Part 194: Living Off the Land Part 4 : I Hate Karnak

Bye for now Wind Shrine.



I mostly fight Wild Nakks on the way to Karnak, netting a new spell.



In order to progress with the game, I have to enter the shop. But don't worry, I don't buy anything; Bear knows better than to trust any place that handles money.



Yet they found him anyway. Someone somehow saw this group of strangers walk out of a meteor that's miles away from town.

...I think this might run deeper than we initially thought.



At least Bear finds a kindred soul in prison.







Oh. He's talking about that. Nevermind.



Anyway, the Fire Ship is a breeze. I just keep the whole team Blue Mage, Golbin Punching everything to death and healing with Vampire when needed. This also has the lovely side effect of blindness being a complete non-issue. Extra bonus: awesome shades for the whole dungeon.



Speaking of which.

As for the treasure, there's some good shit. For consumables we've got three elixirs, a cottage, and a phoenix down. Most of that is too nice to use right now, but still super nice to have.





But these two are probably the most important. I have a severe hat deficiency, and the green beret really helps for that. As for the Thieves Gloves, the improved accuracy means more consumables, which isn't to be sneezed at. Also worth noting is the Moonring Blade, which makes my thief actually one of the more damaging characters while keeping him the back. Nice.


Liquid Flame

So the Liquid Flame ended up being more challenging than I'd thought.



For one, my main healing strategy is dicey at best now, since it triggers a counter.



Also, the hand form will straight up murder me. The tornado form's counter is at least harmless, even with the boss's decent physical attack. I mean, that's not what's killing me.



I blow one of my four hi potions on Faris, because ice rod boosted Shiva is the cornerstone of my strategy here.



As you see here.



And here we see Fira ripping my shit up. Fortunately, it never did cast Fira on Faris, and the hand form ran out of MP pretty soon. I did use a hi potion and a phoenix down just in case, though.



I somehow won this fight.

Since it was in human form, it dropped a flame scroll. I debated whether this was the drop I wanted. I could also get a flame rod or a flame bow. Hm. Scrolls will be in short supply in this run, but that bow could be useful. Or a rod to break if I needed to.



So hell I fought it again, this time not using any hi potions or phoenix downs. Also getting the Flame Bow. In retrospect maybe the scroll would be more useful. Hm. Eh, I like not having used the items.



Sadly I have to use the tent here, what with all the dead party members, wasting a bit of time.



So I'm not terribly fond of this segment anyway, but Karnak castle was not fun for this party, at least if you're trying to actually get stuff.



And it's entirely because of these beefy fuckers. My blue mage centric party can handle all the other enemies here just fine, but Gigas has a ton of HP, has a nasty attack, and loves to counter with full party Aero. You know one problem with Blue Mages in the early game? For the most part, they can't kill things quickly, at least not the Gigas. And Gigases guard a lot of chests here.

Now Monk or Summoner can take these guys out a lot quicker, but they lack healing. Subbing !Blue would solve that, but next to no one has gotten it yet. Also the Summoner will run out of MP eventually, since there are a lot of Gigas and it takes more than one summon to kill one.

Quite a few of my characters are close to learning !Blue, and they'll learn it partway through the castle sequence, but the class change would, you guessed it, take time I can't afford to spend.

I actually ran out of time at least once, and reset twice.

Eventually, I realized that I would just have to leave a fair amount of stuff behind. Mostly elixirs.



At least I can steal 'em from the Gigases, so I still end up with plenty.



Oh I didn't mention the Gigas also has Aera, which will often kill my party members, especially after a bunch of aero counters. This didn't, and yay new Blue spell.

Although every one time he used Aera, it offed someone. That's two phoenix down used. At least Lenna learned !Blue on the way. That's good.





Of course, I made sure to get the important stuff.

Overall, I got the shuriken, ribbon, 4000 worthless gil, the lightning scroll, and two elixirs. Not as many elixirs as I'd like, but I stole plenty. I think I'll be fine.



Oh, and I made sure to get this spell. I'm still not going to use a White Mage in battle, but I can still swap someone over just to cure poison or something. I can save my status curing items for an emergency, how novel.



As for the Iron Claw boss fight?



There, uh, wasn't one. I wasted him with Aera and Shiva before he could transform. I probably should have let it happen so I could get Death Claw, but... goddamn was I sick of this place.

Although I did have enough time to go back in and snag another elixir, so I did.



Just barely made it.



Unlike last time, I can use all these jobs! Obviously Ninja is the stand-out, even with limited throwing stock. Also I'm rather fond of Beastmaster, although that might just be because I had one for Fiesta once. Learned it was a lot more powerful than I thought. Geomancer will probably only be used for damage tiles.

Oh, and before I sign out.



I realized I was missing some stuff, so I went and I got the tent and phoenix down that I missed in Walse, the two cottages in Tycoon, and the eight potions from the pirate cave. I'm certain this kept someone up at night.

Anyway, next time the library and FREE HEALING again. Yay!

Final level: 14/14/14/14
Deaths: Strictly speaking, none (But if you count resets to avoid certain death, like 3)