There’s not much going on in the seas to the north of Izumo. A large stretch of rocky reefs block off the bay where Imil and Mercury Lighthouse were so we can’t go very far west. There is one island here, an optional dungeon called Treasure Isle. It’s not quite an equivalent to Crossbones Isle, but because it can’t be fully explored until much later in the game I’m not going to bother with it at the moment. One of the shallow spots near it contains another Rusty Mace though.
We’ll be heading back south today, and along the way I have to make a quick pit stop at Apojii. Now that we have Sand we can use it to slip under some rocks at the beach in order to access a lower section of the Gaia Falls screen. It looks like there’s a dead end here, but we can actually jump off the falls at this hidden spot to find a small outcropping below with a hidden cave behind the falls. This is a complete leap of faith given the GBA’s small screen, and to put this into perspective you basically have to jump off of the edge of the world!! Any other medium and that would be suicide. Fortunately, this little cave leads out to another small outcropping where we find the Jupiter Djinni Haze just kinda chilling. I guess if you wanted to find a good spot to just hang, the edge of existence is as good as any other. Haze basically turns one character invisible, effectively making them invincible for a single turn. Not too shabby in the least.
Now then, our first destination this update is the eastern chunk of Osenia which is only accessible by sea thanks to a mountain range. Towards the north is the only settlement in this part of the continent, Yallam, which can be access either from the north via landing at a beach or the south via sailing up the mouth of a river. Yallam is a small place, and pretty much the entire town, from the people to the music, are deeply depressed and listless, and have been ever since Yepp, the famous fisherman and sailor mentioned on one of the Eastern Sea’s island earlier, passed away. All the children in the village are gathered in a clearing that’s one screen to the right, a space that’s decorated with various tree stumps with moons, suns, and stars carved on them. These all have to do with a song that Yepp taught them, supposedly containing the secret to his navigating prowess:
If you want to go to the stars, if you want to go to the stars. Go north past the twins, passing two swirls, run deasil twice \'round the trunk. Haste without waste, and head to the east, past three to the north. Then, run \'round thrice and wait for the waves. When they stop run north and go to the stars. If you race full of folly and take the wrong way, you\'ll find yourself a watery grave. If you want to go to the moon, if you want to go to the moon. Face west from the stars and run straight past three swirls, then circle \'round twice. Haste without waste, and head to the south, then one swirl west. There, run \'round thrice and wait for the waves. When they stop, run south and go for the moon. If you race full of folly and take the wrong way, you\'ll find yourself a watery grave. If you want to go to the sun, if you want to go to the sun. Face south from the moon and run straight through two swirls, then circle \'round twice. Haste without waste, and head to the west, then six to the north. There, run \'round thrice and wait for the waves. When they stop, run north and go for the sun. If you race full of folly and take the wrong way, you\'ll find yourself a watery grave.
Seems awfully specific and not very musical, huh? Well the general tune and the Japanese lyrics are actually based off a Japanese nursery rhyme known as \"Kagome Kagome\". Usually when I’ve seen that rhyme referenced in an anime or game I happen to be watching/playing it’s generally being used in a creepy context since the associated imagery can be a little eerie and it’s very easy for a children’s song to sound “off”, you know? Here though, they are instructions that are going to be very important, and the children run and skip around each stump as they sing.
Yallam’s other big reason for existing is a very important one: it’s home to Sunshine, the Ultimate Blacksmith of the game. He’s fallen into a lazy funk along with the rest of the town, but upon seeing our forgeable materials he perks right back up and agrees to go to work on one of them. Once he starts working we have to leave town and then return, and while the game doesn’t really make it all that clear to the player at first, we do have to pay cash to receive our new gear. There are two types of forging, the first being the restoration of the rusty weapons:
- The Rusty Axe becomes the Captain’s Axe, which isn’t all that great since it has no unleash and has been obsoleted by the rest of our gear. Can be used to buff a character’s Defense at least.
- The Rusty Sword becomes the Robber’s Blade, a long sword with the Shred unleash which doesn’t so much shred enemies as blow them up, potentially lowering Defense. This one’s usable, and goes to Felix.
- The first Rusty Mace becomes a Demon Mace. It’s strong, and its unleash of Evil Eye is Earth-based and may delude.
- Finally, the second Rusty Mace becomes a Hagbone Mace whose head appears to be a jack-o-lantern. Despite looking like a Joke Weapon, it’s decently strong, with the Earth-based Wyrd Curse unleash that can haunt foes.
Pretty straightforward. For generic forgeable materials like our two Tear Stones however, that’s where the RNG comes into play. Each raw material can potentially make a few different things, but it’s all percentage-based. Tear Stones make Water-themed stuff and all four items have roughly even chances of showing up. The two items I was able to make were the Clear Bracelet which also buffs Water power so it went to Sheba as a defensive upgrade over the Bone Armlet and to shore up her Water weakness, and the Spirit Ring which restores 160 HP to the whole party when used.
Next, there is one other location that we can visit in this part of Osenia, and I find it to be a bit of a weird one. If we head out of Yallam via its northern entrance then follow the rough, looping path on the world map southwest we will hit Taopo Swamp. Why I find this place to be weird is its length relative to its overall importance. There’s a Venus Djinni here but you don’t know that going in. Some of the townspeople of Yallam say that Sunshine sometimes comes here to get raw materials, but there actually aren’t that many to find. The dungeon is lengthy-ish but doesn’t have too much special in terms of payoff compared to say the Elemental Rocks. I guess overall it reminds me of those out-of-the-way locations in Pokemon games, only those usually have exclusive new Pokemon to capture.
Anyway, the single screen that is Taopo Swamp’s exterior is your typical Bubblegloop Swamp, full of dark, very nasty-looking muck. The remnants of a dock are laid about, but in order to actually reach the opposite shores and the bulk of the dungeon we have to wade out into the slime, which will cause Felix to gradually sink until he either gets pulled under and whisked back to dry land, or reaches a patch of bubbles which will push him back to the surface. Navigating the goop will allow us to snag a Cookie and access a cave that contains a half-buried Tear Stone that can be Scooped up. On the opposite shore from the start point are two more cave entrances, one of which requires Growth to reach. The first has two floors and the puzzle here involves snagging that Venus Djinni. We have to block up air vents so the rerouted bursts of steam blast it off a cliff, then we have to drop down the correct ledge to fight and capture it on the floor below. Flower is an AOE group heal to the tune of 30% max HP. Speaking of flowers there’s also a Mad Plant hiding in this cavern that should be uncovered a battle since it drops a Lucky Medal. Plus there’s another buried Tear Stone.
After obtaining Flower and the Lucky Medal it’s on to the second cave for the meat of Taopo Swamp. The first half involves more steam and puzzles of timing: freezing puddles so that we can reach distant ledges but before the steam blasts out again and melt our stepping stones. The second half is more involved puzzle-wise as it involves…magma. The deepest levels of the swamp do in fact consist of lava tubes and it’s not all that strange once you learn that the swamp’s based off of a location in New Zealand that rests on top of a dormant supervolcano. Lots of hopping across stepping stones, some of which we need to figure out how to tip into the magma first, and cooling down molten rocks with Douse ensue. After some looping around we use Tremor to knock a big boulder into a river of magma, thereby redirecting the flow into a patch of standing water that’s immune to Parch. With enough of the water evaporated we can proceed to the final room of the cavern, which appears to be empty save for a single molten rock. However Dousing it plunges the room into darkness aside from one patch of ground that begins to glow instead. Using Scoop there unearths a piece of Star Dust. Star Dust is another piece of forgeable material and the stuff it turns out is generally a bit better than what’s made from Tear Stones.
And that’s it for Taopo Swamp. Flower and some Star Dust are good loot by themselves but together they’re a bit underwhelming IMO. Sunshine forges the two Tear Stones into another Clear Bracelet and a Pure Circlet which has the same Defensive boost as the generic Platinum Circlet Sheba’s wearing but also increases one’s Water affinity so on her it goes. The Star Dust meanwhile becomes an Astral Circlet which in addition to the requisite Defense boost also increases the wearer’s PP by fifteen points.
Now there’s one more location we need to hit up before leaving this part of Weyard for the time being. Hopping back aboard the ship and heading southwest from Osenia brings us to the antarctic continent of Weyard, Tundaria. Heck, looking at the geographical layout of the continent Tundaria is literally Antarctica with the serial numbers filed off. There is a tiny island settlement just offshore called East Tundaria Islet that mainly exists to start off an important Chain of Deals by crossing a few small ice floes and pushing an injured penguin over to its mate, who rewards us with the Pretty Stone key item which will sit in the inventory looking nice and pretty until needed. The lesser reason for this place to exist is to prod the player into landing on Tundaria itself via an inhabitant mentioning a “strange tower” that’s supposedly been built there. This Tundaria Tower is on the tip of Tundaria’s Antarctic Peninsula equivalent so it’s a bit of a hike to reach it from the available eastern beach, but it’s worth it as there’s a Jupiter Djinni hiding out on the overworld to its southwest (Wheeze damages and potentially poisons its target).
Tundaria Tower is not that long a dungeon, but it is an ice-themed video game stage, which means there will be some sliding ice puzzles to stall out progress for a bit. There are three doors just inside the entrance; one opens into a tiny room with a biggish ice crystal in the center with flavor text noting that something’s frozen inside it, the other two are submerged in separate pools of water that must be evaporated with Parch. You want to tackle the one on the right first, since it leads to the majority of the dungeon, including a small side area where you have to solve an sliding ice puzzle to reach the next Mars Djinni, Reflux (counters an attack). After slipping every which way on the ice we eventually reach the peak of the tower, where the Burst Brooch rests on a small pedestal. Equip this, and we can use Burst to blow apart certain cracked objects when they appear. Such as that ice crystal, which yields an item called the Center Prong, as in a trident prong. Reminds me of another trident we’ve recently heard mention of…
Heading through the left door that we ignored before brings us to a big sheet of ice with a cracked section that we can now blow apart, and beyond is a cache of four treasure chests containing a Vial, a Lucky Medal, a Sylph Feather, and the Lightning Sword. Sylph Feathers are a new type of raw material that can be forged into wind-themed equipment (in fact there’s a specific nugget for each of the four elements) and the Lightning Sword is a fairly strong long sword, inferior only to the Cloud Brand at this point, and its unleash, Flash Edge, can delude enemies. I was hoping the Sylph Feather would be forged into a pair of Aerial Gloves since they power-up the Wind attribute in order to strengthen the Lightning Edge’s damage in turn, but unfortunately it ended up becoming a Sylph Rapier instead. Not a total loss though, for it’s an upgrade over Jenna’s Mist Sabre and the unleash, a series of thrusts called Mad Zephyr, can potentially deal double damage.
Speaking of forging, Sunshine can’t do anything with the prong we just discovered. But you know, if there’s a center prong, you just know there’s gonna be a right and left one…
Soundtrack
- Yallam
![](\"https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif\")
- I think this track does a fairly good job conveying the atmosphere of a depressed, dwindling town.
- Yepp\'s Song 1 and Yepp\'s Song 2
- Compare to \"Kagome Kagome\".
- Taopo Swamp
- Seriously it even gets its own, rather sinister-sounding, BGM track!
- Tundaria Tower
- I wonder if this was originally conceived as BGM for Aqua Rock that Sakuraba decided to repurpose after being told to go with something else.
