Well, with the Raging Tyrant dispatched, this room's clear of sizeable threats. There's a few parts of this room to check out before we move on, and I preferred to do so without having to FOE-dodge. First, to the northwest corner.
Warp Point 3D-13: 3D-14; face west and check wall (Marked)
Now, to the south side of the room. Here we find three south-facing doors.
Gabe: Door One, Two, or Three?
Axel: What?
Gabe: From the left, Door One, Door Two, and Door Three. Which one?
Axel: Just pick one.
Report: Hang on, we don't know what's behind them. They could be trapped.
(They aren't).
Gabe: If that's the case, they could all be trapped.
Report: Er...
Gabe: Axel, you're in situations like these a lot. What's the likelihood of one of these doors being trapped?
Axel: 10 doors out of 10 I encounter in RPG dungeons have stuff waiting for you on the other side. 90 percent of the time, said stuff is bad.
Gabe: So, 90% chance of a trap.
I'm just pulling numbers out of my bum, now. I have no idea if it's really 90%.
Gabe: If there's a 90% chance that one of these doors is "trapped", then there's an 81% chance that two of them are trapped. The probability of all three being trapped is 72.9%.
Report: That's pretty high...
Also incorrect in this case.
Ere: Oh, for the love of Semtex, we'll just go through all three!
Yes, Ere is still in Hot-Blooded Mode. Also, that's what I'm doing.
In case you still didn't pick up on it, none of these doors here are trapped or have FOEs waiting behind them or anything. Let's start with "Door Number 1" (the southeastern door).
Two steps south and a ninety-degree turn to the left shows us that telltale shimmer on the ground that indicates an Item Point. Here on the third floor, we encounter the third and final of the three types: Mining. As you can probably guess, it requires the Mine skill.
Ere: See? No traps. Just another impassable river.
Axel: Hm...
Axel stoops to examine the ground
Report: Find something?
Axel: Yup. There are some valuable minerals in the ground here.
Gabe: Let's dig some out.
Ere: With what? Our hands?
Gabe: What's the matter? Afraid of ruining your manicure?
Ere: It's hard ground. I thought we had shovels and pickaxes or something.
'Dems Farmin' weapons.
Gabe: Nope. No digging tools, 'cept-
Axel: There.
Axel punches the ground, his hand sinking up to the wrist.
Axel: Loose dirt, soft clay and plant material. The ground's not hard. Also, this.
Axel pulls his hand out of the ground, a light brown crystal clenched in his hand.
Axel: Topaz.
Report: Are you sure? It could be a different semiprecious min-
Axel: It's topaz. There's topaz in this vein.
>Discovered a new item: Topaz!
Ere: Wait, so Gabe and I lose our powers here but Axel gets to keep his? Unfair.
Axel: I don't have my powers, either. Besides, I wouldn't need them to know something like this.
Ere: If you don't have them, then why didn't you complain?
Axel: What's there to complain about? I hardly ever use them anyway, so their loss doesn't much affect me. Now, we should get moving; we're wasting time talking about hands and dirt.
So yeah, I have no idea how the party can mine without digging tools (it's been that way for all three games so far). I'm not complaining though; never look a gift mine in the vein.
Variants on "Never Look A Gift Horse": 2
>Discovered a new item: Phonolite!
>Discovered a new item: Chalcophyllite!
In the process of mining the party is chanced upon by a pair of Great Lynxes and two new enemies (which look like mushrooms). These mushrooms are Venomshrooms, and they can poison the entire party at once with Poison Spores. They use it automatically when they die, so yeah.
Also, kill 'em fast enough and they drop their feet.
>You've discovered a new monster: Venomshroom!
>Discovered a new item: Poison Hypha! (Normal drop from Venomshroom)
>Discovered a new item: Pseudopod! (Golden Drop from Venomshroom)
Pseudopod GDR: Kill the Venomshroom on the first turn of battle.
The battle also nets 2904 exp.
...
Wow, in the process of mining 15 items, I wound up encountering three groups of four enemies apiece. Statistically, that's a lot for a small number of minings.
Speaking of mining:
- 6 Topaz
- 3 Phonolite
- 6 Chalcophyllite
Chalcophyllites are supposed to be the rare loot from this point, but once again the game gives me more rares than commons. More money for me, though.
The Item Point's the only thing of interest in this room, so let's leave this room and take the middle door.
...
The middle room is a campsite. While I don't need to use campsites due to having infinite TP (or rather, all skills TP-free), but this campsite is involved in a quest that nets you a pretty useful item, so remember it anyway. Back outside, now...
The southwest door is the one that leads further along the floor, so let's take it. Following the linear path to a fork, the left path leads nowhere, so let's head right through a door.
ATLUS Gets Off On Your Tears Example #1: There's three things to point about this room when you enter:
- There's a Red FOE (Raging Tyrant) in the middle of the room, but towards the east side.
- The door to safety is literally five steps above where you enter at.
- Those five steps are actually eight because three of those tiles are mud tiles.
If you avoided or had trouble with the previous Raging Tyrant, the moment you enter just strafe left (moving north, and don't even think about moving even one step east. Once you're within six spaces of movement of the FOE, it'll notice (and chase) you. If you get into a random battle during this, you're screwed; turns in battle and movement turns are the same, and every turn you spend in battle lets the FOEs move another space. Done right, you'll get out of the room just as the FOE reaches the space in front of the door.
Report: Oh, man, that was close.
Ranko: Why'd you avoid that one?
Axel: It's not a good time to fight it. Beside's the pack's almost full.
Ranko: Oh.
Axel brings up a good point; right now the pack is at 58/60 capacity, meaning I can only fit two more items before I'd have to start discarding, and all of my loot is new loot. Luckily, there's a Warp Point right around the corner.
Warp Point 1D-15: 1D-14; face right and examine wall (Activated).
This Warp Point leads us back to the stairs from B2F. Regardless, it is now viable to pop a thread and return to town.
Next Time: Hot-Blooded Stuff!
