Part 30: No Healing Allowed

Update 30: No Healing Allowed



Welcome back, everyone. Today we're going to do some main plot stuff, but first let's check out some stuff Lector's unlocked for us.





















Hmm, looks like I'm making a dent in this stuff. I wonder who all will get character bios and stuff?





Music: Dota!


Hey guys. Oh, is she a new friend?

My name is Marietta.

Nice to meet you, Marietta. I'm Pamela, a cute ghost!


Just chiming in to say that I love how Pamela introduces herself to strangers this way.


A gho...gho...ghost?

Are you alright, Marietta? You seem a bit pale.

I'm fine, just...Don't come any closer!

...You're afraid of her?

What? No, of course not.

You're scared of me, aren't you, Marietta? Woo! It's been so long since I scared someone! Here...I'll scare you a little bit more, okay?





...Aha ha ha ha! You're a funny little ghost.

What? Stop laughing! I was trying to be scary! Oh well, it's nice to have a new fried. Would you like to play sometime?

I'm surprised there's something you're actually afraid of.

What are you talking about?


I'm glad that even in a plot-centric update I could still find a way to include at least one of the better NPCs. We love you, Pamela.

Okay, let's move on to the town of Duran...





Music: Eternal Ground


Well, Pops...What do you know about the Tower of Marcus?

What is it with you kids and places like that?

So then you do know about it.

It's the tower you can see deep inside the Forest of Ocean Mist. It's dangerous, though. I wouldn't recommend getting near it...Of course, when has that ever stopped you? Come back safe, y'hear?

Who do you think you're talking to? Of course we'll be fine.


And just like that, the path to the tower is unlocked...







This is a tower?...

Doesn't look like it to me.

It looks like a donut, meow!




Meow...There's a cane right there!

This is our easiest mission yet!


Predictably, this is the moment where everything starts shaking.


Meow!?

Whoa! Everyone watch out!









Music: Tower of No Return


Don't worry about us...what happened to the cane?


Delsus approaches the huge crystal nearby.


Hmm...You must summon the Guardian of Water with the Water Gem, lest the path remain sealed.

I recognize this shape...Oh, here we go.


Marietta does something, and...





...summons a boss. Yay?





This one isn't too bad. The lady is immune to physical damage, so I had Lita kill off her bird allies then swapper her for Delsus and Norn at various times.

Also, I don't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but Marietta's standard attack hits twice, one hit being physical and the other being magic/thunder damage, meaning she's able to do decent damage to just about anything except maybe the odd thunder based enemy. The magic portion is even decently potent, though still generally weaker due to Marietta's stat spread.





I also fired off Marietta's Thunder God ability to see how it did. 200+ damage is pretty solid, too, though I think it's still an ability I'd only really use against enemies that don't take physical damage.

This boss goes down without much difficulty. I even wound up killing her with ELE EXTRACT for a cool 50 Water elements.





I used the Raindrop Sphere. It's one of Alkavana's treasures. I brought it for luck...and it looks like it worked.


Oh, well I guess it's a good thing we recruited you, then. Let's scale us a tower, shall we?





Oh yeah, I remember the Gust Sphere! That's what that fairy guy gave us after we completed the Puni God quest.







Our next miniboss is also not especially dangerous, although she does come with a dragon buddy that you'll want to off pretty fast. Again, physical damage is not allowed. She likes to hit multiple characters and inflict paralysis, but overall she's not that dangerous.





Nuthin' to it.





The third one requires the Flame Sphere we found in Ka Luda's Playground...





This lady is probably the most difficult of the elemental guardians. She just seems to take much less damage than the others did, and she also has more alarming damage output.







Remember Tera Flame? That's an attack I was hoping wouldn't show up again.





The other cool thing about Marietta is that, while she's not quite as effective a healer as Klein, she can still keep on top of healing enough that he can spend more turns buffing or even attacking. Since he's the only character who ever seemed to do any meaningful damage to this boss, I found myself relying mostly on Marietta for survival.

I also threw Veola's ??? Bread at this boss for fun. It technically counts as physical damage so it didn't work.





And now we're, uh, screwed. Hmm. Let's leave and see what happens.





There's no rush. Why don't we just go back to town and see what's going on?

Maybe someone in town has a job for us to do.


Eh...I guess that is more or less how we found these other ones. Okay, let's check out Duran again.





Well, there's one more, and we need to find it.

I think we were lucky we had those three in the first place.





None of your business, Faith.

Don't be so mean! Come on, you can tell me...

Well...


fade out/in


Delsus, you big dummy, why didn't you say so!? I'm an oracle now! I started training just before you left. Leave this to me!





… … …

Aha!





… …

That's amazing, meow!


This game is so delightfully self-aware.


...Is that it?

Oh wait, there's one more: What you seek is in the fortress.

The fortress, huh?

Did she mean Fort Galga? I guess that's as good a clue as any.


Hmm. We haven't been there in quite a while. I suppose we could have missed something what with all the bandit killing. Let's check it out!





Music: Popcorn Strategy


Excellent! As soon as that's finished, this will be our new headquarters: Fort Alkavana. Let's keep working, people! We need to get this done.

Leave it to us, sir!

Yeah, we're working fairly hard.

Let's finish before dinner, sir!

I can't wait to see the captain's face when he sees the curtains I put up...

Failure is not an option!





What the...What're THEY doing here!?

Brother...


The kngihts mill around for a few moments, and then...


We found something, Captain!

Hmm...What's this, then? Interesting...It looks like the treasure Marietta stole from us. It's a sign! Fate has ordained that Fort Alkavana be raised on this spot! Keep up the good work, Ein.

Yes, sir!



Hey, that looked like the last sphere.

This is gonna get ugly...

We have to snag it before Beggur realizes what it's for.


We do? I don't think it really matters if Beggur knows anything about it or not. Well, anyway, our team rushes into the fort.





We're not staying long. We just need to grab something.

I won't go easy on you!

Nobody asked you to.


I can't decide if I'm pleased or sort of sad that not even Klein takes Beggur seriously anymore.





Music: Bullfight


Once again, the fight is pretty trivial. Marietta is pretty good at wrecking her brother.





Beggur has a charge attack, but I was able to interrupt it every time. I like all the stuff that managed to happen just from this one attack.

...honestly, I only included these last couple screenshots to make the battle seem long and important enough to be worth linking Bullfight.





Why you...This can't keep happening!


Less predictably, this is the moment where everything starts shaking.


Captain Beggur! Your fight opened a crack in the fortress wall!

What the HELL!?

It could collapse at any time! We have to evacuate!

But...but...Fort Alkavana...

Let's grab the sphere and get outta here.





Well that was all very weird. Also, the fortress doesn't actually collapse. I don't really know what any of that was all about.


Back to the tower!







This fight is...a moderate challenge, but not as bad as the fire one. Norn and Marietta do huge damage to her Phantom buddies (she also had a Supreme Wolf Ally but Lita kicked it to death) so it's easy to kill off her support pretty quick.





By herself, she's just another jerk who likes to do damage to multiple characters but isn't really a major threat.





What happened to good old optimistic Delsus?

Oh, don't worry about me, baby.

Ugh, not again. How can you be like this?

Meow!! Stop it stop it stop it! That's enough, meow...


I donnu, Delsus, this honestly hasn't been that bad. I mean, the minibosses could be less annoying I guess, but I've done worse.





The next floor has a mystery level, complete with a Groovecube, making this journey worth it.







This thing is sort of a jerk to make. It takes Light and Holy, and I can't have Eital transformed and untransformed at the same time so I used Uru for Light instead. Oh well, I made nine anyway. Here's hoping it's crazy strong at least.





Can we go meow, Klein? I'm scared of heights...


The screen darkens...


Meow!?

What's wrong?





Great, wouldn't you know it?

Are we going to fight way up here?

I'M AFRAID OF HEIGHTS, MEOW!!

Stay on guard!









Music: Duke of Stratosphere


...Is that it? It's funny looking.

So that's the boss, huh? This should be fun.

We aren't here to have fun!





This is the boss of the Tower of Marcus, Quetzalcoatl. Speaking as someone who grew up seeing Quetzalcoatl as an electric bird, this is sort of a strange interpretation of him. He doesn't have much defense, and unlike Prism he can't heal himself, so our damage output against him isn't much of an issue.







Unfortunately for us, his many hands aren't just there for show. His standard attack launches all of them at one character. It's...actually not THAT powerful, really. It can do a good 120-150 damage to Klein, but Marietta can just about keep up with that, as can Klein himself. It does more in the ballpark of 100 to Delsus, Lita, and Marietta, which is perfectly manageable.





But Quetzalcoatl does have one very dangerous ability...





Towznetkarz (what the fuck) inflict poison and curse. Poison you're all familiar with, but curse...curse is pretty bad. It prevents the afflicted character from recovering HP.

Fortunately, it seems to wear off after a few turns, and as I said, Quezzie's own attack power is middling, but it's still a dickish status effect, especially in conjunction with the status that damages HP every turn.





I had Klein try a Heaven Geode. Turns out those don't work on enemies that aren't explicitly evil or something.





Then Klein died because he's made of paper and can't heal.

So I thought, you know what? Let's have another damage race.





And, well...it worked out just fine. Quezzie also has an ability that he charges up called Null Sphere, but it's relatively easy to interrupt so he never got to use it. He also can use a variant of his standard attack that randomly distributes hits but isn't really any stronger. Meanwhile, Delsus was popping Flare Shots for like 300+damage a turn, Norn could Shrink it for 200 or so, and Marietta could do about 200 with standard attacks, while Lita did less damage but got more attacks overall.





I was kind of worried about this fight, but he didn't give me much grief this time. Good night, Quetzalcoatl.





Indeed. See you all next time!