Part 9: Donde está la Byblos teca?
Part 9 Donde está la Byblos teca?So... On one hand the castle exploded. On the other hand it only blew up the castle and knocked over a fence which is a net positive compared to plunging a large plot of land into the sea.
But then again we only got 3 jobs this time so maybe we get more jobs the more apocalyptic the damage is?
The Fire Powered Ship (Original) (The Triumphant theme of abject failure to save the fire crystal)
FYI the following is not necessary, even if there's a bunch of scripted dialog and movement and such tied to it. Actually these are the only times you NEED to speak a word to anyone so far (excluding "walk on event tile and let nature take its course")
"Talk" to the helm on Faris's ship.
Talk to Karnak Weapon/Armor merchant.
Talk to Cid after the prison renovation.
Everything- all of this is my fault! If it weren't for me...
Cid!
Professor!
...
Must be tough for him...Cid stormed off before anyone was able to tell him he merely contributed to breaking elemental forces instead of being completely responsible. I'm sure once he calms down he'll be happy to hear this.
Cursed Lands (Original)
Professor Cid's machine was what broke the crystal!? Unbelievable!
The crystals have shattered and darkness is taking over the world... It's worse than a nightmare! The castle's gone...
When the castle blew up, the explosion knocked down the wall blocking the way to the Library of the Ancients. Queen Karnak collapsed in the fire-powered ship... She was taken to the second floor of the inn to rest.
We were lucky to get out of the castle with our lives... The queen has been delirious since we found here. We rescued the queen from the fire-powered ship, but she's sustained injuries...
Before the fire crystal shattered the stairs leading to the town walls was blocked with fire. We can now access the one and only treasure.
The guy who warned us about Crew Dust's Flash spell now warns us about a new enemy. He doesn't explicitly say it but its probably fearsome because it too has a blue magic spell to teach.
Cid's grandson, Mid, is over at the Library of the Ancients. He's even more crazy about learning than Cid is!
Professor Cid's upstairs. He looks distraught, like he lost his best friend or something...
The Jachols still say the same thing about how great their town is since they can dig holes and how they can't leave town because of the wall despite massive mountain ranges being between them and home.
Leave me alone! If only I hadn't made that infernal machine... Professor, it wasn't your fault... Please, just let me be!
...Well that's all there is to learn in Karnak, but since learned that Cid has a grandkid at the Library of the Ancients and that the Library of the Ancients is no longer blocked off maybe we should go to the Library of the Ancients?
Do you want me to repeat this?
====>Yes
No
Battle 1 (Pixel Remaster)
The desert doesn't cover the whole path but trying to circumvent it would take almost 3 times as long. What's the worst that could-
happen.
Aqua Breath is a bit deceptive. It isn't water element (there IS a water element but there are very few things that use it) but it does have something going on behind the scenes that will be relevant later.
There's the library, but there's one more thing to do before we check in.
This should wrap up the whole bestiary for the Karnak region. Each of these guys has something interesting about them.
Silent Bee's send out a Needle that can silence or blind the target.
Deal with it.
Mythril Dragons have a blue magic spell to learn, but they need encouragement to use it on you.
Transfusion AKA Pep Up fully heals the target at the cost of killing the caster.
Lenna is now level 16, which was needed for the next dungeon.
After the battle the party just rips the shell off the Grass Tortoise, so he had that going for him I guess. These have the item icon next to them but they aren't usable yet.
Library of the Ancients (Original)
Welcome to the Library of the Ancients, where we get to play everyone's favorite game of "did I talk to you already?"
Eh, Mid? That's Professor Cid's grandson, you know. Mid mentioned something about looking for a book... I haven't seen him since then. None of us have the faintest idea where Mid's run off to.And knowing Mid I don't think any of you have the faintest motivation to find the jerk.
I mean you are reading right now.
Eventually the Library of the Ancients will be a minor base of operations. So this is probably the most convenient free heal we'll have for a bit.
Some books in the basement have been possessed by monsters. Such a shame... According to one of our texts, long ago the crystals were much more powerful than they are today. After learning that, Professor Cid created machines to increase the power of the crystals to how it once was. Thirty years ago, a monster called Byblos appeared near the Wind Shrine... It was eventually sealed away beneath this library.
I feel like there's something quite important written within these pages... This is the library's oldest tome. However, half of its pages have been lost, so we don't really know what it's about.
Far to the south of here is the village of Jachol. They've excavated all sorts of precious items from the ruins there.They've also excavated all sorts of headless corpses from the ruins there too. No one seems to mention that part.
A Blue Mage's Journey "Finally started learning monsters' skills... Aero... Level 5 Death..." A Traveler's Journal "I'll give the strange staff I found to that man from Tycoon..."
THIS ONE
All of the random encounters here are pages from possessed books. Pages 32, 64, 128 and 256 are the ones to look for to complete the bestiary. 32, 64 and 256 are the ones to look for to fill out Blue Magic lists.
The fights can be incredibly involved in the library. At their simplest they'll be a 2 stage fight. When one page goes down another one might pop up. At its most complicated you might end up fighting all of them twice in a single fight (except 256, that'll only be fought once in that marathon fight).
I love jpeg artifact skull and I will not tolerate anyone besmirching him, he's trying his best. (this is apparently due to it being stored as a particle effect, rather than a simple sprite because previous games are a nice crisp
)Level 5 Death (and any other Level _ Spell hits anyone with levels that are divisible by that number. So if I didn't take that detour to get Transfusion everyone would be dead from this.)
So Mid is missing and the basement is full of more evil books.
The library is filled with moving shelves, the trick is finding where the triggers are to move the shelves you want. In this case just walk straight into this shelf.
Usually the triggers are easy to spot, This hole was made for Butz.
Worst case if the shelves don't behave just walk to the very end of a dead end.
That's most of the puzzles dealt with. And most of the treasures are in easy line of sight.
While the Gigas in Karnak was stingy about casting Aera this Page 32 was incredibly eager to share.
I don't give any other Page 64's enough time to cast Level 5 Death any more but now Faris is safe from it too.
This bookshelf doesn't have a pressure plate or switch to make it move where we want to, it just constantly body blocks Seymour.
Page 128 doesn't do anything interesting beyond afflicting slow on someone. So I'll take this line to mention a strange thing in this release. Previous ones would let you just queue up all your actions and they'd just go off as normal if a page changes. Here, if you kill a page and have things lined up or were in the middle of menuing it kicks you out. This doesn't really mean anything besides maybe having someone stuck in a casting pose when they aren't really casting.
This room looks pretty daunting, but there's really only 3 points of interest on it. First we can't proceed since the bookshelf is stopping us from going further in that one central door. Second, the treasure that is the only one that isn't immediately in line of sight, and Third is the boss room at the very bottom.
The secret to proceeding is looking back in the bookshelf room and seeing there's a door up along the other bookcases to the left. So we need to get up there somehow.
So up along the shelves we go.
The Fierce Battle (Pixel Remaster)
Ifrit is just a watered down Liquid Flame. He does physicals, and casts Fira or Blaze. He's such a nonthreat I don't bother to juggle to ice rods because I'd just be switching right back to fire rods for everything else in the basement.
Ifrit is also here to remind you that status effects work on bosses.
A few more Blizzaras and a self inflicted punch to the face later...
Ifrit is one of two mandatory summons to collect.
Library of the Ancients (Original)
Back at the bookshelf that wouldn't let us pass...
The silent threat of being moved by force is enough to calm it down.
The treasure that was shown on the mini map above is down this stairway.
Its here that I try to set things up for the boss. I haven't posted the Fire Crystal job set yet and that was intentional. But I'll start explaining the gimmick of Beastmaster here.
First, Beastmaster will want something other than a robe to wear. Ninja Suits have higher defense and trade the strength boost of the Kenpo Gi for an agility boost.
Second, their signature ability is !Catch.
!Catch requires an enemy to be at critical health (The target must be below 1/8 of their max health), so 3 casts of Gravity from Galuf will do it.
Now that I caught something, !Catch will become !Release.
Also, !Catch doesn't trigger death scripts so no more pages come out to play. In fact it doesn't kill the enemy so you don't get experience from captured enemies.
Here's the last monster.
He casts one of the worst blue magics in the game.
I mean you might think Moon Flute seems like a good idea if you can cast berserk on a whole group of enemie casters...
But it doesn't do that, it casts berserk on YOUR party, no matter if friend or foe casts it.
This is the second to last event trigger to hit. And here's the last puzzle: if you go down through that door you end up on a small balcony.
The solution is checking this ladder out.
It's a forced fight
That you can run from
It still opens the door no matter how you deal with it.
Beyond is a save point, but I only had one tent after leaving Karnak and I used it after getting aqua breathed. I weigh using a cottage or just pushing through. I chose to push through.
Mid? Stay on your toes! I have a bad feeling about this place...
Prepare for the fight of your life: literacy.
The Fierce Battle (Pixel Remaster)
Byblos is a wildcard to fight. I could end him just as easily as I did Liquid Flame, but I want a blue magic out of him.
I am going to pay dearly for wanting something.
See this? You can probably just copy and paste this image 4 or 5 times and that would be most of his turns in this fight.
His physical attack is less damaging than Wind Slash, but notice that it did that much in the back row.
Web is a blessing, all it does is cast slow, which could be fixed with haste.
After taking several beatings I choose to go on the offensive to see if maybe some minor damage would knock him out of the murder loop.
That's almost 1/3 of his health, so like I said he isn't too hard to rush down.
But of course there's a twist. He can counter spells with toad. And that's the nice counter. If I threw a punch he could counter with protect. Protect doesn't wear off and we won't have a way to negate buffs for a long time. So if you're fighting Byblos with a purely physical team, you will probably suddenly find the fight going much longer than you planned.
And then there's a second counter that comes in as his HP drops down, he'll cast drain and you could find yourself in a very bad spiral if all you can do is !Attack and fail to do much damage through protect and drain.
Garula was a gentle nudge to stop you from just blindly hitting !Attack. Liquid Flame was a kind suggestion to maybe carefully consider your attacks and take things one step at a time. Byblos will teach you to stop doing these things or suffer.
At this point I got tired of his garbage and wanted this over.
When you !Release a monster they show up and do a move. That move might have absolutely nothing to do with what they do when you're fighting them. Banish is an endgame Time Magic spell that removes the enemy from battle.
Or at least has the chance to, it failed here. I guess this is also the best time to mention another thing about bosses.
Well right after this. Dischord has a chance to cut your level in half (just in battle, thankfully), so if this would have hit Galuf would be doing half the damage to Byblos.
Anyway back to bosses. Previous bosses have had vulnerabilities to status effects. And I obviously tried to throw this jerk into the shadow realm because I had a chance to. So bosses can be vulnerable to Instant Kills. There is a bit in the enemies data called the Heavy Flag. Heavy enemies will be immune to most instant kill moves, percentile damage like gravity, or "set HP to single digits" like Death Claw. If a heavy enemy is vulnerable to a temporary status like silence or paralyze their duration is shortened.
So after that Banish failed I could have still followed up with spamming Death Claw if I had Blue Mages and then pushed him over when one hit.
But after resigning myself to death and waiting for him to finish Galuf off he finally pulled out Magic Hammer.
My mana!
However will I survive?
By doing 400 more HP than he could ever possibly have.
Death is but a door, time is but a window, if I had a gil for every time I heard those words...
So at the bare minimum 60 gil.
Library of the Ancients (Original)
On top of all that I have to walk the last 4 steps to Mid. I'm unsure if there's encounters in this room but I wasn't about to wander around to find out (Mid is now the 4th thing that requires direct intervention to progress plot).
Huh? I told you not to bother me when I'm reading! Don't tell me you were engrossed in that book the whole time!? What whole time? Now that you mention it, I did hear some rustling behind me... Was that you? !? ...!? You've gotta be kidding... A strange bird, this one... Whatever... Guess it's time to go back, huh? You guys coming, or what? I know a shortcut!
...trying as hard as possible to be impartial to Mid.
The shortcut is where the guy thought he found the book he was looking for and proceeded to do nothing with.
Mid! There you are! Mid! You're all right! Thank you for finding Mid! Thank goodness you're safe!
Deep... breaths...
Oh yeah! Look at this! I found the most amazing book! Check it out... I bet with this method, we could get the fire-powered ship moving! I've gotta tell Grandpa Cid about it right away! Cid? Oh, you know him? He's my grandfather. Grandpa is so awesome! When he gets absorbed in his research, he's unstoppable- he never gives up until he's found the solution!
What're you talking about?
What!? He would never do that!
And as abruptly and rudely as he has been for every moment we've seen him he leaves.
Wait-Mid! I'm so glad that Mid is all right! Mid just ran out of here. He looked pretty flustered. Mid was muttering something about the professor... Mid rushed out of the library. He said something about finding Professor Cid...
So Mid is going to check up on Cid so its back to Karnak we go. I switch Seymour to geomancer because I wanted to see if they behaved like Matrix or not (it behaves like the other releases)
If you are walking right up against the coast of the map you get a beach background.
Despite the screen filling wave, this is the first !Gaia effect for the beach.
The results are a little underwhelming for what just happened (it's still lethal to them though).
Feeler is the special attack that causes Old status.
It can be incredibly hard to tell when Galuf gets hit by Old. Hell some jobs like Black Mage Seymour can be just as tough.
For some reason I decide I want Faris to do something else. Maybe it was because !White4 is sufficient for every white magic spell there is right now. Maybe it was just because I wanted to kill things faster. Maybe just to show that since in the wind crystal jobs Faris wears gender neutral clothes since we don't know the story of the captain til between the Wind and Water crystals while starting with the water crystal some feminine clothes start showing up. (Yes, the berserker clothes are gendered. Wolves for the Galuf and Seymour, Big game cats for Faris and Lenna)
it was because I wanted to murder something with !White4 boosted throws.
Cursed Lands (Original)
Mid isn't here? Come on, man. Pull yourself together! Leave me alone... Don't waste your time on a worthless old lump like me. Grandpa!Silence
Mid proceeds to flap his arms at Cid.
Ouch! Mid, stop that! What are you doing? What am I doing? What are YOU doing, you silly old fool!? You never give up! Never! Mid...
You told me that if you mess up, you have to start over and try again... What happened to that!? Mid... Just try again...
The Fire Powered Ship (Original) (Now with real sense of triumph)
Of course I am! It's not over. The earth crystal is still out there! Yeah, but where?
We'll need the fire-powered ship! Yes... We'll need to get the ship moving again. But without the crystal... Way ahead of you, Grandpa. Just look at this! Mid! Where'd you dig this up? Hmm... Ahh, I see, like that... Nice work, Mid, this could do it! All right! Let's get to work! Yeah!
After so many words, Cid just nods at Seymour. Other than the Bar tender and the random guy at a table 30 feet away sharing a quantum entangled brain no one else says anything different.
Professor Cid skipped out of here, happy as a lark. Wonder what happened.
As soon as the party steps on deck Mid just stomps up...
And throws the deck panel out from under his feet.
Really don't like Mid. Its not so much for him being a jerk, he's a kid, I guess I should overlook it. No, its far more insidious than that.
Cid and Mid are now our Navi. Think about the last 9 updates, most NPCs we only interact with once, maybe 2 or 3 times if I'm going out of the way to show optional dialog. Right now, we had to talk to Cid once. I had to talk to Mid once. And then the event trigger tile made them both talk, and its happening again right here. And its going to keep happening.
This sounds dangerously like "free inn stay" doesn't it?
Galuf, what's wrong? Yes... you do look even stranger than usual.
Galuf, are you all right? My head...
Lenna's poisoned again?
It was like I could almost remember...Sorrows of Parting (Pixel Remaster, yes the link is named wrong)
K... Kri... Krile...
Galuf! What happened!? Did you remember something!?
I came here in a meteorite sent from another world. Because... Because the evil we'd sealed away thirty years ago was beginning to reawaken... I came here to stop it... Evil is reawakening? That's right... And a terrible evil at that- the dark warlock, Exdeath!
30 years ago there were 4 standing stones in this valley. And then there was one.
I came here once before, to seal him away, thirty years ago... So, if all four crystals are destroyed, then the seal you placed on Exdeath will be broken? Right... Ughhh... my head... Galuf! Still... can't remember clearly... Urgh... We can't... allow Exdeath to... be revived...
I'm... okay...The Fire Powered Ship (Original)
The next morning we wake up before Cid and Mid, and can't even get through the snores.
Come on kid, I'm trying so hard here to only hate you for the fact that you're constantly standing on or near event triggers through no fault of your own.
Hey! It's finished! We are so awesome! Presenting... a boat that will sail without any wind! Now we have a ship, we can go find the earth crystal! Righto! We're counting on you. We'll return to the Library of the Ancients for now. We should be able to find more clues there.
And with that, we're free to explore the world.