Part 22: Part Twenty-Two: Fire Walking

Part Twenty-Two: Fire Walking


Here we are, back in the Dwarven Hollows.


Where this guy still won't let me have his treasure, even though we risked our asses to get the horn back.


Before I move on with the story, I do a little shopping.



New equipment!

The Ice Helm gives a resistance to ice, and the Ice Armor resists fire, but is weak to ice. According to the wiki, anyway. As you can see here, the game has nothing to say on the topic.


I did remember to equip the Flame Mail to Kuja, by the way. Unfortunately, I also bought the slightly inferior Ice Armor to put on her.


Might as well hit the inn before I wander into another dungeon without preparing for it.


Now we can just return the horn and we're good as gold.


The nice dwarf even magics the magic wall away for us.

: You can approach the shrine now, and put the horn back where it belongs!


Let's do that.


There's the other Horn of Ice, just...chillin'.



Let's be finished with this.


But as soon as Sephy sets the horn down...


...Everything goes to shit.


Gutsco!


Before I can murder Gutsco like a chump again, he prances away with the horns.


Redundant-ass game.

: Wha...? How'd you do that!? And why do you keep stealing the horns in the first place?

Valid questions from Sephy.

: You silly twits! These are the Horns of Ice, wards against the fire crystal's flame! They are the key to the tunnel leading to the crystal! Now that I have them both, the power of the crystal of fire is mine! Mine!

Gutsco decides to be benevolent and give us a quick answer, even. Then he teleports out like a jerk.

Well, I guess we'd best get to killing him again.


Always time to chat, though.

: Gutsco must have gone to the mountain to the north! Please, take the horns back from that scoundrel!

Quick little directions, first of all.

: The fire crystal is in danger! Warriors of the Light, you have to hurry!

: Gutsco it was! He took the Horns of Ice, and ran away to the cave to the north! We're in big, big trouble!

: We got the horn back, but now both are gone! I guess that just goes to show you something, but I'm not sure what.

Some reminders of the stakes here. Honestly, I'm kind of divorced from it. We've never actually seen the crystals do anything, so what would happen if Gutsco got the power of one is a mystery. There's been talk of a flood of light or darkness, but that sounded like a major event and it would probably take more than Gutsco to set it in motion.


This guy still won't let us have his loot. Well, guy, maybe I just won't give your Horn of Ice back. I'm completely going to kill Gutsco, though, because fuck that guy.

: Warriors of the Light, we've been had again!

: I can't believe it! Gutsco made off with both horns! Oh, boy, are we ever in trouble!

Upstairs, the dwarves at the entrance have new lines for us.


Now we're on our way! Our destination is that cave just north of the Dwarven Hollows, but we have to sail around the mountain range.


This can prove a little difficult because sometimes your ship just follows the coast's curve instead of letting you disembark.


Once you're off the boat, though, you can just walk right into the Molten Cave.

The Molten Cave doesn't have a unique track on the OST, it has this:



which it shares with a few other dungeons, including the Altar Cave from the beginning of the game. If you pay attention to where that song comes up, I'm sure you can figure out the theme of those dungeons.


Where you can find exciting new enemies! They'll even attack you from behind!


They're called Crocottas, and they can put you to sleep with their physicals, but they're still not so bad.


As long as you have decent Defense, at least. This is why you don't want your healer in the front row. White Mages are pretty shitty at not being dead, really.


Staff damage still isn't outdated.


Unlike the items in the Subterranean Lake, this will actually be really useful against the boss of this place.


Our second new enemy in this cave is the Adamantoise, or the Land Turtle Mk. II. They can hit for fairly solid damage, but they're also weak to ice, so the Ice Staff is the way to go here.


Balloons and Red Marshmallows. A slightly better Bomb with the same crippling weakness to ice, and a fairly generic enemy that shares it.


Unlike later games' flans, Red Marshmallows don't have special resistance to physical damage, so they go down just as quickly as anything else.


And now we get to deal with this dungeon's main gimmick: lava.


To progress in this dungeon, you have to walk through the lava, which does 10 damage every second you're in there. Since Float doesn't exist as a spell in this game, you just get to take that. In order to progress through this dungeon, you have to take damage and heal regularly, which puts even more stress on your resources.

I can think of worse circumstances, but it's still annoying. These last few dungeons have not been this game's strongest point, and they're early on, so it's not like the game's carrying a lot of goodwill, either.


Adding to the lava's danger is that you can still get into random encounters when you're in it, so you're pretty much guaranteed to run into a couple of fights while you're in sub-optimal condition. If you've been following along the whole time, you know what a risk that can be.


Treasures in this cave also tend to be at the end of lava-covered paths.



So you end up running around in the shit looking for a chest or stairs. It's not a long dungeon, though, and there aren't a lot of side paths, so there's that.



Thankfully, you can't get into this lava. That would be some bullshit.




This is the first thing to grab on the second floor.


It's really good on a Warrior, especially here. Red Mages don't need it, since you should be using a staff anyway.


Now that she's hitting a weakness (and got an Attack boost), Kuja's actually competitive in battle. I don't remember Warriors being this shitty the first time I played the game. Maybe I was just using mages really poorly. Or maybe I was just overlevelled.


Anyway. Would lava really flow like this? I mean, if you look, it's not flowing down the wall (and I'm passing under the "waterfall"), it's shooting out a couple feet. Gotta be some real pressure there.



Wow! Hi-Potions heal too much to be used freely right now, and by the time we get over 500 HP, they'll start to be outpaced pretty quickly. I don't know by what, since you get steeply diminishing returns on MP gains, but your HP gains are always increasing - one of the terms in the formula is your level, and another is your Vitality, neither of which decreases.


Phoenix Downs will be replaced before too long. Of course, White Mages don't pick up the MP to use it until nearly level 30.


Let's just move on.


Ugh, piss.



Never gonna be used!


I think Kuja's finally picking up some extra Agility around now, which is good to see on her. There's another class, later in the game, that goes from "decent" to "absolute shit" because of its low Agility. There are a couple, actually. I don't feel like working out the actual strict numbers, because the formula is ugly, but I'm pretty sure your Strength will never be high enough to make up for losing a hit (or two or three).


Another Phoenix Down. These are gonna be real handy real quick.


Also here: a big rock that sparkles. Of course, you can't see the sparkles because they're the same colour as the rock. Even in motion in the game itself, it's a fuckin' pain to see these things.



Examine the rock, open the passage. Nothing new, and this mechanic was already boring the second time we did it.



Past that is this room, which would be a perfect place for a save point if this game actually had those.


The next room has...


...The fire crystal!

I don't understand why this dungeon has no unique track, though. I mean, the Tower of Owen does and that place is a shithole. It doesn't even matter at all.

This game: weird design decisions all up in. That's my review.


Oh yeah, things are still happening.

: Haw haw haw! I have the power of fire! I can feel it coursing through my veins! But it's not enough! I must defeat you, those who've been blessed with the light, to gain the true power of the crystal of fire! Now...die!

I told you that Gutsco couldn't do shit with the crystal's power. What a chump.


Haha, whatever, I'm gonna murder you again.


Wait what?

This is Gutsco's new ability - he can turn into a big lizard. The NES, with its masterful spritework, captured this transformation much better:


LOOK AT THIS DOOFY MOTHERFUCKER.


Fuckin' polka-dotted lizard man.


This guy is weak to ice, so I'm just gonna dump all the Blizzara I can on him. If I were using a Black Mage, I might be able to get through the entire fight with it, even. It's right about now, as MP gains actually start to come in, that Red Mages lose their lustre.


Salamander's also got pockets full of Hi-Potions.


If your Defense is low, he hits like a truck.


If your Defense is high, he hits like a regular enemy. Now, if his attack damage were consolidated into one hit, it would be a real threat in short order. As it stands, pretty much anyone can take a hit and live, so him attacking twice actually makes the fight easier. As long as he doesn't focus his attacks.


Here's the Blizzara I queued up earlier. Salamander has 5,700 HP, so this is a huge chunk of damage against him.


Unfortunately, the Ice Staff is the Ice Turd for this fight. I suppose the dude just has high Magic Defense, but I was expecting to at least break 100 damage on the thing.


He does not have the same resistance to physical attacks. Kuja is going to be a major damage force in this fight, for once.


When it came back to Sephy's turn, and he'd already stolen successfully, I figured I'd toss a Wind at this guy. Why not, right?








Yeah, I end up tossing all my Antarctic Winds at him. If you're not above cheating, duping attack items really flattens this game's difficulty curve.


Remember how I talked about the Salamander needing to focus to be a threat? Well, he focussed. This round, he just went to town on Jecht (who was, by the way, queued up to heal).


So I'd revive him.


And Salamander would put him right back down again.


This happened a few times before I managed to actually get him back in the game.


He's slightly more effective using Cure than he is throwing the staff, but only slightly.


Sephy status: also pretty useless.


Cura's hot, though. I'm a big fan of Cura right now, except I can only cast it, like, 4 times or something.



If you see this happen, it means you're almost there. Salamander only uses this at low HP (30%, I think).


It can be pretty ugly. If he did this twice, it would have been a total party kill.


Fuckin' asshole. He didn't do this for, like, three rounds, then just as I was about to kill him.


Douchebag.


Alright gil, at least.


Piss poor EXP. For a boss, anyway.


Sephy's the only one to level up off this. Everybody picks up a job level, though.


Would've been cool to get a nice item here, game.


Hey Gutsco, you gonna stay dead this time?


Good, awesome.



Aw yeah, you know why I'm including that extra-large screen. We're gonna be listening to this rock lay down some sweet story for us.

: Warriors of the Light... I will bless you with the light contained within my eternal flames. Bringers of equilibrium... You must restore the light of hope lost from this world...


It's not much of a story, really.


What happens after we win? Do we have to return the power to the crystals, or do we just get to keep it?


Aw Jesus H, don't make me walk out of here again game.


Oh, there's a teleporter. That's cool. I like teleporting.



Bwoop!


Hey, look, new jobs!


The only change I make at this point is turning Kuja into a Knight. I'm not really sure how long this will last.

Next time, we tool around a bit and then deal with the next thing the game wants us to do.

Mognet



Today's letter is from Sara, talking about how she...broke her pendant? What were you doing that you broke your pendant? You are literally a princess, you probably slept until one in the afternoon or some bullshit.

Everyone in this game is terrible at what they do.