The Hellfire Chasm is a Soul of Chaos bonus dungeon in the Dawn of Souls and 20th Anniversary Edition releases of Final Fantasy. The entrance to the chasm is located on the Cardia Islands, but is sealed until the Fiend of Fire, Marilith, is defeated. Within players can challenge the Archfiends from Final Fantasy IV.
Layout[]
The Hellfire Chasm contains ten floors after the entrance, with floors B1 to B4 and B6 to B9 presented in random order, while B5 and B10 are fixed and feature the boss encounters. It is only possible to exit the Shrine on B5 or B10, where the player must defeat a boss in order to leave. Entering this dungeon unprepared is a common mistake, as its bosses can over ten times as much HP as Marilith had, reaching levels comparable to the final boss, but losing a battle in the Chasm ejects the party to the world map rather than the title screen, retaining any items or experience they gained. B5 and B10 each contain two bosses but the party can only challenge one on each floor per run, necessitating that they run the dungeon a minimum of two times to complete it.
The floors are based on four environments:
- The entrance, boss floors, and four random maps are based on Mount Gulg.
- Two maps based on the Waterfall Cavern.
- A unique fire shrine using a modified version of the Sunken Shrine tileset.
- Three overworld maps.
Each of these environments present their own challenges. The Mount Gulg maps feature lava damage floors, inflicting damage with every step on the lava, with two of the floors being comprised almost entirely of lava. As relief, random encounters will not occur on the lava tiles.
The fire shrine map likewise causes damage over time when standing on the red tiles; unlike the lava, this damage occurs every few seconds rather than with every step, so the party must keep moving to avoid it. Only the white tiles in the shrine are safe from this effect. The map is additionally filled with bats that will impede movement, increasing the time spent on the damaging tiles.
While one of the Waterfall Cavern environments is a standard dungeon, the other is filled with roaming NPCs. This version of the Cavern does not have random encounters; instead there are patches of floor that faintly glitter which initiate fixed encounters upon stepping on them. The roaming NPCs will block the safe paths around these patches, forcing the player to choose whether to wait for the NPCs to get out of the way or fight their way around them. The fixed encounters feature the same formations and probabilities as the random encounters of the normal Waterfall Cavern floor.
While there are three overworld maps, only one will appear on any given run. The party starts on foot, and through their explorations may find a ship, an airship, and the pirate Thule. To obtain the airship, the player must first speak with Thule and then find a desert oasis. One of the maps can be completed without finding either ship, while the airship is only mandatory to complete one other map, but the ship and/or airship are required to reach several treasures.
Items[]
In the Hellfire Chasm, treasure lists are static on each floor, but the number of chests in each floor varies, and these are randomly sorted for each run.
| Floor | Number of Chests |
|---|---|
| Fire Shrine | 4 |
| Mount Gulg | 2-5 |
| Overworld | 5 |
| Waterfall Cavern | 3-4 |
Encounters[]
| Encounters | Areas |
|---|---|
|
Fire Shrine |
|
Mount Gulg |
|
Overworld (land) |
|
Overworld (sea) |
|
Waterfall Cavern |
|
B5 |
|
B10 |
Surrounding region[]
Hellfire Chasm straddles the two encounter maps of the Cardian Islands.
| Encounters | Areas |
|---|---|
| West | |
| East |
Maps[]
Musical themes[]
In the 20th Anniversary version, a remix of the Final Fantasy IV boss theme plays while fighting the bosses in this dungeon. Previously, "Boss Battle B" was used for that purpose in the Dawn of Souls version.
Etymology[]
In many mythological, folklore and religious traditions, hell is a place of torment and punishment in an afterlife.