Part 14: HAHAHAHAHA Fuck you Reuben
Before we move on to the wind part of the game, we've got one more battlefield to clean up since the volcano erupting cleared a shortcut back to Aquaria.
This particular battlefield is very annoying because every fight is set to start with the enemies getting a jump on us.
This, combined with the only enemies being Stheno and Iflytes means we're going to be seeing this screen quite a bit. Often before we even get to do anything, in fact.
Our reward is quite meager, but it does something very cool.
See it? No? Look a little closer at our level. We should only be L27, right? What we've done is the Double-Level glitch. See, Mystic Quest's leveling system is a little weird, in that it doesn't reset your "To next level" counter until the fight is over. Normally, that's not a problem, but at a battlefield we can get some extra experience. Set it low enough that the fight will level you up, then when you get your extra experience the game will see "Oh look, they only need 800 experience, level them up," thus getting us two levels from a single fight.
We also get two levels worth of stats from the glitch, but it does have a price. Mystic Quest also uses a "tier" leveling system where it says 500,00 exp is level 25, 525,000 is level 26, etc. So after we get our two levels, the game looks at our level and says "Okay, level 29 needs 700,000 experience, so we need 60,000 exp (which is two levels worth) to level up." Mildly useful in the short run, but it all evens out in the end. 13/f/cali has informed me we can't use it to bypass the level cap unfortunately.
A quick trip back to Fireburg to heal, we'll also notice that Tristam seems to have finished whatever business he had here and moved on. To the Focus Tower!
And of course, what visit to the Focus Tower would be complete without running into CE? Before we run off to the Wind portion, we're going to take those stairs first. Follow them to the end...
...and we're rewarded with our final Black spell, Aero. As you might have guessed, it's the Wind spell, which a lot of enemies are weak to in the Wind area for some reason.
Anyway, we're now in the Wind portion of the game, and we're about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way done. There's four dungeons to go through this time, some more filler, another dungeon, then the endgame, so we're coming up on the home stretch.
Music: Rope Bridge
The rope bridge is not a new dungeon, simply a quick pit stop for PlotTM along the way. It does have some pretty rad music, though.
Zombie out of nowhere, but it's okay, Reuben's got this.
Reuben, predictably, gets his ass handed to him. It's hard to tell from the screenshot, but he's falling off the bridge, so we have to go clean up his mess. Fortunately, our new friend here is weak to wind.
After the battle, we slide down the vine to
Awesome. Let's get the hell out of here and...wait, I hear music.
So that's where he went. Now that we've got Tristam back with us, we can move on.
That...is not so awesome. There's no two ways around it, Tristam is probably the worst party member for when you get them in this section. He's a whole two levels above Reuben, hits for about 300-350 damage (Reuben was doing over 600), and only has Life. He's still the best party member though, because no matter how terrible this upcoming section is, what he does next update completely redeems him and then some.
Anyway, you can climb down the vines, and some of them lead to items (Cure potions and seeds), but that's all there is to see here.
The Alive Forest is the first proper "dungeon" of the wind area. As you might expect given how few levels Tristam has over Reuben, he won't be with us long, and this dungeon is his last hurrah. It's got the same music as the Level Forest from way back when.
The first of only two enemies this update, Mummies are upgraded Zombies. They've picked up Stone Gas and are slightly more damaging with their physical attacks, but that's it.
Likewise, Spectors are upgraded Ghosts. I don't actually remember what they've picked up, but they're weak to shooting attacks (so Tristam can actually kill them), and both they and the Mummies are weak to wind.
This dungeon's gimmick is that there are three trees with these crest markers on top of them, and they've all got goodies inside (nothing special though, Cure potions, heal potions, and refreshers if memory serves). To get in, we're going to have to find solitary trees like this one:
And cut it down, revealing a teleporter underneath like so:
It's really stupid, but it's completely optional. We won't be getting this particular crest until very near the end of the game anyway.
The second tree is off to the right there. Cut a path off to the left, and we find an item box as well as the Libra Crest teleporter:
That's not the only reason we cut over here though.
That chest is a perfectly good reason, too.
The Giant's Axe is a VERY nice upgrade to our Battle Axe. It's the strongest weapon we have as of now, and it hits even harder than Reuben was. Also unlike the Battle Axe, it won't be outclassed by another weapon literally five seconds after getting it, because though we're getting something even better next update, there are a ton of monsters coming up with axe weaknesses.
Once again, the attacking sprite has been redrawn to match our new weapon.
The end goal is to reach here. Art quickly finds that attempting to talk to a tree isn't going to get him very far.
What about Kaeli? Can't she talk to trees?
I...well, that's a oddly specific power that'll come in handy rather quickly. Art's little lightbulb goes off again at this statement.
Well great, we've got to go back to Aquaria to progress with the plot. Take note, because sending you to the other parts of the world is a thing that the Wind part of the game loves to do. Before we head back though, we head off to the right to grab the last of the goodies here.
The last crest marking is under the tree in the corner. After grabbing our goodies, we're done here for now.
Next time: Holy fuck this thing is awesome