Part 11: Something Fishy's Going On!

Last time, Ghaleon acted really... oddly and then told us to take care of his busy work. Now Lann is a good distance away from the Fountain, but like every other location in this area, we can find it easily if we stick to the roads. First, you'll want to head northwest to the Goddess tower.



Like so. From here go north. It's a pretty easy journey, as we're just fighting the same monsters on that we fought on the world map before.



Except for these guys.

Do you remember these guys? They're the aquatic bunny bastards we saw in the sewers. Now, while we have gained a few levels, a slightly less awful teammate, and the ability to kill all of them in one turn, but they're still faster than us and capable of dishing out some nasty damage. And there are five of them. You're going to eat a fair chuck of HP whenever you encounter these guys, and they're nothing you can do about it.

Also, keep in mind that when you first get to Meribia with Ramus, absolutely nothing is stopping you from leaving and exploring the new continent. If the Ambushes (urgh) don't kill you, and they are slow enough to run from without any real danger, these fuckers are a nasty surprise.



Fortunately, this encounter only shows up on the western side of the continent, and if the RNG is kind to you then you'll reach Lann without encountering too many amphibious lagomorphs.

Now, you may wonder why I've emphasized staying on the roads. Well, let's say instead of going northwest from the Goddess Tower I just went straight west.



First off you'll encounter this rather interesting rock formation. If you keep heading west you'll just reach the coast, so let's head north from here.



Son of a bitch.

To emphasize what a dick move that is, I drew up a shitty MS paint map of this area.


_{I forgot Nanza. It's right below the Goddess Tower, more or less}

Almost half of this area is completely empty. If you get lost heading to Lann, you get really, really fucking lost. Stay. On. The. Damn. Roads.


"Unfortunately, these days, the fishing isn't so good. There's a problem..."



But we stayed on the roads, and here we are. So let's find this impostor and put some punk-ass bitch in his place.


"I never saw anything like that around before that Dragonmaster came..."

That actually does sound pretty scary. Well... shit. This perhaps might be a little harder than initially anticipated.


"He said that he was my appointed tormentor, and this was my judgment!"

Although he certainly doesn't actually seem to have an agenda. He's just content to use his beasts and magic to harass the town for shits and giggles.



And the townsfolk are not happy about it.

: There, there, young lady... I'll take care of this! With Nash on your side, you have nothing to fear.
: Yeah... nothing except that maybe he's letting his ego get away from him!

Oh Nash... you make me regret bringing you along...


"It's kind of sad, but at least now my house smells much better..."

But some of the folk have learned to look on the bright side of life. You may have lost your livelihood, but you'll die slightly less smelly than you lived! That's the spirit!


"with worn out shoes to find a monster to slay. These days, they're all over! What's this world coming to?"

Indeed, it is a crying shame! I think we should sail out to this island right now and give this guy what for-



Uh, no, we have to follow the scripted chain of events. Of course.


"I think she's practicing for the next goddess festival!"

This has nothing to do with said chain, but I just wanted to point out that there's another singing girl here.


"Want to hear me sing?"

And everyone seems to have a pretty high opinion of this girl. And guess what?



Her song is the same damn song we hear elsewhere.

: Wow! You are almost as good as Luna! Alex, she's really got talent!

Although for some reason Nall is far nicer to this girl than the one from Meribia.

That's enough faffing about. Let's talk to the mayor and hopefully he'll force that jerk to let us use his boat.


"Well... I suppose if Master Ghaleon has faith in you, I should give you a chance... A while ago, a magician came to live on the isle over there... He claims to be the Dragonmaster, but he continually torments our village! Since he has a powerful kind of magic, we are powerless to stop him... I think he lives in the caves under the island. Please help us!"

Can do! All right, let's get sailin'!



OH COME ON.

Okay, let's go back and talk to the obviously conspicuous girl in the mayor's house.



Whoa! I... mis-timed that screenshot. I would go back and fix it, but... this picture amuses me too much to change it.

Oh, and if you remember, Mel's daughter's name is Jessica. Yeap, same girl.


: to see what I could do to help with the situation here. I'm really good at healing magics... I learned them when I was a deckhand on my father's ship... your names are Alex and Nall… Nice to meet you all! My name's Jessica. I'm a junior priestess! I just had a fight with a jerk in Nanza... I need to blow off some steam! What do you say? Shall we try to get to the bottom of the problems they're having here?

And she's mentioning a jerk in Nanza... say, we met a jerk who lives in Nanza. I wonder who in the world she could be talking about.



Oh, definitely that dude. What a dick.

In any case, there's no reason to refuse her (and we can't continue until she joins the party anyway) so welcome abroad unusually proactive priestess!

: I can't wait to get to the bottom of these weird events! Let’s get going…

Let's take a look at our new party member.



She's a bit higher in level than even Alex at the moment! She's obviously a mage, but she still has some decent attack power, and she has two attacks!



She mainly uses claws as weapons. She can also use canes and even the Short Sword (but not most other swords, and the Short Sword is inferior to her default weapon so I don't know why they bothered). In the remake she exclusively used maces.



Unsurprisingly, her skillset is focused on healing. If you didn't remember, Little Litany heals one party member for a modest amount. Purity Litany heals poison, and Calm Litany heals a small amount of HP for the party. Nothing special, but two of those spells are always nice to have.

Now for those who did not play the remake, keep in mind at this point in that game you still had Luna. Luna's skillset was slightly tweaked in the remake to make her even more healing-focused than she already was. So, yes, in the remake you go through this section with two healers. It's... kind of odd. Although in the original Alex can heal, but he's not focused on healing and doesn't have Calm Litany  yet  so it doesn't feel like there's as much of an overlap.

Oh! And there's one more thing to note about Jessica.



She's awesome.


"I saw a weird stranger that looked like a boss!"
: Where do you come up with all these stupid little rhymes? ...and what's a boss?

Although she is sheltered enough to have never even heard of the horrors of employment.


"No way, ya dumb broad!"
: For a sniveling coward, you talk pretty big! If you don’t want to end up zapped into the frontier, you’ll lend us your boat!

At this point, the screen flashes, implying horrifying acts of violence.



So horrifying, it turns this man into a valley girl.



Yeah, it's a good thing she's on our side.



But at least her methods work, and we're finally on the damn boat.



After a short trip we're- am I the only one who thinks the entrance to that cave looks kind of... vaginal? Just a little bit. Just me? Okay.





Well this looks kind of familiar. I'd get used to this cave tile set; we're going to be seeing it a lot more as the game progresses.



But at least the enemies are new. For the past two dungeons, our MO has just been "set the fucker on fire."



Which works for the ants, but the freaky cyclops are completely unfazed. Now do you see why I bought that shiny new sword?



The other new enemy, the Great Lion, also has really have high magic defense. So Alex isn't going to be doing much in the way of casting, especially since Nash can clear out those ants with his spells as well. Apart from that, Nash really doesn't have much to do in this dungeon. If I had bothered to buy him a bow, he could at least do semi-decent damage by attacking, but I left him with the cane because I really don't care.



Speaking of long range weapons, a lack of is one of the problems Jessica has. While she does have a decent number of moves, she simply doesn't have the defense to tank that many hits. And did I mention the ants attack twice? They attack twice.



To the northwest some help for her pitiful defense does arrive. Yes... she can equip shields. In the remakes, bracelets and other hand protective gear occupies the same slot as shields, and Jessica, like most mages, have to equip bracelets because their puny bodies couldn't possibly lift a shield. But old school Jessica is far more metal to bother with that stereotype. Being able to equip shields does give Jessica slightly higher defense than other mage characters, but still it's not enough to justify putting her in harm's way a lot of time. In some ways Nash is slightly better off in the attack front; he doesn't have to get up close and personal to attack (if you remember to buy a bow), he does get two attacks unlike the remakes, and if he dies, then, eh, whatever.



Oh don't try to pretend like he's useful, game! Thunder Thumper attacks to freeze all enemies, which would be useful if it worked for more than one round. Which it doesn't. So... useless!

And that's pretty much the only new skills learned in this cave. It's actually really short, as there's only one floor that's not terribly big. Although there are two (two!) side rooms to find.



The first is further west from the chest with the shield in it. You can't really miss it, honestly.

By the way, the chest you see on screen is a Wind Essence, which warps you out of dungeons. Not really needed in this one, but obviously handy.



But more importantly, behind door number one is this piece of lovely new equipment.

The second door, however, is a bit more hidden. If we head south, we'll come across a treasure chest:



Which I forgot to screenshot. It has a Mint Essence, which if you remember cures sleeping and confusion. But from this screenshot, can you tell where we're supposed to go next?



If you guessed "straight down" you are correct! This is surprisingly easy to miss, especially if you really aren't paying attention. This is also pretty much the only angle you can see that archway from, so you can spend an embarrassing amount of time wandering around wondering where the hell to go. And I'm not just saying that because it's happened to me. Nope.

But that's the only remotely difficult part about this cave. In the remake, this is actually a swamp instead and has a really irritating gimmick where the treasure chests re-map your d-pad.



I think we found our man.


"What?? You've come here to take me down? Ha, ha, ha, ha! How delightful! I shall enjoy teaching a lesson or two about deadly force..."

And of course he immediately sics some of his monsters on us. Well, this can't be-



Oh right. Shit. Well, fine then, we can take some-



...dinosaurs. I think that kid needs glasses.

If I still had Alex with the Short Sword (and in may other playthroughs, I have done just that) this might be a decently challenging fight. As it stands, though, Alex can cut these guys down without too much difficulty. Jessica might have a turn or two free enough to attack, but these guys can do a bit of damage to you, and they start close enough to you (and there are so many) that your mages aren't protected by sheer virtue of being away from the enemy. If I didn't have Nash, she would be in some trouble of dying, but Nash will take a lot of the hits for her, and furthermore her defense is high enough that if you play conservatively you'll be okay.

Nash, on the other hand, has far less defense so takes a fuck ton of damage, and all he does in return is throw out some piddly damage with his thunder spell. Foolishly, I have Jessica expend a great deal of effort and MP in an attempt to keep him alive.



It didn't work.

And he nearly did survive the fight. That's almost a pity.



But on the upside, because Nash doesn't get a share of the EXP, Alex gets a bit more which pushes him over to level 20, earning him his first upgrade to Flame. So Nash accomplished something useful in the end.


"To tell you the truth, I was never a Dragonmaster, but you must have figured that out already... I promise I'll mend my ways... will you give me a chance?"

...why the hell should we?


"You might as well get it over with and get on with this game... I can wait alot longer than you can, believe me..."

Good point.



And we never hear from him again, so I guess he did turn over a new leaf. Or he was immediately mauled by one of the giant ants on his way out.

Thankfully I don't care, let's just head back.



Oh, whine, whine...



There's actually a different graphic for rowing back. Not terribly different, but I feel obligated to include it.


: I guess this is goodbye for now. I'll see you guys later... So long!

Sadly, she won't be joining up permanently  yet , but at least we done our good deed for the day and peace has returned to this small fishing village!


"I heard that you guys defeated him... so did you find the girl, too? No? There was no girl with him? Hmmmm...."

Well, shit.


"Say were the black monsters I saw with him? ...no? That's weird. I saw 'em with my own eyes!"

I don't know what you think you saw, but it wasn't that, kid.


"I son't know how to thank you properly! What can I do to show my appreciation?"
: I can think of a thing or two... hehe
: Nash! You pervert! Geez... always twisting an innocent situation... you're sick!

All right, we're out of here.

Next time we'll be.... joining the magic guild? That was why we did did this in the first place, right?

BONUS:



There is an item shop in Lann. It sells crap. The only new thing is garlic which, surprise! heals you for fucking nothing. Exciting.

Also!