Part 4: The RNG Gods Have Favored Me
Now that we've picked up the Mythril, it's time to walk all the way back to Altea. Yay. Nothing happens on the way, so let's just jump to the important stuff.
There's one character I didn't mention. There's an old man in the Altea weapon shop. You give him the Mythril and he makes stuff from them. That's it. That's all he does.
And of course we don't get any freebies. Don't be silly. In any case, the weapons are good (if expensive) and so is the shield, but the armor is heavy garbage. So this little fetch quest did not benefit us one iota. Excellent.
Oh and I picked up Bolt to round out my trio of elemental attack spells. Probably should have done that sooner.
: ...and I got the Mythril you were-
: That's nice dear.I should have picked up the Warship keyword earlier, but I forgot. Oops. Oh well, it's really only relevant now anyway.
We got our marching orders. Time to... hike across the world map again.
This time, I'm actually going to ride the ferry to Poft. One thing that really sucks about the early game of FF2 is that you have to traverse the same stretch of world map over and over and over again. What were once decently challenging encounters are pathetically easy, even with a solo character. The ferry alleviates it, but not by much.
As I mentioned before, the town of Bofsk is right of Poft. And that must be the
: I'm leading!Hilda mentioned a Dark Knight; if you come here earlier, you actually see him. Nothing happens when you do, mind you, but he's here. Also sitting on his ass and barking orders, but in a... better way?
Even under the tyrannical rule of the evil Empire, the shops in Bofsk are still open. So it's time for some shopping!
The Silver you see is in fact the Cuirass. It has the same small evasion penalty as the Copper Cuirass, but double the defense. Honestly, I should have gotten it sooner, since there was no reason not to and I probably could have scrounged up enough. The Bronze stuff is heavy crap, and even if we were using shields we'd have a better one soon anyway.
The spells they sell are kind of an odd bunch. Fear makes the enemies run away, Peep cures temporary status ailments, Heal cures permanent status ailments, and Mute silences the enemy temporarily. Heal is a must buy. The rest are rubbish. Peep (Basuna as it's known in later versions) seems like it'd be useful, but temporary status ailments tend to wear off quickly, and in a solo run any ailment that we'd want to cure would render us unable to cast anyway. Because temporary status ailments tend to wear off, this makes Mute also pointless to level. And Fear, like in FF1, is just dumb.
One thing that's annoying about both Peep and Esuna is that what ailments it cures is reliant on the spell level. For right now it only cures blind in battle. Moreover, in battle those two spells are not guaranteed to hit, especially if they're multi-targeted. So I'll have to grind the spell. Somewhat fortunately, since this is a solo run I don't have to bother getting the spell above level 3 or 4 since the statuses cured by higher levels of Heal either seal off spell casting or instantly game over me. Yay?
All right, now we're ready to go blow up an a giant airship.
There's a fellow in the corner bitching about Borgan (understandable). But he's on our side and once we mention the Warship he lets us through.
The path to the Warship is basically a mini dungeon, and there's very little to say about it. It's only two floors and I didn't run into any new monsters. There is a new enemy here, but I never ran into it. Oh well.
The first floor has some weapons for us, at least. Both of these are actually inferior to Mythril stuff, although if we couldn't afford Mythril weapons they're not bad. Okay, the sword's decent. The bow is terrible. All bows are terrible.
Yeah, that's all I can think of to say about this dungeon.
Hey it's
: Ha ha! You fool- oh, shit.
: Anyway. The Warship is operational and you failed. I'm off to kill some nameless NPCs. Ta!: I get a line in this scene!
Well son of a bean.
If we go back inside and go right, where Borgan came from, there's a door leading to a room.
This treasure chest contains the Pass, which we will let us onto the Warship.
We don't need it.
The pentagram is just a warp out of here. Not that it'd be all that hard to walk out, but if I don't have to I won't.
Probably should report to Hilda about this. Time to walk back. Again. Yay.
The bad guys wasted no time in using their Warship, did they? One thing that's notable about FF2's plot is how absurdly high the death toll is. Mega64 counted every single NPC and how of them died, and at the end concluded that almost half of the entire world's population dies over the course of the game. The GBA version actually bases its optional content around the game's death toll. I hesitate to call it dark, though, as "dark" assumes that we are shocked by this, or care in some way.
You will need to talk to Cid, preferably before you head back. He gives you the Sun Flame keyword which you need to get another important keyword.
Other than that, the walk back to Altea is uneven-
Seriously, I've done runs of this sort before, and I've gotten to the Snow Cavern having only ever gotten two or three gains in agility. This is really weird to me.
Since King Gonna Die Anyway's on his deathbed, we have to give Minwu back. Good-bye Minwu. Even as a corpse you're more useful than most of the temporary characters in this game.
Now, you're supposed to go talk to everyone. Cid tells you that you need to get the Sunflame to destroy the Warship, but to actually carry the Sunflame you need a torch that's in Kashuon Castle, but Kashuon Castle is locked and you can't get in without Gordon or Scott, but Gordon is missing(because he's awful) so you need to get the Goddess Bell but to get the Goddess Bell we- oh fuck all that. I've played this game before, I know where to go. We have to go to Salamondo and talk to Josef. There, easy.
So we're back on the road again. After some more pointless encounters-
Okay seriously what the fuck.
In any case, we're at Salamondo. At this point sometimes starts to feel off. I swear I forgot to do something.
Oh right. I'm missing a keyword. Because I forgot use the Sun Flame keyword on King Useless. And he's back in Altea.
GIVE ME YOUR KEYWORD.
All right, now we can continue.
At least, I'm gaining some experience for my spells and some stats along the way.
...I'm convinced. The game is sentient. It's sentient and it's luring me into a false sense of security. What are you up to, FF2? WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?!
So we got what we needed.
In order to get the Bell, we have to pick up a useless vehicle and a useless party member. Say hello to Josef everyone.
He hits things with his fists.
Josef also doesn't come with anything that great. The Leather stuff isn't that heavy, but it also doesn't really add a lot of defense. I don't see the point in losing two percent evasion for a point of defense. The Garlic is an attack item that only harms the undead. Oh, we haven't seen undead yet. We will. Don't you worry, we will.
Agility +4 (ridiculous), Vitality +1, Intelligence +4 (I might have overcompensated for last time), Soul +3, Evasion +2, Heal +1, HP +20