Part 21: The Beginning of the End
Cipher Pol 9 posted:
Did you skip the Mars event with Dias entirely, or are you ignoring it for story purposes?
Needless to say, it is a throwaway section, and that is exactly what I did with it.
Pleiades posted:
In Earthbound? I know that there were a TON of shout-outs, but music ripping off pre-existing music? The only tracks I could think of are the Runaway Five ones.
Mother 3 had some clips that sounded familiar too.
Yeah, Earthbound/Mother 3 stuff is all purely referential, nothing ripped, with the exception of the Runaway Five. The problem is that even just those tiny references are enough to get people up in arms these days, which is a really sad state of things when you think about it.
Chapter 19: The Beginning of the End
At the end of our preview, we were standing right outside of Linga. Linga is very important for a number of reasons.
This here isn't one of them.
But I guess we should still find out what all that was about.
Oh, Vados, that's illegal. She's sixteen.
And if you're playing as Claude and recruit her, the game actually has a Private Action dedicated to talking about how flat-chested she is.
No, I can't just make this kind of thing up.
"Redheads?"
"No, jailbait."
"... Oh."
"We had this same problem like one update ago, didn't we."
"Now you're just being terrible."
Anyway, this event puts us right where we want to be:
just outside the item store.
We fill up on all kinds of items...
... and go into PA mode.
We just lift the wedding ring right off this poor woman's finger.
Valvados has been holding out on us with some nice armor.
No, no, he's either writing picture book manuscripts or playing Star Ocean 2 and posting about it on the Internet.
This is what people who study Linguistics actually do, not gonna lie.
Since we're here, we buy some skills from LE SKILL. They will be important very soon.
Then we go to this house and get hit on by somebody's old man.
Oh boy, this is the part where he asks Billy to be His Little Princess's New Mommy, isn't it.
So apparently this man has trouble controlling his teenage daughter. Surprise, surprise.
This is Panic! At Nabisco.
And this
is now a really awkward situation.
Yup, time to hele on out of this hale.
Panic! follows us outside and starts asking about what we're doing here.
She really wants to come along.
She really wants to come along.
I think we just dodged a really, really big bullet.
Anyway, let's take a look at some of the fancy stuff we just got.
We buy one level in each skill for Geese. He will be playing A Big Role soon.
And we max out his, uh, Reproduction.
Now, there's a scene in Hilton in which Billy follows Geese outside and he tries to use his Transceiver to contact a spaceship. This is how the game introduces Geese's Transceiver as a plot point in Rena's story, but if you don't stay at the inn in Hilton, which I didn't, you don't get to see it. So I never saw this scene. Consequently, it does not appear in this LP.
Instead, have a picture of Head Splitter:
Anyway, here we are, Geese very good at Reproducing. What do we do with this new skill?
We put it to work.
Forged Checks sell for like 24,000 Fols each. They will be our main source of money inflow at the moment, so we make a bunch of them. As you can see, my success rate is pretty dismal at this point: 2 successes out of 16 tries.
Forged Documents sell for 65,000 Fols each, but they're a rare high-level craft in the Reverse Side item creation skill, which I don't have a high level in. Alternatively, you can just pickpocket a Forged Checks off of one of the thugs in the bar at Herlie.
We use the Super Specialty Skill Identify All! to get favorable transactions in the University Co-op store in Linga.
"Give Discount" lowers the selling price of everything, whether it's what the shop is selling, or what you're selling to the shop. "Raise Price" raises the selling price of everything. Thankfully, the effect is well-translated and it advises you to only sell when you Raise Prices and to only buy when you Give Discounts. At Level 10, the effect is about a 30% change.
We're making marginally more than we should here. Every little bit counts.
Still, when what we're buying costs 16,000 to buy a full set of 20 of, you can theoretically be making a return on every cycle of "Buy Magical Film > Reproduce Forged Checks > Identify All! > Sell Forged Checks," even if only one of the 20 Reproduction attempts works.
But that's not what we're here for.
Our real purpose is to reproduce Forged Medals. We copy as many as we can, and then...
As mentioned earlier, Forged Medals are consumables that reduce the "EXP to next level" to 1 for the target character.
We use this technique to gain a few levels for Tallgeese.
We pump as many points from said levels into Mech Knowledge and Mech Operation as we can, leveling up his Machinery skill.
When you get a level every encounter, it's not too tough to get a skill to Level 10, even if it's an SP-intensive one like Machinery.
Machinery is used to make permanent item creation support items, and bombs.
This is useful.
As is this. For some reason, I always liked the Soldering Iron and Survival Kit items, if not only because they use the same model as the Material Kit.
Suddenly,
we get something absolutely useless.
Followed by the item that is--if you're trying to break this game this early on--your best fucking friend in the entire goddamn world.
The Ririca is the support item for Reproduction. It is better than the Magical Camera in that its base success rate is in the 20-55% range per batch of 20 items, as opposed to the Magical Camera's 5-25%. You're effectively quadrupling your success rate floor and more than doubling its ceiling just by making one (which admittedly it harder than it sounds and I just got pretty lucky).
Anyway, we're gonna need this pretty soon, so I get Geese's Customize up to Level 10, too.
You see it all over the Internet about how dudes forged his best weapon with Customize at Level 9, but I'm not fucking resetting that many times.
All this before Level 60.
Level 60? That's it? Bitches, I have a Ririca and some Forged Medals.
I'll see y'all later. Daddy's got some grinding to do.