I beat Dragon Warrior III with just the Hero. It took me till the following Monday to work my way through Alefgard, with no particular difficulty. On Tuesday the 2nd I faced Zoma for the first time...and the second, and the third, and the sixth time.
I had a nice niche of time that evening where I got home from work a little early but my family was doing something else out of the house. So I got to try the fight several times. The first fight was actually that morning, but didn't count for much because I accidentally triggered the fight before I finished healing, and actually forgot to bring the Sphere of Light, so I died in two rounds. The first three fights of the evening were meant to get a feel for what I could and couldn't do, trying out different strategies to see what would be most effective.
Here are some things I learned:
First, the encounter with Zoma seems to automatically trigger if you step on any square adjacent or immediately diagonal to him. Since I was trying to step on every square, I accidentally triggered this fight twice before I was ready, before I deduced the full zone of triggering the fight.
Second, it is likely not viable to kill Zoma with physical attacks at 196 Strength. Here's an interesting fact that I had learned some time ago when testing out a no-equipment fight against Zoma: his freezing waves nullifies his own negative status effects in addition to your party's beneficial ones. As a consequence of this, using the Orochi Sword is not an effective strategy. But without it, I don't think it's possible to overcome Zoma's regeneration in the long term. There might be a statistical non-zero chance, but I suspect it's rather low. I tested both the Falcon Sword and the Sword of Kings. At that strength score, the Sword of Kings appears to do better against Zoma, but still not good enough.
Third, at someone's suggestion, I tried using herbs against him. I wasn't expecting this to turn out the best option, and it didn't, but it was better than I thought. This is probably a relatively obscure fact: both Medical Herbs and healing spells will damage Zoma after you use the Sphere of Light on him. And herbs can do anywhere from single digits to over 200 damage against Zoma. Someone pointed out that as little as four herbs followed by a lucky Lightning spell is theoretically enough to beat him if you're lucky enough to get max damage each time. But I doubt that the chances of that happening are any better than beating him using just Healall against him.
I actually got over 100 damage each with all four Herbs, the last one doing over 200. But the total damage for all four rounds was less than Healall does in four rounds. Furthermore, you can't take 4 herbs with you without leaving most of your armor behind. On that try I definitely had to heal more often than other tries, which has a huge impact on the battle.
Another thing I definitely learned is that the battle does rely a large degree on chance. Whereas Baramos' attack pattern is scripted and therefore completely predictable, Zoma's (after using the Sphere of Light) is anything but. He uses a pretty strong physical attack, a comparatively tamer breath attack, and his freezing waves attack, at least. I don't remember if there's at least one more, but those are the ones I do remember. Furthermore, it's random whether he attacks once or twice in one round. Because of this, you can't predict effectively how many rounds you can go without healing yourself. This makes it difficult to predict effectively whether a given strategy can work.
But, my experience in a few rounds of trying pretty much confirmed what I had read in numerous places: the most effective strategy is to cast Healall on Zoma every round, except for the rounds you cast it on yourself.
Healall does a surprising amount of damage on him. I think it's over 75% of the damage Lightning does on him, typically somewhere between 140 and 180, but at less than 25% of the MP cost of Lightning. It's plenty to wear him down, as long as you don't run out of MP. But that's where it gets difficult. This relies on Zoma's attack pattern, which is random. I had hugely different results between my last two tries using the same strategy. (I can infer from my experience combined with what I've read that this battle's difficulty likely drops considerably if you have higher max MP--every 7 points would likely make a notable difference.)
One caveat I discovered: it's extremely easy to accidentally heal yourself when you meant to use the spell on Zoma. But it's also a devastating mistake to make; doing it even once can decide the fight. Just one unnecessary round of free regeneration for Zoma is way too much.
On my last try of the night (it was going to be my last try anyway because I needed to get to sleep) I got very lucky. Zoma started using almost nothing but freezing waves on me for several rounds straight, with his low-damage breath a couple of times in between. I went eight entire rounds without healing, and my tracking had over 700 damage against him before I finally did heal.
But even with that lucky streak, it came down to the wire. After a few more cycles, I found myself out of MP. My tracking had him pretty close to 900 HP down after regeneration. With no other choice I did a physical attack. I was using the Falcon Sword and, the two hits totalled 111 damage. It was enough. Zoma went down.
I felt quite lucky. Even the last attack was on the very high end of what I had tested the Falcon Sword with. And Zoma's regeneration was likely a little on the low end, since he has 1024 HP. If I had known I would have to rely on at least one physical attack, I probably would have equipped the Sword of Kings instead. But the Falcon Sword works much better against the King Hydra and Baramos Gonus, so I chose it as my weapon since I was using magic on Zoma. The weapon came through for me in the end.
The solo challenge ended up being difficult, but still not as difficult as I expected given everything I read. I think I got lucky on my natural Strength, which is probably a big part of it. But I also think that the documentation available for this challenge is far too spotty and incomplete. I hope that anyone who tries this challenge in the future and searches for information will find what I've written either here or on Gamefaqs.com message boards.
Anyway, having completed this challenge, I have finally started my "minimalist" challenge, to mirror my efforts on Dragon Quest I and II. I'm only at level 5 and feeling the struggle already. More about that to come.
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