Part 27: Radiant Mythology
24. Radiant Mythology
The next set of floors are all generally pretty easy and straightforward. There's a good chance of only fighting one thing before the next trial, for example.
We rolled a simple little village for our first floor. It sells some weapons that are mostly just for Edge to throw, and some outdated armour but that's not important.
The important bit is that the item store is the same as the one from the Hummingway Cave. It's nice to get to actively buy more Elixirs in the middle of a dungeon, huh?
The next floor is... ugh. On the one hand, at least there's no enemies. On the other hand, it's a teleporter maze. And we all know how fun they are.
The answer, as usual, is "not very." Especially if you want everything here.
Another weapon for Edge here. I'm only pointing this out because it seems to be a theme.
If you just want to run through the maze ASAP, that's pretty easy to do. It's just tedious and time consuming.
Our last floor actually has combat. A whole one enemy resides here, and it's special.
This guy wants it, so we have to beat it to progress. It's not very easy to find and it teleports around if you get close to it.
I want to say that it moves in a set pattern, at least. Makes it pretty easy to track down after a while.
Our goblin-y friend... isn't a goblin at all. I feel lied to.
Also the Toad is the Golden Toad but with a few differences:
It doesn't absorb every main element, for one thing. It also has a reasonable physical defense stat. It makes up for it by having more HP though.
However! It turns out that it can be hit with Tornado. This makes the fit go remarkably quickly and...
If you follow it up with a physical attack, it shouldn't have the chance to run either. Trying magic is a fool's errand because it still throws up Reflects, and summons are all just too slow to always go first.
The toad's are also kind enough to drop Megalixirs, and only Megalixirs. In themselves, these are nice but unnecessary. What we can do with one, however, makes them fantastic.
1 Megalixir, sells for over 300,000 gil. 1 regular Elixir costs 100,000 gil. If you get the toad before the town, you can trade that Megalixir for 3 normal ones and still have some cash left over. It's a relatively good way to stock up on 'em. Y'know, if you were daft enough to run through here 33 times to pull it off.
With the toad beaten, though, we can go back and talk to the guy in the center of the room. He lets us continue on to the next floor now, which of course is...
The next trial. In this case, it's NOT Edge's trial but...
Cecil's. That's not to say it won't potentially involve something to do with Edge.
So, the way this one works is there's 5 randomly selected rooms (out of 11) you have to deal with. They each have their own problem you can either solve or ignore.
This first one involves beating up 3 monsters. Now, other than this one here we're not fighting anything before the Lunar Eidolon.
I just went and did this one because it gave me a fight and I don't have to run through the entire trial again if it goes wrong.
Rydia was too close to a level up for me to be comfortable redoing the boss over and over if I rolled badly.
Fortunately, I didn't so we can bail out and continue onwards.
The next room just wants us to guard a chest. There's some thing where we have to turn away people who try and get it or something, but that's unimportant. He just told us what it contains, so we're gonna steal it ourselves!
Well, okay, we'll try to. The game doesn't actually let you which is a shame.
The next room has a kid that wants us to find her chocobos. I always remember this as being a thing in one of the unimportant towns somewhere. Guess that's indicative of how interesting this one is.
There sure are chocobos here, yup. They're also not in their pen.
Eh, that's not our problem. Let's keep on keeping on.
One of the few nice things about Cecil's trial is this. You can get free Golden Apples, infinitely, if you wanted to. It's not likely but it's here.
You have to return it to the old man and give him it back through the inventory interface. Y'know the one that only turned up like 4 times before now.
You can instead just eat the apple, or skip it entirely. Eating it is more beneficial though.
Next trial is the easiest by far. You succeed by literally doing nothing.
So, of course, we're going to immediately do something.
I think you can stick around after this happens to get a mediocre ending to the quest/trial room/thing instead, but that's boring and a waste of time so I wouldn't. We're just going to skip to the next room.
But since this was the fifth mini-trial that means next is the boss.
He's kind enough to give us something based on how well we did before. The more trials you pass, the better your reward. And being the ultimate
We systematically screwed them all up, so we just get junk. Its sole purpose is to be thrown by Edge for what I can only guess is absolutely miniscule damage.
Once we get the reward, though, it's time for the boss. And it's a doozy.
[Music: Fighting of the Spirit ~ Radiant Mythology 2]
Lunar Odin is, by far, the hardest Lunar Eidolon we've fought to date. So difficult that in a straight up fair fight I'm pretty sure we can't win as we are now.
So, we're not giving him a fair fight.
He's the least tedious we've fought, true, and has a weakness we can exploit. However, he hits like a runaway freight truck and that magic stat of 95 is deceptively low. His magic is by far his strongest asset.
Fortunately, he's predictable. He always runs in a set pattern; he opens with a Zantetsuken. It hits hard, but it's not impossible to deal with.
Next, he uses a regular attack. His turn after that is also a regular attack. These are reprieves, and are a good time to heal effectively.
Sylph's good for that, at least for now, and can even clean up that initial Zantetsuken if you want. The healing is what we're after; the damage is irrelevant.
After his second physical attack, Odin adopts this stance. This stance is one of two that signals a Zantetsuken is coming. There's a reason there's two.
The second Zantetsuken comes right on cue. The damage being a fair bit higher is just random variance. The stances don't affect the damage dealt.
Now comes the REALLY tricky bit. Surviving this long is not that easy, but it's certainly doable. After the second Zantetsuken, Odin slips in a single physical attack. That's not the problem.
No, the hard part is the Holy that comes after it. Surviving this without Shell is not particularly easy. This also makes Lunar Odin the first Lunar Eidolon to make us wipe.
Of course, it's predictable so you can prepare for it. Instead of healing after the second Zantetsuken just throw a Lunar Curtain.
Not only does Odin not care, but he'll happily blast himself with his own Holy if it comes to that. But we're not out of the woods yet.
No, the last thing Odin will do is Haste himself. And I do mean "the last thing." He's not getting to attack again.
You have to be quick, of course, but now he adopts the second Zantetsuken stance. When he raises his sword like this, he is at his most vulnerable. Why?
Let's just him with a regular Thunder and see what happens. The damage is unimpressive, but...
It will kill him regardless. Let's see that again, shall we?
I'm pretty sure that were it not for this little suicide trigger in his script, this fight would not be doable. Even as is, I wasn't entirely convinced I could pull it off.
Having to survive 2 Zantetsukens and the Most Powerful Holy to just get the chance is hard enough. Then you compound it by making it time limited and he reduces your margin for error by casting Haste.
Still, by hook or by crook, the Grimoire LO is in our possession. That makes 4 down, and only 5 to go.
Much more important is that we're done with the trial. Our reward for it is whatever we get in the chest, and that can be repeated with the exception of the best sword. Getting all 5 mini-trials completed "correctly" more than once nets you... a Lunar Curtain.
It's arguably the easiest place to get them, but jeez that is up there for things in this game that can be written off for being "too much hassle."
Next time: the moon has no fury like a war goddess scorned.
Optional Bosses Fought: 22
Optional Bosses Killed: 22
Success Rate: 100%