The Let's Play Archive

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga

by Dragonatrix

Part 10: Co-Ordinate 136 (Part Thr-Hee)



...Okay, before we go and deal with what's at Coordinate 136 we'll go back to a few places and tear down some walls. Swadhisthana's first since we might as well do 'em in the order we did originally.

Hideout of the Chickens



The wall here's in the basement we ran through briefly before. Only real change now is that dude by the Red wall and what feels like a massively reduced encounter rate.

As in I only got a whole 3 fights my entire time here. How bizarre.



Yellow wall's just around the corner from there and leads to a very small outside area.



...Almost feels like the Blue and Yellow ones here should be the other way around. There's nothing here but this Vital Noise. Weird.



Next up's Manipura which has two walls for us to get past.


Hunting Field ~ Second Movement



Only problem is they're pretty far apart. One past Gate 6's closest so we'll head over there first.



Our second Power Noise is the only thing here. There's two rooms but one is strangely empty. Seems so weird that there are empty rooms gated off...



Anyway, the other Yellow wall's over on the second floor by Gate 2. Need both the Blue and Yellow keys to get to this one.



...It's, um, not particularly worth it. Just a single Soma Drop here.



Ah well, last we have the Citadel over at Anahata to contend with again.


Man's Tomb ~ Second Movement



Just the one Yellow wall this time. It's even pretty easy to get to since it's near the rooftop entrance and all.



This one has two rooms behind it as well but with only one item to get. It's the new bullet that was conspicuously absent the last time we were here.



It is the best one we could have right now by far. We could also buy them at this point but it costs like 15k a piece so bugger that. There's no point to buying any bullets except like one but that's a special exception we'll get to much, much later.



That's all the Yellow walls we've run into so far, so it's back to Coordinate 136 for what's next.


Point136



...Something seems different here. Can't quite put my finger on what, though. Maybe the castle did something different with its hair.

Anyway, let's talk to that Pyro Jack and see what's up.




Why are you still here ho? Mick's already winked off to the other world. I'm just chillin' with my partner here ho! Hee!



Sorry, not this time.

But, but! Get out! Out!



And that's because--
Why?
It's because--
Why?



A new K-hee-ng, ho? Interesting...

So go hee home! This is for the new king! You can't open the chest anyway, cus you don't have the key, ho! .......Please go hee home. I beg you.



Revel in...er-- Repent of your evil deeds ...and serve the King. Hee may give you some treasure ho!
I can look for it.



Our comrades may have already found it, though.

Alright, so we've got a key to track down in this place and there are a few places it could be. Unfortunately, most of them are out of the way and other than where the one we want is I don't remember where they are.



So I just beelined for the third puzzle room and took the platform to the left of the entrance.



This actually takes us down a floor to a small room with another new bullet in it.



Probably should've gotten this before, but we didn't really need it then. Sort of don't now either, but it can Stun dudes so it has its uses.



Stood next to our new bullet is this lady. She seems awful familiar...




It's such a great honor to be queen that it almost brings me to tears... Hey! What're YOU looking at!? I get it! Now you're going to embarass me by telling all my comrades what you saw me doing! Not if I have anything to say about it, buster!



Hunting ~ Compulsion



So Titania's a pretty big chump. Good thing too, since I'll be sick of her by the end of this game.

Anyway, she's weak to Ailments. So I have Gale make her Panic.



She can cast some pretty strong spells, appropriately enough for a demon only found in the final dungeon and an end-game optional area.

...No, really. Punching waaaaaaaay above our weightclass here.



Her item drop when Panicked is a wonderful item called a Theory Cell. It's not a top-tier cell, it's actually around the middle of the ranks, but it sells for a pretty penny at this stage.



Once panicked, she drops quickly enough and she even... drops a second Theory Cell...


okay thats fucking great i have plans for this now


Point136



Got the Sugar Key which we want to continue but first a minor detour back to Swadhisthana!



Getting back to a Terminal is easy enough, and we pass a Red wall immediately after leaving Titania's room. Guess we'll be back here later after all.



Theory sells for 60,000 Macca a piece at Maximum noise. Since we have two of them I can buy something special with this money. I need 100k for a Scheme and this does the job quite nicely.



Money and a new Mantra bought, we head back to the front door of Coordinate 136 and give Jack the key.


Let's open it, hee!



oh my god the inside of the chest is wallpapered with smiling jack frosts eeee

Okay. I'll take the treasure then, thank hee you ho. Ho ho ho! You're so naive, ho.



eeeee... Ahem. Anyway, Jack runs off with our hard-earned loot. That's cool. We never were really promised a reward, but we can go and meet the king now. Let's run aaaaaaaall the way back up to the top floor...



And someone new is residing in the princess's room.


Big Battle ~ Prelude



I know you're the King and all, but it's rather rude to stand on the bed's canopy!

This is the King's castle, HO. The King decides the HEE code. HEE HO Article One:



HEE HO Article Two:



ohmygod i just noticed the smiling face on his scepter that is sooooo adorable



Ahem! Anyway, it's time for our first optional boss fight!


Optional Boss: Fiend King Frost
no, that length is not a mistake; doing this a wee bit earlier than intended is all.

Hunting ~ Compulsion



Since everyone's packing a debuff for this fight we can use Debilitate ourself. Takes all our turns though so we won't be using it here. Too risky.



Speaking of debuffs, because we're around 10 levels under the recommended range for this fight (low 30s when you want to be at least 40), we're gonna need 'em. So starting off with Taunts then.

Thankfully the king cannot Dekunda.



He also has some real fuckin' nasty Ice attacks so we want to stop that. Drain would be ideal but I don't actually have that yet.



Void isn't good enough since the King alone gets 3 turns. Naturally he drains Ice so Repel is out of the equation save for emergencies.



Celestial Gift lets him summon a big Jack Frost. This one is tougher than normal, of course.



Also has Makakaja. If we didn't have Ice resistance this would be lethal.



The King likes having two subjects out so we can take advantage of that. Also want to use Dekaja in some form to get rid of the 4 Tarukajas that get added by Taunt.



The King has a lot of attacks, but he really liked using this one in particular.



Frost Rush has him summon a bunch of tiny Jack Frosts that body slam one dude. Naturally this is Physical damage and fucking wrecks shit hard. That's 141 AFTER the Dekaja by the way.



The two Taunts were necessary to deal damage too. That's 135 after his defence has been crippled and without a resistance. Fire's out since he nullifies that, and the King has no weakness either.

Also he has somwhere betwen 4150-4200 HP. This might take a while...



Other skills in the King's arsenal are Power Wave which is weaker than Frost Rush (barely) but hits everyone. Swell.



His subjects seem to really prefer just trying to punch ya. And they can rack up the damage fast what with the 3 of 'em getting 5 turns and all.



So, Sukundas it is then. Throwing their accuracy into the shitter will help alleviate things but they still hit quite often even with 4 of them applied.



Although they do also miss a ton, which costs 2 turns everytime it happens.



...Buuuut the King has Megido. We don't have Makunda, so this damage can't be mitigated.



Thankfully it doesn't deal all that much; this is after one Makakaja after all. Plus Gale dodged, which is nice whenever that happens.



So, we can't weaken Megido but we can negate his Ice spells. That just leaves the physicals then; their hitrate is reduced but they can still pack a whollop whenever they land.



After 4 Tarundas, they're reduced to "managable" rather than "drop everything heal now." Gone from 140+ to ~70.



That done, we can now focus on blasting the fuck outta the King. But since each hit doesn't deal much of a dent on his own this takes a while.



The mid-tier spells do come with random damage variants too. Only problem is, uh, in the random part. Getting a couple hits that deal more damage is nice buuuuut it does have a tendency to hit once too. Not worth it most of the time.



Also killing the minions is nice but only temporarily. He'll bring them back soon thereafter and the new ones aren't debuffed. Blargh.



Could buff our physical damage output and use Serph's pretty good strength to speed things up but the King resists Physicals so that's needed to just bring them on par with the spells.



Also once the King drops to around 1,000 HP, his critical sprite has his head droop and he looks sad.



So we put him out of his misery, gain a fucking ton of Karma, 100 grand and a decent chunk of Atma too.


Point136



For beating the King, we get this. The Ice Crystal is the first of a few items that have a special use. Next time we use any Karma terminal...



Ice Crystal has been confiscated and King Mantra has been added to the Mantra Grid. Embrace this new Mantra, Child of Purgatory.



So that's our first hidden node opened up.



The King Mantra's lurking in the bottom right corner of the board and costs... well, what do you know. Exactly 100,000 Macca. How convenient!



Megido's a bit odd to be in here, honestly. It's the low-level Almighty spell but the better versions are on the board without boss fights shenanigans. Cocytus is mid-tier Ice and hits randomly but has a VERY high chance of freezing dudes.

Null Sleep is the real reason you want this thing. Despite its name, it does not nullify sleep. No, it does something else...



We'll worry about exactly what that is when it gets mastered though. That done, let's head on off to this ship Cielo found for us...