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So we've hit something of a weird crossroads. At the end of the day, no amount of randomization can change the fact that magic is magic, and now that we've got access to more or less all the spells we're supposed to have at this point, there's a limit to how janky any of our characters that actually have magic commands can really be. Between that and the airship giving us the freedom to shop around, we're... kind of just playing FF6 for a while? Barring any particularly dickish enemies, at least.
The main difference is that Rei is twice as good at magic as everyone else, so let's get started on building up that spell list! Rounding out the party are BK-201, Gilga (for now), and... sure, Kars can come.
Speaking of Kars, while reorganizing equipment I notice that their armor selection is incredibly limited. They can still use the red jacket though, so it's not a big deal.
Also BK-201 has a 28% learned quake for some reason? Try as I might, I couldn't find anything in our inventory that teaches it. I guess it's a natural mage thing, but you either know those spells or you don't, showing up in the spell list partially learned doesn't make any sense.
Anyway, here's everyone's loadouts. Rei's just picking a solid damage spell to start learning,
Gilga's focusing on strength,
BK-201 on magic,
and someone should probably be learning life.
With that sorted, we have a few errands to run before advancing the plot, most of them esper related. First up, the auction house!
I don't know if I just got really lucky or if Beyond Chaos rigs this in your favor, but both magicites were the first two items up for bid.
ZoneSeek is pretty blah, but speed +2 on Golem is great, and slow 2 doesn't hurt either.
In fact, let's switch Gilga to it now, they've honestly got enough strength as is.
Next is... this is the wrong town, isn't it? I always forget where the guy selling Seraph is. As long as we're here though, we might as well check to see if Kars can use the hawkeye.
...Well, they can, but it's somehow worse than the full moon? Pass.
Here we go. I have a vague memory that on my original run of this seed I forgot to grab Seraph until pretty far into the world of ruin. Depending on what spells it has, I might be feeling very silly in a moment.
Okay damn, that is pretty good actually, and Rei's new number one priority, but it's not what I was afraid of. See, if you've been keeping track, you know there's still one significant gap in our spell selection. We may have cure and life, but we don't have cure 2. Cure is fine for now, but uh, that was the last WoB esper. We're absolutely going to start feeling the pressure again eventually.
I think that's everything worth doing before heading to Narshe, but just for fun, let's visit triangle island and see what monstrosities lurk there.
...This may have been a mistake.
Since we're probably fucked anyway, I decide to take a chance on W-Time and get rewarded with meteo. 
Honestly if I were better prepared this might actually be doable, but part of that involves getting these goobers some spells, so let's just move on.
Plot, plot, don't care, don't care...
New party member time!
Oh no, I guess we'll just have to take it for ourselves, how horrible.
Unlike the other rods so far, this one's actually got a fairly competitive attack stat, so sure, BK-201 can start whacking stuff with it.
Hmm, I can just barely make out a foot on not!Umaro...
Here's me failing to take a screenshot of BK-201 learning quake after the first encounter in the caves, without leveling up. My best guess is that it has something to do with everyone's levels getting re-averaged, like the game can't actually teach someone a spell outside of an encounter, and for some reason overshooting the level you're "supposed" to learn it at makes it show up partially learned in the spell list until the inconsistency gets resolved. What's weird is, this seems like something that could happen easily for Terra and Celes just playing FF6 normally, and yet I don't think I've ever heard anything about it before. 
Somewhere in the world, someone has actually picked the gold hairpin, and I'm not sure how that makes me feel. I think you can still get Mog in the WoR even if you do, so it's not completely indefensible, but still.
Yes, yes, we knew this already.
Aha, it's Sabin! Yeah, that tracks. Also that color palette looks suspiciously normal. Maybe the pants are slightly bluer? I dunno.
Anyway, Gilga is getting a well deserved break now that Koharu can take over stealing duty.
A quick reminder of what we're working with, since it's been a while. That equipment is looking pretty lackluster; let's see what we can do about it...
In addition to rods, Koharu can also use the various brushes we've been collecting. But who gives a fuck about that, because 
we've found someone who can equip the final tier of shuriken.
Yeah, that looks good. Welcome to the team, Gilga 2.0! Koharu's damage might end up slightly lower overall thanks to their much lower strength stat, but the convenience of being able to steal and attack at the same time more than makes up for it.
And of course, lower strength is a problem that can be fixed. Also, tack stars have an extra little secret which we'll see later.
Well said, Rei. Hopefully this dungeon will be kinder to us than the last one.
It actually is, too! Almost none of the enemies in here have much worth talking about. A few do have a lot of HP, but these guys aren't one of them.
They do adhere to the theme of the run, though. 
...Isn't this the dungeon where you get this normally? It's nice to know that Kars seems to be where the "knives that both Locke and Shadow can use, but nobody else" set of weapon access ended up. (I'm not sure if it's actually come up yet, but Iria has retained access to the ninja knives.)
The assassin dagger itself has some nice stat boosts, but isn't very good for actually attacking. Kars' damage isn't that impressive anyway though, so sure, whatever. If nothing else it'll be good for a laugh if I accidentally poke an undead with it.
Chest number two is just a consumable, and encounter number two is... another phantom train repeat. I think they only show up in these first couple rooms though, because this is the last we see of them.
It actually ends up being a surprisingly lucrative encounter. Come to think of it, almost everything in here gives out a lot of magic points. As for the relics, I think we've seen gale hairpins before, for sale if not necessarily in our inventory, but the barrier ring is new. It's not useful, mind, mostly it's just weird that it's taken us this long to find one.
The first lava room kicks things off with a rude surprise.
This is the Sealed Cave's secret; what it lacks in regular enemies, it makes up for in chest encounters. We've just piled on ~3000 damage, and this guy is still going strong.
Meanwhile, he spends most of his turns doing this. 
I try to slam the brakes on with status effects, but it's too little, too late. It's fine though; Kars has totally got this, right?
Honestly the jump timing worked out longer than I thought it would, but no, Kars doesn't got this. 
While retracing our steps, the tack stars reveal their secret: they have a spell proc! It's... either life or life 2, I'm not actually sure which. Fortunately it doesn't do anything to living enemies, and we can't target dead ones, so in practice all it amounts to is a fun little bonus if something happens to be undead. A reverse assassin dagger, if you will.
Back to this room. I decide to check the other chest first this time... and immediately fall into the lava afterwards. Wait, don't we already have one of these?
We do, but I'm glad I got reminded of its existence, because it turns out Koharu can actually use it!
Sandstorm, I assume? I wanna say that's just aoe damage, maybe with a blind attached? Replacing an aoe option that costs money with one that doesn't isn't nothing, I suppose, but I'm not convinced it's worth spending a relic slot on. Pass.
Time for round 2.
My gut feeling is that status effects are in fact the way to go, we just need to be more on the ball with applying them. Unfortunately Koharu hasn't learned any yet, so uhhhh rasp I guess?
Rei and BK-201, on the other hand, have berserk and muddle, both of which hit. This'll give us some free turns and hopefully make the ones that aren't less deadly.
Yeah, its physicals do a lot of damage, both to itself and to us, but it's at least manageable.
Not that the fight lasts long enough for it to matter; one more set of turns is all it takes to burn through the rest of its HP.
It even has some actual loot for us! I... honestly don't remember for sure what the cursed ring does in FF6, but I assume it's the same as 5 and just starts the wearer with doom. X-Zone isn't exactly a spell I'm champing at the bit to learn, so I don't really feel the need to put this on anyone right now.
More new enemies! The seahorse is a big sack of HP, but otherwise unremarkable. The bugs, however, actually do something interesting:
They counter attacks with either cure or cure 2... on us. What friendly creatures! 
Sadly I think this is the only time we run into them.
Goodbye small lava room, hello ridiculously large lava room. Seriously, this room is essentially the whole rest of the dungeon.
Not a tack star, don't care.
While there are enough of these guys that GP rain kind of makes sense, it was actually a misinput. Trust me, they're not dangerous enough to merit the expense.
They do seem to be immune to instant death, though. Rei rolls cleave against them several times over the course of the dungeon, and not once does it ever hit any of them.
Two important takeaways from the end of the fight: Rei has finished learning ice 3, and malru hefs have remedies as a guaranteed drop. Handy! By the time we're done here we should have enough to last us most of the game.
Except when they have sprint shoes instead, that is.
More sacks of HP. They're also undead! It doesn't come up in this fight, but Koharu tags one of them with life later on. Also, a general observation: it might just be a coincidence, and I haven't exactly had a lot of opportunities to test it, but it does seem like so far, the randomizer has been pretty consistent about only making things undead if they're using undead sprites.
And uh, that's pretty much it for regular enemies in this dungeon. There's some steals we haven't seen yet (these guys have gold shields, for instance), but none of it is new new, so I'm not gonna worry about using up more real estate on it.
I also have a bunch of screenshots of me shuffling espers around, but honestly? Nobody really needs to see all of that riveting menu action either. Just know that by the end of the dungeon pretty much all of our available spells have been learned by at least one person in the party.
That just leaves treasure, and boy howdy does this place have a lot of it. Sorry assassin dagger; your reign was short lived. Kars did get a death proc in that brief time though, so that was fun.
That said, we're not totally done with enemies. Next up is this ...ninja ...mammoth ...guy.
He starts off the fight by doing, uh, something to himself.
He doesn't last long enough for us to find out what, if anything, it was though.
Thanks for this, genuinely. There's a good chance I would have forgotten about all those items otherwise.
Save point!
Also this. It's actually pretty solid on anyone that wants to focus on physical damage. Only problem is, we already have the tiger mask for that.
So I don't remember offhand all of the items that are supposed to be here normally, but everything I find seems plausible? I suspect these are another special case that doesn't get randomized, since they have a unique message for obtaining them.
See? That's the message for opening a chest.
Hot damn, that's what I call a payday!
I'm ridin' high! Lay it on me, game.
Cool, cool, you can never really go wrong with a consumable.
FUCK.
Uh.
Hey there big guy, can we help you?
Seriously, does anyone happen to know what enemy this animation normally belongs to? I'm drawing a complete blank.
Well, you can certainly help us, at least. That sure is an endgame armor right there.
Oh God, oh fuck, is that a three peeking out from the edge of the screen? ...Yeah, honestly I should have expected that.
Except plot twist: I did. I mean, not that specifically, but after the last chest monster, I wasn't taking any chances and had a muddle queued up already. 
FUCK. AGAIN.
Uhhhh does dispel bypass reflect in 6? Guess we're about to find out, with a piddly little fire spell to see if it worked afterwards.
Okay, so it does, but I guess it doesn't actually remove the reflect if it's innate to the enemy? Either that or X-Magic is just weird.
Oh hey, an attack that doesn't instantly murder us! That's nice.
Still, this attempt is probably doomed. I notice something interesting while desperately searching for an out, though. Our brand new snow muffler is usable as an item, which sounds like a terrible idea.
...Among other things. Maybe one of these days I'll run through all of these just to see what happens and then reload.
Yeah, there it is.
Obviously the smart play here is to cut our losses and move on, but fuck that, I'm going to get that snow muffler or die trying. Which I probably will. A lot.
The plan is the same as it was for the jettoes: two can play the reflect game. Unfortunately nobody's learned the spell itself yet, so we're still relying on the wall ring.
And sure, let's grab these other two chests first, just in case they can help somehow.
The sword's whatever, but I will absolutely take that genji shield. Hell, we have enough sources of fire immunity that I might actually cast merton eventually!
Round two, start!
Seems like he always leads with this doom inflicting move. Good to know, especially for when we don't luck into a preemptive.
Time to start checking statuses off the list. Mute appears to be a no, though I'm not sure how much it'd help anyway.
Muddle is... a yes!
As is berserk. Which is a bit silly of me, in retrospect. If muddle hadn't worked, then sure, there's merit in making sure he can only kill one person at a time. But I don't think I saw a single physical from him the first time around, so this is just making it easier for him to break out of his confusion for no reason.
See? Now we're stuck in this loop forever, and spoiler alert, we don't have enough of an action economy advantage to sustain it for long.
Side note: I was too focused on damage control at the time to notice, but uh, the doom timer ran out and Kars is still standing. Yep, they're undead! I'd say this solidly nails down the wall ring as the culprit; pretty sure it's the only common denominator between now and that first set of attempts against the jettoes way back when.
I of course discovered this for real while trying to use a phoenix down on Kars in a later attempt. It actually makes pulling the heist off significantly harder, because one misstep permanently scuttles the run. Can't confuse Sahay if the wall ring user is dead.
RIP.
Attempt number three is over before it even starts. Anyway, I think you get the idea by now, so I have a couple quick highlights to show and then we're gonna skip ahead to the successful run.
Highlight number one: Sahay's rare steal, probably. I only saw it once, so. If you're not familiar, these give auto protect, shell, haste, and regen. Pretty good, but all things considered I'd rather have the snow muffler. That's all stuff that can be replicated with spells if we need to, after all.
Highlight number two... sort of. I'd stopped recording video by now, so uh, pretend Sahay didn't miss himself with this grav bomb, and also it did quad nines. Just to give you an idea of how much HP we'd have to burn through to do the fight legit.
Which segues nicely into attempt number who fuckin' knows at this point, because luckily he's also vulnerable to petrify, letting us skip all of that HP entirely.
This triggers a death counter, and apparently breaks confusion? He also gives literally zero end of battle rewards iirc. No experience, no gold, no nothing. But at long last, the deed is done. 
How cozy, indeed.
Losing that juicy +5 magic hurts, but we'll live.
A bit anticlimactic after all that, but there is one more chest left to grab. It's... a third thunder blade. 
Annnd now plot is happening. We poke Kefka once...
And out come the espers. I'm including every screenshot I managed to grab of them flying by, just so we can appreciate the funky color palettes. ...Actually, not!Kirin and not!Carbuncle there look pretty normal, don't they?
You know, I'm still not a huge fan of the mode 7 airship navigation, but this scene does kind of justify it. Anyway, more walking. Yay.
On the way we run into this encounter again, and I get a slightly more useful screenshot this time. Now you know what the bugs are called!
Also unwedibs aren't nearly as scary anymore.
There's a few chests to grab before dinner. Most don't have anything of interest, but this shield is pretty good. I hope you'll understand if I don't take the time to look at it just yet, though.
Speaking of time, I came embarrassingly close to running out of it. 
Probably shouldn't have tried to mug the soldiers, that animation is really long.
I've actually got the banquet responses pretty well memorized, but for some reason this one in particular always gives me pause. My first instinct was correct, but I still had to look it up to be sure.
I didn't bother showing the pre-dinner fights (it was just solo zinnisties and that vanilla mega armor), but this one is at least somewhat amusing.
Okay, bye I guess. Actually, have we seen these before? I have a distinct memory of already showing off a trio of enemies that flee immediately.
And just like that, our genuinely pretty strong party is back down to... well, honestly it's still fine, because Goten has magic. But it sure feels worse, you know?
The two bonuses for doing extra well are, of course, not randomized, which in this case makes them useless to us. We can at least hit up the Imperial base, though! After that I think I'm gonna call the update.
Okay, now unwedibs are scary again. Luckily we don't run into any.
You know what else would be scary right now? Trapped chests. Let's keep our fingers crossed.
Oh hey, another one! This time I have no excuse. I think somewhere between the banquet and here I forgot it was actually new. Goten's holding one, though.
Meh.
Shit.
Surprisingly it actually goes okay, and even drops something vaguely useful. If nothing else it gives those two something to spend MP on, which I guess makes runic ever so slightly less of a waste of time for Hideki.
The rest of the visible chests are an assortment of money, consumables, shit we already have, and katanas that are worse than the one Rei is using. As for the one hiding in the corner...
We put up a good fight, but it's not meant to be. Oh well, we'll just come back with a full party later.
A bit of a sour note to end on, but such is life. I figure one more update for the whole Thamasa arc, one to clean up any remaining loose ends and do the Floating Continent, and then the real fun begins. 