Part 60: Update LVII: An Adventurer and the Lost Isle
New update get. This scene takes place the first time you re-enter Atelier Rorona after the scene where Totori resolves to hunt down that troublesome devil. Video goes until Totori says "You can't do this!"
I think Teacher is the only one I can talk to. It's kinda hard to say, but I gotta...
What're you mumbling about? Something on your mind? Um, I want to ask you something! Me? What is it?
Thank you! Well...*fade for exposition*
So...because of that devil, the villagers might get eaten, and... Uh... Ummm...
No, I'm absolutely fine! I totally understand completely! Are you sure?
So what should we do, Teacher? H-Hold on. Let me gather my throughts about the situation... Hmmm... Maybe I asked the wrong person...
So you just need to sacrifice someone to get into a tower and beat some mean old devil? Yes. I guess we need a sacrifice. It's to save the village, but we can't sacrifice someone because of that.
Pamela? O-Of course not! Why would you suggest such a thing?! Yeah. I guess that's cheating, huh? It's not about cheating! That's terrible! I thought you and Pamela were friends!
Poor Totori is so far behind. Hopefully she'll be catching up soon.
Well, let's just try it out. If it doesn't work, we'll think of something else. If it doesn't work? Please don't treat Pamela's life like it's an experiment! I think it'll be okay, but let's go ask her anyway. All right, let's do it!*Rorona leaves*
Teacher?! Please don't decide this on your own! You can't do this!
Well, the Ruby Prism this time around isn't good for much. I don't think it's required in any recipes, and as a synthesis item for transferring to another item, there are much more convenient options. Spirit Stone is an alright attack item, I don't use it much.
Elixir is much better, of course, but strangely enough it's now a level 50 item, making it quite a leap for us, but we've got several items with traits that give us better odds. Well, at the very least it's great for alchemy level grinding, and you need to be level 50 to get Rorona's ending flag.
So at the start of our final full year (as expected, the game ends on Year 6, 6/1), we have our base materials for the final tier of weapons. Quality L, Convert Damage L (15% of a basic strike back as HP), Attack + 10 are all self-explanatory, but Inflict Paralysis gives the weapon the ability to inflict Paralysis, which is a general stat debuff, which luckily very few non-boss enemies are resistant to.
Finally, Holy Power is an inherent quality of the Wispstone, and it basically gives the user the ability to resist insta-death attacks (like the Fresverg has), and it reduces damage overall. This here is a good combination of traits, and should serve me well. I immidiately set a Chim working on making replicas of this.
Cory gets the first big upgrade. Fun fact, but even though Cory is still quite a bit below Totori and Mimi in overall level, the CSP is one of the strongest weapons in the game, and will actually give Cory more power than either of those two, even with their weapons being on the same tier.
Mimi's best weapon. For this, you get a scene. Video goes until the screenshot of Totori thinking about something Mimi said.
Yeah. That noisy kiddo is going to use it, right? Noisy? I guess you're not wrong...
All the same, I love Hagel's impression of Mimi. You can hardly tell them apart!
She looked at my lineup and said, "All you have are boorish and stupid-looking weapons!" She also said a bunch of stuff I'm not at liberty to say...
Why are you saying it? I knew that if I sold her anything weird, I'd never hear the end of it. No matter how many people complain, I only make stuff that looks ordinary. Maybe I'm a failure as an artisan.
Thanks... Haha, you're too nice, kiddo. Can I ask you for a favor? What is it? You can ask me anything! Can you keep it a secret from the noisy kiddo that I made this? Please? I don't mind, I guess... Really? Thanks! I think I just felt a huge load lift off my shoulders.
Unfortunately, like in Rorona, I just can't get everyone's weapons scene (every character has one for a specific weapon), simply because constantly switching people in and out in a game without leaked experience is not something I tend to do, but of course I'll record and post them.
And now we have our highest cloth tier. All of these should be pretty self-explanatory, but this'll give Totori and her allies rock solid defense, and a nice boost to HP. This is something I can work with.
Once again, Cory gets the first upgrade. The game's library says this coat is based off of Gio's, but its effectiveness cannot be denied.
One thing I should note is that it's important to see what each armor's upgrade does. For example, one of Mimi bits of armor increases LP and give a bigger boost to defense, but doesn't have the boost to HP or speed.
LP is not that big of a factor, especially with the Iksel Plate smorgasboard I have in the Container, and the defense increase isn't enough to offset those other stat increases, which I why I went with the Hero Mail.
With this setup, Mimi is now officially weaker than Cory, ten levels higher than her (164 vs. 170). That's because Mimi's Fighter's Garb does have a boost to attack, but the Hero Mail is definitely superior overall. Even with being slightly weaker, Mimi has nearly 100 HP more than Cory.
Totori's final weapon is ours. The best part is that Totori can do some pretty nice damage by herself, without relying on items.
And again. Totori shares this armor with Marc, but it shall suffice.
Here's a pretty interesting item: the Ether Ink. What it does is that it's an attack item that doesn't directly do any damage. What it does instead is that it makes the target more vulnerable to certain attacks. For lower quality ingredients, it makes the target more vulnerable to items, and for higher quality ingredients, physical attacks. I mostly made it because it's a necessary ingredient in the...
The Warrior Mask (we got this item recipe, among others, from Epic Poems). This little guy gives the wearer a substantial boost in total HP, and massive HP regeneration. While it will weaken our allies because we're replacing a Power Rune Gnardi Ring, all the power in the world will do you no good if you can't live long enough to use it. My favorite accessory in the game, I think.
Cory's getting this one, mostly because lack of total HP is Cory's balancing weakness. Anyway, our next big adventure is to the large island in the south, so heading back to Atelier Totori is an obvious first step. When we return, another Piana scene. Pretty sure this never happens if Rorona is in the party. Video goes until the screenshot of Totori thinking about things not being fair.
No fair... She's completely unfair... What are you doing, Ceci? Totori! Look! Your mean teacher is being so unfair! Unfair? What're you talking about?*fade to black*
Mmm. Umm... Twirl, twirl... Yeah, you're doing good. Just twirl a bit more. Okay. Twirl... Uh-oh!*item made noise*
Rorona, something weird came out.
Better than Totori? Really?! Maybe you can make something harder! Let's try something else... How about pies?!Naturally. If you want to initiate someone into the Order of Pastry, it's best to start them young.
Sure! I want to make some!*fade to black*
No way. She actually did it. See? It's not fair. I was the one playing with Piana.
Well, like in Rorona, Cory has a special assist where if Totori's health is below some threshold, her assist changes from defense into simply stopping the enemy's attack altogether. I love it.
We've finally made landfall on the mysterious island. What awaits us here? We shall see...
The first area is innocuous enough. Just a dock, water, and a beach with some high quality materials. Not much worth mentioning here.
To the southeast is the Himmel Way, which is filled with more materials and goat enemies. This is the first area in the game the gold goats show up, but they can also show up in the southwest peninsula area as a random encounter.
Our first big location on the Primordial Isle is the Grune Rainforest. It's pretty neat, but not as big as most locations. It only has points for killing the boss and finding all the gathering points.
Music: The Divergent Forest
Wow, the plans look completely different around here. Is that a carnivorous plant?! I've never seen one before! It's so cute! Maybe I can feed it.Totori and I have very different defintions of what qualifies as "cute", but I'll show you how they work soon.
Oh, and I made a mistake with the song that plays in Neumont Forest. The song there was called "The Shadows Gather", and the song here is called "The Divergent Forest". I already went back and corrected the song for Numont.
Big location, late game, Tonic.
Totori follows in the proud tradition of games putting something valuable behind where you start. I see through your tricks.
The Forest Dew is always a good thing to pick up, the Sonne Fruit we got from Iksel although we could always pick up more, and the Azure Wings have long since become obsolete after we made the Warp Gate.
As soon as you enter, a bunch of bugs are already bearing down on your position. They're nothing special, especially since we have our weapons and armor.
The new ingredient here is the Gold Scarab, which is another good ingredient, but not particularly useful for any one thing.
Okay, so the way these plants work is that if you give them either a Scarab or an Azure Wing (might be other ingredients, but those two for sure), they'll eat it, and give you a random ingredient back in exchange. Nothing too special, but it's a nice area-specific gimmick.
Personally, I wouldn't want to have my hand anywhere near any carnivorous plants, no matter what, but I guess that's why I'm not Totori.
Yep, nothing I especially need, but hey. There's three of them here, they only work once per visit, and they don't count as a gathering point. Moving on.
You may have noticed this ugly little guy in the opening screenshots, but let's see if we can't sneak up on him...
Not happening. Oh well. Time to take out the Queen Bee trash
Alright, I got lucky this time, because there can be up to three of those Queen Guards in this fight, but only two showed up to protect the Queen this time. Obviously, Goldie in the middle there is the most powerful, but those Guards will prove to be pretty annoying if you leave them bee
Luckily for me, they're all in a line, and Cory's Round Shock is fire elemental, which these freaks are weak to. Easy money.
What they're not weak to is lightning, but that Quartz will do anyway.
When Goldie gets below a certain amount of HP, she goes into Royal Rage, which just upps some of her parameters. Yawn.
She gives her foes some pretty virulent poison, but the thing with the Warrior Mask is that Cory still has a net gain of HP. Love that thing.
Great job of protecting her, guys. Although she didn't use it, her most powerful move is called Sonic Wave, which hurts pretty bad. As it stands, however, these guys are going to need a miracle to win.
A miracle they did not get. Another enemy cut down.
The big guy dropped this. Too bad I have a vastly superior Hero Mail being used right now.
A neat detail, which I am always a sucker for, is this dock and boat in the southern part of the area, but otherwise there's not much worth mentioning around here. Just assume I got the gathering points, because I did, and let's check out the eastern half of the island.
Next area is the Jungle Ruins. Nothing here worth mentioning, and there's not even any enemies about. What there is is a couple exits to this area, which lead to two different areas. Only one leads to the better part of the island, but we do need to head to that dead end location.
I know I've mentioned it for a number of places, but damn is this location chill.
Said dead end location is the Oceanic Hill, which has some unremarkable materials, but some really pissed off birds (and Scarlets).
Going back to the ruins, I ended up fighting a kinda special enemy. I was debating making this a video, but decided against it because he didn't last long enough for anything interesting to happen, but he tried at least.
So although I had more trouble with the Wasteland Beast, this is actually the genuine article, in that it isn't pathetic for how intimidating it looks. I'm in no danger of losing, but this ended up kind of a fun fight.
He has basically all the same tricks the Wasteland Beast did, sans the fire breath.
I *think* he can drop low quality Behemoth Hearts, but don't quote me on that. If I needed more Hearts, though, I could always force a Chim to get me more.
In spite of what it may look like, this rock can't be destroyed. Instead, our exit is...
Past this tree. Up ahead, we find...
The lair of these Behemoths roaming across the island. Otherwise, nothing special here, except this area, too, branches off to two different locations. First exit is north-ish of where you start.
Another tomb-area, the Primordial Cave. Our friend here looks so out of place, so let's send him on his way. I was actually all-prepared to make this a video, but the guy folded like a house of cards on the first turn.
Duplicate, like I mentioned, is the closest thing Totori has to a super attack. If you select this option, then the game takes you to the usable items menu in your Basket, and assuming you have any, it'll allow you to take an item (such as a Quartz), and use it without reducing the uses number on the actual item, but it's like...I want to say about half as strong as normal.
Well, at least it's confirmation about where Totori puts all her stuff on adventures.
But here we find the shrine of the Griffons. Hm...something tells me we might be near where the Griffons nest. Just a hunch...
Anyway, lots of gathering points here for such a small location, so I'd recommend a Tonic. Afterwards, I just made a quick trip through the Beast's Den to unlock the next area, so let's just skip right to it.
The final non-big location is the Himmel Gate. All that you should note here is that there's a rock just off-screen, but a good quality bomb should put it in its place.
Onward, brave adventurer, to the best location in the game.
The Grand Horn. I love this place.
Music: The Distant Summit
Treasure these days, Totori. They'll be the best years of your life. The Grand Horn is awesome, mostly because of the music. The Distant Summit always makes me think of just that, climbing a tall, vast mountain on the edge of the world, and that feeling of looking across a vast wilderness. I could listen to this song for hours.
The new ingredient here is the Fairy World Tree, which you can use in Warrior Masks. I wish I held off just a bit on making one, because that Stats +10 could have been used alongside the +5 I have on my current one. Ah well.
So yeah, the Grand Horn also doubles as the nesting grounds of the Griffons. The red one in back there is the area boss, and this actually makes the Grand Horn the last big location with the big three: all gathering points, boss, and landmark. You can't get the landmark without fighting the boss, however, like on Stein Hill.
Griffonians have this ability, the Death Dive, which gives them a chance of an insta-kill.
Well, they would have a chance of doing so, if I didn't have a trait on my weapons specifically meant to resist that.
South of the Griffon bridge is a drop that conceals a few gathering points. There's like...three or four down here.
The Griffons get stronger the further you on the bridge. From Griffon -> Griffonian -> Elder Griffon. In between each is a rock, but you should have more than enough explosives to deal with them.
It is time to teach the Elder Griffon his time has come.
He has some mean attacks, including Winter Rage. The thing about our armor is that it doesn't shield us very well from elemental attacks, but that's alright. He doesn't have much going for him.
Really? That quick? I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
And one of the last landmarks in the game. Who cares about plausibility when you have sights like this?
And there we go. Well, I think our fun on the Primordial Isle has come an end. All in all, quite the worthwhile trip.
Let's head to Atelier Totori, because we've got another Piana scene. This one is actually fairly long. Video goes until Ceci says "You can be such a baby".
Welcome back, Totori. Look, Totori! I made this!
Hehe. I tried really hard! That's amazing, Pinny! I only taught you the basics, but you've made so much on your own! Oh, really... You might even become a greater alchemist than Totori or me...
Huh? O-Oh... Totori, are you mad? Why? W-Wait, I didn't mean to...
N-No, I was just...
I-I'm sorry!*Totori leaves*
Totori, wait!
*sigh* She never grows up. Ceci! You... You were watching?
That's not something you should say with such gusto... Don't mind the details. Anyway, I'll go take care of her. But please, be a little more considerate. Then again, I'm not one to talk...*Ceci leaves*
What happened to Totori? Did I do something? No, you didn't do anything bad, Pinny. It's my fault. I should've been more mature about all this. Huh?*fade to black*
How am I gonna do that? My mind still feels hazy.
Ceci... I... I'm sorry. Huh? Why're you apologizing to me?
I-I didn't feel lonely. I'm not a little kid anymore. You can feel lonely even after you grow up. I still get that way. You're way more mature than me. There's no way you'd feel that way.
Oh... That's why when Piana came, I got so excited. I'm sorry. Y-You might have felt lonely, but I didn't. Uh-huh. I guess you're more of a grownup than me, then. Mmm... You're treating me like a little kid again. No, I'm not. Come on. Let's go home. Piana and Rorona are worried about you.
Hmm? Yes?
What? I didn't hear you. You'll have to speak up.
Pfft. Haha. Hahahahaha! D-Don't laugh at me! Hehe. Sorry. I thought it was funny because you sound like a kid all of a sudden. Mmm! Fine! Never mind.
Hey. Stay still. There, there. That's a good girl. You're treating me like a kid again... Grownups don't beg for hugs. Mmm...
Can you hug me just a bit more? Yeah, yeah. You can be such a baby.After that scene, to wrap up this little subplot, you need to talk to Piana in the Dining Room, but shockingly, I forgot about that last part. Oh well. It's not like you miss the scene if you don't talk to her immidiately, so we can wait a bit.
After I turned in all of my completed requests that I had at the end of my journey on the island, I got a whole bunch of points that put me within 30 points of Galaxy. I ended up pissing away a lot of time (read: about two weeks or so, which is long in my book) trying to get 12 Totoris, and while I don't know the exact number I got, it simply wasn't enough.
Well, actually, I did all that 12 Totoris grinding after the following scene, but I might as well leave that there. Oh yeah, and the Chims all do cute things while you're in the workshop. They can working with mixing bowls, or rolling pins, rolling around on the floor, happily eating pie, or just walking around.
Anyhow, let's wrap things up for her. Video goes until the screenshot of Piana looking into the screen.
Oh.*fade to black*
I'm so sorry. I took my anger out on you. Sorry! You're not mad anymore? I'm not! I'm not mad at all! You don't hate me anymore?
*fade to black*
Yup. You're really amazing, you know that? I couldn't do anything but panic. I've been her sister for many years.*fade to black*
Totori, Totori! U-Um, it makes me happy when you do that, but if you stick onto me that much... Why do you like me so much? Aren't Teacher or Ceci nicer?
R-Really? Hehe... That's kind of embarrassing.*fade to black*
I-I guess. We really shouldn't peep. Let's just go over there.*fade to black*
Sure has been a lot of scene transitions for a relatively short scene, eh?
Well, looks like things will be okay around here. As for next time, there's going to be a big battle. I wonder with who...
Piana artwork
Piana concept art
Still a Child
The Divergent Forest
The Distant Summit