Part 6: Update 6 – The Coliseum
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Oh boy, the sewer level. I'm going to come right out and say this now: There is absolutely nothing I can do to make this level seem interesting in any way. Nothing. The level is completely linear with a couple of side rooms for item boxes. Therefore, I'm just going to talk about a couple of the enemies and then skip to to the end of the dungeon.
See these harmless little blobs? They are the most dangerous enemy in the level and should be taken down first, with extreme prejudice. What makes them so dangerous? Firstly, they can explode, killing themselves and dealing huge damage to anyone nearby along with poison. As if that wasn't enough, they can cast Eterni. Eterni is the first of the game's instant death spells. It has a base 50% chance of killing the target instantly, modified by the Will of the caster and Mdef of the target.
The good new is that one good Pyri will take them down. I do this whenever I so much as glimpse one in the enemy lineup.
Second, these things. In this version they're called Dementis, but in the Dreamcast version I'm told they were called Mind Stealers. Why are they called that? Here, let me get you a closer view.
OH GOD.
Yeah, it's some sort of giant parasitic beetle that's zombified some poor bastard and now controls him like a puppet. The Japanese name for literally translates to “puppet”, in fact.
And you thought Parasect was bad.
They're the toughest monsters in the catacombs in terms of HP, being the only ones Aika can't take down in one hit with Alpha Storm, and they have a minute chance of dropping a rather interesting weapon for Drachma.
Oh yes, and this is a Pyri Box. Boxes are the nuking equivalent of crystals, only they last for a few uses before breaking.
This is the only interesting part of the actual dungeon. This entire island is surrounded by a giant thundercloud, remember? The lighting effects are also pretty damn impressive for the time. Thankfully, you can't fall off the edge into the lightning-filled abyss.
And here we have the end of the dungeon. You can just about see the ladder leading up into the coliseum at the end of this corridor covered in human skulls, behind the giant blob full of human skulls.
Oh, hey giant blob thing. You must be the next boss.
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Meet Bleigock, the boss of the Valua Catacombs. I have absolutely no idea what he is or what he's doing here, but he seems to be basically a giant bag of acid and bile with the occasional human fucking skull floating in it for good measure. It has a mountain of HP for this stage of the game, a whopping 4300 - for comparison, recall that Sentinel had a mere 1200. Fortunately, I have a little trick up my sleeve.
The first stage of said trick is to buff Drachma up with Increm, but that's a pretty standard tactic to any battle by now.
Drachma's Spirit Charge. As I mentioned before, it restores double his Spirit in SP and puts him in Guard status. What is about to happen is going to be fairly SP intensive.
I don't know why they didn't just make Drachma flat out invincible for Spirit Charge, it amounts to the same thing.
There are three very important things in this picture. Firstly, look at all that lovely SP. Secondly, the Mace Hand is the weapon that Dementis drop. I spent a couple of hours grinding off-camera until I found one, resetting so I didn't get overleveled. The Mace Hand has an absolutely astronomical 125 attack, compared to a puny 51 on the Hook Hand. However, it has 0%Hit, so it will never hit with regular attacks. Thirdly, you can change equips in battle at any time using the item command.
Fourthly, Super Moves never miss.
Fifthly and finally, Drachma is now an unstoppable engine of death.
This is one of Bleigock's two special attacks. It's pretty unpleasant.
Oh god Aika!
It does moderate damage to the party along with a chance of poison.
As well as having her hair ruined forever, Aika also cops the poison. This really isn't her day.
On the other hand, Bleigock isn't having too great a time of it either. He does have one other attack called Frost Breath, which freezes over the area to do some pretty nasty damage to the whole party. It's not going to cause a party wipe by itself, but if you're taking a while to whittle down Bleigock's HP it can really add up.
In my game he doesn't even get a chance to use it. Yeah, Drachma took him down in three hits. Deal with it.
I wonder how much power is required to make something that soggy burst into flames. I'm going to estimate that it's exactly one Drachma of power.
Seeds are the permanent stat boost items of the game. This particular one boosts HP by 30, so I'm saving it until we get the squishy party member.
This is the ladder that was hiding being Bleigock's massive, gooey bulk. For the love of god, heal before you climb this ladder.
The crowd is cheering for this, by the way. You can just about see Dyne with a Valuan soldier next to him at the top of the text box, with a suspicious hole behind him. My guess is that after execution the corpses are thrown down that hole to be eaten by the Bleigock.
I'm betting that quite a few people who played this game remember this guy with dread. Also, yellow weapons again.
Executioner: The price of stealing from Valua is high! And Dyne and his pitiful band will pay... with their heads!
I'm not going to try to show off what happened there because there's just no way to do it in screenshots. What happened is that the camera went into first person mode for Vyse as he charged up and bodychecked the guard next to Dyne. It's pretty awesome in motion.
The captive Air Pirates are no strangers to this sort of thing. They're not going to stand around and wait to be rescued, not when there's a perfectly good chance to take out a pair of armoured soldiers with their hands tied behind their backs.
Hurry! Run for the opening in the floor!
Meanwhile, Aika is busy rescuing the rest of the crew form the holding cell.
Seeing all this, Marco makes a quick exit.
Executioner: You have deprived the audience from witnessing the death of a notorious band of Air Pirates! Now they will witness your execution!
The audience already got to watch us free our friends, and trash your guards! Now they get to watch us beat the snot out of you. What more could they want? By the way, the name's Vyse!
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Boss fight!
The fight is against the Executioner, named Carcer, and his two magic-casting cronies. Carcer is Latin for “Jail”, while his two Venificus cronies are probably a misspelling of Veneficus, the Latin term for witches, wizards and general magical types. This is, hands down, the hardest fight in the game so far. Therefore, I am going to absolutely destroy it.
Round 1 – fight!
Aika nukes the field with that Pyri Box to soften up the mages a little, while Vyse and Drachma attack one each. They can't quite kill them, but it's close enough.
This is what makes the fight really dangerous. The mages can cast both Increm and Sacri, and a buffed up Carcer is a real nightmare. His strongest attack can potentially one-shot Aika and put a serious dent in Vyse. Even Drachma can only shrug it off for so long.
This isn't the attack you really need to worry about. This one does moderate damage in a wide cone in front of Carcer. 300 damage to Vyse is still a reasonable chunk of his HP, but it's a light breeze compared to his other skill.
Round 2 – fight!
A quick Spirit Charge, because I'm going to need it on the next turn. As an aside, in a few of my practice runs Carcer hit a Spirit Charged Drachma with his second skill, Tackle. It did 300-400 damage, compared to 30 damage from Bleigock.
Vyse casts Increm on Drachma, you know the drill by now.
And a second use of the Pyri Box by Aika finishes off the mages.
Apart from his two special skills, Carcer also has Electres, the second damage spell of the Yellow school. It does damage in a line in front of the caster, and it's probably Carcer's weakest attack. Really, it's a poor choice for his last action in life.
Round 3 – fight!
Well hey, exactly 10SP to start the third round. I know just what to do with that.
WHERE IS YOUR INCREM NOW? WHERE IS IT?
I don't know what you're posing for, all you did was open a box.
And the crowd goes wild! I don't know what Vyse is posing for either, he only did slightly more than Aika. I don't know where the crowd got the confetti from, either.
After showboating to the crowd for a moment, Vyse takes his bows and retreats back into the catacombs.
Next time on Skies of Arcadia, we run like buggery.
Video list
Valua Catacombs
Bleigock
Carcer