The Let's Play Archive

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga

by Dragonatrix

Part 25: Internment Facility (Part One)

Road to Sodom ~ The Second Movement



We won't be talking to everyone this time around, since its mostly just samey stuff.



But, I do like that Fred and Roland have painted their clothes to be more accurate to the Embryon's style. Roland added the orange stripe to his left sleeve (right above his brand) and Fred's done it on his right leg and even his hat.




But, I like you all. And, Sera cares about us too... and dat can't be fake. We gotta follow de love, ja?

Cielo has the best ideas.



Anyway, a bit to the left is a relatively easy to miss Great Chakra. You CAN very, very slightly see the light on its side when talking to Cielo but it's super hard to notice if you don't know it's there.

Going up!


The Mole (2)

Silence









I wonder what this guy's up to...



Scheme of Betrayal

Impossible, How could that happen?







I see.







So, Angel has a gun of her own, huh?



But she only has just the one bullet. Can't really capitalise on hitting a weakness that way.


So that's it...





So artificial...

End



Just a small little rest stop before we move on to our main goal here.



It does give us a chance to talk to everyone, but like before we'll just skip most of it.



I just like this one because you can see Adil right there, and the whole disturbance thing is superfluous and unnecessary.



We can enter regardless of what Adil does or does not do.


Meeeeaaaat! Processing Plant



Alright NOW we can begin the next dungeon.



Immediately to the left of the entrance is a small karma terminal and a life terminal. At least you can take a break pretty quick here if you really need to.



There's nothing else by the entrance and progress is nice and easy to come across. Just go straight north.



And immediately get stopped by this fella.


This is the shop. Wherever I set up shop, that's where the shop is. This is serious business -- remember that.

Mad Mart



"A wise man sets up shop in enemy territory." Got it?



Alright, so flowers sell for seemingly low amounts of cash considering how expensive things get but that's not a problem. These are the first couple after all. We'll just sell one clover for now and...



Unlock the ability to upgrade the Mad Mart stuff. Unlike before where it was only from selling Cells, here it's done whenever you buy or sell past certain amounts. $100 gets you 1 point and we need 100 points to get the store upgraded a little. So, uh, $10,000 in total which isn't really that bad. We could do it immediately by selling that Great Chakra but I am a weird and dumb hoarder so I don't.



Instead, I sell a bunch of crap I don't need, buy meh items I don't need and then this happens.


That means you're Rank 2 now. Serious business relies on serious customers, like you. You ranked up, huh? Go ahead, check out the new items.



Even I don't know what's inside those things. Serious business requires a little risk, you know? For your informtion, I don't award points for box purchases. It's nothing personal...



The box stuff is in in buy items, but the other thing we get at rank 2 is the ability to buy a couple Karma Rings. We'll do that in a minute.



First, we need Max solar noise. This is important.



Now we'll buy the Magic and Quick Rings. Only one of each because you can't have two of any ring. Sucks but its understandable why.

This does give us 60 points for an easy no brainer, though. You can't get the rings anywhere else and the Magic one, at least, is very good.



Once we get both we can get a random meh item for free. At least I might remember to use the Chakra Drop sometime ever, so I guess we'll take that.



Only boxes available right now are Crimson ones but they're arguably the best ones (for what we need) anyway so that's nice.



See, the Crimson Box can give any low tier attack item. This covers all the five elemental stuff, as well as expel and dark. Wild Cards too, which we can sell for 1100 which gives a small profit. Too random to be worthwhile though.

BUT! At Max Solar Noise, boxes have a chance of containing something else. It's random still, but...



We can get a new Ring from them. The Rich Ring is argaubly the best of the bunch you can get this way. The name's a big clue but we'll see why in a minute.

First...



Now that we're rank 2, everything sells for an extra 10% more than its base selling price. Hence Wild Cards selling for 1100 despite being 1000 before, for example. So, we CAN manipulate the sell prices for flowers but they can only go up and it takes actual work now.

...Needless to say, yes, there are flowers it is much better to hold onto and sell once the prices get higher.



We could easily,
easily, get to Rank 3 right now but I'm content with where we are for the time being. It's only $9400 more 'til Rank 3 and that's gonna be very easy to manage anyway.

Meeeeaaaat! Processing Plant



...Especially since the Rich Ring is fantastic. It's not a significant boost (only 1.25x the normal amount) but it helps a ton all the same. Considering how much of a problem it can be gaining money especially early on, this makes it so much easier.



Hey, remember this Yellow Crystal? Let's use it now. The Magic Ring gives +3 pushing Cielo to 16 Magic making him competent.



Stacking the Crystal onto it makes it +5. Much better, much more usable and puts Cielo on par with everyone else worth using spells with now. How nice.



Anyway, we just run further on in and then this happens.


If Boss finds out we didn't notice the spies... *shudder*
Come on, let's kill this guy before that happens.
It doesn't matter. We'll take care of you first.







Now we can finally see Roland in action...



He doesn't quite be as show-offy as the Embryon, but he is new to this whole Tuning business after all.



Doesn't stop Indra from being cool tho.


Heroic Battle



Anyway, we fight a couple Nues. I wonder what they're weak to...



Oh no what a surprise. It was Fire all along.

So, yeah, this is not a hard fight. Oh well.



At least we got the first of a couple new skills out of it. Resolution is a passive that makes it so your regular attack hits harder as you lose health. It's pretty niche but could be really useful for Berserk fights I guess. Really the biggest problem with it is that it doesn't work for skills at all.


Meeeeaaaat! Processing Plant



What about the others who snuck in? Are they alright?
Yeah. They should be mixed in with the prisoners in the underground prison.



He's...really strong. There's no way you can defeat him in a straight fight.



Alright, now we can finally proceed onwards. There's a minor detour to the left and it just leads to a chest containing 3 Dis-Mutes. Meh.

Battle for Survival



Lots of new enemies, though. Onkots are back and better than before if only because they don't have a weakness to Elec now. Except their ailment weakness has become all encompassing.

...Also Cielo starts with Dream Haze.



Azus seem intimidating with two mid-tier spells, but being weak to Elec (and Gun but whatever) is kind of a death sentence considering most of the party knows Zio.



Orobas is even less of a threat. We hit it with Bufu and literally anything else and it dies.



...And when it does, this happens. Sapphires are pretty nice, but also a complete crapshoot.



Boosts a stat by a very nice amount for this stage but its wholly random which one. Still, giving Serph +6 Strength or turning the Power Ring into a +3/+3 Str/Mag attack booster or basically anything else is pretty good too. There's not really a bad roll here.



It came up Luck which is arguably the worst. It's not ideal, sure, but it's not bad either so can't complain.


Battle with Rare Devil
inexplicably not on the dds2 ost nor integral because atlus (actually good version courtesy of poptartsninja!)



So, Omoikane's back and VERY different now. Rather than shoot to kill, it's more of a minigame of sorts.



OUR TREASURE IS HEAVY, BUT WE ARE SWIFT AS WIND.
ONLY MAGIC WILL WORK. BUT, ONLY WE KNOW WHICH MAGIC WILL WORK.
HOW LUCKY DO YOU FEEL?
LET'S FIND OUT, SHALL WE?



...well shit i cant win now

So, think of Omoikanes as a sort of pseudo-match game. Each one of the five has a different weakness, and they appear in a randomly selected pattern. Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing what the chosen pattern is beyond flinging spells and hoping it sticks.

There's 5 patterns, so that makes it easy to remember. Or you could just write them down (these are left-to-right ordered for convenience);

1: Force → Earth → Electricity → Ice → Fire
2: Ice → Electricity → Fire → Force → Earth
3: Electricity → Fire → Ice → Earth → Force
4: Fire → Force → Earth → Electricity → Ice
5: Earth → Ice → Force → Fire → Electricity



You only get the one shot at this, though. Come Omoikanes' first turn, they just run. Ah well.

And, no, relying on something like Berserk or MT attacks doesn't work. You actively cannot be Berserked in an Omoikane fight, since it's a special scripted encounter which overrides Berserk and forces you to be fully tuned by default.

MT attacks just make them run away.


Meeeeaaaat! Processing Plant



Now, where were we? Ah, right. By the way further in to the north of the room, there's a small detour around here. It lets you snag a couple extra Revival Beads.



Further in, we come to a split with no indication as to which way is the right way and which is not.



The right path just leads to the Phantom Ring though, so we'll grab this even if it is so worthless I will never use it.



A slight Agility boost when in Human form. It's so not worth using it is astounding.

We still want to pick it up, though.



Back on the left, we immediately come to another crossroads. Unsurprisingly, north is progress here but this chest contains...



Eh. It adds +2 Vit to a Ring. Not explicitly bad or anything, but its not all that great either.



Follow the path around to the end of the room again. That little alcove to the left of the door just had 3 Dis-Stuns in it. Nothing too exciting.

Unsurprisingly, though, there's something else hidden off to the right here.



More flowers are never bad to have. This gives us another 22 shop points right off the bat.



Continuing onwards now, and we're in more of an actual important area. We pretty obviously came in through the back entrance via a warehouse so it makes sense.


Battle for Survival



And, of course, new area means new enemies. We've also got a couple new combos that weren't in DDS1. Sol Blaster is pretty nice since it hits everything and has a high crit chance... that sounds familiar somehow. Probably imagining it.

Crystal Dust is basically DDS1 Cocytus but it hits everything, rather than being random.

I, uh, I don't use either of them though. As nice as they are on paper, they both require all 3 press turns to use. That's part of why I don't bother.



This guy nulling Ice is the other part. It's not really much of an issue, though; can just blast him with Fire or have Cielo put him to sleep whenever.



Nekomata is basically identical to before. Kind of disappointing, but she's been in the third dungeon both times so whatever.



Thoth, meanwhile, got hit with the nerfbat pretty hard. Lost access to Rage, doesn't resist physicals anymore, can't use a Ma-Dyne, his immunity to Panic got replaced with a weakness and is still weak to Death.

Which, uh, I don't have yet. So, instead, he gets stabbed and he dies.



Alright, so now we get to a small branch in the path. The right leads to another branch so that's probably progress. North brings us to...



Our first Field Hunt.


Internment Facility Field Hunt

Sicily



So, field hunts are a bit different now. Rather than run a course with a mitama at the end we have to get to before time runs out...



We run a course that loops over and over and over again until time runs out. There is no way to finish before then, and the goal is to hunt as many purple orbs as possible in that time.

39 is pretty decent, albeit just short of what I wanted, but it'll do. There's no super-secret reward for getting a ton or anything.



Once time runs out, that's when we get into an actual fight.


Battle for Survival



And, yes, it's against Mitamas. This is where the hunt part before comes into play. The more orbs you get, the longer they stick around.

Things are mostly unchanged at this point, but Aras feel less tanky than they were before. That could just be me imagining it, but they definitely have MUCH less HP than they did originally.



Anyway 39 and sub-3 Mitama nets an A rank. Unsurprisingly, there is an S rank and... absolutely nothing on the internet lists the requirements for them at all as far as I can tell.



...To get an S rank, you need at least 42 kills. This does include the Mitamas, so the absolute minimum orbs you can get away with is 38 (if you can wipe all 4 Mitama). 42 orbs is actually damned hard to get though. 40 is easy enough to be consistent, and at this stage 2 Mitama drop pretty fast too. There are no extra rewards for an S rank though, so don't worry too much about it.

Redoing Field Hunts is the same as before; 5 full solar cycles in the dungeon, no random encounters in the Field Hunt area to make it easy etc. etc.


Meeeeaaaat! Processing Plant



That detour dealt with, we can continue onwards and immediately take another detour. This time it's to the south.



I see two items and something on the map right next to us. I think this one was far more lucrative than expected.



You don't actually have to know this machine is here. You can ignore this room wholesale and continue on just fine.



The gold container is a fight. About time we got our first monster-in-a-box encounter.



...Oh. It's just 2 Orobas. They get Bufu'd and they die.

Regular box is just a single Medical Kit. Whatever.



Back on the main path, we come to a door that couldn't really be that much more blatantly important if it tried.



Sadly we can't quite get in just yet, so we'll need to remember this is here for later.



And there's another one of these machines. This time covered in... something.


I don't like de vibes I'm getting from dis machine, bro.



Yeahhhhhh, let's try and ignore this one for now. That large karma terminal seems much more inviting and there's progress to the north too.



From here, we can go downstairs huh? I think this might just be the entrance to the actual prison area.


Epic Battle ~ Prelude



Jailer... this pretty much seals it, then. We'll just take this guy down and then bust everyone out.

Wait... You're those Asuras that escaped from purgatory!


(im apologising for nothing)

You won't get out here alive!

Epic Battle



Alright, so boss 3. Shouldn't be too hard, right?



Well, Kumbhanda gets the first turn which is a bit awkward but I'm not too worried. Black Bind is probably just a chance to stun or something.



Okay, so it's not stun. It's something new. And he gets three turns. And Black Bind hit everyone.



...yeah okay this wasn't actually a fight, it was just cutscene. Black Bind is scripted to hit everyone here.



And then, yeah, we're thrown in jail. Swell.