Part 2
“I’ve got it! You shall go out among the people as my voice and be called…
“You’ll need a new face to go with that name, too. Because honestly, people are going to get a bit weirded out about a six foot cherub wandering around. How about…”
“MASTER, SOMETHING ABOUT THIS FEELS WRONG.” “Oops. Slight mix up. Try this one.”
“Very funny, my lord. This one should work.” “Great. Now get to it.”
So, the starting area is a bit empty for now. Fixing that will be a bit of work. In the meantime, our first destination is a bit south down a flight of stairs, but we won’t get there without an interruption.
“There are many creatures being held in the Underground Castle. If you can release those creatures, the village will be reconstructed.” “Did I… Mage Soul, did I just get advice from a tulip?”
“Everybody’s got to start somewhere.”
“Speaking of which, is it me or is that monster walking into a column?” “These ones are that dumb, even if they still managed to half-kill you before this one got hung up on the architecture.” “Hey! This is harder than it looks, I’ll have you know.” “It would almost have to be.”
So, our first enemies are these little green goblin-like things… which are actually called goblins. They’re dumb enough that they’re in more danger from the local terrain than from us. Take three hits to take out and give one experience. Clearing the second lair results in…
“Okay, not sure where the house came from, but this is a start.”
Moving on, we have our next enemy. Plantmen will continually pop out of their lair until it’s empty, and they wander around kind of aimlessly. This actually makes them more difficult than the enemies who try to come after you. Still 3 HP and 1 experience.
Nearby we also have some blue slimes. These aren’t attached to lairs, so they’ll respawn every time you exit and enter the cave. They’ll also respawn when you free a person from a lair, so it’s possible to find yourself suddenly surrounded.
Anyway, clearing out the lair this time gives us a chest. The Medical Herb has to be equipped in our item slot, but once equipped it will restore your HP if you die.
Right next door, we get introduced to another dungeon fixture. Flame statues shoot balls of flame at you, as you’d pretty much expect. They have more HP than anything else in this first dungeon, and give two experience instead of one. They’ll respawn just like blue slimes.
“Great, first tulips and now inanimate objects. I’m really moving up the scale here…”
“Alright, come over here.”
“Oh. Um… hi…” “Done feeling sorry for yourself? I’ll give you some advice. Don’t forget to equip the things that you wish to use or they will not work.” “You mean like this sword that I’m holding in my hand? The one that I equipped so that I could kill more than 30 monsters to get this far?” “Well fine, if you want to be a jerk about it.”Note: This gets us 30 experience. Quite a bonus for a conversation.
The Jewel Fairy is our exit mechanism. You can restore HP by going back to the Celestial Palace, so this is a chance to refresh before moving on with the rest of the dungeon.
“That’s nice… wait, why is this bringing back memories?”
“One day he suddenly disappeared along with the other villagers. I feel so lonely… how about being one of my children?” “Oh GodJesus, it’s just like Fillmore. Yes! I’ll be one of your children!”
“I… didn’t tell you my new name. You know what, whatever. Let’s check out my new room.”
“Well, it’s a nice thought…” “I guess after the Celestial Palace it is a bit of a letdown.”No, we can’t actually do anything here. It’s purely cosmetic.
Heading back to the Underground Castle the enemies have all reset. In theory you could use this to grind, but we’d only get 4 experience for killing all of the respawning enemies. It’s honestly kind of useless.
“It’s a foot tall rock. Is this really so confusing to you?” “Take it for what it’s worth. Never complain about your enemies being idiots.” “I hate to admit it, but you have a good point there.”Clearing this lair opens up a bridge that allows us to progress.
“Oh, GodJesus, this is going to take forever. How many people are there in this town?” “…a lot less than there used to be?” “That brings up some long term problems, but they’re not mine.” “There’s a reason I have rules against inbreeding.”
Sometimes you’ll also find chests like this one randomly sitting in an area. 12 gems isn’t much, but it’s also nothing to sneeze at. You need 4 gems to fire the most basic magic, and they also serve as the penalty for dying. If you die you lose all of your gems, regardless of how many you have.
“There once was a water mill here before the village was destroyed. I hear that there is a man in the mill who runs the elevator in the Underground Castle.” “Great, I’ll get right on that.”
Moving on to the right, we have our first conveyor belt. These things can either speed up or slow down your movement, but they can’t stop it completely. They can also be used for crowd control.
Next up we have the Imp, who’s actually pretty much the toughest enemy in the dungeon. They get the ability to shoot flames at us, and they have four HP and give two experience. They’re also a bit smarter than goblins when it comes to pathfinding.
The easiest way to deal with them is using the Mage Soul to shoot a fire spell at them. The way it works is that the spell goes in a straight line in the direction you’re facing based on where the orbiting Mage Soul is. It requires a certain amount of timing to get it right. Also, you can see that once you hit an enemy you can see their HP under yours. This only lasts for a couple of seconds.
Clearing out this lair is enough to get us to our first level up, which increases our HP and Strength. Experience is cumulative… we have 100 experience now, and need an additional 180 to get to the next level. The maximum level in this game is 14. We’ll almost certainly hit it before the game is over.
Pressing start gets us this menu, and a countdown of how many lairs we have to clear.
“More than halfway there!”Next update: We’ll finish up the Underground Castle. One way or another.