Part 196: Spirit Sanctuary 1

Welcome back!





So, the Spirit Sanctuary is a semitransparent structure, floating in the infinite void of space.

Okay then.



Welp, that was a short dungeon, guess there's nothing to d-



Oh.

This dungeon's gimmick is paths that appear and disappear as you hit certain trigger points.

I'm honestly not the biggest fan of dungeons you can't solve with the left-hand rule.



We do get a sneak peek at the boss, a recolor of the Lord's Ghost.

And yes, the storyline boss is just a recolor of the optional boss, seeing as we lost the ability to go fight the Lord's Ghost long before stepping foot in here.



This dungeon also loves to tease you about things you'll have a hard time getting to.

Oh, I should probably talk about those monsters, huh?



Critters can cause instant death with Death Spear. They're immune to fire and very weak to blizzard. Stingrays exist to die horribly. Seriously, weak to all elements and statuses? Flight Bomb isn't even that powerful of a skill.

Guardians are the annoying ones here. Zap All hurts without good elemental resistance, and they can heal, buff, and their Riddle skill confuses all allies.

Fuck Guardians.



Liete gains an all right level.



And, along a twisty passageway, we find this. As you might expect, the Spirit gear is the default set of endgame armor. While some other things might offer special abilities, the Spirit gear usually gives far better numbers than anything else.

Since Liete is wearing the Glass Slippers, Rapp gets the new shoes.



And that's that, for Rapp.



Liete picks up her final unique spell. Enclose... well, we'll see what it does against the next boss.



This place can get confusing when paths pass over or under each other.



The Force Knife increases the attack radius. The Force Knife increases the attack radius by far less than 128. Therefore, it's not nearly as hilarious as the Telescope. Still, it casts WOW! when used as an item and is pretty powerful, so it pretty much defaults to "best knife".



We've gotten the treasures to either side of that center platform, now. We must be close.







Towards the end of the area, there's this puzzle here. "Puzzle" in heavy sarcasm quotes, as it boils down to "hit the right colors in the right order. If you ever fuck up, you have to start from the beginning again".

Given that the correct sequence is red, green, then blue, this isn't quite as annoying as it could be.







Eventually we come to the central platform. We could go fight the boss now, but there's a few things to pick up first.



Victoly!



And our reward is a pretty decent set of gloves. Between these, the Devil Robe, and the Holy Ring, you can get a character to +5 against all elements.



You can't hide from me, Boss Bread! (it's just a seed of life)



This is a little better, a Fruit of Moves.

But whatever, it's time for the main event.





Much like the Lord's Ghost, only easier. Sure, his stats are slightly higher, but our stats are much higher.

Howlnado is more annoying than dangerous, GadZap can still hurt if you let the Wand get too many turns, and the head can, in theory, cast BOOM-POW but if it's not spamming Atomic Shot every round then something's gone wrong.

By the by, Mage King's Atomic Shot is a 30-power attack. Lord's Ghost's X-Ray was at 67 power.

Granted, none of this matters for one simple reason.



Enclose. Its description stats that it "Blocks all attacks of one enemy for now". Based on what we've seen, you'd figure that it probably inflicts both Move and Magic blocks, right?

Wrong. Enclose inflicts Stop. You'll note that Stop isn't even a status ailment in this game. It's a hardcoded special effect unique to this spell, and nothing in the game resists it. It's like an offensive variant of Time Gate, only much cheaper and more useful. Kinda like how Magic Art is a cheaper, single-target variant of End of the World. At least Star Symphony and Tree of Life do different things and are both have a reasonable MP cost.

Oh, and in addition to completely halting an enemy for more than long enough to win any fight? It also deals a small amount of damage over time, just to add insult to injury.

Also, the spell's power stat seems to control the Stop duration, rather than the damage, so with +Mag equipment, Liete can keep the foe stunlocked even longer.

Not that it matters, since the default duration is more than long enough for her to attack or chug an MP potion, then cast Enclose again.

Poor bastard only gets off two attacks, and both were Atomic Shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpGo-6KMceg (Polsy link)



So, fun fact. He gives a decent chunk of change when defeated. As soon as we stepped foot into the Spirit Sanctuary, though, we lost access to the game's final shop. Money has been 100% useless to us since the start of this update.



Rapp gets a level of unimportant quality. Seriously, if Demon Ball was weapon/explosion elemental, then Rapp's stats would be more or less the same as Justin's at this point.



Anyway, we've got some more cutscenes coming up.

See you next time!