Lunar: Dragon Song Part #5 - Gronk and the Deuces

Part 5: Gronk and the Deuces

Chapter 5: Gronk and the Deuces

It just occured to me that there's no reason for this screen to be here. You came here straight from the world map, and there's nowhere else to go but inside. Nitpicking, I know, but still dumb.

And it turns out Zio came by!

After the first room, we've got a long hall with a couple of rooms off to the side.

That girl wasn't lying when she said they held classes there.

And yes, the great shrine to Althena does not look a damn thing like this in any version of Lunar 1, but it looks drastically different in the original versus the remake, so I guess I can't get too hung up on it.

However, the Vile Tribe being able to petrify everyone here actually is in canon, as the villain Xenobia did this several times in Lunar 1.

But it goes to show, you should never underestimate an academic!

I'm sorry, I'm just not getting over "Gronk."

By the way, each petrified person provokes a different reaction. A lot of it isn't that interesting, but hey the game put some effort into something.

And while everyone's petrified our heroes can steal from a church.

The Aura is an accessory, and it's a straight upgrade to the Magic Ring.

Brilliant deduction. Also, Statue of Althena! Did they just stick a statue in every fucking dungeon?

Honestly, we kind of need it. I need the whole team to take out one enemy at a time, even with Gab's new claws, and even then sometimes they can't quite take them down in a turn, especially since some of these enemies really likes blind.

Eventually, I found that using Gale Cut really helped cut down on the tedium. That doesn't kill all the enemies, but they'll go down in another hit. That's as good as we can do for making a battle more tolerable. Obviously, I can't do this for every battle, unless I'm running back to the statue all the damn time, which I will be.

There's no blue chests, and thank goodness for that. I'm generally going to try to avoid fighting as much as possible. The Ice Mongrel card allows me to quickly escape from battles without a chance of failure, and it gets pulled out a few times.

She's so cheerful about being illiterate.

Amethyst protects against petrify. None of the regular monsters petrify, but it's still a useful thing to have.

Oh hey these guys break your equipment too. Time to reload.

That's not any better, Lunar Dragon Song.

I actually switched on Virtue Mode for a brief bit, mainly because I heard that you can't get a card from an enemy unless you've fought it in Virtue, and there's a lot of new enemies here. I'm not sure if that's true, though. Oh, and if you're on Virtue, the monsters' death animation is different; they turn into a glowing ball and float away. Neat. Gab gained a single level, but that's it.

Branching off from the main area, there are two towers, each of which are two stories and have two little altars here. But this is empty. Odd.

Hey, what's this? Looks like something fits here.

A jewel or something, perhaps?

Oh and a statue of Althena needs some jewels hm. You can't use this statue to heal, by the way.

On the right of the cathedral, there is the exact same tower, except it has a monster in it.

Boss fight! After spending the first round applying my poison card and attack buffing card we're good to go.

Considering that our attack output has been crippled, the poison card is really useful. That's about the damage Gabryel does. Actually starting to run out of uses for it, and there's three more "Deuces" and a fight with Gronk, because this game needs yet another way to pad out content.

The damage the monster does isn't that bad, although it does occasionally hit twice.

But if it lands a critical hit, we're a little fucked. I hadn't bought any angel tears either, and by this point the game has not given me any.

It doesn't help that I haven't bought any better armor for Gabryel. Oops.

I got a little complacent, and I did pay for it.

But I won! And yes, this game does restore KO'd members back to one HP after the fight, so I'm not totally fucked.

I mentioned earlier that when I tried to play this game for the first time, equipment breakage broke me. I got to this dungeon at way too high a level because I didn't know the game had level scaling, and in addition Jian had a shitty, broken weapon. I just plain couldn't beat one of these bosses, much less four. I would have to do jobs for quite some time to get the money for a replacement weapons, and then I'd have to get some better armor because everything was just massacring me. And going to grind for more items, or even just getting through the Thieves' Woods, was going to be a chore and a half because the broken weapon and curse means that killing starting level enemies would take forever... yeah, I instead chose to quit.

This time around I did not chose to quit. You're not breaking me, Lunar Dragon Song.

Jian can telepathically tell it fits in that statue in the main hall. Good deal.

Fortunately with the Hellbird and a few Healing Gums, I got the party back up to full pretty quickly.

I'll take your word for it. (This monster makes no noise whatsoever.)

Went a lot better, at least. Also, the Deuce card does nothing.

After heading back to the statue to heal, time to go to the other side and repeat the process. This is as fun as it sounds, by the way.

Oh, I used Lucia's Grand Shell to hopefully improve Gabryel and Lucia's chances of survival.

Doesn't really help. Oh well. Probably should have reduced its luck instead.

When I ran back to the statue, I ended up using this card, and I can't believe I didn't point this little gem out earlier. This card? Makes enemies slower, that's it. I have no idea how it became "symbols." Enemies are actually already really slow, but so are you. I didn't have the HP to run, and healing supplies are low.

Anyway, I squeezed out the last Deuce with no incident.

And we insert all the orbs. Which, incidentally, are the four colors of the Four Dragons. Which we've still not seen any of. Not even a talking flying cat. You know... these games really are missing something without a mouthy airborne feline being an inexplicable asshole.

And there we go!

However, I chose not to immediately go and finish the dungeon.

Instead I puttered around doing jobs for... about an hour I'd say. I- I really don't think I'm fully explained how big of a pain this shit is. For example, I'm in Port Searis in this screenshot. It's not uncommon that out of the available jobs, only one of them actually has the recipient in Port Searis. It's not uncommon that none of them are in Port Searis. Half of the towns (and the list will draw from all the towns we've been to) require passing through the Thieves' Woods. And then you have to find one that you can fill, or that you can complete with store bought items. Or you grind for the items you need.

All right, so this is how a delivery might go. Let's say I get a job in Port Searis for delivery in Perit. If I have to buy some items for it, I sail to Port Olbeage, buy it there, sail back (and you have to walk through the pier every time), walk through the forest, find the recipient (which may require some trial and error) and then go to any Gad's for the reward. And this may net me less than 1000 silver, depending on the job. Point is, either I have to constantly refresh the job list for deliveries that are in town (which may require a lot of re-rolls until it shows up, and not pay much) or run around to fill a bigger delivery, and the payout from the latter might buy one armor upgrade, depending on the piece of armor.

From the money total above, you can tell I was at it for a while. Honestly, I went a little overboard, but oh well. I got that pricey weapon upgrade for Jian pictured above, the best weapon I could buy for Gab, new suit of armor for Jian, and an upgrade for Gab. I didn't have enough for the best armor for her, but it was an over 30 point upgrade, so still a major improvement. Didn't get anything for Lucia because her stuff is stupidly expensive. The best armor I could buy for Lucia is 12,000! Second best is 5,000. I'll skip it.

All right Gronk (snerk) your beat-down is overdue!

So Jian wasn't lying; Gronk (mfph) is quite different than the four Deuces.

Should have actually equipped the Amethyst. Gronk only did this once, though, and Lucia cured it the next round. Weirdly, Jian's sprite still moved and I could input commands for him, but he couldn't do anything.

His attack magic packs a bit of a punch. Magic defense runs off of intelligence, so Jian, being stupid as hell, is the worst hit. Gabryel also doesn't do well with it.

And it gets a full party spell. Yay.

Most annoyingly, though, Gronk can heal himself. Once everyone's all buffed up, the party will offset the healing, but that's still annoying. And if I hadn't upgraded my equipment, I possibly couldn't keep up with this. Fun!

One of the new monsters in this dungeon is the Enigma, and their card can help take the punch out of its spells. Hey, somewhat decent design. Once you do reduce its intelligence, this fight is super easy, since the monster only uses magic. It can't really do more than 30 damage to you after debuffing. Even its party-wide attack isn't much. Slapped the HP regen card on, and then set it on auto.