Part 60: All the burdens gone; Open the chest once more

Update XX: All the burdens gone; Open the chest once more
Song Title Reference: Dark Chest of Wonders - By Nightwish


This is it. The last Star Labyrinth/Impurity God/whatever the fuck we need to seal or kill in order to be done with the prep work. After this, it’s nothing but Ophiuchus standing between us and the end of this LP… well, the story portion of it anyway. There’s still some extra updates after, including the last 3 episodes of the anime… but that’s future PK’s problem.



Pisces is the final Labyrinth. I’m not sure how much story content the ending will be composed of, so after we finish up here, we’ll be heading to Ophiuchus for a little bit just to scope things out. That way we’ll be able to get straight to the 13th Phantom next time.



It has a Yuzuha theme. That’s about it. The only thing I can find to say about it is that the little fins coming out of the columns look like Yuzuha’s hair.



I will say that the Pisces Blessing room has one of the better effects. This might have been one of the better labyrinths to start with, because early on you don’t have access to skills like “Remove”. That said, these rooms only appear occasionally, so it’s not going to make or break your run.



The only equipment we pick up in here is from an Item Shrine. It’s a minor upgrade to the Holy Tree Lance, but in a strange sense. Holy Tower Lance has much higher MAT than Holy Tree Lance (as well as slightly higher ATK), but it has much less LUC (310 less). However, it adds the Light element attack that Holy Tree Lance didn’t have. Usually weapons of the same design just have better stats instead of pros and cons.

Oh yeah, and Holy Tower Lance is based on Tokyo Tower instead of Tokyo Skytree. They didn’t tweak the design (Tokyo Tower has an Eiffel Tower design, with a square observation deck/base. Skytree has a circular deck/triangular base closer to the CN Tower), but the name and the colour scheme match with Tokyo Tower.



This dude looks so doofy and I love it.

Mana tells us that Infideles has a good balance of offence and defence. It also has attacks that can drop speed, which can pose a decent threat. Speed is the one thing in this game that you don’t want to be reduced.



The balance of offence and defence is fairly on point. Infideles doesn’t have crazy MAT, but its regular ATK is pretty beefy and it’s DEF/MDF is serviceable. I recommend taking the magic route in this battle, if possible. Infideles will actually take advantage of speed, so you don’t want to drag this fight out too long. Of course, this is if you wind up fighting it earlier on. At the stage we’re at, we could easily drag this battle out for as long as we felt like and still not come close to biting it.

A quick note: Infideles actually has 2 magic attack elements. Water and Earth. This isn’t a huge deal (you’d be pretty foolish to roll into the Pisces Boss with a majority Fire team), but it does mean that Wind (or Dark, if you have it) will be the only safe defensive element. Earth is supereffective against Water teams and Water will be supereffective against Fire teams. Light and Earth are also options if you want Neutral defence.

Attacking is much simpler. Just try and bring along Dark or Earth spells.





There’s also the mandatory Crater enemies to deal with. They should always be the first targets, since Bosses can’t bring them back.



Oddly, despite getting a Chain Drive off immediately, Infideles and the Craters don’t suffer any turn delay.



Team A(wful) MECUNITEs and takes out the two Craters. Then Team C eats fish tail for nearly 2k. That is fairly scary. Even more so when you remember that this is reduced damage (Team C has Earth element defence). On top of that, Infideles then gets another turn right after Team Cs. He seems to have a very short delay on his actions. It’s not as though his speed is insane, so there must be something else going on.



Seeing as how Infideles likes to try and cripple speed, I decide to take the same approach and have Team B use a team skill called Snail Wind. Snail Wind is a strong attack that can also lower SPD and MAT by 10%.



Also, Team B has a frankly stupid Crit rate. So that’s a bonus.



Still not a challenge, but I will applaud Infideles for at least providing some resistance. It at least took a few swings on its way to hell.



Mana has a few words for us now that we’ve taken out all 12 Impurity Gods.

Great. Now that that’s done, we can focus on Ophiuchus.

Come on, Itsuki. Let’s go back to the surface.

And that’s it. Back to the world map.

I turn in the final boss quest and check out what I have left to do in terms of regular quests. I’ll be honest with you, I was intending to complete all the quests to see if any special ones popped up, but there is a small detail that I forgot about when it comes to quests.

I went to check the database after this and see how many ??? quests were left. Turns out I only have 56% of them done. How can I be missing that many when there’s only 4 or 5 Ophiuchus quests open at the moment?

Turns out that the Star Maidens have 3 quests each to dish out (except Alfie), for a total of 36. Do you remember waaaaay back at the start of the game where it was mentioned that Star Maidens will sometimes call up Itsuki and ask him to fulfill a request? Me neither. But apparently that is something they can do (although it has never happened to me throughout this entire game).

From what I read, it happens randomly when they call you either in a dungeon or when you are in the middle of an event with another Star Maiden. Also, the quests are repeatable, so you could wind up getting a quest you’ve already completed. Fun stuff.

I’m not doing that. At least that is what I am currently telling myself.



I will have that Photon Blade for Itsuki though. I swear it.

Anyway, the shop finally has new equipment in stock that we don’t already have better versions of.



Not all of them are better, but there are a few. Guto is a straight upgrade to Itsuki’s Bat weapon. A big upgrade in fact (+400 ATK. I later find an upgrade to this in Ophiuchus called Guto Luck which gives Itsuki a +680 to LUC).



More importantly, we are finally free to buy up the stat fruits. They are incredibly expensive, but at this stage of the game money isn’t good for much else. The remainder of our equipment upgrades will be coming from the Ophiuchus Labyrinth. I wind up blowing 1 million on five Power Fruit and five Speed Fruit for Itsuki.

I make sure to hang on to 500k in the off chance that more healing items are required. Now, I’ve been saying all this time that we’re stocked to the gills on healing items of every type. So why would I start getting concerned about inventory now?



Because of this. At first glance, Ophiuchus is only a short five floor dungeon.



Just about every enemy type will pop up throughout the course of this dungeon and they will be of the highest-level palette swap. There are some slightly weaker versions thrown into encounters as helpers of the strong one, but all of them are beefy enough to tank several hits from any of your teams. There will be no God’s Poking happening in this dungeon.

Because of that, it’s rare to come out of a battle completely unscathed. Even taking advantage of Chain Drive, Itsuki and the kids were regularly taking a beating. You’ll need to heal everyone up after every two or three battles (sometimes after each battle). This means that potions are going to start quickly vanishing.

The Ophiuchus Labyrinth is also not a fan of those little HP/MP/Status Cure checkpoints that other labyrinths have been littering around. I don’t think it’s possible for them to show up at all in here. The only bonus points have been shops.



The good news is that Ophiuchus is where all the good shit is hiding out. Throughout the first five floors basically every Star Child received an upgrade, either in the form of a weapon or armour. Mokino here is wearing a Haze Ninja Garb, Raitzeno got Libra Mail, Neoman got Lucky Armor+, and Blaze got special Bondsman-only armor called Heart Full Plate.

Those are just some examples. I’ll show off everyone’s final loadout once we are sitting in front of the final boss, because I’d imagine weapons and armor will be changing rapidly over the course of this dungeon.



Now, as for the dungeon itself. When I got to floor 5 I decided to make a save and just see if the portal was going to lead straight to the final boss. I was relieved to see that Ophiuchus was only 5 floors, but I was also suspicious of that fact. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

Turns out it wasn’t. No, Ophiuchus is indeed 15 floors, just like the other labyrinths. The game just fucks with you by only showing Section 1 at first. Upon hitting the portal on floor 5, the message above is displayed. It’s slightly different than normal, as the usual message involves an “evil” presence or something. What makes the presence familiar?



Yeah, we’re fighting the boss that we just defeated earlier in the update. I’m not sure how the game decides which boss to use or if it just pulls out the last one that you defeated.

I recognize its face, but it’s giving off a more powerful aura.

Great… Well, we beat it once before. We can do it again. Come on, everyone!

Itsuki, don’t let your guard down!



It’s the same fight we just had, except now Infideles has Crater D enemies with it. As for the boss itself, I think it’s supposed to be stronger, but these stats look the same as the first time. I compared the two side by side and this version of Infideles is 2 levels higher and some of its stats are maybe 100 higher. Weirdly, it’s DEF and LUC are somehow lower than the last time we fought it.



Oh well. This is the same as before. Although Infideles managed to put up less of a fight this time for some reason. Strange.

Just... please Conception Plus, please let this just be filler. Don’t make me refight all 12 Impurity Gods again in reverse order or something.



Well done! I knew you had it in you, Itsuki!

It… it was… nothing. Huff…

Itsuki, you okay? You look tired… We should head to the surface for a little bit.

N-No, I’m fine… I can keep going. Don’t worry about me.

No, we’re turning back. Unlike other labyrinths, this place will suck away your life force.

I hear that.

Isn’t there a proverb on Sora for this? Slow and steady wins the race, right?

That saying is based on a story about a cocky hare that would have totally kicked the shit out of that tortoise if not for the fact that he was an arrogant prick. Slow and steady didn’t get the tortoise the win. Hubris caused the hare to lose.

The enemies are even stronger from here on. Don’t be a daredevil, Itsuki. Return to the surface and get some rest. This is for everyone, not just you.

…Okay. Fine. We’ll go back and rest.

And then we’re forced back out to the world map again.

That’s everything worth looking at for now. If I snag any nifty new equipment during my remaining quest grinding then I’ll point it out before we tackle the final boss. The rest of Ophiuchus is just going to involve me battling all the same monsters and possibly fighting another recycled boss while hunting for cool new weapons (I ended up fighting Pseudothei again as the Floor 10 Gatekeeper. It was far from being a threat).

Which brings me to the next point. As we are just about to go up against the dreaded “13th Phantom”, we need to make a decision on how this is all going to end. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Itsuki or the Star Maidens or Granvania or anyone else in this game. What I do know is that each Maiden gets some kind of individual ending event (they all have one ??? event after their Final Bonding Event).

Because I think Harem endings are fucking stupid, a final Star Maiden poll was created in order to decide which character ending would be the canonical one for this LP. The results were—



…not quite as close as I thought they would be. This may have been the result of everyone only getting a single vote. I wanted to let people have 3 each, but the polling site doesn’t have advanced options like that. Either I gave everybody a single vote, or I let them all pick however many choices they wanted. I felt this was the better option.



So Arie’s will be the canonical ending for this LP.



As a consolation, Alfie, Mirei, Ruka, and Femiruna will get detailed endings in an extra update. They were the only Maidens (along with Arie) to get more than a single vote.

Which kind of surprised me to be honest. Well, not so much Alfie, I guess. Alfie remained neck and neck with Arie throughout the entire voting period. Alfie was certainly popular, but I think the late reveal that she’s (supposedly) only going to live for 10 years may have given some people pause.

I can’t make much sense of the other top Maidens. All three were part of the Top 6 since the second vote (Mirei has always been in the Top 6), so it’s not necessarily surprising to see them here. I think what I find strange is that they all beat out Farun. Farun really seemed like she was becoming the thread favourite during the Final Bonding Event updates. In comparison, Ruka and Femiruna’s routes seemed to sputter out and didn’t build much excitement. I think Mirei’s has generally been pretty neutral.

Maybe the Farun supporters just shifted to Alfie/Arie or something.

In case you're wondering, I will be showing the ending CG for each Star Maiden. The other 8 Star Maidens will get short summaries of what happens in their endings and the CGs will be posted.



The only other surprising thing about the poll was that both Reone and Lillith/Lillie came out of it without a single vote. Reone’s brother thing had been resolved and I thought her final events were really nice. Definitely a turnaround from the middle where we were all being creeped out by her brother complex. Lillith/Lillie have always been one of my least favourite, but the last few events seemed okay. I figured somebody would have voted for them.

The weirdest part (to me) is that Tarua ranked higher than them. Sure, it was only because she got a single vote while they got none, but still.



Tarua.


Oh well. Everyone has their own preferences, I guess. Point is, we’ve got everything out of the way and our path is clear. Next time: We put an end to the 13th Phantom and save the world! …Begrudgingly.