A bit has happened since our dungeon crawling in the last update... In life, I've discovered the "joys" of getting destroyed by back-to-back exams... And in more relevant news, we now know what Oliver and the other characters in this game sound like in English.
Now... Where were we...?
精霊 の 神殿.
- Will expire. We will upgrade the harp. The harp can be used to remove the monster from a friend. This will give us a try, it is easy to attack it first, then press the skill which, if the harp. They will become a monster.
- Talk to him over the middle of the upgrade. We make it a monster. The like. The Ticket, we can remove it from the Download Wi-Fi to exchange monsters, too.
- Warp back out. (Warp once. Do not warp out of the mountain again. To the beginning, we did not select it).
Oh right, the palace of the blue elves. And that sounds suspiciously like how we got Felis in the last update. Doing a quick check of the elves' throne room reveals that there's a lot of whopping nothing in those hallways, so let's talk to our unnatural looking princess and Starscream in the waiting advisor before leaving. Talking to the pricess brings up a little blurb... And then a choice between a prompt with 2 Kanji and a much longer string of Katakana... Uh... Well... Long things are nice... Oh. She mentions the phrase that we chose... And Oliver asks what it is... You know, like a normal 10-year old with discolored Keebler Elves would. The two continue on a bit and... Wait a minute, that green manhole thing just opened! And there's some sort of black Diglett thing in there... There's some more exposition from Princess Azula Blue, and she mentions some term with 5 Katakana in quote blocks. What was that manho- OH! It's apparently the game's Wi-Fi mode! Hmm... Let's see if we can get anything out of it...
There's 6 tiles... The topmost left seems to handle storing Imagines... Topmost right seems to be some sort of Wi-Fi battle mode... Which would probably be valuable if I wasn't like 8000 miles away from where everyone actually OWNS this game. Middle rows consist of something dealing with Imagine eggs on the left, and some blocked thing on the right... The bottom row has what is apparently stat tracking on the left and right. Alright, let's go back and harass those elves.
If you go back to the seasick-looking elf, she'll tell you about the OTHER topic that you were asked to choose between and- Oh, we got some sort of... Mirror? Wait... Looks like this thing does character upgrades... And cosmetic changes... You know, evolution for you fellow Poke-dorks. After deciding to take a shot in the dark, we decide to give the upgrade to Totoko, seeing as his stats seem to be the ones that would improve the most off the bat upon upgrading. Telling the game "Yes, I'm serious about this, let me upgrade my green blob already" will trigger a cutscene in which the camera goes around Totoko in an arc as he is swallowed up in light and transforms into a taller, darker green blob with line-like markings under his eyes.
Afterwards Lady Blue goes on a bit about character upgrades, apparently takes an opportunity to make fun of our intelligence, prompting what is presumably a "HEY!" from Oliver. They talk a little more... And make some sort of warp thing for us... If you take the time to talk to Blimpy the Bearded, he apparently has quite a bit of lore to share with you... If you can understand moonspeak. Or at least, I presume that's lore, based off of the fact that entire text boxes are sometimes 80% red. Attempting to talk to the princess at this point gives you what are apparently pointers... Also in moonspeak... Now what, game?
- Warp back out. (Warp once. Do not warp out of the mountain again. To the beginning, we did not select it).
Right, let's do that. Going through the warp ring takes us back to the first of those stone bird statues that we ran into back in Mordor... So we're supposed to go to...?
山頂 へ の 道.
- Walking into a room will have to wade through it, after winning the game went on.
- I went to the door. Close to the chest key. Doors to avoid walking on the left before.
- On the left to find another door. Another key to open it.
- Back down to the first goal of the Item Merging アイテム マージ cast for the two keys together.
... Ah. Looks like that might be the other fork in the road.
After a quick backtracking, we go past some steaming lava and-
... Get ambushed by a orange lava-spewing equivalent of a fat girl in a bikini and gigantic volcanic pimples? Ew... She's dribbling lava...
... Oh boy, we seem to have run into another boss battle here... Er... Sending "I Burn Easily" Drippy up against a volcanic fat lump doesn't seem like the best idea... So let's hug the back row and attack. We'll try an ice attack from Oliver, Taillow's default spell, and Rucci's tried and true strategy of jabbing things in uncomfortable places. Hmm... This boss seems to be weak to ice magic, so let's try another round of that, but have Taillow lay off the MP. The boss launches three boulders that correspond to our particular row... But they don't come down yet... Yeah, let's clear that back row stat. It is also at this point that we realize that this boss doesn't have an HP meter... Is she even beatable? Clearing the back row couldn't have come at a better time, as those boulders from earlier fell down on where we were in this turn. Let's just keep whaling on this thing... In the next turn, we repeat the pattern of "ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK!", Taillow wound up eating a 34 HP swat, and we seem to have gotten this boss under 25% health since she can't stand up properly at this point. After another turn, and Rucci getting hit for 38 HP we have Oliver unlock his limit break... But should we really be using this on a FIRE boss? Eh... One way to find out... We have Rucci and Taillow stand guard for this turn as Oliver casts a massive fireball... And proceed to cherry tap our boss for the last 38 HP of her health. In the aftermath, the boss vanishes in a flash of light like most conventional monsters, and Maru's duck winds up leveling up after we get 614 very sweet experience points...
... What is this?
Maru's duck is evolving!
Congratulations, Maru's light blue duck turned into a dark blue pallete swap with an additional spell! (At level 17.)
Maru and Oliver chat a bit post-boss fight, while Drippy hugs the back with her father. There's some sort of conversation, whatever it is, it looks like Maru's father is making Oliver disappointed... Presumably he's still bitter about the fact that we let his baby girl get down to 4 HP of keeling over last update. Oliver yells at Maru's dad, Maru and Drippy pipe in... ... And suddenly it's just us and Drippy on the overworld again... And an arrow bidding us to go northward... Onward! But first let's heal up Rucci and Tai-
... *twitch* There was a save point... 5 feet. Ahead of us.
Swallowing our pride (and wasted bread rolls), we go up to heal and save before we progress further. Now what?
- Went to the safe. Then go to my boss.
- After you win, we will come back to ババナシア 王国 we went out to get the map.
- Walk to the south. Next destination is 南 の 港町 ビッキーニ.
... Another boss? Okay...
There's some different enemies here, one of the first new faces is some sort of blue, white, and yellow finned fish-dog. It's not all that tough, deal out about 100 or so HP and it'll slump over- Wait, another Imagine upgrade? Looks like Taillow is growing up a bit at this point... At Level 18. Unlike Maru's duck, Taillow's changes are quite a bit more substantial, its plumage pattern changes and its feather-spikes on its head change shape. Hmm... On the subject of Imagines... While we're here, let's play around with Maru's harp a bit. We try it out on a fishdog... And after a couple bites and wand-swats manage to see hearts... Hmm... Let's keep at it.
... That mutt bit Maru for 40 points... That MUTT BIT MARU FOR 40 POINTS! Alright chump, you've got 2 turns to change your tune before I beat the snot out of you.
... 2 turns and one throttled fish-dog later, we backtrack to the save point. If Maru CAN recruit monsters from the field, it's certainly not worth attempting on things that can halve your health in one move.
This particular chunk of dungeon appears to be build around a 2-way fork in the path. The left fork dead ends at a red chest with armor, the upper fork has a HP crystal and goes on a ways up... On this path, we run into a pallet swap of those Flareon/Vaporeon offspring from outside Ding Dong Dell... That hits for about 3x the amount of damage. After a few more battles, team MVP Rucci evolves at Level 20 into a swordsman with a blue shirt, some more hair, and a sturdier looking sword and shield.
After having the fortune to whittle down an enemy party to a singular, weaker enemy, we decide to try playing around with Maru's harp again. And after what seems like an eternity, we finally manage to convince one of those feathered lizards to join us and not make us beat it up for scratch EXP. Uh... Naming time... Hmm... What do we call a thing with a shield that looks like a velociraptor? After a long mental pause and some questioning to some internet friends, I decide to go with Kree (lit: クリー). Imagines that you recruit in Ni no Kuni apparently come at full health, which is great for us, because that would suck if Kree had to limp around in pain from getting hit upside the head from our attacks throughout this entire dungeon (not to mention a waste of a perfectly good party slot). Kree joins the party at Level 12 with 65 HP and 31 MP.
In another battle, we discover that it's possible for the monsters that you face to just like you off the bat if you have Maru in your party. And we wind up getting one of those medic stingray things as part of our rapidly ballooning party. Being the oh-so-creative player I am, I call him "Ei," which happens to be "stingray" in moonspeak. Ei joins at level 14 with 67 HP and 60 MP.
We reach a gate with a path continuing on beyond it. Being the suicidal curious folks we are, we go off to check the path out before opening up the gate. The upper fork has a red chest with a key in it, the other path has... ... A bunch of lava all over the path... Hmm... Oh well, FLOAT! This particular path comes with forks between other lava-covered paths, so be prepared to break out that stylus, and possibly some coffee to make it over it. The upper fork dead ends at a blue chest with a claw... The other takes you to another gate... With a further stretch of dungeon beyond it... Yeah, let's backtrack and heal first.
Trying the key on the first gate doesn't work... Looks like we'll have to cross some lava again. Making it to the second gate, we find that the gate opens to a dead end with a chest... ... And the key that we need. After successfully backtracking to the other gate, Maru's dad pops up to yack a bit. Uh... We need to use magic now... But what? ... Let's try Unlock... Wait a minute... Item Merging? Oh! ... Right. After some brute forcing, we finally figure out that it's the spell that looks vaguely like a fused 'D' and 'C' that does item merging, and get a fused gray key from our red and blue keys for our trouble.
We open the gate, Oliver is cheery... And then promptly has an 'Oh crap, there's probably a monster behind this gate' moment the moment the doors stop moving. Maru and her father make some comments, presumably some variation of "Get a spine, Oliver," and we press on to a save point and a convenient grate to rearrange like back at the elven palace to shuffle our Imagines. Let's save and heal up before we take on the boss here. ... We reach a bluff overlooking a pit of lava... And... Drippy promply has an aneurysm when he sees a precariously balanced boulder threatening to drop into the pool of lava and deep fry us all. Everyone's arguing is cut short by the emergence of a oversized lava... Bipedal lizard thing... You know, what a frill-necked lizard would be like if it was maroon, had a frill made of napalm, with a blue and white thing that looks like it's halfway between a loincloth and a kilt, a tail with plates arranged to look kinda like an asparagus, and all and all looks like it would probably melt your DS if it touched it.
You know what this means...
Hmm... Let's hug the middle and back, but avoid the corners, lest we fall to another nasty trick like that temple boss' cross attack. Let's see what Rucci and Taillow's new spells can do- Er... I guess just Rucci's, his apparently boosts attack, I accidentally commanded Taillow to defend. In other news, this boss took 94 damage from Oliver using an ice attack, so I guess we know what gets under its fiery hide. Attacking again, and inadvertently telling Taillow to defend... Again, reveals that Oliver can top 100 damage on this boss with his ice magic, and Rucci dealt out a whopping 83 HP of damage with a simple sword jab. A third turn takes off 190 HP combined off of our boss' health bar, we learn that Taillow's 12 MP spell that he gained after "evolving" is also something that boosts attack, and Oliver eats 40 HP of damage. Alright, let's rush this guy! A round of all-out attack is enough to take over 260 points off of this boss' health meter, and give him trouble standing up, since this is the first time we've been able to see his back spikes. Since Rucci's deeply in the red health-wise, let's take this turn to heal and regroup for one final rush. During this turn, we get Oliver and Rucci both at or above 90 HP, and the boss shows off a move that COULD have been very annoying had it hit the column Rucci was in, or for that matter, if it had hit Oliver. He can apparently do a tail sweep across an entire horizontal row of movement cells. But enough, let's send lizard boy back to his lava pit already. After he topples over, we learn that thankfully, his garments DO have material on the underside, net 971 EXP, 95 gil G, a sweet looking orange orb, as well as a character upgrade for Felis at Level 16. Post-upgrade Felis gets some white and gray-purple facial markings, a brown vest in place of his ratty red shirt, and an actual sword instead of that fruit knife he was waltzing around with before this.
Post-battle, there's a cutscene of the boss stumbling back into the lava pit, and then Oliver causing that boulder from earlier to fall into it... Right as the boss regains his bearings enough to watch the boulder come bearing down on him and give a short "Oh crap" expression. If it weren't for the fact that he kinda roared in our faces and tried to incinerate us all for no good reason, I'd probably feel a little sorry for him. (Considering how he crawled out of a lava pit, he'll probably live, it's just that he won't be seeing the surface world anytime soon.) Maru and her father give Oliver a short "Good job!" speech afterwards
Afterwards, the game takes us back to that desert town. Oliver gets upset with Maru's father over something... There's some talking between him, Oliver, and Drippy... There's mention of a location that happens to pop up later on in our guide... Is that our next stop? Maru's father sends us off, tells us not to be COMPLETE idiots, and then the game frees us to move about where we want to. However, seeing as it's a fairly unreasonable hour right now, and we've FINALLY gotten out of Mordor, let's call this a night and stop at the local inn.
Takeaway Points:
- If you have Maru in your party, you can recruit Imagines from the battlefield. That said, they will still attack you up until the point where
you trap them in a plastic ballyou beat them to an inch of their lives and negotiate with them* Maru's music finally sways them, so if you plan on trying to recruit an Imagine with some bite off the bat, expect to have to heal. If you see hearts, followed by speech bubbles in subsequent turns, you know you're making progress. - You can have 15 characters on you at any given time. While that sounds like a lot, after you suddenly realize that ANY enemy that you run into can theoretically become a teammate, that seems a lot smaller. Expect to have to out and out bench some imagines at different points in-game.
- Imagines are kinda like Pokemon, they can upgrade after leveling up to certain points. Aside from the cosmetic changes and spells, it remains to be seen whether there's any (dis)advantages to upgrading them as soon as you can.
- The VAs more or less went on strike this update. The only spoken lines outside of battle were a couple short blurbs in the cutscene following the lava pit boss.
- Defeating the mountain pass miniboss; TL/DR version: DON'T PANIC. She may not have a HP bar to track how close you are to putting her down for the count, but this boss is more or less a pushover, if hard-hitting. Avoid keeping your party members in a nice horizontal row and remember to move OUT of the line of fire if she tries her boulder trick. Otherwise, just keep any party members with elemental weaknesses to fire *cough* Drippy *cough* off of the field, use ice magic to rack up easy damage, and heal when you need to.
- Defeating the lava pit boss; TL/DR version: ... He's actually not all that different from the miniboss, if a little more intimidating and less "Ew, lava pimples". Once again, keep your party members from forming nice horizontal lines (and you won't have a turn to get out of the way if he successfully tail sweeps you) and keep your squishier party members AWAY from him. He hits a bit harder than the miniboss, so if you don't feel like keeping someone on medic duty (which considering how there's a save point that replenishes your HP and MP RIGHT BEFORE this fight, is probably somewhat redundant if you play your cards right or are otherwise lucky) consider offensive buffs to help eat away at his HP bar faster. As with the miniboss, this boss is weak to ice magic, which just so happens to be one of Oliver's cheaper-to-use spells at this point.
- The story has been getting a bit harder on the bosses post-battle... And they've become increasingly capable of killing you horribly, so it all balances out!
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 18: 104 HP / 77 MP
- Rucci: Level 20: 133 HP / 68 MP
- Taillow: Level 19: 128 HP / 63 MP*
- G: 5634
- Play Time: 29 hours, 21 minutes, 27 seconds.
Next time, we will press on with Oliver's saga... Or alternately, wind up spending a few hours wandering around collecting Imagines.
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