Part 41: Odds and End #5: The Lionhead

Odd and End #5: The Lionhead

If you recall, a dude in a bar mentioned some treasure caches. He got his locations mixed up a bit, but he was correct in that there is one in the Marius Zone. It's pretty easy to find; it's just directly south from where the Destiny was forcibly parked. Alternatively, it's directly east of Zaback.



Really, ya can't miss it.



The first five levels of this place are just your standard cave set up. Except for an Angel Ring on the third floor, the treasure isn't particularly noteworthy. (I mean, it's Dover Nuts and a Starlight, which is always worth picking up, but that shit's everywhere.)



Actually, it looks a bit like the Cave of Trial.



Which would explain why the enemies are reskins of the Cave of Trial bosses.



It has a lot of the same attacks, such as a stoning attack. Lovely. Actually, I think perhaps its attack pattern is exactly the same as its predecessor, the Fleshsucker.



It only has a little over 2000 HP, and Hiro's Poe Sword does really good damage against it, but it still takes a few rounds. However, these are not one-off fights like the Cave of Trial, they are just normal random encounters.



Also your reward is far, far shittier. Wow. Not worth it.



And yes, the other miniboss of the Cave of Trial shows up too. Unlike there, the Fiendish Eye here is actually the tougher of the two. How so?





Yikes.



I'll be honest; I didn't bother fighting this guy at all. Neither enemy gives you shit for fighting it, so you're better off running from every fight you can. The game was weirdly kind to me, because almost every attempt to run succeeded. Still, it'd be good to save somewhat frequently. If you're not using savestates, save some MExp for this place.

So the first few floors make this dungeon seem like it's not worth going to. But, once you clear the first five levels, you'll reach an interesting looking room.



This room. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure how it works, and if there's a better way to do than how I did it. It's a bit of a pain, but random encounters are disabled here because the game makers don't actually hate you. (Just mildly dislike you.) I'll try to give a detailed, logical account, but I can't promise much. Or, if you want the short version: just keep going until you get all the treasure I list here.



It's a bunch of walkways on a spike pit. If we enter this room here...



And press the button here...





It rotates the walkway. Okay. And what's in the next room?





Treasure! I already have a Shiro Tail, but agility can be a really nice thing to have.

Press the switches here, and the new pathway leads-



Nowhere? And you can't go and repress the button. What do I do? Warp out?



Nope! If you walk to the end it just... teleports you. Uh, okay. I have no idea how you'd reasonably guess that would happen until you just started running around in desperation.

Well, where does this lead us?



Oh!



It's the lion's head of Lionhead! That's an awesome thing to put in, especially for an optional dungeon.

At the top of the lion's head, there's a treasure room. What could be inside?



Now the Snake Ring in the first game was shit; you used it to increase the encounter rate. Why bother? In this game...



Uh, yeah. Worth it.

So we go back and warp across the pit. Since we left the room, the game will let us press the switch again.



And we can go here.

There's no treasure in there, so we just press the button inside.



And what's our next piece of treasure?



The Lucky Bandanna is, as you guessed, for Ronfar. It's actually worse than the Studly Bandanna he's wearing, but it increases his luck by 20. Eh. No.

You will want to remember this chest and where it is, though. Just sayin'...

Anyway, press the button, warp across the pit again, and-



It'll actually lead you out. Huh. Well, go back, warp across, and press the button again.





Nice.

After you press the button, where does it lead us?





Wait, this just lead us back!

Well, just keep warping and pressin' buttons and shit and eventually you'll reach the last piece of treasure. (Yeah, so much for detailed and logical, eh?)



Finally.



That's it? That doesn't seem like it was worth it-



Nah, I'm totally lying; it's awesome. I put it on Jean to make her Blue Dragon Vigor even more OP. 10 attacks baby.

And that's it for the Lionhead dungeon. Just warp out and there you go.

Frankly, the Snake Ring makes the entire dungeon worth it; MP conversation is always a major concern in these games. It does seem like the creators intended you to do this dungeon later, but with a bit of luck it's very doable now. You definitely want to do it before a certain point.







Oh, and for the lack of any better place to put this, I'm gonna put in a quick little demo. You see, I had a bunch of MExp, and I decided to use it to show off Hiro's Wind spells and Ronfar's Dice, two skillsets I otherwise put no MExp into. First off, Hiro.



At level 8, Hiro will get his first new wind magic. This is the upgraded version, Tempest. Its area of effect is based around Hiro, so like most skills with that effect, its usefulness is iffy. At least it's cheaper than Sybillium Sword.



At 13 he gets Rushing Breeze and- man, all of these have lame animations. Yeah, this one at least is AoE attack based on the enemy's location. Again, at least it's fairly cheap, even though it did crap for damage.



Finally, at level 16, Hiro gets Cyclone. As I mentioned, it's pretty much the same spell that Borgan used on us, although since this is a lower leveled version it's less spiffy looking. Again, it's dirt cheap at 16 MP (even at it's highest level, the spell is only 24 MP) but still not terribly worth spending the MExp on it when said MExp could have been used getting a better party heal spell.



Oh, and Boomerang becomes Multi-Boomerang. Also it costs more than Poe Sword, which makes it literally useless.

All right, onto Ronfar's Dice skills.





At 8 we get Risk Roulette, and at 18, it becomes Sword Roulette. It chooses a monster or party member from random and does damage to them. Yeap, just damage, it doesn't kill them like the Roulette spell in Final Fantasy does. It does a decent amount of damage, but why the hell would you use it instead of, say, just attacking the enemy or using Light Litany? Useless.



At 13 we get Anger Flame. It most closely resembles the Anger Dice spell Ronfar gets in the remake, in that it does a random amount of damage to one enemy. Honestly, I haven't messed around with it enough to see the range of the damage, but from what I saw it's pretty average. Still, this approaches useful, even though I still have no idea why you wouldn't use Light Litany instead.



At 16, you get Hades Wager. This has a random chance of reviving your entire party. I didn't have dead characters at the time, so it didn't actually do anything. (Barely had an animation) Still, you can see how this can useful. Almost makes the skillset worth it.

Almost.

So, yeah, I reloaded and none of these are going to be staying. I hope you can see now there's a reason why I never spend MExp on these skillsets.

And with that, we're finally done in the Marius Zone. Next up, the Minea Sea!