Part 60: Cool Cool Mountain

Chapter 60 - Cool Cool Mountain




And as you can see here we march towards the Icecrown Glacier to reach the Old God's site.



Welcome to Gaea/Gaia's Cliff.



Basically, you pick up ways, follow them and once you reach the next platform, hug yourself to raise the temperature.



There's not much to this part other the fact that I absolutely love the artwork here, so enjoy.



There are some dead-ends, none of which contain anything interesting and they're there just to mock you up.



Eventually you end up in this mini-dungeon. Another great-looking place, showcasing the diversity I mentioned earlier. There's only so many color-schemes you can get out of ice and they sure know how to do them.



This place has an annoying encounter rate too, but the same can be said about all dungeons in this game.



We go all the way up north...



And end up here. There are some crystals blocking the way, so we need to find a way to get rid of them. Further west and...



We find ourselves on the second floor, hooray.



There's a hidden passage here after the bridge, leading to the second [Ribbon] in the game. Remember kids, the Ribbon is an accessory that makes us immune to every status ailment in the game, so it's pretty good stuff.



Oh, and in case you're asking, we fight bats, worms and yellow penguins here. There's also a really rare encounter in this place, we'll see later.



The [Javelin] is the second tier DOUBLE growth weapon for Cid. It deals as much damage as the weapon for Red we got back in Cosmo Canyon, which kinda spells out how ridiculously powerful it was back then.



Anyway, this dungeon's layout is confusing. I'm just backdooring all around the place.



This dungeon truly is a kick in the ball.





Je t'aime.



Moi non plus.



This is the encounter I was talking about. Remember the boss from the Nibelheim Reactor, Materia Keeper? You get to fight mini Materia-Keepers here, at an abysmal encounter rate.
Either way, he's very important for one reason, the same reason I'm manipulating him.




He can cast Magic Breath on your party, a very cool-looking Enemy Skill that does multi-elemental damage (sucks). You can also manipulate him into using Trine in case you missed the other two times you had to learn the skill.



Anyway, once you get the crystals out of the way, you're out of the mini-dungeon back to the massive cliff. The cliff starts asking you questions.



There isn't, sadly enough, anything of worth here. Mostly dead-ends.



Either way, you can appreciate this beautiful work of 90's Photoshop copy-pasting pictures of rocks.



There are encounters here, by the way. Most are not notable with one exception, we'll see it later.



Right now we're too busy climbing the mountain at the weirdest angles known to men.



So this is another mini-dungeon. These are some massive holes in the ground with water underneath.



And these are a bunch of platforms that, sadly enough, are too low. In other words we must rise up the water level. There's also a chest to the northwest we can't reach, and only one way out. Out we go.



Oh now you're just messing with me.



I really like this scene. It shows how high we are, it shows the way out taunting us, and otherwise it just looks cool.



And this is another super-bizarre sequence. Basically, the moment you touch these stalactites, you get into a battle.



With an icicle. Surrounded by bats.



The icicles are weak to Fire, so Beta does the trick. The bats are just there to annoy you, really. You can ignore them and go straight to the main guy - once you destroy it, they disappear.



You will dream of your teeth tonight. You know you will.



These icicles give you some huge amount of Exp, which I'm sure low-level runners must hate.



Right. Back to the dungeon. There's a chest to the right, it contains a [Fire Armlet]. This is just like the [Bolt Armlet] - decent armors that also offer us total protection to an element by absorbing it.



During the fight we also get our Elemental materia leveled up. This could not have happened in a better time, you'll understand why soon enough. In case you forgot, here's the deal with the [Elemental] - if you put it on your armor with a magic (or summon) materia, it offers protection to that element. How much protection? It depends on the materia level:

Level 1 - Halves damage.
Level 2 - Nulls damage.
Level 3 - Absorbs damage.



The icicles obviously don't attack, but hitting them offers a 50% chance of icicles falling on you dealing some damage.



Once we're done we can open this chest for a... Last... Elixir? Sure, why not? In truth, it's a poorly translated Megalixir, God knows. Talking about nonsense, why can't we just jump to the path below? It's not like Cloud can't take 30 meters falls.



Back to the first floor, we got these icicles down, rising up the water level.



Except for this one, that just fell conveniently so we can go up and grab that chest. Who the hell placed those things here anyway?



Why? I mean, think about the logistics.



Someone went through all the trouble of climbing here while carrying what I believe to be some very heavy chests.



I bet the sword isn't light either. Let's see:



Well, that's colorful, but that's not a very good picture now, is it? JESSIE, you know what to do.




ENHANCE... sword.



The CSI sword of choice.



Oh, by the way, it has 8 slots.



So yea, you walk all the way around the mountain to get back here. I still think we could have just jumped.



Back to climbing. This cliff is huge.



Luckily for us, this is the last climbing section.



It also happens to be the shortest one, so let's take this time to see what we can fight here.



OH GOD GO AWAY GO AWAY.



AHHH JESUS CHRIST BURN WITH FIRE BURN IT DOWN



So, this is the Malboro. The Malboro is a strong creature and a staple of the Final Fantasy series. Its design is always the same - a carnivorous nightmare-inducing plant themed for being poisonous. It can cast Bio2 on your party, it's immune to Poison, it absorbs Poison damage, and you can still some Malboro Tentacles from it. It's an item that casts poison. But none of these really define a Malboro.



This defines a Malboro. These creatures are infamous for having an attack called [Bad Breath].



Here you can see what happens. Barret was using protection (Ribbon) but the others weren't. Bad Breath inflicts Poison, Confusion, Sleep, Silence, Frog and Small on everyone in your party. Depending on which Final Fantasy you're playing, they may as well open the battle with it and wipe out your group.

It's also an Enemy Skill.




And with that, the climbing is over.



So after this long climb and nothing exciting happening since the disk started, we end up in this cave with a Save Point. Also, that glowing spring next to it is a fountain that fully regenerates your HP/MP infinitely. I don't know about you but it smells like an upcoming boss fight to me.



This room has some tough enemies. These cheetah sphynxes counter all your attacks.



And these Blue Dragons follow the tradition of ruining your day. They have a lot of HP (8800) and do a lot of damage, just like Nibelheim Dragons do.



You can also win [Dragon Armlets] from them, which are really cool.




OFF WE GOoo




My tablet broke again so I drew this with a mouse. Life sucks sometimes.

It's time for yet another Dragon. These past encounters were pretty tough and our party isn't really healed up. Schizo is a tough opponent - first, he's split in two heads, each with 18,000 health for a total of 36,000 combined (so using All or Enemy Skills is recommended). Each head attacks separately and they can deal some good amount of damage. Let's see what they can do against us.






Oh.




So here's the deal - Schizo uses a lot of magic. The right head deals Fire and Earth damage, while the left head deals Ice and Earth damage. Their final attack deals Lightning damage. So in total that's Fire, Earth, Ice and Lightning. Schizo doesn't deal any physical attack. So what gives?



Without touching materias, we can nullify the two main attacks in a single character. The armor Fire Armlet will actually make his Fire attacks heal us, while the accessory Ice Ring will give us immunity to Cold. There goes half the challenge, folks!

Now here's the fun part - the Elemental Armlets have exactly 4 Linked (2 pairs) Materias. It's like the devs wanted us to do this. We also have two Elemental materias, so by linking them to Earth and Lightning we get to this:



In other words, we're 100% invincible to a boss. If you don't do this he's hard-ish, I suppose.



Oh, and you can steal this from him. Let's move on.



Once you leave the cave, a cutscene starts as you finish climbing the last part of the cliff.



What the



Holy fuck.



Holy fuck that's a big crater.



And with that, we conclude this update.



NEXT TIME:

Holy crap look at the size of that cratter WE'RE DOOMED.