Last time, we spent our time primarily exploring the world of Ni no Kuni and clearing some rather rudimentary quests. This update, we will be a bit more aggressive than we were last time. Also, as you may have noticed, this update is following the projected schedule of updates a bit more closely, due in no small part to a little annoyance that a lot of people like to refer to as "school."
ゴロネール王国.
- Go to the store items. Talk to the owner.
- Follow the arrow to continue. Until it reaches the drainage 地 下水道.
- Imagine that we used to think that we can let the birds get their name on it.
- At the entrance of the drain to block the use of magic Unlock.
... Sounds like we're paying a visit to that blocked dungeon from earlier. Once again, our map is kind enough to give us red arrows, which sure enough steer us to the little old lady who lived in a shoe that looks a bit like her shop's owl roof. En route, I made a quick check of the barrels and pots around the item shop, UNLIKE Dragon Quest 9, the items don't appear to respawn after you take them (unlike the replacement barrels and pots). Heading into the shop, the clerk has a yellow exclamation mark in a speech bubble over her head, which is our cue to yack with her. We get thrown into a long back and forth involving Oliver, the clerk, and Shizuku. After a few boxes of dialogue, the location consisting of 4 Kanji mentioned in the instructions gets namedropped. A few more lines and we are freed to depart.
If you decide to interact with the clerk afterwards, you get thrust into a menu with three buttons. The first one is to buy items, the second one is to sell items, and the bottom one is to stop window shopping. There's not a whole lot here beyond what appear to be HP restoring and status healing items, with the cheapest one going for 20G... Seeing as we have a whopping 290 G at this point, we'll skip on shopping for now (and hope that it doesn't come back to bite us).
Once exiting the shop, we get a lovely pair of red arrows, instructing you to pick one of 2 game suggested routes to the dungeon that we saw last time. Let's take the direct route, it'll also take us right past Falco's the weapon shop anyways. Attempting to pick up a decent wand to replace this dog-bitten stick fished out of a gutter or a broadsword to replace Rucci's steak knife appears to be a no-go... The crow isn't in the mood to sell us anything right now. We traverse towards the red arrow and... The gate's blocked by NPCs... Two men with obviously evil goatees. They yack a bit, Oliver gets a couple lines... But nothing really appears to be of interest in their lines... Oh, so they didn't block the gate, you can still squeeze by them. Onwards!
When you enter the alley that connects to the dungeon entrance, you'll notice a few NPCs standing around and Shizuku will pipe up. The music switches over to something more tense... Looks like we're going to be fighting stuff pretty fast... There's a bald guy not wholly unlike one of the gate NPCs on the bottom, brunette Heidi a woman in the middle, and a cat-man on top. The one you should be paying attention to is the kid in the improvised armor (namely a pot, a broom, and what looks like part of a door) in front of the passage with a yellow exclamation mark over his head.
When Shizuku talks to him, the kid yells back, presumably telling Shizuku to piss off. Shizuku and Oliver ask some questions, but hillbilly armor here seems to still be rather cranky. He reveals that he's got an imagine... Which appears to be some sort of bird... We can't see it up close, but on the overworld, its model looks kinda like a Chatot. After a few more sprites of hillbilly armor yelling at us and us responding, we get a message on the bottom screen. Oh... We got an imagine... We get to name it too... On closer inspection, it looks kinda like a Taillow... If Taillow had Astro Boy "ears" and teal feathers in place of red. For you uncreative folk, or for folk that can't understand Japanese, the X button is apparently the "Don't Care" option. Since we're not THAT lazy, but still KINDA lazy, let's call it "Taillow," for kicks. (スバメ - Subame, for all you technical folk.) After we're done, we get a short jingle and a message that presumably says "Taillow joined the party!" Afterwards, hillbilly armor lets us through, finally.
When we get to the dungeon, the lock on it that we were previously unable to touch now has a nice yellow exclamation mark over it. Shizuku prompts us to get out our chew toy stick wand and cast a spell. Presumably this is the Unlock spell the guide mentioned. 2 attempts and 2 MP later, we get an Unlock spell
◊ off (the game mercifully doesn't suck up HP for failed spells), which causes the lock to sprout angry eyes and then melt in a flash of blue light. Then Shizuku and Oliver yack a little, and a rat comes up the entrance to the dungeon. Oliver doesn't think much of it and tries to take off, when Shizuku gets the idea that the little gray vermin is trying to tell us something. Uh... Now we're free and... Uh...
- Then I would have ran. Let us cast トーカー Talker will allow us to talk to me about the animals.
Right. Let's do that.
To accomplish this, just go up to the rat, yack with it, and sketch this cute little mirrored "C" and "<" sign
◊ to talk to the thing in slightly more varied moonspeak (on page 32 of your copy of Trope-Tan, if you want to use it). Casting it will cost you 2 MP. The rat now is yacking in perfectly cromulent elven runes Japanese. A term consisting of 5 Katakana pops up followed by 17 and the first Kanji in "world" pops up highlighted in red... There's some more yacking... And a red term composed of 2 Katakana pops up, which appears to freak Oliver out... Is that the boss? There's some more lines... And now a red phrase... Three words, the first two with 4 Hiragana the last consisting of 2 Kanji sandwiching a "ha" (は) in Hiragana. ... Whatever the rat said after that, it must have been useful, seeing as Oliver no longer looks like he's in danger of wetting his pants.
... So now what, game?
- Ford will continue to see the torch to the torch on the left, with Fireball magic right.
- On the way, if you use the magic Unlock my chest until we arrive at the second torch to cast spells. Fireball on the torch in the middle.
- And so you will see a purple box and the safe.
- Continue until boss. I then get teleported back out.
... Sounds simple enough. Though this guide seems to be in the habit of incredibly undetailed boss descriptions... (Which will probably result in Oliver having to see a medieval fantasy European equivalent of an ICU at some point.)
Before we press on, let's take a quick look at Taillow. Like Rucci, he's Level 6... But that's where the similarities end. He's got 49 HP, 23 MP, and an Attack/Defense/Magic Attack/Magic Defense/Speed spread of 23/21/22/18/30, which makes him worse off in every stat than Rucci other than in speed, and the fact that he appears to have no weak elemental weaknesses (or strengths) and his only spell costs half as much MP to use compared to Rucci's. For some reason, he appears to have 3 notices above his stats that are different from Rucci's. Rucci has a red box thing with a yellow diamond in it, has a super deformed knight icon (more like a Shelmet) and a phrase consisting of 3 kana in yellow. Taillow on the other hand has a blue box with a moon in it, a yellow bird, and 2 kana. Also, it appears that we may not have a way to put Taillow on the team for the moment... But whatever, let's get going.
Inside the dungeon, the music takes a turn for the foreboding. As with the first dungeon, you unlock the map as you explore as you explore. When you get to the fork in the path, Shizuku will say something and freak Oliver out a bit... And then we will promptly get jumped by a flying seafood special. In battle, we get a flying... Blue and yellow mushroom? Jellyfish? And a flying teal and greenish fish. Uh... Let's Auto-Battle a round and see what happens... The mushroom jellyfish opens with a defense buff, Rucci uses some sort of freaky multislash attack on all the enemies and then eats a 3 HP attack from the fish, Shizuku bum-rushes the Jellyfish for single-digit damage, and Oliver Firas for 34 HP worth of damage. Shizuku freaks out after that round and drops 2 highlighted phrases. One composed of one kanji, one character in hiragana followed by 2 kanji and a phrase consisting of 1 kanji, hiragana "no" (の) and 5 more kanji. We then get prompted to hit a yellow button on our battle menu that we couldn't before... Oh so THAT'S how you switch Imagines around in battle... We throw Taillow out there to see whether or not he's got anything remotely helpful and proceed to spam melee attacks, with Taillow using his spell. The round of attacks is enough to finish off the "monsters," causing them to fall onto the ground and vanish into our "I don't care, outta my way" field (the jelly might be fairly dead though, it kinda fell apart into two pieces, unless that yellow thing is SUPPOSED to be able to come off... A hat perhaps?). In this round, all four of us gained exp, though it's presently unclear as to whether or not we had to BE there for that. The total exp gained was 40 points, we netted 30 G, and got a purple scale thing.
Let's try the right branch of this path first... In one battle we find out that a pink rabbit pig can apparently hit for 14 HP damage a pop, and that the enemies we faced in the battle to switch our Imagines around were thoroughly nerfed and got some sort of yellow message over one of our attacks on one occasion. Also, exp gain DOES appear to affect everyone in your extended party, as Rucci gained exp in battles where he did not set a foot out onto the field. Those blue and green fish aren't slouches either, if you run into them, throttle the two ASAP. The right branch splits into two, the right part has 2 red chests for the looting, they have 150G and a sandwich (maybe we don't need mom, maybe we just need to steal everything not bolted down, we seem to be getting sandwiches that way). On our way back from the chests, we whaled on a Poliwag look alike and spotted a green crystal in a corner of the path. It's apparently like that blue crystal from the very first dungeon of the game, except it restores your party's HP. The left path that forks off of the right path from the start forks again. There's a dead end to the left with a red chest with an herb, and a path heading upwards. On this upwards trek north, there is a 4-way intersection, where we have our first encounter with a different type of jellyfish enemy, this one with a red cap, teal body, and green and pink tendrils. Unfortunately for you, its main role appears to be that of a healer for your foes, and it can undo over 30 HP of damage in one go. Unfortunately, at this point, we have pretty much exhausted Oliver's MP for healing and attacking, as well as our supply of bread rolls... So let's backtrack and regroup.
One fast stay at the inn, 10 bread rolls, and 520 G later (we have been ripping off a LOT of cash from those poor monsters we've been mugging), we try the dungeon again. Also, if you were wondering what that left fork at the very beginning did, it's a rather underwhelming dead-end. A couple battles later, after fishing out the bread rolls, we make an important discovery: COFFEE restores MP for you in this game. At the 4-way intersection, the rightmost path takes you before a statue of that lardo cat king from the plaze, which has 3 slots to fill around it. Shortly afterwards, we discover that those medic jellyfish CAN attack... For all of 1 HP. The middle path in the 4-way intersection takes you to a crystal to restore MP and the leftmost path, as well as a painful discovery that the Poliwag lookalikes: A) Are master dodgers. B) Can poison you with their attacks. Also, we finally figured out the button to run off screaming and crying from battle, it's the pink one, in case if you didn't need your dignity further mocked. Also, herbs heal poison. Another battle with those rabbit-pigs reveal that they have an attack that hits everyone in a HORIZONTAL line... So keep on your toes when facing them. The end of the leftmost path has a mask in a red chest for you to take. Hmm... Looks like we were supposed to set things on that cat statue on fire... Let's go there after restoring our MP.
Uh... So what order ARE we supposed to light these things up with? Let's try the left... We try casting a fireball spell (looks like this
◊, if you don't feel like backtracking) on the leftmost... Torch? And a lovely little fire starts... But not much else... Let's try the rightmost one. Aha! Lighting up the leftmost and rightmost torches opens a purple door up ahead! Useful! If you were thinking of trying to mess up the lovely pattern you made, don't bother, the game won't let you. Beyond the door, we have a fork again... Left fork leads to vertical fork with a red chest with a rock in it on the bottom, and one with some coffee on the top. This is also the first spot where we fight what appears to be a blue-green and cream frog with only 2 purple feet, purple antennae and some chin feelers that you may have seen lurking around or picked a fight with earlier if you're playing along. On the right fork, there's a blue chest that you can open with an Unlock spell with... Wait, is that a WAND or a WHIP? Anywho, there's a black... Thing in it. Head down the steps and continue along the path until you reach a big circular room with purple fish on a floor with huge cracks. The top path is gated off, so obviously we can't go there just yet. The left path will take us to another set of torches and a MP crystal to smash if you need the boos... Let's check where the other path went first tho- Oh. It's a dead end with a HP crystal. Also useful. According to the guide, it looks like we're supposed to burn the middle one... So let's try that...
And like magic a charm, following the guide causes that purple gate from earlier to retract. A quick use of the MP crystal, and we're off. The path ahead is fairly linear, and has another MP crystal to smash if you've been spamming spells a lot. This path is also the first spot where we encountered a blue and orange anglerfish-like enemy with arms. After following the path a ways, there's another 4-way intersection, left and top branches are dead ends, but the top has a chest with some sort of medallion to take. The right branch leads to yet another 4-way intesection. Apparently starving cats are fond of gridlike patterns. Going south takes you to a dead end with a curve and a red chest, the west path has a purple chest... ... Wait, a PURPLE chest?
When Oliver examines the purple chest, he initially freaks out a bit because what is this abomination? It's not a primary color! it's probably cursed or something that a local monster tucks under its pillow at night to get some sweet dreams, but then calms down after a short back and forth with Shizuku. Let's try the north path now. The north path apparently takes us to a save point. Seeing as the boss is in all likelihood around the corner, and Shizuku is SOMEHOW not Level 8 yet, let's quickly mug a few monsters before progressing. A dozen or so monster muggings later, Shizuku is finally Level 8, and since we noticed that Rucci was just a fraction of exp away from level up, we made him Level 10 to boot. Alright, now let's swat that boss!
Pressing on from the save point we see that our foe is... ... An overgrown purple rat with a wand? The aforementioned rat is actually pictured in the guide, namely this little bugger here
◊. Let's start by having Rucci and Taillow cover the front, while keeping Oliver firmly in the back behind Rucci and open with a Fireball, and attacks from Taillow and Rucci. Er... Looks like this rat packs one nasty punch. Taillow ate a 17 HP wand swat in the first turn before Oliver could do anything, which was about as much damage as he dealt, so let's shift him back, also rat boy's wand started glowing, which probably translates into "Oh piss, we're all going to die." In turn 2, we hit rat boy with Taillow's spell, Rucci's basic attack, and another Fireball. True to our fears, rat boy DID indeed have something up his sleeve, and proceeded to blast Rucci in the face with a spell for 17 HP of damage. Oliver wasn't affected, though it's unclear if he just got lucky, or if meatshielding accomplished that. Rucci appears to have a fog around him... So he in all likelihood has some sort of status effect at the moment. In turn 3, we take a gamble and move Taillow to the front row again and have everyone spam their specials, just because. ... And the moral of the story is "Don't bother" for Rucci. His multislash did a full 10 points FEWER of damage than his normal attack did. Nothing really important happened that round other than Oliver eating a 11 HP swat and rat boy finally going under 50% of his max health. A repeat of this same strategy leaves Taillow in need of a medic, though probably healthy enough to tank another hit of that nature (lost 20 HP), and is enough to get rat boy to have some problems standing up. In turn 5, we have Taillow heal himself while leaving rat boy to Rucci and Oliver. Due to some idiocy involving the menu (and the fact that I probably should have been in bed by the time I was throttling rat boy, Taillow wound up healing OLIVER, which was more or less a waste of a bread loaf, luckily, rat boy swatted Rucci, who, being a boss, shrugged the hit off pretty well. Oliver appears to have gained a new spell somehow after getting a larger than normal red notice... Whether it's temporary or a one-time deal remains unclear... But let's stall and try to use it. After commanding Taillow and Rucci to take a break, we find out what our mystery spell was. It was a limit break that dealt 131(!) HP of damage. Unsuprisingly, rat boy keels over after this, and we gained enough EX to level up both Oliver and Taillow.
After getting the snot pounded out of it, rat boy does what any sensible monster faced with an angry band of adventurers does and runs for it, leaving his wand behind. Shizuku and Oliver gawk and talk over it for a bit, and it creates a portal for us to leave without backtracking through the ENTIRE dungeon... That said, I'm pretty sure we were supposed to get a purple chest out of this...
* Now we also have a purple box.
... Let's go see if we can open that purple chest from earlier now. We get prompted to use magic, but Unlock doesn't appear to work... ... What? A quick search on Google reveals that some chests apparently need stronger wands than a dog-chewed stick to be opened... Which our guide conveniently didn't tell us...
- Then go back into the castle to talk to the king of cats.
Yeah, let's go ahead with that... On our way back, we FINALLY determined what those red notices mean, they're units building up to a limit break. Stepping through the portal takes us back to the mouth of the dungeon. On our way out, we run into hillbilly armor again, he seems fairly impressed at us being able to not get crushed by a wannabe rat mage and runs off, presumably to tell others about us. Let's run to the guard in front of the castle and stop there.
Takeaway Points:
- Red notices keep track of "points" that you build up towards limit breaks, they are not critical hit notices as previously presumed. (My current suspicion is that the yellow notices that appeared a couple times this update over different enemies may be related to critical hits, since they corresponded with attacks that did above-average amounts of damage.)
- Layout of the battle menu: UPDATE:
| Change Field Positions (Y) | Auto-Battle (X) | ||
| Your Party (No Direct Menu Function) | |||
| Attack | Magic | Inventory | Defend |
| Rotate Party | Limit Break Tracker | Stuff I Still Need To Figure Out | Run Away |
- Coffee - It's the drink of champions... And apparently of aspiring mages.
- The local town guards appear to either be too lazy or too incompetent to handle purple mage rats running around the sewers
- The game's VAs apparently went on strike in-game for this update. There was not a single voiced word in-game during all of this, barring the sounds that the monsters made and the normal voice clips that Oliver and the party make in battle.
- Defeating the second boss, TL:DR version: Keep anyone who isn't named Rucci or otherwise CAN'T take repeated 20+ HP hits away from the first row of cells. Hide your more squishy party members behind Rucci to dodge the boss' beam attack that affects vertical columns and chip away at the boss' health. Use specials for everyone not named Rucci or Shizuku, if you choose to have him out (Rucci because it is ineffectual, Shizuku because he HAS no offensive special). Defensive buffing is not NEEDED to survive this battle, as this update demonstrated, but if you're low on MP for Oliver to use his heal spells or otherwise have a dearth of healing items, using Shizuku to give you defensive buffs is always a nice plus.
- There are green HP crystals that will give you a one-time restoral of your HP, much like the blue MP crystal from the third update.
- There is a grand conspiracy amongst colored chests to thwart kleptomaniac heroes. Fortunately, it's just a matter of time before all chests shall bow before our rightful claim to their contents.
- Shizuku is an exp sponge. In all-caps. In bolded italic font. He'll take a while to level up relative to everyone else, it remains to be seen whether this amounts to anything.
- I really am starting to think that Rucci joined the party to make everyone else look utterly pathetic. Whether or not the game is doing this on purpose shall remain to be seen for another time.
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 9: 60 HP / 38 MP
- Rucci: Level 10: 83 HP / 36 MP
- Taillow*: Level 10: 68 HP / 30 MP. *
- G: 850
- Play Time: 13 hours, 32 minutes, 13 seconds.
Next time, we'll be talking to the morbidly obese cat that appears to run this town.
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