Part 5: Between a Rock and a Cold Place

5. Between a Rock and a Cold Place



In the tunnel he was digging under here. The dirt is frozen solid, so he can’t get out.

Can’t we melt it?

Not until we get Wakewater from the Spring of Life. But a monster from in the Wintry Cave stole the Libra Crest which warps to Life Temple.



Wait, what was confusing about that?



Libra is not a hard word

Right! To the Wintry Cave!


And we’re off!



This Battlefield will get you 99 EXP so I’m not even going to bother. Maybe I’ll come back when Shrug can get a double level.





The first of three ice themed dungeons, the Wintry Cave is mercifully short and you don’t even have to fight a whole bunch. I imagine you could very easily get two levels worth of EXP here though if you fight everything, so it doesn’t hurt to go out of your way.



Edgehogs can be pretty irritating since they can blind and paralyze you but since Phoebe is packing the Heal spell and 21 white magic charges, persistent status effects like blind aren’t as big a deal.

They’re weak to Fire and Phoebe just one-shot all of them at once with it. Phoebe is awesome, in other words.



The Land Worm is a Sand Worm palette-swap and they’re about as threatening as their lesser forms were in Bone Dungeon. They have a Quake analogue, which can hit fairly hard, but they’re still weak to Quake and axes so you should be able to take them out pretty quickly.



This seems perfectly normal.



Shrug died as he lived—flailing about like an idiot



But won’t you just fall like Shrug did now?

Select the Claw, hold down the A button down, and press the Control Pad. Now it’s yours!



Well, the final weapon tree is available now so this place isn’t a complete waste!



Out of all the weapon trees, the Claw family is physically the weakest. It does give Shrug a slight boost to his magic and has the benefit of causing status effects. Right now, it’s only three points weaker than our Steel Sword but it’ll fall behind really soon.



But Phoebe won’t be going unarmed. She replaces her claw with the crazy strong Bow of Grace. It’s basically doubling her damage output and is even stronger than our bombs. I think it even boosts her speed considerably. Not only that, but it’ll blind enemies presumably because she’s shooting them in the eyes. Unfortunately, she has to work with ammo but it’s not like that’s ever been a big deal.



The Claw works as how Phoebe described it. If you see these step/handhold things, you can climb them. Shrug looks like a dork so it’s business as usual here in Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest.

We can walk under the floor with the icicles so let’s go to the left.



Deeper in the cave, you’ll find these chumps. They’re weak to axes and Thunder, and at level 11 Shrug will one-shot them with the axe. These are probably the least effective and interesting enemies in the dungeon.



You’ve probably figured as much, but 99 is the cap for all ammunition based weapons.



Uuugh, Centaurs. Odds are if you’re fighting these guys, one of your party members is going to get confused because they love using Riddle. Phoebe’s new weapon will hit us for 300 damage, and at his level right now I’m pretty sure that Thunder will just kill Shrug outright. They come in groups like this often and you’ll frequently be seeing two of them at a time.



Shrug doesn’t feel sorry for beating them up even after they throw down their weapons.



After a gauntlet of enemies, Shrug finds himself under the ice. That’s more or less where you’re trying to get to here.







So this dumb giant squid thing snuck out of this cave and stole some magic crest? Mystic Quest is the best.

Squidite is nothing to worry about. It’s also got some friends in the two Sparnas which are, you guessed it, upgraded Rocs.

The Sparnas are packing Iron Nail, which lowers your defense, and Tornado. The latter of these can potentially be pretty threatening because it deals 140 damage. They’re still nothing to worry about because the Bow of Grace is a shooting weapon and was already doing crazy good damage even in spite of their weakness, plus Sparnas are still bogged down by low HP.



Electrapulse is sort of weird. It does 1 damage and lowers your magic stat. ...I guess that’s the game’s way of telling you that spamming Thunder won’t work here but it totally will. Other attacks include Blackness, which might blind you; Choke Up, which hits both characters; Sucker, which drains a negligible amount of HP; and lastly, 6 Pseudopods can hit extremely hard if each of the six hits connects. All the same, this is probably the only real problem attack it has.

It’s also immune to paralysis but not poison meaning the Cat Claw can shine here and whittle the Squidite down slowly but surely.



Here’s Phoebe’s bow in action. I told you she went for the eyes!





All in all, nothing to worry about with Shrug on healing duty.





And that’s it for this place, so let’s get out of here. It's a relatively brief dungeon and it's hard to get lost so hooray, I guess.



After clearing the Wintry Cave, we can access the other Battlefield. But Shrug’s close enough to a level that he can get the double level so what the hell, let’s do that one from earlier.



In the newly opened Battlefield, Shrug meets Desert Hags (not sure why they’re here and not, you know, in the desert/earth area) which are pretty blasé monsters. Their attacks don’t hit for very much. The only really unique thing about them...



They can counter if you hit them with an attack that either hits them directly (so not bombs or magic) or doesn’t kill them in one hit. At least I think that’s the case. I hit them with the Cat Claw and it didn’t trigger a counter. It’s pretty pitiful damage when they do it, but it can be annoying to have the window pop up all the time if you like using the axe or something.

They’re weak to Fire if you’re into overkill.





This Battlefield, for some reason, only has Desert Hags in a variety of formations. It’s worth 600 GP so it might be worth your time after all.





With the Libra Crest in hand, we can use this glowing tile. Stepping inside teleports us to...









It’s hopeless now.

Don’t give up yet. There’s someone inside. Let’s have a look.


I have this feeling that if Phoebe tripped and fell, she would just lay there forever because what’s the point?

And who the hell would be here, in the temple that was impossible to get to without the crest



and even if it wasn’t is totally inaccessible from every other possible direction? Shouldn’t this be a little more mysterious to you, Shrug?



Oh. Figures as much.


I know that. We need Wakewater to melt the ice…

But the Wakewater has dried up! It’s hopeless!



Whoa, dang, no need to yell.

All that’s left of the Wakewater is in this bag. Take it and go back to Aquaria.



He flies away and, for the first time, Shrug doesn’t shrug about it. He’s learning! I bet this’ll help Aquaria out.



“You got it, boss”



Ha ha, oh well, this town’s boned, I guess.

Vil in the thread pointed out that healing this plant means that you can buy Cure Potions from the old man at the inn again. If you're struggling/don't like to use white magic charges on Cure, it could come in handy.

That’s it? I guess this town will stay frozen until the Crystal of Water shines again.


Oh, so there was a solution this whole time? Meaning it was never hopeless? Phoebe’s learning too!


Then we’d better hurry to the Ice Pyramid!


Do we have to...?





Before we can go... there, we have another little dungeon to tackle. We can’t get started immediately though, Phoebe pops up to tell us to move the pillar out of the way. This is a rudimentary puzzle dungeon with very few enemies.

The “challenge” is in not screwing up the puzzle and having to redo everything and reset the encounters.



So take that first pillar and push it here so we can use it as a bridge to jump across. Jumping is good so I can forgive this area.



Lamias can confuse you and put you to sleep but their physical attacks are pretty pathetic and Thunder will kill them easily. Really, your biggest threat here is Phoebe when she’s confused.



I don’t know why I thought Lamias looked like weird baby bibs when I was young. The imagination of a child, I guess?

Sleep acts how you’d expect it to. You can’t act but you’ll be woken up as soon as you’re hit or after a few turns.



Move the pillar behind the Lamias here to, again, use as a bridge. Are you seeing a pattern yet?





Puzzles.



For this bridge, you need to push one of the other pillars that you no longer need. That’s it for this place other than the boss and the cool treasure chest.



Heal’s definitely an interesting spell. Of course, it does as you might expect and functions like a Heal Potion. But if you use it on an enemy instead, you can mess with them. We’ll probably check it out next time.

You could actually miss this spell! I mean, you’d have to be a big ol’ idiot or intentionally missing it, but you technically could because as soon as we’re done here Falls Basin is closed off forever.





The boss is definitely more threatening than Squidite, mostly because this sucker hits incredibly hard. Physical attacks are usually in the 200 range and its Water Breath attack will hurt Phoebe considerably despite her resistance to it. Shrug, lacking any worthwhile resistance, will take a walloping from it.

Naturally, you’ll want to pick off the Desert Hags beforehand.



Don’t bother with Fire, either, because Snow Crab is immune to it. I guess that’s the developers trying to pull a fast one but they forgot that Phoebe has Thunder, sooo

He’s weak to axes so Shrug can deal a good amount of damage here.

E: I went back to check and either Shrug just has some incredibly wimpy black magic or Snow Crab is also immune to Quake. My money's on the latter.



Still not too threatening but certainly a step up from Squidite.



Where did you get these?



Where did you get these?


Next time: Seriously, do we have to...?