Part 21: Sector Delphinus

Alright, sector Delphinus. Into the garbage dump we go...

A Rotten Nation



Even my eyes are watering up... This is the worst sector we've seen yet.
Geez, Zelenin... I feel bad making a lady like you dig through all this garbage...



I'm more worried about the demons attacking.
The strike team is backing me up, and I have some power as well, so I think I can make it...
Getting feisty there, First Lieutenant.
Must be incredible, having a guardian angel, huh?
Please don't start, Jimenez. I won't fight any unnecessary battles; I can't.
Anyway, let's all work together to carry out the mission.



Alright, let's go, Tadano! The mountain of trash calls!



It sure does! I think that's a vat of nuclear waste next to those stairs? And, yes, these stairs are right at the entrance. There's also a path left and a path right, though, so we'll go to the right first.



Well, uh, I guess the first thing of substance is beating up Unknowns and making a Tam Lin. Baphomet's source is almost entirely to get rid of his Curse weakness, which is a giant liability in Delphinus in particular.



Also, surprising probably no-one, Tam Lin was the only thing missing from making Frost Ace!

Well, now it's 5 levels that's stopping that.



Oh and I'm also gonna make a Skogsra. Mediarama and Recarm are replacable trash, but Acid Breath is 2 Rakundas in one. She's a good offensive buffer and she can maybe Charm dudes too.

Also she's just kind of solid in general. Her Fire weakness doesn't matter too much, resists Instant Death and she can learn a lot of nice support skills without issue.



Very first thing we find is a box containing 2 Beads? Sure, okay. It's not super necessary any more but I'm never gonna complain about this really.

The Fear of God



Speaking of Incubus, we did kind of use one of them earlier without much fanfare either. There's nothing about him that you can't really see here or deduce from the above Source use. He's weak to Elec, resists Wind and is immune to Expel. His Source is an easy way to get Acid Breath.

Also Baphomet's here too. Hi, Baphomet!



Speaking of things that are here, Orias has been demoted to random schmuck as of now. He's still weak to Fire, but now he only resists Expel and Curse. He has no ailment resistances, but at least he has Rakunda to pretend to matter.



Nue is a bit more interesting than anything else here, so far. He's weak to Gun and Wind, but at least he resists Elec? He naturally comes with Acid Breath. Also his basic attack is Gun elemental and has a 10% chance to inflict Fear. His Source gives Ziodyne if you still don't have that somehow.

Speaking of fun skills, Wendigo's here! Hi, Wendigo! He's our first real example of weird mechanical shenanigans. Wendigo's got Bobasma and Tyranny as default skills. Bobasma we've seen before, technically. Tyranny is new. Tyranny is 1-3 hits of Physical damage. Each hit has a 60% chance to inflict Fear. Tyranny is fucking nuts good; it's 12 MP and the damage isn't hot, but that's not why you use Tyranny. You use Tyranny for being the easiest and best way to inflict Fear.

Oh right, uhhh... He's weak to Fire and Elec (and 300% weak to Mute), but resists Wind and is immune to Ice.

Except he's not immune to Ice. He nulls it, sure, but if you replace that with, say, Drain? He only heals 50% the normal amount because he inherently resists it on top of being immune. There's exactly one demon that does a way more shitty thing with this. You'll see...



It's neither of these boys. Kwancha is all about that there poison; he's weak to Elec and Wind, resists Expel and nulls Curse. He's immune to Poison, and his default skills are Toxic Cloud, Posumudi and Paraladi.

We used a Churel before and I did talk about him then. There's nothing new here.



Lastly, we have Mandrakes. I think I talked about one of these before, but they're weak to Fire and nullify Curse, Paralysis, Poison and Petrification. They paralyse dudes and that's basically it.

A Rotten Nation



Anyway, in the actual map we have this guy hanging out in the corner by those 2 Beads.

What happened to him? He's been acting up ever since we got to this sector.
It's not like him at all to talk that way...
Does it have something to do with this landfill of a sector?



The path around to the north from there is very, very long and has no branches away. Up here, there's just a single Tetraja Stone. Oh, we'll see that guy he was talking about later.



Following the path left from there, brings us to these 5 Life Stones. Kind of a crappy thing to find at this point, huh.



Path from there leads down to these 2 Dis-Stones and... we've looped the whole way around this floor. Augh, that was such a waste of time!



Well, almost... it gave enough fights to get to level 30. Level 30 is good, doubly-so if you're Neutral right now. Hello Black Frost. The biggest issue with on-paper Black Frost is that he has no Ailment resistance, but a least he has no Ailment weakness. Or any weakness at all, for that matter.



Hey Matador. Gonna use the shit outta Matador, hell yeah.

Also he has Chakra Walk. That gives MP back every ~10 steps in the Schwarzwelt whenever he's in the active party. The only thing aside from this that I didn't mention last time is that his base attack hits a single dude 1-3 times. It's quite good, yes.



Anyway, this guy is by those Dis-Stones.

I'm gonna make that placid face of hers crinkle in fear! Grrrrr...!

> Something is clearly wrong with the crewman...



Hmm, how odd... anyway, more relevant right now is that there are hidden doors we can't open yet on both the left and right sides of the stairs leading up.



So, we'll just head on to the 2nd floor for now. There's a terminal immediately...? That's kind of weird considering this is a tiny number of steps away from the sector entrance.

Malevolence and Benevolence



Also when we approach, Zelenin hits us up over our communicator.

Please! I'm in danger... I need your backup!
I ran into trouble during my observation mission. It's demons...
They haven't attacked yet, but I can't abandon my equipment.
Please, can't you come help me?
Be right there.
Thank you, Hitonari! I knew I could count on you.
I'll explain the situation once you get here.



Huh, that doesn't seem all that far away. Talk about both convenient and helpful.

I'll keep a low profile until you get here.
Hurry, Hitonari!

Sure, so now that we're on the second floor this seems like a good time to talk about the Enemy Search demons in Delphi--



2% chance. Well, I sure hope I don't fall by his arrow...

Fiend White Rider

An Honor Befitting That Name



Yeah, so White Rider. Kinda got the jump on us big time, by being the first Enemy Search that didn't give an Unknown result. Whew boy....



This is his basic attack. Yeah, he's pretty damn strong! Despite using a bow and thus Gun element being sensible, it's Phys type. Also, appparently he really hated Skogsra in this fight for some reason?!



Gonna start off by being sensible and debuffing the shit outta this guy then.



Both in terms of offense, and defense. You may have noticed that he's level 49. Yeah, he's pretty darn tanky!



When he's not casually shooting the shit outta you, he'll sometimes cast Staredown. Staredown is just the usable version of Gehenna from Morax's fight; 70% chance to Fear every enemy.



Also, he's weak to Wind. He nulls Elec, Expel and Curse.



Thankfully, he doesn't mind if you modify stats to +/-4. Even nicer is that if someone gets put into the stock (if, as a random example, Skogsra does that to herself immediately) and then brought back out, they still keep their buffs.



Oh yeah and he can cast Maziodyne.



Remember, this is with him at -4 Attack. He does slightly more damage to Skogsra than Matador despite his weakness, even.



But this is the dangerous one. And it's only Light tier Gun damage!



Like, reaaaaal dangerous. This also serves to highlight just how fucking good Resist is if you haven't quite grasped that yet. Black Frost takes 135 while Neutral to Gun damage.

Matador takes ~100 points less than that because he resists. Which means he takes "50%" damage. It's a reduction to the base power, not the actual damage I am fairly sure.

The End



White Rider here is a fairly tanky dude and comes with 1200 HP. That's a significant amount more than Matador, yes. He's immune to every Ailment, just like Matador was in his fight.



He also gives decent EXP and drops Somas. That's pretty nice, really.

End

An Honor Befitting That Name



In all seriousness, let's talk about the rest of the Enemy Search dudes now as well.

Futotama (15% chance of appearing solo, 18% chance of appearing with 3 Mandrakes) is kind of interesting. Not to fight, since his only resists are that he's immune to Expel and Curse. No, what makes him interesting is that he has a unique skill called Tables Turned. He CAN use it in these fights but I've never seen him do it. It's a 70% chance to flip buffs and debuffs (targets everyone and rolls that chance for everything separately), so if you put a thing to +4 if this hits, it becomes -4 instead.

This is insanely gimmicky, yes. It has a pretty clear use, though.



Kurama Tengu (15% solo, 18% these two Mothman things) is a dude we need to beat up to get to use. He's marginally trickier than he seems at first glance, since he Nulls Gun and Expel damage and he Reflects Wind. He has no ailment resistances and no weaknesses in any way either. Thankfully his skillset sucks balls, since he can only punch one dude, cast Magarula or waste his time with Mahama.

Mothman meanwhile is weak to Gun and Wind. Resists Elec and Nulls Curse. Can cast Mudoon or Stone Curse (50% chance to Petrify).



And lastly, we have the Hare of Inaba. 32% chance of appearing solo, and always appears solo. He's the final UMA, yes really, and resists Expel and Curse.

He's weak to Gun, Fire, Ice, Elec and Wind but he takes base damage from the lot (so he's as weak to them as he is to Phys which he's Neutral to). Those weaknesses just exist solely to give you Demon Co-Ops. This is not the last time we will see "weaknesses" that aren't and are only for the player's benefit.

Strange Journey does this thing where it bends over backwards to make shit as easy as possible for you and I don't get it.

Oh, skills? Sukukaja and Mediarama. Yes, really. That's kind of super awful!

A Rotten Nation



Okay, now we can focus on what's really important here: the mountain of trash and scrapped junk. There's a hidden door behind the terminal but we can't open this one yet.



Near the terminal, there are these weird almost-river like areas. We can step into it like normal and it's not an ailment damage tile, surprisingly...



Nah, it's much more boring. It's just a conveyer belt, basically. Automove tiles, oh boy. Well, it could always be worse. They could be in a dark room or something.

And, hey, the game is even kind enough to automap them AS conveyer belts for you. It shows which direction they go and everything.



Where is this thing taking me!? I'm not trash!

> The crewman is acting strangely...

Hmm... that makes two folks acting hyper-aggressively for no real reason. I coulda swore we already did wrath.

Anyway, two paths here. Both are automove sections, so we have a navigation puzzle! Or, rather, I do. It's not really difficult thanks to it being mapped sensibly...



But the reason 1F is a giant expansive of nothing and tedium is because a lot of belts here drop you into pits. They send you squarely into the middle of the left, right and top paths on 1F and its tedious as all hell to deal with.



Speaking of tedious, here's Camazotz. Hi, Camazotz. He's kind of okay, I guess? Like reflecting Gun and resisting Phys is nice and that Elec weakness really doesn't matter much. Really, just want his source because it gives Resist Gun.

Phys and Gun resistances as skills are pretty rare, because Atlus was sensible with them and realised they were good. One of the rare times I get to say something in this game was almost balanced well.



Anyway, path from that Angry Strike Team member isn't too complex. It's just a flat 50/50 shot at getting here, after all. Poison Gas is thoroughly "eh" but we're using this as a reference point.



There's a fixed forma here that gives us 2 DF Delphite which is nice. This is also kind of mostly obscuring something in that alcove in front. You see it peeking out of the bottom left there?



It's our fourth Black Box!







Hmm... now, I know what you're thinking. You were thinking that because this is a trash dump shithole, it's obviously representative of sloth, right? Well, no. We start things off by having the entire Strike Team and a significant number of other folks leaving the Red Sprite to actively find the Rosetta. That's the exact antithesis of sloth.

This and the Strike Team's erratic behaviour are our real clues into what this place represents. There is one other major revealing factor that we've seen exactly once so far.

Wait, hang on.



It seems you've picked up some data from a black box.
I've been compiling all the data we collect. Could you please return to the deck?

We'll do that later. It's not important right now.



This is what the doors in Delphinus are. Take a good look at it. What does it look like to you? I'll give you a minute.













It is a person holding their hands to their face in misery. Tristitia is one of the eight sins as written originally by John Cassian. It is latin for "sorrow" but it effectively means overarching despair, despondency or misery in this case. Surrender in hopelessness. A cycle of misery from which one can never escape - Delphinus is not a trash heap from laziness, it is a trash heap from neglect. By giving in to this extreme depression (not to be confused with like actual clinical depression, probably), one closes oneself off from the outside and only dwells on the negative. The present sucks, the future is just more misery and only the past back when Things Were Good is worth a damn.

But wait, I said eight sins and there's only seven, right? Haha, wrong!

Ira, or Wrath, we saw in Antlia.
Luxuria, or Lust, we saw in Bootes.
Gula, or Gluttony, we saw in Carina.
Tristitia, or Despair, we see now in Delphinus.

Avaritia, Superbia, Vanagloria, Acedia...
Avarice, Pride, Vanity, Sloth...

These four we haven't seen yet.

But there's one missing from there, right? Where's Invidia/Envy? Not on this list. The seven sins as you and I traditionally know them was an updated list compiled in the 6th century by Pope Gregory I. Tristitia and Acedia were combined into one thing giving what we consider sloth. Vanagloria and Superbia were combined into one thing to create our understanding of pride. Envy was added at this time, presumably because it's mentioned in Galatians 5:21 (as part of a passage that begins at 5:19), but a lot of things are mentioned at that time and they're not all considered sins.

Point here is that clearly while the Schwarzwelt has a blatant Sin thing going on, it sure ain't using Gregory's list. It sure ain't using the 7 listed in Proverbs nor the 8 listed in Revelation for that matter either. No one uses those lists. They include things like Cowardice and Witchcraft...



Anyway, this ain't a Sunday School so let's get moving further along, shall we? This Bead Chain is the only thing down in this corner and there's no reason to come here except for this. Totally worth it though.



I also managed to snag some Chakra Cores which I could've sworn we got before at some point? The game tells me they're not new and I am damn sure I got some in Antlia but checking earlier I may have just forgotten to mention them I guess.

And by "I guess" I mean I almost certainly did. They make, well, Chakra Drops and co.



More importantly, that Forma that was just north of the Bead Chain was a fixed AT Delphite spawn. How useful.



The actual main path to here is pretty easy, honestly. Just go where you can and you'll get here no problem. This hidden door we CAN clearly open, at last.



I decided to let Tam Lin swap out Mudoon because it's not that useful here. He opted to go with Hamaon as its replacement. That's also not that useful here.

...I swear I'll explain skill change mechanics later. They're just REALLY long.



Anyway, if you somehow missed this door, then you'll learn real quick that you missed something. Both paths in the previous room lead to pits and everywhere else just brings you here or back to where you just came from.



Huh, we can just... go up to the 3rd floor and ditch Zelenin.

Also that first hidden door was just a shortcut. Figures.



We won't go up to the 3rd just yet. There's more of this part to explore, after all.

Encounter



Hmm, a lady surrounded by snow wearing a kimono? Not quite a blizzard...

Also fucking hell yes she comes with Dormina and Eternal Rest by default. She also resists Sleep (25%) and her Source gives Eternal Rest. Sweet!



Completely relevant to everything here I'm sure is that Yuki-Jyorou literally translates as "Snow Harlot."

Oh... THAT human. Yes, I remember him well. He was... distinctive.
He attempted to court me amidst the blizzard I created, and he didn't freeze one whit.
...I believe he was under the impression his words were carried away in the winds...



......

> Yuki Jyorou seems to be reminiscing...

Oh... right. You were expecting an answer of me, yes?
Then could you tell him this?
......



Ahahaha, yesssss!

His attempts at courtship were so patently insincere that I shiver to remember them...
That may be difficult to credit, coming from me...
But I assure, they were no laughing matter. The more I heard, the less impressed I became.



It might have been funny if it weren't so sad.
...Have I made myself clear?
Then go and deliver my message to this An-something fellow.

We'll check in on Anthony and laugh at him in the future, I guess. Not doing that right now though.

A Rotten Nation



There's not much left on 2F. A few Chakra Drops at this point is kind of like "ok." It's like... why bother.



Oh and there's a terminal around the corner from Zelenin. This is semi-sensible but only until we get that hidden door shortcut open.



On 3F, there's a fixed forma immediately that gives us some White Cores. Now THESE are new, but nothing fancy. They're used for a few ailment cures.



Also on the 3rd floor, there are two places that look like event rooms... but they're both completely empty right now. Weird.

Malevolence and Benevolence



Huh? No one told you!? Impossible!
...Well, maybe I did forget to tell you, but...
That's beside the point!
How's it look for me if you get all the results!?



Go back and investigate your own turf already!
Just go! Don't piss me off, man!

Welp, looks like we're not getting through here yet. I guess we might as well go see what Zelenin's gotten herself into now.



I was setting up the quantum tunnel detector when demons suddenly appeared.
They're over there... Can you see them?



I've been hiding here so they won't find me, but I can't leave, either...
They came at the worst possible time... How annoying.
I have what the angel Mastema gave me for protection, but...

It's only a base Power and that stopped being useful at the start of Carina?

It won't be enough to take them all out.
I tried asking Jimenez...



He sounded rather vehement. I don't know why he's so upset.
Is he frustrated over the mission? Taking it out on the rest of the crew will hardly improve things.
You, on the other hand, never seem fazed by anything. You're a model crewman... no, really, I mean it.
So, do you think you can handle it?
I'm ready to go.
All right. Beat them for me!

An Honor Befitting That Name



Ghoul's new, huh? He CAN turn up in Delphinus but I guess he just didn't. Weak to Fire, Expel and a 300% weakness to Mute. Nulls Curse at least. His basic attack has a 30% chance to Poison.

These guys are technically minibosses in the same way Fomor and Macabre were. They have more HP than normal (I know this because I didn't quite one shot them!) and can't be instakilled. That's it. Moving on...

Malevolence and Benevolence



Now I can resume my observation duties. Thank you.
Oh, yes... you haven't picked up the Rosetta signal yet, have you?



I don't understand. The Demonica's Rosetta search has been upgraded, but we still can't find it.
I may have an idea, though. Could you help me?





Can you come to the 3rd floor? I'll explain the details there.
...Oh, but I must finish my observation duties first. I'll only be a moment...

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