Part 30: York Is Still a Dumbshit

Howdy, folks, and welcome back! Last time, on Secret of Evermore, we finished off the Dark Forest and met Cecil, from Final Fantasy IV. Today, we're going to be heading into Ebon Keep Castle, so let's boogie.



Ebon Keep is laid out the same as Ivor Tower, which is important to note for a couple of reasons.



It makes it a touch easier to navigate, since you already know where shit is.



And hidden paths are the same, too.



In Ivor Tower, this was the house of the plumber who thought he was a king. Here, an old alchemist lives.



I swear, if this is a Viagra formula involving Iron and Limestone, I'm quitting this LP right now.



I'm sure York never expected an old lady to get his nuts wet.



That sounds pretty great, right? It's Regen! Who doesn't like Regen (besides those who are too busy nuking things to cast it)?



Yeah, ain't nobody likes this spell. It's a huge piece of shit.



It restores 1 HP a second, which is kind of piss poor (it'd take over six minutes for York to fully regenerate), but it also wears off whenever the target gets hit.



By anything. A mosquito could swing by and hit you for a single point of damage and boom! Your regeneration is gone.



And to add another middle finger to it, leveling it up doesn't do shit for it.



So, yeah, keep with your regular healing spells.



Crystals? I forgot about these. They'll be useful in some later formulas, but for now, all we can power with them is Hardball.



We'll also soon get a formula that utilizes Ethanol, and one that I'll probably actually use.





Upstairs, there's a bit of a puzzle.



The puzzle is getting into this room.



It's just a hidden passage, but with a caveat (the other chest holds some Water).



Upon opening this chest, those candles light. When they're lit, the passage is closed and you can't get the stuff beyond it. There's nothing irreplaceable back there, but it's still nice to have some extra Vinegar, since you can't buy any here in Gothica.



Alright, let's get into that castle. We've got a drawbridge to lower and people left to slaughter.





The gate opens automatically when you walk up to it.





Well, things don't look good around here.



Let's just head on in. We could go up the middle path, through the main gate, but you know what I'm not tired of yet?



Fucking mazes!



This one isn't too bad, or too long, but I wanted to show it off.



It's filled with rats, and most of the paths are hidden.



Eventually, we'll come out to the main hall.



And the basement!



It's just a treasure trove of ingredients, but I won't turn down some Brimstone.



Feathers are good too, since they're so expensive.



Acorns will be more useful in a little bit.





Alright, this next boss is one of the hardest in the game, if not the hardest.

Unless you're prepared, then he isn't too bad.



See those boxes he's perched on? Those are important.



This part isn't so much, but backstory is nice.



Look, bud, you'll either be killed by us here, or when the Queen's troops invaded.





Plague this, asshole.



The Verminator has 3,425 HP, which is a goddamned lot. Thankfully, his defenses aren't too great.



His offenses, on the other hand...



He attacks with nothing but alchemy.



And his alchemy is powerful, much like ours.



His Drain is decently powered, too. He doesn't recover a ton of health with it, but if you're not prepared for this kind of fight, any bit of HP recovery can doom you.



You might have noticed that Zach hasn't done much of anything here. Or that I've not hit him with my sword.



Being perched on those boxes, you can only hit him using either alchemy or spear throws. Which means that Zach can't do shit in this fight.



If you haven't leveled the spear? Too bad! What's that, your alchemy levels are piss-poor?



Suck it down and hunker in!



The Verminator isn't afraid to combo his alchemy on you, either.



We'll be getting Explosion soon enough, as in next update.



This is the closest I've been to death in a loooooong time. Verminator is dangerous.



For those who don't know he's coming or who haven't been leveling their alchemy like psychopaths, the Verminator can very well end your run right here. He's got a lot of health, a lot of powerful attacks, and is fairly relentless in them, you need to be careful or he will wreck your shit. I suppose you could use up your Call Beads here, but I'm not sure if Fire Eyes has enough power to take him down with the amount you'll have here; I have around 15 and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have killed him.



I'm not sure why using Lance and Crush at the same time changes the hand of Crush to such an odd color, but I like it.





He can cast Drain on both York and Zach.



It doesn't heal a ton of health for him, but it does hurt both characters for around 50 damage.



Zach's only use in this fight is to tank spells, but I've never seen ol' Vermy cast a spell on Zach alone. I've only seen it on York alone, or to cast it on both of them.



It doesn't take long to drop him if you've got some strong spells. You also get 1,050 EXP from him.



As well as getting to watch a giant, spell slinging rat explode.



And an additional five grand!





Just say it, York. We're all thinking it.

It's a shit hole.



Oh, crap, the fuzz! Cheese it!





We're here to do our best to get everyone here murdered.



Hell, we could do the job ourselves.



York, you're a blabbermouth.



And this guy is totally cool with what you just told him...







If it's someone else who wants to try and kill me, I'll put 'em down. I'm not worried.





I'm half-thinking that York should get a medal for his ability to go with the flow.



It's almost Zen, his ability to do so.









You're a fucking idiot, York.





C'mon, York, put two and two together.

I know this is going to tax your brain cells, but I believe in you.



Dammit, Queenie, he was almost there!



That sounds like the worst high school knock-off of Jekyll and Hyde I've ever heard of. If you mention there's a character named Hekyll Jyde, I'm out.





You've also met an evil version of yourself. Not quite like the other evil twins, mind you, but still.





Chances are...









It sure as hell didn't go right.



Eh, could be worse, I reckon. Being stuck as a queen is probably an easy enough gig. Especially being a queen of a realm you created with your mind.



Political uprising? Were the masses tired of the tyranny of the monarchy and wanted democracy?



Eh, kind of the same thing.



Right, I watched it. It was certainly something.



It might have been easier to kill him and bill it as an accident.



Or maybe it would have been easier to kill the real Queen and clean this place up.



But, maybe not. I don't know the logistics of regicide and castle cleaning.





...No shit...



I'm pretty sure she couldn't get past us. Hell, probably couldn't past Zach, even with an army. Drop a biscuit here and there, I'm sure he could wreck several armies.





Like we weren't going to? C'mon, give us some credit.





Set things straight? York, that's an odd way of saying we're going to kill all of the bad guys over there.



Yeah, yeah, I know we're not going to actually kill anyone, but one of these days, I'll LP a game where we kill all of our foes.



Some of these I might use. Queen Bluegarden has some neat spells.







Well, that's a lot less stupid than Bluegarden.



Tinker's Lab is through this door.



Ugh. Those are uglier than--









Calm down, Zach. We can't chew him up for having bad taste.





Holy crap, that guy popped out of the window.



Though, being just your average Mad Monk, he lasted about as long as you'd expect.



Like this Viper.



Camellia's spells are mostly of the offensive-support variety.



Hypnotize here will freeze all enemies in place for twenty seconds, giving you plenty of time to wreck them.



Shockwave hits all enemies on screen with an earthquake, dealing tons of damage.



It's just a screen shake effect, but the results are entirely worth it.



Plague is a stronger form of Poison, and deals 30 to 45 damage ever few seconds. Her last spell is called Shield and it halves all damage taken for a good while.





I'm not a fan of Fire Eyes' spells because I can do better with my own spells. I'm not a fan of Horace's, because I usually don't need the support that he's offering.



I like Camellia's spells because they're not doing anything I can do better; Plague is dealing constant damage, and I don't have a really great source of that right now. Shockwave automatically hits all targets, so it won't suffer the penalties I would if I use Crush on everything; Hypnotize freezes them in place, which I can't do yet, and Shield is just 1/2 damage. I like that.



I wonder if these two are aware--



Jesus Christ, York! You blasted him to dust!



Well, not too shabby, fella--



...Fuck you, York.







Not until it was over.



Honestly, I can't imagine you would have had any other name.



He has a couple formulas hidden around here that I didn't grab just yet. I thought they showed up later, so, yeah, we'll get them next update.



There is a formula that shows up later in here, by the way. I got my hidden formulas mixed up.



Though, you all know what that means!



Next update is going to be another edition of: "I Missed A Formula!"



I was thinking it had been too long.



Oh, guess we need to get a quick summary of how we landed in Evermore.



That cat probably got warped to Evermore, too. Where do you think that cat Zach has chased in Antiqua and Gothica came from?



I don't have any fucking clue if that's even remotely close to true, but it seems half-plausible.



Was it?







You basically fucked everything up at that point, crashed the escape pod thing, and broke the bazooka.



"Ever since"? It's been three days, at most.



How convenient is that?



...Looking at you, I'm sure you've seen plenty through that telescope.



It won't be the silliest place we've visited.



And we're about to get an alchemy powered rocket. Awwwww yeah



Awwww man, I almost forgot about that.



It shouldn't be too hard. Nothing in this game really is.



Verminator is about as dangerous as it is going to get. Thraxx at the beginning is dangerous, too, but mostly because you don't have too many tools to deal with him. At this point, you've got enough tools to destroy everything in your path.







That's pretty precisely placed. C'mon, guys, you couldn't have let us seen some goofy shit, like Cecil lost in the Dark Forest, Lance falling down a well, something like that.



Holy shit, you have long range microphones on this thing.



...I think I know where that is...





For those of you wondering, Eronio is Bluegarden's adviser. He's the exact same sprite as Pompolonius from Antiqua, but they're two different characters.



That's hard to show with sprites, but I'm sure at least one or two of you were wondering about that.





Well, you're willing to destroy everyone over here, why not everyone over there?



Zach, you want to drop any insight here? It can't be any worse.





Just once, I'd like a game like this to tell me that, but give me the option to fight the army instead of sneaking around the army.



I'd have a whole video for it, and take suggestions from the thread for what music I should put over it.



It'd be like one of those goofy AMVs from the early aughts, but instead of DBZ set to Linkin Park.





And now he's going to sell us ingredients!



I stock up on what I need (mostly Brimstone) and move on. The extra 6,000 Gold Coins help out with that.





We head south from there to pick up our new Axe.



I don't know why the fuck it's green. It's actually golden, like the other weapons we've gotten here.



It's also still the middle tier, so I'm not sure why we didn't get it sooner. Or the Lance later.



We've got one more thing to do while we're here.





It's grabbing a hidden formula. I remember to get this one, but don't grab the two in Tinker's Lab.



Christ, what is wrong with me?



This is Naris, the smartest boy in the kingdom. He wants to play a game.



Just guess between the numbers.



And viola! You get Super Heal. It restores York and Zach's HP to full, all for two Ethanol and an Acorn. As often as I need to heal anymore, I'm going to stick with this for the rest of the game.



If we had guessed wrong, we could have left and come back to find Naris as an old man. He has the same sprite as Lance, from earlier, so I'm not sure if it was worth it to show it.



And just like most smart kids, Naris is kind of a douche.



Oh, fuck it, let's go get those formulas. I'm already here and we may as well go just a bit longer.





On this bookshelf, we find Slow Burn.



It's...Kind of useless. It does a bit of damage to start with, and then, gradually, deals bits of more damage. It would be useful against weaker enemies, but I can just Crush entire groups of them. Against stronger enemies, I could Crush them and get better results.





Jesus, now he's quoting McFly.





The only barriers this destroys is those between enemies and their afterlives. Explosion is one of the strongest formulas in the game, and the ingredients are super easy to get right now.



Tinker sells all that we need!



And I better end the update! Next time, we'll see if we can reach Gomi and find out what's shakin' with him.

Stay tuned!

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