Part 18: "DarkLord sold his soul to an evil thing from the dark side."

You guys voted that Lion uses Axes with the Defender as his shield, so that's what I do. Here's his starting equipment. Poison Axe is fine, but the diamond crap go in favor of light armor with stat boosts.

Anyway, time to chat up Fin castle again.





it came through a path called .... .... [Jade].

Our last password is Jade.

There is a place of that name in Mysidia.

Actually, it's on the eastern part of the Mysidian part of the super-continent.



Let's ask Gordon about Jade.

There is a small lake in Mysidia. It is in an anecdote of old Casheon. It leads you to .... .... the Hades ....

Again, it's not actually in Mysidia.



Narrow channel east of Mysidia. That's the Sea of Jade.

Meanwhile, Reila actually knows what she's talking about, even if she has trouble putting it into words that make sense.

Now for our last round of NPC chat!















Good question.

And finally,



That's over with. Before we enter the final dungeon, there's a couple things we can do.



We've gotten a couple more passwords since our first visit to Mysidia. Let's learn about them!

Palakia

King of Palakia said "Anyone enters this castle gets my daughter!" Many tried to get in, but no one made it. A man stuffed hot air in a big bag, and flew into the castle from the roof. King tried to capture, but he flew away with Princess in his arms!

Jade

Path to the Pandemonium, the Castle of Hades.

The Palakia one is entertaining, at any rate.



Finally, we can come back to Dist and talk to the mother and son there.





The two are rather upset that the random dude they were going to make their surrogate husband/father up and died. Still, we can talk to her about Dragoon.

We will leave this Dist and go somewhere else. Oh, yes. I have to give you this.





Our reward is Xcalber, the second-strongest weapon in the game. It also has a smaller magic penalty than any sword we've seen so far, though it's still a sizeable one. It'd be great if I were actually using swords to fight!



That's all there is left to do, so now it's time to go to the Jade Passage!





The final dungeon is two parts, with the first one being Jade Passage. Somehow it still has the regular dungeon music.



Of course, it's not a FF2 dungeon without nasty enemies whose gimmicks we can somewhat nullify with insane evasion. This guy can do Flame for around 150 damage to everyone (except Nathan Fillion, who resists the four attack elements).



The ultimate Malboro does what you expect it to do. Of course, Luna is unphased by this stuff.



First room has the ultimate staff. Meh.



These guys will use the non-elemental Tornado attack for 150-200 damage each, and they love spamming it. It's enough to wear Lion down pretty hard.



Floor 2. At least the Jade Passage lives up to its name with all the greenery around.



I believe the lizards cast ice magic. Megaparas are good at dying easily.







The ultimate knife also houses a blue dragon. Powr + Luna = Easy.



As for Lion, he hits harder than Luna thanks to axes being better than spears and his high strength.



Of course, he can only evade three hits, so he's still rather fragile. His HP skyrockets in this dungeon, as you'd expect.



These Grey Chimeras love spamming Flame on everyone.



This floor's pretty cool, as it's a huge room with a massive waterfall. This game doesn't have as much great imagery as FF1, but it has its moments.







The ultimate axe is guarded by a King Behemoth.

All it does is attack.



It's a joke.

Anyway, the Rune Axe is an obvious upgrade for Lion. It can also be used as an item to cast Lose 6, which inflicts amnesia (i.e. silence) on an enemy if it somehow hits.





Hilariously, there's a secret shop here selling some nice magic. Of course, this magic is of questionable usefulness at this point of the game, though Powr might still be handy. Hell, even at this point Nathan Fillion can barely get Nuke to do half as much damage as Dude gets from Fade.



Next floor has a nice dragoon-themed room in the north.







Dragon armor is heavy and thus shit, though it does have attack-oriented elemental resistance. Aegis Shield is the best shield in the game and resists against the status-oriented elements. Finally, Lance is actually the Holy Lance, the best spear in the game, though it's still not that stellar.









Yawn.





We're getting close to the end, with the background changing to a solid brown.



what



This ProRing gives a nice defense and magic defense boost without hitting magic stats. Great piece for Dude.



Green Dragons start popping up as random encounters at this point.





This looks like a dead end, but one of these tiles will transport you to the actual final dungeon.



Next time, the final dungeon and the end of the game!





STR +1, INT +2, WILL +2, MAG +2, MP +71, Phys +1, Nuke +1, Psyc +1

At this point, he's spamming Nuke and Phys pretty regularly, with Psyc being fantastic in restoring his MP. Damage-wise, he's the weakest except against physically-resistant bosses, but Powr is a fantastic buff that makes my attackers useful as hell. Not too shabby.



STR +2, AGI +3, VIT +5, HP +348

Lion's a better attacker than her, but Lion also dies all the time. Luna, meanwhile, is almost god damn unkillable, though enemies can now get a few hits on her, barely.





AGI +2, VIT +4, WILL +7, HP +270, Cure +1, Swap +1, Xtal +1

Dude hasn't maxed out Will yet, but he's damn close at this point. All he has is Will and VIT, but god damn if he doesn't make the most out of them. That said, his magic is fantastic, with Cure, Hel2, and Life being awesome of course, Swap helping him maintain MP thanks to Nathan Fillion, and Fade getting around 900 damage a hit. I'm more than happy with what he's become.



STR +1, AGI +6, VIT +7, INT -1, MAG +1, HP +394, MP +32

He's fragile, but he makes up for it with more damage, able to one-shot things Luna can't. Not shabby for a character that makes such a late appearance.