Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon Part #36

Part 36: mistybloomcavehappens

Update 36: mistybloomcavehappens

Well, this has been a long time coming. Fair warning, this update is lengthy.

Welcome to the shitty ocean zone. I’m kinda surprised Mist didn’t show up.

Oh, never mind. I just had to take a few more steps than usual.

Please do not compliment Misty Bloom Cave.

: This would be a great place to bring a date, don’t you think, Donnel?

: Huh? Uh...I guess…

: But it would never do with all these monsters!

: If you say so…

: You know, Donnel, sometimes I just don’t get you!

: You...don’t get me?

Mist is there a reason you came down here or

: Isn’t that kind of strange?

: Do you think it might have something to do with you?

Donnel that’s dumb.

: Nah, I doubt it!

: Okay…

: Well, I’m going to head back now. Watch yourself!

: I guess there’s no point anymore in asking her why she’s always at the new caves I go to…

: Oh, I almost forgot! You can only enter this cave in winter. So if you’re in there for a long time, and it turns spring…

: I won’t be able to come out?

: Exactly! So keep a careful eye on your calendar. I suppose if you had the “Teleport” magic book, you’d be able to get out, even in Spring. You can buy Teleport at the library. Okay! Toodleloo!

NOPE

Okay, so, this is a...this is an extremely Rune Factory 1 thing. What else could make Misty Bloom Cave the worst thing in the game?

If you guessed “Game Breaking Bug” then congrats! If you use the sleeping bag here, on the last day of Winter…it can corrupt your save file and make it unplayable.

To make it worse, Mist here pretty much EXPRESSLY TELLS YOU that there’s an out for that situation! But it can completely fuck up your save and remove all of your progress. So, I mean, bottom line: Don’t Trust Mist, fuck Misty Bloom Cave.

Let’s just get into it now. The first enemies you’ll encounter are these reskins of the very first foes we fought, the Orcs. These are High Orcs. They have a melee attack and that’s it.

You’ll notice HiMoo is a pretty efficient tank now. That’s because, with 10 FP, her HP is over, like, 600, and she can do a good job of pulling enemies away while you attack the spawner.

Still doesn’t do much damage, though.

The next enemy you can barely see here, but it’s right under HiMoo. It’s a...fish? It’s called the “Sky Fish”, and it’s a wizard. They’ll use Aqua Laser and Swordstorm, and can Seal you with melee hits. Honestly not a huge threat. There are actually two different fish enemies in Misty Bloom, but it is hard as hell to tell them apart.

So, going counter-clockwise around this big rock in the first room, you have the High Orcs, the Sky Fish, and then...needlessly dangerous two rocks.

The special gem for Misty Bloom shouldn’t be too surprising, it’s an Aquamarine. Because...water.

Also, Water Crystals are common here. Thankfully this isn’t the ONLY place you can get them, though, thanks to the season restriction.

Exiting the first room brings you into this big, empty area with really not much worth talking about.

There’s one spawner to the southwest that has another reskinned Carmite enemy, the Orc Hunters. They’ve traded off the Seal of their predecessors for Paralyze, and they can have two of themselves up at once. That’s about the only difference. They do hurt, though.

The right side of the room is mostly just more rocks and random poison tiles. Misty Bloom adores smattering these things all over for no reason. It’s really just to annoy you, because this is Misty Bloom Cave we’re talking about. There is one exit on the right side, though, which is important.

It leads to another spawner. This is NOT a Sky Fish, because those were blue. This is gray, and it’s called a “Shira”. They also have an additional trick up their sleeves. (Scales? Fins?)

They fire these purple balls and sap HP from you. It’s honestly not a big deal (7 HP.

) but it’s a cool spell effect, at least. The rest of their toolkit is the same as the Sky Fish.

It was guarding some stumps. That’s nice. Back to the main room.

And onto the next one. I dismissed HiMoo because it was getting hard to take screenshots with a massive cow in the way, and she was nearly at 0 HP anyway.

This is...another one of these.

A trap room.

The opponent here is a pretty versatile caster, the “Hitodama”. They’ll use Swordstorm and Aqua Laser.

They have like, no HP though. So long, ghost pal.

The next room contains...uh…

What the fuck is that.

Allegedly this is a “Shadow Panther”, although it looks more like a dinosaur to me. It slowly bumbles around and tries to slowly melee you. It’s kind of a sad thing to watch.

This feels dirty.

So, while Donnel takes a calming fishing trip here, I’ll run down this last main room. It’s a circle with a tail at the top left quadrant. I’ll be going through it clockwise.

Yeah, this is a pretty short dungeon. That’s one not awful thing about it.

Alright, let’s go.

There’s a nice dock for fishing here. How pleasant.

The exit to the east leads to this very sad fire wall. You’re surrounded by water!

Inside is the place I will go to do my plowing for this dumb cave.

Oh, also another Shira. This guy sucks, because while you’re trying to dance around the poison tiles to get to him, he’ll slap you with an Aqua Laser. Now, I could have used the sword beams…

Fuck

Hindsight is 20/20, Misty Bloom is awful.

Thankfully I brought food.

The RP it restores is still pitiful, but it’s enough for a Medicate, which is really what matters.

Rejuvenated, I head to the southern part of the circle, which has...scorpions.

They’re just called “Scorpion”s, and unlike most of the Rune Factory insects, they’re pretty harmless. They can inflict Poison and Paralysis, but only with a slow, awkward melee attack, and their HP pools are pretty weak.

Sword Beam makes short work of ‘em.

There’s also another side room! This one is on the northern edge of the circle.

More farmland! This is also one of two rooms you can catch the Lover Snapper in, with a maxed out fishing rod. You need it to marry Mei, but you also have to do that WiFi bullshit that’s actually impossible now. So, uh, don’t marry Mei.

Anyway here’s some Blue Mushrooms. These “Tricky Mush” are pretty much the same as the ones in Mt. Gigant. Just higher stats. I don’t know what the trick is.

Once all those spawners are dealt with, follow the tail south of that room to reach the next area.

There are some more High Orcs, but they aren’t really a threat.

Ice Cream break.

Again, pitiful RP recovery, but so long as it’s enough for Medicate, I’ll take it. Here’s the door for this dungeon. It’s a nice looking door, I’m not sure how it got stuck in Misty Bloom.

All doors open before Donnel.

The final stretch of Misty Bloom Cave has no spawners, just...more poison for some reason. You can catch the Lover Snapper here too.

...Tempting. But not now.

There’s also a save point before the end of this room, so you can probably guess what that means.

Boss room. The usual door in our way is replaced with a coral thing here, which is a nice touch. Honestly, this cave looks pretty nice visually, but everything else about it is...Misty Bloom Cave.

Still, not going to that boss yet. Time to bathe, then I’ll knock this cave out.

Oh, also grabbing the Large Kitchen and Fridge from Ivan. Large Kitchen will let me buy those appliances I couldn’t last time, the Large Fridge just holds more stuff.

Okay, NOW it’s time for the boss fight.

A strange sound is coming from the pool…

: You think so too, Mist?

: Yes.

: I think you’re right. You’d better stand back.

: All right.

I swear, they have less to talk about every time.

So this boss doesn’t show up at first, which you already know is a great sign. There is a shadow moving around below, though…

Ahh! A mermaid!

This is Siren. She’s got 1300 HP, which is way more than Grimoire’s 999, and you have much less time to attack her. You can’t really brute force this one. She’s also incredibly obnoxious, and very resistant to Water and Fire. So the Cyclone Sword is a good bet.

Every once in a while she’ll pop out of the water like this and sit down to cast a spell. She’s got a few. One annoying thing is that she’s totally invincible while climbing out of the water, or jumping back in. She’s only vulnerable while she’s wholly on land. It’s dumb, and you’ll rarely have time for more than one combo.

And here’s the worst part of the fight. She summons a Hitodama. This asshole is just going to float in the middle of the arena and spam Aqua Laser and Swordstorm at you. Forever. While you cannot hit him with your melee attacks.

This is why I really wanted a sword that could use the charge/Sword Beams for this fight, otherwise you cannot damage this thing. You can just ignore it, but it will be targeting you the entire battle, and Siren herself is annoying enough to catch up to without this guy peppering you the whole time.

Siren too, has an Aqua Laser. Two of them, just like your old pal Chimera.

This is usually what the fight can turn into. Frantically trying to cast Medicate while the Hitodama spams Swordstorm and keeps interrupting you.

Here’s a good moment where a fatal Swordstorm hit me as I was Medicate-ing, so I somehow died with HP still on the bar.

But, with Sword Beams, and some effort…

You can kill the Hitodama. (you could use magic too but...why?)

Then she’ll usually just summon another one immediately. Sorry about the flicker on these shots, but this fight is a mess of shit flying everywhere and the DS hates it.

The narrowness of this ring of land doesn’t help matters, as it’s hard to avoid both enemies’ projectiles. Sometimes you get into situations like this, where I really can’t approach Siren without getting caught in crossfire and taking a ton of unnecessary damage.

She also has this attack, where she’ll stop and start singing, sending music notes scattering across the arena.

Touching them makes you take damage and a status ailment. I got poisoned here. These are hard to avoid, as they kinda wriggle around, and as stated, no dodging room.

She’ll spend most of this fight underwater. It’s worth mentioning that there are only 4 spots in the room she can pop out, so if you memorize them, you can usually get to her faster when she surfaces. The location of the shadow isn’t really a good indicator.

Oh, also she can heal herself for 200 HP. Just kinda whenever she feels like it.

I don’t like Siren.

And, like all Rune Factory bosses, she will turn Red and get mad at low HP

And summon another damn Hitodama

There’s so much going on in this fight that I’d recommend pausing to swap to a healing item. It’s much easier that way.

While she’s Red, Siren’s two Aqua Lasers become four Aqua Lasers. Good luck dodging any of that.

She also surfaces/dives much faster, so you really have almost no margin for error when it comes to reaching her on time to do decent damage.

I had to panic eat a Sashimi while she was underwater so I could get a Medicate off. As you can see, her notes can paralyse you too!

Stick on her, avoid/kill the Hitodama, and pray, and you’ll eventually get this.

Fuck Misty Bloom Cave.

: Are you okay, Donnel?

Debatable.

: Say, how’s your memory? Have you been able to remember anything yet?

: No. No luck yet.

: Well, I’m sure it’ll come back in time.

: Yeah.

: So there was a monster here after all.

: It seems so.

: Do you think something big is going down?

I’m sorry, I don’t really have any jokes about like, the fourth time we’ve had this conversation.

: I can’t be sure, but perhaps.

: Donnel, isn’t it dangerous to go to any more caves?

: It’s dangerous, but if there is something going on in our world, I can’t just ignore it.

: You know Donnel, you’re different than most people.

: Really?

: Whatever you used to do before you came to our town, I bet it involved a lot of responsibility.

: Well, I wish I could just remember.

: Do you think if your memory comes back...you’ll leave this town?

I just upgraded my house, no way.

: I’m not sure. But it doesn’t seem I’ll have to make that decision anytime soon.

: Oh, right… Well, I’d better get back.

: Okay.

And I never have to come back here again.

I mean, except to do all the field plowing, and then taming any monsters I might want from here, and smashing all those rocks.

But in a way? I never have to come back here again.

So, now that I’ve finished Misty Bloom Cave, Donnel’s heart is strong. He is prepared. He can do this.