Part 5: Screenshot Update 5: Drowning in Density

Screenshot Update 5: Drowning in Density

Following Tombstone Trail and the acquisition of Travel, the game drops a sidequest avalanche on my ass. Most of these are the standard broken hearts and clone bounty hunts, so I did them but they won't be covered anymore. This still ended up being nearly 90 screenshots, so strap in.



Our first stop is Old Father Oak, who we can regale with our tale of time travel bullshit for some stuff.




None of it is useful this time.

I also went back to Autumnia and got myself a zombie.



I admit that connection is obscure, even for me.



And a cheeseburger I missed.

The brother in the Hamelin side alley wanted us to check the forest for a fungus he can use to heal his sick sister.




That's a spear weapon I give to Shiro!?.




She means Carrot Cake. Luckily they're a piece of piss to make.





There's also a green chest nearby for Swaine to grab.




And it's even less useful than what Old Father Oak gave me.

We give the fungus to the brother, but yet another problem besets his efforts.




We'll take care of them later in this update. In the meantime, we help this woman who was lacking restraint several months ago, so she's likely shopped herself out of her own house.



Horace is hanging out on the bridge nearby, and he has another riddle for us.






Nazcaan script becomes more relevant in later updates. In a couple cases the game (Drippy) translates it for you, which I'm kind of okay with. It's a pain to translate yourself. To wit, I didn't even bother looking in the book and just told Horace the answer.




The joke is wizard clothing is always made of the finest fibers. Horace's and Oliver's share material from the Sky Tree. And no, that doesn't mean shit. Vacate is a fairly useful spell though; it allows us to escape to the entrances of dungeon areas, which are places Travel can't be used.



We'll see Horace again in due time.

During the Swaine and the Sea video, you may have noticed this guy hanging out in the area nearby Castaway Cove. I left him until after Hamelin because he's a tough fucker; he kicked my ass first playthrough.





R proves himself several times this update.

The four pirate ships mentioned earlier are also nearby. They just move in a circle, so they're easy to sneak up on. Every ship's crew is made of zombies.





The third ship will have four zombies instead of three...



...and the fourth ship has the captain.



It's this ship where things get hairy. I pull it off with lots of Phoenix Feathers and patience, and in a nice bit of situational irony, ADAMANT gets enough XP to metamorphose into the exact zombies I was fighting the whole time.





Returning to the brother gets us more pirate stuff. I probably gave it to ADAM 'cause I'm a smartass.



Jumping over to The Fairygrounds, this fairy needs me to gather some herbs for his sickness.



Now I wish even more that one of them died when they jumped in the river. Just a few steps further Ni no Kuni; that's all you needed.

Luckily he wants items I've already farmed the fuck out of this entire LP.




One of the more amusing broken hearts is this shopkeeper. He simply doesn't talk to people, and in all fairness, I agree with the guy. He's not brokenhearted; he's an introvert. But of course Oliver and Drippy operate on "introverts aren't real" and decide he needs fixing.




In the process of writing this update, I went from being amused by this sidequest to personally offended by it.

Whatever. We've already established that they're terrible characters anyway.




And another cheeseburger I missed.



We can't go an update without catching up on our favourite Shadar-off-pissers. This time the husband has lost his nerve.




Also this guy again.




This fairy has a monster-killing fetch quest for us.





It's similar to the quest earlier where we had to use frost attacks on the desert flower monsters to get their feathers. This time we have to blind the Whambats before we kill them, and since that's a status effect, we get a lot more leeway in terms of time. We also don't have to worry as much about your allies taking your kill, since you want them dead fast.




The most amusing part of this sidequest though is when you give the slapsticks back. The guy proceeds to talk to himself, at one point referencing Steffan Rhodri, the English voice actor for Drippy.




The gentleman's diary can be found in the cave full of blue crabs.




We have a mystery quest available by someone inside the forest. This one is nearby the Collum I killed earlier.




This one will have to be saved for later, since I don't have access to Jade Marbles yet. I complete it two videos from now.

In the meantime, I have enough merit stamp cards to collect two more rewards.




There's a bounty hunt hanging out nearby the entrance to Old Smoky. She ends up being a running gag set of hunts that all take place here, each one progressively higher up the volcano and all trying to make it erupt.




She's pretty creepy.

Luckily she's been here a while and is relatively weak now, especially to Shiro!?.



In the Golden Grove, a fairy tells us that Hyperboars have taken over the forest.




They're also not too tough at this point.




Kill all of them, and the big daddy Full Boar spawns in front of the fairy.




He's a good bit tougher than his kids.



But luckily Tingle is an area-of-effect motherfucker.




A kind of depressing unique bounty hunt is hanging out nearby Tombstone Trail.




You can get tons of "the fug?" jokes out of this guy. He already looks confused and lost.



With him killed and all of the other quests and bounty hunts turned in, I can grab another reward.



However the Old Smoky brigade has only just invaded.




He's just a clone of the ogre we fought in the past who Gascon and Marcassin were harassing.




Shiro!?'s having none of that.



We go back to Swift Solutions, and yet another monster attacks Old Smoky.




She's just as creepy as her sister.



And Shiro!?'s just as effective against her.



Killing her gets R enough experience to metamorphose his third and final time.



I decide to make him a Soldier Bumbler.




HYDORAAAAH

Thus concludes this overlong screenshot update that was even stupidly longer before I cut out the malminutia. Next time: we scale Skull Mountain and confront the dreaded Sky Pirate Kublai in our search for the stones of Mornstar. And we get a big fucking dragon.