"Always berserk in battle, these feral warriors sacrifice commands to gain attack strength and power."

—Description

The Berserker is a Job in Final Fantasy V obtained after the Water Crystal shatters. The Berserker possesses high Stamina and Strength, making it a very powerful job early in the game, and are one of the few jobs capable of equipping the powerful Axes and Hammers in the game. However, Berserkers are in a constant Auto-Berserk state, meaning that the player will have no control over what they do, and as such, support abilities outside of those that give stat bonuses are useless to give to a Berserker.

However, due to this Berserkers are innately immune to the Confusion status. Berserkers start to decline sharply in use the more the game progresses, and after a certain point, become irrelevant compared to many other jobs in the game. Due to their low ABP cost to master compared to many other physical jobs, they are ideal to master early on for the bonuses they provide to Freelancers.

AppearanceEdit

As Berserkers, the characters wear animal pelts, wolves for the males and tigers for the females. Bartz, Galuf, and Faris all have similar clothes, Lenna's is more revealing, and Krile's seems to completely cover her up. Krile's costume looks somewhat similar to a Japanese "disguise pajama".

AbilitiesEdit

• Job Command - None
• Innate Abilities - Berserk
• Equipment - Knives, Axes, Hammers, Shields, Heavy Helmets, Clothes, Heavy Armor, Gauntlets

The Berserker has no actual job command, because of its innate ability Berserk. The Berserker will attack every turn, without any prompt. As such, it is not very practical to use the Berserker in vital boss battles; instead, it is more of a novelty to be used in random battles (though some use exists early game if given a Barehand or Doublehand, producing high damage for that point). Berserk prevents Confusion and will increase physical damage by 50%.

Berserkers do have MP, which they can put to use by equipping a Rune Axe or Rune Edge (or even both, if they have the Ninja Dual-Wield ability). These weapons drain the wielder's MP to increase their Attack power. Strangely enough, equipping an ability that gives a high boost to the magic stat, such as !Summon or !Black, might be a good idea if the Berserker is using either the Gaia Hammer or the Rune Axe.

The magic stat is used in the damage calculation for the random quake attack of the former, and the attack bonus for any attack of the latter that uses MP. A Thief's Agility ability is a useful ability to use with a Berserker. Two-Handed is another obvious choice for an ability. The job is vulnerable to a glitch where, if all party members are in the Berserk job, they are unable to run away from battles, and which ruins the game if a Berserker is equipped with the Chicken Knife.

Since this job is constantly berserked; due to this, three sprites can never be seen, and they go unused. They are the Defend or ready stance (after confirming an action and target) and the two-frame animation sprites for casting magic spells. Berserked character(s) ignores the ready stance completely and players cannot select and use magic during battle while using the Berserker job.

Of note, Equip Axes gives a character Strength equal to base Freelancer Strength +21. In addition to allowing the user to equip axes, the user can also equip hammers despite the game's description.

Upon mastery, Freelancers gain a bonus to Strength and Vitality, with the boost to Vitality being the second highest in the game out of all jobs.

The stat modifiers for Berserkers are:

• Strength: +21
• Agility: -9
• Stamina: +25
• Magic: -23

Level-Up AbilitiesEdit

GalleryEdit

Defend stance.

1st frame animation.

2nd frame animation.

Final Fantasy Trading Card Game.