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Black Robe
Sep 12, 2017

Generic Magic User


I will give a grudging :golfclap: to there being Zoo Bats in the sewers.

Some things are just too traditional to mess with.

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PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Jade Rider posted:

Now that we've seen all the pieces, Assassin/Hunter is what I used to trivialize the Sky Arena. The highest attack gear I had, Initial Oomph, Perfect Vision, and Quickshot/Snipe took everything out in one round or drat close to it.

I remember what I did it with my first time around was a Reaper primary where I just piled on EVERYTHING that could possibly lifedrain, including two Hemorings, I forget what the secondary was, but the name of the game was just survival and never wasting a round to any kind of recovery.

When I tried a quick-kill build it faltered against the final opponent of the Sky Arena who takes notably more killing to destroy than the rest, but that was on my very first run, so I could probably do it better now.

Cattail Prophet posted:

I have an enormous grudge against Tall Tall Heights for being a huge, sprawling area that's a pain in the rear end to navigate without a map. A map that iirc I literally did not stumble into until after beating the final boss.

Assassin is weird. It's literally the only class that has mutually exclusive weapon skills, and that's an interesting concept! ...But in practice you can just stick to a dagger, have access to everything except harm memory (which is bad anyway), and call it a day. Axes do at least get you most of the important stuff, if that works better with your secondary.

I really should hate TTH but... exploring it just so chill that I don't really mind, even when I manage to get lost or can't find a thing over and over.

With regards to weapon exclusive skills, I did a chaos mode run at one point with all the weapon-specificity turned off, and it did COMPLETELY gently caress the balance sideways(using unintended +AP weapons to rip out deranged combos from turn one, that sort of thing), but I still feel like the game would've benefited from the classes having maybe only their "apex" or "signature" skills require a specific weapon, just to open up more combos. The weapon exclusivity ends up making some things just not really worth it.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Occasionally I wonder what Crystal Project as an in-universe MMO looks like to non-players, with regular mass bannings of players who haven't progressed the main quest enough.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Update 17: Tall, Tall Heights



Ashsaber posted:

Occasionally I wonder what Crystal Project as an in-universe MMO looks like to non-players, with regular mass bannings of players who haven't progressed the main quest enough.

Imagine an MMO where the most tryhard, judgmental players who complain that you're not "following the meta" are allowed and encouraged to coup the existing moderators and then enforce their brand of play on everyone else.







Welcome to the Tall Tall Heights. A lot of the game I've talked about enemies being trivial as long as you have the right setup, this is about where that stops.







Hamza: Fairies again? What are they going to do? Throw glitter at us?

gently caress you up if you underestimate them is what they're going to do.







If you don't interrupt them, they put the party to sleep, mute the casters and blast you with a big AoE spell that rips the mana out of you.











Rabbites are a lot calmer to deal with, they CAN do a lot of damage but thankfully they tend to use Hibernate pretty often which means a turn where they're not murdering you.











Tau: Where are we even going? Why are we here? Are we meant to be here?
Charity: Well, since it's the last place we can go that we haven't... I'd say yes. Unless you want to go back to the jungle.
Vanessa: We're not going back there to die a bunch for Hamza's amusement, we worked hard to loot all this gold off of dead enemies and I'm not giving it back.











Not all of the ice block puzzles lead to something important, but at least we can do a seed roundup update at some point.













Some block puzzles have multiple solutions, you can also push that other block left, up, right and get a better platform, but eh. I like my solution.











Trash item in the chest, but I can use it as a platform to get one step up. :v:







I don't really understand this little mesa, there's nothing here that's important. But on the way back I meet a new enemy.









Sabertooths are powered up Pangolions with a life drain attack. I think they're probably the easiest thing in the Tall, Tall Heights, by which I mean the only thing that didn't clown on Charity or Hamza at least once.









Every five steps there's a new and exciting thing that wants to murder us in Tall, Tall Heights, and this is absolutely the worst of them. I hate these bears.





They act super fast and lead with an instakill ability.





The best way I've found to deal with them is to put them to sleep right off the bat, then buff and make sure to divert hostility to Hamza who, due to being a Valkyrie, has inherent Reraise that'll get him back on his feet. But the Polar Claw is still fast and powerful enough to flatten him again AND take out Vanessa in the bargain. These bears suck.















I hop down to the frozen lake and learn what happens when you don't take out the Snow Nymph casting Sleep Aura before it gets its spell off. Look at this loving damage, Jesus.











I also skip this current ice cube "puzzle" because about the best way to mentally parse the Tall Tall Heights is in "layers" based on heights, and I'm trying to clear one layer at a time to miss as little as possible.

















Charity: ...why would someone make a big fence in the middle of nowhere?
Tau: To keep something away from us... maybe this is where we're meant to go! Our mission is to circumvent this fence!







Tau: I feel like this isn't getting us around the fence.
Hamza: Ehhhhh... I wanna look around out here a bit more first.
Tau: You mean get into more fights with things that actually challenge us?
Hamza: I don't feel alive unless I'm bleeding.



















A relatively easy jump from this chest gets you up on this ridge leading around the south side of the valley.





















Something very big is casting a shadow straight across the valley as we approach the narrowest point.





Charity: ...is that?
Hamza: How did they even get this far?
Vanessa: This time they better drop some goddamn loot.





Hamza: Oh poo poo, level 54?! They must've been doing some grinding. I think we need a while before we try to cross this valley.

At the start of this update the party was level 41 and they'll gain maybe three levels over the course of it. We'll need a while before we challenge these dickheads again.

















Most of the valley is taken up by a frozen lake, with someone living in the middle of it.









It's the game's second fishing spot. I haven't bothered acquiring a fishing rod yet since it's really only the third spot with the best rod and lure that gives you anything really worth keeping. The way it works is you pass the fella a rod and a lure, then it rolls from a pool associated with those two and maybe coughs up some loot, with some rolls being repeatable.







Anyway, let's get this chest.























It's not hard to get, but it's kind of perverse to give me an ice damage weapon in an area where all enemies are ice-based.















The only other thing of note in this valley is a cave on the north side.



















These Ice Elementals are thankfully pretty fragile, if they started spamming Cold Embrace and paralyzing everyone, they could be trouble.















Tau: Ice Cell? A frozen prison?
Charity: That's pretty cool... I wonder what they'd lock up here. No key yet, though, but we should remember it.



















There's this other little cave next to it that has... just a single seed.















Anyway, nothing more to that valley until we're ready to handle the PK'ers, let's do something about that fence.







Before I get a chance to do so, though, I get ambushed by multiple flames, one of them a Polar Claw, and I decide to try and see whether attacking right away, rather than putting it to Sleep first, might work better. The result?



Do not gently caress with bears.











Anyway, once you have the Ibek, consider every pine tree to be a ladder since you can always get on the lowest branches.









Tau: ...did you do that just to annoy me?
Hamza: I mean, a little bit, but I also wanted to see what was on this side of the fence.











Another shrine! Having more teleport locations is always good, since we're limited to three home points otherwise.





No surprises on the roof, but we'll want to keep this in mind as a nice, high perch in the future. For reasons.



















Tau: Isn't this just going around the top side of the same valley we were just in?
Vanessa: Humour me, I have a hunch.



















Tau: A hunch about what?
Vanessa: About who's on the north side of the pass.













Vanessa: Yep, here's the other half of the gang... but where's Dr. Cool Aids? I don't recognize this "Edge Master" guy.
Hamza: As much as I love a good fight, I think he's our cue to "git gud" before picking this particular one.













North of the Triton Shrine there's another cave.













The pit below is actually the other cave where we got a Tear Seed earlier.





















Ice Constructs aren't a challenge if you can do even a bit of damage, this one got in a light tap on Hamza before I melted it down for its drops.







Charity: More pushing ice blocks for height?
Hamza: More pushing ice blocks for height.











I do genuinely not "get" this door, though. It doesn't provide much of a convenient shortcut, but I guess if you come back here later you save one or two jumps by coming from the ice fisherman's hut rather than the Triton Shrine.

















The indoors ice block puzzles are, for now, a lot simpler than the ones outdoors with less potential mistakes to make.









Here part of the "trick" is that it's not immediately obvious these little structures are T intersections rather than X intersections.













The Apprentice should at this stage be an upgrade for most casters capable of using a staff, Tau gets this one to help them through the suffering of being a Chemist. I'm almost, ALMOST done getting that awful class mastered.













Charity: How the heck are we meant to get across here?
Vanessa: And more importantly, what's that drat music?

https://soundcloud.com/aaron-anderson-11/fashion-models-from-space

The Slip Glide Ride isn't a place we're able to get through yet, we need some more tricks to handle it, and it's one of the game's dungeons that I for the life of me cannot 100%. There's some stuff in it I just cannot get, but we'll get to that when we get that far.

















This time we'll actually explore the area north of the fence.











It has some new enemies. Wrensoul is another one in the pack of "if you're properly levelled it won't really stop you"-enemies, but it does get a bit of chip damage in.



I just can't kill it fast enough to stop it casting Icy Chill.





















Great Whites are reasonably tanky single-target attackers with a strange AI quirk. No matter what I manage to taunt them into targeting with Threat, they always attack Charity anyway. I have no idea why.

















There are a few Spit Skull formations where they hang out with other enemies, and if any of those enemies have Ice damage attacks, you need to be careful because of the Frostbite effect. Thankfully said formations are rare.













This is probably, by the way, the ice block puzzle that stumped me the longest on my first playthrough despite having a surprisingly simple solution.















Snowbirds are no great danger, but they do give the Spit Skull longer to gently caress around if you don't know who's the bigger danger.





Anyway, the trick is to completely ignore the ice block right next to the guy who wants one and go up here instead. This is the only ice block you want to mess around with.

















Tau: Oh thank you great NPC, finally we know where the hell we are.
Charity: Aw, I thought exploring blind was kind of a vibe.
Tau: Silence, heretic.



The Tall, Tall Heights are simpler than they seem, but they're deceptive because of the constant elevation changes and the fact most areas are just big enough that at some point you can't see any of the surrounding walls/exits, so you start doubting whether you've found everything. With the map, it's nowhere near as bad.









Charity: I wish I knew what was casting this huge shadow all over us.
Vanessa: Well, if you gag and hogtie Tau, I'm sure we can go off-trail for a bit.

















Charity: I feel like I've seen this somewhere before...

























The point where you realize there's something to head for is usually when you're about as far from it as possible.























There are a few new enemy formations here, but still nothing as threatening as double Snow Nymphs or Polar Claws.































It can be a bit difficult to gauge height when jumping "down" but this frozen waterfall is exactly short enough that one ice block lets you jump up it.















https://soundcloud.com/schematist/will-of-wisp

Tau: Is this the castle?! You fools, we're going to get banned! We'll get super banned!
Vanessa: We're just going in for a little look... and a little loot.

































The ramparts' gimmick is that you need to walk about half their length each time you want to ascend one "tier."







Also the flames here are all orange! :v:







Rampart Infantry hit hard, but aren't super tough and all their attacks are single target.







So even playing a little carelessly I can wipe a full stack of them with no deaths, and they drop a good amount of gold for this stage of the game.

























I don't believe I can reach the platform in the back there just yet, and even if I could, it would murder me quickly. We'll leave it for later since we're coming back to the Ramparts again at some point.























So most of the jumps here aren't too bad, especialyl since if you gently caress them up you land on spikes, but lining up the jump to the left to this lamp, and then south to the next one flummoxed me for a good five to ten minutes AND every time I hosed up, I'd land on the ledge and have to head all the way back up and then down.













If there hadn't then been a save point here I would probably have done something drastic.









Paralyze is a good status effect, but at a 5% chance I would rather have something less dramatic but more reliable.



















Most of the enemies along the "front" of the ramparts, including this boss flame, only chase you while you move. So as long as you stop, go, stop, go, etc. you won't get attacked.



Oh and the boss is guarding a job crystal.











And we do not want to fight him yet since he can more or less one-shot the entire gang. I can't even negate him with Rogue shenanigans because Firebreath has zero CT. So avoidance it is.













On the way back I run into one of the other rampart enemies. These guys aren't as scary as they look, while resistance won't work on their Flare cast, magic defense/reduced magic offense statuses still do, and it's a single-target I can just hoover up with Hamza, while Death Stare is negated by anything that can cure status effects.











Jumping up to the crystal can be one of the game's nastier platforming challenges until you realize you can do diagonal jumps from side to side rather than "hook" jumps to the platform above you.





The Beastmaster is... a class I never used much. Their skills are hybrid unarmed/axe skills, and their passive is always being able to see enemy HP which can occasionally come in handy against boss enemies. They've got lifesteal, defense debuffs, buff-removers, even a timed instakill(like the other Death Sentence enemies have used against us so far), though bosses are always immune to it. But their biggest thing is that they have a passive that makes your first attack in any fight a crit, combined with a Fencer's Nighthawk, it can give you some great alpha strike capacity against wandering mobs.





















All that's left now is the left side of the ramparts, which I check out mostly for completion's sake.



















It has this INSANELY painful jump since you're on a "half-size" platform it's really hard to get a Quintar "up to speed" to make the leap. Truly miserable place to scale at this stage of the game.



















But that's it! For now we've explored the Ramparts fully!

Tau: Now let's never come back here again.
Vanessa: For another five levels or so, sure.



Since he's mastered Valkyrie, Hamza now gets to be a Samurai/Valkyrie so I can teach him Uncounterable and also to show the class sprite off a little. In any case, we have more Tall Tall Heights to explore.















But that's going to require more ice blocks.









































Charity: I like snowscapes and all, but is that all there is to this place? Snow and fir trees?











Vanessa: How about a fabulous ice castle guarded by a duck?





Vanessa: A bit of an odd name for a library, but you're on, duck, we'll keep an eye out for your books.



















Vanessa: ...or if we could get just a bit higher up, we could make our own entrance. Something to keep in mind.













Vanessa: Now this place is just getting crowded.
Tau: I'm not complaining, I haven't been able to feel any of my digits for the last two hours, they better have a fire in there.









Charity: Well, this is cozy!





I'm grabbing all these maps, in particular we'll need and want the Land's End map even if could probably skip the others.



Charity: ...is this a souvenir shop?





High-tier axes often have massive starting AP boosts, this is part of why a Beastmaster/Assassin, say, can sometimes be a real brutal combo. A turn-1 Executioner attack from the Assassin's skill tree does a lot of damage and supercharges your AP generation.

Hamza: If all souvenir shops sold epic weapons I might travel more.







And the armor merchant also has a few upgrades, though they're a bit less exciting.



Tau: I'm pretty sure those PK'ers are blocking the way onwards.
Charity: One of them was level 60, there's no way we're getting through there now.
Hamza: Well, that can only mean one thing.
Vanessa: Training arc?
Hamza: Training arc! Or you can think us up a really cheap strategy to beat them with.
Vanessa: I'll get right on it.

Next time: We clear out the rest of the ice fields and see if we can take on any of those optional bosses we skipped earlier.

Ravenson
Feb 23, 2024

Likes writing desks but isn't like one.
Was the Castle Ramparts map in that chest below the crystal?

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Correct, cut that screenshot because there was a good bit of loving around getting up those platforms without getting eaten by the Rampart Demon and I couldn't make it make sense, then forgot to mention it.

Chillgamesh
Jul 29, 2014

Thank you for giving me closure on that chest in Shoudu.

Also: Slip Glide Ride theme :slick:

Cattail Prophet
Apr 12, 2014

PurpleXVI posted:





Great Whites are reasonably tanky single-target attackers with a strange AI quirk. No matter what I manage to taunt them into targeting with Threat, they always attack Charity anyway. I have no idea why.

Gonna take a stab in the dark on this one: You know targeting gets locked in when an attack starts charging, right?

Black Robe
Sep 12, 2017

Generic Magic User


Is it time for an epic power ballad training montage?

Einander
Sep 14, 2008

"Yeh've forged a magnificent sword."

"This one's only practice. The real sword I intend to forge will be three times longer."

"Can there really be a sword as monstrous as that in this world?"

"Yes. I can see that sword... Somewhere out there..."
A reminder that our wonderful LPer is on normal. Bears are even worse on Hard. :v: Though if you have some kind of dispel access, removing their starting speed buff helps. Snowbirds are also a particular pain in the rear end because of their MP damage. (If the snow fairies are damaging your MP then you're getting murdered and you have bigger problems.) At this point you're probably using a Valkyrie as your tank or at least subbing the skills, so them losing their MP is actually an issue now, let alone if it hits either of your mages.

Doing the Castle Ramparts without the future mobility upgrades? You madman. Respect for that. I expect that Beastmaster is the last class a lot of players find simply because the Castle has strong Final Dungeon vibes, and also dodging the flying flames is kind of annoying.

Beastmaster's most painful drawback is that all of the skills have a charge time, the way most spells do. Even its stances have charge times! The skills aren't really anything special either, so in general it's a class you might dip into for the passives before you leave it to mold in the back of the closet.

Cattail Prophet
Apr 12, 2014

The main draw of Beastmaster is if you're doing a variance build, since it comes with some baked in. But the skills themselves are kind of immaterial to that, yeah. (Other than the stance that gives you even more variance, of course.)

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Cattail Prophet posted:

Gonna take a stab in the dark on this one: You know targeting gets locked in when an attack starts charging, right?

I actually didn't know that! Especially since the aggro marker does change if you increase threat on someone else in between a skill charging and firing. I think this is genuinely the first time I've ever experienced it mattering, though.

Einander posted:

Beastmaster's most painful drawback is that all of the skills have a charge time, the way most spells do. Even its stances have charge times! The skills aren't really anything special either, so in general it's a class you might dip into for the passives before you leave it to mold in the back of the closet.

I think its main use would be against single big overworld enemies. You drop the "two turns till you die"-skill on them, then hit them with a two-turn Sleep effect and take a breather until they keel over.

I think it could also work as a Monk or Assassin secondary to give them slightly wider skill selections.

Einander posted:

A reminder that our wonderful LPer is on normal. Bears are even worse on Hard. :v:

If I was just doing an "Any%" playthrough I'd be happy to do Hard, but considering that I intend to tackle all of the optional bosses, and they're big enough pains in the rear end on Normal, I'm not gonna play on Hard, thank you. :v:

Black Robe posted:

Is it time for an epic power ballad training montage?

Feel free to recommend a training montage power ballad!

Olesh
Aug 4, 2008

Why did the circus close?

A long, chilling list of animal rights violations.

PurpleXVI posted:

I think its main use would be against single big overworld enemies. You drop the "two turns till you die"-skill on them, then hit them with a two-turn Sleep effect and take a breather until they keel over.

I think it could also work as a Monk or Assassin secondary to give them slightly wider skill selections.

The primary use I got out of Beastmaster was as a secondary for a different class we haven't seen yet, and that was primarily as a "delete random encounters" option using Sleep Bomb after Jugular. I never tried the extreme Variance builds, but you could probably do something silly using a Beastmaster/Scholar or something.

Gilgamesh255
Aug 15, 2015
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who made the connection, but I'm going to mention it anyway. Tall, Tall Heights is most DEFINITELY a reference to Link's Awakening's Tal Tal Heights. Hard to miss with how on the nose it is, save that it's snowing and there's no giant egg in the center. :v

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010
Hi thread, I'm back after getting the game for myself, putting unreasonable amounts of time into it, and exploring everything that was there to explore. And having read the updates I realized I missed like half the early game's platforming routes from before I learned what you can do by jumping and where (and by the time I learned that I already had mounts). Like I missed Mercury's Shrine entirely until I started cheesing inaccessible locations by going off-track with the rental salmon.
And I got so into the mushroom trial dungeon I totally forgot there was a crystal at the beginning and only came back once I realized the Aegis master had been suspiciously early for where I was :doh:
So now, up to date and safe from the risk of getting spoiled, I can enjoy the LP in peace start bitching about the updates being slow :v:
I may also do a randomized NG+ at some point.

Gilgamesh255 posted:

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who made the connection, but I'm going to mention it anyway. Tall, Tall Heights is most DEFINITELY a reference to Link's Awakening's Tal Tal Heights. Hard to miss with how on the nose it is, save that it's snowing and there's no giant egg in the center. :v
Yeah I was thinking that half the time I was playing in that region.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Update 18: Leftovers



Pierzak posted:

Hi thread, I'm back after getting the game for myself, putting unreasonable amounts of time into it, and exploring everything that was there to explore.

Someone getting the game after reading any of this LP is something I take as a badge of honour, managing to make it look interesting to folks. If you do a rando run, I think my main recommendations would be to turn off summoner/scholar/samurai randomization. Scholar and Summoner because one of their skills at the "start" of a class can lock off most of it for most of the game, Samurai because they really only work with their full tree. Also if you want to just enjoy a nice power fantasy run, turn off the weapon limitations on skills.







Charity: What was up here again?
Vanessa: I mostly just remember a brief glimpse of something big and then I was paste.









Hamza: Maybe last time, but this time, it's the Troll who will be paste! En garde!





So my first couple of runs at the Troll and his "Meats" didn't go very well. I simply couldn't compete with their damage output in terms of healing, counters, lockdowns, etc. and it took me a couple of runs to figure out how to handle it. I didn't want to do it later when I would just overrun it with big numbers, I wanted to do it now, when it would challenge me a bit.





The magic sauce turned out to be starting off with a casting of Sleep Aura from Tau, one of their Scholar skills. That buys me two turns of peace from all of the enemies, meaning I can get started one one of the Meats(who will then wake up) and because I don't have to take the same breaks to heal and recover, I can blitz it down before the rest of the team wakes up.





And the only one who somehow managed to die during this was Charity.







Once everyone's awake, it's then Vanessa's job to keep the Troll from flattening anyone(assisted by some Physattack down and Physdef up casts from Tau and Charity) while the second Meat goes down. Once that's handled, it suddenly gets a lot easier to stay on top of the Troll's damage output.









The second Meat goes down not long after. Hamza doesn't have the full Samurai loadout currently, nor exactly the world's greatest katana, but he's still able to hand out ~1000 single-target damage in a turn. The high volume of attacks also has some other niche applications.





You need to stay on top of the Troll, though, this is how much damage one of his attacks does to Hamza, our most physically resilient character, after the Troll's damage output has been reduced by 35%, and Hamza's physical damage intake has been reduced by 35%. So in rough numbers it'd be doing about twice as much damage without those two.



Another constant annoyance is that Vanessa is my best option for locking down the Troll, with Eye Gouges for general physical attacks and Trick Slash for Wind Up, its most powerful attack that has a charge time, but those two both generate Threat, and with Tau mostly on healing duty, they don't generate a lot of threat, forcing me to have Tau actually attack occasionally just to balance out the Threat. It gets further complciated if I ever slip up and let someone die, because when someone dies, their Threat is reset to zero and they have to accrue it again, leaving a window where I have to either leave Vanessa not doing anything until she's bottom threat again, or commit to having her use Assassin skills instead(since almost all Thief skills miss if you're not bottom threat).





Eventually, the Troll reveals that they're one of the few bosses in the game that have a second phase, which largely consists of loving up your Threat management and making him hit more often. At this point it's time to sprint for the finish line in terms of damage since he'll be under half health.







Charity: ...I'm not sure how to feel about this.
Vanessa: They're just a couple of orbs, nothing weird about orbs.
Tau: Consider "Ogre" as a synonym for "Troll" for a moment.
Vanessa: ...ah.

Anyway, on to the next reprise.









I still can't quite take out the Crag Demon, though I think in hindsight the winning strat would involve giving the Blank Pages to Tau, making them a Cleric again, and casting Blackout before the Crag Demon has a chance to lead with Fire Breath.

I decide to let the team take a breather before we're back to it.




Hamza: I still can't believe that Crag Demon beat us up... maybe we're just missing the right strat...
Charity: While you think that over, we'll take a walk, get some fresh air, see some new places.
Vanessa: Maybe we'll find some loot we missed that'll change things up.









A big chunk of map near the Salmon River can be explored with a goat. Some of them require more mobility options to really be explored, so I'll skip those for now.









Tau: ...a mine, out here? This is just an out of bounds area.
Charity: Looks like someone expected us to come here, though, or at least expected someone to come here.
Tau: But that would mean... the developers intended someone to take this path...
Charity: And aimless exploring is the intended route!
Tau: Let's just get this over with.















You can probably already guess where this leads now.















The Tall, Tall Heights! Specifically the westernmost part of the zone with the ice fisher in the middle of the frozen lake and the PK ambush to the west. What if we went west from the shrine instead of east, though?











Hamza: What the hell is that above us?
Charity: Something big!
Hamza: Okay, yes, but a big what?
Charity: A big structure!
Hamza: ...maybe if we loop around and do a bit of jumping we'll get closer to it.















This puts us within one Overpass Scrap of being able to finish the map, at long last. Not having the Overpass map hurts my sense of completionism.







Hamza: I'd missed this.



I'm not sure if it's the ONLY way to make this jump, but being mounted on a quintar increases your horizontal movespeed even if you're in the air being bounced by someone else, and it's the only way I could get on to that ledge north of this shroom.













Hamza: drat, guess we're not fighting that one.
Tau: You know, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense.
Hamza: What doesn't?
Tau: Haven't you noticed all the worst creatures we've met have been out on the edges, in desolate places?
Hamza: ...I mean yeah, that's where you always find badass enemies in games.
Tau: But it's stupid, if there are no other creatures out here, why do they need to evolve powerful means of defending themselves? There's nothing for them to hunt, nothing that's trying to hunt them, either!
Charity: Just pretend a wizard did it and you'll feel better.
Tau: ...drat wizards.













The next stage is some death-defying leaps over spikes.

































For a loving Zether Pouch. :v: Well trolled, dev. It's easy to think you're done with this side trip for now... but there's an easily missed way to progress further.







You can use this mushroom to get higher rather than to launch you to the next precipice to the south.



















I hope you like mushrooms because it's shrooms all the way up. A couple of the jumps can result in some annoying time spent resetting them, but it's by no means the worst place to bungle a jump(oh, we'll get there yet...) unless you really panic.

































Charity: Wow! We're getting far up! We're almost at the snowline!











Hamza: ...still not far enough to see what that drat thing is, though.

There are two different mobility options we can use to get closer, and of course both of them are the two (main) mobility options we've yet to unlock.















:toot:

Finally we'll have that map, FINALLY.









Tau: I wonder who would live all the way out here... or up here, rather.
Vanessa: Probably someone who wants to be left alone.







Hamza: ...
Tau: ...
Vanessa: ...
Charity: ...is that a lemming? I mean, swap the hair and outfit colours...





Charity: A Nomad... Nomads are known for their mobility-
Vanessa: If it's an Agility-based class I'm logging off and not logging back on again. I'm not gonna end up looking like that.
Hamza: Doesn't look like they were wearing heavy armor, probably some kind of caster-
Charity: Really? You think so? Awesome!
Vanessa: Awesome?
Charity: I always liked playing Lemmings games.

Anyway, that's all the news the Overpass has for now. So I'm headed back to the capital to buy a few gear upgrades off-screen, nothing exciting and...















...to plant our collection of seeds. We'll be back here before the update is out.









Meanwhile, we've got some revenge coming.















I tell the samurai to take a nap, and the ninja then promptly attempts to 360-noscope Charity, which she only dodges by sheer luck.





After that lucky break, though, it's easy enough to wipe them out. Hamza pops Steeling Wind to protect everyone and we're not in any kind of danger afterwards.



Now we could technically enter the castle... but we wouldn't be able to progress very far. So we'll put that on the backburner for now.

Vanessa: I've got bad vibes about that castle...
Charity: I know, it looks so dreary and unimaginative.
Hamza: No I bet Vanessa's talking about the ominous aura, I bet it's gonna have so many bosses.
Tau: Or maybe she just respects that we've been told not to go there!
Vanessa: ...actually I was just thinking I bet it's got poo poo loot.







We've also got a leftover enemy in the moat. Not the castle moat, the other moat, the one between the courtyard we emerged into when we first arrived and the capital proper.



As a refresher: Enami loves to start with "Curse of the Moat," a perpetual negative status effect that makes everyone take double Water damage. He then has two really nasty single-target Water attacks, and "Kneurotoxin," a physical attack that fucks you up good.



So my response is to put him to sleep with Charity's free starting turn, before he can cast it, which means he'll try recasting it every so often. He starts with very good time so the first one is REALLY hard to stop, but if you can interrupt it, and then also the later ones, it occasionally makes him waste a turn, slowing his damage output.





I can tank the water spells with Hamza(as long as Curse of the Moat doesn't happen, at least) by boosting his magic defense and lowering Enami's magic attack, but Kneurotoxin HAS TO BE AVOIDED at all costs.











Eventually after trading a few blows, though, it happens, Kneurotoxin lands... and piffle! 19 damage on a crit! That's nothing, right? Wrong.

What it does is that it applies a status effect to the target that immediately forces them to take three actions back to back, and each of their free "turns" does 50% of their max health worth of damage, so without any sort of regen, lifesteal or self-heals applied(no one else gets a turn, after all!), you WILL DIE at the start of your second free turn. Thankfully Hamza cast Healing Breeze earlier, which gives him a regen rate of 35%. I feel like this should even out to 15% of max health lost per turn, but instead the game decides he loses about 400 out of 1300 HP, which is closer to 30%.

I'm not sure how these calculations reach this result, but since he starts out at 1078 HP before being hit by Kneurotoxin, it's a death sentence.














He gives it his all but still gets bonked out, which brings us back to the usual problem. Tau can trivially bring him back, but then Vanessa's useless for a couple of turns while Hamza rebuilds Threat.





Really the worst part of Hamza dying is loving up my Threat management, goddammit. :v:









Charity: Really, another one of these things?
Tau: I really don't want a reminder of most of these fights, they're stressful.

The Digested Heads do actually have a use, but I figure most people will miss it. The guy in Capital Sequoia who offers to hurt you, i.e. knock a character down to "critical health" to trigger all the passives that are affected by them, will trade the three digested heads for a two-handed axe that hits pretty hard by itself, but does 50% more damage if you're at critical health.





In the meantime, the garden has ripened to plucking readiness. I'm not sure how it's timed, I think it's timed in the same way as enemies respawning is, which is to say: rather vaguely and requires you to leave the area. Anyway, we'll start from the upper left, move right, go to the lower left, move right.







The Weed is just a bigger version of the man-eating plants down by the Delende sea cliffs. Not really of note.





The Dye Khan we've seen before. It's trivial to crush in a single round.













The Gourmet is nasty, anything with Devour is, but thankfully enemies with Devour are almost universally solo and thus can't rip your party apart too fast. This fella also drops a decent crown to put on a Cleric or other healer.

















The Red Onion hits like a goddamn truck if you let it cast Earthquake, but also drops a nice Medium Armor that's an upgrade for Vanessa, and the fire weakness won't matter as long as we're dealing with the Tall, Tall Heights and the area past the PK Dorks.

The lower right plant was also a Red Onion, so only the lower center one remains.










The colonizer has a lot of nasty tricks, blasty magic counters, blasty magic attacks, putting everyone to sleep, etc.









Both the counter lightning and the lightning lightning really sting, too. A few levels earlier and this guy might have demolished a good chunk of the party. Seeds can hold some rude surprises.







It drops a pretty decent bow which might be relevant for Vanessa when she picks up Hunter again to Master the class. Anyway... I have to admit I was wrong. I can actually reach the two hidden minibosses in the Castle Ramparts, and we're gonna go fight them now.



















Height is really hard to gauge on some jumps, but an Ibek can make a jump from that lamp up to this ledge.

Charity: Wow, that was some exercise. Good job, Ibek!
Vanessa: Pretty good view from up here... hey, is that someone hiding behind the tree?
Tau: I feel like depressingly often when we find someone hanging out in some distant location, they want to stab us in the face.
Hamza: I know what you mean, I love meeting new people.















That was what Masashi did with his starter attack AFTER Charity cut his physical offense down by 35% with a spell with the Blank Pages' free action. That book is just such a great piece of equipment. Getting off a debuff before the fight starts is so drat important.







Even with his offense debuffed and with Charity protected by Steeling Wind, he still one-shots her. Note that the Ken: Asura is preceded by three attacks each doing ~200 damage.













The battle swings back and forth, with Tau getting low on MP for healing. Note the Burn effect that does 15% of Masashi's max health worth of damage, by my calculations that means he's got roughly 12000HP. It's odd that he lacks a feature most bosses, boss-like encounters or even high-level normal enemies have, though, which is the effect that reduces the strength of damage-over-time statuses to make them not completely OP, but I'll take it, he probably would have won the fight otherwise.







The reward, aside from smug pride, is a new toy for Hamza. Now, to the other side of the ramparts...



Hamza: You think there's gonna be someone over here, too?
Tau: ...probably, in fact, almost certainly.
Hamza: Hell yeah! Hope they put up more of a fight.
Tau: That last guy almost killed us!
Hamza: I know, right? I wanna take two, three, runs at this guy before we win. It's more satisfying that way.



















That door in the wall is locked and we won't find the key for a while yet.





Tau: Please be friendly, please be friendly.
Hamza: Please try to fight us, please try to fight us!









As a ninja, Murasaki will of course use this skill that makes him very likely(but not 100% guaranteed) to dodge a number of attacks.





Having a Samurai along makes him a lot easier to handle since Hamza effectively gets multiple attacks per turn, allowing him to burn up all of the effect's charges in one go and then letting Vanessa rip away with her high-damage Rogue/Assassin attacks.





He drops a dagger that's sadly not a much of an upgrade for Vanessa. The Counter effect is somewhat wasted since a Rogue that has enough Threat to get hit is a Rogue that's doing its job wrong.

In any case, I think we're about ready...








Hamza: Everyone feeling ready? Everyone PUMPED? Everyone JUICED AND MAXED AND READY TO FIGHT?
Vanessa: I mean normally I'd log off when you started writing that, but I do actually want to jam a dagger into these idiots.
Tau: People like that really shouldn't be allowed to ruin other players' fun.
Charity: Man it's so nice when we can all get together and agree on something.













Hamza: Wrong, idiot, I'm still very much alive!











Hamza: Hey, what gives! They were supposed to be really high level!
Vanessa: ...man what if they just faked their levels and we did all that grinding for nothing?
Hamza: Hey now, killing stuff is never for nothing. It's for fun, and killing stuff.







Hamza: That does hit a bit harder than last time. Good show, Kuroi.









Tau: At least that's over with. I hope we don't have to deal with them again.
Charity: Since their friends are getting banished... I don't know, I wouldn't want to hang around here if you guys got banished.
Hamza: Don't worry, someone tries to banish any of us? They'll get the old ONE TWO and I'll take them out.









Vanessa: A lot of spikes around, like the ground's falling apart here...











Tau: Well, dang, I guess that's that, door's locked and there's a sign saying to stay out, guess we gotta turn around!
Vanessa: Nice try. They've yet to build the door that could keep us out if there's loot on the other side.
Charity: At least we'll definitely be the first to see what's on the far side, with it being locked and all.

Next time: The gang is not the first to see what's on the far side.

Einander
Sep 14, 2008

"Yeh've forged a magnificent sword."

"This one's only practice. The real sword I intend to forge will be three times longer."

"Can there really be a sword as monstrous as that in this world?"

"Yes. I can see that sword... Somewhere out there..."
The thing that makes the axe from the Digested Heads really hard to find is that you need to have the sadist hurt you at least once before the prompt to trade in the Digested Heads appears, even if you talk to him with all three Heads in tow. And you have no real reason to get hurt for 99% of builds and no reason to think doing so accomplishes anything else.

Kneurotoxin has always seemed like some sort of pun and I have no idea what it is. Neurotoxin is half of it, obviously, but I can't think of anything related to horse, fish, or hippocampi that's tied to "kneu" or "kneuro" or anything like that. A little unanswered question there.

Funny thing about that hidden Samurai miniboss: his Cleave has the normal attack skill icon because it's only available from effects that make it replace the normal Attack command. In the base game, I'm pretty sure that's only certain weapons, and there IS a Katana that gives you Cleave. It's purchasable in an earlier shop instead of being the one he drops, though, unlike the counter effect on his Ninja friend's knife. Makes me wonder if which katana drops where was changed at some point.

Sadly that counter knife is even bad on Ninja, since the "on physical damage" effect should mean that it won't take effect if you evade an enemy. Weirdly at odds with the knife itself having evasion on it. I guess you could put it on an Assassin or Beastmaster?

Cattail Prophet
Apr 12, 2014

Kinda surprised you haven't already picked up Nomad tbh.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Cattail Prophet posted:

Kinda surprised you haven't already picked up Nomad tbh.

My understanding is that I'd need more mobility to get up there, I don't think it's reachable without the next option we pick up, at the very least(in fact, do I need the last option, too? We will find out), and while in an ordinary game I'd have "cheated" my way to the last mobility option already, this time around I'm trying not to break the game in unintended ways.

jkq
Nov 26, 2022

PurpleXVI posted:

in an ordinary game I'd have "cheated" my way to the last mobility option already, this time around I'm trying not to break the game in unintended ways.

Do you have any plans to show some of these ways to break the game, intended or not?

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

jkq posted:

Do you have any plans to show some of these ways to break the game, intended or not?

The game is pretty resilient, I think that abusing the salmon race to get the "last" mobility option early and sniping some unguarded late-game crates for big gear upgrades is probably the main way you can "break" it, but even then the relatively strict level cap(unless you use the difficulty options to raise it) means that it's just going to get you some faster early movement, the late-game battles will gently caress you up anyway.

There are a couple of bosses you can "skip," for instance, the wraith boss in the Capital Jail can be juked into the lava around the crystal, from what I remember, if you have really sharp reflexes. You could use that sort of thing to get a class early... but since the power of a given class skill is derived from your stats anyway, said class won't be wildly overpowered or anything.

Likewise it's possible to break out of Delende and right into the Poko Poko Desert with some good and clever jumping early on, but... everything there is just going to kick your rear end. If you juke an enemy into the ocean, sure, that enemy is gone, but you won't get any loot or XP for the next enemy you can't juke and so on.

Einander
Sep 14, 2008

"Yeh've forged a magnificent sword."

"This one's only practice. The real sword I intend to forge will be three times longer."

"Can there really be a sword as monstrous as that in this world?"

"Yes. I can see that sword... Somewhere out there..."

PurpleXVI posted:

My understanding is that I'd need more mobility to get up there, I don't think it's reachable without the next option we pick up, at the very least(in fact, do I need the last option, too? We will find out), and while in an ordinary game I'd have "cheated" my way to the last mobility option already, this time around I'm trying not to break the game in unintended ways.

Yeah, you could have obtained Nomad quite a while ago. The rental salmon gives you enough time to veer off from the finish line to the north, go up the waterfall, answer the questions, and hop across to the crystal. The execution's a bit tight, but it's doable.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Einander posted:

Yeah, you could have obtained Nomad quite a while ago. The rental salmon gives you enough time to veer off from the finish line to the north, go up the waterfall, answer the questions, and hop across to the crystal. The execution's a bit tight, but it's doable.

Oh, I mean, yes, theoretically, but I hate having to do things under time pressure and I always gently caress up the salmon race when I'm trying to rush. So y'all are just gonna have to be a bit patient to learn about the class in Crystal Project that most dresses like a weirdo.

EDIT: Aside from that I never really found the Nomad to be super useful, so I'm not hyper rushing for it in any case.

Einander
Sep 14, 2008

"Yeh've forged a magnificent sword."

"This one's only practice. The real sword I intend to forge will be three times longer."

"Can there really be a sword as monstrous as that in this world?"

"Yes. I can see that sword... Somewhere out there..."
Yep, I figured that was why you hadn't picked it up. It's more an endgame combo class than anything, so no great loss.

Kemix
Dec 1, 2013

Because change

PurpleXVI posted:

EDIT: Aside from that I never really found the Nomad to be super useful, so I'm not hyper rushing for it in any case.

I rather liked the class myself, it combos well into someone who is a healer and has enough damage output to not be completely dead weight when nobody needs healed.

Kemix fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Apr 5, 2024

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Update 19: Owl's Well That End's Well



So last time we reached an impregnable barrier! I mean, impregnable except for tools which we've had access to for literal hours of gametime now.







The Quintar lets you make a pinchy little jump down here through the fence, though it looks and is rather fiddly.











The Ibek is probably what most folks will think to use, since Tall, Tall Heights has generally encouraged you to use it to get around a lot of obstructions. Anyway, welcome to Land's End.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXA2p84meI

Charity: I can feel the cold even though I'm not really there, brrrr.
Hamza: And all this snow! I'd hardly see a monster if it came for us.
Tau: ...you think someone would really work that hard to keep us out of where we were meant to go? I hope we're ready for this place.
Vanessa: Judging by the dork squad out front, we'll breeze through. Relax.











Tau: Spikes everywhere, like the ground's falling apart.
Charity: Or like it was never finished to begin with.















Between the snow, the music and the broken terrain, Land's End feels desolate and foreboding, like you're not meant to be here and you're struggling against the elements to progress. Despite this, the platforming it has is pretty forgiving.











Charity: That was Astley! Hey, Astley, wait up! C'mon!
Tau: Well if they're here it's not off-limits... but does it ever feel like they're leading us somewhere?
Vanessa: You're just paranoid. No one's got that much time on their hands.















A bit of technical issues caused this brief glitch in the matrix. Just pretend we're totally still on course and we didn't miss a couple of screenshots. Anyway, a new enemy!









Risen are a bit more than just generic skeletons, their special trait is Lifegiver, which reduces the user's health 1 and revives the target at 100% health. If you don't have multi-target attacks or a significant speed/power advantage, groups of enemies with Lifegiver can keep reviving each other when you take one out. It doesn't take a lot to overpower it if you think even slightly about it, though.

















Most Land's End platforming is also over spikes, there are very few areas where you can flub a jump and have to redo anything as a result.



































Any off-to-the-side chests without anything interesting in them, like new equipment, I grab off-screen to avoid bloating things with excessive screenshots.









Dead Warriors are just slightly tougher Risen that replace the paralyzing Bone Crunch with a stronger direct attack(Fighter Crush) and Waste Away, a magic attack that weakens your attacks.

















Tau: ...looks like they're planning to beat you to it, Hamza. At least if they get banished, they can't keep stalking us.
Hamza: No! The Grand Master is mine! The ultimate battle! GET BACK HERE ASTLEY!



























If you flub this relatively generous bridge, you drop all the way down to the cottage at the start of Land's End. Not a truly punishing penalty, but it exists!

















That flame didn't disappear because I fought it but because it tried to chase us and ended up in the spikes, which just delete flames instantly. It happens in a few places, hell, some enemies seem like you really have to TRY to not have them yeet themselves into oblivion.





Tau: Why are we going this way?
Hamza: Because we can.
Vanessa: Also I can't imagine someone would place these pillars out here without putting something cool on top of at least one of them.















The Blue Cape is a non-gimmicky piece of Light Armor that, at the time you get it, will almost certainly be an upgrade for someone in your party.

























Hamza: Ahhhhh, good memories.
Vanessa: What are you talking about?
Hamza: I mean, down there, that's where we killed those dorks again.

This bridge is also a place where you can drop down, to the area just before the cottage. The total lack of save points up until here is a bit of a departure from earlier areas, and in that sense also somewhat tests you if you're not overlevelled, overgeared or well-prepared otherwise, because you could easily be starting to run low on MP at this point.

Because I'm real clever, though, I already levelled Charity as a Red Mage, and am now levelling Tau as a Red Mage, so they can have the Refresher passive, which starts them off with six turns of MP recovery in every fight. It helps reduce MP attrition somewhat in longer or bigger areas without breaks.




















Hollow Travellers start off with two dead skeletons which they immediately resurrect as their first action. This means you could blitz the Hollow Traveller down, and if you don't, you risk the skeletons reviving it and vice versa if you're not spreading your damage around or just doing a ton of it.













This detour has another Blue Cape which is actually a bit strange since very few equippable items in the game drop from multiple locations unless they drop from enemies.











































Hamza: ...do you think we could beat them to it?
Vanessa: I don't think we need to, they're rushing into this all full of vinegar and fury and they're going to get themselves banished real hard.
Hamza: I don't follow.
Tau: What Vanessa means is that if we prepare rather than trying to rush ahead of them, we can just step over their bodies and take what they couldn't.
Hamza: Hah! That'd really show them!
Tau: Well, except that they'd be Banished so they wouldn't see it.
Hamza: ...sure we can't hurry a little just so we can do it while they're still around to be impressed?
Tau: No!



















Sealed Fates are pretty dangerous enemies, because they're highly magic resistant and usually their first move will be to Blind your physical attackers, a simple but dangerous combo that can be avoided by alpha striking it down, being ready to cure statuses or simply having your physical attackers immune to blindness.

Can anyone tell me what the hell is up with that sprite, though? Whose face is that? Does that mean anything? I don't get it.

Also their flames are completely stationary, so accurate platforming can also simply avoid them a lot of the time.


























Charity: All this snow, I can hardly see an inch ahead!
Hamza: No hard feelings if I slip up any of these jumps because I can't see the platform we're trying to reach, right?















That's the Salmon River visible to our west, it's actually somewhat impressive how densely packed the zones are yet how it's never really obvious or visible until you start getting quite late game.





















The Storm Stalker has a cool appearance, really fits something you'd imagine stalking you in a blizzard, but they're not super threatening. They have relatively high stats and can hit kinda hard, but getting Hasted when they're almost dead doesn't do much because the next whack kills them, and they're all about single-target physical attacks which are somewhat trivially countered.





























There's a small side path for the Defender sword, which is an okay pick if you're rolling with, say, an Aegis whom you just want to hoover up all the hits and get his rear end kicked while everyone else's asses stay un-beat.













The perspective on this jump is cruel, the first time I got here I kept trying to hit that high ledge and, as far as I can tell, it's not possible, so I'd just keep getting spiked over and over until I gave up and jumped for the low one instead. It LOOKS very possible, though, and it may be possible on a really perfect jump, but most people should just go for the low one.































Charity: Soon we won't be able to get much higher.
Hamza: Good!
Charity: Good?
Hamza: Yeah, because when you go to the highest places you get the hardest bosses to fight.
Charity: ...I was just gonna enjoy the view up there.
Hamza: I'll enjoy the view of my enemies mercilessly crushed.









If you can handle the other skeletons, Dead Mages are no threat because you probably have multi-target attacks that wipe them all out at once, more or less. They get +30AP because they have a (spoiler, I guess) Nomad skill that uses AP to cast a spell. Reasonably pinchy but... we'll get around to why they suck once we get Nomads ourselves.























Tau: Oh thank God, there's something up here, we're not just wasting our time wandering through crumbling, forgotten zones.

























You're just meant to go on the middle block, which raises or lowers, but there's a small item down here to fetch.



































Another Snow Stalker guards a wand upgrade up here. Silence Immunity should theoretically be very handy for casters but... I don't really remember any enemies actually ever Silencing me outside of the Tall, Tall Heights fairies. Certainly no bosses, so I don't think it's really worth equipping.

















Good thing there's a save point halfway up the summit shrine, since there's also a boss up here.

Hamza: A boss! Ha ha ha, yes!
Tau: What could it even be guarding? We can't go any higher, can we?















The Owlbear is a real tough bastard, with more or less the who's who of fancy boss physical skills. Hyper Slam and Hyper Crush for just really loving up one party member, Blood Spiller for an all-target with Bleed, Weep makes it hard to keep your guys topped up and Owl's Minuet causes swingy damage which can make it harder to predict what you can take and when you should heal. It also applies to EVERYONE, including the player's party members, so having high Luck combined with something Variance-boosting can get you through this fight more easily.





Weeping Cry also does a decent amount of damage on its own. Ouch, nasty starter. As a result, Tau is mostly on condition-removal duty.







The smart play would have been to swap Vanessa back to Rogue so she could negate most of the Owlbear's offense, but because I'm a stubborn dickhead I decide to keep her as a Hunter/Assassin.



Somehow I manage to get through it by the skin of my teeth, Hamza being mostly on healing duty, which takes a while to really work since Tau needs to peel Weep off everyone each time so Healing Breeze can do its healing-over-time thing.





I also let Hamza charge up the biggest swing he can currently get and he aces it with a crit on top, showing why Samurai can be real scary to single targets. 1685 damage from the finisher, combined with about 1000 damage from the attacks adding combo points. If I made him a Samurai/Scholar with the Adrenaline skill(at which point Insult from the Scholar would also help him keep tanking) or a Monk, he could pop that off every other turn just about.



The katana from killing the Castle Ramparts samurai is better than this one, which is kind of a shame.









Tau: That's it? Just a boss?
Charity: If the fog cleared there'd be a nice view, too!
Hamza: Just a boss? A boss is a reward all by itself.
Vanessa: ...look behind us, and up.















Charity: The fog's clearing, and there's a tree up here!





The Callisto Stone warps you back up here, it seems to be of dubious utility for about five seconds.









Charity: Maybe the reward is getting to pet an owl?
Vanessa: Hmmm... last time we beat a boss and met an animal we got the Ibek. Let's get closer.













The Owl is kind of like a Quintar+. It has a small jump about equal to your on-foot jump in height and a VERY long glide that follows it. And by very long I mean "until you touch ground again." The reason the Callisto Stone is super useful is that thus far this is the highest point in the map we've reached, we could fly to most parts of the game world from up here if we know where to go.





Charity: omg! OMG! This is SO. CUTE.
Vanessa: You know owls are just big cats, right? They eat rats and cough up hairballs.
Charity: Can't hear you over how cute it is! Much better than that nasty quintar, yes, aren't you? That nasty quintar we're never going ride again now we have you.
Hamza: Hm, how do you fly this thing?





Hamza: Seems pretty simple.











Charity: Whee! We can see the world!
Hamza: And fight anything we meet!
Tau: ...do any of you actually know how to land?





Hamza: ...I mean, go down, right?
Vanessa: You mean down into that mountain in front of us?





Charity: Pull up! Pull up!
Tau: I'm never letting you fly again!
Vanessa: This is the last will and testament of Vanessa, I leave all my gold to no one-

[SESSION END]

VOTE

So it's been a while since we last had anything to vote about, but the owl opens up a lot of options. One thing that's immutably on the slate is that I'm going back to the "Slip Glide Ride" since the Owl is what's needed to cross that initial stretch of tar, and check out the last two things hidden in the Tall Tall Heights(or are there more?) but afterwards we have a few choices:

A: Investigate the Mystery Desert Cube.
B: Fly out into the ocean and see if we hit anything.
C: Explore east of the Castle Ramparts.
D: Visit the Quintar Reserve to make Charity cry. We could do this previously, but now seems a fun time.
E: Rechallenge the Sky Arena, except this time we win.
F: Go fight the boss hiding out in the Meat Tunnels.
G: Ride the Meat Tunnels to the Jidamba Enclanaya and see what's up with that place now it probably won't one-shot us instantly any longer.

Ravenson
Feb 23, 2024

Likes writing desks but isn't like one.
I'm thinking B!

Junpei
Oct 4, 2015
Probation
Can't post for 11 years!
B

Gilgamesh255
Aug 15, 2015
D.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
B, Nautical nonsense here we come

Naramyth
Jan 22, 2009

Australia cares about cunts. Including this one.
I did B, I want to see B!

Raitzeno
Nov 24, 2007

What? It seemed like
a good idea at the time.

Let's go with D.

AweStriker
Oct 6, 2014

A, because CUBE

Einwand
Nov 3, 2012

You idiot.
In this world it's pet or BE pet.

Voting A because I want to see what happens if you go there this early.

That Owlbear boss on hard is one of the toughest fights in the entire game, I think. Just absolutely brutal numbers compared to what you have available at the time.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Rather than having a vote between every update, I feel like I'll do things in the order of most to least votes, and then have a re-vote for the remainder afterwards.

Jade Rider
May 11, 2007

All the pages have been censored except for "heck," and she misread that one.


B, let's dick around in the ocean

BraveLittleToaster
May 5, 2019
A. Seek the CUBE.

ZCKaiser
Feb 13, 2014
Sure, I'll throw out a token vote for C. More exploring!

Greenking77
Nov 6, 2022
B, ocean exploring is always fun.

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Slaan
Mar 16, 2009



ASHERAH DEMANDS I FEAST, I VOTE FOR A FEAST OF FLESH
D quintars are cute :(

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