Part 27: Soul of Rebirth Part 2

So the makers of this optional dungeon actually show you mercy here. Instead of launching straight into flipped recolored Pandaemonium, they put a town here. Despite what this guy says, no, at no point will monsters enter or anything.

But... if this is the FF2 afterlife, it's going to be filled with some familiar faces.



What Cid has to say is actually kind of important, so I'm just going to present all of it.

No one's more surprised than me. Who's have thought there'd really be an afterlife? And to top it off, everyone here died fighting the empire. How do you like that?
...
I gave up my life of a white knight for the lure of the skies, and here I am. Never thought I'd wind up in Hell for it, but... Any way you slice it, this place is different than any story I ever heard about Jade.
You don't think this is Jade?
If this is the entrance to Hell, what are innocent little kids doing here?

Depending on the time period, and who you ask, unbaptized infants go to limbo, so I guess it's not that unbelievable. I mean, we're talking FF2 here. They should be glad that they're not currently on fire.

When I first got here, this place WAS just how you'd picture Hell. Monsters fed on anyone they could catch-the old, children, you name it. By the time we found a place without monsters to build this makeshift town, most of the people were already done in.
: Terrible...
Since you all showed up, people have started to show some hope. It's funny to think of the dead having hope, but there it is. As long as I'm defending this village, I'll help you in any way I can. So I'm asking you, find out what in blazes is going on! Where are we, and what are we doing here?

Minwu and co have been here for, like, thirty minutes. Also, when he says he's going to help in any way he can, that means Cid will not do a goddamn thing.



Good for you.

Anywho, that's the excuse this thing for having a town right next to what is apparently not the Jade Passage. So, you might be wondering if this a "real" town.



Yes, it is! Just having an inn here is a major help.



There's actually a lot of stuff on sale here. This town has the full suite of stores, each of them with three sellers.



Most of the stuff on sale is actually rather basic, but it's not as though you couldn't use more of these spells. In addition, Machanon also sells fire, blizzard, thunder, cure, blink, protect, shell, and basuna.

I get Josef the basic elemental spell plus cure to get him starting on becoming a mage. He also gets blink, life, and mini. Those latter three are far more useful than any attack spell, and Josef doesn't really train his elemental spells much. Oh well.



Despite the fact that Minwu already comes with a great number of spells, I decided to toss Silence and Teleport to make room for more. Silence is redundant since a) it inflicts a temporary ailment and b) Minwu already has Fog, which casts the permanent version of silence. As for Teleport, I could still theoretically use it as a insta-death spell, but it was very low-leveled and mini has higher accuracy. Moreover it's disabled out of battle, so I can't use it for its intended purpose. Teleport goes. I could probably toss more of his spells, but the only new spells I want are mini and a certain mystery spell- we get later.

Also, Ricard gets Life. Ricard's not going to be a spellcaster, but I want everyone to be able to cast Life.



The weapon shop is pretty unimpressive, though. Both of my front liners generally have better weapons than the ones on sale. However, since they sell bows both Minwu and Josef now have means to attack from the back row.



Oh yes and Tobul is here. Do you even remember him? Made the mythril stuff that you never, ever use? Told him I'd see him in hell, but this isn't what I expected



The armor shop is even worse. This is the best it offers. Yeah, I skip it.



The item shop has the Gaia Drum instead of Cottages, which makes sense since we'll never see a world map, but otherwise sells the exact same stuff item shops sell in the main game.



And like the main game, most of our money will be going towards ethers and elixirs.

All right, so, now that the party is all rested up and I've got 18 ethers, we're good to go, right?






Mini Satana
Rank 5, HP 1200, MP 350, Attack Power 60, Attacks 8, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Defense 6-60%

Bloodbones
Rank 4, HP 1000, MP 200, Attack Power 90, Attacks 5, Accuracy 75%, Defense 35, Evasion 2-40%, Magic Defense 3-50%

Purobolos
Rank 4, HP 800, MP 300, Attack Power 60, Attacks 5, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 0, Magic Defense 4-40%

Li'l Murderer
Rank 4, HP 1500, MP 250, Attack Power 100, Attacks 6, Accuracy 80%, Defense 4, Evasion 3-20%, Magic Defense 2-40%





Yeah, we're a little underpowered for this. The Bloodbones and Purobolos are just physical attackers, and they can be neutered easily enough, but the Li'l Murderer can cast some pretty damaging spells, and if they hit Minwu or Josef, they're taking them out.



The Mini Satana, however, are complete bastards. All of the party has pretty low magic defense levels, and boy does it show.



Also the Mini Satana casts stun.



Yeah.


Chimera Brain
Rank 5, HP 2000, MP 240, Attack Power 85, Attacks 6, Accuracy 90%, Defense 70, Evasion 1-65%, Magic Defense 5-40%



Again, this is a case where my party's low HP, especially my back row characters, bites me in the ass. Chimera Brains rather like this blaze attacks, and two of them kill Minwu and Josef. Minwu can cast Barrier, and that helps immensely, but a) he has to cast it before dying, which isn't reliable, and b) he doesn't blink for that turn. Josef can't pick up the slack, he's shit at applying blink, so that leaves Ricard and Scott vulnerable for a few turns. Sounds trivial, but they could easy die in the meantime. Remember, if they both die, the battle is lost.



This was a message I saw a lot.

This party can actually win battles here, but not consistently. Also, winning a battle takes so much MP that I pretty much have to run to the inn after every battle. It's unavoidable; I gotta grind.



First off, I'm going to go back through the Not Jade Passage to buy some more spells from the waterfall store. Since I've got a full party, and we're a bit stronger now, this is actually a fairly easy task. One tip for this dungeon is that if you're having a lot of trouble in the beginning (and of course you will) you can just try to rush through it as fast as possible then come back later to get the treasure. Although there's no easy way back to town, you gotta walk. Kind of annoying, but I need to grind anyway.



All I grab is a single haste tome, mostly that's all I can afford, but that's all I need. It goes to Josef. The trip gives him a chance to gain a few spell levels, but he's never going to be much of a mage. At best he'll help Minwu or Scott set up buffs.



I say the trip was worth it.

Sadly, we're still not ready to tackle the next part. But, there is something we can grab real quick.



There are actually three teleporters in town. We know where the other two lead, but this one?





It's... the top of Mysidia tower?







I still really don't know how people exactly die twice here, but whatever. Minwu didn't, so we're good.



Much like Ultima in the main game, we have four silver orbs and a gold orb.



And like in the main game, each of the four silver orbs give +10 to a stat. Minwu got intelligence (bleh), Scott got agility (he's the one who really least needs it, but okay), Ricard got spirt (ugh), and Josef got strength. Disappointing all around. I could have reloaded and rerolled those results, but that's lame, so I'll just live with it.

However, you don't want to grab the gold orb, at least not right away. You actually can grab the silver orb and then leave the gold orb sitting there. Why do that?



This time, you can't just grab Ultima without a fight.


Ultima Weapon
Rank 7, HP 15000, MP 500, Attack Power 150, Attacks 9, Accuracy 100%, Defense 190, Evasion 1-80%, Magic Defense 8-70%

Ha ha ha. No.



We'll have to come back to this later.

So... grinding. Yes, grinding. Well, we have two options where to grind. In Jade, where the enemies are easier to kill but give less rewards, or Pandaemonium(?), where you can easily get wiped, but surviving battles means more stats.

It's actually worth your while in grind in NotPandaemonium. Not only will you gain more stats more battle, but they drop better things.



The L'il Murderers in particular love giving out shit. While Black Robe doesn't protect against any statuses, it does reduce damage from fire, ice, and thunder. Considering how easily Minwu and Josef fall to Blaze or the L'il Murderer's Thunderbolt, this is actually a really great find. Scott ends up with it, since he is pretty much what's keeping the party alive. I'll eventually get more, though, so no worries.



Chimera Brains can drop the best knife. Eh, not great. Since the main gauche doesn't show up in Dawn of Souls, it's really not worth it to train knives.


Warg Wolf
Rank 4, HP 1500, Attack Power 70, Attacks 8, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-80%, Magic Defense6-60%

It can poison you. That's pretty much it.


Orukat
Rank 6, HP 1140, MP 400, Attack Power 85, Attacks 7, Accuracy 90%, Defense 70, Evasion 0, Magic Defense 5-70%

Okay, it was stupid not to heal up, but perhaps I could still swing this, right?

Guess what Orukats can do.





Yeah, this ended in a game over. I got a lot of game over grinding here. Just... trust me, okay?



After about, hrm, an hour or so of grinding (or attempting to, anyway) I decided to give this another whirl.



So what can the Ultima Weapon do?



It has a nasty, nasty attack, but Minwu's blink is up to level 7, so that can be neutralized.





Oh goodie. However, a Barrier from Minwu cuts this down pretty significantly.



It doesn't help, though, if Minwu doesn't cast it in time.



The real feather in this boss's cap is single target Flare 16.



Yeah, this attempt didn't work.



So I tried it again.



Oh, and the Ultima Weapon gets an earthquake spell.



Not that bad.



Once I got every on their feet, barriered and shelled, with the fighters blinked, I was actually keeping steady, for the most part. If Minwu healed in every round, no one would fall to Blaze or Earthquake, and since Scott is the fastest one if I need emergency healing he can do that.



Unfortunately, there were two major problems. One, it was difficult to damage this boss. Even with berserk neither Scott nor Ricard could do much damage. Turns out 190 defense is hard to cut through. I eventually got them doing up to 1000 damage per round. Out of 15,000. This was going to take a while.



The other problem was flare. Scott and Richard had enough HP and magic defense to survive a flare, but for Minwu or Josef it was a one-hit kill.



It was nice that everyone here knew the life spell. Also, in the original game life sometimes failed, and it was never revive more than one person at a time, although you could still multi-target the spell. Here, it never seemed to fail. Lucky for me.

In addition, he's resistant to all eight elements, so I can't cheese this with frog, or cripple the boss. Also, Sap is mind elemental, and unlike Osmose, can fail. It doesn't work. If I had Osmose in some form I possibly could make this boss so much easier. You can't pick up Osmose in Soul of Rebirth, so you'd have to have Ricard come in with it. Good luck with that.



The battle went on long enough that I had to start using ethers.

This battle was almost ten minutes long.



But I eventually won.

He doesn't drop a damn thing, by the way.



And I get Ultima. Apparently the game doesn't let you give it to anyone but Minwu, but I wasn't going to do so anyway. If nothing else, at least Minwu now has an damaging spell.

This time I actually went and looked at everyone's stats before I signed off, so let's check up on them.