you can find. I've yet to see a Mutant learn any kind of healing or status cure ability so if they do (the list says Heal is possible to learn) then I suspect it's rare.

Time to powergrind! Fought Gargoyles in that spiky room repeatedly, and fortunately most of the time I had an attack ability on most mutants, so I rarely needed to use my precious items. Mutants are all maxed out in Mana and Agi, one has 900 HP with the rest boasting between 800 and 600. Two have 99 Str, the ones that don't are high 70s. Def is still quite low, as expected, with only one having a natural Def in the mid 30s. Feeling ready to ascend to World 3, my concern is if I'm not prepared enough, the encounters along the way may prove annoying, and I don't know if I want to kill off my 4th Mutant again just for Silver Swords.

Machine will be a problem - I need enough HP to survive at least one N. Bomb, and I may not be able to kill it in a single turn even with 4 Mutants at max stats. Using the Saw on it to instant kill should work; I don't think Machine can be petrified in the first game. I'd rather not have to resort to the Saw glitch, as fun as it is. Would also like to avoid having to use the Glass Sword which in the English version has way more uses than it originally was intended to have, but we'll see, there's only one Flare book to use in the endgame so my options for the final boss will be somewhat limited.

Going up the tower now, my HP will likely be nearly maxed by the time I get to World 4 with my 3 frontline Mutants and if not, I'll deal with it. Grabbed some X-Potions from the Shachihoko statues which should help. The Musket we got is, as expected, useless with massive attack stats. It hits only for 150 or so, already obsolete by the time we get it. Spells are consistently oneshotting everything for 200-230 damage, so Mutants fortunate enough to have an attack ability are great at sweeping groups, and I've been lucky that I've had attack abilities on most Mutants (or the very powerful Kinesis for paralysis).

Grabbed the P-Knife, I swung it once as a test and it's now our best weapon at 300 damage per hit with 99 Mana, beating out Long Sword's 170s and Saber's 220s. I don't generally use the P-Knife or P-Sword with Mutants because normal spells tend to be far better and you could save for a Flare book by this point with a bit of grinding. However, the P-Knife's sheer damage in this challenge bodes well for two more weapons we'll pick up later, the Vampic Sword and the P-Sword. The Vampic Sword will give us an HP drain attack on anything not Undead (I think this includes Creator). It's not terribly powerful but it's an interesting option to have. P-Sword has massive single target damage and should be our best weapon for a while. We'll likely try to save both for serious situations. Both are affected by O-Damage I think, though.

I can't remember if Silver Sword beats out P-Sword at 99 in its attack stat, but if not, they should be pretty even? According to the inventory guide here, P-Knife has an attack multiplier of 7 and P-Sword has a 12, putting P-Sword equivalent to the endgame Defend Sword!

Interestingly, the Saber has a multiplier of 6; for us, this means that it's wildly better than Strength weapons once we reach World 2 and can collect items using the Guild. It's vastly better than the Long Swords we can get and is actually equivalent in damage to the Katana! I wish I'd noticed this before and farmed these instead of Long Swords, but alas.

Sabers also happen to be the first and the last interesting Agi weapon of the game. L-Sabers that show up after are equivalent in damage to Silver Swords with a multiplier of 9, but in a normal game the Rune Sword you can get with a multipler of 7 is probably more useful for a Human due to its unique anti-magic property. Later on CatCraws are available but are matched by Dragon Swords which have anti dragon critical hits, and the various elemental swords which lose a bit of damage for hitting for weaknesses. Flame Swords in particular are handy for crits against slime types, all of which except for the last two tiers have X-Fire.

Made it to World 3 uneventfully. I ran into Medusa groups several times but they never even got a chance to try using their petrification so I don't know how immune I am with 99 Mana. No new worthwhile items to get from the Guild at this point so my 4th Mutant's going to be sticking around. The new items we can get here (and are forced to do so since they're all missable, you can't return to the Jail later to get them) includes:

• Revenge Sword: Probably useless, I could try it on Ashura but if Ashura decides to use spells or attack someone other than the Revenge user it's just wasted turns.

• Revive: Our first revival item! This should help in case of an unfortunate emergency later on in the tower. It takes up an inventory slot that could be used for a precious weapon, but that's fine.

• L-Saber: This will be our highest damage weapon when we get it.• Death Book: Stone tends to be the better element for instant death, but the Death spell is nevertheless very useful against a variety of dangerous enemies. I plan on using this a lot during the ascent to Ashura or to Creator.

• Giant Gauntlet: Our second piece of decent armor in this challenge. I may put it on the same Mutant that has the Silver Armor.

• Elixir: This gives us a variety of options; we can recharge abilities before a boss fight if we have useful ones, or we can save it for healing as well as status curing. Because I have no other way to fix petrification (and I don't know if the Guild can swap out petrified characters), I'm going to likely hang onto this for petrification alone.

IIRC it's random whether you need a Battle Sword, Needle, or Rock to get the Sphere. I don't believe you can find any of those so you'd be forced to spend gold at that point, similar to how in FFL2 you need to spend at least 1 on a jukebox to proceed.

DCdemonic1 posted...

IIRC it's random whether you need a Battle Sword, Needle, or Rock to get the Sphere. I don't believe you can find any of those so you'd be forced to spend gold at that point, similar to how in FFL2 you need to spend at least 1 on a jukebox to proceed.

This is a false rumor spread by two of the FAQs on here (the ones by RPaulson and terrisus). Nowhere else will you find this claim made as far as I'm aware, and that's because the only object ever needed is the Battle Sword, which we are unfortunately forced to purchase in this challenge. But as you say, none of those appear normally anyways, so even if it was random we'd still have to spend money regardless! The line that refers to it is hardcoded to say "Battle Sword", and you can confirm this by looking through the text dumps of the game:

Show it to me! [CHAR1], you have Battle sword, the right answer, I'll give you a reward.

You get BLUEORB.

You can use it to open the door at the tower.

https://towerreversed.neocities.org/dump/ffl-text.txt (see line 0x15060)

http://infoseek_rip.g.ribbon.to/xb_lim.at.infoseek.co.jp/gbffl1/serihu2.htm

Interestingly, when looking at a document containing the flags for the game, I discovered that the reason you can't get the N.Bomb after Ashura isn't beating Ashura, it's actually beating Gen-Bu2 that causes the N.Bomb to disappear if you didn't already get it: https://towerreversed.neocities.org/dump/ffl-flags.txt

Making more progress!

The World of Sky is exactly the point in the game when a Mutant with a maxed out Mana stat can't one-hit-kill enemies with any innate abilities they happen to get. And, with spellbooks mostly being inaccessible to us, we're gonna have to get by planning around hitting basic enemies twice from now on with our abilities. Same goes for weapons; until we can get Silver Swords from the Guild in the World of Ruin, our melee attacks don't have that much oomph anymore unless we use our more limited use weapons.

HP is also an issue; the closest healing pool is a floor down and requires a bit of backtracking into Medusa territory, so I'll have to be careful about limiting how much damage I take.

The last of our Hammers and the Musket have been ditched, and one Mutant is nearing 999 max HP. We pick up the Revenge Sword, and encounter an actual spellcaster group in the Jail, Imps and Dragon 1! However, with maxed out Mana, neither of them can actually deal any damage with their fire spells. The lead Mutant has Stealth, Forseen, and has been rocking O-Par/WP for some time, and my other two main Mutants are getting close to 800 HP.

Raiding the Jail does cause some problems; we simply can't carry everything and hold onto our stock of spare Long Swords. I decide to ditch a few things I hung onto that I've never used, namely my Bronze Gauntlets, the Bronze Shield, and the Grenades. The Grenades are obsolete by this point for any serious fights; they deal less than 100 damage to enemies around here and are pretty much only good for a 4 Human team to use to grind on Gargoyles. The Bronze Shield I thought might prove useful for the frontline Mutant, but honestly I don't think it stops Melt from slime enemies, and by the time we hit Ashura, the Aezis Shield will be available (not to mention ESP is a common ability and a perfectly good shield if need be). The Bronze Gauntlets only give 1 Def, a tiny amount compared to the natural Def my Mutants have and isn't worth taking up a carrying slot. Other than a bunch of Long Swords and Sabers and the unique stuff from the Jail, I'm hanging onto an unused Cure Book, the Silver Armor, and a few X-Potions. I've given the Silver Armor and Giant Gauntlets to the same Mutant. 43 Def now, with the rest between 25 and 18 natural Def.

Byak-Ko only lasted a couple of turns. Annoyingly, I only had Ice and Kinesis as offensive abilities, both of which he resisted, but a couple of turns swinging melee weapons took him down uneventfully. Headed back to a healing pool to get back to max health (mostly from max HP gains). I'm not sure if I'm ready to ascend to the World of Ruin quite yet; I want to make sure that once I get there, I'm ready to run around and kill off Machine quickly so I don't have to deal with Su-Zaku fights. Using the Saw against Machine requires having less than 70 Str for it to work, but that means rerecruiting a new Mutant, and hopefully getting over 600 HP before their Str gets above 70, which isn't necessarily guaranteed if I'm unlucky.

Machine can also potentially kill everyone with less than 600 HP in a single shot using N.Bomb, so I may try to damage race its 1000 HP down. It's unlikely to be killable in one turn, though; it has 1000 HP and has O-Weapon. O-Weapon will put a huge dent in my offense even with the P-Sword. The best plan may be to wait until I have 4 Mutants will offensive abilities since it has no damage element resistance. If all 4 Mutants have attack spells, I'd need two turns to win, although that does mean a bit of luck will be involved as it could kill me with two N.Bombs in a row, or N.Bomb then Missile. Fortunately it has a huge ability list, and is more likely to use its weaker single target attacks.

Even with 4 team members boasting near maxed out Agility, running feels quite unreliable. I'm going to have to plan on fighting out every encounter, I think.

I raided the weird cloud room for the Vampic Sword and the Elixir there. Had a scary moment where a Hunter tried to use Saw on my leader, but fortunately I had low enough Def that it didn't hit! I need to remember that there's a few enemies with Saw! Beetles can hit if my Def is above 19, but they're weak and extremely rare. Hunters can kill anyone with Def above 45, and Warriors can target characters with a Def of 60 or higher. Fortunately, after a few fights, all my Mutants had fresh single group attack spells ready to go, so we're all set as we ascend the tower.

Accidentally picked up Saw far earlier than intended and saved before I realized it was probably a mistake to fill up my inventory with it. Oh well. Decided to ditch the Revenge Sword for good; any plan that relied on the enemy attacking a specific character seemed like a poor plan. Unusually, one Mutant got O-Par/WP twice! I guess it's handy if it gets overwritten by something else?

Unsurprisingly, Long Swords were not cutting it at this point. It often took 3 hits to drop an enemy, so attack abilities were precious and valuable on the way up. Anaconda, Triceras, and Gazer groups were a huge threat. Gazers can repeatedly use Beam for an unresistable 130 damage, and if the Triceras uses 4 Horns you're eating 400 ish damage! Fortunately, Kinesis works to stop the Triceras reliably, and the Gazer can be blasted down without much issue. I thought seriously about dipping into my Death book when 4 Triceras showed up, but fortunately I still had some uses of Kinesis left.

Got the P-Sword, tried it out on a Jelly specifically to test how hard it hits on an enemy with Weapon resistance. It hits HARD. The only reason Mutants normally never need bother with it is because you can get Flare books before these are buyable, and spellbooks hit groups for huge damage, which is generally preferable to single target attacks for Mutants. 375 on a Jelly at 99 Mana is very impressive! I imagine on a higher Def target it'd hit for 600-700 if the target doesn't resist Weapon, so maybe 300s on Machine? It's strong enough that it's potentially viable against Creator, although Creator has that obnoxious 200 Def stat. Definitely gonna be handy for Ashura though.

Made it to World of Ruin. My lead Mutant has 989 HP, the other two main Mutants are well above 800, and the one who I'm gonna have to sacrifice for farming Guild weapons is nearly at 700. Then again... I do have enough weapons that if I'm careful about what I use them on, I may not need to farm a guild for Silver Swords? I'm still undecided about what I'll do, mostly because levelling up a single Mutant to this point again will be a pain, but probably not unbearably so (I'd go back to the Gargoyle area to do it, I think).

Ran from my first Su-Zaku encounter easily before making it in the tunnel.Even with suboptimal equipment, my natural Def is holding its own. Was still taking 20s from stuff like Mou-Jya using Nail on my frontliners. Instead of putting the Army helmet on my leader, I gave it to my second Mutant so both had 43 Def. Made it to the town at mostly full health, though I did eat a Beak from Su-Zaku at one point.

Grabbed the Bike. The main concern will be the Hydras we can meet while grabbing the stuff we need to disable Su-Zaku's forcefield since they have powerful multihit melee attacks. As long as I have spells ready to use they're not too bad, and I think the Death book can drop them. Inventory's getting tight; I grabbed too many Elixirs and Revives at once; I've now got three of each in inventory and I'm not sure I'll really need all of them. But, they're valuable enough that I want to hang onto them too... Oh, and I forgot a CatCraw shows up! With a CatCraw, a P-Sword, a P-Knife, and a L-Saber along with spells, we should be all set to deal with Machine.

We quickly pop back into the tower to go down a floor to where the healing pool is before it's time to go to the Power Plant. I've still got a full Cure Book since raiding Sei-Ryu's castle I haven't touched. I'm being stingy with it, probably, but better safe than sorry. This was a mistake in retrospect; I ran into a nasty group of Hunters and Triceras and had to use some spell abilities I was hoping I'd have to raid the Power Plant. After a few tries where I basically ran back and forth from the pool because I couldn't run from the fight and needed to heal up, I eventually made it back to the World of Ruin with full health ready to tackle the Power Plant. My lead Mutant had a full 999 HP, with two others edging close to 900s.

In the subway tunnels that had just single enemies, I fought a bit to try and get some fresh attack abilities for the Power Plant. My uses of Ice and Flame were all nearly exhausted and I really wanted to have some ready to go. Got hit with Blind on two members on the way though; it's quite annoying as it halves your Agl damage. Things got rough in the Power Plant - had to use 3 Elixir uses and 3 shots of a Cure Book to heal up. So-Cho's headband went to the lead Mutant along with the Silver Armor. The Army helmet and the Giant Gloves are currently on my second mutant, but one or the other may get ditched eventually.

The Machine decided to be a joke and wasted a turn using Bash. P-Sword did a whopping 370 damage, with CatCraw only doing a paltry 150. Does P-Sword ignore the Def stat or something? That's the only reason I can think of why it still hits so hard even when the Machine has a good 50 Def above a Jelly. That'd make it REALLY impressive for a single target weapon and explain why I remember it seems to work well against Creator. I have a strong suspicion now that the three Mana based melee weapons (P-Knife, P-Sword, Vampic Sword) may well ignore the target's Def and only be reduced by Weapon resistance as it would explain the significant damage despite Machine's colossal Def stat of 70. Using the P-Sword against Creator will be an easy way to reconfirm this; the Creator's whopping 200 Def stat should mean the P-Sword will do far less damage than even the Machine's 70 Def (and you normally do pitiful melee damage if using non-defense ignoring melee attacks such as the Sun Sword, making the Masamune, the Glass Sword, Flare Spells, etc, all far better.)

BareknuckleRoo posted...

This is a false rumor spread by two of the FAQs on here (the ones by RPaulson and terrisus). Nowhere else will you find this claim made as far as I'm aware, and that's because the only object ever needed is the Battle Sword, which we are unfortunately forced to purchase in this challenge. But as you say, none of those appear normally anyways, so even if it was random we'd still have to spend money regardless! The line that refers to it is hardcoded to say "Battle Sword", and you can confirm this by looking through the text dumps of the game:

Show it to me! [CHAR1], you have Battle sword, the right answer, I'll give you a reward.

You get BLUEORB.

You can use it to open the door at the tower.

https://towerreversed.neocities.org/dump/ffl-text.txt (see line 0x15060)

http://infoseek_rip.g.ribbon.to/xb_lim.at.infoseek.co.jp/gbffl1/serihu2.htm

Interestingly, when looking at a document containing the flags for the game, I discovered that the reason you can't get the N.Bomb after Ashura isn't beating Ashura, it's actually beating Gen-Bu2 that causes the N.Bomb to disappear if you didn't already get it: https://towerreversed.neocities.org/dump/ffl-flags.txt

I haven't played the original in ~20 years so you're probably right. I don't remember having the battle sword on the Wonderswan play through I did but I may be mistaken.