Part 2: The Word for Today Is: Tedious

Chapter 2: The Word for Today Is: Tedious



On the way back through the Thieves' Woods, I realized there was another blue chest. If there is a blue chest on a screen (and there isn't always, and no there's no way to tell until you see it), there's only ever one.

Five fights and one level later, we get the chest.



It's a weapon for Lucia! Why not? It's still not making her useful in battle, mind you. Mainly she goes from hitting for 1 damage to 7. Meanwhile, Jian is still hitting for about 14 per hit, and he gets three.

Actually, having gained four levels and a new weapon, you'd think Lucia would be starting to pull her weight.



Also, enemies still seem to be doing the same amount of damage.

It's hard to tell at first, but enemies scale with your level. That's why you don't want to level. You'd think this was in place to prevent grinding, but all it does is change it from grinding for items instead of EXP.

It'll be brought up, so I'll mention that another Lunar game, Lunar Silver Star Story Complete to be precise, also had some enemies scale with your level. Namely, only bosses scaled, and they won't scale past a certain level. Neither of which is true here.



Anywho, we just return to the first screen of the woods and go to the left this time.



Oh hey, they put a Althena statue in case seven piss-easy encounters was too taxing for you. And we found the people.







And we go back to Perit.

This sure was an important thing and not blatant padding.


Oh yes! A fearsome monster, currently making Delrich Temple its home.
...Delrich Temple??
That's right... Once a place of worship of the Four Dragons.
...Four Dragons?
It seems there is quite the echo in here.
You don't know much, do you?!
Cool White in the north
Deep Blue for the south
Flame Red in the east
and night Black for the west!
I see.
As the temple is hardly used nowadays, that Sasquatch had taken it for its nest.
And it's the one causing all the recent trouble?
The very same! And it's causing me no lack of sleepless nights! In fact... Well... But no, I could never ask such a thing...
Oh, you can't just say that and then stop! Please, go on. Don't leave us hanging like this!
Ah... maybe... But, no, no, I could never...

Jesus fucking Christ dude get on with it.

Very well then! We shall defeat this monster for you!
But... that is exactly what I was going to... How ever did you know?
It was obviously going to happen. I was just speeding the process up a bit.
Ah, well, very well then. Hagar and Micah should have moved the rocks in the Thieves' Woods by now. The way to Delrich Temple should be open.

Wait how the fuck do you know that?

Then we will head straight over there.
Just a final word of warning... Please, take due care in this matter! Those rocks were places there by the Sasquatch, so he is obviously extremely strong! I want to see you come back alive, understood?
Understood.
Then I send my hopes with you!

Yeap, we're going back again to the Thieves' Woods. Yay. If you talked to those two in the woods before going to Perit, I believe you can actually avoid that second trip and just go straight to Delrich Temple, but that doesn't prevent it from being bad game design.



I just noticed this, but the game keeps referring to the Sasquatch as singular, but we saw multiple Sasquatches take the package.



Quality work, Ubisoft.



Anyway, now onto a new Thieves' Woods screen.



Of course there's a blue chest here.



Believe it or not, straight up money is going to be one of the most welcome treasure we'll get from a chest.

At the end, everyone reached level 7. Lucia got Tender Rain, which cures all allies for 30 MP, and Grand Shell, which increases defense for all allies for 24 MP. Her max MP is 35.



The blue chest has a new piece of headgear for Jian. It's actually an improvement, and a substantial improvement, so finally getting one of these blue chests has paid off!



Now we are at the what I suppose is the first real dungeon of the game. Although I suppose the Thieves' Woods does count, but this area is a bit of step up, at least.




Yeah, but... what about them?
I'm not sure... Just something about them suggests some kind of puzzle to me.

It's almost as though there might be puzzle where you have to find out what order to press the switches in and each switch correlated to one of the Four Dragons which is a very original puzzle and has never been used in a Lunar game or any RPG before.



Speaking of a step up, sometimes the red spider here can't always be killed in one round by Jian. Lucia actually killed it here. Oh my gosh.



Also the bats here can blind you. I was going to complain, but Lucia does have a status restoring spell and it's "only" 8 MP. Blind goes away at the end of combat anyway. But the gameplay is evolving, at least. Right?

Yeah I still auto-battled past every fight.



Enemies parties are getting a lot larger, though. Considering that I have no way of killing more than one enemy a round, it gets tedious. I know, shocking.



One bone the game throws you is that Jian starts with something called the Counter Prototype. When he assumes this position when an enemy goes to attack him, they miss and he counters.



It's rare, but at least it means one less round.



Oh there was a blue chest in the first populated room of the temple. And I got... another bandana? Is it for Lucia?



Nope! Two blue chests in a row contain nearly identical treasure, this bandana just has slightly higher defense and no luck bonus. The hell? I go for the defense because I like big numbers.



Past that chest, there are no more blue chests in Derlich temple, so I can keep Virtue Mode off. But now we have a puzzle.



After this conspicuously empty room.



Anyway, there are four doors with a thing above them. Each of them has a statue inside.



Indeed.

Apparently you have to examine the statues at the beginning to get a hint, but I didn't do it. I mean, it's four buttons in a sequence, it's not that hard to guess, and there's no real punishment if you guess wrong.



It's actually really not hard to guess. These two doors are directly left of the door with the black orb above it. After pressing black and white, I found that red is where you start. And then directly right to white, and then black. From the black statue you go down to find the blue one. You just go left to right and down. Not a brain teaser.



In one of the side rooms, there's a statue of Althena and an accessory, which Lucia gets.



Right below it is the statue we need.



"Hugging" pillow, hm? Is that all-



What.

Oh yes, there are monsters that can steal from you. I don't think they can steal anything other than sundries and items, but I could be wrong. And you don't get it back at the end of the battle. Again, this "modern" Lunar game somehow includes way more dated gameplay mechanics than the originals had.



But anyway, we're onto the second part of the dungeon.



There are four paths that branch out from the center that lead to four different rooms.





And each one leads to a fight with a Sasquatch and his buddies.



Unlike the other enemies we've seen so far, these guys are actually kind of dangerous. Not that I had to go off of auto, but I definitely had to heal afterwards.



Hey, the script remembered that there are plural Sasquatch how nice.



In any case, this seems as good a time as any to start using these cards. So how do you use cards? Well, some cards are used in battle, and others can be used on the field. The one pictured is a field card. Each card has a number of points, and it goes down by 100 when you use the card. Once it's zero, you lose the card. You can only carry one of each type of card at a time. Still, 13 uses of a MP regan card is damn nice. This actually goes a long way in making Lucia useful. I have to heal after each Sasquatch fight, and it's more economical to use her spells rather than my items. The Gloomwing card's MP regen is pretty fast, it brings her up to max rather quickly. Also it lasts a decently long time, so it can restore her MP more than once, depending on how fast you use up her MP.



As for using cards in battle, it's pretty much just like using an item. We have a number of cards to be used in battle, one that increases luck, maxes out accuracy, or decreases enemy luck.



The poison card might be the best of the lot, though. It hits all enemies, and near as I can tell, next to nothing in the game resists poison. That includes bosses.



The damage isn't spectacular, but any bit helps.



And the Sasquatches can drop a card. This card, however, is only for show and does nothing. Yay.



One of the Sasquatch battles has it surrounded by two of its buddies, one of whom drops a Yeti card. The Yeti card prevents items from being stolen, which is definitely useful.

In any case, all four of them drop soon enough.


Yes! I feel a lot better now, Jian! But... where is the package?
They must have hidden it around her somewhere! Come on, let's get searching!

Where could it be indeed? I wonder if it's in the one room that served no purpose but was very conspicuous about it.



Whaddya know.


Now we won't get fired!
Thank Goddess Althena for that.
You can thank her from me, too. Now, we have a delivery to finish!
That's right. Let's go!

And we're done! I kind of forgot that Lucia had the Escape spell, but any area you cleared out on Virtue Mode stays cleared out until you exit the dungeon, so the only room I had to backtrack through was empty anyway.





The game isn't even pretending we have an actual quest. "There's a new area. Go to it."



Oh yes, we'll be getting more of fantasy racism so look forward to that.



Sweet.



Now that we've got the package, we can start to do Gad's Express jobs.



You know how in some RPGs they have a quest guild or whatever and you can take on all sorts of varied jobs?

Yeah, not here. It's all item collecting.



And they want a lot of items. Even if you remember which monster drops what, trying to fill a list like this can take a long time.



However there isn't a set job list; the available jobs shuffle every time you search the jobs. Also jobs will repeat. This means that at least if you take on a job you really don't wanna do canceling it doesn't mean you permanently lose out. You do have to pay a fee if you cancel, though.



Which is nice, because you can only take one job at at time.



Some of the jobs are fairly easy, and any resources you have enough of are highlighted in blue. Since I've already got what I need and the recipient is in town, let's go.



Slight problem; the game gives you a name, but not where they are in town. You see, each NPC has a unique name, but not a unique sprite or portrait. Sometimes you can find them if they own a house, since their house will be listed as "so and so's house" but if it's a shop keeper or someone else then good luck.


I can see it. I can understand it, I can. Oh yes, Jian. I can.

Uh, okay.



Anyway, found the client. So we give her what she wants, and return to Gad's for the money.



There we go. And that's how you make money through Gad's.



Oh, and sometimes the recipient is in another town. Still, the "To Gad's Express" jobs are very easy, you just run to another Gad's with a package that the game gives you. That does mean you have to run through the Thieves' Woods again. Yay.

Still, you might be wondering: okay, so the items you get when you battle on Combat Mode are for delivery. But... honestly, this whole rigmarole is such a boring pain in the butt. Many jobs require so many items that's not feasible to do them unless you wanna battle for a long ass time, the ones that don't require as many items don't pay very much. You have to go through the Thieves' Woods every time you want to go to another town (and many of the jobs require this), and you can't load up on a few jobs at a time so your stone can only kill one bird at a time. So... why not just sell the items you win from battles and forget Gad's?



The sundries you pick up are worth next to nothing when you sell them. You'll go broke pretty quick if you just sell loot instead of using it for deliveries, so don't bother.

So yeah, the boring ass item collection is pretty much the only way to make money in this game. And money is kind of important, since levels don't give you an advantage.

Be very thankful that this is an SSLP, and I'm going to be glossing over a lot of this Gad's shit.



In any case, I ran a few jobs, and with the money I got I bought Jian some Leather Gloves and this Adventure Jacket. Lucia gets nothing.

After taking a package to Port Searis, I'm pretty ready to continue on with the game. Can't wait.