Part 33: To burst, press any three buttons except dust

Part 22: To burst, press any three buttons except dust

So Lemon ran off crying like a little baby.



Hey, this place looks kind of familiar.



Useless. Cursed items are far too much of a gamble to use in this hack. They paralyze you 25% of the time. Would you risk that for an extra +10 ATT? Didn't think so.



The idea of Lemon running all over the place and trying to kill himself by jumping off high places is pretty funny. Why doesn't he just stab himself with the cursed sword?


Meanwhile...









Hey, that blind guy looks a little familiar. Once we exit Galam, we're fighting on the same map where we picked up Slade all those months ago.





Actually, he wanted the jewel of evil. But if you're that determined to fuck it all up, don't let me stop you.








Lots of new bad guys this time, but it's heavily mitigated by the new mithril weapons. Enemies are feeling pretty soft for now, but that's going to change soon. Obob ratcheted up enemy defense by 20% after this fight to compensate for mithril weapons. Geshp himself is just Cameela 2.0. The big differences are major resistances to magic (not an issue thanks to Atlas) and a lack of a healing buddy (a very welcome change). He may hit hard, but his real threat is Freeze 4, which blasts a single target for about 55 HP. Alone that's not so bad, but remember bosses always move twice. Like most other bosses, he basically kills a character every turn.

You may also notice that the battlefield is generally empty of enemies. There's a gimmick to this map, but it's not very threatening, and actually works out to my favor.





Ground axe shenanigans. Since it's +1 to MOV, I can equip it, move beyond normal boundaries, and then re-equip a stronger weapon for attack. No penalty. It's much like the spear trick on knights, except a lot better.



The levanter has a funny pink tinge to it. No idea why this amuses me so much.



Here's the gimmick to this map: Like the mud men from a few fights ago, there are burst rocks hidden all over the map. They don't actually attack, but if you either kill them or leave them alone for long enough, they'll explode. An explosion deals damage to all units, friendly or enemy, around it (same radius as Aura 2) for 15 – 17 fire damage. It's slightly annoying and enough to tip the scales if I'm careless, but the damage easily patched up with a single cast of Aura, which I have in spades now. Additionally, they have low defense and bleed amazing amounts of experience, so I get a few easy levels off of them.



Hell, they're not even immune to Slow. They die in two hits with their defenses dropped.




These things only have 61 HP, for the record. Jaro is also one of my weakest hitters.



White dragons are scary. That's Zynk with Boost on, even.

Thankfully, they have low defense, fly, and are vulnerable to Slow. If I still had May around, she would be hitting these things for 45% a pop. May completely murders endgame flying units.



Luckily, Janet is good enough in a pinch. That damage would skyrocket if the dragon were slowed.



Not even Boosted. Claude is a godsend.



This looks like a bad situation, and I thought it was when I was in the thick of it. Honestly, it's only bad if you're absolutely determined to milk the EXP from the burst rocks – which I am. However, the minotaur and mist demon are leashed onto tanks (Claude and Jaha, respectively), the dragon is going to be taken down in short order, and all the dark bishop does is heal. The only real variable to be controlled in the dark gunner over on the right.



Even Skreech can lay the smackdown on a flying enemy.



I'll never get over how the laser merits three exclamation marks. Lasers are just that rad.




Oh god dammit. And he has just enough to survive one at full HP too.







Not a bad haul. Friendly fire for enemies is a nice thing to include after all that Muddle 2 horseshit.

Fun fact: Open Office's spellchecker does not catch “horseshit”.



Man, these things used to be threatening.




As long as Taya can survive one hit at full HP, she's golden.




Fire resistance, fuck yeah! For once, a change in the hack actually works in my favor.



Taya picked up Apollo 2 during the fight. Payback's a bitch. Sorcerers own, by the way.




Taya, more like TANKYA




Okay, it had to end sooner or later. It was a good run. Except for the fact that she died with three casts of Atlas left, which would have helped against the magic-resistant Geshp a lot. Oops.



Still, after that clusterfuck, I came out of it only losing Claude and Taya. Granted, they're the two characters I least wanted to lose, but it could have been a lot worse. Time to bleed the healer of EXP.



Also to use it as an MP refill station for Frayja. I could have gone into fighting Geshp with an almost full MP Taya too.




The showdown about to happen.




Well, unless these things get in my way. But without any other monsters to support them, it's easy enough to take them down in one round, eat the explosion damage, and heal back up with Frayja.



Like so. Everyone who says Frayja is bad is stupid.



Of course, as I creep up to Geshp's territory, I make the mistake of moving a little too far when he's in an offensive position. Geshp charges right out and takes advantage of Freeze 4's long range. I had intended to draw out his cronies first, but looks like things just got a lot more fun.




That's just way too much damage for anyone to tank. Karna currently has the highest HP in my group, at 93. Nobody can survive two casts, so burning out Geshp's MP like I did with Zalbard isn't an option.



And since bosses move twice a round, this is inevitable.



But hey, not all is lost. Geshp moved into 0% terrain to kill Zynk. This might just happen.



God damn elemental resistances. Karna has shit-all to do when everyone's at full HP. Well, except use the Wish Staff, which I keep forgetting to do.




With both Zynk and Claude dead, Sarah is sadly my best remaining choice.



Oh, of fucking course I only get one use out of it for the fight.



Still, I shouldn't complain too loudly.



Wow, this actually looks pretty doable.



Geshp's attack does more than Freeze 4. Jesus.



Of course, when your highest attacker is also flagged as a healer, this happens. Sure, it makes the AI look smart, but it really happened for no reason other than AI prioritizing healers over everyone else (except Bowie), and Sarah being the closest one around.



I'm coming to the realization that if you just focus fire a single target, you can do a boatload of damage in very little time. This is probably less than three rounds, and Geshp is already down to double digit HP. The fact that he decided to plant himself on 0% terrain helped a god damn lot, too.




This really didn't hurt nearly as bad as I had predicted.




Of course, the game has to send me the best goodbye fuck you it can muster.




Two goodbye fuck yous, then.





Not taking a single chance on this one.



Battle Report!

Level 21 4 HP/2 ATT/4 DEF/2 AGI
Level 24 2 HP/1 MP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI
Level 22 4 HP/2 ATT/5 DEF/2 AGI
Level 22 2 HP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI
Level 19 2 HP/2 MP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
Level 20 2 HP/1 MP/1 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI
Level 21 4 HP/2 ATT/3 DEF/4 AGI
Level 27 4 HP/3 MP/2 ATT/4 DEF/2 AGI
Level 21 4 HP/2 MP/2 ATT/6 DEF/2 AGI
Level 21 2 HP/1 MP/2 ATT/2 DEF/1 AGI



Well, since you were a relatively wimpy boss and didn't actually piss me off all that much in your fight, I guess I can do that.






Wow, who didn't see that one coming?





Back in Yeel, Lemon is still trying to jump off cliff. The animation is amusing. Still don't understand why he can't just stab himself.




This opens up the basement where we recruit the penultimate character.



This would imply that Hawel ever god laid, which I am not inclined to believe.



A bunch of dialogue happens, and it's completely unimportant. In fact, I think you might be able to skip the second visit to Yeel all together, I know if you keep walking south after the Geshp fight, you'll run into the next one no problem. Granted, you'd miss Chaz and Lemon (oh come on, you know we're going to recruit him and it's going to happen in two minutes), but those characters kind of suck anyway.

Actually wait. The ending sequence actually uses Lemon. I'm not sure what happens if you skip Yeel the second time. Anyone want to look into this for me?




Some more loot nobody cares about. The evil knuckles have another 8 ATT over the giant knuckles, but again it isn't worth losing a quarter of your actions.




And there's the last character!

NEXT TIME: I'm not sure there are any hard bosses left