Part 7: "You ruined my life!!"

This will be a shortish update, only tackling the next dungeon. You see, dungeons in this game take forever because there's still the FF1 mentality of "regular encounters should challenge you and make you exhaust all your resources" except ramped to 11 and leading to bosses which are generally immune to physical attacks. Fucking wonderful.



Anyway, the Snowship is an actual fucking ship that sails on snow. Don't ask me the mechanics on that. It's probably fueled on palm oil or something.





Though there are Yetis around here, I only run into Icicles, which can take a good bit of abuse and dish it out as well. Take this as a sign that the next dungeon isn't going to be a walk in the park.



Eventually I get to the dungeon entrance. Keep in mind it's a pretty lengthy dive, and Dude only has 30MP, giving him a mere 15 castings of Cure 2 (not taking any necessary castings of Life into account).



That said, I have a bunch of Cure potions from those Soldier drops, so those will help my healing needs a bit.



I also decide to move Josef to the front row and have him actually participate, as I'm going to need his strength and another target to spread out damage.





The second dungeon is a long slog with tough encounters constantly wearing you down, lengthy passages that lead nowhere, empty rooms wasting time, and an annoying boss at the end.

So yeah, your typical FF2 dungeon.



Shadows hit pretty hard, while DeadHeads hit less so, about on par with the Icicles. Nothing too scary.



Josef's right now my weakest attacker, though because he's also a fellow fister he's more reliable with his damage than Nathan Fillion and Luna. He'll also improve as the dungeon goes on. Dude meanwhile can take out most enemies in one attack. Luna can deal a lot of damage if all her attacks land, though they usually don't, but her biggest asset is that she usually goes first, so she can take out the biggest threats in each encounter, you know, if she actually lands enough hits to kill them. Nathan Fillion is kinda there, though he's not shabby either.



Icicles are also abound here, and they're one of the easier encounters.



Thankfully, most of the loot here is not as shitty as this.



We can't enter this room, because it's a one-way exit from where we need to go.





Ghouls are nasty because they can paralyze a character, though this is the only time it happens to me. They also hit rather hard, so the sooner they redie, the better.



There's six or so floors to this dungeon. The treasure on the bottom requires going down to floor three, taking another entrance back up to this floor, and then walking around the area we're in to get the loot.

They really wanted you to suffer back in the day.



These guys are the fucking worst.



They hit really fucking hard, and can hit twice to deal as much as a hundred damage. They can also take a few hits before dying. They really suck when healing is limited.



At least the loot is good, dropping stuff like Maces and Battle Axes.



Grenades are a souped-up version of Balloons, with enough HP to actually survive attacks.



So when they choose to do their explosion move, it'll hurt. Unlike later FF's, the damage is not proportional to how much HP they have left. It's always around 80-90 HP, which really hurts. It only works when they aren't at max health, though, as otherwise they waste their turn. They also have a regular attack that's painful, but they much prefer trying to explode.



This is a one-shot item that will cast Ice16. Nice if you need it, I guess.



Now to wrap around and get the treasures on Floor 2...



GOD DAMMIT



That encounter already dropped one Battle Axe, but hey, more shit to sell.



A couple of grenades, nothing too major. Too bad nobody here uses maces.



Yetis also pop up in the overworld, and after the goblins and zombies they're the easiest monsters to deal with. Their attacks rarely hit double-digit damage, and any one character can take one down in one hit most of the time.



Deeper down, we find an Ice tome. Nathan Fillion gets it, of course.





We also get another silver lance. Meh.



This encounter scared me until I figured out a safe way to approach this.



Have everyone attack only one at a time. Slower, yeah, but since attacks don't redirect from a dead enemy, it increases the likelihood that one Grenade will die before exploding while not encouraging the others to explode. As I said, they prefer trying to explode to simply attacking, so overall it's the safer option.



I give this to Nathan Fillion. It's still pretty rough this early, and any way I can reduce damage is much appreciated.



More scrubs. The Ancient Sword is interesting.



It has a chance of Cursing enemies, which lowers attack and defense apparently, and it gives a big boost to damage.



However, its biggest problem is the 40% penalty to hit. I can still land one on average, but I'll be doing more damage with my Long Sword. Still, something I should remember should I need it.



This actually leads somewhere.





The somewhere being...a bunch of beavers.



Most aren't very talkative. You want to talk to the stationary one in the top left.



Secret path! Right wall this room. Monster guarding Chime. Chime in wall.

Oh yeah, Dude can talk to animals. This is the only time in the game this comes up.

This is also the only time in the game Dude contributes anything to the plot.



This path leads to the final room in the dungeon.





New armor! I'll take it.



Time for a boss battle with our fake boss music!





So, this fight is similar to the other times we fought turtles.



Insane physical defense that renders Josef worthless and relegates Dude to defense. Except his MP is so low I can't even cast Ruse. Also, the turtle hits pretty damn hard, like around 50 damage a hit hard (and he can do two hits).





Needless to say, Nathan Fillion does all the heavy lifting here, though Luna gets to help a little as well.



It takes awhile, but I manage to bring him down with little difficulty.



Don't forget to take the Chime, of course.





As a plus, we make it back out to the first floor. This is important because we can't use Warp in this dungeon because story.



You see, our good friend Borgen is here, and he's not happy for...some reason. We failed at destroying the warship, so I don't know how we ruined Borgen's life. Honestly, it's probably that everyone hates him because he's a worthless piece of shit and he's too arrogant to realize this, so blames us instead.





Borgen's a chump though and goes down in a single round of combat.





Unfortunately, there's a BOULDER HEADING TOWARD US.





Now!! Run!!
Cannot leave you.
Hurry! I..can't..











And so Josef sacrifices himself to save the party, meanwhile orphaning his daughter. They actually retell this story in Final Fantasy IX, during the part where Ramuh gives Garnet a history lesson or whatever. It's also the first of many, many occasions where a party member sacrifices himself for the good of the party. And trust me, as far as this game's concerned, we're only getting started.

Oh yeah,

DEATH COUNT: 21

Next time, we move on to the next dungeon and all that.



STR +3, AGI +2, VIT +4, INT -1, MAG +1, HP +63, MP +18, Sword +1

Since Nathan Fillion only spams magic in the overworld and its weak enemies, his Intelligence isn't climbing as high as I'd like. Other than that and his lowish HP, he's around where I want him right now.



STR +1, AGI +3, VIT +3, MAG +1, HP +49, MP +13, Spear +1, Shield +1

Luna's gaining agility like a mad woman, and I fucking love it. Her Strength is also becoming respectable, and she's even starting to improve her magical stats a bit. Some more strength, and she'll be fantastic.



STR +3, VIT +4, INT -1, HP +132

Dude's still problematic with his low Agility and MP. Considering how much I rely on Dude for healing now that MingWu's gone, at the very least I'll likely need to go out of my way to raise his MP. I cut it close that dungeon, and that was with a ton of Cure potions. The next dungeon isn't going to be a picnic, either, so I'll have to grind that up a bit, especially since Cure will be closing in on L3 soon. Other than that, he's still my best melee fighter, and he has a huge reserve of HP to make up for his lack of evasion, so he has that going for him.