Part 34: Krile vs. A Heat-Seeking Missile

Welp, it's finally going to happen. Reina's finally going to master Ninja this update. Faris is close to mastering Samurai as well.



There's a ton of stuff that I can still do, but I might as well do the next dungeon now, as that also unlocks more fun stuff.







You know the deal.



Reina still hits the hardest of the group, but now that they have awesome weapons Faris and Krile are actually competitive.



And then there's Hydra.



With the Magus Rod, Hydra will do 3000 damage to most monsters.

Now remember he can cast it twice a round.



Yeah.



You know how this goes.



There's a few hidden passages, a few traps, a couple annoying gimmicks. Just an average FF5 dungeon, though a bit drabber than usual.



Druids are fond of the Blue Magic level spells. Nice place to get them if you don't have them yet, can be obnoxious otherwise depending on your levels.



Aaaaand here we go!



Reina still has three jobs to burn through before I can let her loose in Freelancer nirvana. I stick her in Sorcerer because Sword Magic is awesome as hell.



Unfortunately, I only have knives to give her since all my best swords are Knight-exclusive. At least it'll give me a chance to show off the Thief Knife.

The hilarious thing is that now Reina's my weakest attacker, since she no longer can use Double Lances. That doesn't make her useless, though, heavens no.





Anyway, our first obstacle is an automatic thing that moves us around, where we flip switches to redirect it. Thus we can change directions to two treasure chests of useless treasure, and the exit!







This guy gets boss music, believe it or not.





Faris's criticals and Krile's Jumps put Reina to shame here.





Then his shadow turns blue for some reason.



Golem will absorb any physical damage directed to your party, up to a specific amount (I believe (20 + level) * 50 according to a FAQ I just looked up). Handy alternative to mass Blinking, and yet another of a myriad of ways to nullify physical damage.









The Thief Knife has a chance to use the Thief command Mug, which can steal while attacking. Get a nice-yet-outdated Ninja Suit from this. Also, I cast Drain Sword on Reina, which gives her the benefit of absorbing all damage dealt. Yet another reason the Drain Sword is needless shit.



And of course, Bartz is Bartz, doing 6000 damage a round because Summoners are fucking awesome.







Our reward is a Razor Ring, which is actually a weapon. It's a Ninja/Thief weapon that's an upgrade of the back-row-friendly Moonring. A shame I just swapped my Thief (and that it's not a Double Lance).



Thief Knife is nifty at times.



This next room's large and drawn out, making encounters numerous.



These guys are pains with Muddle and aren't very fragile, so I just opt to nuke them with Hydra. 8AP's decent, at least.





Here's a MechaHead, from the Pyramids that I lost footage of! It likes to use stuff like Missile.











One neat thing is that it can actually stop Jump attacks. The narrator even encourages it after doing so, being proud that an incredibly situational move actually triggered for once.



Unfortunately for it, a L3 elemental sword spell that hits a weak target will instantly kill it unless it's immune to instant death. No damage necessary, just swift and beautiful death.



Our reward is another Protect Ring. These are more valuable than Elf Cloaks at this point, due to the whole "I have at least three different ways to make physical damage irrelevant" thing.





The Damned are a common enemy here, meh. ShadeDancr can inflict a couple status effects and is unremarkable otherwise.



Nice for my non-Genji-using heavy armor wearer.



This floor can trip you up.



But first, a whip upgrade. Hooray?



Here's where the dungeon starts throwing all sorts of cruel pitfalls at you.



At least it gives me an opportunity to master Samurai for Faris. Fdraw can instantly kill enemies, though Faris always died before I got it off when I used it for the rest of the dungeon. The important thing is that she mastered Samurai, and that now she can't use that wonderful Masamune without wasting a slot on Equip Katana.



I switch Faris to Blue Mage just because she's on the cusp of mastering it. She's already close to mastering all her assigned jobs, and she may end up being the only character to actually make good use of all her jobs as a Freelancer.



Also, she's L35, making the rest of the dungeon slightly annoying.



Reina makes progress on Sorcerer. The quicker I can get her to mastering it, the quicker I can get a Freelancer with Sword Magic and Sshot (with 2-swords built in).



Along the way, Bartz runs out of MP, so I take this opportunity to bust out Mix for the first time.









Potion + Turtle Shell = Dry Tincture, recovering his MP by a whopping 160.

This isn't even close to the amount of awesome Mix can do.



Another room with a bunch of annoying pitfalls.



Nice random drop if ArmBands were worth using!



This guy's the worst part of this dungeon. Why, you ask?



He absorbs Wind, making the Air Knife (and Hydra) useless against him. He also has a huge amount of HP, making killing him a slog. I just run away after the first encounter.



These guys die too quickly, but this may be one of the few enemy names in this translation that's actually clever.



In the boss room, we pick up a nice mage helmet that works as a nifty upgrade for Faris.







I wondered who could have made it this far... But it's only a group of little girls! Ha, ha, ha! Now I will send you all to your graves!!

Ha, ha, ha! You just shit-talked the wrong group of "little girls."







Stoker (Stalker/Wendigo in RPGe/GBA) is a gimmick fight, where there's only one real one and three imposters. He likes to use Mind Blast to paralyze and damage a character.







If you do a target-all attack, he'll counter with Blaze with all his forms. This stacks with a double-cast, hitting you quite a few times. Not that this stops me from dual-casting it, of course, as Faris blocks some and Krile absorbs it with her shield.





The battle's over once the main form dies, but the imposters last just long enough for me to revive Bartz and Reina. How nice of them.



Anyway, we got more weapons.





The gates to Fork Tower have opened! Powerful black and white magic can be found there!

More importantly, we can now access Fork Tower, where we can unlock a couple of handy spells.





Fork Tower...twin houses of powerful balck and white magic...The magic in both towers must be taken at the same time...Or they will explode!

We'll get more into the gimmick of Fork Tower of another time.



Next time, we do more sidequest stuff and take on the Fork Tower to unlock even more fun!