Part 12: Accord's Requests I: The Land of Seas

Accord's Requests I: The Land of Seas

New Music: Drakengard 1: Fourth Chapter Ground ~ Chiptune



Earlier on we unlocked the first of... many... many... many requests from the mail order weapons merchant, Accord. Periodically throughout the course of the game Accord will dole out freelance side missions to aide in the operations of their shop. These require the gathering of goods from within the area for... some bullshit. Honestly, it's just fucking filler padding nonsense. There is a one line Mad Libs description of the job usually to the tune of:

"The people of <PROPER NOUN LOCATION> require <NOUN FANTASY ITEM>. I've got a request for <NUMBER BETWEEN 3-12> of them; get them for a reward!"



There's a few restrictions to all of Accord's Requests. As you can read above, no items and no allies. It's just Zero flying solo for all of these. With those stipulations I should add: No story, no dialog, no fun. These are are all terrible, boring, grindy bullshit. So I'll be going over how they go down this one time here. Then on out I'll be ignoring beyond any noteworthy weapon unlocks. Nothing will be lost of value.

The Beloved Stones





The first of the whole... four variations of Accord's Requests is Item Raiding. There are X number of enemy soldiers that will drop a crystal upon death. That crystal is the item required. They didn't bother to render unique low poly vendor trash shapes for these requests. Just a crystal and a different item text bubble will suffice.

Item Raiding also includes the parameter that the weapon type unlocked during the particular chapter is the only one allowed on these raids. In this case Swords, since that is all Zero has access to during Chapter 1. This can get annoying in later chapters. Chakrams, I'm looking at your sorry asses.



Now given the separate soldier number and item number, it would mean Zero would have to slay a particular few unique soldiers on the battlefield to get the necessary drops, right? Haha. That's cute. No, it's almost always the very last soldier that will drop the final item in question. So the actual objective is to just kill all the enemy units present in the allotted time. With the off chance you may zoom away too quickly for a drop to be collected and have to run over afterwards once the smoke settles. Or get fucked by the timer due to your negligence! It's great!







The solitary wrinkle to this item collect-a-thon/massacre is the fact there is an infinitely spawning swarm of suicide bomber rushing Zero periodically. They all carry massive cartoon bombs and beeline for Zero's position. The bombs are on a timer and they're happy to just chill out next to our Part-Timer Intoner. But smacking them around will cause the bomb to drop and detonate earlier.

These guys are noteworthy mostly due to the fact cartoon explosives do not know the meaning of friend or foe and are happy to blow up either side of the conflict. Which helps when the objective is a glorified "kill everyone quickly" scenario.





And that's pretty much it for Item Raiding. There are like frikkin' over like twenty of these missions. Swap out the map, shuffle in the next tier of enemies, change the item name and count. Adjust the time. Done.



A lump sum is presumably mailed to Zero... somehow... upon completion of the mission. I'd like to think Zero has to leave a return address after completing one of Accord's Requests to get the reward and it just reads:

I don't know?! By the dumbass ocean near my slutty sister's shrine. There's a cave or some shit. Just the trail of bodies and send me my goddamn gold!



In addition to the flat reward, the first time any of Accord's Requests is completed a one time only bonus is awarded. In the very first case, we receive an upgrade to Zero's supply limit. Inventory upgrades are pretty rare. About 90% of the time the First Time reward is just a Base Material for weapons upgrades.

Yeah... thanks, Accord. A gift of something to spend more money in your shop. I see your mail order scam going on here. I bet it's not even the actual material. It's probably just a damned coupon voucher only redeemable at Accord's Retail Outlet good for the next 30 days or some garbage. I know your type, merchant!



While some of Accord's requests are unlocked via just story progress. There are usually two or three missions that require the previous installment of off-the-books retail work to be completed in full before unlocking. Such as this: Horn Hunting! Would you like to know what Horn Hunting is?

Horn Hunting





THE SAME FUCKING MISSION ON! THE SAME FUCKING MAP! BUT YOU NEED ONE MORE ITEM DROP! There is slightly less time and slightly stronger soldiers. The end. Full stop.

Book Club: Hope



This variation has a Gigas in it along with the same mook soldiers! Murdering the Gigas is mandatory reading for this curriculum.



And now you see why I am going to just gloss over this tedious busy work. Ya know, we play it so you don't have to and all that...



Following the completion of Verse 3 of Chapter 1 we unlocked the second tier of Accord's Requests. I know the mission description may look quite similar, but I assure you it is a completely different animal. I mean it is a tedious, spiteful, obnoxious animal. Like a goose. Geese are such dicks. In any form they take. Geese Howard? Fucking asshole. I'm glad he got dropped off a high rise skyscraper. Twice.

Pinkstone Pilgrimage





The second set of about twenty interchangeable side quests is the Treasure Hunting requests. Quite different from Item Raiding, I'll have you know. While Item Raiding required basically a quick and deadly search for required items scattered among a group of enemy combatants. Sort of a hunt, if you will. Treasure Hunting instead tasks Zero with a quick surgical strike into enemy territory to plunder their valuables in a sort of raid like fashion.

...





The gimmick of this quest variant is that there are three chests scattered along a stretch of the map, just like in the main game. They're in plain view this time around. The developers were not quite enough of a dick to hide them this time around. The only catch now is that they are reinforced by steel chains hastily wrapped around their exteriors for extra protection against rogue pirates.





The goal of this set of requests is for Zero to just haul ass to each chest in the area and just beat the living shit out of it as quickly as possible. There are scores of soldiers running around. They're just there to slow Zero down in her pursuit of treasure chest clobberin'. This set of missions is largely based on having a weapon that will deal the most damage possible in the least amount of time. Ideally one that will also knock back a few soldiers in the process so they are less of a hindrance in Zero's quest against steel chain bondage.



And that is essentially the gist of it. The time limit in these missions are quite tight. It often comes down to a matter of popping off Intoner Mode on the final lockbox and going to town in hopes of beating the clock. I found these to get really annoying later on when they start throwing in tons of enemies that can easily bash Zero away or just overwhelm in stun-locking numbers if you're not careful. To make no mention of fun stuff like having a chest on an elevated platform and the like.

Communicorns



See above. With slightly more archers and lancer guys. Also a terrible pun for the mission title as we're gathering stocks of unicorn horns. Copper Base Material reward.

Book Club: Ambition



Same mission. Bunch more lance guys. Little time. Gold Base Material reward.

Seaside Payday



After completing a chapter in Drakengard 3, the final Accord Request side mission will unlock: Payday! Time for a nice proper heist, wouldn't you say?



There is one Payday mission per area of the game. They entail locking Zero in an arena with a powerful monster that has pockets just loaded with change as though they just got back from a vacation in River City. Zero is ordered to knock the snot out 'em for fun and profit until they can barf no longer. They're even nice enough to start her off with a fully juiced Intoner Mode meter for maximum mugging potential.





Once the initial change filled pinata is dealt with a golden soldier will appear to challenge get manhandled by Zero. These guys aren't actually any sort of threat. They're just a standard soldier with a filter applied and a metric ton of HP. Chipping away at their golden exterior is quite profitable. But the core goal is to actual kill one of these suckers for a big multiplier of overall profits from the Payday. Just this first one can yield a good 15,000 Gold if Zero is up to the task.



Unfortunately, with barely upgraded Chapter 1 weapons, that can be an issue. And on top of that Payday missions cannot be farmed like other missions. They have a cool down period before becoming available again. Every time a Payday is initiated, successfully or not, Zero cannot participate in another session until three other Accord Requests are accomplished. Any three will do, even previously completed missions. Since, ya know, the grind required to fully complete the vanilla version of the game wasn't tedious enough on its own merits.



And that about does it for my book report on Accord's Request and why they suck. Oh well, at least there are no NIER level side quest trolling. I will be pissed about Life in the Sands until the day I die.