Part 19: A Dream Distorted
Update 16: A Dream Distorted
A New Crisis
*Huff* *Huff* … It’s awful … terrible … You guys have gotta get over to the Dream Tree! Hurry!
… Whatever it is, it must be serious. We need to hurry.
What’s going on?!
This is horrible … How could this have happened?!
I cannot say for certain … Only that it is apparent that the Dream Tree has returned to its former withered state.
Hey, the Dream Tree’s connected to Elvira’s heart, right? So, then that means … Ellie’s in trouble …!
Sophie, we must return to the atelier!
Right! We can quickly whip up a batch of Dimensional Solvent and go look for Elvira!Well, we’ll be doing that anything BUT quickly this update. First things first: since we got the Absorpta back in the Eternal Sand Dunes, we’ll be immediately treated to a 101.
You can see from the above screencap that there are 2 Light links on the grid. You need 3 to activate the first assist skill.
By making linked tiles disappear while preserving effect levels, you can hit a number of effect thresholds that are otherwise impossible to do in one synthesis. It’s invaluable, it makes you think that you can have your cake and eat it too, but it’s also incredibly painstaking to do so. You’ll feel it when you’re using the Absorpta and gunning for 7 or 10 links to activate Link Morph to raise the max effect threshold or Extra Ingredient to add the ingredient that will let you hit your targets.
And this is the Resolia in action. Strategic use of Link Morph let me trigger Element Switch, allowing me to add a metal ingredient to pad my numbers for Wind and Lightning components.
Same with a Gas ingredient, and at that point I just needed a little push to get everything I need out of a catalyst: a 7x7 grid, the ability to horizontally flip components, and the ability to allow component overlap.
Of course, I can still hit multiple thresholds of 20+ if I play my cards right with Add Ingredient skills, even without the Absorpta. Now, here’s one thing the Black Agujero is an ingredient in–and I’m duplicating it because it’s pennies on the dollar to do so compared to what I’m about to make:
Tier 5 ingots and cloths and weapons and armors were not in the OG Mysterious trilogy, though they were present in the three Atelier games between L&S and Sophie 2. I have multiple very high thresholds to hit for this, so I have to whip out the Absorpta.
Linked components being removed from the grid means that if you keep stacking links on a matching tile until all your assist skills are exhausted, you can keep getting boosts from said tile.
Still, removing linked components from the grid can make it really goddamn frustrating when you’re gunning to activate Link Morph or Extra Ingredient assist skills. Whereas I can just use Link Morph to convert a regular component to a starred component and have it link up with 2-3 pre-existing links and activate Extra Ingredient with the Resolia, I have no such luxury with the Absorpta. So it was that for this first batch of Ōkeagyrn, I had to settle for missing the max Light threshold.
Here is the most successful Major Gathering take out of god knows how many to get Einquartz for my new accessories.
You’ve seen how Gnade Rings give rather sizeable boosts to ATK, DEF and SPD in addition to what comes with your traits and your Ingot. Replacing them means everyone’s going to take a hit to those stats. What could I want that would compensate for the stat boosts the Gnade Ring provides? This is one of the two, an Eaglescope. I’ll use the Resolia since I only really care about hitting the Light and Wind thresholds on this one.
I’ll start with getting 10 Lightning links for no other reason than to add one of my fresh new Ōkeagyrn to the mix; the recipe doesn’t call for any Ingot or Metal items, and thus the Ōkeagyrn can’t be a part of this synthesis otherwise. It helps that I can just write over these afterwards, since there are no Lightning effect thresholds to hit for this synthesis and the game won’t revoke my extra Ōkeagyrn from the mix if the Lightning links get blanked after the fact.
With that, we already have some solid stat boosts to kick this off. After being very careful with the Magical and Gas ingredients I add afterward…
Multiplier 8x increases crit rate and crit damage output by 40%. You’ll see in the next two updates, but the Eaglescope and its effects will complement Ramizel and Diebold’s final weapons splendidly. The Fire effect would have given an accuracy boost, which was zero priority compared to maxing out Wind and Light and thus boosting crit rate and crit damage output.
The slight hit to Ramizel’s stats will be well worth what she’ll get in exchange.
Everyone else gets a Time Control Hourglass. The Dawn Tree Branch is something I could gather by upgrading my Bomb Hammer to Rank 3 and smashing logs in the Thunderbolt Palace. In addition, one of my intermediate syntheses was that Topaz; for that one, I hit the threshold of 12 Light to make it count as Sand as well, making it usable as an ingredient for this.
Again, my first priority was getting 10 Lightning links to add an Ōkeagyrn in; in doing so, I also hit my first target by maxing out Lightning. My next big priorities were Light and Wind.
“Maybe I can add an extra Gas or Magical ingredient to get some Fire components on the board if I get enough links”, or so I thought, but things just didn’t work out that way. Settling for that three-tile Light component on the Ōkeagyrn is really coming back to bite me in the ass. As for effects:
Accelerate Time shortens wait time by 30%.
Otherworldly Speed adds 30% of the wielder’s SPD to their ATK.
Control the Future has Dragon God Wrath’s effect, but with a +35% boost instead of +25%. So with two Dragon God Wraths and a Control the Future!Time Control Hourglass, that’s a total of +85% damage on the first hit and double the damage on all the rest.
The Fire effect would have been additional KO resistance–nice to have, but Control the Future and the two maxed-out Wind effects were the ones of utmost priority to get.
Otherworldly Speed alone makes the Time Control Hourglass a shoo-in for Alette, the resident speed demon of the party, but I deemed it to be the accessory for everyone else too.
The slight hit to Alette’s speed will be well worth these effects going live; same to a lesser extent for Sophie, Plachta and Olias.
At this point, you shouldn’t have to ask how the Ōkeagyrn got in there. Transition Crest gives TP whenever Support Guard is used, but it was low-priority for me to upgrade compared to maxing the other effects.
Not shown is me running around doing quests and beating up the occasional Groll Aura mini-boss to finance all this duplication. Here’s one, the Countless Feelers in the Quartz Lapis.
Of note, Sophie can now drop meteors on an enemy!
Vorpal Strike was a bounty from my greenhouse abuse in Part 8 and it combines with Certain Critical to make One-Hit Kill. And I took One-Hit Kill and put it on a… Craft? The most basic bomb in the game? And I’m making this before a major boss battle? You’ll see why once we get back in the Dream Tree’s dimension.
Langwolke is an intermediate ingredient for the Tier 5 cloth and woof that’s a rude set of thresholds to hit for the latter.
I have lots of Ice components and this effect threshold will be the one I can do without if I had to start overwriting Ice tiles, so I gunned for it first so I could add an additional Water ingredient to the mix.
But it did not, in fact, come to that. Being very, VERY exacting with where I triggered my assist skills and which tiles I picked for Link Morph let me add a metal ingredient with good Light components/links and max out all four effect thresholds on the Geranóvirgen. Still, the armors I’d be using it in aren’t available yet!
This is the best medicine in the game, but first…
Here’s another important item the Black Agujero is needed for. And Philosopher’s Stones also count as Elixirs, and thus can be an ingredient in the Mystery Elixir. The Priarco is my vector to get all my healing/revival/buff traits in there.
Switching back to the Resolia for this one because I’m focused mainly on the Wind and Ice effects.
I got two Mystery Elixirs out of this synthesis, so I’ll be duplicating this once so all my alchemists can have it. Even though Diebold CAN equip it, in practice his low Equip Cost won’t allow for him to. Effects:
Miracle Cure applies 2 stacks of max HP increase in addition to its massive healing.
Auto Activate 50% means the Mystery Elixir gets used automatically when the wielder’s HP drops below 50%.
Activate Scatter activates two time cards, so in this context it’ll massively heal and buff the target twice down the line.
Revisiting the Breezy Aroma so I can upgrade my AoE healing/buffing item, I can hit Activate Scatter for it too with better Ice components/links than I had during the alchemy contest way back when, in addition to now having access to Extra Ingredient assist skills. This time, I want to target Lightning for my secondary effect threshold so the product can actually appreciably heal targets who haven’t been KO’d.
I dicked around to unlock this Talisman I won’t be using…
…and synthesized it to unlock this node on Sophie’s recipe tree. The Calm Blue Flame is an ingredient in and prerequisite to unlock the Flame of the End, Sophie’s most powerful signature bomb.
After smashing a crystal in the desert with a Rank 3 Bomb Hammer for some Uro Hielo, I can now synthesize the Calm Blue Flame. I’d already gathered Uro Hielo before this, but it only counts for unlocking the recipe for Calm Blue Flame AFTER I’ve reached its node on the recipe tree.
It’s a pretty easy synthesis with only two effect thresholds to care about. The output will have fantastic Fire and Ice components, even if it will only raise the maximum, pre-link Fire value of the Flame of the End by 2 instead of 3.
Now that I’m able to make Flame of the End, let’s go make that right now.
This is a really hard synthesis to hit my target thresholds on (and I had to settle with not maxing out all four of them at the end), but that last effect is what I needed the most out of this synthesis. Aura Damage XL shaves off 10 aura, and Pure White Corrosion and All Stats Down M both do their part in depleting enemy aura as well. For the second debuff trait, I chose Certain Grudge to make enemies weak to Magic damage and to turn their auto-heals against them. The top-level effect does a ton of Magic damage by default and does even more depending on the quality of the traits attached–so a lot in this case, even if I didn’t come close to maxing out Light. Finally, maxing out Ice got me Consume MP M, which means Sophie will only expend 30% of her max MP whenever she uses the Flame of the End instead of like 80%.
For the ingredients aside from the Calm Blue Flame: Innocent Adamas is the first ingredient, and it serves as my main source of Light components/links as well as my vector to get my debuff traits in the mix. The next ingredient is an Old Master, a fish which also counts as a Puni. (Don’t ask questions as to how or why.) I tried getting some with my desired mix of components through Major Gathering with a Rank 3 fishing rod. The last ingredient is a Poison ingredient.
(You’re still allowed to use Flame of the End even when Sophie doesn’t have the requisite percentage of her max MP, it’s just going to do markedly less damage than it should.)
Since the Flame of the End is going to be Sophie’s primary aura buster for major bosses from now on, I went through the trouble of having Plachta make a Great Gift as an intermediate Poison ingredient so Sophie could take a second one to battle. Why didn’t I just duplicate it, you ask? Because it costs like 20k Cole to do so.
I then synthesized these very particular Philosopher’s Stones; by hitting 13 Fire and not 17+ Fire, I got one unit with All Stats+10. Philosopher’s Stones count as Magical items, Elixirs, Jewels and Stones; still, in practice, the rest of the gear I’ll be making might only ever require an ingredient from the first two categories. Since Philosopher’s Stones count as Magical items, that means that if I get 10 Light links when synthesizing gear, I can add one of these Philosopher’s Stones and get a further +10 boost to all stats. The -cost traits are there to make it cheaper to duplicate given the sheer volume of these I’ll need for the next round of weapon/armor upgrades; all the traits I want for said weapons and armors are already going to be on my Ōkeagyrn and Geranóvirgen anyway.
…I realized belatedly that I could have also put these in the Synergy Talisman, the Time Control Hourglass and the Eaglescope and tried to trigger Extra (Magical) Ingredient during those syntheses for even more stat boosts. I should have done so for the Synergy Talisman, while for the Time Control Hourglass and the Eaglescope I found that I wasn’t able to do so without fatally compromising my ability to hit the key effect thresholds I needed to hit.
Even with multiple -cost traits stacked, Philosopher’s Stones are still Philosopher’s Stones and aren’t exactly gonna be cheap to duplicate.
Now that we’re finally done with our syntheses for the time being, let’s figure out what’s going on with Elvira and the Dream Tree.
The Cradle Disturbed
Okay, it’s open!
C’mon, let’s go!
Whoa! Wh-what the heck?! This isn’t where we were supposed to end up … Ramizel, where are we? I don’t know … I’ve never seen this place before, either. Oh no, did I make a mistake with the Dimensional Solvent … Of course not. It was perfectly crafted. So, it stands to reason that … the destination of the gate itself has changed. Oh, Ellie … What has happened to you … We don’t have time to waste by worrying, Ramizel! That’s right. The quicker we find Elvira, the sooner we can help her!
I am in agreement. We must continue onward and see where this path leads. Yeah … Everyone, let’s go!
So yeah, you can tell this is a hell of a remodeling.
The materials that can be found here are rare and of fittingly high quality, and being able to find items like *checks notes* Evil Cores, Fatal Nebulas, and Fallen Star Pieces really reinforces the very off vibe the Dream Tree’s dimension now gives off.
Eventually we make it back to the Dream Cradle and… oh dear.
Possessed
Gngh … Uuurgh … H-hey, that black aura surrounding Elvira … There is no mistaking it. It is exactly the same as the monsters who were possessed by the Groll. It can’t be … You mean Elvira’s been possessed?!
No, Ellie! Hang in there! Stay back … Ellie!
Ramizel, look out! Ngh!
Ngh … Ellie … I guess we don’t have a choice …
Elvira’s in trouble guys … We’ve got to stop her first. That is all we can do … In her current state, our only choice is to use force. So, let us fight, in order to save Elvira! Fighting Elvira to save her, huh … Alright, then! Bring it on! If that’s the plan, then I’m all in. But … we’ve definitely gotta help her out after. Though she lacks maturity, she is a wonderful goddess with pure beliefs. I shall wield my sword for her sake.
I never would have imagined we’d be drawing our weapons against her again … Then let’s make sure this is the last time. Ngh … You have to … stay back …! Don’t come near me! Sorry, Elvira! We’ll try to make this quick!
For round 2, Elvira now resists all elements.
Elvira has quite a bit more resistance to debuffs and status effects than the mini-bosses I’ve been beating up, so in addition to my new Flame of the End, it took an Ennui Mirror use from both Plachta and Alette to break her aura.
Fantastic Bargain does something different each time you use it, and in this case, Alette kicks a dinosaur plush at Elvira like she’s scoring a field goal.
Alas, Elvira doesn’t miss a turn from being stunned, and I couldn’t knock off her 100k HP in the short timeframe I had before she was up again. My usual model of “debuff enemy with Flame of the End/Ennui Mirror until their aura breaks, then rev up the DPS until they go down” won’t work with her, and she didn’t put her aura back up for quite some time. Here’s how that all ended:
And that’s what happens when the boss charges up the super-attack gauge fully and unleashes one! Still, even though the frontline got wiped, I can swap them all out for the rear guard and pick right back up from there. Hell, if I HAD to have the entire frontline go down, I’d rather none of the alchemists get caught in it.
After all, they’re the ones with the revival items; just like that, the three non-alchemists are up and ready to go again, and with a fresh layer of buffs to boot. I’ll say that Sophie 2 having a frontline and a rear guard makes these super-attacks far less devastating than they are in the Ryza games, which have a party of three in battle. An attack like that would have resulted in a straight up wipeout in the Ryza games.
For emphasis: I have like no opportunity to take advantage of her being stunned!
Still, as you can see, Elvira gets like three moves in whenever she has a turn. And since her 3% auto-heal activates whenever she moves, it means that with all those stacks of Curse active, instead of recovering 3% of her HP when she moves, she’ll lose 12% instead. So by moving multiple times in one turn, she’s hemorrhaging a tremendous amount of HP each time she’s up. Everyone’s bombs and skills plus Sophie and Plachta’s Dual Trigger only did 36623 damage to Elvira out of her 100k HP; this status effect did most of my dirty work for me for this battle!
You may wonder why I put One-Hit Kill on a Craft and brought it to this fight, since it’s a weak bomb and Elvira, as a boss, is expressly immune to insta-death.
Elvira herself may be immune to insta-death, but the mooks she summons to take the hit for her sure aren’t! And since the Craft is a weak bomb with a low base value, this won’t cost me much to use even with a trait as strong as One-Hit Kill on it. It also meant that the particulars of crafting the Craft didn’t matter; all I needed was one with this single trait on it.
And that’s the Auto Activate!Mystery Elixir in action! Note how Sophie didn’t just get fully healed, but also that two stacks of max HP increase raised her max HP by 20%.
After taking a few more really nasty blows from Elvira (and reviving fallen frontliners with a Breezy Aroma for the frontline in between), her auto-heal finally brought her down to 1HP.
Nnngh! Haah … Aaah … Alright, she’s down! Ellie! Stay back! Don’t … Don’t come any closer to me! Ellie, you have to let us help you! We’re only trying t–
She’s gone … But where to? There is no telling. Somewhere in Erde Wiege, another dimension …
Ramizel … I don’t know what went wrong … What is going on?! Elvira has clearly been possessed by the Groll. But why would they do that?! Both Roytale and the Dream Tree should have been protected from the Groll by the warding stone … And yet, she has been possessed by the Groll … Did my magic stones fail? If they did, then the town woulda definitely been attacked again. Unless there is something we have simply overlooked? A reason why the Groll would possess Elvira … Let us return for now …
It would be better to take a step back and carefully consider our next course of action. You’re right … Let’s go back to the atelier and figure this out.
Debrief
Y’know, I’ve been thinkin’ about it over and over, but I still just don’t get it. What happened to Elvira? She looked so happy just the other day … She was helping everyone in the town, too … Perhaps … that is the precise reason why. What do you mean? She never really explained to us how she was able to help everyone. Now that you mention it … You’re right …
Oi, oi! Ya think she would really do something crazy like that … It is no more than a theory. And yet, it also feels very likely. You’re right. Knowing Ellie, that seems exactly like something she’d try to do … Actually, that reminds me of something she told me once. Ellie said that when she watches our dreams … she has the power to purify them by absorbing our nightmares.
However, what are we to do? If what you say is true, we have no means of saving her. … Maybe we can make something using alchemy? Something to separate the Groll from Elvira … Yeah, good thinking! Sophie and Plachta, you two can make something like that, can’t you?! I am afraid not, unless we are capable of performing the same feats as Elvira. In other words, we’d need divine powers … It is not something that humans can meddle with. Really? We’ve managed to figure some pretty tricky things out so far, so this time … I acknowledge that you are highly skilled, Sophie. However, this is unlike anything we have faced before.
*Sigh* … This is getting us nowhere. A’ight. Let’s give it a rest. We ain’t gonna come up with a decent plan like this. You’re right. Besides, we need to tell the mayor about this. Sophie, could you take care of that? Ah, sure! Leave it to me! Plachta and I will stay here and try to think of a way to help Ellie. I’ll go talk with Pirka about it too. If we’re lucky, she’ll have some handy tool stored away somewhere! In that case, Olias and I shall patrol the town and the surrounding area. There may be unusual activities afoot. Yeah, good thinkin’. We gotta make sure the townsfolk are all safe. Okay, it’s decided then! We’ll get together again once we come up with a good idea.
I’m paying a premium for everything I crafted this update!!