Part 9: "Next attack of the Warship will be the end of time."
So, after that trip the party is kind of worn down and has kind of a long trip to get back. But luckily, there's a well-hidden shortcut that's incredibly easy to miss!
That said, all you have to do is go all the way south from the bridge and you'll find an open clearing.
And in that clearing is the series' first Chocobo!
That said, catching him is a pain in the ass, since he likes to teleport everywhere.
It's a bit confusing, but after talking to it you have to leave and then jump on it in the overworld.
The first Chocobo theme is rather incomplete compared to later iterations, merely repeating the first part of the now-familiar theme repeatedly. It's not until FF3 that we got the Chocobo theme as we know it as well as adding stuff like Big Chocobos and what-not.
Other than that, it's still a Chocobo, letting you fly through the overworld without encountering any battles. The one major difference is it can't cross shallow water like later Chocobos can, which cuts off a few areas without having to do some clever navigation.
But the entire world is essentially one massive landmass that wraps around the entire world, so it all works out.
A couple of many interesting landmarks I could've shown off if I weren't lazy. The warship is actually our next dungeon, but I really need to regroup first.
And of course, like the rest of the series, Chocobos will run off to their deaths once you're done with them.
So, new dialogue at Altea.
People are still concerned about the Warship, of course.
Turns out the Warship caught up to Cid and Hilda and captured them both.
Anyway, the warship is a good walk north of Fin, so it's good to be extra-prepared since now even the journey to the next dungeon will consume resources.
She took the Airship, thinking at least to meet you at Casheon.You can ask Mingwu about the Warship...
Even the Warship has to land and be refueled.
Nothing else works on these two, though.
Lot of useless loot that ends up netting lots of money. Now I'm over 20k gold with nothing to spend it on.
Parm and Poft actually have new dialogue, though it's barely worth the trip to read it.
For battles, I have Nathan Fillion grinding Blind so that it may become the one status-inflicting spell I end up actually using. Lowering hit rate could come in handy later on. ...Maybe.
North of Fin is where I did a lot of my early grinding, and now we have to go through the area to reach the next dungeon. It's mostly the same level of enemies as the upper levels of Casheon, so nothing too threatening, though definitely annoying.
Oh, the difference one level makes on a weakness! Now Nathan Fillion can one-show the Black Turtles with a single casting.
Mages are good and bad. Bad, because they have all sorts of nasty spells that prolong battle, though they aren't that deadly.
Good in that they like to drop spell books, like Powr which boosts power. It's Black Magic, so Nathan Fillion grabs a copy. Damn, he has a lot of magic grinding to do now.
It's important to note that Luna is starting to fall behind in damage. Dude is Dude, still dominant as hell, while Gordon is kicking ass with that Were Staff despite only having two hits with it. Even Nathan Fillion is more reliable damage-wise, even with his weaker Silver Sword.
Anyway, here we are again. The Warship.
Guards are everywhere. There are two ways to enter. One is to tell the imperial guard our super-secret password, Ivy.
This is the "hard" way, as you have to beat a tough-as-nails Captain to get in.
However, using the Pass we got in Bafsuk will just let us right in.
Don't talk to these guys, though, or you'll have to fight a Captain and likely will get your shit wrecked.
Anyway, many of the enemies are ones you've seen before. The green and purple undead enemies that love inflicting darkness, Soldiers and Mages, Wererats, all that stuff.
There's also Eagles, which can hit decently and do a couple hits. Nothing too bad.
Were Cats are a bigger pain, having a ton of HP and being able to inflict heavy poison with their attacks. Luna in particular doesn't like them because her spear can hardly pierce them.
A group of four mages netted me this. Hey, more cash.
Stunners can inflict paralysis with their attacks, so the name's appropriate. Also, in case you doubted me, Gordon really is kicking ass with that staff. Probably my second-best attacker after Dude right now.
Plus he's nice for fall-back healing since I don't want to burn through all of Dude's MP.
Darkness is a major problem this dungeon, though one multi-target Hel2 will cure it all outside of battle.
This chest nets us a Slumber Sword, a nice upgrade from the Ancient Sword and inflicting the kinda-useful Sleep over Curse. Of course, its hit rate is also shit, so I stick with the Silver Sword for the most part.
The monsters are a Sergeant (the boss of Semite Falls) and two Soldiers, nothing too scary.
This is a side-room that we nevertheless need to go in to make progress.
Of course, the loot's not too shabby. The Thief gloves give Luna a nice defense bonus.
I even pick up the Bane spell. I think the NeoDemiforce translation misinterpreted this spell as Aero, but it does poison-elemental damage, though it doesn't seem to actually inflict the poison status. Who the hell knows. All I know is that I'm dumping black magic to Nathan Fillion.
There's not just decent treasure here, though. There's also Cid and Hilda. But how are we going to get them out?
By breaking the fucking bars, of course!
I'm getting ready to fly!And with that, both escape. We still have to blow this ship up, though.
It's pretty straight-forward from here, though on the right side of the floor in the last pic...
...are these chests, all of them having something nice. However, the chest we're in front of has a nasty surprise, so much so that I actually save stated because FUCK if I redo all of this shit again.
Meet the Giant.
As expected, physical attacks do jack shit against it.
What's unexpected is the incredibly insane amount of damage it can deal. It just took off half of Dude's health. That's incredibly worrisome, especially since Dude's the only one who can cast Life. He and Gordon end up going solely on healing duty while Nathan Fillion and Luna do the usual spell spamming on the thing.
Actually, I inflict sleep on the thing too with the Slumber Sword, though the game never tells you when sleep wears off, making it somewhat unreliable at best, especially since my Sleep Sword user is also my main magic attacker.
Fortunately, I take it down without too much trouble, and walk away with some more stat boosts and a nice new Ice Shield for Luna.
In fact, most of this is nice for Luna. In particular, that Trident finally boosts her damage output enough that she's an offensive powerhouse again.
The last floor is a maze, where Captains block areas and you have to walk around them. I'm pretty sure they don't disappear if you somehow beat one, too.
This sucked, though thankfully it didn't come close to a party wipe.
Alright! Finally at the end of the dungeon. One nice thing about this one is that there's no boss.
Nope, we just throw the thing in and leave it at that.
Oh yeah, the DarkLord's actually a brainwashed Lion. The GBA version doesn't even pretend to hide it, giving the DarkLord a darkened version of Leon's portrait. Yeah.
Nathan Fillion doesn't really give a shit about this, more concerned about not dying or whatever.
Follow a bunch of screens of the party at the entrance of each floor fading in and out to signify running...
...It's alright.
And then Cid drops us all off. A good place to call it an update!
STR +4, AGI +1, VIT +6, WILL +2, MAG +1, HP +132, MP +12, Sword +1
Nathan Fillion's problem is that he's gonna be much more important as a Black Mage than a fighter later on, yet during dungeons I pretty much use him exclusively as a physical attacker and only use magic on the overworld and against physical-resistant enemies. This is all my fault, though, and maybe next dungeon I'll try using him more like a Black Mage and start raising that INT up, especially with all the magic he has.
EDIT: Oops! Looks like Luna got +10 bonuses from the Giant Helm (+10 STR) and the Thief's Glove (+10 AGI). +4 to STR and AGI is still nice, though, so I'm not complaining.
STR +3, VIT +4, INT -1, WILL +1, HP +172, MP +15, Fist +1
At this point, I've completely given up on Dude gaining any Agility. My new plan is to let him stay up front as long as it's viable, and once enemy attacks start getting really nasty, I stick him in the back row and stick to White Magic. At the very least, he'll have enough HP to absorb whatever attacks hit the back row, so right now all I really care about is building Will, HP, and MP.
STR +5, AGI +4, VIT +4, INT -3, HP +108, Staff +2, Shield +1
Gordon will leave next update, so here's his final stats for now. For all the shit I talked about him, he was a great contribution to the team, even though most of that was probably the Were Staff.