Part 5: Deuteronomy

Well, looks like it takes quite a while to work but the Shrine of Hypnos did manage to take us to a whole new continent eventually. There's not much here, other than a few slightly more powerful monsters that I would grab some of. Mezuki and Gozuki are good to get since they can inflict ailments which could be useful, I guess.



Head south-east a bit, and you'll find Ramuh. This place looks smaller than it is, since there's a few places out to the extreme ends that don't look like you can walk to. One of them is a weapon store, and the others are armour stores so missing them is kind of a big deal.



Mona Branches could come in handy, since Paralysis is a bit of a dick in any game let alone a MegaTen one. The Tower of Magan is very definitely not the next dungeon, no sir. Let's check out the shrine just to prove how right that is!



...Oh. Well then, I guess we are off to the Tower of Magan next after all. But, uh, is it just me or is there something missing? I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure there's something that should be here that isn't.



: The priest, Rafael, went to retrieve the Orb.

Ah, so we have to go to the Tower of Magan to save Rafael because he went there to reclaim the Orb from monsters but screwed up and got himself captured. Makes sense, since there's no one else around who could do that or anything.



The item store has some new things other than the Mona Branch. Okay, one new thing but it's a very expensive new thing and it's the Rune. Runes are what you use to revive dead unconscious characters and could come in handy if there's no town nearby (you can do the same thing at Inns for much cheaper than this thing costs). They also drop from a few things, so you could always farm one or two I guess.



The weapon store is hidden off to the right of the town, and its full of expensive shit that you might want to buy one or two of since the weapons you'll probably still be carrying around are likely to be somewhat outdated by now. Also, the Moon Sword is not actually a sword, for equipment purposes, despite having "sword" in its name. This means that it cannot be equipped by either Samuel or Enkidu, and the same goes for the Tangaloia... strange, that. The Hecto Axe is expensive as all hell, but its a very nice thing to get, even though it will probably take ages to grind the money for.



There are two armour stores in Ramuh, and the first one (on the left) is easy to find, even though its basically crap. The Ice Armor is functionally identical to the Shock Armour, though I think it reduces Ice damage which could be handy I guess. The two robes, like the Moon Sword and Tangaloia, cannot be equipped by either Samuel of Enkidu. I think the game is trying to hint at something, even though it should be obvious what it is by now.  Even with omitting the from the intro like with Kishe Enkidu, it should still be painfully obvious. 

The second armour store is more the kind of thing you'd be expecting at this point, though its hidden off to the left of the town. The Hecto Mail is the sole reason I would avoid going for the best equipment at every town as soon as possible; getting that and the axe would run you 54,000 to get both for Samuel and Enkidu so it's not particularly worth it. I'd get the Hecto Mail for one of them, if you can stand the grind, since it will come in very handy eventually.



This cave in the desert east of Ramuh is, uh, the Tower of Magan. The enemies in there have a massive level spike compared to the ones outside of it, unless you go out of your way, so it might be able to put up a decent fight. For reference, the enemies around the tower of around 17-18 or so. The ones inside it? 22-24 give or take. Upgrading your equipment, or at least getting Curse 1, is going to help in a way other than reducing tedium for once.



That cave on the island IS in fact a cave! I know, I'm surprised as well. The town is a place we'll be checking out later, since there's not much we can do right now. The other cave is, like Mt. Palo, actually a mountain.



There's a few Mt. of Sages dotted around, and they're all incredibly useful for the exact same thing. They have one purpose, and that's for a sidequest that we can't do much for, until a long, long time later. The payoff is more than worth it, though.



At level 17, Kishe picks up Offense Up which does exactly what you think it does. This will prove very handy at some point, I am sure. Likewise, at level 18, Samuel gets Escape which allows you immediately leave a dungeon. There'll be a time when this comes in handy, but aside from dungeon crawling it doesn't have much use.



Oh, and Enkidu gets a Spirit Sword since it's relatively cheap and he needs an upgrade. Before long, we'll have more money than we'll know what to do with and we won't need to buy many upgrades at that point. The two may or may not be related in some way.



The Tower of Magan is a short dungeon, and only consists of a few floors that have nothing in them. Well, except for two; one should be obvious, and the other?



A couple of items. There's only two here that really stand out;



Light Charms are items that permanently raise a characters Strength by 1. Likewise, there's a charm for Speed (Wind), Intelligence (Water) and Stamina (Earth) too. There isn't one for Luck, though.

: Obtained Bamora
: Obtained Magnetite

Bamora functions somewhat similarly to Offence Up, in that it only works in battle and increases their damage output. It functions differently in that it only hits one person instead of the entire party and items are kind of crap in combat anyway with the obvious exception of Runes, Pana and Mana.



The last chest contains a... Dragon Bone? There is bugger all we can do with this, so I'd just dump in it storage so as to save inventory space for items that actually matter.



For a stat increase, Charms are quite common so I wouldn't feel too bad about not hoarding them. You kind of can't anyway, due to inventory space and such, so actually using them is by no means a bad thing. It doesn't hurt that there's a boss fight at the top of the tower, and you can't coast through them with Curse 1 so giving Enkidu a means to actually fight is a good idea too.

...If you don't have some decent armour, though, this is a good time to use Escape and get some. Even if its just for one character, it will help; the boss here is actually harder than Devil as opposed to being easier, and is one of the few bosses in the game that actually puts up a fight. Since I've just been coasting through this place on Curse, Poison and Confusion, I'll be off to get something worth equipping!