Part 34: NG+ Update 06: Colonialism

NG+ Update 06: Colonialism

Music: Lowest Sector Borough





EndSector is mostly the same as ever, with one minor exception.









There’s a fairy by the vendors. Progress in the Fairy Colony also carries over between playthroughs, and the game putting a fairy here lets players access it slightly earlier.



We skipped out on the Fairy Colony last time, so let’s take this opportunity to see what we missed by doing so.

Music: The More We Dig



We are transported to a strange cavern.





It’s not a particularly big place. There’s a short passage to the south, but it leads to a dead end.





There’s a carved panel on the large column in the central cave…



…and a trio of ants hanging out to the right.



The fairy has a number of explanations on how the colony works, but she’s pretty long-winded so I’ll do a quick summary instead.



The Fairy Colony is a major sidequest where the player employs ants to build an underground town. This includes useful features such as item shops, skill shops, businesses that earn you zenny, banks that store your zenny, let you invest it to make more money and allow you to carry it through the SOL System, and other facilities.





Selecting the ‘Move’ option lets us survey the extent of our colony, which at the moment is limited to the entrance room. Our initial objective is to do some digging in order to expand, and to do that we’re going to have to hire some ants.



As luck would have it there are three of the little guys waiting in the unemployment line. Each ant has different stats that determine their suitability for certain jobs. Ants with high HP are good at jobs that involve manual labour, such as excavation. Ants with high Smarts are good at banking and research, while those with high Tastes are better at moneymaking jobs like the Cafeteria.

There’s also the age of the ant to consider. As time passes ants will grow older and improve their stats, but will eventually die of old age, so it’s a good idea to keep some younger, less skilled ants around to replace the ones that die off.





The three starting ants aren’t great, but they’re the only ones we’ve got, and now we have to organise them into an excavation team, which we do via the Orders command.





I put our three starters into the red team. We could make three teams with one ant each, but one team of three will dig much faster than three teams of one.

Also, I was serious when I said we’d have to employ the ants. The box on the right shows their wages, which come out of the colony’s budget. That’s not much of a worry given that we can top the initial 1,000 zenny up whenever we please with our huge NG+ fortune, but it’s something a player on their first run will want to keep an eye on.





The passage of time in the colony is pegged to combat. The more enemies we kill the more time passes, leading to greater expansion and eventually greater profits.





The last thing we need to look at is the bulletin board.



The bulletin board is a fun little place where fairies post messages about the state of the colony / condition of the workers / whatever else happens to be on their rather tiny minds. I don’t recall it playing a major role, but some amusing comments can crop up from time to time.



With all that covered it’s time to leave. Time in the colony won’t progress until we fight some battles, so we’ll have to advance the story a bit before any major changes occur.









There are no additional scenes at the train station. Bosch returns and makes it clear he’s going to kill Nina.







Bosch stabs Ryu, awakening his dragon powers.

Music: Attack







Bosch gets his face turned inside-out, as do his two companions.





Ryu falls unconscious and has a tense conversation with Lin about what just happened. In the end the only thing they can agree on is that they need to get moving before reinforcements show up.

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Bonus Art: Fairy