|
Randalor posted:Do you know what would happen if you talk to the sultan or guards in the Throne room before confronting the sultan in his bedchambers? I'm curious which sultan it's thinking is supposed to be there. Smart money says it's whatever happens if you talk to the Sultan after breaking out of prison but before getting the Mirror of Truth. I didn't think to check what that might be, though.
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2022 14:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 08:02 |
|
|
man there are sixteen of these little bastards huh
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2022 22:48
|
|
|
Kinu Nishimura posted:man there are sixteen of these little bastards huh Which? Our party members?
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2022 23:55
|
|
|
yeah those little bastards. i'm wondering how the game is gonna like. work with that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 00:17
|
|
|
16 party members at the same time, all it needs is a dynamic combo generator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MACWyquliyo
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 00:21
|
|
|
Kinu Nishimura posted:yeah those little bastards. i'm wondering how the game is gonna like. work with that. Guess you'll just have to stick around and find out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 00:40
|
|
|
Kinu Nishimura posted:yeah those little bastards. i'm wondering how the game is gonna like. work with that. The parties become 4 unique "characters" where each "character" gains the abilities of the characters making up each party with the stats of its lead characters?
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 03:41
|
|
|
I hope you all like plot, because there's a ton of dialogue in today's update. And here we are: the final chapter. Everything prior has really been preparation for this. Chapter 5 is by far the longest in the game, about as long as the first four chapters combined. It's the real meat of the game, and it's going to take us a while.  The chapter opens with an extended black screen. After a few long moments, the sound of a teleportal can be heard, faint but growing louder. As it does...  We see that Zefiryn has arrived. You might remember that she ended her chapter by taking a teleportal out of Tyrsis.  We're immediately greeted by a red-clad Guru who prompts us to go with him.    We have no choice but to do so.  If you check the crowd closely, you can actually spot the other three heroes. I believe there's also at least one sprite for every class/gender combination.    Alliteration aside, I can't believe that some of the wisest men in the world chose that for their leader's title.  Pablo himself appears at the stairs after several long seconds.      Yes, the ultimate fight against Mephistocles is officially known as the Final Battle. No points for creativity here.   Pablo's speech is interrupted by a noise and a flash of light.  Some kind of screen appears, and on it is a familiar face.  Just imagine a Kefka laugh on every one of Murzhor's dialogue boxes. The guy loves his evil laughter.            After making his threats, Murzhor's TV screen fades away.   I haven't read the series, but Google tells me that "Gareth Bryne" is a Wheel of Time reference.  As the screen fades to black, our heroes rush to follow Pablo. They're in such a hurry that Zefiryn and Holdana end up on the same space.       It's been a while for most of these characters, so a reminder is actually rather helpful.       The screen fades out again, and we find ourselves elsewhere in the building.      There's been some curiosity among the readers about how the game would handle having four parties, each with four characters. This is one answer. If you've played Final Fantasy VI, the concept should be pretty familiar. For an RPG Maker 2003 game, this is some impressive tech.     Holdana, Raj Ahtan, and Akira head into the teleportal.   We're going to save first, and take care of a little housekeeping.  All four parties' inventories have been merged for the final chapter, which means we suddenly have a huge supply of items.  This includes a boatload of tarot cards. Since Harley is in Zefiryn's party, we may as well use them.  She gets a bunch of new tarot powers, including one that... allows her to kill one of her party members out of combat. This has a niche use, but we likely won't be seeing it.  Enough prep work - let's get going.  We arrive at a four-way intersection. All four heroes are here, but they're currently all standing on the teleportal. The Challenge of Heroes is a puzzle dungeon, and not a very complex one. It's pretty much purely an extended tutorial on multi-party dungeons, to the point that there aren't even any monsters here. (And really, why would the Gurus stock their own challenge with monsters?)  Zefiryn heads north and immediately comes across some spikes. They can be crossed, but they deal damage to the party and who wants that?  We switch to Holdana, who heads west.  The path leads her to more spikes and some pushable rocks, but the latter are blocked by bigger, impassable spikes.  She heads south and finds a Tiny Medal, one of four in the dungeon. With nowhere else to go, we leave her by the spikes.  Akira heads south.  The path takes him to a split, with the north branch clearly looking more tantalizing.  He pushes a rock, which will be significant later.   He moves on and finds a floor switch. When stepped on, it causes the spikes to retract. This affects the entire floor.  The nearby sign explains how spikes work, in case I hadn't already done that.  He moves on and finds a door in the wall, which is firmly closed. South of here is another Tiny Medal, so he's at a dead end.   Raj Ahtan heads east and immediately comes across the boulder that Akira pushed, giving him quicker access to this branch.  He comes across Akira, and at this point my brain felt the logical thing to do was to leave Raj Ahtan here and backtrack with the ninja.  While we're at it, we can also equip Moe with one of the golbin clubs we found, since he's the only one able to use them. This is an impressive boost to his power.   Akira returns to where is path branched and runs into some big spikes.   With the small spikes down, Holdana crosses them and finds a switch, which she presses.  Zefiryn also crosses her spikes and comes to a wall-door, which is open thanks to Holdana hitting her switch.   At the end is a button that retracts the floor's big spikes (and gives her access to another Tiny Medal).  Backtracking through the wall passage, she comes to another room, with a set of stairs leading down.  She finds a chamber full of big spikes and is forced to stop.  With the big spikes down, Holdana can push some rocks around and head downstairs.  She finds herself in the same room as Zefiryn, also unable to proceed.  Akira heads past his big spikes and comes to a fork. The east branch contains the last Tiny Medal, and the middle branch is a dead end.  The west branch takes him to the spike room and a switch.  This lowers some of the spikes, giving Holdana a path to another switch. You can probably see where this is going.  Holdana's switch opens another path, but no one's there to take it.   Raj Ahtan heads into the wall and down the last set of stairs.     He opens a path for Zefiryn, who opens a second path for Holdana, who opens a straightforward path for Akira.  Objective complete! But we still have to escape.   Luckily, a switch right next to the chest opens a path for Zefiryn to get to the teleportal, which gets us out.  Back outside the Challenge, we're greeted by Pablo's assistant, who takes us to see the Poobah.          We're rewarded with both money and experience for finding the Seal, giving us several level-ups. Poismore and Acid are both stronger versions of Poison: Poismore is stronger, while Acid hits all enemies. Having this many characters level at once isn't likely to happen often, but it will happen.      And this is the other way the game works with four parties. When we're not in combat, we can use it to simply switch which of our teams is active at any given time. The four groups can't interact with each other (e.g., by healing each other), but if we think a specific group might be best for the task at hand we can bring it out.  Naturally, we can't do this in multi-party dungeons like the Challenge of Heroes.   Although we will eventually have to find all seven artifacts, we're given only three to start with.     I know this is supposed to sound like a challenging journey, but I have to be honest: piloting what is essentially a giant robot sounds loving awesome.        The author is clearly a fan of both J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks.        Everything would be fine if not for that damned logic and science.   Our next three story beats are all set. We're going to be at this for a while.   A demonstration of the Seal of Legends at work. A flash of light, and one party is replaced by another. We'll be rolling with Zefiryn and Akira for now, since their parties' levels are a bit lower than Holdana's and Raj Ahtan's.  Wip is mostly here to remind us about what we were just told regarding the Artifacts' locations. We'll have to locate them ourselves.   This is a detail I love. Pretty much as soon as Alistair spoke his prophecy, the Gurus went to work finding the Child of Light and hiding her away, and without alerting Mephistocles' minions in the process. It really lends an air of competence to the guys who are directing the war against the demon lord. At this point we can head out, but first we have a city to explore. Paranor is pretty huge, largely thanks to the Gurus' base of operations.  Naturally, there's a church here, and it's impressively big. The priestess here offers the usual services. And yes, there's really a country in the world named Ikeia. Try not to groan to hard.   I'm just going to believe that the incubus is doing standard mind magic and not the thing incubi are generally known for, which would be a little... extreme for the tone this game goes for.  Elsewhere in the building is a set of three teleportals. This is just north of where Zefiryn arrived.  The first takes us to a small room that we cannot currently escape.  The second does essentially the same, though the door is shut by the key we still don't have rather than a wall switch.  And the third we can't even enter: a strange whirlwind pushes us back if we try.   You'd think the people of Indhopal would have talked more about a cursed sandstorm sweeping through the neighboring country. No doubt we'll have to deal with it at some point.  In the pub, we encounter a fellow who calls himself a daredevil. We've not heard of that class nor seen this sprite, so this is something of an enigma.  Literally every single person in the dining hall has this exact dialogue. No one is willing to stop eating long enough to talk to us.   The building naturally has a library, which is almost as much of a pain to search as Okasa's. I've left out most of the loot, but I wanted to note that I found a ticket among the shelves, suggesting that there's at least one more Funhouse.  Akira nods smugly at this.  I see no way in which this could go disastrously wrong.  In the basement, we find something that might actually be useful: a world map.  So here it is. The purple dots seem to represent towns and cities, while the smaller green dots are other places of interest. You can also see the places we've already been: Norsland in the northwest, Hasara in the center-south, Jumongu to the east, and Indhopal east of the big desert on the main continent. That still leaves a ton of unexplored territory.  In town, we find a set of shops run by the Sohei, who you might remember as having been founded by the son of Jumongu's legendary hero.     They mostly sell stuff we've already seen, though the ninja star and black hood (not shown) are both significant upgrades for the characters who can use them.  We also sell off the gemstone that Niddly dropped after Zefiryn killed him. It's actually real and worth a solid chunk of cash!  Spoony the bard, huh?    Silly name aside, this actually sounds pretty interesting. We might be going gambling at some point.  In the east part of the city is a building where the Child of Light is being kept. You can actually see here there in the upper left, though as the guard says, we can't actually get in and speak with her. Kept under guard 24/7 and not allowed to see other people except her teachers and guardians? Seems kinda sad. Destiny is a bitch.    We've already heard of Machin Shin, but now we also have a clue to where it comes from. It's not a priority (yet), but we'll surely have to check it out eventually.  Down a conspicuous set of stairs in the town is a dilapidated room containing a well.  Inside is the fifth and final Tiny Medal house. The medals we turned in previously all count toward our total, as do any we find going forward.  This conveniently gives us enough to earn not only another boomerang and bladerang, but also a new item: the Staff of Jubilation.  This mage weapon is two-handed, but has high power and a chance to send enemies into laughing fits, which hinders them in battle. I ultimately decide to give it to Hexia, since her offensive spells and weapons are both kind of bad.  There's a froggite in the town pond, who takes great pleasure in reminding us what assholes his people are.  Naturally, they pulled this poo poo right here. With Curly having Outside, a warp whistle isn't the valuable prize it used to be, but it's still good to have for an emergency.  We're pretty much done in Paranor, but there's another small area to check before we set out on our journey.  It's the command post that was briefly mentioned after Murzhor's speech.    The man himself is pretty chill, though "avail yourselves" actually means "buy what you want if you can afford it".  The items shop sells warp whistles, but is otherwise unimpressive.      The weapons, armor, and accessories are another matter. Virtually everything here is a noticeable upgrade for us, even the accessories. The pixie cape and fighter's ring both prevent multiple statuses, the voodoo doll prevents numb and can be used as an item to cure it, the blade barrier prevents a character from being critted, and the stepguard boots prevent damage from terrain. Unfortunately, all this brings me to my biggest gripe with the game: its economy. Money isn't hard to come by, exactly, but without a ton of grinding we will not get nearly enough to upgrade all 16 of our characters with any consistency. We're going to need to be extremely choosy about who gets what. I'll most likely handle that off-screen, since it's not something that I think needs to be detailed.  And that's it for now. Next time, we set out on our quest for real. 5-Headed Snake God fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jul 24, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2022 02:20
|
|
|
So, I have a bit of a confession. Before I started this LP, I decided I wanted to replay the game, which I hadn't touched in several years. I got to the end of chapter 4 before I decided to turn it into an LP. From here on out, I'll covering content on which my memory is shaky at best, so if I seem less knowledgeable than I have so far, there's a reason. I'm still confident that I can write a half-decent LP, but there may be things I miss here and there, and you're welcome to point them out if you think I do.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2022 02:24
|
|
|
I missed the Ikeia joke unless it's about Swedish furniture, but Machin Shin is also a Robert Jordan reference.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2022 05:03
|
|
|
fatsleepycat posted:I missed the Ikeia joke unless it's about Swedish furniture Bingo!
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2022 06:15
|
|
|
 Welcome back, everyone. After getting our new equipment purchased, we head west from Paranor, because it's as good a direction to head as any.  As night falls, we find a shrine, as well as the likely destination of its teleportal.   Now this is enticing news. Someone much earlier in the game suggested that the Gurus might have the Magic Key, but it seems they don't. We definitely need to look into this.   The teleportal spits us out exactly where you'd expect, and we continue west.  On the way, we encounter our first enemy of the chapter, a hawk. Hawks have decently strong physical attacks and good endurance, but not much else to speak of.  It's worth a level for Harley, though.  And for Zefiryn as well. Out of combat. So what's going on here? This seems to be the result of how the game deals with dividing EXP among multiple groups. As far as I can tell, the EXP rewards shown at the end of battle are given to the active party, and an additional pool of EXP is divided among all 16 characters - which can result in a member of the active party gaining a level. It's not really anything to worry about, but get used to seeing these post-post-battle level-up messages.   Anyway, we head further south, and as day breaks, we come to the city of Remus.    Hoo boy. We were told about this country abandoning magic for reason, but still, Team Magical Girl is not going to have a good time here.  We have the Jailor's Key, so we may as well talk to the prisoner too.  Luckily, we can't actually get arrested, but this gives us a pretty good read on how the people around here feel.  Next door to the jail is the Engineers' Guild, which I can't help but feel is not a coincidence. A couple of them mention the possibility of an ancient, advanced civilization. Given that this is a fantasy world, it's probably true.      Loon or no, we should probably talk to him at some point.  Um, yes? We've been officially anointed as heroes now; this is practically our job.  There's an extremely suspicious guy in the pub. It's probably best to ignore him.  OKAY YES YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION.  We're going to finish our daytime exploration, but we'll be back.  Oh, right, those things we're supposed to be looking for as part of the whole "saving the world" business.    Lady, we have literally fought two (2) of Mephistocles' generals. You need to stop putting so much stock in your precious "science".  This is an extremely unspecific hint, but at least there aren't many flower beds in Remus.  The treasure is a bit west of the boy, so "over yonder" is actually about right.  The creator clearly spent more time leaning on the fourth wall here.  As long as we don't have to pay another 5000 GP. Akira already had to buy into that scam.      While we're here, we check out the shops. There's nothing we couldn't have gotten at the outpost earlier.  "Sir?" Zefiryn is clearly a lady.   The blind man runs a tool shop, which is nice for teams with Engineers. I can't really justify buying all this stuff, but getting a chainsaw for Shemp can't be a bad idea, right?  I... probably should have saved first. Since it inflicts a powerful condition at no MP cost, it's a safe bet that the Chainsaw has extremely low accuracy and is thus not worth using.    A couple people tucked away in the corner of the city don't immediately look askance at us for talking about the War on Terror. I think they're the only ones in the city.    We definitely want the Magic Key, but even if we didn't, it sounds like we're going to need it.   You might remember Holdana clearing Merchant's pass in Chapter 1. I'm not sure, but I think this might be implying that not doing that side quest keeps the pass blocked and forces the player to take the long way there in this chapter.     Oh goddess dammit. No, we're not going to buy it. At least not right now. We'll see if we can get our business done in town without it. Let's come back at night and see if maybe we can just take it.  Which is weird since they do still have a church.  But we're not here to discuss religious liberty. We're after a key!   gently caress yes we are.  We get to work with the Cobra Club again? This just gets better and better!      This seems fairly straightforward. Unfortunately, we can't just Return to Stromholm, since the spell's destination list is reset at the start of the chapter. Luckily, with Merchant's Pass clear, the way should be fairly simple.  Well, this explains the sprite, but I still kinda hate it.  I have zero doubts that at least one or two people in Akira's party would be interested.  Well, yeah, they do all have the same sprite.  Unfortunately, we cannot get by without buying the skiff. We don't need this eating into our savings, but at least we have the cash on-hand.   Sound advice.  The Remus Skiff is even more limited than the one Akira bought. It's limited to the city and can only navigate the darker blue waters.  I told you there was a church here. Though I guess being on an island does make it hard to get to.  South of the church, there's a passage through the deeper waters we can take.  It takes us to a small island with a lone occupant.    Why yes, it is another animal-themed side quest. Unlike Bessie the Wondercow, though, Shelby the Super Sheep has a much larger number of places he could be. No promises on being able to find them all, but I will try.   In the south central part of the city, on another island, is the University. This being nighttime, it's empty.   There are a couple of magic doors here, taunting us.   On the roof is an extremely suspicious individual. He directs us to the pub, which is helpful in case we'd missed the prison break job. We could come back and take our boat around during the day, but we'll have to come back anyway. Let's go get the Magic Key.   On our way to Norsland, we run into a few new enemy types. Parapluies like to use Shadow Flame, while zombies hit pretty hard and can use Feed, which drains a character's HP. Thornicuses are the real danger, though, as they have abilities that inflict both Numb and Poison.      We get a few more levels from these fights. Speedself doubles the speed at which the caster gets turns and is especially useful on a character who's already speedy, like Akira.    North and west of Remus is a cave, which actually Merchant's Pass.   it's nice to see our efforts bearing actual fruit. The monsters here are the same as ever, in case you were curious.  Man, it has been a while.  You might remember this room and the dungeon it led to. At the start of the game, it was a genuine challenge. At this point, even if we ran into some enemies, they would be zero threat. Getting outside the walls is simple.  Norsland has the best guards.  I love the idea that every member of the Cobra Club puts "Cobra" in front of their name.       And she walks off. This seems fairly simple.   Welcome to the tunnel with no proper name. It starts with a little bit of a maze, but it's not terribly tough. Oddly enough, since it's part of the city, we're allowed to save down here.    The enemies here are nothing too nasty. Sewerrats continue the rat tradition of inflicting poison, and they can hit reasonably hard if they target more fragile party members. Jellies are pretty durable and use Glorb, which inflicts very minor damage and Discord (reduced magic damage). It's not a huge issue. Slimes are the most annoying things here, using an ability called Slimeburp to duplicate themselves. Without high damage or good crowd control, it can spiral out of control, but they're not durable enough for that to be a real hazard. That goes double when faced with Team Shonen's high multi-target damage.      More levels. Curly's is especially nice; Ironize is a good spell.   Past some spikes is a switch that lowers those same spikes. This is worth our time, I promise.  See? There are more spikes to the north, and that first switch is the only one that lowers them.  We loop back round the central room to another, very ominous-looking switch.  All it does is lower the big spikes, though.    Surprising no one, the central chest holds a monster. The Reanimate is basically a tougher zombie: same Feed ability, but higher strength and durability. If we were fighting it with Akira's party he could use Spirit Skean to wipe it out easily, but I did this with Holdana's group instead, so it's a mild challenge.  Our reward is the Ring of Negation, which adds a huge +30 Defense. Holdana's party won it, so it goes to Karla.  Further south is a closed door and another switch.   Well, that was simple.  We exit into the castle dungeon, next to King Cobra's cell.  This must be our distraction.             ...Norsland has the worst loving guards.   All right, now we just have to walk out. With no guard on duty, this should be easy.  No, of course not. We have to get out the way we came.      More levels on the way out. Nothing amazing.  Lowering the big spikes gives us a shorter route back, which I appreciate.  Easy peasy.          Some very solid levels here too. The heroes are starting to learn Ironize, and Harley gets a mass silence spell.    A job well done. Let's go try out our new key.  The Stromholm castle actually has the first magic door we ever saw.  Yes, I had already deduced that.     There are some pretty interesting rewards here, in addition to a couple of seeds. A big pile of gold and some strong armor are always good, but those other two things are unique.  Thor's seal provides lightning resistance and is potentially quite useful against enemies that wield it.  The Sword of Malice, meanwhile, is very powerful and inflicts poison, but has a low hit rate and lowers our non-Strength stats.  Oh, and it's highly cursed. Yes, I was a dumbass.  We can't even get any money for selling it, but that's likely for the best. We probably shouldn't introduce a cursed sword into the market.  Next time we'll head back to Remus to try out our key, then move on to the Four Towers. But wait! I have some BONUS CONTENT.  When we rescue King Cobra, we can't take the stairs out. We also can't use the Outside spell, since we're technically in a town, not a dungeon.   But being in a town means we can use the Return spell to warp the the city entrance.  We get the same dialogue, despite the fact that the NPCs are nowhere to be seen. It's an amusing little oversight, and doesn't even seem to break the game at all; we still the the Magic Key and the invitation to Jardin. See you all next time!
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2022 01:46
|
|
|
Do you know if the game has any skills that go off of your Str? I can see the Sword of Malice being good on someone who wants high Str but doesn't rely on their basic attack (like FF's Excalipoor).
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2022 03:11
|
|
|
Randalor posted:Do you know if the game has any skills that go off of your Str? I can see the Sword of Malice being good on someone who wants high Str but doesn't rely on their basic attack (like FF's Excalipoor). There aren't spells or spell-like abilities that key off Strength directly. There are special commands and spells (like Larry's Wolfman spell) that modify a character's attacks, but that's it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2022 03:57
|
|
|
Man, you can tell with the Guru's home base that the guy who made the game really put a lot of effort into starting off chapter 5 as strongly as they could.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2022 07:42
|
|
|
What a fantastic game, and a stellar LP! I love how this game wears its inspirations like a badge on its chest. The custom systems, pretty maps, and tongue-in-cheek (but rather witty) dialogue makes the love and effort the creator put into the game very clear. I can't wait to see what else this game has to offer!
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2022 07:37
|
|
|
Crazy Lou posted:What a fantastic game, and a stellar LP! I love how this game wears its inspirations like a badge on its chest. The custom systems, pretty maps, and tongue-in-cheek (but rather witty) dialogue makes the love and effort the creator put into the game very clear. I can't wait to see what else this game has to offer! Aw, thank you! And yeah, the game was definitely a labor of love. For all that I use , I cant help but find the writing earnest and charming.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2022 17:18
|
|
|
Welcome back, everyone. Last time, we finally got our hands on the Magic Key. So now let's go to Helminsk. Why? I dunno. For some reason it felt like a good idea to add it to our Return destination list, but I don't think it'll actually be relevant. I might have been a little out of it when I played this segment.  At least we get a level for Kali out of it.   Well, that was fun. Let's head back to the University.   By day, the University is pretty bustling.   I feel like this is a hair away from being biting social commentary.  Now that we have the Magic Key, we can get into these doors on the 2nd floor.   We've noticed. This would be a legitimately valuable accomplishment.  Of course there's one in the cabinet.   This also sounds pretty intriguing. Something to keep in mind when we finally get done with Monoboraba. And yes, that's almost certainly a Dune reference.    The game is nice enough to drop a hint about the guy who hangs out on the roof at night, which points the player toward the Magic Key quest.  Sure, why not? We don't need his key any more, but maybe he'll have something else of value to offer us.     You should know exactly what joke the game is about to make.    Eeyup, that's the one.      I'd feel bad for him, but these people are denying reality and we need the key to save the world.  I'm sure we have no idea what that was about.       Some of the students in the University rattle off unnecessary but interesting facts.  All right, enough faffing around in town. Let's head for the Four Towers.  We encounter a couple new foes en route to our destination. Timberwolves usually open fights with Howl, inflicting Sap on the party, then start attacking to take advantage of our lowered defense.  Gastropod shells are more interesting, employing a strategy derived from the creature whose sprite they're using. Attack them...     And they counter viciously. The head pops in and out over the course of the fight, and is the real target. Unfortunately, it has the irritating habit of retracting right after an attack command is entered, causing us to attack the shell and eat another counter. This walk also taught me that parapluies (first encountered in the previous update) are offensive casters, throwing around stuff like Firebal, Hurt, and Icebolt.       We get a nice set of levels from these fights. Our protagonists start learning Ironize, and Curly gets a very useful debuff.  At last, we arrive at our destination.  It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the Four Towers are a multi-party dungeon, with each party intended to enter one of the four. It's also a puzzle dungeon, which is unfortunate since my brain was really not working when I recorded this.  Akira is our currently active party, so we may as well send him in first. He goes to the third tower, since that makes logical sense to me.   The ground floor of the tower has a series of levers and a pool of water. The water leads nowhere and has nothing interesting. The levels seem to be worth messing with, but who knows what that might trigger? Let's explore a bit more with the other characters.  This screenshot is here just because I thought the animation was really neat. But first, let's talk about the opposition. The enemies here are no joke, and my biggest takeaway from running the dungeon was that I should have bought more equipment upgrades.    Misguided have fairly basic physical attacks and not a lot of endurance, but they like to use Alibaba's Caltrops ability, and can do a lot of damage with it. Lost souls can use Shadow Flame, but it's their physical attacks that are their real threat; they can two- or three-shot a mage if given a chance. Goblins use Slasher and Numbing Thorns, which can be mildly dangerous, but they're only really threatening in numbers. Faithless are tricksy enemies that use Silencio and Love Potion, but their lack of durability means they tend not to get much done. And Fallen Knights seem to be bugged: they don't take any actions, ever.  Finally, we have the beastriders, which deserve a special mention. They have a ton of HP and open fights by casting Surround twice, which is almost guaranteed to blind anyone not immune to it. And that's problematic, since they follow it with Ravage, a more powerful version of Slasher. Once they get going they can be quite difficult to handle, and fighting them is always a risk. Luckily, they only show up on the upper floors of the Towers.  Holdana's team enters tower 1.  The first floor has some large spikes on either side, but a passage straight ahead leads to some stairs up.  The second floor is a room filled with small spikes. Taking a little damage to shorten our route is worth the pain.  The third floor opens into a small area with pillars, a save point, and more large spikes blocking the way up.  The obvious walkway on the right leads to a dead end. You might have already guessed what's up with this. But with no obvious way forward, we switch to another team for now.   Zefiryn's party enters the second tower, which seems to have been pretty lavishly appointed back in the day.   Stairways on either side lead up to the second floor and a library. One of the regulars here back in the day must have been an occultist because there are no fewer than three tarot cards hidden among the shelves.  The next floor is another spike maze, but with a do-it-yourself bridge. (The ladder is in the northeast corner.)   After setting the ladder, we cross it and come to more stairs.  These promptly lead us to more large spikes, which is as good as a dead end.   Raj Ahtan's party heads into the final tower, which seems to have been an auditorium of some kind.  The second floor is a balcony boasting even more seats. Also a bunch of large spike barring the stairs.  With no one else able to do anything, we switch back to Akira and have him play with the levers. Flipping one also flips the lever or levers adjacent to it.  With all the levers pointing right, we unveil a set of stairs leading down.  Inside is a small room with a chest containing Death's Mask.  It boasts a ton of defense and you'd better believe it's cursed.  We go back up and flip the levers to the left instead, which reveals stairs leading up.  Floor two is a set of narrow walkways. Oh boy do I love having to move slowly to avoid falling.   The eastern path leads to a floor button that lowers the small spikes. This affects all four towers, so we can move around a bit more freely. The western path leads to a chest containing a Healmost scroll - decent, but not an amazing prize.  The southern walkway circles the room and leads to the stairs.  Floor 3 is a straight hallway leading to more stairs and a save point (barely visible against the south wall).  Floor 4 gives us a choice of two directions, but it's not much of a choice.  To the east is an MP-restoring blue blob. A nice find, but not really what we need.  To the south is an intersection, and further south of that is a floor switch.   Stepping on the switch retracts the large spikes to the south, but only as long as someone stands on the switch.   West of the intersection is a lever that has no apparent effect.  With Akira stymied, we switch back to Holdana and take a leap of faith.  And our faith is rewarded as we land behind these large spikes on the ground floor.   As you'd expect, the wall switch causes them to retract. Like the small spike button Akira pressed, this affects all four towers, though not all the spikes. The ones controlled by the other button Akira found are exempted.  With the spikes retracted, Holdana can head up to floor 4, which gives us only one way to go.   It leads to an intersection. To the north is another button that only stays down when stood on, but it has no clear effect.  To the east is a level that changes the floor in a nearby hallway. You can probably see where this is going.  Holdana has nothing more to do for now, so we switch to Zefiryn, who can move on thanks to Holdana lowering the large spikes.  Her third floor has a big pool of water in front of a throne, with a convenient save point nearby.   Her fourth floor is... pretty terrible.  There's a red blob here, but it's not really worth the time.  Side note: while checking on my ladder situation is discovered that I still have King Cobra in my inventory. This raises several uncomfortable questions.  Finally, we reach the end of this mess, and find a teleportal.  it takes us to a small platform containing four levers.  The northeast lever changes the floor, similar to the one Holdana found, but the others don't do anything obvious.  Finally, Raj Ahtan heads up to his third floor.  It's a bog-standard maze.  Finally, our monk and his allies ascend to floor 4. We've finally found that mystery hallway, as evidenced by the appearance of Zefiryn to the left.   She uses the levers to provide Raj Ahtan with a path.   Akira steps on the button to let him past the spikes.   Zefiryn uses another lever to allow him to continue.   Holdana uses her lever to let him get to a blocked-off stairway.   She then moves to her button and uses it to retract the spikes.   And finally, Akira uses his lever to allow Raj Ahtan to climb the stairs. Phew!   Our reward is the Divine Halo, along with a nice chunk of EXP. Which makes this a convenient time to share all the levels we gained while navigating this place.                                     Yeah, we got a lot of stuff here! Notably, the heroes learn Ironize, and a few of the casters learn Firebane, a more powerful version of Firebal. Probably the most significant, though, is Lina and Hexia's RobMagic spell, which steal enemy MP. I had originally attributed this effect to Expel, but this tells me I may be mistaken - I'll have to do some experimenting with them.  One last hitch: the Outside spell doesn't work in this dungeon. We'll have to walk out.   At least it's quick.  The Divine Halo is, technically, a piece of armor. And, like other armor, it has its defense listed at the end of its description. Yes, it has over 12,000 defense. Unfortunately, even our heroes aren't worthy of it - none of them can actually equip it. It is, after all, meant for the Child of Light.  And with that we've finished a third of our goals on the mainland!
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2022 00:23
|
|
|
Sorry for the lack of update this week, folks. Work last week was crazy and I did not have the energy to devote to the LP. This week should be smooth sailing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2022 01:01
|
|
|
Welcome back, everyone! Last time, we completed the Four Towers and retrieved the Divine Halo.  Our first stop today is Paranor, where we have a few pieces of business to take care of.  The first is this locked door in the Gurus' basement. The stairs on the other side are surrounded by damaging floor tiles.  Down below is a chest, also surrounded by damaging floor tiles.  Inside is the Demonslayer sword. Despite the name, it's actually demonic in nature, and very cursed. It's super strong, but lowers defense to 1. Wielding it is basically suicide. No wonder the Gurus kept it sealed away - it's quite dangerous to both wielder and target.  Our other order of business in town is talking to this guy, who told us about the tunnel to San Vegas being blocked. Turns out that is no longer an issue, so we'll take his advice and visit the city.     After buying some new weapons and armor for those characters that need it, we set out. The trip isn't too eventful, though we do gain a few levels from it.  Vivify is particularly interesting, since it means that Hexia, rather than Karla, is the first person to attain a resurrection spell.   Finally, we reach the tunnel, and the engineer inside confirms that it's open.  The tunnel itself is very short and monster-free.  On the other side, we're given a choice of two routes: a swampy southern path or a longer western path. Both lead to the city, but it's nice to be given the option.   There are a couple of new enemies in this region. Thieves are pretty weak and sometimes run away. presumably they have some kind of stealing ability, but I haven't seen it. Chest lurkers also frequently run away, usually after putting the party to sleep. They don't give a lot of EXP, but they drop a decent chunk of money and, appropriately, a chest.   Finally, we come to San Vegas itself. There aren't any casinos here, but there are still quite a few worthwhile sites.    Naturally, Vegas has some high-quality shops. We don't have a lot of money, but Larry does get a new silver axe, which should help keep his offense competitive. The pearl earring is also exceedingly tempting, and likely something we'll return for.   Besides the shopping, there's also a lot of very juicy information to be gained here. Way back in chapter 1, we heard about a place that only allows women to enter. Not only is it here, but so is its all-male counterpart.      A few people talk about an airship, but we're likely a long way from actually getting one.  There's a Coliseum here, similar to Okasa's but even bigger. We're not ready to deal with it yet, but we will.   We also learn about some of the political goings-on in the city. Apparently the local count has a decent military force and a lot of money. His name also sounds oddly specific, but I wasn't able to find anything concrete about it. "Francis Miller" is a fairly plain name.      This is possibly the most interesting information in all of San Vegas. Three Elfstones are scattered throughout the world (apart from the white one that was lost with the Fellowship of the Stone), and each one will allow a character to change into an advanced class. Of course, we can't make use of this information yet, but it's pretty tantalizing!  We don't have any such rights, but this is another one of those things that we'll keep in mind. We'll need to get off the continent eventually.   Well, this is supremely bad news. It was sort of glossed over, but Okasa has a massive underground crypt. This could get really ugly!   So the guy with the airship is now blocked by a massive bone wall? Seems like something a necromancer might have done... (Also, yes, in case it wasn't already obvious, Ozland is 100% an analogue for Australia.)  Behind the Coliseum is the fabled Women's Club. Holdana could enter, but she's too loyal to her friends and would never leave Larry or Wolff behind.   Team Magical Girl has no such issues, though.  Ooh, that sounds cool. Any clues on where it might be?   Oh, okay then. The Maneater is a pretty powerful weapon for this point in the game, and due to being a dagger is usable by practically every class. Harley takes it for now, because that feels appropriate somehow.        One of the shops has a hidden switch leading to a Tiny Medal. Kind of a lot of work for one medal, but there ya go.  In the local bar, a woman mentions another hangout of Shelby the Super Sheep. We'll keep our eyes peeled when we visit Jardin.  If we sneak around the bartender, we can take the back exit.   It leads to the Men's Club. Holdana, of course, can't enter here either, but Akira's all-male party is more than welcome.  Ah, of course. It's a "gentlemen's club".  Now that sounds like an adventure.  We've heard! And since the Maneater was found in the Women's Club, it stands to reason that the Ladykiller is somewhere nearby.    Bingo! Alibaba's falling a bit behind, so he gets to wield it.    Other folks in the inn and the bar, give us Shelby's remaining locations. Looks like he's in the other major cities on the continent.  Well, we know about the elite classes, if that counts.  More tantalizing information. We should look into these classes, since they don't seem to require any special items to acquire.  With any luck, Balthalas has already slain every frogite in the city.  Okay, enough wasting time. Let's go see the count.       He's not willing to commit his forces to the war effort, but he otherwise seems like a decent guy.  In his backyard, we find the count's father, who recommends we prove our worth in battle. Seems reasonable.  The keep's basement contains a familiar room.   Hitting the switch gives us an easy teleport back to Paranor, though it's largely unnecessary since Return exists.   Upstairs is the count's bedroom, complete with indoor swimming pool. I don't know who this is for, but it's a women's suit, so probably not the count himself.  As armor it is absolutely worthless.  But it is made of (or at least covered with) diamonds, so it sells for a lot of money.  On the roof is a man who gives us some information we already had. It's good to have the reminder, I guess?   In the attic is a chest containing an accessory, the Comet Girdle.  It's hard to tell exactly what it does since it doesn't do anything to the wearer's stats, but if the description is accurate it is extraordinarily powerful. Raj Ahtan takes it for now, until more testing can be done.  Well, there's only one thing left to do here. Let's visit the Coliseum.  I wasn't kidding when I said it was bigger than Okasa's.  Unlike the Kumite, the San Vegas Coliseum doesn't have championships. it's just a fight between one party and an opponent.    Let's give it a shot.   The Chariot's map sprite is a little... glitchy.   The Soul Chariot isn't a complex foe, but it puts up a good fight. It opens with Discord, temporarily reducing the entire party's ability to hurt it. It then uses physical attacks and Onslaught, a powerful attack against the whole party. With this team's sheer power and Karla's healing, the fight isn't too tough.     Regrettably, we can't continue to fight here. It'll be a while before we can return to challenge another opponent.  In the meantime, though, we at least got a decent reward. Since Holdana's party won the match, it seems only fair that she take it.  With nothing else to do in San Vegas, we depart and head south, then west.   We don't see any new foes on this trip, but we gain a couple of levels.  We also spy a mysterious ship sailing the seas. We heard rumors about a ghost ship earlier in the game, and this seems to be it.  Finally, we arrive at a small island containing a temple.  Its name is a little on the nose.     These classes sound pretty neat. Maybe we should check them out.  Unfortunately, there are a couple of additional caveats: taking an elite class cuts a character's level in half, and it can't be done until the character is at least level 20. We can't do this now, but we'll come back.  We've heard of these too, but information on them is scarce. Suffice it to say that they're very good, but taking one isn't a simple decision.   Nothing we didn't already know. We don't meet any of the requirements yet, but we'll be back.    The Temple of Class Change has nothing of value for us yet, so we Return to Paranor, rest up, and then head back to the shrine. From there, we go north, and come to another town.  Queensbridge is a neat little down that's much bigger than it initially appears.     The weapons and armor here are nothing new, but there's a dedicated shop selling recipes for Hexia. I'm not quite willing to commit 9000 gold to one, but we do grab the Restorative recipe, which makes strong healing potions. The accessory shop also has a new item, the Lucid Barrier, which resist physical attacks and could be really nice for areas with lots of strong monsters.    Oh. This is actually a little depressing.   Oh, actually, yes, we did hear about that.  Besides the bridge itself, there's a significant amount of land also being used by the town.     It looks like we've stumbled onto the trail of the Fellowship of the Stone. In case the Lord of the Rings reference wasn't clear enough, one of them even drops a blatant Return of the King reference.   Luckily, the steward here is way less of a dick than Denethor.            This is a lot of information, but not much of it is really relevant. We already know we have to find the stone.  A lady in town does offer us a potential hint, though.  North of the bridge is the temple, plus a well.    Inside the well is a twisting path and a Tiny Medal. There are no monsters here, so there's not much else to say.  Seems worth checking.  Imagine like 5 screens of this. Thrilling.  Finally, we emerge at the top, and find... something interesting.      Now this is relevant: we actually have a trail to follow. You might remember us having seen a similar sprite in Sudash's inn in Raj Ahtan's chapter. So I suppose we have our next destination.  Beneath a stairwell in the town in a sealed room with a chest surrounded by both damaging tiles and corpses. Which means we have a monster-in-a-box guarding a cursed item.  Oh wait, no, it's just an unguarded item.  And it's... actually pretty solid! Resistance to magic could be super useful in places.  Ah. Clearly Lich, the Earth Fiend, is causing the land to rot by corrupting the Orb. Wait, no, wrong game.  Yeah, the Fellowship of the Stone went to the two towers and now everyone's waiting for the return of the king.  You know, I respect this.  And that's all for Queensbridge. Next time, we start our hunt for the White Elfstone.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2022 01:22
|
|
|
Welcome back, everyone. Today's update is going to be a bit short - it took a while to actually play, but there isn't a huge amount to show off. We're currently following the path of the Fellowship of the Stone, trying to figure out exactly where they (and their precious cargo) ended up. The journal page we found in Queensbridge indicated that they were headed for Indhopal, but we're actually going to head west first, to the site where Arborlon used to stand.   Larry earns himself a level on the way, and in so doing acquires a new shapeshifting spell, Wolflord. Where Wolfman doubles the user's attack power, Wolflord doubles both attack and defense. It'll be very handy for boss fights.   We head across a bridge and arrive at a bare patch of earth.   It's really just a giant hole in the ground, but there are a couple items of interest, like a journal page.    I'm genuinely surprised the author didn't go with Lord of the Rings for his joke names.   No new information, but it does give us a little more insight into the story.  Presumably this is where the stone will go once we've recovered it.  With the pit explored, we head north.  One new enemy type roams this area, the kaiser. I only met two and surprised both of them, so their abilities remain a mystery for now.    We find ourselves at another city, and just before we enter, we're attacked, earning Karla and Wolff some levels.  Oh hey, this place is nice.  It turns out we're way off course. Jardin is the third quest location. We could do it, since we're here, but we'll continue our hunt for the Fellowship while the information is fresh in our minds.  After returning to Paranor and consulting the world map, we head south out of the city and turn east. This eventually brings us to the Monaboraba Desert.     More levels are gained en route.  Although it doesn't actively harm us, Machin Shin's presence is clear - a massive sandstorm hits us almost the instant we enter the desert.  Not far in, we spy what must be the city of Aleksandria.  As we get near, the wind pushes us away, which seems like a confirmation of this suspicion.  We also get pushed away from the southeast corner of the desert, which is odd. Perhaps there's something there.  The desert is home to a couple new enemy types. Dirt dragons are strong and durable, while hermits have a poisonous sting. Neither is especially dangerous.     Still more levels for us.  As we near Sudash, the storm dissipates.   You may remember us seeing this journal page during Raj Ahtan's chapter, though we had no way to get to it at the time.      Seems like things started to go pear-shaped pretty early.  What can I say? I laughed at this.   North of Sudash are the two Towers of Ziam.  Raj Ahtan visited this area as well, but again, he couldn't get in. Now that we have the Magic Key, we can.  The Towers look much like other dungeons we've seen.     The Towers are home to zombies and lost souls, as well as several new types of monster. Most of the are undead, so abilities like Bonebane and Spirit Skean are super useful. Glorjes don't seem to do much apart from physical attacks. Porkuses use Pus to inflict slow as well as Charge, a weak physical attack against the entire party. Like morkuses, they're very slow and spend some of their turns doing nothing. For the undead, we now have to deal with phantoms. Like their weaker palette-swaps, their like to inflict Chaos on the party and are immune to physical damage.   The northwest corner of the first floor has a set of treasure chests protected by a damaging floor. The pixie cape protects against several status ailments and could be very useful against for that use them. There's not much need for it here, though.  On the east side is another journal page.      Yeah, things did not go at all well for the Fellowship, but at least their notes are thorough enough for us to track them.  Through the first doorway is a nice-looking room with a bridge over a pond.   The next floor up has two side rooms. One contains a chest with a Moon herb, while the other has a save point. It seems a bit early for that, but whatever.   Floor 3 is... uninteresting.  Floors 4 and 5 just require is to walk around gaps in the floor.  Floor 6 is technically the same, but at least it's somewhat visually interesting with the little island in the middle.  Finally, we're atop the first tower.   We cross a bridge and descend into the second tower.  Its top floor is small and contains nothing of interest.   Floor 5 has probably the easiest-to-find Tiny Medal in the entire game.   Floors 4 and 3 are both short and sweet.  Floor 2 is a maze. Oh boy! It's at least fairly small and quick.  It also lets us take a peek outside and grab HP and MP refills.  The bottom floor is... yet another maze. This one's significantly bigger and more of a pain to navigate. The two chests each contain stat-boosting seeds, which are nice but not essential.   Finally, we reach the end and step outside. All in all, the Towers of Ziam feel like a bit of a letdown. They're pretty unremarkable in terms of design, and the mazes just feel designed to waste the player's time with more random battles. They're inoffensive, but definitely not a high point.     Luckily, they're also pretty short. We only gained a handful of levels here.  That's it for today. Next time, we'll continue east in search of the White Elfstone.
|
|
#
?
Oct 31, 2022 19:12
|
|
|
yeah that dungeon felt like kind of a letdown for the buildup. not even a boss. for shame
|
|
#
?
Oct 31, 2022 20:23
|
|
|
 Welcome back, everyone. We're still on the trail of the Fellowship of the Stone. Having completed the two Towers of Ziam, we're headed further east to a small coastal town.  During this leg of the journey we run into a few new types of monsters. The first of them... has a really unfortunate name. I'm inclined to chalk this up to lack of awareness of how problematic the term was. In any case, they're not very interesting, using weak physical attacks and having low HP.  The rest of the monsters are fine, and in fact I kind of love the name "Little Shop" for a monster with the malboro sprite. They use Poison Breath, unsurprisingly. Snippers, meanwhile, use reasonably strong physical attacks, while bossquitos don't do much before dying (though I assume they have some kind of blood-sucking attack).  Our journey takes us through a narrow, wooded mountain pass. It's inessential to the gameplay, but I think it looks neat.  When we emerge from the other side, we see... Oh. Well, we knew it was out there somewhere.  Despite appearances, however, we can't reach it from here.  We can't reach it from here, either. It seems to be located on an island.         We gain a few levels during this trip. There's nothing really exciting in them, though Healmore for Kali is nice. Curly also learns Demi, which is new. Like its Final Fantasy counterpart, it halves an enemy's HP.  Finally, we catch sight of the town.  It's kind of a dump.  Well, we've been to Paranor, and even if we hadn't, this definitely isn't the grandest city in the world. What an odd thing to lie about.  Oh, okay. Parvinder is actually a big homage to Zozo, though it's at least not filled with random battles.  We've seen this gimmick before.   We return at night and find exactly what we expected. At least this tells us that not everyone is Parvinder is lying.   This is a strange mix of depressing and heartwarming.  One of the Rovers gives us this piece of information. He's not the only one to mention Shelob, either - she clearly has a reputation among the townsfolk.  The townsfolk being huge liars isn't the only thing that makes this a Zozo reference. There's also a clock-setting puzzle. The trick, of course, is that everything you're told about the correct time is a lie. I'm not going to show off the other clues, since there are several and it wouldn't really add anything to the LP, but just be aware that like half the town is lying about a clock.  Oh, that seems promising, or it would if anyone here had a shred of credibility.       The shops here do offer some new weapons and armor, along with a bunch of utter garbage. The Shelobhide bucklers are especially interesting, offering a solid defense increase for characters that can't use heavier shields, like Curly. The Rovers sell some decent accessories, as well, and a shop near the town center has some ninja gear for Akira. The item shop also includes some good accessories, though nothing we haven't already seen.   Okay, so I am going to show off some of the clock clues. This guy is just so transparently dishonest.   A guy in the middle of town points us toward the bar.  Akira, however, has other plans.  In the well, we find an unusual item: a guidebook.   Wolff takes a quick look through it and memorizes its contents. He's now able to use his world map Nature abilities (currently Lagomorph, Feral Wolves, and Dryad Touch) in any terrain. More healing is always good, though it's admittedly downplayed with Karla in the party.  Yet another person points us toward the barkeep. We should probably get on that.  The bar doubles as an inn. An expensive one too - we'll pass for now.     The barkeep doesn't really have much to offer us, but at least he seems honest.   I mean, this is obviously a trick, but why not?      I can't even be mad.  Upstairs we find what must be the room the Fellowship used.     This is the last journal page we can find. Whatever grim fate befell the Fellowship of the Stone will likely remain a mystery.  Okay, this is a pretty clever hint. Like all the others, it's a ruse. Even the clocks in Parvinder are liars!   We should check that out too. Maybe he left something valuable for this new generation of heroes.  t     We also meet a familiar animal face here. You might have noticed Shelby earlier, when we picked up the Tiny Medal guarded by the boy's dog.  This is also an honest statement, and an important one, since it gives us a destination.  It's finally time to check out the building across from the bar. The music cuts out here, leaving only the ticking of a clock.  The clues we gathered in town don't fully narrow down the time for us, but we're left with a handful of possibilities, so we can go through them until...   We get it right and a stairwell appears.  A... chemise? We were told that this belonged to the Fellowship's druid, and the last journal entry used male pronouns for him. I'm not shaming him or anything, just saying that this is kind of an odd find.  Regardless, it's an excellent piece of armor. it doesn't seem to be limited to women, and offers spellcasters both good defense and halved MP consumption.  I also noticed here that Raj Ahtan has Bikill, indicating that the Comet Girdle is working as intended.  Lastly, we drop by the last remaining building in town, an inn that's much more reasonably-priced than the one at the bar.    But, um. It also costs half the party's gold. Let's just reload and pretend this never happened.  Heading north from Parvinder, we're presented with two paths to take.  Larry also gets a level here.  To the west is a patch of land that looks like the pit where Arborlon once stood.  Its layout is different, but it's clearly the city's intended destination. It makes me curious as to who dug the pit, since supposedly the Fellowship was transporting the city's entire populace.  East of the pit is a single swamp tile. If what we were told in Parvinder was accurate, this is probably where Shelob is lairing.  Well, it's certainly miserable enough.  It's also a multi-party area, which is an odd choice. The map is small and uncomplicated, and there's no real need for multiple groups acting independently. You might also notice what appears to be a fish a couple tiles north of us. It's actually a group of monsters. This swamp has no random battles; instead, it has groups of monsters that move around the map and generally try to head for the active party.  Those monster groups are made up of only a single type of monster: Shelobites. If we had any doubt that this was Shelob's lair, those doubts are now gone.  Shelobites typically use Sting, a basic physical attack, but they do significant damage. If a group of them gangs up on a caster, that character will probably die. They also use a special attack, Sickly Sting, which does damage and inflicts some combination of Sleep, Poison, and Slow. Shelobites themselves also absorb poison.  The best way to deal with them seems to be by using Akira's Sleep Powder. Shelobites are fairly susceptible to Sleepmore status, letting us pick them off one by one. They also appear to be vulnerable to fire, so spells like Fireball and Firebane can kill them quickly.  We move further north through the swamp, killing Shelobites, walking through swamps, and navigating around trees and ruins. We finally catch sight of the monster herself, though there's one last encounter than patrols the area in front of her.  It's just more Shelobites, but a group of five can be dangerous if not shut down quickly.  With the last group of her spawn out of the way, we can finally fight Shelob herself.   Shelob is a pretty dangerous boss - not as tough as Darmon the Great was when we fought him, but still nasty. Besides having a ton of HP, she can also use Web to slow the party, Insanity Sting to inflict Chaos, and Shelobite Spawn to bring back her minions after they're killed.  Along with the Shelobites that accompany her, she can drown our party in status ailments.    She also uses Bloody Sting, an extremely powerful attack that can one-shot more fragile party members. It makes having to use Life Herbs virtually unavoidable.  Our best bet for handling this fight is to go on the offensive. Raj Ahtan and Yajirobe can both Speedup themselves, and Lina can deal with the Shelobites pretty efficiently using Firebane. Alibaba's Net trap is also useful for inflicting Slow on Shelob.   Once the demon herself is down, we can open the chest behind her to find the goal of our quest: the While Elfstone.              Between Shelob, her spawn, and the quest reward, we gained quite a few levels here.  Of course, our quest isn't over. We still need to release Arborlon and get the divine artifact from it.  Oh, and there's this too. It basically just jacks up the random encounter rate, which is annoying but not too dangerous. We can still rest in inns and so forth.  We can release Arborlon in either its original location or its destination. We may as well do the latter, especially since it's nearby anyway.   All the battles gives Alibaba another level. Dart deals damage and can inflict Numb on an enemy, which is reasonably useful.       With an impressive display of magical effects, Arborlon is finally released from the Elfstone.  The city seems to have been in stasis while in the Elfstone, with no real idea what happened until we tell them.  Heck yeah, kid, go get yourself a beer.     Like most cities, Arborlon has the usual array of shops. Most of it isn't exciting, but the elf bow is new and a long-awaited upgrade for Wolff.  There's not much else in town that's worth showing off, so let's go see the king.            I'm unsure what, if anything, the king would have given us if we'd restored the city in its original destination, but the Blade of Arborlon is such a good prize that I don't really care.  Despite relatively low power (80), it hits three times per attack. Zefiryn takes it for now, since her weaponry is lagging behind.           We've found the second of the first three relics and gotten a host of levels for doing so.   Upstairs, we meet the king's wife, who tells us about her husband's prophecy-granting altar. Let's give it a try.     We get another clue about the lake tower, though we still cannot reach it.  And with that, our business here is concluded. Next time, we head for Jardin.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2022 17:17
|
|
|
if there's anything that makes the game's gimmick a bit clunky it's all these separate level-up messages. at some point the serotonin of a +1 wears off
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2022 04:05
|
|
|
Sorry that my update schedule has gotten a bit unsteady the last couple weeks. I work retail, and with the holiday season here I tend not to have the energy to work on the LP as much. This will probably continue through the end of the year, after which I expect a return to a more normal update schedule. In the meantime, I'll still post when I can.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2022 01:54
|
|
|
Take care of yourself and good luck with retail holidays. We'll be here when it's over.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2022 03:19
|
|
|
Welcome back, everyone. Sorry again for the long wait on this update - the season has not been kind to me, and the update itself took a long time to actually record. Last time, we restored the lost city of Paranor and retrieved the Divine Scales. There's only one artifact left on the continent, located near the city of Jardin.   Happily, we found Jardin earlier, so we can simply Return there.      Jardin's shops don't have anything new to offer us, which isn't too surprising since we could have come here any time after the Trial of Heroes.  In the basement of one of the city's buildings is a passage leading to a magic door. That's curious.  It's... a bar? Well, we have the Magic Key, so let's check it out.  Oh, that makes sense. King Cobra did mention that his organization had a hideout in Jardin.  Really? We met the guy, and he seemed more taciturn than anything else.   Hell yeah, this is what I like to see. It's always nice when NPCs actually show some real gratitude for helping them.   It's good stuff too! Besides a good chunk of cash, we also get a unique weapon.  The thief blade is a surprisingly strong weapon that also gives its wielder a decent agility boost.  Well, isn't that convenient!  One of the houses in the city just contains a bunch of cats. If there's anything significant about this building I haven't found it, but it is amusing.  That's really all there is to see in the city. Let's check the castle.  There's a treasury near the entrance, which is always enticing.    Besides a life herb and some gold, the treasury also contains a gemstone we can sell for a ton of cash, as well as another seal accessory.   This isn't promising, but let's see what we can do.    This seems like a surprisingly healthy and reciprocal relationship, though it's a bit of a problem for us.      The queen, at least, seems to be wavering. We'll have to pick up on this very obvious clue and come back at night.  Upstairs, a group of Gurus offer a few scattered pieces of advice, most notably the location of the Inverted Tower.  There's not much more to do here, so we leave the city, wait for nightfall, and return to see the queen. She is, as promised, on the balcony overlooking the garden that dominates the center of the palace.        I mean... there's not really much to think about here. It's pretty much the entire reason we're here.    At least we get something for having to go through this rigamarole.      And with that, the queen heads back inside. We changed her mind with a single word. Anyway, let's see whether this ring she gave us is actually decent.  Yeah, that's pretty good. The Ring of the Ancients is an absolutely stellar accessory and worthwhile for literally anyone. After much deliberation, I give it to Zefiryn, since she's our most well-rounded party member.There's nothing else to do in the city at night, so we leave, wait again for day to dawn, and go back to see the king.   Finally.   The passage to the Desolate Valley is a short walk to the east.    Akira gets a pretty good level-up.   The Jermanian Tunnels are a short dungeon with a few conveyor belt puzzles. Fortunately, there are no random encounters here, so any failures just lead to lost time, not combat.  Like this treasure chest.  It's true that the Tunnels don't have any random encounters, but they do have this one fixed battle.  The tyranno hits pretty hard and has a solid chunk of HP, but doesn't do anything interesting.  It's immune to Poison and Sap statuses, which make it harder to bring it down, but it's highly susceptible to Sleepmore status, which makes the fight a lot simpler.    We're rewarded with levels for Karla and Wolff, plus a Fey Dagger, which is pretty underwhelming.  A few more screens, and we're through the Tunnels and into the Desolate Valley.    The Desolate Valley is home to more tyrannos, as well as a few new enemy types. Giants and ramekin are just physical attackers, though giants are extremely strong and durable. Scavengers are more frail, but use Windblade to attack the entire party.    Giants are also fairly susceptible to sleep, and I was even able to get an instant kill with Shemp's Chainsaw.    The fights here give us a few more levels, and then finally...  ...we arrive at the Colossus.  Before we can get the Colossus running, we of course have to traverse it. As you'd expect, it's a multi-party dungeon, but with only two doors at the entrance. Holdana and Zefiryn take the left, while Akira and Raj Ahtan take the right.  The interior of the giant uses a basic cave tileset, which feels a little boring to me. I feel like a brick interior would have matched the exterior better.  The dungeon is home to a small variety of enemies, all shown here in this one encounter. Birdmen can lower the party's defense by casting Sap, but are pretty frail and nonthreatening. Phantoms have the same pattern as other ghost-type enemies (decent physical attacks and occasionally hitting the whole party with Chaos), and porkuses we've seen before.  There are quite a few rock-pushing puzzles in the Colossus, including this one around a chest containing a unique accessory.  The golem feet are interesting, providing a big defense boost and protection from damaging floors in exchange for a steep reduction in agility. Unfortunately, since agility determines how often a character can act, this is almost always a poor trade.  Several floors up, we encounter what looks like a desk in front of a glass floor.  Stepping into the chair lets us know that one party is in position to control the Colossus.  Zefiryn takes another route, coming to a floor filled with boulders.  In the southwest corner is a chest containing a unique tool for Shemp.  The earthshaker hits all enemies, though because it's earth damage it can't hit flying monsters. It's also somewhat inaccurate, but it does a lot of damage.  (It also looks pretty cool.)  Further up, we find a hole in the side of the Colossus, in case we want to jump out for some reason.  Zefiryn finds the next control station, as well as a lever.   Pushing it drops a rope down a hole in the glass floor, making for an easy exit.  The magus' team steps into position.  There's nothing much to say about Akira's trip up the tower. He finds another control station and another lever.  His team gets into position, leaving just Raj Ahtan.   After climb that includes a painfully simply rock-pushing puzzle, he finds himself in the same room as Zefiryn. The climb would have been a lot simpler if I'd known that.   He takes the set of stairs behind her to the top of the Colossus and gets into the final position.  The construct lumbers across the wasteland, shaking the screen with every step.  Interacting with a boulder causes the Colossus to destroy it. This is... everything there is to controlling the Colossus. Walk slowly, destroy boulders. It's super boring and a huge letdown for what should have been a fantastic moment.  Finally, we come to the entrance to the Inverted Tower.  Pushing the menu button takes us back into the Colossus, and the ropes we made earlier let us leave quickly.  The Colossus is a pretty short dungeon, and we gained only a single level from the fights here.  But now we get to do something much nastier: the Inverted Tower.  The dungeon's entrance certainly doesn't seem very tower-like. It's three pretty straightforward floors with the same enemy set as the Colossus.  The fourth floor is where things change. This feels a little more tower-like.   The tower proper has a different set of monsters, though not a very diverse one. We saw iceballs all the way back in the Cave of Wonders, but Gaialiches are new. They hit moderately hard and have enough HP to survive a shot of Akira's Spirit Skean, but only barely.     The four corners of the room each feature a contained area of one of the four elements. It doesn't really tie into anything, but it looks neat.  The chest in front of the throne seems like it should be something really interesting, but it's just a warhammer. We've been able to buy these for ages.  The next floor down has a save point just south of the stairs, which I missed on my first pass. Luckily this did not come back to bite me.   This whole floor is a maze with the obvious prize at its center. Suspiciously, all the large spikes are down and the floor buttons can't be pressed.   Still, there's no reason not to open the chest and claim the Divine Gavel.  But when we do, the camera pans south to reveal a familiar sprite.     In a genuinely surprising twist the vague "He appears to be dead" message we got when examining Niddly's body back in Chapter 2 was accurate. We now have an angry brother out for vengeance.   This is where things get... complicated. All the large spikes have come up, so we have to use our four teams to drop them using the floor buttons and make their way out of the maze, all while dealing with Gormly's goons. It's a pretty complicated maze and it took me longer than I would have liked to complete. Logically, we should be able to ignore all of this using Outside, but it's disabled on this floor (because of course it is). The enemies themselves appear as sprites rather than random encounters. This is good since it limits the number of fights, but it's bad because, well, this whole room is super buggy. Sometimes characters will enter battle with enemies through walls. If an inactive party stands on one of the corpses the enemy groups leave behind, they'll get into continual random battles with that group. And sometimes the game will just forget that a character is standing on a floor button. It's weirdly messy given how relatively well most of the game works.   The goons themselves range from laughably easy to quite dangerous. Hired thugs and bounty dogs both use weak physical attacks, and the former also use a weak version of Alibaba's Caltrops trap. Neither is especially deadly. Dancers use Lapis, a full-party heal, which isn't dangerous by itself but does prolong the lives of other enemies. This is especially bad in the case of jesters, who use an array of tarot cards to inflict damage and status effects (including poison and laughing) on the entire party. They're easily the nastiest enemies here and definitely should be the highest-priority targets.  The final enemy group before reaching Gormly is this nightmare, which has the potential to lock down and kill the party if it wants to.  But we push forward and reach the villain.   You said that already.  I agree to your terms.   The logical worry going into this fight is that it's going to be a repeat of the Niddly fight. Unfortunately, this worry is entirely founded. Gormly fights exactly like Niddly did apart from having one new attack, Chainwhip, which hits the entire party for moderate physical damage.   And yes, that includes using Bladeshield. In this respect I was sort of lucky though: he kept the drat thing up for ages, but he only ever used it once and never refreshed it.  This fight is, as near as I can tell, the first to use a new and unexplained mechanic: Party Swap.   It's exactly what it sounds like. I'm not sure exactly what the conditions are for making it available, but I suspect it's boss fights in multi-party areas. In this case, I felt is would be appropriate to have Zefiryn take down the boss.  Eventually, Gormly goes down, dropping his flintlock pistol when he does. (Niddly used it as an attack but didn't drop it.)   And good loving riddance.   As you may have guessed, the Flintlock Pistol is an engineer tool. It deals defense-ignoring physical damage to all enemies, which is pretty solid.       Feed drains an enemy's HP and MP. It's not too useful for a character who should be spending his turns attacking constantly.                   By the way, we gained a shitton of levels here. About half of them were from finding the Divine Gavel.  Once we're back on the previous floor, w e can use Outside normally to leave the tower. Now that we have all three continental artifacts, it's time to return to Paranor. Next time: We do not return to Paranor. 5-Headed Snake God fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Dec 15, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 20:31
|
|
|
 Though we could return to Paranor now, we're not going to. We're headed elsewhere.  With our characters starting to hit level 20, it's time to think about promoting some of them to the elite classes. As a reminder, a character (other than one of the four protagonists) who has reached level 20 can promote to the elite class in their class group, but at the cost of half their levels. Since I asked you all to vote on our party compositions, I'm enlisting you again, dear readers, to help me make this choice. For each of the three class groups (mage, warrior, and rogue), I will change a maximum of one character to the elite class in that group. Your job is to vote for which characters you'd like to see get this upgrade. You can vote for any number of characters, with each vote counting equally and with me being the tie-breaker. You can also vote for No Mage, No Warrior, and/or No Rogue if you'd prefer to keep all the characters from a group as they are. (I've given my recommendations as to who would be the best candidates for each promotion, but I've spoilered them in case you'd rather make the decisions based on other criteria.) Sage (Available to Karla, Hexia, Curly, and Lina)    Further Comments: Sage is an amazing class, with caveats. Its versatility is crazy, giving it a ton of attacks, heals, buffs, and debuffs, but having only single-target spells means it lacks crowd control. It's still a really good class, though. Recommendations: Hexia's already starting to flag in terms of pulling her weight. Curly's going to have to deal with indirect spells being decreasingly useful as the game goes on. Champion (Available to Larry, Kali, Moe, and Yajirobe)    Further Comments: I don't have much to add here. Champion is a very one-trick class, but it does that trick extremely well. Recommendations: Yajirobe is easily the worst-performing of our warriors and could seriously use an upgrade. Jester (Available to Wolff, Harley, Shemp, and Alibaba)    Further Comments: Jester is pretty loving terrible and straight-up worse than any basic class. It does gain a significant benefit if we can get it back to level 20 though. Recommendations: Harley or maybe Alibaba would probably be the best candidate for Jester, but there's no good option.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 20:53
|
|
|
I'll vote for Hexia, Yajirobe and Harley to get the upgrades. Well, upgrades and a downgrade, but you know what I mean.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2022 21:12
|
|
|
Harley has gotta be Mistah J.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2022 07:30
|
|
|
yeah, Hexia, Yajirobe, and Harley seems good. you've got me curious about Joker
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2022 07:37
|
|
|
Welcome back, everyone! We've collected the Divine Gavel, Scales, and Halo, and are ready for the next leg of our journey.          Between updates, I spent a little time getting everyone up to level 20, in case there were any surprises in the voting for who got a class change. Lina got the most notable level up with her access to Snowstorm, a medium-strength ice spell that targets all enemies. Honorable mention goes to Curly, who got a spell for boosting his entire party's speed.    But there were no surprises. Hexia, Harley, and Yajirobe have now been promoted to more advanced classes, though with their levels cut in half it'll take a while for them to start showing what they can really do. Zefiryn's party also didn't get much use during this session, but I'll make an effort to show off Hexia and Harley next time.  Back at Paranor, Grand Poobah Pablo has the exact same dialogue as before. There's clearly something more we have to do before he points us toward our next destination.  So we head to a little town on the south end of the continent.  It's obnoxiously crowded. It does a good job of creating the appearance of a bustling city, but it makes navigation annoying.  Weirdo.      The shops in Port Kells are mostly more of the same. The available accessories are good but nothing we haven't seen before. We do grab a couple of delicate tiaras for Hexia and Harley, though, since they can no longer use the headwear they previously had equipped.  A ship would be great, but we don't have the Queen's Letter.    Quite a few people in town talk about Machin Shin, making it pretty plan where we're supposed to go next. This goes double since the sandstorm is preventing us from getting to the queen in Aleksandria, and thus from getting a ship.  We have, but let's pretend we haven't and see what this person has to say.  Wait, Yasuki? We've heard that name before. There's a story here and we're not seeing all of it yet.  This isn't a notable find except to note that we can no longer use it. Harley has moved on.  This also isn't notable; I just find it amusing.   Oh, this sounds bad. We need to get to Okasa as soon as we can. There's nothing else for us to do in Port Kells at the moment, but we have a pretty clear destination.   We Return to Sudash and head west into the desert.  Soon enough, we find the pyramid.  That's incredibly convenient!  There are two tends at this encampment. One contains a priestess and a place to rest, while the other has this setup.  We step into the circle and are treated to a teleport effect.  We reappear right outside the pyramid. The sandstorm doesn't blow here, thankfully.  The interior of the pyramid is brick walls and sandy floors, as you might expect.   The monsters here are all new and mostly undead. Undead are average warrior-types with no notable traits. Shades are exactly the same as other ghost-type undead we've encountered, occasionally hitting the party with Chaos. Scarabs are fairly fragile but hit remarkably hard; their attacks can do over 100 damage to lightly-armored characters like Lina. Cadavers have moderate physical attacks; if they can do anything else I never saw it. And finally, death mages very likely have something extremely nasty available, but they're incredibly frail and as with the boulders I wasn't going to take any chances.  Directly ahead, two gargoyles block our path.  Heading west, we come to a hallways strewn with corpses.  As we head into a it, a boulder comes rolling toward us. I'm not sure whether it inflicts damage or an instant kill, since I wasn't interested in risking a game over to find out. Regardless, we'll check out the east side of the floor first.  To the east are some protruding large spikes and retracted small spikes.  We all know that this switch is going to raises the small spikes, right? The only question is whether it will also lower the large ones to the south.  No surprises here, just pain.  Well, poo poo. Yeah, the pyramid is full of traps because that's the classic stereotype.  We head back west to face the boulder. Luckily, it's easy enough to avoid. It rolls north and south through the hallway continuously, so by waiting outside its path we can sneak in and bypass it.  Another switch! Maybe this one will be nicer.  Yeah, there we go.  Oh, come on.  Mad Potters show up in a few pots in this dungeon. They cast Sleepmore and Blazemore, but die pretty quickly and aren't all that threatening.  With the large spikes down, we head back to the southeast room and suffer another ambush.  It's just a gaialich though. We've fought them in the Inverted Tower, and while we don't have Akira to auto-win this fight, it's not really dangerous.   Our prize is the Meteorite Armband, a unique accessory that grants Speedup to its wearer. This excellent treasure goes to Wolff, to better boost his damage output and support abilities.   With that taken care of, we head back west, then north, then east along a spike-filled hallway, where we find another button.  We then have to head back out through the spikes. I sure am glad we pushed that first button...  Finally, the statues at the entrance are gone and we can head upstairs.  We are immediately greeted by another boulder here. We can also see a few rooms that aren't connected to the rest of the floor - they can only be reached by taking stairways from floors above. Yes, in addition to all the traps, the pyramid is also a maze. Luckily it doesn't wear out its welcome.   To the southwest, we find three levers. We pull the ones on the left and right, which is coincidentally exactly what we're supposed to do - it lowers more statues on the east and west sides of the floor, allowing us passage.  On the west side of the floor, we find a set of stairs leading up into an isolated room. The flames here move up and down at different speeds; touching one damages the party but removes the flame. Besides a Tiny Medal in one of the pots, there's nothing exciting here.   Further up the pyramid, we find this familiar setup. The unavoidable button raises the spikes, but only after we've passed.  Immediately above, we encounter three levers.  We hit the one on the left, but that's incorrect.  We're dropped back to the previous floor, and now we have to cross the spikes we raised earlier. This is actually kind of a clever setup, I have to admit.  After falling down again, we hit the last lever, which lowers another gargoyle statue.  There's not much else to say about the pyramid's design, but there are a couple more areas of note before we get to the end. The first is this weird bedroom, which contains both a Mad Potter and a Tiny Medal.    The other is this flame-filled room. The flames here protect a chest containing the Golden Claw. This is a powerful weapon that also raises Agility. Larry can use it, but Raj Ahtan is the better choice.  Finally, we come to an important-looking floor with a save point.  Is that..?  It is. Fuckin' Murzhor.         The demonic general vanishes in a flash, leaving his henchman to deal with it.  Conveniently, Nephilim is too lazy and/or stupid to move, giving us to to go save before we fight him.    Nephilim is the big boss of the pyramid. As his sprite and dialogue suggest, he's a big bruiser with strong attacks and not much else. Of particular note is Ravage, which can deal pretty nasty damage to everyone, but luckily he doesn't use it much.  He does have one non-attack, Weakness, which inflicts Weak on the party and is pretty annoying.  Luckily, Karla can remove that from everyone in one shot. Tricks like this are why I love dedicated healer classes.  Nephilim's biggest weakness is that he can be poisoned. This inflicts over 1000 damage a pop, which seems to coincide with anyone taking a turn. Larry can exceed that damage while in wolf form, but only barely and not nearly as often. Even better, Nephilim will sometimes Defend, which just gives the poison more time to do its thing.  Nephilim goes down without much fuss, and drops a unique shield.     As he falls, lighting strikes the four orbs in the corner of the room, and the ghostly figure above floats toward us.    Did I say Nephilim was the boss of the pyramid? I meant that he's the first boss of the pyramid. We now have to fight Machin Shin itself, and without a rest break. At least we get a rad battle background.    Besides a basic attack that hits all of its enemies, Machin Shin only has one attack, Black Wind, which damages the whole party and can inflict Chaos. This is pretty annoying. It's also immune to physical damage, so Holdana's mostly-physical party is at a huge disadvantage.  Luckily, Party Swap is available, so we can bring in Akira's team.     Between Spirit Skean, Earthshaker, and Moe's spells, we have some actual offensive options here. Curly can't hurt the boss, but he can be put to better use anyway by casting buffs, debuffs, and Regen. Chaos still makes it a bit touch and go in places, but overall we win without too much difficulty.  For killing Machin Shin and finally ending the sandstorm, we get a moderate amount of EXP, which still results in a bunch of level ups. Speaking of...  Mine damages a single foe. It does more damage than a regular attack, but only barely. It's kind of worthless.           Blessmore is obviously a stronger form of Bless. Resistance raises the caster's defenses against elemental damage, which I can see being super useful in some fights.      Bikill doubles a character's damage and is amazing on physical fighters.    Raj Ahtan continues to be the best healer hero. Mantra doubles his intelligence, which I guess means better healing? It's free to use, but still seems pretty niche.    We got a lot of levels in the pyramid, though that's in large part thanks to Hexia, Harley, and Yajirobe making up for their lost EXP.   Outside the pyramid, we deliver the news that Machin Shin has been defeated.  We're told to visit Paranor, but that will have to wait.  Now that we've freed Aleksandria, we're going to pay it a visit. 5-Headed Snake God fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Feb 16, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2023 17:55
|
|
|
Last time, our intrepid heroes entered the pyramid and defeated the evil sandstorm, Machin Shin. Now we're off to Aleksandria, which was isolated by the sentient storm.  The citizens seem quite happy to see us.  You know that the first thing we're gonna do is jump in that water.   Partly because there is always a hidden chest...   ...and partly because there's usually something else of interest.    I'll admit that I'd forgotten about Shelby. I'll need to hunt him down for the next update.     Apart from the item shop (I feel like I should stop showing those; they're always the same), Aleksandria is full of new and interesting things to buy. The phaseblade, flameblade, iceblade, and windforce (a bow) are elemental weapons, which I generally try to avoid for fear of running into enemies that resist them. The wizardwand is excellent, though, and we get two (for Hexia and Lina). On the armor side, the magic armor grants 50% resistance to debuffs, while the magefist and magic coronet both increase the wearer's Int. We forgo buying any of it since I don't want to get too extravagant, but we may come back later. Finally, we have a full set of ninja tools for sale, including two new ones. The Shadow Skean has a chance to inflict instant death, while the Empowerer steals enemy HP and MP. We grab them both since 2000 GP isn't a huge expenditure at this point.    Surprise! Aleksandria actually has a ton of shops, including a basic scroll shop and a tarot card store. There's nothing really worth our time here, though Heal scrolls might come in handy later in the game for teams with less natural healing magic, like Akira's.      An old man in town tells us about his adventures in an airship, which crashed in Ozland. We've heard about this elsewhere too.   Well I pray to the father and the holy ghost/Kneeling at the altar of my nightly post... Spice is apparently a potent local pharmaceutical, but beyond that no one actually tells us what it is. I guess we should be grateful there aren't any sandworms here.  This isn't significant or anything, but I appreciate this guy's energy.  All right, let's go see the queen.  That is absolutely why we're here.     Hell yeah, that was easy.      I'm not actually sure what triggered this. We didn't even know about Spice until about ten minutes ago. But we're also not gonna turn it down.    There's nothing obvious we can do with it, but it's a key item in an RPG, so we'll find a use eventually.  Before we go, we need to toss the queen's bedroom.    Now this is suspicious. We have no idea what it means, but given where we found it, we can probably assume it's addressed to the queen herself. We'll need to keep an eye out for the Frozen Throne.   We also find a valuable amulet in the queen's closet, which we commandeer for the cause. It doubles the wearer's Int, so we give it to Hexia in order to really boost her spells.   Finally, we check the city temple and find a teleportal in the basement. You can probably guess where it leads.  Yep, back to Paranor. This is the portal that was blocked by a mysterious whirlwind earlier in the game. With Machin Shin gone, so is the wind.  Conveniently, this makes it quite east to go see Pablo.    I'll be honest: I looked for Wip after this conversation and could not find him anywhere. We'll just have to make do.  Anyway, now that we have the Queen's Letter, we can head back to Port Kells to get ourselves a ship!      Should have known. Well, we don't really have a choice, do we?      So, we're 30,000 GP poorer, but at least we finally have our ship! We can now head to Ikea or Kremsland, or to Okasa to deal with the siege. But we're not going to do any of that. I have another destination.  Random encounters do happen at sea, but they're rare and mostly consist of the same enemies that Akira fought on the water. However, this is a good chance to show off what our Joker can do.   In this case, she has told a joke so good that it makes five lumps of coral turn on each other.   She then makes a silly face that confuses one of them.  Notice the empty turn timers here. Goof Off is bugged; no one else can take actions until the Joker does something else. This can, in theory, be exploited, but it would make fights take forever, especially since the class has no reliable offense. On the other hand, Jokers aren't entirely awful. Sure, Goof Off is terrible and Toss is basically useless, but they do get Harlequins' songs and can steal from foes. They also have a chance to find gold or chests after battle, same as bandits. I still wouldn't ever recommend them without the special bonus they get at level 20.  Appropriately, that solitary fight gave Harley a level. It's the only level up in this whole update.  But anyway, here w e are at our destination: the last Funhouse in the game. May as well get it over and done with.     Oh. Oh god. There are four mazes here. This is going to suck.  Oh, and we'll probably have to run each one a second time to find a floor switch. Fuuuuuck. Look, in all seriousness: Yes, I'm exaggerating for comedic effect, but I do dislike the Funhouses. The mazes are boring and tedious and feel more like an obligation than a diversion. There's not even any threat of losing tickets, since it's so easy to save scum until you get them right. Luckily, this is the last one we have to deal with.   This particular Funhouse has an expanded shop upstairs, with vendors selling guidebooks for Rangers. For now we're not going to bite since I expect to be able to find these guides in the wild, but it's worth keeping in mind. Anyway, let's go do the mazes.  The southeast maze is air-themed and easily the worst of the lot. The connected vertical hallways all look the same and it's really easy to get lost.   Our reward for completing each maze is a hat of happiness, which restores HP while walking but has awful defense. It's pretty much trash.  Oh, as we also hit the button on a second trip. One down, three to go.  To the northeast is the fire-themed maze.  We find the button on the first trip this time.  This maze isn't as bad as the previous one simply because the intended path has very few branches. It's twisty and time-consuming, but not hard to navigate.  Also, it has a chest with a monster-in-a-box, but it's just a phantom.  To the southwest is the water maze. Walking through this monstrosity actually hurt my eyes.   Fortunately, this one was actually the easiest for me - it only took a few tries, and I was able to get both the switch and the exit in one run.   Finally, the maze to the northwest is earth-themed. Button, exit, done.  We're finished! We don't have any more Funhouse mazes for the rest of the game!   We do have this, though. What fresh hell awaits us now?  Actually, it's... perfectly fine, if a bit tedious. We spend our tickets to roll dice and move around a square board, dealing with the effects of whatever space we land on. It's basic, but impressive to see in an RPG Maker game.     Oh, and doubles get us a free roll, which is nice.    Tree spaces can be searched, which usually does nothing.   Sometimes you have to fight a bear, though. If there's anything else to be gained from these spaces I never saw it.  Arrow tiles move us forward or back a certain number of spaces.   The two teleportal tiles transport us between them.   The treasure chest spaces contain unique items. This particular one is a powerful piece of body armor for the four protagonists. Sadly, it's the only one I was able to claim.  The inn space works like a regular inn and is a complete waste of cash.   Magic circles force you into a fight, usually with a zombie, but sometimes the game throws a leafer at you instead as a joke.  Incidentally, Hexia can do well over 1000 damage with a basic Bless spell, even with her low level. She's already kind of a wrecking ball.   The water tile in the corner restores HP and MP, making the inn an even bigger waste of money.  Landing on a book (I promise you that's what it is) gives us a ticket.  Landing on a bush gives us a low-tier consumable.  Landing on a pot gives us some money.  And finally, landing on the weapon shop icon takes us to an actual shop.      The stuff here is insanely good. Extra ladykillers and maneaters would be nice, but they're way too pricey. The sword of miracles is a little weak for this point in the game, but the stat boosts are still worth it; we grab one for Moe, whose club is looking a bit weak. The shields cast spells, and while Icebolt and Firebal are both a bit weak at this point, the ability for anyone to cast Speedself is incredible and well worth the cost. We grab one for general use. And finally, the ring of the zodiac is probably the best non-unique stat-boosting ring in the game, so we buy one for Holdana.  After a few more unexciting rolls, we're out of tickets. Monoplo is worth playing, though, so we may come back.  And that's it for today! If you have a preference for where the parties head next, feel free to say so. Otherwise, we'll probably head to Jumongu to break the siege at Okasa. 5-Headed Snake God fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jan 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2023 21:30
|
|
|
Man, I kinda expected to be close to the end but it seems like we've still got quite a way to go, huh.
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2023 21:42
|
|
|
Kinu Nishimura posted:Man, I kinda expected to be close to the end but it seems like we've still got quite a way to go, huh. We still have to collect four artifacts, get the airship, save Okasa, find three Elfstones, and probably other stuff that hasn't been mentioned. We might be halfway through the game at this point.
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2023 21:53
|
|
|
jesus
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2023 22:01
|
|
|
 Welcome back, everyone. We're finally done with the Funhouses, but there's one more thing we need to take care of before we proceed with the story.   We missed just one of Shelby's hiding spots. It's actually embarrassingly easy to find.      If I'd known this would be the reward I probably wouldn't have bought another ring at the Monoplo game, but oh well. What's important is that we finished the side quest.    Oh, and we got a few levels from it too. Zap is a single-target lightning spell that's reasonably strong - a good acquisition for our newly-minted Sage.  Now that we've done that, we can head for Jumongu. There's a town there we need to visit.  What, Okasa? No, we're headed to Koby to see the pirates.  They're all out during the day (sailing, presumably), but we can still loot their treasury. They've got some good loot too: about 5000 gold, a gemstone, a delicate tiara, and a golden harp (which we can't use since Harley is no longer a Harlequin).  Come nightfall, the pirates return home to carouse.  When Akira first visited this town, the Dread Pirate Roberts was totally silent. We later learned that it's because he only speaks to those who have a ship.  We also found out that he has a world map, which would be really nice to get our hands on.    Seems simple enough, especially since Ozland is due south of Jumongu.  When we arrive at Ozland, we find that something it's ringed by mountains, and the only way onto the island is blocked.  I'm not even going to make any jokes about where this came from, since it should be pretty obvious.  Sailing further east, we come to a small island with a volcano at its center. Like Ozland, it's surrounded by mountains, so we can't get to it.  We can get to this small town at its eastern tip though.  Yep, this is the place.    Tortuga doesn't have many shops, but what shops it does have (besides the basic item shop) follow a definite theme.  Meanwhile, the pots and barrels around the town contain various tokens used for trading at the Funhouses.   Considering that we'll undoubtedly need to find the Ghost Ship eventually, this is valuable information.   This sailor in the bar has some information about Catan, an island we've only heard of in passing.   Sounds fascinating. I wonder if they have anything to do with the robot that plagued the Rovers.  We're finding more and more things that require an airship to reach. We know where to get one, but not how to get there.    Why is it that so many children bury Tiny Medals?  Sorry old man, but the Chapter 1 title card already asked us to do that.   Aha! Here at last we find the object of our search. It's quite inexpensive too.  Back to Koby, and...     Should've known it was too easy. So we Return to Tortuga and buy ourselves 10 of the things.   That seems to be enough.     The World Map isn't strictly necessary for completing the game, but it's a huge convenience. Geting it ASAP is a smart idea.   Finally, we can head northeast to Okasa. Larry gains a level from a random sea encounter on the way.  The city is... not in great shape. I guess an undead invasion will do that.   Monsters also roam the streets. Decayers may have some kind of special trick, but this was the only one we encountered and it fell pretty quickly. Tortured souls are similar - this one died to a single Spirit Skean, and no others showed up. Flesh eaters are the sole non-undead enemy here; they have high speed and evasion but are pretty fragile and don't hit too hard. Finally, reanimates also don't do much damage, but they have several thousand HP, making them incredibly tanky.  The locals are all holed up indoors, making the buildings inaccessible.   A local rear end in a top hat gives us the lowdown, in case we didn't already know.  This is also good to know. Luckily, you may remember that we do, in fact, know of another way into the palace.  Down we go.  Likely due to a missing event trigger, the rain continues to fall even in the well.   We open the magic door and climb out of the well, finding ourselves, as expected, on the palace grounds.   The citizens here are upset and a bit panicky, but otherwise unharmed.    There's also a merchant here who sells a small selection of amazing gear. I didn't feel justified in throwing all the party's money at a few upgrades, but in retrospect I should have at least bought a tiger claw for Raj Ahtan.  Luckily, the emperor still seems to be okay.    He doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know, and in fact visiting the palace is totally optional, but it's an obvious destination that provides all the necessary information.  It also provides us with some new information. First the prince of Aleksandria vanished, and now the prince of Okasa? What's going on? Wait... Perhaps the letter we found in Aleksandria wasn't addressed to the queen, but the prince? But then why would Kenji refer to himself as "the Betrayed"?    ...I have a bad feeling about this. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can really do about it at the moment. For now, we need to focus on finding Balthalas and ending his assault.  After returning through the well, we head east and then north to find the crypts. Once again, our Magic Key gives us entry.  The crypts are appropriately spooky.  The monsters here include everything that roams the town, plus poltergeists, which do the usual ghostly undead trick of confusing the party.  Once down the stairs, we head west and find a treasure chest surrounded by corpses. This is a crypt though, so it probably doesn't indicate a monster-in-a-box.   Indeed, the chest is entirely safe to open. The armor inside is actually pretty strong; it offers good defense and some solid bonuses. It's cursed, though, which means it probably comes with some nasty drawback not mentioned in its description. We're not gonna risk it.  On the lower level of the crypts, we find a multi-party area containing another puzzle revolving around buttons and levers. I'll spare you all the details.  Suffice it to say that Zefiryn's party is the one that reaches Balthalas.  He greets Holdana instead, presumably shouting at her through the walls.     Balthalas is a classic villain in all the best ways.    gently caress. Murzhor continues to demonstrate his savvy by beating us at our own game and stealing one of the Divine Relics. Another problem we'll need to resolve.  But for now, we have an undead mage to destroy.  So, here we are again. Balthalas starts the fight in his true form, apparently having learned from his previous mistake. He also comes with three lost knights, which are totally immune to magic. Given that, Team Magical Girl isn't likely to have much success. Luckily, we can-  Ah, gently caress. Hero's Realm has some stability issues when it comes to the Party Swap mechanic. It'll sometimes just crash when you try, which can be really annoying. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to save before confronting Balthalas. Okay, take 2.  Before switching out the party, I also wanted to show off that Sages have a special command, Chainmagic. This allows them to pick any spell and cast it twice at a time, on the same target. This makes them amazing boss killers once they get to decent levels.  Anyway, Holdana's party has strong physical attacks, not to mention a grudge against Balthalas, so they get to take this one. The fact that Holdana has the Ghostblade, which does extra damage to undead foes, is also a big bonus. As for Balthalas, he switches between highly dangerous and laughably harmless. His most dangerous attack by far is Tail Smash II, which can deal over 300 damage to whoever it hits. He also uses Sleepmore and the amusingly-named Eviler Flame. On the other hand, he often uses Defend or even Observe Battle, making him way easier than you'd think.   Once the lost knights are dealt with, we can focus on Balthalas himself. Even Karla can deal some solid damage when she's not busy healing. Holdana is the real star, though: Pummel now gives her three hits per attack, and with the Ghostblade, each hit can do upwards of 1000 damage. On a critical, that rises to a little over 3000. Larry, by comparison, is dealing about 1000 per hit in wolf form.   Oh wait, turns out that wans't even his final form. OmegaBalthalas is the true final boss here.   Besides Icebreath, he has a new attack, Greater Black Death, which deals considerable damage to the whole party. Astoundingly, he'll also spend turns using Observe Battle. He goes down without a lot of trouble.  In case we hadn't already guessed it, Balthalas reveals that he was sustaining the Bonewall that blocked off Ozland.  Balthalas is finally dead for real, and we claim a surprisingly small amount of EXP for making it happen.  Back in the city, things have returned to normal.   The emperor is duly grateful for our efforts, and gifts us with the princely sum of 60,000 GP - not to mention a much more generous amount of EXP.  Hey, we finally got to take out Balthalas. It was our pleasure.          Beat is our first instant-death spell.           Our level ups in Okasa. Not a huge amount to say here, but more levels are always good.  And so Okasa is saved. Next time, we could go after the next two Divine Relics, or perhaps head to Ozland to try and get the airship. Decisions, decisions...
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2023 22:31
|
|
|
I think the answer is obvious. Get the airship, and do everything that isn't the main plot.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2023 14:31
|
|
|
Randalor posted:I think the answer is obvious. Get the airship, and do everything that isn't the main plot. A lot of it is probably not really feasible right now due to my levels being low compared to what's expected, but I can't deny that an early hunt for the Elfstones is an attractive option. It's also worth noting that I don't entirely remember what's main plot and what's purely optional.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2023 01:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 08:02 |
|
|
Thanks again for your patience, everyone. I've been on vacation for the last week and a half, but I'll have a new update for you next week.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 18:34
|
|