Part 19: Kriegspire and Beyond
Update 019: Kriegspire and Beyond![](1-Tag.jpg)
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So an interesting thing about Castle Kriegspire is that it has multiple doorways. Only one actual entrance, but the doors around the sides and in the turrets...
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Are actually homes for people! You know, people who don't mind living in a volcano surrounded by minotaurs and with monsters in the basement. Normal, sane people.
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Most of them are just normal chatter NPC's, but one is a semi-hidden master trainer, behind the double doors on the roof.
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He represents the only real power boost that bows get, since no skill level gives them a straight damage+, and they don't benefit from Heroism, this effectively doubles their damage and is necessary to make them in any way useful. Mind, unless you're doing a full Knight or hybrid caster party, where you have either no mages or very limited SP, you'll probably be relying more on spells than bows for ranged combat in any case. The only one really making notable use of theirs is Bobelix, because Cleric spells almost purely do magic damage(even fucking Flying Fist does magic damage rather than physical), which almost every monster in the game is resistant to.
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Time to get this sorted, though, memory crystal three out of four.
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Kriegspire is mostly populated by three enemy types, the first of which is minotaurs. We've met them before. Normal minotaurs go down in a couple of swipes, Mages take some beating but don't output enough damage to hurt us and Minotaur Kings can still do enough damage to give the healers some work, but unlike when we first met them, a single one isn't a boss battle any longer.
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The dungeon itself is a network of narrow corridors with mostly small rooms and a few larger ones. Despite the description sounding like Castle Alamos, however, it takes nowhere near as long to handle, the battles are generally more compact, the layout is simpler to parse(being almost purely on one level) and you don't need to chase down multiple unmarked clues to get to the Memory Crystal.
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It's also normal that rooms have "windows" into neighbouring rooms to help you orient yourself and have an idea of where you are in the overall geography of the building.
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It's sort of a midway point between the People Place dungeons and Abstract Cube dungeons, in that while it lacks anything... people-ish, like beds and kitchens, it has enough little flourishes like gratings and arches that it feels like some parts were designed because people thought them aesthetically pleasing. Also these particular gratings are a trap, there are two minotaur kings behind each, and as you pass by, they get enough view on the party to lash out through the bars and hit you. Very rude.
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The Jeweled Egg for the guy in Kriegspire is also just casually lying around in a chest accessible without any excessive bullshit, riddles or keyfinding. Kriegspire really only has one notably rude thing, but also a bypass for it that is, for once, designer-intended.
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I still can't get over how, despite all these dead ends, Kriegspire remains more easily navigable than Castle Alamos.
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The one dick move about Kriegspire is that we need to retract these "bars" so we can pass through, but the button for it is extremely well hidden. I only found it because of special feature about the dungeon that I greatly appreciate, later.
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These four round rooms are where that dickhead well in Kriegspire village would teleport you if you happened to take a sip from it. What happens when you walk into them?
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It spawns a ring of Agars' Pets(of various difficulties), which are easily dispatched, or it spawns minotaurs, or a mix of minotaurs and pets, which are a bit harder to deal with since you often get a nice helping of minotaur kings in those.
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Now, I turned this corner and I was like "ooooooh shit, dragons!" because dragons are, alongside Titans, one of the monster types that can still hit the party decently hard and take a hell of a lot of pounding before going down. But then I accidentally brought the cursor over one of them and...
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The only real danger are the limited supply of red(Energy) drakes, since they hit us with Energy damage that we can't resist and thus eat the full brunt of every time. The elemental drakes, meanwhile, have a real hard time hurting a party that defaults to reducing all their damage by 50% most of the time, and even Richmond can two-hit enemies with his daggers.
It's another one of those odd rooms, though.
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The chest contains some nice loot, in particular an MP regen belt, and then the little corridor next to it...
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Just loops back and overlooks the room itself. I'm not really sure why it exists except to confuse the player.
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In any case, the real excitement is in the northern half of the castle, in a sense.
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This guy actually gives you a full heal for ten grand! It's a bit of a ripoff since even a non-Baa temple would do that for a mere 500 to 1000 gold assuming we didn't have any severe conditions that needed curing. Still, it's nice to know that Castle Kriegspire cares about customer service.
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So yeah, odd thing about this. There's a chasm in front of the drakes that you need to cross, and a bridge, but you literally can't cross the bridge since it's blocked at this end and, as far as I know, the block can't be lowered, so in any case you need to Jump past.
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Once again, the primary target is red drakes because of their energy bullshit. This battle has a twist, though.
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A dense swarm of Agars' Pets swarm out of the chasm and chase after you as soon as you cross it, the little fuckers. With this one I almost felt out of my depth, everyone was hovering at around 50% health all the way through as I pounded away.
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The last of the drakes has an appropriately dramatic end, dropping flaming into the chasm. Mind, when going down to find it, I also learned the chasm has a weird trait, which is that there's a teleport trigger at the edge that warps you to the bottom, rather than just a normal fall, which is... odd. The game has never been shy about letting you drop to your death at any previous point.
Now for that sweet, sweet drake hoard! Let's see what they've got!
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It's all trash, aaaaall trash, like low-level, starter-grade trash.
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So, you'll probably end up dropping the 50k on this one, but also at this point you should be able to afford it. What does it do?
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It teleports you across the map and plops you down right in front of the button that opens those bars from earlier.
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Still, it works and we're on our way through Kriegspire in record time with, really, only two rooms left to poke at.
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One of the prisoner cages holds an easily-missed note since like 90% of the cages you find after the first cave in the game contain nothing.
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And it only just, you know, contains a shitload of lore about the devils having kidnapped the king.
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Just around the corner is the "secret" boss for the dungeon, Lurch. Unlike Q he's actually behind a marked door, rather than a secret door, and he has a "mere" 2000 HP rather than Q's 16000. Unlike Q he also doesn't spam instakill spells and in general he gets wiped out in moments, though part of that is be discovering a bug with Richmond. Sometimes, in turn-based mode, the game lets him have like ten attacks in a row for no clear reason. Maybe there's some aggressive RNG involved with recovery times between swings, and as the guy with the fastest weapon he just lucks out more often, or it's something to do with spamming the attack button during easy fights.
Either way it's wildly effective when it happens.
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Lurch becomes ground beef.
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This room is a bit odd because it has no stairs or other real entrance, you just gotta hop through one of these "windows" to get access, and then we've got it!
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We've also got that Jeweled Egg to hand off.
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...
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Despite all the hype, outdoors Sweet Water isn't really that bad. It's mostly a danger if you're on foot, and if you go to Sweet Water before you can Fly everywhere, you're making poor decisions in any case.
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Also all wells and fountains here just poison you.
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It's also super desolate.
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The obelisk isn't hard to find, but while we're here I decide to also finish up Twilen's quest, since his last statuette location is here, and the route there takes me through a little village...
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You see that meteor shower, though? That's not mine. The mid-tier of winged devils can cast Meteor Shower, which would be very rude against a non-flying party. I cannot imagine playing this game without an elemental caster.
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As far as I know Twilen isn't guaranteed to drop artifacts for you, just very likely to. Hercules is, sadly, outclassed by dual-wielding, but Apollo is absolutely an upgrade for Deadeye.
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obelisks posted:
I t o t e c t h o t h e s a i p
n h r h _ a h e r h e a t v d i
_ e t e c p e _ _ e r s o e d e
t _ h a a t _ l t _ _ e n _ l c
h d _ s c a w e h S f d e w e e
e r b t h i e a e u u , _ o ' d
_ a y , e n i s _ n n _ a n s .
l g _ _ _ _ a t S _ c l n ; _ _
a o f l o ' h . h b t i d _ p _
n n a i f n t _ i e i f _ t u _
d _ r e _ e _ H p f o t y h z _
_ t _ s t a o i _ o n _ o i z _
o o n _ h t f d o r s t u s l _
f _ o t e h _ _ f e _ h _ _ e _
_ n r h _ _ t f _ _ c e h r _ _
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So the Obelisk stash always has certain pre-defined drops, and for a few reasons it's important to go for it late-ish. Firstly: You can only ever have, I think, 12 artifact spawns in the game. These do not count as spawned until you discover them. Secondly, the artifacts in here do not count as spawned until you grab them, so they can actually be doubled if you find them elsewhere first.
It's also the only source of Divine Intervention and Dark Containment, an "oh fuck" spell and a "never cast this, ever"-spell.
The artifacts, though? Oh baby they're fucking good.
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They're "of X"-artifacts for every school of magic. Plus, remember how Richmond already has an "of Light Magic" ring? They stack. Not multiplicatively, it appears, sadly, but still, betwen those two, his Light magic skill is doubled in effect. It is muy bueno.
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So, fun fact: If you pick the wrong place to re-enter Hermit's Isle, you're greeted by like two dozen Titans who want you to consider the therapeutical advantages of getting curbstomped.
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The foggy weather doesn't help navigation either.
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The great secret of what's potentially(but quite likely, since it's the most remote) the third-last storyline dungeon you'll ever encounter, is that half the enemies inside are what you've been killing since what was likely your third dungeon at all.
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Our goal is to reach the (almost) bottom of this shaft. Now, we could just hop the edge and drop down using Feather Fall, but what's the fun of that? We finally get to take some damn revenge.
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Nothing in here is a challenge. There are some fire elementals, but we scythe right through those as well.
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The altars in this room are the "altars of pain," they hurt whoever touches them, predictably, but also each unlock a later altar that gives a single character a permanent +10 to a single resistance type. Every little bit helps.
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We've come a long way since Snergle's Mines where they were mini-bosses each time we met one. Now even Richmond can just spin-kick them into non-existence with minimal effort. I don't think I cast a single offensive spell in this dungeon, the party just goes full Cuisinart on everything inside.
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Occasionally the path loops back through the main chamber. Once again, could just hop over the edge and land on one of the ledges down there, but that would mean leaving something in the temple alive, and we can't have that.
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After looping all around the temple complex at least twice, we finally come to this hallway. You can technically just run down it, but if you do, then enemies hiding in the rooms off to the side come out and attack you, so the smart move is to walk in and murder them first. That'll teach them to set up so incompetent an ambush.
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The Memory Module is just faintly visible on the far ledge, and, once again, you could cast Jump twice to get over there, or you can pull the lever on this ledge, which extends a bridge to the ledge on the right, which has a lever which extends a bridge to the ledge we want to get to. As per standard for this easy-ass dungeon, I pick the bloody option.
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Devil Warriors are without a doubt the most "challenging" thing in this final temple of Baa.
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Deadeye's makeup gets slightly smeared during the following struggle as he grabs one of its wrists and makes it punch itself until it dies, that's about the only difficulty the party faces.
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So, personally I hate this runaround, despite liking most things about MM6. First we gotta collect the votes, that's fine. A single runaround in the form of needing to expose Slicker, also fine. Runaround two, collecting the memory modules... acceptable. But then a THIRD runaround to go get a fucking control cube? It's a bit much.
Doesn't help that I remember this next dungeon, the second-last storyline dungeon, as being hell.
Status
Promotions: 12 of 12
Countil Votes: 6 of 6
Traitors Exposed: 1 of 1
Memory Modules Returned: 4 of 4
Magical Polyhedrons Recovered: 0 of 1
No voting this time, since there are no more places to go except onwards.