Part 4: "No one takes my Silver!"

Since I'm getting a ton of stat-ups now, I'm going to just do status updates after each section. Let's start with checking out our current party.



Getting close to finishing Swords, with Shields not far behind. I'll stop using shields for Nathan Fillion sooner or later, once he starts gaining some damn agility.



Making decent progress on spears. Still pretty low on strength, but it's not really hurting her that much.



Having a shield equipped doesn't level fists! Plus having a shield equipped with a bare fist means you miss almost all the time. I soon abandon shields for him completely. He'll have to be content taking a ton of hits.



Our goal is to walk northwest, to Salamand. Again, not a long walk.



Along the way, I have Dude level Ruse a bit since I'm sure it'll be a valuable spell later on.



Dude also levels shields up. Doesn't really help him much in gaining agility, though.



Let's go to Salamand, then.



Salamand
Population: 11 (For now)





The Empire is mining Silver in the cave.

Our next destination is Semite Falls, to both obtain Silver and free the enslaved miners.



This woman's sole character trait is being obsessed with Josef. She's always outside his house and talks about how in love with him she is.

I don't know why they created a NPC whose sole purpose is to stalk another minor NPC. Also, none of our passwords work on her despite the prompt.



More weapons, though armor's mostly the same.



Got some new spells, the notable one being Life. Warp's also handy, but there's a copy in the next dungeon so no need to bother with it.

Of course, we can't actually afford any of this stuff right now. Let's go bother Josef instead.



Let's start by asking about an Airship.

I know an expert, but I can't let you know.

...Alright then. How about the Warship?

Of course I know! It's a gigantic airship!

Let's try out Ivy.

Princess Hilda sent youngsters like you? Ha! Unbelievable!! Can you prove it?

Apparently not. Might as well ask about Silver then.



I will trust you if you free the people being enslaved at Semite Falls.

So yeah, no headway with Josef until we beat the next dungeon.



The Semite Falls is to the southwest. First I do a bit more exploration to the northwest.



Big Feet aren't really any different from the other enemies around here. They don't hit terribly hard and go down easily enough.



To the north is this ice area that we can't walk into. We'll revisit this later.



A few stat-ups later, Nathan Fillion levels up swords. This is big because the number of hits you can perform is equal to your weapon level. This means Nathan Fillion now does two hits per attack instead of one, pretty much doubling his damage output and increasing his chance to hit an enemy.



Likewise, Luna levels up spears and shields. Since Luna's actually using a shield, this means it'll increase her chances of evading attacks, since I believe it will give her two chances to block an enemy hit. A high shield level is pretty important for a character you want to evade attacks.



Despite hitting nothing but air, MingWu still manages to level up staves. You don't even need to hit anything to level up a weapon. Just using it will do (and not even that is necessary due to a glitch, the select-cancel glitch which works just as it sounds).





I also have Nathan Fillion alternating between Fire and Swords, to the point where Fire levels up to L2. This increases the damage a good amount, to the point where he can one-shot weaker enemies with one multi-target casting. The downside is that it costs 2MP instead of 1 now. Of course, this also lets him burn through MP quicker and thus helps him gain MP level-ups, but I stupidly decide not to grind for MP before going to the dungeon, a mistake I'll later regret.



But here it is in action. It'll do a nice ~30 damage to a single-target, plus it looks better than the wimpy L1 Flame.



Eventually, we reach Semite Falls. Before we go in, let's summarize stat gains so far.



STR +2, INT +1, MP +8, Sword +1



STR +1, Spear +1, Shield +1



STR -1, VIT +1, WILL +3, MP +7, Shield +1

A little slow, but going as expected. Also, here's MingWu's stats coming in.



I'm showing these off now because we'll be gaining a lot soon enough. So let's tackle this dungeon!





The way I put this dungeon earlier is an "easy slog." It's lengthy, but the enemies are only a small step above what's around Salamand.



Soldiers are a nice encounter.





They can use arrows, which hit from/at the back row (so it can hurt MingWu) and they hit hard. This is a good thing, of course, because I want to end battle in low HP so I can increase my max HP, plus I have MingWu to give me good healing in case my HP gets too low. Thus I'm never in any real danger, but there's enough danger to justify some great stat boosts.



However, these guys are pretty beefy with some decent defense and thus take several rounds to kill off.





They'll also usually drop treasures instead of money. These guys like to drop Cure potions, which don't really mean much compared to MingWu and Dude's healing, but hey, saves a bit of HP.



This does nothing, even though it looks like it does something.



This game can really dick you over when it feels like it. Remote treasures with crap rewards is just the tip of the iceberg.



Most encounters here will have similar enemies to the ones you can fight around Salamand, just in more difficult formations. The Green Goblins can also use arrows, so sometimes those in the back row can still hurt you. Fortunately, it's a decent but not scary amount of damage, enough as I said to give nice HP boosts.



Of course, some treasures actually have decent loot. 200G is not too shabby.



That said, the dungeon's only easy because I have MingWu to heal/revive everybody. The game gives him to you as a panic button, since otherwise healing will be an ordeal without a good bit of grinding. Dude would be out of MP by the first floor. Still, he's a great way to slowly introduce you to the gameplay without the player being overwhelmed.

It's funny to think of FF2 as a game that actually eases its player into the gameplay, but this is actually pretty clever for a NES game.



Apparently Garlic does damage or something. I don't know, maybe I'll try it out later.



Another great thing about this dungeon's encounters is the cash. I was strapped for cash entering the dungeon, and already I'm collecting enough money that I could actually afford upgrades for my characters.



Finally, we reach the second floor. This dungeon has large, maze-like rooms with a lot of dead-end branches, so that combined with constant random encounters make navigating a room take forever.



I'm having Nathan Fillion hold back on magic to conserve his MP, so he's using a shield, leading to a level up.



This game ups the nasty status effects, but also gives you the tools to cure them. It also kindly gives you the heal spell to cure them, though this translation has the two listed as the confusing Hel1 and Hel2, so it's hard to know which spell heals what, even if you know that Hel1 heals temporary battle statuses and Hel2 heals the ones that stick around post-battle.



Also, Dude levels his fists. This actually gives him an even larger boost to his damage than Nathan Fillion or Luna, so it's a nice addition.



MingWu also gains a bunch of Strength despite still not hitting anything.



Pure cures poison, which can be pretty nasty. Still can't buy Heal spells right now, so I'll need this if MingWu ever leaves.



At the end of this area, there are four doors.



Three of them lead to empty rooms. This game fucking loves doing this, and there's a ton more rooms deeper in the dungeon that lead to more empty rooms. The worst part is that you still have to walk all the way back out, so all this does is increase the likelihood of more random encounters.

A game shouldn't discourage exploration, yet between all the dead-ends and these empty rooms and the shit treasure and the constant encounters, you don't really get much of an incentive to explore. For all the misunderstandings about this game, there's still a lot of bullshit that fits its low reputation.



Zombies hit a bit hard, but that's about it.





The leftmost room leads to another area of weird passages to dead ends. Same old shit.





Slimes are why you want to have MP. They're highly resistant to physical attacks, but not so much to magic.



One multi-target L2 Fire spell destroys them. Considering it's nigh-impossible to run away from my experience so far, you're screwed if you run into these guys without any solid magic attacks.



Oh fuck you.



The northwest has more doors. Once again, two lead to empty rooms, while the last one...



...leads to the enslaved miners!



They have nothing to say to the passwords, so I don't know why they even bothered with them.



I'll take Nelly and all! Thanks! See ya!



Then they all just disappear. They don't even bother showing everyone walking out. Anyway, to the right is the passage to the next floor.



Balloons like to spam attacks that don't do anything. I assume they'll explode if they lost HP, but I tended to kill them all in one attack each so they never accomplished anything.



A second Fire spell. Pretty nice considering all the Slimes around.



This area has yet another empty room door and a four-way bridge area. The northern path wraps around to the next exit.

They really designed this place to be as long and confusing as possible.



Finally, the last area!





And L3 Spears/Shields for Luna! And the more-meaningless L3 Staves for MingWu!



And here we finally are.



And so we fight the first boss of the game. Though this game has boss music, it only uses it in a very few fights, so this gets the regular battle music. So instead, listen to this unused battle track and pretend it's the battle music instead!





The Sergeant is a big step up and can be pretty damn difficult if you're not prepared. His HP is in the triple-digits, for one thing.



The big problem is his high physical resistance. This makes Luna useless and renders Dude into nothing more than a back-up healer.



This guy also hits really fucking hard. He's legit dangerous and forces me to start spamming spells as MingWu, burning through his lowering MP pool.



My only real offensive action is to cast Fire2 on the Sergeant. If you look at the lower-right area, I only have enough MP for three castings of the spell.



I end up just sticking with physicals after running out of MP and finally finish him off with a fucking 2-damage attack. Those Fires did a great job weakening him, but man would I have loved more MP.



At least I got a ton of level-ups from it, including leveling Nathan Fillion's swords!



Finally, Silver!

There's no warp back outside, so we have to backtrack. Well, that's not entirely true, but first we have to search the rest of the floor.

Though it's against the play-style, I give Dude the Fire tome we found since he still has MP and in case I run into more fucking Slimes that I don't end up getting fucked over.



On the bright side, Nathan Fillion gains some much-needed agility.







This game figures out how to have monsters hide in chests, and thus we have the series' first monster-in-a-chest.



And guess what, this guy also has high defense! Dude can burn him a little bit, but I come up with a clever, if risky, idea.



You see, MingWu has a spell called Swap. When cast, it will exchange the HP and MP of the caster with the target. It's a great way to weaken an enemy while healing yourself, if you get it off.



It's also got other applications, like leveling or, in this case, giving some free MP to my black mage.



Of course, I leave MingWu without any MP, meaning I can't revive anybody and have to rely on Dude's healing. It was kind of a gamble.



But it worked out, and now I got a much-needed Warp spell.



I actually give it to Luna, since teleportation seems rather Dragoon-like, and since I won't get too screwed if my other mages run out of MP.



The spell teleports us out of the dungeon, though it depletes Luna's HP. Not a big deal, though, as now I can save. I can also delete Fire from Dude so he can remain a healer/puncher.

And now, let's end the update with a summary of stat gains in that dungeon.



STR +2, AGI +1, VIT +3, INT +1, HP +34, MP +8, Sword +1, Shield +1

Nice, balanced gain. A decent HP boost is a plus.



STR +1, VIT +6, HP +97, Spear +1, Shield +1

Luna didn't really make much progress in anything but Health. That said, in just that one dungeon she more than tripled her max HP, so I'm fine with that.



STR +1, VIT +6, MAG +1, HP +118, MP +7, Fist +1

Likewise, Dude also gained a ton of HP, doubling his already-high HP.



STR +5, VIT +1, WILL +1, MAG +1, HP +21, MP +83, Staff +1

Here's MingWu's stat gains for trivia's sake.

Next time, we finally advance the story a tiny bit! Hopefully more interesting things will happen!