Every Lore, and Exactly Where to Learn It

Twenty-four Lores sounds like a scavenger hunt strung across two worlds. It mostly isn’t. One enemy in the final dungeon casts seventeen of them, only a single Lore can be lost for good, and Strago walks in the door already knowing three. The list is real; the panic around it isn’t earned.

Strago is FF6’s Blue Mage, and his Lores are the game’s Blue Magic — spells you take off the enemies that cast them. The detail that trips up anyone arriving from another Blue Mage: Strago doesn’t have to get hit to learn a Lore. He has to watch. Below is every Lore, the exact enemy and place to learn each, the one you can miss, and the route that gets you all 24 in a single playthrough.

How Strago Actually Learns a Lore

Strago learns by watching, not by bleeding. That one rule reframes everything else. Most Blue Mage kits make you eat the spell to learn it; Strago only has to be in the party and see an enemy cast it. He can stand at the back untouched and still walk away with the Lore. You do have to win the fight, though — flee and the learn is cancelled, even if the skill went off a turn earlier.

The rest of the rules are about keeping Strago in a state to absorb it. He learns nothing if he’s knocked out, petrified, zombied, blind, asleep, confused, berserked, stopped, hidden, or frozen at the moment the skill lands — and on the Pixel Remaster he also has to be standing when the battle ends, so don’t let him drop on the final turn. The enemy has to be clear-headed too: a monster that’s blinded, confused, or stopped when it uses the skill teaches you nothing.

Some Lores will never come to you on their own. Support and healing spells — White Wind is the usual example — are things no enemy will aim at your party, so you have to make an enemy use them. Three abilities can force that: Gau’s Rage, Relm’s Sketch, and Relm’s or Gogo’s Control. Control is the one to lean on, because you pick the enemy’s move yourself instead of hoping its AI obliges. Several Lores are only practical this way.

Two more quirks worth carrying. Lore is never bounced by Reflect, which makes Strago a clean answer to bosses that wrap themselves in it — his damage lands where normal magic would ricochet. And Silence shuts him down like any caster: no firing a learned Lore while he’s silenced. Gogo, for the record, can equip the Lore command and use anything Strago already knows, but never learns a Lore of its own. The list is Strago’s alone. He joins holding three of them — Aqua Breath, Revenge Blast, and Stone — so you’re really chasing twenty-one.

All 24 Lores and Where to Learn Each

Here is the whole list. Every Lore, what it does, what it costs, and the cleanest place to pick it up. The three innate Lores are marked as such; the lone missable one carries its own flag. Where a Lore has an obvious best source I’ve given it, with the fallback most players actually use in the final dungeon.

The Lores Worth Building Around

A handful earn a permanent slot. Twenty-four Lores, but you’re not slotting all of them into rotation. A few are worth building Strago around, and they sort cleanly by what they do.

For raw damage, Grand Delta is the ceiling. It hits every enemy, ignores defense entirely, and sits just under Ultima for base power — and once Strago’s Magic climbs into the high eighties it caps at 9999 across the board, so it stays a main-slot nuke into the endgame. Before you’ve cleared Ebot’s Rock for it, Quasar does the same job at a smaller scale: all enemies, non-elemental, defense ignored. Aero carries the single highest base power of any Lore and sweeps the whole field, making it the best pure elemental hit, and Aqua Breath — one of your three starting Lores — comes out strong enough to carry the early World of Ruin.

1000 Needles sits outside that curve on purpose: a flat 1000 to one target no matter its defense, which is exactly what you want pointed at a single armored enemy your normal damage can’t dent.

On the support side, Mighty Guard is the best Lore in the game that deals no damage — Protect and Shell on your entire party for one cast. White Wind heals the whole party for Strago’s current HP, so a high-HP Strago turns it into a full team heal that Reflect can’t bounce. Force Field nullifies a random element for the fight, and stacking two or three casts can lock a caster boss out of its whole offense. Dischord quietly halves a boss’s level, which softens its stats and switches the Level-X Lores on against it. Those three — Lv.5 Death, Lv.4 Flare, Lv.3 Confuse — are situational, but when an enemy’s level lines up they end fights on the spot.

Most players park Strago on regular black magic and never open the Lore list at all. That skips the one character who can nuke through defense and Reflect in the same kit, and full-heal the party while he’s at it. The collection earns its keep.

The One Lore You Can Lose Forever

Only one Lore is ever gone for good. For all the completionist dread around Strago, exactly one Lore is permanently missable: Force Field. Everything else on the list — Grand Delta included — can still be learned right up until you commit to the final battle. If you walked past something in the World of Balance, it’s waiting for you in the World of Ruin, most of it from a single enemy in the last dungeon.

Force Field is the exception because of where it lives. Its only source is the Fiend , one of the three Warring Triad statues near the top of Kefka’s Tower — and Kefka’s Tower is the point of no return. Beat Kefka and the game ends. The Pixel Remaster has no Soul Shrine, the post-credits dungeon that let older versions re-fight every enemy, so there is no second run at the Fiend once the tower falls.

The tower splits your roster into as many as three parties on three separate paths, and each path ends at one of the three statues. Only the party that reaches the Fiend can learn Force Field, which means the one piece of planning this whole collection asks of you is small: put Strago in that party. The other two statues are Lore sources as well — the Goddess casts Quasar, the Demon casts Aero — so a Strago-in-every-party split sweeps all three at once.

Collecting the Whole Set in One Playthrough

The whole set fits one run. The collection looks map-wide, but the arithmetic is small. Strago starts with three Lores. Dark Force — an enemy inside Kefka’s Tower, not the Deathgaze boss — casts seventeen of the remaining twenty-one, the biggest single catch-up the game offers. That leaves just four Lores Dark Force can’t teach: Grand Delta, Force Field, Mighty Guard, and Transfusion. Three plus seventeen plus four is your twenty-four.

Twenty-four spells scattered across two worlds, and one enemy in the last dungeon hands you seventeen of them. — the 3 + 17 + 4 of it

Those four are the only ones worth planning around. Grand Delta comes from Hidon at Ebot’s Rock, the cave that opens north of Thamasa once you’ve recruited Strago and talked to Gungho; the chest inside won’t budge until you feed it Coral, and only with Strago in the active party. Mighty Guard is easy in the same final dungeon — Mover casts it — or earlier by Sketching a Land Ray out on the island desert. Transfusion is cleanest by Sketching a Mousse near Kohlingen in the World of Ruin. Force Field is the only true deadline, and you handle it by keeping Strago in the Fiend’s party.

• Self-Destruct — Bomb or Grenade, forest west of the Veldt World of Ruin
• Traveler — Sketch an Intangir on Triangle Island World of Balance
• Lv.3 Confuse — Ultros at the Opera House World of Balance
• 1000 Needles — Cactuar in the Maranda desert World of Ruin
• Grand Delta — Hidon; talk to Gungho, then feed the chest Coral with Strago in the party Ebot’s Rock
• Seventeen Lores in one place — Dark Force casts them all Kefka’s Tower
• Force Field — Control the Fiend; don’t skip it, this is the missable one Kefka’s Tower
• Mighty Guard — Mover Kefka’s Tower
• Quasar and Aero — the Goddess and Demon statues Kefka’s Tower

Play it in that order and nothing feels like a hunt. Grab what’s convenient as you go, run Ebot’s Rock for Grand Delta whenever suits you in the World of Ruin — it never expires — and save the bulk for Kefka’s Tower, where Dark Force hands you the seventeen, Mover covers Mighty Guard, and the Fiend gives up Force Field to a Control. Keep Relm along for the few Lores that only come through Control or Sketch, and you’ll leave the tower with all twenty-four — comfortably past the twenty the Master Blue Mage achievement asks for.

Common Questions

How many Lores are there in FF6?

Twenty-four. Strago starts already knowing three of them — Aqua Breath, Revenge Blast, and Stone — so there are twenty-one left to learn. Reach twenty and the Pixel Remaster gives you the Master Blue Mage achievement; the full set is four beyond that.

Which FF6 Lore is missable?

Force Field, and only Force Field. Its one source is the Fiend statue near the top of Kefka’s Tower, and beating Kefka ends the game — this version has no post-game dungeon to go back for it. Every other Lore waits for you until the final battle.

What’s the best Lore in FF6?

Grand Delta. It hits every enemy, ignores their defense, and sits just under Ultima for raw power — and once you’ve cleared Ebot’s Rock it costs almost nothing to keep casting. For support, Mighty Guard is the pick: Protect and Shell on the whole party in a single cast.

Where do you learn Grand Delta in FF6?

From Hidon, the boss at Ebot’s Rock, a cave that appears north of Thamasa after you recruit Strago and talk to Gungho. The chest inside won’t move until you feed it Coral, and it stays shut unless Strago is in your active party. Hidon is the only enemy that casts Grand Delta.

Can Gogo learn Lores?

No. Gogo can equip the Lore command and use any Lore Strago already knows, but Gogo never learns new ones. Only Strago builds the list, so keep him in the party for every learn.