Part 13: "A knight name Hearn tried to be friends with the Dragons for 30 years."

So we're doing a second dungeon within Fin Castle. Yeah, two dungeons in one castle, why not?



It's a few floors down, and there's a secret passage to more loot.



And also this guy, who managed to appear here without using the super-secret password. The hell, game?



It's mainly gold stuff and another Topaz armlet/mail thing.

Here's the thing about the Topaz armlet: It has a mere -1 magic stat penalty to the higher ones of the heavier armors, gives a much smaller penalty to evasion, is much cheaper than its heavy armor variants, and it has the same defense value as the Steel Armor from Mysidia.

I really don't understand why they went out of their way to make these things better than heavy armor in every imaginable way. Why the fucking hell do you have armor, then? What the fuck is the point of heavy armor if these lighter, cheaper pieces of armor are better in every possible way? It's idiotic game design.



Oh yeah, Luna now has an 88% chance to evade attacks, and she gets four chances to evade.

Most enemies in this stage of the game still have like two hits. Suffice to say, she's dodging the vast majority of attacks.



Anyway, the first floor.



The enemies are outdated weak trash, and everything that isn't a Revenant goes down to a multi-target L5 Fire spell (later L6 due to how much I cast it here).



The treasures are mostly shit, by the way.







Floor 2 has slightly more challenging enemies. Changers and Brains are annoying since they sap MP and all, but it also means they'll give you MP if you're low, plus it's a nice way to score a free HP up.



Too bad they also do this. This is basically Mute.



Fun fact: If a character is hit by a status like Frog or Mute before their turn, they'll still do their action as normal. Thus Dude casts Fade despite not being allowed to cast it. A similar thing happened in the last update the same turn Dude got turned into a Toad, though I didn't show that off.





Anyway, since Dude can't cast magic, he can't cast Hel2 to cure himself, so I have to walk back out (as, fucking surprise, god damn Warp doesn't work here).



Anyway, Pan cures Forgetfulness, so we whack Dude over the head with a frying pan so he'd remember stuff. This would later become a plot point in FF4.



Right, Floor 3.



Mantises just hit hard (when they hit at all, since they obviously whiff against Luna pretty often) and have a lot of HP, enough that I pretty much have to have my entire party kill them one at a time. At least they're weak to Ice.



Opposite deal of the Ice Shield. Reila takes it.



Inflicts Slow, which sucks outside an ATB environment. Inventory's too limited for this piece of shit, so it's vendor trash.



Floor 4 has much weaker enemies that we've already seen before.





Specters can inflict status effects, but who gives a shit. The important thing is the Blood Sword, which is a gimmicky weapon that apparently does a percentage of damage with each hit (1/16th, I think) and absorbs the target's HP. Most people think it's useless outside the final boss, but that's because people don't realize the damage is proportional to the target's max HP.

Of course, it gives the biggest magic stat penalties in the game, has a horrible hit rate, and hurts you against undead. Later games keep the nasty downsides while toning down the power of the sword, but here it's still pretty nifty despite the massive downsides. Probably won't be using it with a spell-casting Nathan Fillion, though.



Gotta love these tougher enemies suddenly running away from us. Shows how awesome the party is now.



Fire resistance, seven points more defense than the Steel Armor, still not worth it. I just stick it on Reila because why not?



Last floor just has boring shit like this.





Upgraded Chimeras are as you expect. The knife is a nice 18-point upgrade for Reila, though, and it really helps her keep up with Luna's insane damage output.



Five of these rooms are blank. Yes, I'm using a walkthrough for this game.



No boss fight at least. There's also a teleporter outside to the north.





Our next mission is to go to Mysidia.



So let's talk about how I'm currently handling combat (skip if you don't care, of course). Luna and Reila are constantly attacking, with Luna usually killing what she's targeting in one attack, while Reila often needs two. Nathan Fillion and Dude tend to practice spells, casting their highest-MP ones at the end of battle, since the game still gives spell EXP even if they aren't cast, and Luna's high agility means she always (and I mean always) goes first in a round, with Reila usually (but not always) second.

For certain enemies, like the undead and the Mantises, Nathan Fillion will cast an attack spell to help take them out (Fire for undead, Ice for the many monsters weak to it), while Dude casts Fade, which hurts anything pretty well. Otherwise, Nathan Fillion is focusing on grinding up Curs, Powr, and Fast. Curse lowers attack and defensive stats on an enemy, while Powr and Fast boosts attack power and number of hits respectively. The goal is to beef an already-powerful Luna to insane heights for those tough battles so she can destroy everything in her path.

As for Dude, he's focusing mostly on Ruse and Hel2. Not that Luna really needs more evasion, but it certainly can't hurt, and Hel2 is just a pain in the ass to level naturally, plus it's not working right now on the tougher status effects. I still need to carry around items in case Dude is hit with something like Toad or Forgetfulness, though.



Anyway, let's explore Mysidia for real this time.





There's only one wizard here. I guess the other ones joined the various Empires and Rebellions, and the rest of these guys are just dudes in pointy hats.



The Tower is a future dungeon, of course.



This book's a neat little thing I'll show off in a minute.









You will find a Xtal Rod to get into the Tower.



So we need the Black Mask, which requires another dungeon. Then we use our two fetch quest items to get a third item to take up inventory space to get to a tower to get a spell that isn't even that good due to the game's glitchiness.

Anyway, the building we're next to has this Book of Ancient.



It will provide information on most of the passwords we have. It's all optional, but it's the closest the game gets to world-building, so let's feed it some stuff.

Xtal

Long time ago, when the Pandemonium appeared, Wizards created a strong magic spell and saved the world. .. After a while, the book of that magic spell was sealed in a huge tower.

Mask

Black Mask to Doppleganger
It disappears with evil
White Mask to Guardian
It stops with goodness

Mysidia

Wizards were afraid of their power of magic being used in a war. So they started to live secretly in a land called Mysidia.

Dragon

Has wings and claws. Often trained to fly with Dragoons. Not very large but strong. Able to fly with several people on its back.

Dragoon

Tower of Dist used to be a dwelling of Dragons. A knight name [sic] Hearn tried to be friends with the Dragons for 30 years. And so he became the first Dragoon.

Chime

There was a king. His treasuries were stolen so many times. So he ordered three keys. First lasted for a night. Second for two nights. Third was never broken. So the king hid the key, .... Chime .... in the Cave of Snowfield.

Sunblaze

Once upon a time, A star came down on this earth. A man took the flame from the burning star, and made an alter [sic] for it.

Airship

Fruit of new technology. Advancement of this kind of technology will vanish magics from this world.

Silver

Strong metal. Easy to process. Reacts well to magic. Material of magical swords and armors.

Best story is easily the Dragoon one, though Chime had its charm as well.







Despite doing this, the White Mask still takes up space in our inventory, along with all the other useless shit we have above. I don't get why the Torch and the Sunblaze take up two item slots, for instance.



This island we need to go to is southeast of Mysidia and north of Salamand and the Snowfield.







This dungeon makes no sense.



You see, the enemies here are around the level as when you first get the ship. The items here are pretty weak compared to what we have now, and there's even a store we'll run into later that sells worse stuff than we can get in Mysidia and Fin.

This dungeon is designed to be done much earlier, but the game doesn't tell you to come here until now. You can get the Black Mask early, but basically the only reason to come here before now is if you were exploring and thought this was a bonus dungeon. To be fair, you pretty much have to pass this island to get to Dist, and curiosity would perhaps get the better of you and encourage you to explore.

I don't really understand why they didn't tell you to go here until this point of the story, considering the encounters here are perhaps easier than in Dist Cave (at the very least, there's no fucking Giants here).



Treasure is mostly crap as well.



The most notable enemies are Jellies (Yellow, weak to Ice) and Jams (Red, weak to Lit). Nathan Fillion can one-shot the Jellies with multi-target L4 Ice, while the women can work together to use their Lit spells to end the Jams. Hell, Nathan Fillion and Dude can even help with their Lit5-casting Mage Staves (with Nathan Fillion often doing double the damage of Dude.

They're quite easy, they're just a waste of MP.



Sleep. Fodder trash.



Rhinos attack and die easily.







In the middle of this dungeon is a town. There's a lot of people, but they all say the same three things.







Don'tya take it! It's our treasure! I betya can't find it .... Hee hee hee...



This guy sells equipment that, while a step up from the stuff you're supposed to access after getting the ship, is outdated now. I guess the Ruby armlets would've been good since you can't access Topaz armlets until liberating Fin. The Quake item casts Quake in battle, a spell you can't use otherwise. It does have multiple uses, though I'm not sure how many. But it's kinda moot as there's a free one later in the dungeon.





For some reason, there's two Bane tomes and two Blnd tomes in this floor. I don't know.



The next-to-last floor has a bunch of passages to various items.



A couple PoisToads and a Rhino nets us this.



Instant death item, I believe.









This is Big Horn. Remember how this dungeon is balanced around an earlier party?







I decide to use it as an excuse to see if I can break into quadruple digits. Don't succeed on this one, though maybe someday soon I will!



And with that, we're done here.



AGI +1, VIT +2, INT +9, WILL +3, HP +44, MP +14, Fire +1, Ice +1, Powr +1, Curs +2, Fast +1

Two dungeons resulted in a lot of progress magic-wise for Nathan Fillion. Six magic levels and a near 50% increase in Intelligence. Now that Nathan Fillion is specializing exclusively in black magic, he's progressing nicely in that department.



STR +4, AGI +6, VIT +3, INT +1, HP +120

Again, Luna's bread and butter are Agility and Strength, and she's making nice progress in both. Also, look at that fucking evade. It's a thing of beauty.



STR -2, VIT +2, WILL +9, MAG +2, HP +155, MP +37, Cure +1, Ruse +1, Hel2 +1, Fade +1

Similar story to Nathan Fillion, Dude is making great progress as a White Mage. Also starting to like his MP a bit, though now I'm at the point where Ethers are plenty affordable (though they still take up room in a limited inventory at a point where dungeons heap tons of treasure on you).



STR +3, AGI +2, VIT +5, WILL +1, MAG +1, HP +128, MP +14, Shield +1, Knife +2

Fourth character gains stats, nobody cares because she'll be gone in an update anyway.