The following is a list of elements in Final Fantasy.
Mechanics[]
In most versions of Final Fantasy, spells and attacks can have eight elemental properties: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth, Poison, Time, Instant Death and spirit. The Dawn of Souls and 20th Anniversary releases, Poison was split into two elements of Poison and Stone, and Spirit was split into six: Darkness, Paralysis, Confusion, Mind, Sleep and Silence.
A weapon can have multiple elemental properties, and a piece of armor can grant resistance to multiple elemental properties. However, spells and enemy abilities never have more than one property (spells like NulAll grant the targets resistance to specific properties, but the spells don't have any elemental properties themselves).
Weaknesses and resistances to elemental properties have different effects for damaging spells, status spells and weapons:
- Spells and enemy abilities have a base accuracy value of 148. If a target resists the attribute of the ability, the base accuracy is changed to 0. If a target is weak to the attribute, the base accuracy is increased by +40.
- For status-inflicting spells, such as Quake, Stop, Break and Sleep, the hit calculation determines whether the spell succeeds or fails in inflicting status ailments.
- From the GBA release and onward, damaging spells instead gain a damage bonus based on the caster's intellect if they hit.
- In the NES, WSC and PS1 releases, damaging spells deal half damage if they miss (for example, Fire deals 20-40 damage if it hits or 10-20 damage if it misses).
- In addition to the hit modifiers, damaging spells and enemy abilities deal 1/2 damage against resistant targets, and 1.5x damage against weak enemies.
- Attacking with a weapon which matches one of a target's weaknesses (such as attacking a Skeleton with the Flame Sword) provides bonuses in the attack formula.
- Damage per hit is increased by a random value between +4 to +8.
- Accuracy is increased by +40.
- In the original NES/Famicom release, this is bugged and weapon elemental properties have no effect.
Status conditions[]
In Pixel Remaster, status conditions are listed as part of a monster's resistances in the bestiary. However, status conditions are not considered elemental attributes. If a monster lists a status condition as a resistance, it is immune to having that status effect applied on them, regardless of what elemental attribute the source attack is.
Instant Death resistance in the bestiary means resistance to the element; no enemy has resistance to the KO condition. This means an enemy that resists Instant Death may still be vulnerable to the KO status inflicted by the Earth-elemental Quake, Poison-elemental Scourge, or Time-elemental Warp. There is also a possibility for Death to work even if they resist the element, as resistance simply lowers its hit chance rather than nullifying it outright. Kill, which only checks for resistance to the element and has no accuracy check, always fails on a target with Instant Death resistance.
Monsters can both be immune to the Poison status and resist the Poison element, despite the player having no way of inflicting the status on enemies. The only way to distinguish between immunity to the status and resistance to the element is its placement on the resistance list; the Poison status is listed higher, between Darkness and Stone, while the Poison element is listed lower, between Spirit and Time. Most enemies are only immune to the status, leaving them vulnerable to Scourge, a Poison-elemental spell which inflicts the KO status rather than the Poison status. The only exceptions to this are the Four Fiends and the final boss, who resist the Poison element instead of or in addition to being immune to the status.
In all versions prior to Pixel Remaster, monsters and player characters do not have resistances to status conditions. They can only have resistance to elemental attributes. Resistance to status-based elements does not guarantee any additional resistance to the status effect itself. If the effect is applied via a means that does not have the status element, a resistance does not eliminate or reduce the chance that the effect is applied. Examples of this are the non-elemental spells Sleepra and Slowra[note 1].
List of elements[]
Fire[]
Ice[]
Lightning[]
Earth[]
Spirit[]
Poison[]
Time[]
Instant Death[]
Dia[]
Dia is not an element mechanically. Instead, Dia spells are scripted to check whether the target has the Undead type. If so, they deals non-elemental damage to the target, otherwise they have no effect. Despite this, Dia is listed as a weakness for Undead enemies in all bestiaries bar the NES manual foldout.
Annotations[]
- ↑ Sleepra is non-elemental only in pre-pixel remaster releases. In the pixel remaster it gains the Spirit element.