Part 24: Delphinus Rosetta Search

Prayer



Gonna take a quick trip back to the Red Sprite now that we've found Gore's Animate Corpse. Kind of a Big Deal, yes.

He was so... talkative. More persuasive than I'm used to...
Well... I get what Arthur is trying to say.
Dwelling on Commander Gore right now is only going to make us more confused, after all.
"Clear your heads and do your duty." That's what he meant.



But that's beside the point now. What's important is how he doesn't seem to be on our side anymore.
Might be time we rethink our stance towards him.
Commander Gore as the enemy... A nice piece of irony, huh?



He's... not human anymore. His death was normal, but this new "life" of his is not...
Seeing him move around without a Demonica is proof enough.



Tch... not only did the demons kill him, but now he's come back to life as a monster...
I tell you, I'm THIS close to really hating this world.



Or... Well, guess I better call him the "Ex-Commander" in earshot of Arthur.
I don't like this situation one bit, though... Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.



Other crewmen have died and not come back. What makes the Commander special?
Hmm... It's a mystery. Maybe Arthur's right. Maybe it's better if I don't dwell on it.

Chen raises a pretty good point. Why Gore? I'm sure we'll get an answer eventually.



Right now, we just get a smidge more stock to peruse. The Luna Knife is the requisite boring and ineffective weapon. It was ineffective before, now it's just a flat downgrade to what we could have for less actual work.

AT Delphite x2, Haunt Dry Skin x1 (Churel) and Femme Snow x1 (Yuki Jyorou) if you really want it and it's an upgrade somehow.



And for our only other new gun we have the Randall which... fucking christ that's awful. I genuinely cannot imagine any situation where you would willingly and intentionally use this thing. It's weak as hell, can't be targeted, deals a random NoH and it's only skill is the gun Agilao.

AT Delphite x1, Vile Long Horn x1 (Baphomet) and Wood Roots x2 (Mandrake) if you somehow can fathom a use for this thing that isn't done better by basically anything and everything else.



But to my mind, that's ignoring the more important and troubling issue.
Did he awaken of his own will...? Or was his rest disturbed?
I think how we approach him will depend a lot on which it is.

A Rotten Nation



Alright, so NOW we can make progress in Delphi--

Wait, we CAN right? Nothing is going to appear when I take a step forward and stop that? Finally!



Now that we can finally advance somewhere, we'll take the obvious door on the left of the map which leads to a dead-end. Which hosts a Search B door.

...Why? This is so pointless.



Anyway, the area over here is kind of semi-sprawling so we'll grab this Chakra Drop set first. It doesn't do much for helping with navigation but it's something.



Fortunately, it turns out that everything just leads to the same place anyway. There's also A Man to talk to here. How nice!

Oh... It's just you, Hitonari. Don't scare me like that.
I thought you were a demon about to attack... I was ready to pull the trigger.



Ungh...!
Oh... sorry. I got hurt when I was attacked from behind a little while back.



That's... not entirely true. Doppelganger exists, after all.

But, overall, yeah it's easy to tell if its genuine or fake and what team they're with. I alluded to it forever ago in update 2 and completely forgot to bring it back up again later, but you can tell by the color of the band on the arms:

Red is Strike Team;
Yellow is like Engineering and anything to do with maintaining the ships;
Blue is support staff like scientists and nurses
White is Hitonari because he's the protagonist.

Whoever it was, I could tell there was something wrong...



The guy probably wasn't treated enough with the MK Gun.
I saw him head upstairs.
Could you go find and cure that crewman, whoever it is?
Me, I'm hurt... I shouldn't move for a while. Will you do it?
Yes.
Be careful. I didn't see who the crewman was. Could be anyone.
There is a way to tell, though.



It's possible that whoever it is can still reason on some level.
It might be hard to tell just by talking to 'em, so be careful.



There ARE stairs over near here, which means this is probably just here for the sake of this sidequest.



Welp, let's explore this then.



There's a fixed Forma down here, which is just a dead-end outside of this, huh? Disappointing.

Malevolence and Benevolence



In the northern part of the area, there's a dead-end where 3 dudes are just hangin' out.

Well, not quite hanging out per se...



(A) Alright, which one of you guys is infected?



(B) Isn't it you? I mean, you're the one who brought it up.
You're the least rational out of all of us here. That's suspicious, I'd say.



(C) There's no point in arguing like this.
Let's all head back to the Red Sprite and...
(A) Aha! It's you! You're the one that's infected!



I'm right, aren't I? You don't fool me!
(C) Wh-What are you talking about!?
You're a strike team member! You need to get a grip, man!
I think you're the infected one!
Isn't that right, Hitonari?
Show me your right hands.
What? You want to see our right hands?
Why would you want to do that?



All right.
If you're not infected, you should have no problem showing it.
Let's see everyone's hands.



(A) Er, okay.



What about you, Hitonari?



(B) Hitonari's clean, too.
Which leaves...

> You checked the remaining crewman's hand.



(C) W-Wait! You got it all wrong!
Yeah, my right hand is hurt.



...Wait, what?

He hit me from behind... I got this defending myself.
Didn't I just finish explaining this to you two!?
(B) That's true, but...

Silence

Hey...! Let me ask you this, Hitonari.



Could it be that he was...?





Well, well, the gang's all here!
Thanks for finding them. Following you made it much easier than doing it myself.

Crisis





Oh no, not 20 damage. Whatever will I do...?

(B) So it WAS you...!
...Grrrrr! You're all dead...!

> Crewman McClane summoned demons and attacked!

An Honor Befitting That Name



Okay, so McClane is just-- wait, hold on a minute. Those Nues have analyze bars.



Okay, that's better. Now, McClane is just a dude so he's immune to Expel by default. He's also immune to Curse because that'd be too easy otherwise.



This is his damage output. Granted this is after a War Cry, but it's still quite frankly ridiculously bad. It's the one so he's at -2 and he can't even hurt me.



That's all he can do, and he's neutral to every other ailment. Because he's just A Dude.

A Rotten Nation



> The crewman staggered back...

> You used the MK Gun.

...Ugh...



> You explained the situation.

No way... I did that...?
Sounds like you saved me. Thanks.



(B) Problem solved, I guess.
This "brainwashing ray"...



Thanks, Hitonari. We owe you one.
Now, let's go back to base.



Man, the Abba Dingo is pretty damn bad! That's only partially because we have the Frost Cannon too. All it can do skill wise is Garula which is ehh, its damage output is thoroughly okay at best and I feel like that may be being generous overall.

The Fear of God



Anyway, now that we've gotten to actually explore the 3F and beyond, there's a whole slew of new* demons to discover!

_{* Probably not actually new.}

Caladrius we've seen before, and he's really not a threatening enemy demon. Just keep that Makarakarn in mind and he's not a threat at all.

Ame no Uzume meanwhile is probably the most boring demon we've seen yet. She has Hitonari's natural resistances (neutral to everything, immune to Expel, 100% ailment rate) and has bad a version of what he can do as well. It's not Silent Prayer; that just wipes all buffs and debuffs from everyone. It's not your party gets Dekunda'd and the enemy gets Dekaja'd. It's everything gone from everyone.

Usable Ame no Uzume swaps Ally Call out for our version of it which is Sabbatma. It costs 20MP to summon a demon from the stock. Just.. just use the actual Summon ability instead; it gets priority like items do and it doesn't cost anything to use!



Zhens are hanging out here too, that's cool. I think I covered their resistances before (what you can see plus immune to Paralyse and Poison if I forgot).

Encounter



Oh, my feathers, huh? Yeah, they're poisonous.
If you mixed them in with wine, you'd fall over dead with one sip.
But he wants to drink it...? I don't understand gods...



Don't worry about paying me back. It's not like I'm gonna run out or anything.
Oh, but be careful not to swallow it or put it in your mouth.
Maybe you should shout, "Warning! Poison feathers!" as you walk around!



Useful, that. We'll take this back to Dionysus... at some point. I, uh, I'll get around to it eventually.

The Fear of God



Hey Virtue. We ain't seen you in a while, huh!

...This is probably just me, but I vastle prefer Virtue's OG design over the weird floaty water man we've had since Devil Summoner (the first one on the Saturn).



Camazotz is just hangin' out in the dark rooms, huh. Strange Ray is an enemy only skill that's basically a free turn. Kanbari CAN do it as well, but Camazotz is more likely to survive long enough to get to use it.

It's an attack that damages one target's MP. That's it.



Dis is here. I didn't say much about her before because there is nothing TO say. She's simple, you shoot her and then she dies.



Skogsra has a cool design and hangs out here with Zhen, sometimes. That's about it. Everything I said about her applies to now too.

Oh wait, uh, she has Resist Wind here? That's weird and confusing. That's only on her enemy version because she resists Wind by default. Strange Journey what are you even doing?



And finally, we have the beautiful duwang - Pisaca. He's fairly boring overall, especially when you're using him, since he's just weak to Fire and neutral to all elements. Bites the Dust is a new thing, even though it's totally named wrong.



It inflicts Bomb on a single target (80% base chance). Pisaca has already touched the Parvati...

Oh, uh, Bomb is a contact ailment; if someone hits whoever is inflicted with it, they die immediately. This can only be prevented by Guarding. Bomb is the objective best ailment in the game in the player's hands, because enemies do not Guard, and that's why you never get to use it normally. It'd be too broken, which is saying something for this game.

it should totally be Killer Queen and not Bites The Dust because it's a reference to the main antagonist of Diamond is Not Crash; the fourth part of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Bites the Dust kills OTHER PEOPLE and sends whoever it's attached to back in time 1 hour.

A Rotten Nation



Gonna make a Vouivre while I can, because even though she's fairly eh her Source is relatively okay I guess. She's weak to Ice and immune to Poison and that's all that she has going on there. Her Source gives Agidyne and Ziodyne which is cool.

Also she's only called Vouivre in English (well, French technically but y'know, whatever). In the Japanese versions of the series, she's called Wyvern instead. Transliterated things online always leave it as Wyvern, and the game files do that here too.

Actually speaking of the game files, they have some fuckin' WEIRD names for things.



We'll head on over to the right hand side of 3F for now. There's not much in the bottom corner since it's just a bit of Macca.



Up north of the cashmoney, we get... 4 Dis-Paras. While that's not bad, per se, it's not exactly good either!



Fortunately, right here we have stairs leading on up to the next floor.



I might be a monster, but even we can be afraid of the dark...
I heard there's a treasure here that's like a night-light, but...
I can't take another step in the darkness! I wanna go home!

Honestly, that a Poltergeist is randomly here at all is kind of impressive. Good job, li'l buddy!



Meanwhile, we have a corridor to navigate. It's just a single linear path. This is only a dark room to be a mild annoyance. The most "meh" of all of them thus far.

Even Carina's first one in the basement was a bigger deal than this.



When we return to the light world, we can get this thing from a forma.



Being a thing for Irving, it's probably required to progress at some point. Might as well see where that point is before doubling back.



The terminal being right here does that make that rather tempting though. Hrm...

No, no. Focus.



Another dark room ahead, though. Hmm...



Well, we've already come this far. It's not like it'd help much with this anyway. No, the thing that makes these bearable doesn't exist until New Game+.

Goin' for the left door first.



There's a Sacrifice here and either a super obvious pit or another blatant hidden door. In either case, I'm just going to ignore it out of spite at this point!

Well that and I just really wanted the Sacrifice. I'unno, I like having these guys. They let me be stupid and reckless!



The other door in the Dark Room just drops us onto an automove section. First one in a while, really, huh...



That kicks us into a hole which drops us onto THIS conveyer belt on 3F.



Which just drops us into a hole that points us to the Bead Chains here.



I somehow just blew right past this area on 3F before, so we'll see where this hidden door leads us. It's not exactly a subtle one, bu--



Oh, okay. I see what the deal is now. I'm onto you, Delphinus.



But at least this one is kind enough to let us get this fixed 5 AC Delphite if you needed it. The only way out of here is a conveyer belt that drops us back to the top of 1F. I'll see you in a moment...



This does at least give us the entire map for 2F. This is really all we were missing for so long, yes.



So, back to the Sacrifice room and this is in the alcove. To the surprise of, hopefully, no one when they first saw this.



This drops us onto this stretch of land here. The conveyer belt there is what the hole on 4F dropped us onto before.

Amrita Shower cures all ailments on the entire party at once. It's pretty good, but there are very, VERY few fights that make something like this even remotely worth it.

And by "very few" I mean one.



In all seriousness when it comes to the dark rooms for a moment, Delphinus really feels more like the introduction of them than Carina did. Sure, Carina did them first but it only had like 2 in the basement. There are more in Delphinus, and they feel more basic and simple for the most part. I really wonder what happened there...



Anyway, the left door leads to a small area with this in it and nothing else. Kamudo was one of the relative best Magatama in Nocturne, IMO. Not for what it did on its own, but rather because it teaches you Focus (2.5x Phys boost) really, REALLY early.

Here?



It's the Hawthorn Spear but worse. Now, ailment base proc rates for your weapons are a thing I don't have the data for but I sure hope this makes up for being deficient by having a higher base chance.

Ailment proc rates for demon attacks? Yeah, no, I have that for all of them. All of them.



Anyway, that hole on the 4th floor by the Sacrifice was required to make progress. Yes, really. It leads you to the stairs here, after all.



Oh and there's a shortcut behind the stairs here. This didn't appear at all before, because some hidden doors only appear at first on one side of a wall.

We gotta open it up from the back before we can use it as a shortcut? Hmm, now where have I heard that before...



Anyway, that's the entirety of 3F mapped out now. Unlike Carina, Delphinus is REALLY easy to fully map out on average.

I'unno, I think so at least.

Silence



Anyway, this part of 4F has a terminal and healing spot for our use.



> The statue looks fearsome, but it doesn't seem to be dangerous...

So this is just behind the stairs leading down to the 3rd floor here. It, uh, it sure is a thing I guess?

Prayer



Anyway, fiiiine, we'll go and give this forma to Irving now.

That's right... you ain't gettin' one over on me. Just hand 'er over and no one gets hurt, heheh.

> You handed Irving the Keisetsu Stone.

...Alright, time for a challenge!
Time to break out the science and unveil the secrets o' the universe!
You better keep up, Chen!



...Sorry, it's always like this, Hitonari. COuld you give us a little more time?

> Irving and Chen started working.

......

......

...



I'm gonna need to borrow yer Demonica for a bit, Tadano.





Holy shit, yes! So now we can actually, y'know, see in those dark rooms! It doesn't add them to our map (I've still gotta do that manually) but it means we can see where we're going at least.

A Rotten Nation



It puts this cool retro VR/Tron style grid up instead of looking like the normal sector. I'm kind of okay with this.



But I didn't grab it for this floor, oh no. Oh no, no no.



And not just because we've mapped out the entire thing now. That definitely helps, though.



The 5th floor starts us off in a tiny corridor that immediately leads into two doors. One to the left and one to the right. We'll go left first I suppose.



This just leads us into a small dark room corridor. Very linear, very simple.



Next we come to a dark room with... an automove tile that pushes us back here. Guess we can't go this way after all.



It's hard to see on the top screen here, but there IS a conveyer belt to the right there that pushes us back up here as well.



.......Oh, okay. I get it. I get it. This is a maze, huh? It's dark so it doesn't get automapped making it super simple and it's automove so you need spacial awareness to keep track of it. In theory.



Now, it's important to note that the Visualiser is completely optional. It just shows you dark rooms after all, so you can technically just ignore the Keisetsu Stone and never get it.



That WOULD make this kind of insanely irritating and difficult but you'd have no one to blame but yourself. The Keisetsu Stone IS just lying there as a fixed forma, but it's right in the critical path to this point so you have no excuse.



Not taking it back to Irving requires more intent for sure, but there are 2 terminals between there and here so you still have to actively not do that.

Three if you include this one.



Now, if you DO have the Visualiser? This becomes much, much easier. See, this area is pretty well designed like that. It's almost worryingly generous with the way the path is laid out.



Because I'm purposefully mapping the entire thing out, it highlights the obvious little tricks with the way the area is designed. You'll realistically never end up going back down here if you're not intentionally doing so, for example. The layout of the level itself, even without manually mapping it, makes it obvious you're just going in a circle.



And if you ARE having trouble with the Visualiser because the game doesn't automap for you? Then just map it yourself. Get some paper and draw it. It's not that big of an area and you don't need to do 100% of it to understand the layout.



There's a few times you might make a mistake looking for the critical path at first, but all the biggest "you won't do this intentionally" spots where you could make a mistake? Still helpful. This path here seems like it might be the right one because of the forma but it's just an easy way to get DF II guaranteed.



Beyond that, the actual goal is simple: get to the centre. Personally, I didn't map this one out by hand because it's so small and there's only a tiny number of spaces you can go. I find it really easy to just remember which path I'd already taken but not everyone can do that.



I realise I spent a lot of time on this spot, relative to like everywhere else so far, but this is the first major spot that I can see someone complaining about. I can definitely understand the complaints but at the same time, I kind of can't? If it was a bigger area and you couldn't have the Visualiser to help with any spacial problems then yeah, it'd be stupid and bullshit. But it's just one small area with no real mean tricks to it.



Now, if there was say holes (or spinners like this is some old school Wizardry nonsense) then it'd be much, much worse.



And if you really got annoyed by it, there's a terminal immediately afterwards as well.

....I realise we haven't done this since Antlia, but this seems like a good place to take a break, huh? Let's do that for now then.