Final Fantasy Record Keeper
How to Play
Contents
Introduction
FAQ
Tutorials:
Description of Screen layouts
The Tutorial
The Home Screen
The Party Tab
The Upgrades and Inventory Tab
The Relic Draw Tab
Selecting and Starting a Dungeon
Battle
record Dungeons
Resources
Credits
Introduction
Welcome and thank you for reading my guide. The intent behind this guide is to teach blind players how to play this extremely complex, but very playable game. It is my hope that by getting a solid blind player base started, the developers (Dena) will take notice of us and will start implementing some deeper accessibility.
If there is anything that you would like to see in this guide, please post about it in one of the existing Final Fantasy Record Keeper threads or create your own. I am sure that I will miss something in early versions of the guide, but I want to eventually include comprehensive tutorials for every bit of content in the game.
Thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoy and are able to learn how to play.
FAQ
So this game is accessible, right?
It depends on what you mean by accessibility. Can all content and information be accessed? Yes. Does the game work perfectly with all screen reading technology? Sadly, no.
First of all, I've been playing this game for nearly a year now and have yet to find any truly unplayable content. Some of it takes a lot of work and dedication, but it can be done.
With that out of the way, here is the bad news. The game has actually become slightly less accessible since it's release. There used to be a lot more elements that VoiceOver could detect. Now there are a lot more areas where you need to turn VoiceOver off and tap the screen. The developers, Dena Corporation, have no interest in all for fixing this as far as I can tell. They are a medium sized company with a support team, and most emails get filtered through said team so that the actual people that work on the game never see them. Blind players and even sighted players have attempted to contact them about this over the past 4 years with no success. So if you want a completely VoiceOver accessible game, you can bail out now.
However, as I said before, I have yet to encounter anything that is unplayable. Though the game shows up as a screen-wide text field, flicking past this field lets you read most text in the game with VoiceOver and select icons on the screen. The only places that are completely unreadable and require total memorization are the dungeon map screen, the record dungeons and the battle screen.
The dungeon maps are a simple matter of tapping on between 1 and 3 different icons to start battles, usually with the later battles locked until you complete the prior ones. Battle is a matter of memorizing screen layout. Record dungeon maps are the hardest because they require you to scroll around as if exploring a map and tap icons as you find them, but I have completed all current record dungeons in the game.
Battles are indeed possible for us to strategize. Although you can not read damage output, character or enemy HP and remaining ability uses, there is a lot blind players can do. The game has an auto targeting system that does things like target a healing ability to the character with the lowest HP, target a random enemy with a debuff who does not have that status effect, and so on. It is also possible for us to use limited targeting if needed, but we must be careful doing this or we can end up healing enemies. The only part of battle I have found to be completely unusable is party formations. However, these only determine who is in the front and back row and do not seem to make or break the playability of content.
In summary, this game is not the ideal of accessibility. It takes a lot of patience and time to learn to play as a blind player. It is also the only game that has managed to keep me hooked for a year straight and with no plans to stop.
Does the game work with VoiceOver?
Yes and no. I would say about 80% of the in game text is readable with VoiceOver. There are places where you must turn VoliceOver off and tap the screen, however. This is especially true in battle.
What about android users?
This guide will be assuming you're playing on iOS. I have no android device and the last I heard, the game is all but inaccessible on the Android platform.
I don't like games that don't work completely with VoiceOver. Why would I want to play?
There is no question that this game takes much patience and dedication to learn. There are many reasons for a blind player to pick this game up though:
First and foremost, it is easily the most advanced mobile game we have available, if not one of the most advanced we have available to us on any operating system. The game is completely playable at this stage, but with just a few accessibility tweaks it would outstrip any audiogame I can think of in advanced battle mechanics.
Here is a basic features list:
If you've ever wanted to play any of the Final Fantasy games, now in a sense you can. Play through storyline with characters from Final Fantasy I through XV (That's 1 through 15 for those that don't know roman numerals), as well as Tactics and Type Zero. There are often collaboration events from other SquareEnix series as well.
Collect dozens of characters from the main series. Each character comes with their own set of soul breaks, which are like limit breaks from Final Fantasy VII but often with more advanced mechanics. All of the heroes of the games are available and the vast majority of the other party members, as well as some characters you weren't allowed to play during the course of the normal Final Fantasy games.
Use hundreds of soul breaks, sorted into many different types. There are super soul breaks, burst, ultra, overstrike and others, each with it's own set of mechanics. Add to that the fact that many of the soul breaks have sub-mechanics within the mechanics of their category and you have a truely diverse set of character-specific special abilities to use here.
Collect hundreds of different pieces of equipment, called relics, from the various Final Fantasy series. Powerful relics contain soul breaks for the various characters, which that character can then equip and master.
Use many different abilities in battle from more than 15 different schools. Schools include black, white and summoning magic, combat, support and spellblade abilities, as well as class-oriented schools such as knight, dragoon, samurai, machinist and sharpshooter.
Upgrade your relics to increase them in power using less powerful relics or specialized materials. Combine duplicate relics together to unlock further levels of power, and eventually reforge them for even more power. Create and hone your abilities using orbs and crystals, letting you use each ability more times in battle.
Unlock record and legend materia slots for your characters, adding bonuses to each character during battle. Almost every character in the game has at least 3 record materia and 3 legend materia, allowing for hundreds of materia to collect.
Start unlocking further power for your characters once they reach level 65. Just about every character in the game has a set of record spheres and a legend sphere that you can spend motes on to unlock. These spheres grant them stat bonuses, as well as occasionally unallowing them to use other ability schools, adding damage percentage boosts and obtaining their legend materia.
Unlock magicite and build what amounts to a secondary party. Magicite can be levelled and provide powerful bonuses to your entire party of characters, as well as allowing you to summon the magicite equipped in the primary slot to fight alongside your characters in battle.
Play through different types of dungeons. Realm dungeons let you play memorable events from each game while unlocking new characters to add to your party. Events are similar to realm dungeons, but run for a limited time and sometimes introduce new characters, content or mechanics. Record dungeons let you play through a modified version of the storyline of the Final Fantasy games. Raid dungeons let you challenge powerful foes either with a single party or by cooperating with other players. There are even more types of dungeons to be unlocked as well.
Active development is ongoing, with new events running every week. New realm and record dungeons are added monthly, and entirely new content and mechanics are introduced several times a year.
How many blind players play this game?
As far as I'm aware, 2, possibly 3. It was discovered by Buu420 that we could play at all, but I don't know if that player is still around. As I have said before, my hope is to attract more blind players using this guide to try to get the attention of the development team. With just a little work, this game could be made extremely accessible.
I've tried to play the game before, and every time I get a system error.
This is one of the oddities with VoiceOver. That system error is almost always present on some screens. It doesn't actually mean anything and I think VoiceOver is detecting it without it actually displaying on the screen. You can completely ignore this and play the game as normal.
The game shows up as a giant text field. How am I supposed to play?
Many apps for iOS show up as a text field like this. However, the one difference is that with FFRK, you can use VoiceOver to flick past this text field and read the actual text of the game. I've never seen this functionality available in any other app, but I'm glad it is here.
Tutorials
Getting a Description of Screen layouts
The first thing I will write about is how to get any screen described if it isn't reading properly with VoiceOver.
For those that are not aware, there is an app for iOS called Seeing AI. One of the features of this app is that it allows you to process a photo and then explore the photo by dragging your finger around the screen. If you take a screenshot of a screen while playing FFRK, you can use this app to discover how it is layed out. For example; to get a description of the home screen layout:
1. Make sure you are on the home screen, then press the home button and the lock button at the same time. You will hear a camera sound which means the screen capture has been successful.
Note: If you are using a newer iPhone, you can still do this by pressing the side button and the volume up button at the same time.
2. Open Seeing AI and tap the menu button. Go to Browse Photos. The first photo you should see will say Screenshot, and then the date the photo was taken. Tap this photo and wait for it to finish processing, then tap the explore photo button and wait for that to finish processing.
3. You can now drag your finger around the screen and hear the text of the icons announced, just as they are displayed on the screen of the game.
For the sake of convenience, I will be writing screen layout guides. But this will help if the screen you want to know the layout of doesn't currently have a guide and you still want to play.
The Tutorial
The tutorial is somewhat difficult to complete and I think is what puts most blind players off of the game straight away.
The story text is readable and can be advanced by double tapping with VoiceOver.
When you come to a point that you're supposed to tap an icon, for example; equipping items, you need to turn VoiceOver off and tap around until you hear the same sound as when dialogue is advanced. Then turn VO back on and see if there is any more tutorial text.
Seeing AI could help with this process immensely. Unfortunately it is impossible for me to write out a detailed guide of the tutorial as you can only play through it once and I would need to restart my progress in the game to do so.
Once you get past the tutorial, which is not long, you can advance to the rest of the guide.
Common sticking points include:
The party screen: After you get done modifying your party at the end of the tutorial, you are left on that screen. You need to tap the bottom left hand corner of the screen to go to the home screen and the music will change.
Books of Trials: It can be difficult to find the book that the tutorial wants you to tap on to display your missions. The first book of trials is toward the bottom of the screen, in the middle.
The Home Screen
The first thing you will see on almost any screen with VoiceOver is a set of numbers.
30/30 is your stamina. This is spent to enter battles.
After that will be your mythril, which is used for relic draws and a couple of other things.
Then is your gil, which is used to purchase just about everything else you can't buy with mythril or gems.
Sometimes a number will show up after gil on the home screen, or at the very end of the screen. This shows how many items are in your item chest to be collected.
You need to have VO off to select icons on the home screen. Here is the layout:
Along the bottom edge are tabs. The first is the home screen tab, which just refreshes the screen you're on. A little to the right is party. To the right of that is upgrades and inventory, then relic draws.
Slightly above that are the dungeons. You will need to scroll from right to left to access some of these. Far left is realm, then record, then event. Scrolling gets you to power up first, then nightmare, then mote and finally torment. Most of these will be locked at first.
A couple inches above realm dungeon is your item chest. This is where mission rewards and login bonuses are sent. The screen can be navigated with VO.
Slightly above that is the announcements icon. These can be read with VO.
On the far right of the screen at the same place as the item chest is the icon that takes you to the hall of acolytes where you can browse the various missions available in the books. VO lets you read the books, but you have to find them on the screen with it off.
Slightly above that is the annex. This brings up a small menu across the top middle of the screen. To the far left, slightly to the right of item chest, is the chocobo exchange. To the right of that is the hall of rites, then the library. The library contains the help database as well as some other useful things.
Finally, in the upper right hand corner is the menu, where you can manage your friend list and profile, change settings, email support and so on. The menu reads with VO. Slightly to the left of that is the shop, which also reads with VO.
One feature that will be necessary to use in this game is the chocobo exchange. This can be accessed in 2 ways:
1. Find the annex button, which is just below the menu button in the upper right of the home screen. Then, once you've activated the annex, tap near the left edge of the screen. Be careful not to tap too far left or you will open the item chest. If you've done it properly, the music will change to a chiptune after a brief loading time.
2. On the home screen, swipe briefly left and then tap near the bottom middle of the screen where the dungeons are. This should get you into the power up dungeons. Select a dungeon from the list of cached images and the music will change to a chocobo theeme. Now you can tap in the upper right hand corner to access the exchange.
Note: I can't remember if power up dungeons must be unlocked or not. I know the higher level ones are locked but lower ones may be accessible at all times.
Once in the exchange, you'll see a list of items, usually major orbs and 3 star motes first. If you navigate by heading to the bottom of this list, you can find the different categories of items that can be traded for. The ones I purchase most often are the 2 sets of stamina potions and the mythril on the special screen.
This is where things get tricky. In order to set the quantity of item you want to exchange, you need to tap a plus icon. This icon is on the far right edge of the screen, and there is an icon for each set of items. You must have VO toggled off to find these icons. You can check the quantity of items you're going to exchange by turning VO back on and reading the details under the heading you are trying to select. You'll see something like this:
Stamina potion:
Cost, 100
Limit: 2
After this will be a read only edit field. If it says 0, you have selected the plus icon for the wrong set of items. You can either try to find the minus icons, which are slightly to the left of the pluses, or select clear all at the bottom and start over.
Be aware that this can be a lengthy and annoying process to get the hang of. Especially in long lists of items like the accessories on the other tab, it's easy to try to exchange for the wrong items. Navigating to an item with VO and then swiping either up or down with 3 fingers can fix some of the scrolling issues. However, sometimes there's nothing to do but turn off VO, swipe up or down slightly with one finger to scroll and guess where the item you want is. I've purchased all available accessories as well as most of the stamina shards and I regularly use the exchange. It is possible, it just takes some work.
The Party Tab
This can be accessed from the home screen, and also comes up before entering any dungeon.
Early on, you can mostly use the remove all and optomize buttons. Optomize is in the uper right corner of the party management screen. Remove all is slightly to the left of it. When you select remove all, you can turn VO back on and navigate to the heading that appears. By default, all options are checked.
If you want to manually manage equipment, you can mostly do it with VO. This especially applies to abilities, soul breaks and materia. To bring up the character management screen, you can tap on any of the cached images after a character's name and HP on the party screen.
For equipping relics you need to briefly turn VO off and touch near the right middle edge of the screen. Weapon is the top icon, then armor and finally accessory. They are kind of close together so it can take some trial and error.
To equip abilities, you just tap on the cached image before both abilities. These will be the images closest to the tabs. The management screen will now come up. You can select an ability from the list, then navigate to the last heading VoiceOver detects on the screen and tap the ability you want to exchange out.
If you have no abilities equipped, you can select the ability you want to equip and then turn off VO and tap near the top left or right part of the screen, close to the top. This should select an empty slot.
Note that this screen can have scrolling issues. If you find VoiceOver selecting the toggle display button, the sort button or the boss info button if you're trying to enter a dungeon, try tapping on different parts of the ability, like it's number of uses or one of it's cached images.
Soul breaks and legend materia work the same way as abilities. Record materia are even easier to equip because you don't need to select a slot, as you can only have one equipped per character at a time.
Please note that on the character management screen the tabs to switch between equipment, abilities, soul breaks and materia are detected as Japanese by VoiceOver. I have listed them in order for convenience.
To change party members, you can tap the cached images under the heading that says party members. These are in the same order as displayed above the heading. You can then use the sort button, right before the characters list, to filter the characters. If you want to sort by series, you select that option and turn off VO. The series are arranged from left to right near the bottom of the screen. Be careful, if you tap too low you will hit the close icon. In order to get to any series after FFXII, you need to swipe from bottom to top to scroll up.
Of note is that optomize will fill all 5 of your party slots, but it will not change them unless you have empty slots.
When you unlock the favorites function, you can access it by tapping near the bottom left corner of your screen, just above where the back button would be. Most of the favorites menu reads with VoiceOver, but in order to bring up information on a saved team you need to turn off VoiceOver and tap the right edge of the screen in the area you think that team would be. You can then turn VO back on and you should see a heading that tells you your party name.
If you have not yet unlocked magicite you can ignore the rest of this tutorial for now.
To manage magicite you can do one of two things depending on whether or not you have magicite currently equipped. Optomize can equip magicite for you if necessary, though you will want to manage them manually for the purposes of levelling and putting together teams.
With no magicite equipped, you can touch the bottom of the screen, right above where the tabs would be.
If you have magicite equipped, another set of cached images will show up after your party members. You can tap on any of these to bring up the magicite screen.
With VoiceOver on, you will now see two japanese tabs, main magicite and sub magicite.
If you do not have a main magicite equipped, you can tap near the top of the screen, about an inch down in the left hand corner. If you tap too high, you risk switching to the sub magicite tab.
If you already have a magicite equipped, you can tap on the cached image before that magicite with VoiceOver to bring up the magicite management screen.
From here you need to find a heading that says "Select Magicite" and there will be a Toggle Display button near it. Activate it and now you will be able to see all of your magicite sorted by name. As with most screens, there is a sorting option here as well.
Simply tap the magicite you want and hit confirm.
Sub magicite is a little trickier. If you have a full set equipped, you can tap the cached images for each magicite and the management screen will come up with that magicite already prepared to exchange. Now you can select the one you want to exchange it with, navigate to the last heading VoiceOver can detect and flick to where it says change. Activate this button and then tap confirm.
You can also turn voiceOver off and tap across the top of the screen, with each slot being about an inch apart. This is necessary if you need to equip magicite without any prior magicites equipped. You'll know if you tapped an empty slot because the stat changes that VoiceOver will read you before the change button will be clear. If you don't see any changes at all or something doesn't look right, you can always hit the back button and try again.
The Upgrades and Inventory Tab
This is where you will be upgrading your characters, relics, abilities and magicite. Be aware that for some reason, VoiceOver detects all of the icons here in japanese. The category names are in english, but under those headings will be lists of japanese text.
Under hero, you have:
Growth egg
Memory crystal.
Wardrobe record
Record spheres
Crystal water
Equipment:
Upgrade
combine
reforge
Abilities:
Create
Hone
Shatter
Orb Exchange
Magicite:
Upgrade
Break level cap
Inheritance
Note that this screen has scrolling issues with VoiceOver. While you can activate all of the icons using VoiceOver except for magicite, sometimes you will need to force VoiceOver to scroll the screen. For instance, if you want to access the create abilities screen, you need to navigate to the abilities heading, then swipe up with 3 fingers to scroll the screen. This will put you back at the top of the screen, but you can now navigate back to the create abilities icon and double tap it. If you do not scroll the screen first, VoiceOver will usually activate the party tab instead.
If you want to see more detailed info on a relic, ability, character, soul break or materia, you can also hold your finger over that item with VO turned off until you hear the selection sound. Then you will have a pop-up heading that you can navigate to with VO and read. The only thing is this takes a bit of guess work as to where the item is on the screen. They're always in rows, but depending on the screen there may be more columns per row and some scrolling necessary. This works in many places during gameplay, such as when equipping abilities or examinine drops from certain dungeons.
As for inventory management, much of this works with VO, but I will explain some of the odd bits.
When spending growth eggs, most of the time you can just press the use all button. However, if you want finer control, plus and minus icons exist for each type of egg. The use all button can be read with VoiceOver, but with VO off it is on the far right edge of the screen for each type of egg. The plus icons are slightly to the left, with minus on the left edge of the screen.
This setup works for similar interfaces, such as spending metals to upgrade relics, consuming crystal water or exchanging orbs.
When upgrading relics, it is possible to use relics you don't want as upgrade material. To do this, select the upgrade relics tab. Then select the relic you want to upgrade. The easiest way to do this is to press the toggle display button. Then the name of the relic will show before it's level. You can also sort relics for convenience by activating the button just after toggle display, which will say something like ATK, desc. This means your relics are sorted by attack, with highest value first.
Once you've chosen your relic, navigate past the materials to the heading that shows the relic name. Flick left from here and you'll see 2 tabs; materials and equipment. Select equipment, then flick left a couple more times and tap toggle display, so you can see the names of the relics you're going to use as material.
Note that this screen has scrolling issues. Firstly, I've never figured out why I can't get rid of the spear. But most notably, I don't recommend trying to select more than 10 relics. I also recommend double tapping on the relic's level instead of it's name or cached image. For some reason it is very easy for VO to accidentally hit the clear button, which causes you to have to start your selections over. You can always see how many relics you have selected before confirming. The materials list does not read correctly when reading the confirmation dialogue though. So when you confirm for the second time, if a pop-up appears telling you that you have selected 5 star relics, you probably want to cancel and start over.
Combining and reforging both work well with VO, but the guide above can help with making selections.
When creating, honing or shattering abilities, the list is so long that it can be easy to run into scrolling issues. Be sure to use the sorting categories instead of trying to browse all abilities. If you run into a situation where double tapping on an ability with VoiceOver causes nothing to happen and even turning it off there are no icons, you need to go to one of the headings on the screen and double tap it. Then you can scroll to where you think the ability might be on screen, and either guess at where it is and try to tap it or navigate to it with VO and double tap. All actions concerning abilities must be confirmed, so do not fear accidental expenditure of orbs.
the vault can be accessed in the upper right corner of the inventory and upgrades screen. The interface is the same as selecting relics to use as material and then you can press the stash in vault button to free up inventory space for more relics.
The Relic Draw Tab
Once you access the relic draw screen, you'll see a lot of cached images and dates. This screen is arranged with the most recent relic draw first, and the stable relic draws that don't close closest to the relic draw heading you can see with VoiceOver. 1 flick back from the heading is the daily free draw. Most of the time you only get a 1 or 3 star relic from this, so I don't bother. You have something like a .01 percent chance of drawing a good relic, that is 5 star or above.
1 flick left from the common, or free, relic draw is the full throttle relic draw if you haven't purchased it. This is a 1 time draw that you pay for with gems, aka real money, and get to pick a set of bonus relics after the draw.
To the left of that are the realm draws. This lets you draw relics from all 17 common realms, that is, FFI to FFXV, Ff Tactics, and FF Type Zero. When you activate the image you'll be in a set of 17 cached images. You'll know which realm you're in because the music will change to a track from that game.
The draws to the left of that are usually the limited time ones. You need to activate the cached image before the dates, and again the music will change to a track from whatever game is being hosted.
Currently there's another type of realm draw going on. It's a countdown to the anniversary, with another realm being released every 24 hours. You get to draw 3 relics with at least 1 5 star or higher guaranteed. These are the relics that unlock powerful soul breaks that you will need to defeat high level content.
Most relic draws cost 50 mythril for 11 draws. This is the best deal since you're guaranteed at least one 5 star, sometimes a 6 star or higher. The normal realm draws let you pay 15 mythril for 11 draws the first time. Some relics are gems ony, and some are half off, that is, 25 mythril.
Once you're on the relic screen you want, you need to turm off VO. Usually if there's a deal of some kind, the draw button you want is either on the middle right edge of the screen, or near the bottom right hand corner. Once you select a button you can turn VO back on and check what happened. If it worked right, you will see a heading that asks you to confirm whether you want to perform this draw. If not, you're probably in the relics list, the help section or the mechanics section. For most things you can hit the back button in the lower left corner and try again. If you end up in the rarity help, you can either flick to the close button, or turn off VO and tap near the bottom middle of the screen.
You can skip any part of the animation as desired by tapping anywhere on the screen. This will skip to the next relic. You can tell if you've gotten a good relic because there will be a sort of victory music, and a slightly longer one for a 6 star relic.
Once the draw finishes, you'll be on a screen that tells you what you drew. The game picks one relic to display the soul break from. Anything that looks like a long string of numbers you can activate with VO and a pop-up will appear with detailed info on that relic. The cached images are for 4 star or lower relics, which usually end up being upgrade material for more powerful relics.
Selecting and starting a Dungeon
There are many different types of dungeons in this game. Here is how to select the type of dungeon you want and start conquering it.
The first dungeon you will play is a realm dungeon.
You probably only have FFVI unlocked at this point, but swiping left and right changes the realm. Left goes higher in number. Touching the center of the screen enters the realm painting.
From here you can turn VO on to select a dungeon. Then if you go to headings in your roter, you will find a heading with the name of that dungeon. Then will be the level and total stamina of the dungeon, followed by prologue, rewards and boss tabs you can use to get information about the dungeon. Selecting enter will take you to the party screen. From here you do any party management, press next and select a roaming warrior. Then press go.
From here you're on the dungeon map. You need to turn VO back off for most of this. In the upper right hand corner is cammsite, a screen that VO can read. Tap the back button, always in the bottom left corner on every screen, to get back to the map. On the right toward the bottom is retreat. Again, VO can read the options once activated. On the left edje are the dungeon icons. Most realm dungeons have 3 battles; bottom, middle and top. The map scrols as you complete them, and VO can read the screen after you select a map icon, which just tells you the name of the battle you're entering as well as how much stamina will be spent. Activate begin battle to start.
You will likely be playing event dungeons as your second type of dungeon. When you first enter the event dungeons screen, if you turn on VoiceOver you will see a bunch of dates and numbers, like 0/12. The date is when the dungeon ends and the numbers are how many battles in that event you have completed and mastered.
Once you select an event by tapping on the cached image before the numbers, you can see details on that event and enter it. After that if you want to see what event you're in and don't know the music, you can always navigate to the heading that VoiceOver detects and it will read you the event name. , the process for selecting and starting dungeons is the same as realm dungeons after this.
Power-up dungeons will probably be the type of dungeon you will see next. As was mentioned in the home screen secton, this requires a bit of scrolling to get to. If you swipe briefly from right to left on the home screen, then touch near the middle of the screen, you should enter the power-up dungeon selection.
Power-up dungeons cycle in and out based on a schedule. Normally you will see 3 to 6 cached images here. If you select one, you will then see a list of dungeons that will tell you which power-up dungeon you have selected. The process for entering the dungeon is the same as realm dungeons after that.
To select record dungeons, you first need to pick a chapter. This can be done with VoiceOver by tapping on the cached image before the chapter name.
You will now be on a sort of scrolling path. Unlike with most screens, you can't just swipe to scroll. Instead, you must press icons to scroll between dungeons. Thankfully, the icon on the far left of the screen scrolls left and the one on the far right scrolls right. These are close to the middle of the screen. Touching the center of the screen will activate the dungeon you currently have in focus if you have closed the dungeon details screen. If there are side paths, the icons to go up and down appear slightly above or below the center of the screen. After this, the entrance process is as normal.
Nightmare dungeons work kind of like power-up dungeons, with the exception that they do not cycle out. Firstly, when you access the nightmare screen, the sound will be different than selecting other dungeon screens and the music will change immediately. You will then see a set of 12 cached images. Tapping on any of these selects a nightmare dungeon and you can then read the details of that dungeon.
After you've entered the dungeon from the details page, you need to select a battle. This can only be done with VoiceOver off. The battles are arranged in a square, with the lowest level being in the upper left hand corner and the most difficult being the lower right. The square is in the middle of the screen, so keep that in mind. Once you select a dungeon, signified by a ringing sound, you can read details of the battle and enter the dungeon as normal.
Magicite dungeons work very much like nightmare dungeons, with the exception that even selecting the dungeon to enter doesn't work with VoiceOver. Magicite dungeons are arranged in a circle by element. Fire is in the upper left portion of the circle, then ice, wind, earth, lightning and finally water. I have yet to unlock Dark and Holy, but I assume they will appear in the center of the circle.
Once you've selected a magicite element, you can tap near the bottom of the screen to access the first tier dungeon, signified by a kind of drum sound. I have not unlocked 4 or 5 star dungeons, but I assume you simply tap higher on the screen for higher tiers.
Mote dungeons have only one dungeon to display at a time, so they are easy to enter.
Torment dungeons work the same way as event dungeons.
If you're in realm and want to go to elite dungeons, or if there's more to an event, you can tap in the upper right hand corner of the dungeon list screen to toggle. This also works on the event dungeon list screen to go to conquest battles. On a power-up dungeon screen it will activate the chocobo exchange, and in torment dungeons it will bring up the royal crucible.
battle
Battle is where you will spend the majority of your time during gameplay. It is the meat and potatoes of the game. It is also one of the least accessible parts of the game for us. You may be wondering what the point of playing is if battle is not accessible. So what can and can't we do?
We can:
Use the entire battle menu by memorizing it. Since you can only have 2 abilities equipped at a time and 4 soul breaks, that means most of your setup is done pre-battle and the basic layout of the battle screen stays the same.
Activate roaming warriors
Toggle auto-battle
Unleash magicite
Target enemies using the game's built-in auto-targeting system. We can use targeting to a limited degree, as explained below.
Pause battle and adjust battle speed, as well as flee and restart if necessary.
Adjust to enemy transformations or timed attacks. Much of this has a sound attached to it, such as an enemy changing forms mid battle or preparing to unleash a powerful attack.
We can not:
Read damage output
See what buffs are active
Use manual targeting reliably
Tell which character is currently ready to act
What this means is that most of the strategizing for us comes in the form of pre-battle setup. There are certain strategies we can not currently use, such as wrath/entrust, because they rely on being able to manually target a character. We also will have trouble using some soul breaks properly, such as burst and brave soul breaks, because we can not tell which character is currently active. Battle for blind players is generally a matter of spamming either ability 1 or ability 2, with ocasional checks to see if you have a soul break ready to fire. This may sound simplistic, but as you learn the game sounds and how to adjust which abilities to spam during battle, you'll learn how to heal, how to reactivate buffs, when to use your roaming warrior and so on.
On the bottom edge is your actions menu. When you have a character ready to act, signified by a little ding sound, you can access any of these options. Bottom left is attack. Then from left to right are defend, ability 1, ability 2, and finally soul break. If you have more than one SB equipped, the bottom menu changes to let you pick one of them.
Above attack is auto battle. For now, this just instructs all of your characters to perform a basic attack. From left to right after auto battle are roaming warrior, magicite and skip turn. Magicite you won't need to worry about for some time, and skip turn is mostly useful if you want to use abilities or soul breaks in a certain order.
Above these two menues are the targetable enemies and allies. Enemies are left, your party is on the right. 90 percent of the time you won't need to use these. The game has an auto targeting system that does things like heal the ally with the lowest HP, target an enemy with a debuff that doesn't have it, etc.
In the top right hand corner is the pause button. The game will also be paused if you lock the screen. To resume play, just touch near the middle of the screen and the battle sounds will come back.
If you lose, the game over screen has 2 options; continue and quit. Continue brings up a menu where you can spend mythril or jems to restart the battle with a stackable bonus. Mythril is the top option.
The pause menu is a large box, slightly longer than wide, that is centered in the middle of the screen. The top ends just below the pause button. The bottom ends just above the Soul Break meter. In the center of the menu rests the battle speed options, with rectangular buttons ranging from one to five going left to right. One being slow, five being fast.
Below the battle speed bar there are two larger buttons for Flee and Restart respectively. Below those two is the resume button.
In the top right corner of the menu there is a Battle Info button.
If you press the flee button, a prompt will appear, asking you for confirmation. If you leave your finger where you pressed the Flee button in the Pause menu, a tiny bit up is now a new button also titled Flee, which acts as a confirmation that you really do want to run from the fight. To the right is the Back button. Be careful! If you tap the Back button here, you'll be thrown directly back into the fight with the game unpaused! You need to be ready to press the Pause button immediately again! If you Flee the battle, the game loads a screen that informs you that you ran away. There is a Next button in the center of the bottom end of the screen.
Pressing the restart button will call up a very similar confirmation screen as the Flee button — left means yes, restart the battle; right means back to the battle, unpaused.
When you restart, the game returns to the loading screen and then starts the battle again, as if you just entered it for the first time. When restarting a fight, you need to be aware of two very important things: one, the music doesn't start over when you use Restart. It continues to play as if you just unpaused the game. Fortunately, restart makes a distinct sound effect (similar to a low-level Cure spell), so you can tell if you did it right or not very easily. Two, when you pause the game, change the battle speed and then restart the fight, the battle speed resets to the value it was on when you first entered the fight. If you take to changing the battle speed on the fly, be especially mindful of this when going into a battle on high battle speed and setting it to low at the start of the fight. If you mess up and hit Restart, you'll be back at high battle speed again.
A note about Burst and Brave Soul Breaks. Burst mode means that your attack and defend options change to burst abilities. This is why they are difficult for us to use unless you have 5 characters in your party with burst mode active. Brave mode is the same way, except that it only changes attack to a brave attack. Having said that, I have compiled parties with everyone using burst soul breaks before and done very well in battle.
Record Dungeons
Record dungeons are easily the most difficult and least accessible of the content for us to play. It can be done, but it takes a lot of patience.
Basically, the only way to complete these dungeons without a guide is to tap around the screen randomly until you hear the selection sound. You have to be careful of where you tap, as tapping in the upper right hand corner will activate the record dungeon menu.
There is good news, however. Some dedicated FFRK players are helping us in a huge way by writing up record dungeon guides that tell us exactly where to scroll and tap. I had completed up to chapter 6 of the record dungeons before these guides started, and I can say that the guides cut 20 to 30 minutes off of each dungeon's playtime. I will link to these guides in the resources section below.
Resources
FFRK Official Strategy Site: https://ffrkstrategy.gamematome.jp/game/951/wiki/Home
This is the wiki for the game. If you need any information and are having trouble accessing it from within the game, you can find it here. All characters, relics, materia, soul breaks, abilities, dungeons etc are listed here in great detail.
FF Record Keeper Reddit Wiki: https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper/wiki/index
This is another wiki that has been assembled by the FF Record Keeper Subreddit community. Very useful information here as well, such as upcoming events, strategies for defeating difficult bosses, guides for new players and more.
FF Record Keeper Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper
This is an awesome community of FFRK players who have been very helpful and encouraging to me. They have assembled guides for blidn players on their own free time with no compensation and some have even written Dena asking for accessibility improvements. This is a great place to ask for help and make friends.
Final Fantasy Record Keeper Gamespot Forum: https://www.gamespot.com/final-fantasy- … er/forums/
Another community of players that has been very helpful. I am not as familiar with this community, but Stirlock has had a good experience with them from what I understand.
FFRK Community Database: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ … =938172420
This is a player-maintained database that is incredibly useful for discovering information that isn't obvious about many elements of gameplay. It can tell you how abilities work with auto-targeting, what follow-up abilities do that have no description, exactly how much a "moderate" damage boost is and much more.
Record Dungeon Blind Guides: https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper … ind_guides
This is the page where guides are being posted to assist blind players through record dungeons.
Credits
Buu420 from audiogames.net, for discovering this game's accessibility and describing basic layouts at first. He helped blind players learn the battle screen and get started playing.
TeekTheReddit and Antis14 from FF Record Keeper Reddit, for the description of the pause menu on the battle screen.
Anyone else from /r/FF Record Keeper, for helping me with menu layouts before Seeing AI and where it doesn't work. Also for the record dungeon guides, which are just awesome.