Now that Isaac’s party has secured passage south to Venus Lighthouse by agreeing to help a morally-shady wannabe Roman emperor find a mythical island so that he can become immortal we’re going to…put that on the backburner for now. While the path to the endgame has been laid out before us, there is one somewhat significant loose end that’s been left dangling for some time now and now we can finally get the means to resolve it. First, what we have to do is head off to Babi’s private bedchamber which is just off the throne room. Babi has already tucked himself into bed to conserve his energy, and on his nightstand rests a black orb. This is the Cloak Ball, Babi explains when we examine, and it’s what he used in the cave to turn himself invisible. We’re free to take it, and equipping it teaches the holder the Cloak spell which does nothing right now but is key to what we’re about to attempt.
With that done we can take our leave of the city for the time being. With Colosso over Tolbi has become a much quieter place, even losing its unique BGM for the generic “Happy Towns” tune. Most of the tourists and fighters are still stuck though thanks to the continued lack of ships willing to cross the Karagol. The only group that’s left is a bunch of soldiers with Sheba in tow, since I guess now that we’ve agreed to head to Lemuria Babi no longer feels that it’s quite as urgent to force the Laliverans to build his lighthouse. Anyway if we head east towards the Karagol but this time hug the southern shore instead of the northern one we will come across a cave simply known as Gondowan Cave. It’s a supremely simple and short dungeon that only really stands out for having slightly tougher enemies compared to Altmiller Cave, such as Dirty Apes who can inflict big damage and an Attack debuff on one character with Freebite Rush, Warrior Bees which are weak but are the first enemy with a kamikaze attack in Mortal Blow, and Kobolds which lack gimmicks aside from being big blocks of HP. The purpose of this place is that it actually allows passage to the other side of the Karagol if you have Lift and open a handy shortcut towards the end, dropping us out on the world map just south of Kalay.
With the mention of Kalay, that brings us to what we’ll be doing today: saving Hammet. The poor guys been rotting away within Lunpa for like ten updates now and it’s time to finally set that right. This side trip is completely optional, but more levels never hurt, and there’s even a Djinni to snag that we’d otherwise completely miss out on. So we head north back to the starting area of Angara, pass Vault, and return to Lunpa. The guards still won’t let anyone in the front gate but there is an alternate entrance in that tiny cave just to the west. Instead of triggering the switch and inadvertently causing the gate to slam shut, we have to use Frost on a puddle at its base to prop the thing open, allowing us to come out on the other side within the confines of Lunpa. Despite the generic happy music, no one in Lunpa is happy; ever since Dodonpa confined Hammet to the fortress the gates have been closed, essentially putting the village in a lockdown state and naturally killing the local economy (though it’s kind of their own fault: even though there’s nothing stopping them from selling stuff to Isaac for some badly-needed coin the shopkeeps and the inn keeper refuse to do any business with us). No one likes Dodonpa or his band of thugs, who apparently routinely harass the villagers and force the womenfolk to the fortress. As foretold so long ago, Dodonpa’s nothing but a nasty crook.
Despite the fact that we can’t rest at the inn there is a Psynergy Stone hidden via Reveal that we can use, plus there’s a secret storehouse in the village’s cliffside with six treasure chests that we can relieve of their contents, including another Water of Life and a Lucky Medal. Fair’s fair. The entrance to the fortress itself is one screen north, but it’s guarded 24/7 so we can’t get in, which is where the gimmick of this dungeon and the purpose of the Cloak Ball come into play. Lunpa is actually one big stealth mission. If Cloak is cast while Isaac is standing in shadow, in this case the ones cast by the fencing around the fortress’s entrance, he will become invisible just like Babi was…but it only works while he’s in shadow. As soon as he puts even a toe into the light, the spell wears off and he’ll become visible again. In this way we’re supposed to sneak around the guards to enter the fortress.
Lunpa Fortress is essentially a darkened cave similar to Altmiller Cave, but not to the extent where it’s pitch black. We want to stick to the darkness with Cloak, avoiding Dodonpa’s thugs, some standing stationary, others patrolling. If we get spotted by any of the ones wearing green we’re instantly given the boot, while red ones, Brigands, attack us. Brigands are basically just the Bandit from Vault with more HP and can use Crystal Powders to attack in addition to Slice. There are a couple of rooms in the fortress that we can enter occupied by non-hostiles, including one with Dodonpa’s wife and children, and another with his elderly father, Donpa, who’s asleep and confined to bed for the time being. We can learn through chatting with them + mind reading that Donpa enabled his son’s evil ways by spoiling him rotten as a child, regrets this deeply, and continues to enable him by doing nothing to stop his son, believing that someone else will “one day” punish Dodonpa. Fortunately, Dodonpa’s young son (Donpappa if you’re curious), seems to be much more righteous than his parent, looking after his beleaguered mother and vowing to protect Lunpa when he grows up.
During our sneaking mission we eventually pick up the Cell Key item that allows us to access the basement level of the fortress (as well as snag the Mythril Circlet, a great piece of headgear for Ivan and Mia that grant them an additional PP regen effect), the only area with random encounters, and at the very end is Hammet’s rather spacious cell. At first he thinks someone’s come with dinner, and is naturally quite surprised to see Ivan strolling into his cell. His confusion turns to delight when he sees Isaac, Garet, and Mia with him, realizing that his prophesied journey has finally begun. But the reunion is brought to a sudden end by the appearance of Dodonpa himself, a greasy looking guy, and as you can imagine he’s here to taunt us for being little kids (Garet gets a good comeback though, retorting that if they’re just kids what does that make his thugs who couldn’t stop ‘em), proclaiming that he’ll never give up his cash cow in Hammet, and that we’ve fallen into his trap. Said trap is that he sics some kind of giant lizard/frog monster thing on us.
Toadonpa
HP
- 2800
- Weak to Fire; Resists Water
- Rotten Blood - Deals Fire damage to one enemy and may lower Defense.
- Dark Breath - Deals moderate Fire damage to three enemies and may lower their Defense.
- Sticky Poison - Deals Water damage and attempts to poison one enemy
- Thrash - Deals Water damage to one enemy; may reduce HP to 1.
Toadonpa…? Really? Well despite the goofy Theme Naming that been going on in Lunpa, this beastie’s a bit of a pain. That’s a nice big block of HP coming off of the Colosso gladiators and it even regenerates eighty of that a turn. The good news is that it has a very small movepool and only one AOE attack, the bad news is that all of its attacks have secondary effects, with Thrash’s being pretty nasty since it’s the first time we’ve encountered something with that effect. On my runthrough, Toadonpa actually stuck to using its version of Dark Breath almost exclusively, which was a big deal because it’s not easy to recover from debuffing since Golden Sun doesn’t have a Dekunda equivalent. Dark Breath was thus soon dishing out the equivalent of heavy-class damage to three guys each turn, forcing Mia to focus on spamming Wish and Spritz. The other good news is that Toadonpa is luckily very weak to Fire attacks, plus Ivan learned the AOE version of Impact, High Impact, just before this encounter, so after a turn or two of setup getting at least 400 or so points of damage off a turn wasn’t much trouble.
Winning earns us 999 EXP, 3200 coins, and a Psy Crystal.
After the battle we see that Dodonpa has been pinned underneath his pet monster. Being a weaselly, pathetic villain he’s reduced to begging us to shift Toadonpa’s carcass, but none of the party, not even Mia is really all that interested in doing so. The scene gets very dumb though when Hammet, despite being kidnapped and held for ransom, says they should forgive the thief and let bygones be bygones just because he stammers out an obviously-insincere apology. And the party just goes along with it, with Garet being the Only Sane Man by strenuously objecting to the absurdity, reminding the others that Dodonpa just tried to kill them, and says that what they should really do is to lock him up in his own cell like he just did to Hammet. You know, while playing this game I’ve been thinking, despite the fact that Garet’s been characterized as being a little hot-tempered and brash throughout the story…he’s actually come across as one of the more sensible characters. The party’s not exactly overflowing with character depth, especially with one of them being mute, but I kind of doubt that was the intention with Garet there. Maybe. Hard to tell.
Anyway, voice says that that would serve him right and in rushes the elder Donpa, at last having worked up the stones to tell his son off for his behavior and taking responsibility for the trouble he’s caused by spoiling him. Donpa apologizes to Hammet for what he’s allowed to happen and tells Isaac’s party that they must leave the fortress by the same undetectable way they came so that Dodonpa’s thugs, who are more loyal to him than to Donpa, would catch that something’s amiss if Hammet’s spotted roaming the corridors, free Dodonpa, then march on Kalay for payback. Donpa says that the next time we see Dodonpa he’ll be a changed man, but I don’t think I’m going to go and hold my breath any over that one.
We don’t have to actually Metal Gear it out of the fortress ourselves because Isaac is automatically whisked back to the entrance and once again uses Cloak to slip past the guards, nor are we allowed to manually head back in. Despite the village still being closed off from the outside world the people of Lunpa are in better moods now that the rumor mill has it that Dodonpa’s been humiliated, and the inn and vendors are now open for business. I haven’t talked about shop inventories much, but Lunpa’s weapon shop is special because it has the Demonic Staff available in its artifact section, and that’s special because it’s the first piece of cursed equipment we’ve come across. Cursed equipment is generally pretty strong (but not always the best necessarily) but as I mentioned waaaaaaaaaaayyyy back at the start when I was listing status ailments, once equipped they can’t be removed save by going to a Sanctum and the wearer may be unable to act when their turn comes up in battle. While I am passing up the Demonic Staff currently, I do use other pieces of cursed gear that turn up later, and there is something that makes them more viable…
Well, after updating some of my gear, it’s time to say goodbye to Lunpa. We gotta head back through the West Lunpa Cave entrance, and on our way out we encounter a man with a unique sprite but no mugshot that Hammet recognizes as a “Bunza”. Bunza turns out to also be a merchant from Kalay and despite the kidnapping incident he came to Lunpa to peddle his wares its people because he believes in Hammet’s tenants that one can’t judge customers by their appearance and that one must to do anything in their power to bring business to those who want it. Even though he wasn’t allowed into the village, his presence is a boon for we can use his covered wagon to ride back to Kalay right out from under Dodonpa’s nose. We’re actually given several opportunities to turn down this offer and I’m going to decline each one of them because there’s something we still need to do in Lunpa now that Hammet’s safe and I want to keep backtracking to a minimum at this point. After bidding farewell to Bunza and Hammet we have to return to Donpa’s bedroom within Lunpa Fortress and as thanks for sorting out his son he’ll hand us the penultimate Mercury Djinni, Tonic, which cures all the party’s ailments during battle. Reading the old man’s mind however, shows that he’s already going soft again and considering freeing Dodonpa from his cell, and visiting the man himself in the basement cell reveals that he is of course totally unrepentant. Let’s get out of here.
So let’s head back down south to Kalay to wrap up this subplot. Despite the fact that Hammet’s been returned safe and sound the townspeople are still being kept in the dark regarding the whole incident because the palace is worried about Lunpan spies apparently. Hammet’s basically confined to the palace now, and visiting Layana and him in the throne room sparks a brief scene where Layana scolds us for disobeying her wishes to leave the kidnapping to Kalay while we have our own quest to handle. Hammet doesn’t hide his gratitude at least, and tells us that we need to take the Shaman’s Rod to the western continent of Hesperia. What we will find there he does not know, but that is what the Jupiter Adept he met long ago told him, so it must be something important. Despite Layana’s harsh words she shows her own gratitude by having Bunza open up some gates in the waterway that runs beneath the palace so that we can loot some treasure chests laying around, the most valuable of which are the Spirit Gloves equipment that boosts the wearers affinity for all four elements.
We have finally cleared out pretty much everything that Angara has left to offer. Next time it’ll be full steam ahead for the continent of Gondowan and the endgame.
