Part 23: Part Twenty-Three: Tooling Around

Part Twenty-Three: Tooling Around


We've saved the fire crystal and retrieved the Horns of Ice, so I suppose we should take those back to the Dwarven Hollows and move the plot forward.


The dwarves have new things to say to us again. It's nice to see that they put all this extra dialogue into the game, especially with how some parts of it are. It's like three different teams worked on this game, I swear to god.

: Lali-ho! Thank you, Warriors of the Light!

I suppose I could have brought it up earlier, but I'm not sure if the dwarves' "lali-ho" was in the original text of the game, or if it was added to this one for continuity with Final Fantasy IV.


And now we're back to the second level of the Dwarven Hollows to actually return the horns.

: Both horns are back! Rally-ho...uh, I mean, lali-ho!

The "rally-ho" here is a reference to Final Fantasy IX; the dwarves in that game used "rally" instead of "lali". I'm pretty sure, anyway.

: Lali-ho! Both horns are back! Hip-hip-lali-ho!


You're kind of weird, but thanks for the advice or whatever.


Now we have to talk to the dwarf boss to tie things up.



: Magic keys can open anything, but they'll break once you use them!

He also gives us a Magic Key for our troubles. Magic Keys are a disposable item that opens locked doors (if you need an example, we saw one in Castle Argus). A Thief can do the same thing, and we already have one of those, so this isn't really a great reward.


The Horns of Ice are back on the altar, but the ward's down, too. Oh well, it's not my problem if the dwarves get their shit stolen again.


Oh, and I can get this guy's sweet treasure now.


The Dwarven Moonwalk is just walking backwards, nothing special.


It's also an animation I can't interrupt.


Now that the jerk is out of my way, let's peep that treasure.


Well, let's talk to a guy first, then peep. We will peep it, don't worry.


This is alright, but not exactly top-tier stuff. I don't use shields a lot.


These are pretty useful, but I wouldn't really consider it a huge deal. They're not hard to get a hold of in large quantities.



Two Phoenix Downs is a pretty bangin' thing to find.


New armour, a unique piece for the Knight. I'm currently using a Knight, so this isn't just deadweight. I shouldn't have to buy Kuja a new set for the next little bit.




I think I already had these, since I've been to Castle Argus. They're Scholar-specific weapons, and they're not really awesome by themselves, but they do boost Int and Mnd by 2 points each. So you just throw two on a Scholar and there you go, 4 point bonus.



Scholar armour. Since the only part of the game where a Scholar really stands out is coming up, this is a good place to get it.



Ehh.


Another piece for Kuja, but these aren't Knight-exclusive.


Never gonna be used.


A good item, unfortunately mainly used to restore MP in the field, and only really useful in the late stages of the game.


I didn't even know what this was, so I had to check the menu.


I'm not sure if I've ever used an Ottershroom, but it'll probably be good to have around. Certainly better than a Gnomish Bread.



As I'm on my way back to the Enterprise, this dude walks in and just dies. How impolite.


Are the kids rushing to be heroes, or just trying to see a dead body because they're 14 and think it'd be cool?

: Warriors of the Light... Tokkul needs you...

Tokkul? Aw jeez, I've already been there once, can't you ask somebody else?

: What's going on? Are you all right?
: Our village... We didn't have anything more for them to take... They're going to burn down Tokkul... Please, you must stop them...

Wasn't Tokkul already kind of burned down the last time we were there? Can't the dwarves do something about it? They're not busy.

: What have they done...!?

It was a raid, kid. You've been there. Christ, these four need to stop falling on their damn heads all the time.

: Hein...has a way to change his weak point... Only a scholar has the power...to see through his deception... Aaagh...


And so he dies, thankfully disappearing so as to not leave an unsightly corpse in the entryway. I mean, that's pretty much the worst thing to do, etiquette-wise.


Now that's done with, I make Golbez into a Scholar. The game wants us to use one, so I'll use one. I will not be going with the game on every part of that, however.



I also make sure Kuja and Golbez have equipment, since changing jobs leaves you naked. If you look, you'll see that Golbez has the Attack advantage. He's not a physical attacker, though, so it'll never come up.


Boat time!


We can also see some exciting new random encounters, such as the Nepto Dragon's bright green cousin.


This is Kuja's magic menu. Knights can use basic White Magic; they're really more like Final Fantasy IV's Paladin Cecil than a strict physical class.


And here's Golbez's new menu. Study tells you an enemy's HP and weaknesses, which can be handy, but it's usually just a wasted turn. This isn't a good reason to use Scholars.


And neither is their magic, which is in pretty short supply.


No, what you want Scholars for is pitching attack items.


When Scholars use items, the items' effects are doubled. The first tier of elemental items cast second-tier spells, so the Zeus's Wrath drops Thundara. Thundara has a base spell power of 85, so that gets doubled to 170, which puts it right under the third-tier elemental spells.


For comparison, here's Golbez casting Blizzard on a mermaid.

You want to go with attack items.


I just have to make a quick stop here.


See, I didn't pick this up before. The Arctic Wind is one better than the Antarctic Wind, casting Blizzaga. Blizzaga has a spell power of 180, which is certainly solid, but the Scholar can up that to 360. 360 is nearly unparalleled. For this point in the game, it's absurd.


So what am I going to do?


Well, I'm going to make it the first item in my menu.


Here's the Arctic Wind in action. Those fish are not weak to ice.


They are weak to the lightning damage on Sephy's physicals, though.


And this is my plan. You see, using a Scholar is like doing your middle school math homework: the quickest path to the best results is to copy. We're supposed to use a Scholar in the next dungeon, so I'm using a Scholar. But I'm also going to completely flatten the difficulty curve.

As an aside, this is probably how you'll roll for bosses if you want to do a low-level game. Just duplicate up a storm of attack items and win every fight.


Before I actually deal with that dungeon, though, I'm going to check out this town.


This town is Gysahl; we couldn't get here before we cleared the Tower of Owen, so we couldn't loot the place.

We also couldn't hear the background music:




DAMN LOOK AT THIS SHEEP. THINGS ARE REAL NOW.


Gysahl's magic shop isn't anything special. Toad and Mini are still stupid shit spells for stupid shit situations, and Libra is the only other thing that would be really useful to us anytime soon, but it's: a) 3,000 gil and b) a level 4 spell, which I can't cast. It just does the same thing as Study, and every other game with Libra has it as a bottom-tier spell for, like, 1 MP, but fuck the player, I guess.

In the original, this shop had Blizzaga available (it's the missing level 4 Black Magic spell here) which would be really handy, as well as getting spells started on moving up another tier. Of course, I wouldn't be able to do anything with it even if I could buy it.

Let's talk to the townspeople.


Fat Chocobo can indeed store your items, and this is really handy when you get a surplus of them, because inventory space is limited in this game.


And over here is a dancer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiQB3JPDK7s
You can watch her prance!


Next up, the inn and item shop. The inn costs 120 gil and is a standard inn.


And the item shop only sells Gysahl Greens, for 150 gil a pop.

In the original (fan)translation, these were called Carrots. Here, they've been brought in line with the rest of the series.


There's also this strange man hanging around.


He'll show you a bestiary if you talk to him.


I've already missed a couple of things, but nothing up to this point has been permanently missable.


This is interesting and pointless in equal measure. I wish they'd given the dragon actual stats, just for kicks.


That number for max damage is skewed by my Scholar-item stunts.


That's all for the inn, so let's talk to this child.


She herds sheep.




Kid's alright by me.




This old man tells us about Gysahl Greens, hinting at their use in finding Fat Chocobo.


He also keeps some around for us to loot.


You can sneak around the side and into the chocobo pen, but there's nothing here.


Alright, cool, I'll just keep stealing stuff and whatever.


This man looks exactly like Takka.


He is also very defensive of his garden. You can't actually get in there, it's completely fenced off.


There's another item shop around, selling only Magic Keys. I don't need Magic Keys.


Also in the shop: a secret passage.


A secret passage to treasure!


Shurikens are a good item for a certain class I don't have yet, and they sell for a bunch. It's too bad I can't clone them and just have infinite money forever.


I don't know why they didn't just make revival part of inns in this remake. It's not like they didn't touch anything else, and it's not like revival actually costs anything.




There's a little stash of items by the water here.




That's it for Gysahl, so we sail past a couple of little forests and over to Tokkul.



Aw shit!

: Hey!
: What's going on!?
: What is the meaning of this!?





Well, that's certainly something, isn't it?

Mognet



Today's letter is from Takka, telling us about Orichalcum. Just a neat little local myth, I guess. Not completely unreasonable for a smith to share this with his smith's apprentice daughter.