Cleyra

Story mode. Written for a first playthrough and kept free of spoilers — it will not tell you what happens here, only what the game is asking of you.

This is the single biggest one-time area in the game, and unlike the Evil Forest or Burmecia, the things in it are worth having.

Two shops with stock you will not see again. A travelling merchant. Four scenes. Three spells. Around thirty pickups across a dungeon and a town. All of it goes.

So: do not rush the middle of this chapter. Whatever else you skip, do not skip Cleyra.

The tree is full of hidden chests

The climb up the trunk is the densest hidden-pickup stretch in the game. Chests tucked behind trees, behind roots, in camera blind spots, at the base of a sandfall, in a room full of whirlpools.

Search walls. Search behind things. If a room looks like it has one chest, walk the edges before you leave it.

Two chests you can see and cannot reach

Early in the climb there is a pair of chests above you that you cannot get to. They are not decoration and they are not a tease.

Get to the town, watch both of Quina’s scenes, then go to the rubbish pit beside the town entrance and jump in. You land next to them.

Those two scenes are also two of the four you need for the watch-everything achievement, so this is one of the rare cases where the completionist route and the loot route are the same route.

Buy the merchant’s bundle

There is a travelling moogle in the inn selling three items for 444 gil. Buy them.

He turns up eight times across the whole game and the payoff only arrives if you have bought from him every single time. Cleyra is his second stop and it is the easiest one to walk past, because the inn is not on the way to anything.

Talk to the priest

The high priest gives you a gem. He does not hand it over unprompted and four guides flag it as easy to lose. Go and speak to him before you head for the town entrance.

When the attack starts

You will be asked where to send people. Right, then left, then across the bridge to the right.

Get them right and the survivors thank you afterwards with seven items. Get them wrong and they do not.

Before you leave

Take Quina’s equipment off.

Quina is not coming with you, and whatever Quina is wearing goes too. Exactly one guide out of fifteen mentions this. It is the most expensive thing in the area after the merchant.

While you are at it: Quina can eat three things in this tree and learn three spells, one of which heals the whole party for a long time. Quina leaves in about twenty minutes.

Game Notes

Cleyra is the best-built place in FFIX and the game destroys it forty minutes after you arrive.

It is a city of refugees who left a war and built a home inside a tree, protected by a sandstorm they maintain with a dance. The dance is a real ceremony, performed by people with a stake in it, and the game lets you watch the whole thing. There is a harp. There is a priest. There are children.

Then Alexandria turns the storm off and walks in.

What makes it land is the pacing. You spend an hour climbing into this place and learning where its chests are, which is the most intimate way a game has of making you know somewhere. By the time the attack comes you have been in the inn, the cathedral, the mill and somebody’s back garden. The loss is measured in rooms you recognise.

And then — this is the part the game does not soften — Freya walks through the ruins of the second city of her people to be destroyed in two chapters, and meets the same knight, and loses again.

Completionist mode. Full spoilers, in play order, with every permanent loss called out before you reach it. 5 entries below are marked where our sources disagree with each other — we have not picked a winner for you.

Every publisher agrees Cleyra is destroyed and cannot be revisited. They put the cutoff in three different places: before the events at the top of the tree, before going to the settlement entrance, and after escaping the Red Rose.

Take everything early and the disagreement stops mattering. What follows is ordered by what costs most to miss.

The things one publisher each tells you

Take Quina’s equipment off before the escape. Quina does not come with you, and whatever Quina is wearing leaves too. Exactly one publisher out of fifteen mentions it. In an area where the headline missables are a 444-gil bundle and a gemstone, this is quietly the most expensive item on the page.

The Ice Staff must be taken before the trunk fills with sand. One Steam guide flags this as a point of no return inside the dungeon; seven other publishers list the Ice Staff as an ordinary hidden chest with no warning at all.

The Kupo Nut from Monev is conditional. One publisher explains it: you only get it if you already gave the previous one to the moogles in Gizamaluke’s Grotto. Caves of Narshe lists the Kupo Nut with no condition; everyone else omits it.

The two chests you can see and cannot reach

Early in the climb, two chests sit above the entrance in plain view. A player asked on a message board whether they were obtainable “or just there to tease you”.

The answer: reach the settlement, watch both of Quina’s Active Time Events, then jump into the garbage pit beside the town entrance. Zidane follows Quina down and lands beside them. Inside are a Silk Robe and the second Magician Shoes.

Four publishers tie it to the two Quina scenes. One publisher places the pair at the Antlion sandpit instead, which is a different pit in a different part of the map, and following it means never finding them.

This also means the two Quina scenes are load-bearing twice over: they are two of the four Active Time Events the achievement needs, and they are the key to the chests.

How many Magician Shoes are there?

Six publishers say one. Three say two. Our own first reading said three.

There are two. The per-map atlas shows that screen holding four chests — Magician Shoes, Ice Staff, Silk Robe, Magician Shoes — and the publishers saying one are counting only what the normal climb reaches. The second is behind the garbage pit with the Silk Robe.

Our three came from the same chest being scripted into both states of that screen, before and after the re-entry. It is the counting error we have now made in three different areas, and it is always the same shape: an award instruction is not a thing you can pick up.

The Trunk

Phoenix Down, Magician Shoes, Ice Staff, Ether, Needle Fork, Tent, Flame Staff, Remedy, Desert Boots, Mythril Vest, Mythril Gloves, Potion, Elixir, Hi-Potion, 900 Gil, Gysahl Greens — plus the Silk Robe and second Magician Shoes above.

Most are hidden. Behind the tree on the back wall, behind the root in the middle of the room, in a blind spot to the left, at the base of the sandfall. This is the densest hidden-pickup stretch in the game and a room that looks like it has one chest usually has two.

The 900 gil is in the whirlpool room, with a Hi-Potion — six publishers place it there and so do the scripts. Do not merge it with the settlement’s 970 gil near the sandpit; they are different chests in different places.

Caves of Narshe’s treasure box omits the Tent that six other publishers list.

The settlement

970 gil near the sandpit. 1,250 gil, an Echo Screen and an Ether in the inn. Thunder Gloves by the water mill. Ore at the end of the east path, and another outside the inn. A Remedy behind a tree by the well. A Yellow Scarf in the cathedral lobby, before you talk to the guards. Gysahl Greens by the cathedral signpost, an Echo Screen in the flowers, and Phoenix Pinions in three separate places.

Three more in the harp room: an Ore in the back wall, a Phoenix Pinion in the right wall, an Ether in the left pillar. Two publishers list these; the rest treat the harp room as a cutscene and move on.

Stiltzkin is in the inn: Hi-Potion, Ether and Phoenix Pinion for 444 gil, unanimous across six publishers. His second of eight stops, and the chain only pays out if you buy at every one.

A note on our own data: the bundle appears twice in the scripts, once in the inn and once in the sandpit field. It is one purchase. Publishers put Stiltzkin in the inn and one specifies the second floor.

The Emerald

Given by the High Priest, not found in a chest. Four publishers flag it as missable, one adds that you must be playing as Freya, and one says it is lost once the party has gone far enough down the trunk.

Go and talk to him before you head for the town entrance.

The Antlion

Level 16, 3,938 HP. Weak to ice, absorbs water.

• Steals: Annoyntment (100%), Mythril Vest (25%), Gold Helm (6.25%). All six publishers agree on the items and none agrees on the rates.
• Drops an Annoyntment and up to three Ethers — Caves of Narshe is alone in showing all three remaining drop slots filled with Ether, and it is right.
• Sandstorm takes the whole party to single digits and blinds them. Only one publisher lists Death among its moves.

Beatrix, again

Level 17, 4,736 HP. Five publishers print that; one says “close to 5,000”. One boss guide’s MP figure is a digit transposition of the other two.

Ten turns, ending on 1 HP, no drops, no experience. She uses Shock a great deal more than she did in Burmecia.

Steals: Phoenix Down (100%), Thunder Gloves (25%), Ice Brand (6.25%).

This is the Beatrix steal worth actually chasing. In Burmecia the prize sat in the fourth slot at 0.39% inside a ten-turn window, which is a lottery. Here it is 6.25% — sixteen times better odds on the same budget of turns.

The attack, and the seven rewards

You are asked where to send people, four times. Right, left, cross the bridge to the right, and then a fourth option that two publishers print differently — “Not Yet” against “We’re not safe yet”.

Get them right and the survivors in the cathedral pay you afterwards. How many items is contested three ways: two publishers list seven, Jegged lists six and omits the Phoenix Pinion, and Game8 prints a different set entirely under a different heading.

The reward script holds seven — Ether, Phoenix Pinion, Remedy, Phoenix Down, Elixir and two cards. The seven-item lists are right.

The battle sequence during the attack is also contested: one publisher enumerates four encounters, another three in a different order tied to the evacuation choices.

Three Blue Magic spells, and a closing window

White Wind from a Zuu, Matra Magic from a Dragonfly, Auto-Life from a Carrion Worm. Quina has to eat them, and Quina is about to leave the party for a stretch. White Wind in particular is a party-wide heal that stays useful for a very long time.

Published HP for these is thin — one publisher gives approximations and no publisher we could reach prints a steal table for any Cleyra random encounter. The two sources that normally carry that data were both unavailable.

The Red Rose

Nothing in it. No chest, no gil, no pickup — a save moogle and a Mognet step. Only one publisher gives it a section at all, and one of the two Mognet deliveries is placed here by two publishers and in Cleyra during the attack by a third.

Game Notes

Cleyra is where the cost of the published record’s blind spots is highest, because it is the one area where missing something actually hurts.

Look at the shape of it. The two most valuable pieces of advice in the chapter — strip Quina before the escape, and take the Ice Staff before the sand comes — are each carried by one publisher out of fifteen. The trigger for two otherwise unreachable chests is carried by four, contradicted by a fifth, and sits behind scenes that a player optimising for loot has no reason to watch. The reward set for the evacuation is counted three different ways.

None of this is any individual guide failing. It is what a corpus looks like when every entry is written to a route, and the route through Cleyra is a story sequence with a timer implied but never shown. You go up the tree, you watch the dance, the army arrives. Nothing in the game says “this is your last chance”, so nothing in most guides does either.

The one thing they all agree on is that it is gone. They just do not agree on when.