Part 36: Winter 1998
Welcome back to Linda4. We're still trying to collect all animals in the limited time of only one year!
Last time when we stopeed, it just turned into Winter 1998. So we're about at a half-way mark time-wise. Let's see how we proceed.
Step 1. Eastern outskirts of G-Factory
Of course, we want to go again and try to find a female whale!
We'll use again Linda's "animal call" to get the "island" to come to us!
Ah, there we go. It's important to note that of course you can reload your game several times to make her appear, BUT you need to reload from before coming to G-Factory itself. It seems that the game "decides" on the whale situation as soon as you arrive, so reloading from that point will not help.
Step 2. Minago and going underground
First we head into the church.
On the upper floor, there's a cryogenic storage machine which gives us a pair of sea cucumbers! Neat.
Now we head into the well.
Our main destination today is the pyramids, but first, here we pick up for now:
Elephant.
Step 3. Tricross
I mentioned that we definitely do NOT have to traverse Tricross cave (since we already have a pair of carps in the ark), however, we do need to at least pop in to pick up that one endemic species which is only found there.
Tricross has multiple entrances, and luckily one of them happens to be exactly on the way to the pyramids!
So we briefly come inside and pick up:
Triceratops. They sometimes appear in large groups, so you may want to use Linda's "Moon of Yabasa" to put them to sleep if you want to make things a bit easier.
Step 4. The pyramids
We have no need to go into the big pyramid. We already have the ladybirds in the ark, and the T-Rex can be also found in the small one. So we'll head directly into the small one then.
Yes, it's that place where we have to activate switches in order to open the doors!
There are three individual switches...
...and then also these which control the entrance to the room next door which houses T-Rexes.
T-Rex ("The Ultra Strong"). Opening the doors of course releases them so you can capture them. Definitely use Ken's "Earth of Yabasa" for good damage to all enemies at once!
The other doorway ultimately leads to the teleporter...
...which leads to this dark and empty place. But we have to come here, because...
Firefly ("The Shiny Guy"). The game gives you "squirrel needle" weapon in the left luggage storage. Pick it up from there as soon as you start the scenario and this guy will be no problem, despite its silly HP. Definitely take the weapon from storage immediately at the start, as the left luggage employees also leave the planet gradually, so, uh, you don't want to find yourself without an easy way to get this guy. I suppose if you're despereate, you can try throwing some poop and hope it does exactly 1HP damage.
Anyway, we're done down here in the pyramid.
Step 5. Fontana
Fontana is that forest place with a big waterfall.
Gorilla. Just let yourself get ambushed.
Cicada. Also you can get ambushed by them. But don't waste time as they are more easily found elsewhere.
Also let yourself get ambushed in the water, because...
Piranha ("The Green Fish").
Then we go down the waterfall!
Pufferfish/Fufu. Found in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall.
Flying squirrel ("The Flying Animal"). Found in the small cave behind the waterfall.
Step 6. Underground, northwestern part
We're heading into this part, which is separated from the rest by mountains (note the rectangle indicating our position).
First, recall that antelopes (serows) live here disugised as trees.
Antelope. Use Linda's "animal call" ability to get them to come out of their disguise and to approach you.
Starfish ("The Star-shaped"). Look in the water for them, or get ambushed in water. Interestingly when using a lightning spell against an enemy in water (like here), it will actually attack ALL enemies. Makes sense, but you don't always see this kind of attention to detail.
Eel. Of course, lightning attacks will heal them.
Step 6. Gapia
Gapia entrance is right in this same little area, so it makes sense to do it now while we're here.
The infamous tree frogs are here, but we actually already have them in the ark, so no need to bother. This I don't get a bit... you have to come here anyway and tree frogs are quite plentiful and easy to catch, but the game still gives them to you. They could have actually given you less without making the challenge significantly harder.
But I'm having a weird impression that they implemented this scenario a bit by using at least partially some sort of a "saved state" from Scenario C. The reason why I say this is because (a) you can still see all quests in the quests menu, but they are all finished, and (b) you can also see all messages from quests on the answering machine, but also they have all been listened to. So it kind of feels almost like somebody from the devs played through the game and then they just made a save when they were happy with the situation. Of course that doesn't explain the extra dialogue you get at the beginning from Ken's mum, but who's to say that you can't trigger that in Scenario C also if you are at a particular situation with regards to capture. Ah, I don't know, but it's pretty obvious that Scenario D was definitely "hacked in" at least to an extent.
Anyway, moving on. Since we also have a pair of giraffes, and also we just got a pair of sea cucumbers from the church, there's really only two species left to find here.
First off, this guy.
Slug ("The Strange Guy"). They are a bit reluctant to spawn sometimes, so either use the "wait" method or alternately see if you can get ambushed by them in water. They seem to get healed by most elemental attacks, so be a bit careful.
Anglerfish. The other species we still need from here, female only of course, since we already have the male in the ark--at this point in time, there would not be anybody around to dismantle the anglerfish to get the egg, nor would there be anybody at the incubator to hatch the male anglerfish from the egg, so it has to be this way.
That's all we need from Gapia. If the season doesn't change when you come back out of the cave, it means you're golden!
Step 7. Melt Pot
If the season didn't change after exiting Gapia, that means we can now relax. Melt Pot can be accessed from this same little patch of underground, simply by walking to it, which means we now enter the "borrowed time" part and can spend as much time as we want in Melt Pot, as the season will not change until we come back out! As you can see, the success of Scenario D definitely hinges in large part on making good planning decisions what to do in "borrowed time", so you can leave that moment for longer overwold captures and dungeons that may take a bit loger to deal with.
Inside first we find an old friend.
Chicken. As you can see, we were able to completely avoid going to Marblepolis--both species from there can be found in other places. It's also important to realise this and to optimise your work by only going to places which you really need to go to--which is still most of them, but at least a couple can be avoided, for example, Marblepolis.
On the deeper level we find also the following:
Cattle ("The Horned Guy"). If they are too strong for you, you can put them to sleep (like I've done in the screenshot!).
Dragon. They are really strong and have some nasty attacks like a stronger version of "fire carpet" which puts it automatically on all four sides (Linda's version just puts it in front). Fire carpet on all four sides means that the "Escape" command is not possible, because well, you can't escape through fire (and dragons just happen to be immune to it!). Also, dragons are immune to sleep too. So, uh, I guess, just do the best you can?
By the way, make sure you're not carrying hot poop with you. As explained previously, it's the dragon poop and if you have it they will chase you, thus making impossible to get a preemptive attack by approaching them from behind--this latter ting being essential to have time to cast buffs before they start going crazy on you!
It is potentialy worth to spend time and catch 20 female dragons and craft a full set of dragon clothes for both Ken and Linda. It will help in case you get into a spot of trouble with pandas. We are on "borrowed time", so we can spend time doing it, but its really a highly optional extra thing--if you get a preemptive attack on pandas, probably you will be ok either way as you have time to cast the buffs.
Anyway, I did craft the equipment, and here's where the characters ended up:
Linda.
Ken.
Of course as weapon we still use the eagle sabre. Although there are stronger weapons around, the ability to hit all enemies at once is much more important in my opinion.
If you missed the cicadas, they can be easily found here in Melt Pot too, there plenty of them around. As for dragons and cattle, they both have a spawn rate a bit on the low side, so as always, use the "wait" method to make them appear.
However, we are done here...
...and after exiting, of course it becomes Spring 1999. We only have one season left to finish the job.
In the meantime...
...let's hand this in at the ark.
We're currently at 95 out of 120, which means next time we need to get the last 25 species in one season.
Sounds doable? Eh, probably?
So, there was some interest in what happens if you do not manage to collect the required minimum number of animal species. In the end, nothing really wery dramatic.
First of all, there's no big explosion or anything and no special animated cutscene.
The game will simply give you hints (like this one above) for a few species you haven't found, what they are called and where they might be found on the map. But only a couple of hints like this, not for all of them.
And then...
...you are finally left with an encouraging message from the game, pronounced in Linda's annoyed voice to you, the player!
And that's all for today. Next time, we'll finally make the last push as we try to get to 120 in this time trial mode! There's still a number of locations we need to visit, so it's going to be a bit more of a whirlwind/hectic tour of the planet. Also, now that we're done with the whales, the pandas will finally grace us with their presence!
So I will see you next time for the truly final final part of this LP!