Final Fantasy Record Keeper

How to Play

Contents

Introduction

Version History

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

Artifacts

The Record Lab

Tips and Tricks

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.

Please note that this guide is not designed to teach you how to play in terms of optimal strategies for completing content. I am writing this guide specifically to teach blind players how to get started with the game. If you need help with content, please see the resources section.

Thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoy and are able to learn how to play.

Version History

06/04/2020: Updated the rrecord board directions with a tip that will hopefully make things easier.

Updated the "tips and tricks" section.

Corrected the directions for first time entry of a realm dungeon.

Corrected some old info about power-up dungeons.

Corrected the directions for record dungeons.

Corrected nightmare dungeon entry.

Corrected magicite dungeon orientation.

Corrected information on mote dungeons.

Added some information about events with item exchanges.

06/03/2020: Created a "Record Lab" section.

Added a section on record boards to the "Upgrades and Inventory tab" section.

Updated references to the "Annex" to the "Item Exchange" and changed some directions accordingly.

Added information about the "Optomize" button.

Added information about the auto battle update to the "party tab" section and the "Battle" section.

Minor updates to the "Relic draw tab" section.

04/11/2019: Updated the tips and tricks section.

Updated the record dungeons section to hopefully help players that are getting stuck re-orient and find icons easier.

04/05/2019: Created a tips and tricks section.

Added information about a character specific optomize button to the equipment and abilities screens.

Added information on how to auto-create rainbow crystals with relics you don't need.

Fixed an error in the version history order.

04/02/2019: Added information on Record Spheres.

Removed some incorrect information about the daily free relic draw.

Added a note to the introduction about the purpose of the guide.

03/27/2019: Added information on how to access and use Magia Crystals,. Rainbow Crystals and artifacts.

Updated the character management section to help blind players favorite record materia for easier equipping.

03/19/2019: First Release.

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:

Play through storyline with characters from Final Fantasy I through XV, 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?

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 keep getting a system error.

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.

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 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 item exchange. This brings up a menu with several options. In order they are: Record lab, chocobo exchange, treasure vault, hall of rights, chamber of artifacts, royal crucible. Interestingly enough, a couple of these can be activated with VoiceOver. If you navigate to the heading that says "Item Exchange" and flick right, you'll see some numbers. These are the currencies that can be exchanged at each location. Double tapping on any of these takes you into the exchange.

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 item exchange button, which is just below the menu button in the upper right of the home screen. Then tap near the top of the screen toward the middle. If you've done it properly, the music will change to a chiptune after a brief loading time. If you hear some jazzy music, you've entered the treasure vault. If you hear a music box type tune, you've likely entered the hall of rights.

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.

Of note is the battle settings icon, which does not read with VoiceOver. You can access it by tapping near the bottom middle of the screen. If you're on the party tab and you tap too low, nothing will happen. If you tap too low on the party screen before selecting a dungeon, you'll activate the next button. If you tap too high, you'll be on the "Change Magicite" tab.

This menu works with VoiceOver and lets you modify auto battle settings and ATB order.

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. Optomize also has a menu that allows you more control. By default, all options are checked. Also note that when you uncheck an item, it is saved for the next time you try to optomize, so you'll have to remember what's checked and what isn't since this doesn't read properly with VoiceOver.

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.

There is an optomize button for each character in the lower right hand corner of the equipment and abilities screens, just above where the tabs would be. If you tap this and then confirm, only that character will be equipped with abilities or relics. This can help with managing equipment so that you don't have to deal with empty slots.

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.

One thing that will make record materia easier to manage is the ability to favorite them. There are literally hundreds of these to unlock, so it can help to sort them by favorites. If you do this with no favorites, it will sort them by type as normal. Once you start adding favorites, they will be at the beginning of the list.

To favorite a record materia, equip it to a character. Then tap near the top right corner of your screen, a little bit below the top edge. Be careful to tap only once because you can unfavorite them very easily. You will hear the selection sound if you did it right, and the next time you bring up the record materia list, you should see that materia at or near the beginning of the list. Note that you won't see the equipped materia in your list anywhere, so if you want to confirm that it worked you need to bring up another character's record materia view or unequip the materia briefly.

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.

There are three other sections that have no detectable label with VoiceOver. These are Magia Crystals, Rainbow Crystals and Hone Soul Breaks.

Magia Crystals can be accessed by turning off VoiceOver and tapping near the middle of the screen, slightly toward the top. If you end up in the Record Spheres section, you are very close.

Rainbow Crystals can be accessed by tapping the bottom right of the screen, just above the tabs. If you end up in reforge equipment, you need to tap a little further right.

Hone Soul Breaks can be accessed by scrolling to the bottom of the screen and tapping the very top edge.

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.

To unlock record spheres, after you have selected the record spheres tab you will be on a page where you can choose a character. I find that this is most easily sorted by series, but you may find an easier sorting method.

After you've chosen a character, provided that character is above level 65, you will see a bunch of cached images and zeros. The zeros are the spheres you have not spent any motes on. At first, you will only have 3 spheres unlocked, which take 3 star motes to learn from. You can activate any of the zeros with VoiceOver to enter that record sphere, and everything works fine with VoiceOver from there.

As you unlock new spheres, more zeros will appear. These are the 4 star spheres, which work the same as the 3 star ones except that they take a different kind of mote to learn from.

There are also empowerment spheres, which grant your character high powered 6 star abilities. These are locked by default until you spend a job mote to unlock them. Generally, you can not activate these with VoiceOver. You must instead scroll by swiping from bottom to top on your screen, and the empowerment spheres are generally on the left, just above the back button. Once you choose a sphere, you can turn VO back on and go through the normal process of spending motes. Once you unlock the sphere, it shows up as a 0 on the screen like the others, but you still can not properly activate it without scrolling.

Note that for Tyro, he gets every empowerment sphere in the game, so his screen can be a bit confusing. I managed to unlock all of his spheres, but it was difficult. Just have patience if you want Tyro fully unlocked, scroll up carefully and tap across the bottom of the screen and slightly upward, being careful to avoid the back button.

Legend spheres work differently. Once you unlock a legend sphere, you must scroll the screen by swiping from bottom to top, and then tap near the bottom middle of the screen, more toward the middle than the bottom. This is done with VoiceOver off.

After you have entered the legend sphere, you'll see a bunch of cached images. I believe there are 15 in all. You can activate most of these cached images with VoiceOver, though as you get to the last legend materia for each character you will have to scroll the screen.

You must spend your motes here in a specific order. You have to purchase bonuses in groups of 3 in general. Sometimes, you have to buy the two bonuses on either side of another before the middle one unlocks. For example; if you activate the fourth cached image once it's unlocked, you can purchase that one. Then you usually need to activate the sixth cached image and purchase that one before you can purchase the fifth.

Record boards are difficult to use with VoiceOver. Seeing AI does not read the labels well and VoiceOver reads almost nothing on the screen. The only way to unlock tiles is to activate the unlock all button, then tap around semi-randomly. You will hear a king of dull chime sound if you've tapped a tile you can potentially unlock, and the cancel sound if you've deactivated a tile or set of tiles. Once you press confirm, you can see what you've got selected to unlock by using VoiceOver, flicking to the heading that says record board and flicking right. There will be a list of tiles you're trying to unlock as well as required materials, similar to how legend spheres work.

I just received a tip that one can zoom the screen out to potentially make this easier. One problem we run into is that the screen pans to focus on the tile you've most recently tapped, even in unlock all mode. This means that as we tap around, the screen is effectively panning all over the place. If you place two fingers on the left and right edge of the screen and pinch them together until they touch, it should zoom the screen out, both making more tiles visible at once and stopping the screen panning.

After selecting Magia Crystals, you select a character and are then shown a screen with 12 crystals which you can scroll to the right. You need to turn VO off to do this and then tap the left or right side of the screen, near the top. If you scroll to the previous or next crystal you will hear a short high-pitched woosh signifying that you have done it correctly.

The first button you will see browsing with VoiceOver is the reset button. This is just after you read how many Magia Points your characters have. This button will reset your point allocation for this specific character and then a 14 day timer counts down until you are able to reset again. The resets are per character and can only be done once every 14 days.

In order the crystals shown are Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth, Wind, Water, Holy, Dark, Poison, Might Magia, Black Magia and finally White Magia.

Near the middle of the screen toward the bottom there are two sections, one on the left and one on the right. This section is where you actually add the points. The left side adds offensive stats and the right side adds defensive stats. You will need to have VoiceOver off to tap these icons and add points, signified by a chiming sound.

You can check all of the modifications you have made with VoiceOver before confirming and the confirmation dialogue is also readable. Be careful though, as it is easy to have this screen go out of focus. Sometimes if you've been navigating with VoiceOver, the screen will scroll off center to the left and the confirm button will be near the left side of the screen. To fix this, turn VoiceOver back on and tap a heading on the screen. Be careful not to accidentally confirm and spend your points or you will have to wait for your next reset to get them back.

The offensive and defensive points upgrade elemental damage and defense for the elements. The Might Magia stone adds ATK on the left and DEF on the right. Black Magia stone is MAG on the left and RES on the right. White Magia stone is MND on the left and HP on the right.

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.

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 is a ticket draw, where you can spend fifth anniversary tickets.

To the left of that is the chain selection draw, which can only be paid for with gems.

To the left of that is the element draw, where you can then select from 8 different elements to draw from. The music will change to a track representing a known character that uses that element. For example, Holy is represented by the Final Fantasy I theme, whereas dark is represented by One Winged Angel from FFVII.

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.

Usually during a festival 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. If you draw a 7 star relic, there will be a further animation similar to the bit that plays when the draw first starts, followed by the longer "relic obtained" music.

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.

One thing that can be very useful for inventory management is to turn on auto-create rainbow crystals. You can do this in the menu from the home screen, under config. You can also tap the exclamation mark one flick left of the common relic draw if it's there to bring up the relic draw settings menu. This means that if you draw a relic that is 4 star or lower, it will be automatically converted into rainbow crystal points. Enough of these points will create a rainbow crystal, which can be used to upgrade artifacts.

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. The first thing you need to do is to touch near the top center of the screen to change the realm dungeon view to one that works better for us. From here, 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.

You will see about 16 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 whether you want to play the prelude or the canon. These are represented by two cached images, the first being prelude. You then need to select a chapter. This can be done with VoiceOver by tapping on the cached image before the chapter name. If you find that nothing happens when you try to pick a chapter, you may need to swipe either right to left or left to right, depending on whether the chapter you want is closer to the beginning or end of the list.

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, the highest level guardian being in the lower right and the final boss being in the direct center of the square. 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 middle portion of the circle, then ice, wind, earth, lightning and finally water. Dark and holy, once unlocked, appear in the center of the circle with holy to the left and dark to the right.

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. Tap higher on the screen for higher tiers. If a tier is locked, you'll get two lines of dialogue telling you so and then be put back on the selection screen for that element.

When selecting mote dungeons, you'll see a set of 5 cached images. In order they are: spirit forge, dexterity maneuvers, vitality pilgrimage, wisdom rights and bravery trials. Selecting any one of these changes the music to a track from FFXII and brings up a list of the dungeons you can challenge. From here, entry works as normal.

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.

Occasionally you'll encounter an event with an item exchange that does not put it in the top right hand corner. In all cases I've encountered, the icon to enter the exchange is slightly further down the screen but still on the right hand side, near the top. Tapping too low on the screen will select one of the dungeons in that event.

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

Summon 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, although if you know your team very well you can memorize team order to a very limited degree. Anything that changes timing of the ATB bars can throw this off though, such as long casting time on a soul break or summoning a magicite.

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.

The new auto battle update helps us immensely, because now we can focus more on pre-battle setup and less on manual input. Some battles can not be completed with auto battle, but I'd say 95% of the game works with it as long as you build your teams correctly.

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. 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.

Note that once you toggle auto battle, two more options appear to the right. These toggle ability use and soul break use.

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 early on.

Do note that when using burst, brave or sync soul breaks with auto battle, if you have abilities toggled on it will use ability 1 of the burst or sync mode, or the brave attack at whatever level it's at. This means that if using a bravery soul break, your character will attack with the level 2 brave attack and then spam the level 0 brave attack after that because they will not use any of their abilities that could raise bravery level. This is also not very useful if ability 2 is your primary attacking ability in a burst soul break. With syncs, it appears that so far they're designed with auto battle in mind, as the attack ability appears to always be in slot 1.

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.

One trick that can be helpful to finding icons is to actually use the record dungeon menu to center the camera back on Tyro as a point of orientation. You can do this by:

1. Tapping the right hand corner of the screen.

2. Tapping just slightly below the top edge of your screen, toward the left but not extremely far left. If you aren't careful, you'll tap the home button which will take you back to the home screen.

note: Seeing AI can be useful here for learning the record dungeon menu layout, which only has 4 options. The options are home, tactics, battle info and retreat.

3. After you have tapped the tactics option as instructed above, you can tap the back button to go back to the record dungeon map. This will make a small blip sound after loading, which means you're ready to start exploring again.

This can be a little easier than just scrolling or tapping around randomly. Do be aware that it takes some practice though. Tapping anywhere on the screen that isn't a menu icon closes the menu, so if you don't hear a selection sound on your second tap you need to re-open the menu and try again. Occasionally selecting the tactics menu does not make the selection sound either, so if you feel like you should have selected it, try tapping in the lower left corner of the screen.

Artifacts

The Chamber of Chronicles can be accessed via the Item Exchange. Bring up the exchange, then tap toward the bottom edge of the screen, but not too low or you'll enter the royal crucible. The music will change to a slow orchestral track if you've done it correctly.

You will now be on a screen where you need to select a weapon type. There are statues arranged in a circle and looks like a hours on a clock face would. Starting with 12 o'clock are the Daggers and going clockwise the next ones are Swords, Fists, Rods, Throwing, Whips, Axes/Hammers, Bows/Guns, Instruments, Staves/Books, Spears and finally Katana. Once you pick one you can switch the view up near the top of the screen in the middle there is a little button with two sides. Left side shows relic information in a nice pretty animated picture and the right button makes it list them out like it looks in your inventory to which you can long press and have a few sorting options to get the relic information. I find that the inventory style view is easier to use with VoiceOver, but both of them work.

The Record Lab

The record lab can be accessed in a couple of ways. One is through the item exchange, by bringing up the exchange and then tapping the very top edge of the screen. The other is by navigating to a dungeon that has recommended soul breaks, such as a torment or magicite dungeon. You can then activate the record lab option with VO.

The record lab mostly works with VoiceOver. However, select by hero is just a list of cached images, two per hero. So if you don't know the order of characters this may not work well for you. Select by dungeon works up until the point you are selecting a dungeon, then VO must be toggled and you have to select the dungeon you want from a scrolling list.

Tips and Tricks

You should be able to handle content up to the nightmare dungeons fairly easily. Practice equipment and ability management but don't worry about it too much.

To defeat any of the endgame content, you will need to switch accessories regularly. You will need to change abilities when you fight enemies that have different elemental weaknesses. The sooner you learn to manage your relics and other inventory, the faster you will graduate to endgame content.

Pay attention to what relics you draw. Don't shy away from using any of them, even if you don't think they'll be useful to blind players (chains, for example).

Do your research. Use the wiki. It has lists of all the relics, abilities, soul breaks, materia, magicite, characters, dungeons and whatever else you might need. The information on these pages can be much easier to read than the information available in game.

Try to build teams with ultra, awakening or sync soul breaks in them. These are the most friendly to blind players because you don't have to do anything to trigger their effects.

Having said that, there is a way to use burst mode soul breaks. This can be useful for soul breaks that have an imperil attached to them. If you equip only one ability on a character, then when you come to that character in battle you will know they are active because there will be no ability in slot 1.

Sync soul breaks are completely usable. When you activate one, your normal abilities are disabled and you can only activate attack and defend, which are your sync abilities. This can be especially useful if you have one character with a sync equipped and one of their abilities does something like boost critical hit rate or damage.

Endgame content is usually completed at battle speed 1.

I can't stress this enough. Use the community database to learn how auto targeting works with abilities and be sure to read carefully.

If you run into scrolling issues, there are several ways to deal with them. If you're in a list with a heading below it, one of the easiest ways is to flick to that heading first and scroll backward until you find what you want. If you're in a long list with no heading or you find it easier to flick forward, you can flick past the item you're trying to select several times, then flick back and select what you wanted. Finally, if the screen appears to have gone out of focus and nothing is where it should be, you can find a heading and double tap it to re-center things. If all else fails, restart the app.

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.

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.

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.

pheonixistari for teaching me how to favorite record materia and for the descriptions of the Magia Crystal and artifact screens.

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.