Part 12

Heading out of the Undersea Palace (or whatever) the first thing we run into is the spiky purple urchin. Considering that regular sea urchins are about 2.5 to 5 inches, this thing is enormous and has a correspondingly enormous amount of HP. They’re very slow, however, so it’s no great problem to kill them before they close in on you. Sea urchins are environmental monsters who don’t have lairs.



Right around the corner we have Sea Horses, which are just as slow as they are in real life and only slightly more threatening. You can pretty much stand in one spot and just keep swinging as they approach you in a steady stream. Clearing out the Sea Horse lair opens our pathway to move on, but before that…



We’re actually right next to the stairs up to the first island we visited.



The last lair on the island is a nest of gorillas… take that you banana stealing, barrel rolling freaks! And the results of clearing the lair…



“Master! This is just going too far. At least trees are something that you can call living… this is a statue!”

“Why do you always ask me for an explanation like I have all the answers?”

“Wait, if you don’t then who should I be asking?”

“I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Are you two done bickering?”

“Er… yes.”

“Good. Come back to me and I will open the passage for you.”



Next up, the Jellyfish. They tend to rush you in straight lines, and can get an attack in before they get over their mercy invincibility from spawning. If you’re slightly offset then it’s easy to get in an attack or two safely. Clearing up their lair opens up a staircase to let us proceed, but we need to head back to move forward.



“That’s great. But when you say a passage…”

“Do I have to spell out everything for you? Proceed right along the seabed to the shore reef, Rockbird.”

“Okay, okay. Can’t blame you for being so bad tempered, I’d be pretty upset if I were just a statue too.”



Going back out a couple sea urchins and the like are enough to boost us up another level. With the Bubble Armor, we’re actually just a bit ahead on Defence. Wait… Defence? What are they, British?



A winding path, with jellyfish free to charge over the sea-floor foliage while we have to go the long way around. Clearing the lair opens up a shortcut right next to its location, meaning that we can save about 10 seconds on future trips.



There’s also a lair of jellyfish to the south, releasing another one of the mermaid dancers back into her troupe.



At this point there’s a few side paths we can explore and lairs we can clear, although we’re very limited as to where exactly we can go. The jelly lair just drops down a set of stairs to let us move along.



A bit more to the left (west) along the seafloor we can find some unfriendly hermit crabs. They’re considered to be “metal enemies” when in their shell, so we can stun them with our current sword but they have to be standing up and moving before we can kill them. You don’t want to actually hit them with this sword when they’re hunkered down, since that just means they’ll sit there for an even longer time.



Eventually we’ll run out of things to kill, so we have no choice but to continue on to Rockbird. The existence of all these stairs suggests the presence of some kind of amphibious species, but it doesn’t seem that there are any present.



“I apologize for everything I said about the last island being boring. This just takes it up to a whole new level.”



Despite having no discernible palm trees around, there are baby palms wandering around the the island. We must destroy them before they take root!




Clearing the lair drains one of the many lakes in the area, exposing a new lair for us to clear and exploit. I feel sorry for the poor gorillas trapped under the water. Incidentally, their lair is holding a mermaid. Due to being severely beaten up this marked a good time to head back to town, although



“Still not sure why you’re keeping them around. I’m pretty sure any amount of water in sufficient quantity will do the same thing.”



“Anna and Kanna… I’m seeing a pattern here…”

“You don’t even know. Purple haired mermaids with names ending in ‘na’ don’t grow in kelp beds.”

“I can only imagine the job posting.”




Clearing up the next lair (I can’t even remember what kind) clears a pond to let us move on to a Firebird lair hidden beneath the waves that’s hiding a blue diamond who gives us some bonus experience. Never a bad thing to see.




Seeing the guppies flopping around never gets old. Another set of lairs, another undersea gorilla, another mermaid held captive.



The next reveal provides a couple of treasure chests containing 60 gems and an entirely superfluous medical herb. The mid-island recharge is welcome at least.




The continual slaughter is enough to pop us up yet another level. We can’t even be halfway through the area, but we’ve already gotten three levels at this point.



This area is pretty much a succession of lairs that drain another pool that contains another lair to drain another pool. The culmination is this pool:



You’re looking at two gorilla lairs that, when cleared, open up your access to the two palm tree lairs, one of which releases a third mermaid statue to let us proceed and one of which releases…



“Okay, that’s a new one. For some reason I was expecting a flounder.”

“I have the power to stop the Magma Rain. I will help you if you return to me.”

“Is that different from the magma that the Mermaid Tears will stop? Because I’ve heard the word magma so many times that it’s starting to sound like a nonsense word.”

“Trust me. Even though I don’t look like it, I am from the sky just like you. I will protect you from the Magma. Please try and protect all creatures.”

“I’ll give it my best shot.”



And with that we’ve got our third soul. We’ll just have to see what it actually does.



“Okay we’ve gone from a tropical island to a barren atoll to an active volcano. This is not an improvement.”

Next update: You call THIS all inclusive?