Part 9: Lava Dome

Lava Dome

First up, let's crawl on through the Lava Dome. The most important thing to realize is that there are boulders in the way in some places; these can be blown up with Mega Grenades, but you're never actually told this. Notable treasures are the Moon Helmet and its Fire protection, which is obviously handy here, and the Life spell, which completes Steve's mastery of White Magic.

Twin-Head Hydra may be weak against Thunder. It was the one spell I didn't try. However, White probably does more damage anyway. Reuben is a waste of space for this fight but at least he was healing.

Oh, and I got a new gamepad and so I do some weird things at first getting used to not having a keyboard control setup. I'm not sure what the slowdown was, but when in doubt blame Firefox.



The volcano proceeds to erupt after the Fire Crystal is freed. Since Steve and Reuben were inside the volcano at the time, I'm not sure how they survived. Steve's pretty badass but Reuben's status immunity to fire is broken (all allied status immunities appear not to work by the way; Kaeli should be immune to Petrify but isn't later on) and he sucks too much to just ride it out. Oh well, he'll be out of my hair soon. Another battlefield, but not much of interest in it.



And so Fireburg is saved, but nobody really cares. Usually they thank you or something, but nobody but Arion and Reuben seemed even remotely concerned with the earthquakes. Also note that Tristam is gone again. Wherever could he be?



Back to the Libra Temple. When you have Phoebe or Tristam, this chest is replaced with one containing Arrows or Shuriken, but since we have Reuben along and he doesn't use ranged weaponry, it's filled with explosives instead. This is a good, cheap way to stock up, and probably the last time I'll need to since Mega Grenades are already starting to suck and will only get worse when I get two new weapons next update.



Onward, to Windia!



I never get tired of the headscratching and shrugging. Poor Steve, he's so put-upon.



The stairs next to the door lead down into the basement of Focus Tower, but strangely, go down even further...



Doom Castle? A new area with badass new music, but it doesn't seem I can make any progress here. This is actually the final dungeon, but you can't get to it from this angle. What is relevant is the chest there.



Which contains Aero. For reasons I do not know, undead are really weak to wind in Mystic Quest. The next area is full of undead. So this is timely. If you're curious what's in the other chest, we'll get to it in due time.



Anyway, next update Reuben falls off a cliff, Tristam comes back to show off how poorly he's leveled himself up, and then Kaeli is back and actually useful this time. We also get some of the game's best weapons in rapid succession and talk to trees. You're gonna love it!