Part 5: The power of :emo:

As you might have noticed, now that we've saved the Earth Crystal, the earth part of the world has returned to life. This affects everything in the region, so going to the Level Forest and starting a fight would result in the trees being green and vibrant, rather than dead and brown.



Right. First order of business is to get the Elixer to Kaeli.



Jesus woman, I'm going!




It's through the Focus Tower, and to the northeast.



Last thing in this part of the world is another battlefield. This one has enemies from the Bone Dungeon, including the Sand Worms, Minotaur Zombies, and Basilisks.



An interesting little quirk of the battle engine I found was either A) your speed affects your attack power, B) there's really only one "stat" in battle and everything that lowers one of them actually lowers them all, or C) the game's bugging out on me again. That's the axe before a speed drop.



This is after. I dunno, just something interesting I found while I was taking screens.



Cleaning it out nets us a fair amount of gold but nothing special.

Music: Focus Tower



The Focus Tower is the main "hub" of the game. Here, we have access to all four regions.





Bottom floor is a cave-like area. You could go the long way around to reach the next floor, but the developers were kind enough to give you a shortcut off to the left there.



Spoiler: No he won't. He'll be useful in the sense of "Hey, I exist and I'm part of the plot!"


Maybe you'll find her along the way...



Captain Exposition, ladies and gentlemen.



This is the main room of the Focus Tower. Behind each door is a different part of the world.



If you got the Sand Coin (you did remember to get it before leaving the Bone Dungeon, right?), the door will open up.



The Tower also will be the source of almost all the black magic spells. Fire is conveniently gifted to us before heading into the ice part of the game.



The water portion of the game is a bit longer than the Earth one. There's three dungeons instead of two, and quite a few more battlefields, but it's still nothing special.



There's a battlefield along the way, but I usually save it because they've got upgraded monsters and they're a bit of a pain in the ass on your own.



Hey, who's this?


Aquaria is frozen, people are sick, Grandpa is trapped...

Damn, enough of an introduction for you?



Art gives breaking the ice another try.



See, now we're getting somewhere.



Damn it, can you take five seconds and not be all emo?



She moves to leave again, but Art is having none of that shit.





And with that, Art has forced his way into someone else's life. Again.



Phoebe is the game's token mage character. She has 680 HP (L17), a fuckton of magic, resists water, wind, and silence, but her offense and defense are terrible (though she can inflict poison/paralysis). As I mentioned before, they will keep the last party member's resistances until you actually do a hard save and reload. This also applies to stats. Her correct stats are above, while with Tristam's resistances still loaded:



Yeah. A few extra points in attack, quite the dip in magic, and a whole lot more speed. What's more is they actually work. Her normal damage:



And when she has Tristam's stats/resistances:





Phoebe's got quite the magical repertoire. First off, she has the Life, Cure, and Heal spell, which means you don't really need any of those potions unless you REALLY don't want to waste a charge. She also has Fire and Thunder, the first wizard spell we've seen.



First new enemy is the MintMint. A pallet-swapped Brownie, he picks up Stare (confusion) as a new toy, but is otherwise unchanged. Nothing really remarkable or dangerous.



This first battlefield we skipped gives 99 exp. A terrible sum, but exp is exp.



Next are the Giant Toads. These guys are upgraded Poison Toads. They've picked up Body Odor, so now they can paralyze and poison but otherwise, also nothing special.



This one had 200-odd GP as a prize. Nicer than exp, but not by much.



Final new enemy is the scorpion. He can poison and blind you, and his physical attacks do 30-40 damage, but his Rapier attack can knock off 120 or so damage, which is quite painful. He's weak to Fire.





Our two new spells in action.



After cleaning this last one out, we get the Magic Ring.





The Magic ring is the first upgrade to the charm, giving it a couple more points of defense and also granting us resistance to Silence. You can also see that we're very quickly pulling ahead of Phoebe in terms of stats. We've already got more defense, and we're almost over her in Attack, Accuracy, Speed.

Next Time: Aquaria and the Ice Cavern