Part 66: Your Idea Sucks

This is an excellently-crafted dungeon.






hump dat door


awww yeah


"Itʻs an honor to be here, hehe."




Like I said, they paid particular attention to, well, everything here. But then, itʻs not like they donʻt do that in every other location in this game.


Oh, and Stiltzkin sells you some stuff and itʻs a good deal but nothing to write home about.


Oelivert is home to the infamous Epitaph monsters, modeled (and named) after the guys you run into on the Sky Dragon mountain in FF5.


They donʻt actually give you EXP for fighting them, but...


… they summon dudes who do. They give you something like 5000 or 6000 EXP apiece, in fact.


If their summoned character matches someone in your party, the monster will use an instant-kill attack on them. If said party member is dead, or if you donʻt have them with you, the thing will just use a weak physical attack.




Itʻs not actually Death magic (which you canʻt actually resist anyway), it just does 9999.


you iz what

Hawaiian Creole English, of course, sounds like very poor English to non-speakers. However, in HCE, "I is" and "you is what" are, in fact, both grammatically correct, and they mean exactly what youʻre probably thinking.




And people say that FF12 was the first FF where you fought enemies in the area you encountered them in

Note that these clones also speak appropriately. Never ran into one of Holly though, for all the times Iʻve played this game. Though I figure Squaresoft wouldnʻt have been tasteless enough to make her go "...", even if Square-Enix would make an Aborted Demon Jesus Fetus into a secret boss today.

Epitaphs will ALWAYS spawn the same type of clone, so if youʻre fighting one that makes Huihuis, you can kill the copy and the Epitaph will make another Huihui. Each one gives you a ton of EXP, so you can theoretically grind a lot of levels here. The drawback: the encounters in FF9 have scripted AP rewards, so youʻll only get the AP for the Epitaph. Also, while money shouldnʻt be a problem, only the Epitaph drops gil, so you can only get that reward once.

Plus, to get the EXP equivalent of fighting a Grand Dragon, you have to sit through 1) the animation of the Epitaph spawning a clone, 2) the spell animation for killing the clone (you wonʻt have enough single-character damage output to kill them outright unless you have Man Eater and MP Attack equipped), and 3) the cloneʻs death animation three to four times, which takes longer than it does to encounter a Grand Dragon, let it cast Thundaga, and cast Lv5 Death on it.

Additionally, you canʻt save between encounters since youʻre just racking up kills in one battle, so really, itʻs an inferior level-grinding method all around.

It might be interesting to see if theyʻre vulnerable to Stop, though, since the Epitaph only makes one clone at a time and a Stopped enemy is technically still counted as being in the battle.

Oh also Epitaphs can be one-shotted with a Soft, and since give you 0 EXP, youʻll want to hope that you get to move first when you run into them if youʻre doing a Level 1 playthrough and still want the AP/GP.


Anyway, the "solution" to this dungeon is that you have to touch everything you see. Including this, which has a ridiculously small examination area.


That activates this, which you need to see in order to progress.




"Aww... I canʻt make it out."
"Ha! You only wish you could read it."
"Itʻs not that I can read it... Itʻs more like the words are talking to me."





going through the door on the right...





Continuing on, we have to examine all of these to activate the orb we just passed by.


"Oldest... in history..."


"Shipbuilding... technology... primitive..."


"Prototype... failure..."


"Improved version... currently... in use..."










"Then... the decline... began..."

I like to imagine that this isnʻt so much Kilika having a hard time reading these things as it is that the words are "speaking" to him really...

really...

slowly...




And now this door is open.


Still not as creepy as GameFAQs.


is he swearing at me

iʻm pretty sure heʻs swearing at me


Well that confirms it.




"This is the record of our civilization..."


"All vegetation and... vessels... died out...
The decay of Terra... triggered it all...
In order to stop the decay, many methods were considered..."


"Then, a final resuscitation attempted on the mother continent...
Unfortunately, it ended in failure...
It was later discovered to have been the catalyst... Subjects were selected..."


"Flora and fauna were revived, but... is still in stasis.
Final results... are still pending..."






"This must be super-important"
"Naaaaaaah"








"Well itʻs like that part in Chrono Cross where Schala is talking about the world being an egg and Serge being a sperm but everyone knew that it was really just an analogue for her saying ʻFUCK THE WORLDʻ"


Now letʻs equip those things that we found while playing Chocobo Game.

This isnʻt even his best weapon and itʻs only two attack points weaker than the Dragonʻs Hair.


Sure enough, weʻre still missing three of his skills. All of which suck.


Now that weʻve seen everything Oelivert has to offer, we can go down this lift.


Oddly enough, even though technically it goes straight against my design philosophy by forcibly shoving everything in your face,


itʻs the way that this is done that makes it acceptable. Itʻs like HUGE INFO DUMP, the in the middle of the player thinking "what", Kilika just outright says "yeah donʻt even worry about this shit"


The Gulug Stone. Itʻs like a cross between the Triforce and the GLBT Safe Zone symbol. No wonder Kuja wanted it.


Come on, you guys knew it wasnʻt gonna be that easy.


Just almost as easy.




Its attacks are cool though so I guess itʻs excusable.


This is your Super Important Steal. If you donʻt get this, donʻt even bother fighting Ozma because you wonʻt have enough Cheese Damage Output.








All that grinding I did against the Grand Dragons? Completely incidental. All I wanted was to make Thievery do 9999 damage. And it does.


So, the Holy Lance. It teaches ʻIole the all-powerful Dragonʻs Crest spell. Since we fought all those Grand Dragons, itʻll do 9999 from the get-go.


Ark will also drop a Pumice Piece. I donʻt know if this is by chance or if itʻs guaranteed or what. But you can steal (find?) one more piece later, meaning that you can get Hollyʻs Ark summon spell without fighting Ozma. But whereʻs the fun in that?


Boost sucks. Unless you have everyone with Auto-Regen and Auto-Haste equipped, because then it makes all summon magic take their full animations, giving you more than enough time to fully heal whenever you use them. Call it a fun side effect of having a healer in your party playing a damage caster role.


FINALLY

NEXT TIME