Part 15: 05/18/09 - 05/23/09: Arqa The Third Land (Part One)

Well, I suppose it's time for midterms to begin today. Should only last a few days, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal...



Or it can take up the entire week, sure. Not like it's going to matter anyway.

Want To Be Close / Time



Gossiping: Come on... You don't need to lie about it every time. By the way, did you hear? Our PE teacher was hospitalized.



Listening: Whoa... Wait. Who cares about our PE teacher? C'mon, we've got 5 minutes! We can memorize 10 vocab words!

> The first bell has rung.

Boy, is this kinda last second attempt at cramming far more my speed.

During the Test...





And, uh, this was a very frequent result from that, yes.



Welp, there's that day go...ne... wait, seriously?!



Yeah, seriously. During exams we get no free-time during the day nor at night.



I sort of understand why, but it's quite silly. One question (if that) and day over!



Speaking of questions, though, the previous one was straight up taken wholesale from class. This one changes the answers around somewhat.





Occasionally, we'll be asked something that is the opposite of what we were asked before.



We had to answer what water low in calcium and magnesium was for class, so it does require remembering that at least.



And this one is something that was mentioned during an Academics increasing lecture forever ago way, way back near the start of the game.



Gotta remember that happening AND what the answer was AND hope you didn't skip it by taking a nap (don't do that).



Just like that, though, since each day is taken up this week goes by VERY quickly.

An Unpleasant Premonition



If the doctor gives me the O.K., I'll be able to fight with you guys again... finally.
By the way, I have a favor to ask. You've been doing a great job leading the team in Tartarus...
Would you mind continuing after I come back? That way, I can concentrate on building my strength.
I don't mind.
I already talked to Mitsuru, and she was okay with it too. Good luck.

During the Test...





I dunno, I always felt like that after I was done with my exams. Sometimes it was accurate, sometimes it... really, really wasn't.

Want To Be Close / Time



As a nice mercy, now that we're done with our exams we get to actually do things on Saturday. The first time I ever played this game... 9 years ago... I was fully expecting to get shunted to either Saturday evening or even Sunday. Understandable why, I'm sure.



Added bonus: people at school are like actually available and stuff now!

I, um... sort of overreacted... and I, um... Just wanted to say I'm sorry...
I-I get really nervous when I, um, talk to people... especially boys...
I-I know it's bad, but... I-I can't help it...

> Chihiro seems to be very self-conscious...

OH! It's cool, I know how to fix this!

I'm male.



S-Sorry, I won't be a very good Student Council representative if I'm like this...
...I have to try harder to overcome this phobia.

Somehow that didn't work?! I know, I'm shocked too!

Right, fine. Okay. Let's see... it is Saturday so we COULD go back to the bookstore... again... but let's be sensible about this. We just regained the ability to work on school links, so who's available today? It's a Saturday...



So our options are limited. Fortunately, we don't need a Strength Persona right now, though we will need one soon...

Joy



I don't think we've seen this place at all on-screen yet. I've walked past it once or twice trying to find folks on Sundays but that's all.



Even though I eat lunch everyday, I still get hungry after practice. I consider this an early dinner...
I'll still eat dinner when I get home, though...
I really have to stop eating between meals, or I'll gain tons of weight once I'm not so busy with the team...
Hey, Makoto-kun, do you think I eat too much?
Not really.
I agree! I just eat a little more than your average girl, right!?
I'm sure I burn off the extra calories during practice!



You live in the dorm, right Makoto-kun? Not to pry, but...
You must love being around good-looking girls like Mitsuru and Yukari...
Not necessarily.
Really? So, not all guys like the same thing? Honestly, I wouldn't mind being more like them.

I know she means Mitsuru and Yukari (etc.) here, but the way its worded in context makes it seem like she wants to be more like, say, Junpei...



...Not that I'm desperate for attention or anything.
Maybe I should go on a diet... I'm lazy, but it's the only way.
...I've decided! I'm gonna stop eating between meals! My first goal is to tone up my arms!
Did you hear that, Makoto-kun? You're my witness.

> Yuko has told you about her resolution.

> Your relationship is stronger now!





Let's go.
Yeah, otherwise I might be tempted to order something else. *blush*



Alright, let's go.

> After saying goodbye to Yuko, you decided to go back to the dorm.

Troubled



Congrats, man!
I need to catch up on my training. I've slacked off for a whole month.
Shouldn't you take it easy, though? You don't wanna reinjure your arm.
I've already wasted precious time.





Yukari DOES get an exclamation mark above her head too, here, though since Akihiko managed to catch Junpei's attention...

We did!? Sweet!
Is it a girl...?



Actually, it is. She's a junior who goes to our school.



Yamagishi...? Oh, that girl in 2-E...
She gets sick a lot, from what I heard... I don't see her at school very often.
She was at the same hospital as me. That's how we found out about her.
But, maybe she's not cut out for battle.
I had an Evoker made for her, too...



I was gonna offer her some private lessons...



Wh-Why're you lookin' at me like that? C'mon...



I dunno, something better than that.

Iwatodai Dorm



Not really.
Are you serious? You're such a strange guy.



Or, did you want her to join instead of me?
......
Sorry, that's a tough question to answer. Just forget I said anything.



He's just happy.
Yeah, you're right. He got this big smile on his face after he heard that a girl was coming.
Well, I guess it would be nice to have another girl in the dorm.



However, it can't be helped if she's weak and unable to fully participate.



The man's computer was also seized in the raid.

Hm, so let's think. We just got Akihiko back in the party, we're running low on money, we have a bunch of quests to finish with a deadline for those in like 2 weeks... we just lost 1 week to exams...



I think it's time we went back to Tartarus!

The Voice Someone Calls



With Akihiko in the fray, we now have a full party of 4 and always will do. How nice!



He joins at level 12, which is notably higher than we could ever dream of being right now without absurd levels of grinding.



Aki's a bit of a mixed bag, really. As his baseline will let you know, he's a very generalist kinda guy; he can sort of do everything and he's not really BAD at anything. Notably he's a good source of Strike elemental damage to finally round those out, he can heal, he can do Electric stuff and he'll be able to debuff later as well. Yeesh.



Do you remember how I said Tartarus was divided into different areas?
I discovered through Penthesilea's power that the first barrier is gone now.
I suspect that the others will disappear too, eventually...
Therefore, I'd like to make reaching the top our goal.
You never know what the future may hold, and getting to the top of the tower is the most logical step.
I'll let you decide on an appropriate pace, but the sooner the better. I'm counting on you.

Whew, jeez, okay. So, first order of business then:



This dreadful thing. It can only be equipped by girls, so that's Yukari and... Yukari. +1 Strength is not really super necessry or useful and its defence is double what she has by default at least?



Also it's needlessly creepy and changes Yukari's model to be... this. It's weird and I don't get it.



Just gonna stick to the Rash Guard when it matters. Or maybe something else if we find decent armor before the next boss.



And now we can progress further on up, just like we've been informed twice. Let's see what lies ahead...



The second block, as expected. So long Thebel, we'll see you... almost never. Almost. Gotta go back for one thing still.

tartarus_0d02



I'll try to see what's up ahead. Hold on...
...Sorry, but I'm experiencing difficulties, possibly because of the distance...
I need more time... You may proceed for now...



Alright, so now we can run around... Thebel?? No, game, you're wrong. That's weird, stop lying.

Mystery New Block is not named Thebel. All versions do this, though; I don't know why, since Elizabeth's requests tell you the real name already.



A new Block brings with it, new opportunities for lots of money jeez. More in this one case than we'd realistically get from 3 before...

Mass Destruction / Wiping All Out



But the real important thing here is the new Shadows! There's nothing BUT new Shadows around now, in fact.



This is the only time we're going to run into Grieving Tiaras though. Not like it matters since they're kinda weak pushovers.



Sure, they're weak to Ice but jeez that's ridiculous.



These things are a bit more interesting and important. They're potentially nasty bastards since they have Mudo access, and their only weakness it Expel which we could have easily but it requires grinding an Angel and, uh, nah.

These guys generally appear in groups of 3 and Elizabeth wants 3 drops from them for good measure. These ones are not guaranteed to happen, annoyingly.



Expel being the only weakness is not a big deal though, since Akihiko doesn't really care. He's kind of a Crit Machine at this stage and that speeds up so, so much. One of the benefits of coming in at Great status!



It pushes his damage with a basic attack upto around 70 and makes Sonic Punch an easy one-hit kill here.



The thing you'll probably sort of notice here is that Ice is quite a common weakness. Makoto is the only source of that right now, and weirdly the game was kind enough to give us Ice Boost already via Jack Frost.



The other thing of importance is that because everything here is level 9+, we actually get real EXP values now! It took long enough!

Oh and gems drop semi-frequently too. Except when you want them. And we will want them. Gems are important!



We also start to get Rank 2 Minor Arcana cards which are a tangible upgrade over Rank 1 by a noticable amount. Can't complain about that, nope.



We also get to see what happens if a Shuffle Time would give a Persona that we can't actually use. It's a silhouette and then it just disappears. Shame. Archangel here is level 10, so we're close to it at least.



Hey a Red Shadow! Akihiko mentioned this before; these things are fairly uncommon/semi-rare but very worth fighting whenever they crop up...



Though it's probably better if they DON'T get the Advantage. Revolution is helpful for us as well, though, since it increases the chance of getting a Crit for... everyone. Everyone.



Not like these things really need it though, when they're doing this on Neutral before proccing a Crit. Yeesh.



Meanwhile, when we hit their weakness, it's not a particularly good amount of damage.



Though, they are also weak to Expel if you have a means of doing that effectively. Resisting Strike is a minor inconvenience, really. Note that they're level 19 as well; Red Shadows are always the highest levelled thing you can encounter in the Block outside of bosses.



This means they give really, really good EXP for the area. This is without a Suit of Wands card as well...



It's easily enough to push Makoto to level 10, though, and that lets us have a stock of 8 instead of 6 now.

tartarus_0d02



Floor 18 is really low on new content, sadly. There's, uh...



Oh, Black Ravens turned up here. They're really weak, though.



A single Zio is an easy, easy one-shot. Shame, but it's really not that big a deal. Black Ravens are straight-up the weakest things in the Block anyway. (Grieving Tiara's are a close second though)



On 19F, Mitsuru decides to let us know that we can leave and come back to lower floors if we need to grind. Uh, nah, we're okay thanks.



So, Arqa is the name of the second Block. It's named after Arka from the Kabbalah; it's one of the seven lands of the lower world where Cain's sons reside. Thebel was also from the Kabbalah being named after Tevel, which is the name for our world. Which is also where the world "Thevel" mentioned before comes from.

...Except just to make it more confusing, Arqa spelt like this is also a thing. It's the third of the Seven Earths of Islam, and is generally considered to be functionally the same thing as the Arka from Judaism as mentioned above.

Anyway, uh, that's a small shadow meaning it's one thing, meaning I know exactly what it is...

Mass Destruction / Wiping All Out



Bestial Wheel is a bit of an awkwrd thing if you don't know what you're doing. Being a solo Shadow that is pretty strong (16 Strength and Endurance; 10 everything else) it's basically the Grave Beetle for this area. Except dangerous because it takes that 16 Strength and uses it to throw down Power Charged Assault Dives. Yikes.



Mercifully it's weak to both Elec and Wind so we can quite easily deal with this if need be. Since getting up requires turns and being a Strong Solo Shadow, it's not exactly immune to ailments either...



Although, thanks to a quirk in the turn order, it goes immediately after Makoto here. So he can knock it down with Zio, do something that ISN'T an attack and then it wastes its only turn getting up. Repeat until fight's won.



...Wow, this is a rare mechanic. So, sometimes this happens and, uh, it's kind of exactly what you think really.



There ARE limitations to what you get from the second draw here, and picking a Blank card voids your initial pick as well.



Double Up draws only have Blank cards and Persona from the normal pool for the area. It's generally easy to avoid the Blank at least, which means our 1.2x EXP boost from the Rank 1 Wand before is completely safe. Hurray!

tartarus_0d02



On the 20th floor, Mitsuru finally finds the next boss and it's still quite a ways away at the 25th floor. Well, we'll get there eventually.



A Black Raven got lucky and lived since I tried to auto it and it dodged Akihiko. Welp. Poisma is single-target with a base 25% chance to Poison. Notably, Black Ravens have 4 Luck so uh...



Of course Junpei gets Poisoned. I'd be more surprised if he didn't.



Poison deals damage at the end of the turn, though it cannot kill anything. It only ever drops you to 1HP. Boring.



It even persists after battle, though it really doesn't matter at all. Dis-Poisons and Posumudi are kinda common as dirt.



On the 21st floor, Mitsuru lets us know about some new Shadows as of this floor. I'm not exactly sure that's accurate though, since I think the "new" Shadows here CAN appear from 17-20F as well, just rarer.

Mass Destruction / Wiping All Out



Anyway, the stuff we run into regardless of its status as "new" or not includes the Heat Balances from the monorail. They can appear in upto groups of 4 and are slightly stronger than they were before, though not by much. We just can't one-shot them now, basically.



They sometimes appear with this thing, though. Wild Beasts are a minor annoyance to deal with on account of their only weaknesses being Expel/Curse. They'll cast Tarukaja sometimes and then Sonic Punch dudes.

Though they have 2 Luck and are sorta also weak to Ailments so, uh, whoops.



Laughing Tables also make a return appearance after popping up on the monorail! They really like Ice spells so of course they burn quite easily and are immune to Ice for good measure.

tartarus_0d02



That's it for the 21st floor. On the 22nd, Mitsuru just continues to doubt our capability for the boss coming up. Jee, thanks Mitsuru.



We also run into another pair of Steel Gigas. Since we're a higher level now their EXP isn't as good, though it's still the best by far.



The 23rd floor gives us this message which doesn't really make a whole lotta sense, but sure. Okay. A floor is expanding. Whatever you say, Mitsuru.



Weirdly, she's not exactly wrong since the rooms here are almost all these large open squares. It makes it easy to sneak up on things or just run straight past 'em at least.



...And we get 3 Old Lanterns from the Phantom Mages in one fight here. I would be happy about this, but I had 2 already that dropped 1 at a time until now.

Absolutely fuck all happens on the 24th floor. Even Mitsuru's dialogue is just "boss is closer than it was before." Good, thanks.



So we'll skip to the 25th floor where the boss is waiting.



Turn on the Terminal, leave for the full heal...

The Poem For Everyone's Soul



And also we need to give Elizabeth these Lanterns. Absolutely worth it for the reward, if you ask me. And you definitely did.



31k is nice and we'll be using this, uh, right now because fucking hell the Compendium is expensive this early.



So, we're gonna make a Valkyrie out of Forneus (our best source of Tarukaja right now), Orpheus AND Angel. No matter how many times I rerolled skills, she would insist on always inheriting Bash which sucks but whatever. At least shes gonna give us Mabufu which her 7 Magic can definitely use really well. Yup!



More importantly, this is another one of Liz's fusion requests dealt with.

A fine specimen it is. Well, you have done as I asked.
The reward I'm going to give you this time has an unusual effect.



If you are strong enough to control this Persona, then please give it a try.



He's level 24, so we'll be waiting a bit for this one too!



Speaking of waiting, next she wants an Oberon that's been levelled up. Sure, okay. Oberon's base level is 15 so once we get there and also get Emperor to rank 3+ this one will just solve itself automatically.



We're currently level 11, so let's make a level 9 persona that will run rings around everything else. Yomotsu-Shikome is kind of a good early game Persona since she has no weakness, is quick, can cast magic effectively and also she starts with Auto-Tarukaja now that we've got Hermit to rank 3. It's exactly what it sounds like; Makoto starts the fight Tarukaja'd. For free.



With Shikome prepped, we'll go deal with some uppity tables I guess. We don't NEED her for this, but it feels better to have her than to not.

Magician Crying Table x3 (Portable)

Master of Tartarus / Danger Zone



I think we know the deal by now, since this is the fourth time and all.



So, these Crying Tables are weak to Ice. We can win pretty handily already, considering both Jack Frost and Yomotsu-Shikome have both Bufu AND Ice Boost.



Honestly, probably a good idea to not let the AI interfere at first/at all in this fight. As Junpei will gladly demonstrate, the tables drain Fire.



And as Akihiko learns, they're also immune to Strike for good measure. They also resist Slash and Pierce, though Elec and Wind are neutral.



Attack-wise, well, they're fire elemental tables. They cast Maragi, frequently.



They also cast Agilao, arguably more frequently. Also they have Fire Boost so, uh, maybe don't use Jack Frost or anything else with a Fire weakness. This is why I brought Yomotsu-Shikome, yes.



If you really want the AI to help out, probably just have Junpei run support so he can Rakukaja folks and early-on help with healing if its necessary. Akihiko can contribute damage with Zio, if you use him right and focus on downing tables and let him only attack ones that have stood up. Yukari can do the same with Garu and they can both heal effectively. Not enough to keep up with 3 Agilaos a turn, mind, but it's something?



Crying Tables are level 14 so, uh, we don't get that great EXP out of them compared to what we're used to. They also have 260HP and 260SP so they're kinda flimsy too. Apparently they can cast Poisma and do some decent physical attcks but Poisma is fairly rare and I don't buy that Magicians with 16 Magic would opt to use their lower Strength all that often!

tartarus_0d02



They were guarding... a Bead Chain, huh? Feels like a step back after the Soma (because it is), but it'll still come in handy I'm sure.

...Sucks that Yukari had to go and get tired after fighting the Tables but that means Junpei and Makoto won't be far behind now, so we'll take a bit of a respite I guess.