Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Family Trades: best family trade job choices explained

Crystal Chronicles is a more homely-feeling adventure than your average entry in the Final Fantasy series, and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition maintains that style right down each playable character's relationship with their family members. 

Not only will you pick a race and gender for each of the 8 members of your caravan, but you'll also pick a family trade, such as merchant or blacksmith. While you might be eager to set out as soon as you create your character, we suggest filling out your whole 8-man roster since each will unlock a new capability for your hometown.

Family Trade choices in Crystal Chronicles

When you create a character in FFCC, there are eight family trades: Alchemist, Blacksmith, Farmer, Fisherman, Merchant, Miller, Rancher, and Tailor. Think of it as being like a job choice in another FF - though it doesn't impact how you play. That's impacted by race. Any tribe/race in FFCC can pick any family trade, so don't worry about that.

You can pick one family trade per character, and you can have eight characters total in your Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles town. You can't double up on character trades, either - so that means if you create a full eight heroes, you'll have one of each family trade. Once chosen, you cannot change family trade with a character. 

With that said, there's still a choice to be made about which family trades are most useful, and which you'll want to focus on with your most-used characters. Some are definitely more useful than others. Thankfully, we've been thinking about that, and list all classes below, with our top picks at the top of the list:

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Best Family Trade

Alchemist: our pick for the best initial family trade

In order to explain why Alchemist is the best pick for family trade, first we need to explain one little detail. In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Scrolls are items used to craft gear such as weapons and armor. For instance, a Novice's Weapon scroll can make an Iron Sword for Clavats or a Wave Hammer for Yukes.

Choosing your character to be from the Alchemist family is the only way to get two unique scrolls, Greatest Weapon, and Ring of Invincibility. You can only get one design of each per game file. The Greatest Weapon, which makes Ultima equipment, is admittedly outclassed with some of the new post-game gear (and also the DLC weapons, funnily enough). The Ring of Invincibility, which creates the Force Ring, is still a top tier Accessory, however. 

The key to the Alchemist bonus is simple - every in-game year you'll be given a scroll that can be used to help craft a weapon, accessory, or armor item. Speaking to your character's father at the start of each year will net you a small stipend of gil, and this is true for any trade. The Alchemist, however, will also give a Scroll item upon speaking to your father a second time, improving in rarity each year. This ends up culminating in the two scrolls listed above, which can be used to craft the Ultima Weapon and Force Ring - two very high-end pieces of gear.

Because of this, we say Alchemist is the best family trade to choose for your primary played character.

Here is the list of designs an Alchemist character will get each year, as long as you've talked to your father at the start of the previous year.

1. Iron Armor (starting in Year 2 at the earliest)
2. Warrior's Weapon
3. Flame Craft
4. Clockwork
5. Mythril Armor
6. Frost Craft
7. Lightning Craft
8. Master's Weapon
9. Ring of Light
10. Diamond Armor
11. Ring of Invincibility
12. Greatest Weapon

There is a wrinkle here, which makes this a better family trade if you're willing to grind multiple characters: crafting many of the items unlocked through the Alchemist trade also require items that are exclusive to a high-level Merchant family. The Greatest Weapon requires Ultimite, while The Ring of Invincibility requires Dark Sphere. In addition, the Greatest Weapon can only be crafted by the town's Blacksmith, while the Ring can be made by the town's Tailor. That means you'd need access to several family trades, through multiple characters, to craft these high-end alchemist unlocks.

How to level multiple family trades

There is a common trick to level multiple family trades. At the start of each year, simply use the "Set Out" option in the menu to switch between members of your caravan. Enter your hometown and speak to the Merchant, Blacksmith, and Tailor with the respective character to get a small allowance of gil for each. Keep speaking to each until they either start repeating themselves or offering their wares. Once this is done, the town's capability in that trade will improve in the next year. This way, even if you focus the rest of the game as your preferred character (the Alchemist's son/daughter, in our case), you'll still rank up the capabilities of the other trades in your town.

What about Letters?

After collecting each drop of Myrrh, characters will receive letters from their friends and family, with the option to send goods back with a reply. The best reply is almost always an obvious choice between the two. Increasing your relationship through your family in this way will result in cheaper services for that character. This would be most useful for the Merchant, but is true for the Blacksmith and Tailor services as well. The Blacksmith can also earn some fun exclusives through letters, but nothing game-changing.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Good Family Trades

Merchant: useful item discounts and vital exclusives

The Merchant trade is pretty straightforward: the stronger your bonds with your family, the greater a discount you will unlock. Additionally, new items will pop up the better your relationship is - including materials that otherwise can only be found in dungeons. That makes this family trade a time-saver.

As mentioned about the Alchemist trade above, the high levels of the merchant unlocks two items that are used for crafting the ultimate recipes gifted by the Alchemist line - so these two go hand-in-hand.

Initial offering - Meat, Fish, Milk, Spring Water, Bronze, Alloy, Iron
1st Upgrade - Mythril, Gold, Silver, Bronze Shard, Iron Shard
2nd Upgrade - Magma Rock, Chilly Gel, Thunderball
3rd Upgrade - Ultimite, Dark Sphere

Blacksmith: some exclusive items, and needed to craft the Greatest Weapon

As you'd expect, the blacksmith family trade means that your family can craft special weapons and armor for your party to use. They can even craft some of the best weapons in FFCC, like the legendary weapons. There are limitations to this, as regardless of your family's upgrade level, you can't craft anything that requires monster parts - that can only happen at the separate blacksmith in Alfitaria.

The Blacksmith's son/daughter is also the only character that can receive Father's Weapon and Treasured Weapon from their character's mother through the mail. These weapons are cool exclusives but are both quickly outclassed, so they are mostly just fun extras.

Here's how to get the Blacksmith's exclusive weapons if you choose to, though stat-wise they are not really useful:

• Treasured Weapon - Upon receiving the mail message 'Found something' from your mother, reply with "I don't need it". The next message you should get will be 'Wow', descibing how your father decided to temper the weapon. While the letter won't clearly contain the weapon, you should find the very average equipment in your inventory. 
• Father's Weapon - Upon receiving the mail message 'Hurt his back' from your mother, return an Orc Belt to receive the weapon. Orc Belt is a rare drop from the Mine of Cathuriges late in the game. 

Initial offering - Novice's Weapon, Warrior's Weapon, Bronze and Iron gear
1st Upgrade - Master's Weapon, Mythril gear
2nd Upgrade - Legendary Weapon, Diamond gear
3rd Upgrade - Greatest Weapon

Tailor: exclusive accessories and greater convenience

The Tailor is all about accessories, and it's actually quite similar to the Blacksmith family trade, which makes it great for solo players who don't want to grind multiple characters. The Tailor is uncommon as a vendor out in the world, too, meaning this is really convenient, giving you access to a high-level tailor at home base. Without this, you have to travel quite some way to reach a better tailor with better accessories, as far out as Shella.

Initial offering - Flame Craft, Frost Craft, Lightning Craft, Clockwork
1st Upgrade - New Clockwork, Blue Yarn, Tome of Wisdom, Tome of Speed, Fiend Kit, Fairie Kit, Eyewear Techniques, Goggle Techniques
2nd Upgrade - White Yarn, Gold Craft, Secrets of Wisdom, Secrets of Speed, Daemon Kit, Angel Kit, Designer Glasses, Designer Goggles
3rd Upgrade - Ring of Invincibility

The Other Family Trades: pick these last

Rancher or Fisherman: the best of the rest - free healing items

While the item-led family trades are definitely our picks for the best, the Rancher or the Fisherman are the best of the final four, giving you access to free meat every in-game year. This is useful for solo players in particular. 

The only real difference between the Rancher and Fisherman is what type of food you get, of course. The Rancher provides Meat and later Milk and the Fisherman provides... do we really need to spell that out? Anyway, meat or fish - it's your choice. The rancher can also choose to send home a cow from the Fields of Fum as a fun correspondence, but that's really it.

Farmer or Miller: the least effective family trades

For our money, the final two - Farmer and Miller - are the weakest family trade options in the game. Like Rancher and Fisherman, these two trades are two sides of the same coin, with the Farmer built around Wheat and the Miller built around Flour. The pair link up their rewards, too, in the same way the Alchemist and Merchant do.

Both Flour and Wheat these items are given for free as part of this family relationship. You can then sell them at shops for a bit of cash. These two roles also combine their rewards to bake Bannock, which is cool, but not really all that advantageous. Pick these last.