Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga Part #11

Part 11: Deserted Ship

All distractions dealt with for the time being, we can go and put Gale's newest plan into action.

But for once we're going to do something a mite different and check in with some of the gang before we enter it proper.

Actually, yeah...

You think so, too... Sera, Argilla, Cielo -- all of us... Doesn't it feel like we've been on this thing before?

It's called a ship.

I know that. In addition, I know that it is a seafaring vessel. But, why is it here?

Probably noticed that guy stood to the left of Gale by the giant gash in the ship's hull. Let's go see what he has to say now...

There probably won't be time to return for more.

Basically, once we enter we can't leave until we finish the entire area.

I'm ready.

We are fighting against the Brutes. It may be a battle with death itself, but... don't die.

The Plan

We will spread a rumor that you are hidden here. to get the attention of Bat and the Brutes. Needless to say, this is a trap.

Hey, c'mon...! Why don't we try somewhere else? Eh? Guys?

Is it really dat simple? I mean, dey'll know it's a trap when Sera's not here!

"Sera" will be here.

Meat Ball

Why is that?

Obviously! Sera's isn't dis tall,

and her arms ain't dat thick--

Once again...

Cielo deserved this.

They only need to be decieved from the distance.

Silence

Already!?

...Sera and Heat?

I hope they weren't spotted.

They moved faster than I expected. We must hurry; if we do not, they will devour us.

Okay, okay! Let's do dis, den. Let's go!

Understood.

Let us go. We will set traps for them throughout the ship.

Although before we can do that...

Bat has to get just a mite creepier. Swell.

That woman's there too.

There's no mistake. Varin--

Turbulence

Flashback time!

Sera

Now get me the hell out of here!

Very interesting...

You must open the door on your own.

On that day, everything changed. Now, each individual shall be judged by his Karma.

I'm beginning to understand how this works. Allow me to help you.

Silence

One quick fade to black later...

How long will your eyes remain shut?

And on that bizarrely enigmatic note, we're back in the present again.

Yes... Sir...

End

Steel Coffin

First, we will plant an explosive at the bottom of the ship. Let us proceed.

Naturally, we're forced into using a party of Serph/Gale/Cielo for the entirety of this area. Even more naturally, this is not the best team composition for it.

Thankfully, the Brutes are still dicking around outside so we don't have to worry about any fights for the moment. Right by the entrance, there's a small Karma Terminal and some stairs heading down a flo-

Okay, no stairs there then. This just makes backtracking more inconvenient, really. No other purpose.

So we'll take the only other exit on the floor, which leads outside. This lets us grab 3 Medical Kits before continuing onward.

One of the most noticably things about this place is that there a lot of doors we can't use. Because they're destroyed or blocked in one way or another. Mostly helps to keep the route linear since we don't have to worry about a billion alternative routes and sidetrips at least.

And if we try and go through any doors but the right ones, Gale yells at us.

So the lift by the door it is then.

We want to go down to the 3rd floor since thats the nearest to the bottom we can get to.

Once there we get spat out into a room with 3 doors.

...Two of which Gale won't let us go through. So the north one it is!

That one leads to a small area with another Karma terminal in it. More importantly, there's an area to the east of here which leads to a lower level.

It also has a small section where... we can never go. The map doesn't put up a wall here indicating there's no progress. Gale just stops you to tell you off everytime you try to go through here.

As we ascend, we must plant explosives on the floors above. One explosive is needed per floor, for a total of seven. Expedience is required for this mission. Let us hurry.

Actual progress involves backtracking down the right-hand side. But there's an area off to the left. Of course we're heading there first.

After all, that leads us to 3 of the next level of rations. These ones heal 300 HP to a person. Pretty handy!

Way back from here's when we finally run into those dastardly Brutes.

Capture the leader and the girl, but kill everyone else!

Hunting ~ Compulsion

Finally got our first fight in the area, and it's against 3 Nagas.

They mostly use Ziongas, which is kinda odd. Dudes in the last dungeon were throwing around -Dynes like candy but Brute soldiers only have mid-level stuff? Weird.

They can also use Tarukaja, but most of the time they won't get the chance.

They're weak to Fire. A single Agilao pretty much neuters them.

Steel Coffin ~ The Second Movement

From this point, we DO get random encounters again and the Deserted Ship is now officially a dungeon. Nice of it to give us a second Rejuvenating Light around the corner from the Hero Rations then.

And not too far from there, there's a couple Attack Mirrors too. These things reflect any physical on the next turn. Not quite as useful as the Magic Mirrors.

Anyway, new dudes turn up with the Nagas. These little floaty green balls of energy/light are kind of assholes that are too much hassle to kill.

Mostly because they have friggin' Megido.

Naturally, they're weak to Force so they cast Force Drain constantly too.

Oh, and they're immune to physicals and guns. The first enemy we've encountered with that resistance by default no less.

Only other new demon in the area is Isora. Significantly less hassle than the Phantoms because he's weak to Force and Electricity.

Gale and Cielo both start with their respective mid-level spells. Isora dies very quickly.

Once we get back to the room with the elevator in it, Gale speaks up and it seems like he's telling you off taking a wrong turn here.

...we cannot return via the same elevator we arrived in. Use the door to the right, instead. You, Leader, are the bait. Move quickly from place to place, and draw our opponents inside.

He's not. Despite it appearing in the self-same context with very similar wording to the messages that boil down to "this is the wrong way, stop it" it's not one of them. No, this is him telling us where to go in the next room.

Could've put this one better, really.

Plus just for that, I'm taking the door next to the lift first. It gives us a Quantum Cell; the first of several cells we'll be grabbing during our time here.

Proceeding onwards, we run into one of these guys. If you take what guides say about these things at face value, Chatterskulls are meant to be a big "do not fight these guys!!" enemy. This is solely because of that Death March skill which they don't use very often. It's a kamikaze skill that deals Almighty damage but kills the user.

I ran into like a billion Chatterskulls. I fought just about every single one. The only times they got a turn, they used Skull Cleave or one of their Voids. Mostly they were Panicked so they didn't even do that.

gamefaqs writers are full of shit when it comes to this game can i make that any clearer

Heading the way Gale wants us to brings us to a small corridor with a couple side-rooms that are mostly optional.

I say "mostly" because one of them is actually the next bomb location.

Two bombs down, we leave the room and swing left to carry on. More Brutes catch up to us in the process though.

The Silver Fox is on the move: port side, toward the bow. Call for backup!

Dey took de bait! It's just like we planned...

Do not speak hastily. We cannot allow them to believe our leader is worth so few of their soldiers. Destroy them so we may continue.

It's just a couple of Taowns. How disappointing. Weak to earth, use Zandyne etc. etc.

The only reason they get a turn is because Gale doesn't have Terazi yet. He does, however, have Drain Force so the Taowns are kind enough to heal us at least.

....Oh, and the ship has a lot of rooms that are just empty. A lot of them. They're pretty out of the way at times too.

So we head back to where we fought the Taowns and go to the east instead.

Leads to a large room with a whole buncha doors. We'll head south first, since that one looks like progress.

Thankfully, it's a pretty linear area which just leads to our third bomb location.

Doubling back to where we just were, the door to the east is a waste of time. It's a large room with nothing in it. The lift at the north end it is, then.

We need to go to both the fourth and fifth floors, but there's no staircase leading to or from the fourth floor. So we'll head there first.

Areas for the next while are just small sections with a terminal and bomb spot basically next to each other. This one's a Karma terminal, and east of here...

...is a Cai-Zhi. Better known in the series as Xiezhai though. Its one of those rare morons that uses an element it is weak too. If there was ever an excuse to actually use Earth Repel here, its this guy.

Or we can just hit it with a Terazi of our own and it dies. Either/or.

After running into the new demon in the area, we hit the fourth bomb location for real.

Now that we're halfway done, we run back to the lift and go up to the fifth floor. But after we get there...

Enter The Bat

Once he finally enters the ship, Bat does notice something at least.

Namely that there's an Embryon uniform discarded and left in the middle of the floor...

At least Bat gets closer to it. So he can give it a good sniff.

Bat is getting awful creepy all of a sudden.

Too bad Sera isn't here, sucker.

Seismic Wave

Oh, but you'll never see him again... not after I devour you!

Your comrade...

You bastard!!

Try as she might, Argilla's not quite able to successfully land a hit on Bat.

The whole flying thing does give him an advantage, and he is able to kick her in the side of the head.

In a one-on-one fight like this, Argilla doesn't really stand a chance...

End

Steel Coffin ~ The Second Movement

So I guess we'd better hurry, huh? Door to the west looks like general progress to a higher floor, so we'll doubleback for it in a bit. East sounds good, so we'll clear that out first.

Like before, we get a terminal near the bomb location. This time around, it gives us a Life Terminal. Around the corner we go...

And thankfully, we're nearly done here.

Back to the main room we go, and on the way there, we even find... a staircase leading up... okay, so this way is progress. That other door must have been optional all along. We'll head back for it then.

It leads to a small area with a couple of cabins in. Only important item is the Theory Cell.

There's also a third door to the north which...

Leads to progress. Huh. Probably should've done this one first then. Appropriately enough, the terminal here is a Karma one.

And, yep, there's a bomb location near there too. Something a bit different happens this time though!

It makes me laugh dat you were stupid enough to fall for such an obvious trap!

The Brutes turn into 3 Chatterskulls. Serph burns them, Gale makes them Panic and Cielo pretends to help by casting Hama. Whatever.

Running all the way back to the staircase leading to the seventh floor then. This floors layout is a mite more convoluted than the norm. To the south there's a room with nothing in it. That corridor to the west that's further north is one of two routes somewhere later in the ship.

This door by the empty room?

That's our penultimate bomb location. Much like before...

We're on the seventh floor, I repeat-- ...Huh!? Th-That's...!?

Silence them.

This fight is probably trickiest thanks to the Phantoms. The Gurr isn't an issue. He's weak to electricity and guns.

Fight is only noteworthy aside from that because its where Serph mastered the King mantra. So what does Null Sleep really do?

Oh, nothing major. Just grants complete immortality when sleeping. The description downplays it, but if you have Null Sleep equipped and you are asleep every single attack will miss. Doesn't matter what it is or who's doing it.

Keep this in mind for much, much later.

Anyway, that done we can run all the way to the northern end of the floor and find progress there.

Hurry up! Get in position! They're moving toward our present location. We have to stop them, no matter what!

We'll, uh, deal with that later. For now, let's spin around and head to that other sidepath a bit to the south.

This one mostly just leads to another area with a couple cabins in it. Again, only item of particular note here is an Organic Cell.

It also has a door to the north that leads to yet another Small Karma terminal and an alternative entrance to the room we heard those Brutes from.

So it's up the stairs we go!

Hunting ~ Compulsion

Alrighty, so we have to fight 3 Sui-Kis this time around. Fittingly enough for the oni named after water, they mostly use Ice spells and they have Mabufudyne as a combo... so they have both Bufudyne and Teradyne then.

Thankfully their magic stat sucks balls; it only dealt 71 to Cielo, 67 to Gale and 35 to Serph.

Of course, then, they're weak to Fire. The only saving grace they have is that they have 500HP each. Still doesn't last all that long though.

They give quite a lot of money for something that's just a regular enemy at the end of the day though.

After getting past them, we can find a couple doors to the east and west. The eastern one most likely loops around to the lift we used on the 8th floor originally, so to the west it is.

This just leads to a small area with a couple cabins in it. Again. Unlike before this time we can get more than one neat item. Namely, first we get some more Hero Rations.

And in the cabin next door, we can find this dungeon's new bullet.

The Neutron Shot is just straight up better than the Iron one in every way possible. It's stronger AND inflicts Poison! Poor Iron Shot never even got a chance to shine.

New bullet picked up, we can now head to the east and the cabins there (also progress to the south).

First, though, we have to run into 3 Omoikanes in one fight. Because of course we do.

3 Debilitates means we aren't hitting shit. Moving on!

At least we can pick up another Magic Noise for our troubles.

To the south, we come to an obvious rest spot since it has both a small Karma terminal AND a Life terminal!

Running to the south, we find more cabins and a gold container that finally contains a fight. Been wondering when we'd find the one for this dungeon.

Hunting ~ Rare Devil

This time around, we get a couple Mothmen. Sorta disappointing really. They mostly use Ziodynes (aimed at Gale naturally).

Occasionally they cast Pulinpa to try and make you panic.

They're weak to earth. Of course they're weak to earth.

They also scare really easily when you use Elec Drain.

Steel Coffin ~ The Second Movement

Mothmen eaten, we can pick up another Organic Cell from the same room and move on.

A little south of the cabins is another area where we can place the final bomb. No Brutes jumping out this time unfortunately.

There's two pretty simple routes we can take back to the terminals. Doesn't matter which, but the one to the west feels shorter. It probably isn't though.

Since the door by the terminals drops us back to familiar territory, it's really easy to run back to the entrance on the 9th floor.

The Deserted Ship's Explosive Finale

Silence

Sadly, by the time we get there, Bat has Argilla beaten and pinned down...

We eat to survive. It's only natural. You're just like me. C'mon, admit it!

Silver Fox

Might not have gotten here in time before the 1-v-1 fight ended, but...

There is no fucking way Camazotz is eating one of our members.

Proving that he's kind of a badass, Serph just jumps right off the banister...

And even unmorphed, he attacks Camazotz.

Sadly, Camazotz dodges but he's probably glad he did. Either way, it's time...

Boss: Asura Camazotz (Round 3)

Big Battle

Time to fight this guy. Again. Since we just reconvened with Argilla, she can be subbed into the fight; most people would recommend not doing that because she might not be prepared or set-up for it. If you know its coming, however...

Like before, Camazotz opens up with a Psycho Rage. Unlike before, he's not quite scripted for the next bit.

Rather than just summon reinforcements, he goes on the offense in some way.

Come the end of his turn, he uses Guard as per usual.

Mistake number 1.

So we switch in Argilla in lieu of Cielo. Really its just position 3, but that's where Cielo is.

Then Gale taunts. Just the one is all you need to ruin Camazotz.

Argilla follows up with a Teradyne. With the one Taunt, this deals... um...

854 damage. Camazotz has 1500HP in this fight. I think we've already won, you guys.

Once he drops below half health, Camazotz gets a lot of dialogue that is super-easy to miss.

He also picks up a new skill called Zotzilaha Bane. This is a skill unique to Camazotz and its the one thing that makes this fight maybe a minor challenge. Emphasis on the maybe.

This drains a small amount of HP, and inflicts the unblockable ailment, Bat. Bat slices your stats, gives you a Force weakness and even drops your HP and MP to around 60% of their original max value.

It also can't be cured beyond death or it randomly curing on its own. So instead Bat gets Taunted a second time to get the big numbers and Argilla hits for almost 1200 damage.

Bat dies in 2 hits. The end.

Assuming that we don't do that, he gets to show off his other skills. Curse is, uh, what you think it is.

A single target spell that does nothing but try to inflict Curse.

His main magical offence comes almost entirely from casting Zanmas. Pitifully weak Zanmas that are in no way a threat.

If you give him a chance, he can use Power Charges which when combined with a Taunt or two allow him to deal upto a whole 90 damage!

Even when stacking buffs, Camazotz barely registers as a blip. Normally.

This changes once he has at least one person inflicted with Bat. That plus Taunt plus Power Charge lead to something a bit actually nasty.

He never got rid of Spiral Edge. He just never has much of a chance to use it. Its also at this point he stops ending his turns with Guard for a little while.

But when he does, at this point it actually hurts a bit.

Note that the only reason Serph died was because he was inflicted with Bat though. Even 200 damage to regular Serph would not kill him.

In the supremely unlikely event the fight goes on long enough, Bat can also use regular Rage but he does something different with this one.

He follows it up with a Dekunda (because he is debuffed; it would be Dekaja if I were buffed instead).

He also gets a bit chattier. A lot of his dialogue here is super easy to miss.

After removing de/buffs, he uses a Psycho Rage. This is the only time in which he stacks Rages.

And, yeah, he uses that mostly for Zotzilaha Banes and the like. Which has a chance of wearing off at the end of any turn, both his and our own.

But after he starts chucking out Zotzilaha Banes, there is a chance of his next turn being something really mean. Remember how the ailment Bat cuts your stats AND adds a Force weakness?

Instead of using a Rage or Spiral Edge, he can use a really nasty attack called Winds of Hell. Given the situation, this is going to murder us.

...Or, rather, it would if it weren't Force elemental. Force Drain is the ideal here, but Void is more than sufficient and you're guaranteed to have that.

So, that's Camazotz 3. If you intentionally sit there and don't attack he becomes a threat. If you so much as half-assedly try to win, however, he dies in like 2 rounds. He's even nice enough to give us AP this time but... I'm not entirely sure how that works in this case.

Like when Heat left before, whatever Mantra Argilla was learning is automatically mastered when she rejoins at this fight. How nice.

...Oh and if you think Teradyne is a bit too much here, well, you're right. But not for the reasons you think you are; Camazotz 3 is nothing but a colossal joke.

Anyway! Remember those bombs we just spent the entire dungeon planting? Yeah, they explode now.

Bat was actually still alive but left in the central area where we kicked his ass.

Emphasis on the "was" in that sentence though. Dude just got caught in the blast. Good chance he's actually dead for real now.

And then the entire ship goes up too. Needless to say, because of this the Deserted Ship was a one-time only dungeon; if we missed anything, it's gone now. That's why there was no field hunt.