Part 28: Ultimate Power

Last time, we gained the Holy Sword, the Diamond Crest, killed Zorgia and saw Nava die and come back to life as a guardian spirit thing.

Also;



We really should do something about that.

So, with seven crests in hand we can now access the final dungeon and kick Melzas' arse.



All seven altars for the crests are easily accessed from by the Coal Mine of all places. Six of them are relatively easy to reach and are all near each other. The other one is out of the way and best saved for last because otherwise you're giving yourself a lot of backtracking for no real reason.

By placing them all, the Lake Shrine rises once more.



The game is even kind enough to drop you off right in front of the dungeon just so you don't have to trek here. That's why it's a good idea to leave placing the Emerald Crest until last.


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The Lake Shrine is, by far, the largest dungeon in the game. An entire part of the dungeon is just gaining access to the place in the first place, even after bringing it back to the surface. Fortunately, you can backtrack to Inoa with a teleporter (and vice versa) if you need something. If you've been diligent in acquiring Gilded Falcons upto this point you will do.

Just outside the entrance to the interior lies two very worthwhile items; the final Falcon and the final Magic Seed. Putting these two items together like that is kind of pointless... and by "kind of" I mean very pointless. Why? Well, the Falcon here makes 50 which means one thing...



We can get the Spirit Wand.



What remains of the entire game now poses no challenge whatsoever. Alundra is quite literally immortal now. The wand doesn't grant infinite HP, oh no... what it does is much, much more broken.



"Prevents direct attacks" is somewhat misleading. It doesn't prevent Alundra from receiving direct attacks. It prevents him from USING direct attacks (the Charm Boots have a similar issue in that their item description says they prevent damage...). Whenever you have the Spirit Wand equipped, you can only deal damage from items. There's an easy 5 choices there; the four spells and the Bomb. The Bomb is massively underpowered at this point, so that's out. This leaves the four spells... but only 4 MP, right? Not quite!

"Creates magic energy" tells you absolutely nothing so the weapon just sounds useless. It has no attack, and it just creates energy? Does it have a charge then that blasts things with a powerful attack? Nope. It gives you infinite MP. That's where the immortality comes from. With infinite MP, you can cast the Water Book whenever you need to restore your HP thus you'll always be able to heal to full and should never, ever die. With infinite MP, you can cast the Fire Book whenever you want and kill fucking everything with no hassle at all.

With infinite MP, the game is your bitch and there's absolutely nothing it can do about it.

Next time: Armageddon.