Part 9: Theo, Mute, and Bogi get Crabs
The passageway from underneath Winder Castle leads directly to the ocean, which has to be awfully convenient when you're wanting a quick break from that whole ruling thing.
The first experience we have of the beach is being attacked by a nautilus. They're not really worth the trouble all things considered, as they have a fairly high defense and not much of a payout. Bogi's still dead because fuck going all the way back to Rod's Woods.
After making some calimari we get our first look at the beach. There's nothing around here to indicate where we're supposed to go, so it's time to explore.
...Shaggy?
That is... unless you have something good to eat. I might invite you to stay and chat.
Unfortunately we don't have any scoobie snacks, but..
He'll settle for some
.
destroying ships and eating any fish foolish enough to enter. We fishermen can't put to sea for fear of our lives!
I think we've figured out what problem we're going to be solving here.
Down the road we finally come to civilization.. of a sort.
The tool shop here has a variety of interesting items for sale, including some really high dollar items. We can't afford any of these things at the moment, but they're something to keep in mind.
The weapon store is similarly expensive, and just as much of an alphabet soup as anything else we've been dealing with. I can get a few of these, but we'll need to make some more money soon.
For some reason there's a cafe (read: bar) here and a cabaret girl passing out cheesy lines and bad advice. She also serves ginger ale, which I can only imagine was changed for the English release.
There's another rape-faced casino dealer here, but the prizes are just a bit different:
Pay particular note to the fact that the three bottom prizes are the high dollar items we saw in the tool shop. Considering that we've got about 50 coins, sheer chance will get us some loot to sell.
The streets of Bon are filled with enemies, mostly the same kind we were dealing with in Castle Winder. The exception are the Dark Knights, who have a fairly nasty multi-target electricity attack.
The canes function as re-usable spell items. The Chill casts Ice, Ltng casts a bolt spell we haven't learned yet, and Destr casts an even better spell.
After winning a few canes we can afford a full suit of new equipment for Theo, but nobody else. It's quite an upgrade, and results in him taking a lot less damage than Mute and Bogi for a while. Shld Ill might be short for Shield of Illusion, and has the same kind of occasional dodge property as the HeatHaze.
Grinding for gold, coins, and levels in town occasionally gets a bit boring so I head out of town and run into this guy. I hope this isn't the kind of sea serpent that Shaggy was so upset about.
The famous house of Yota is also located a bit down the beach from where we entered. Who is Yota?
.. well... if you catch a big crab in the sea-side cave, I'll consider loaning it to you.
This is Yota. He's... old. And possibly crazy. I'm personally inclined to just steal his boat and leave the crab alone. Unfortunately, Theo isn't that kind of hero.
If only there were a way to use this against the giant octopus we've heard tell about...
This is presumably the home of the crab, but we're not quite ready to murder sea life for Yota yet.
.. so tempting. There's not even anybody guarding it. It's just tied up there, waiting to be stolen. As a side note, you have to visit this location before you can teleport to Bon Harbor. I visited everywhere else first, so this was quite annoying.
We get a few more spells in the meantime. Exit appears to be a very specific teleport that does exactly what you'd think in a town or dungeon, and bolt is the first of a new round of elemental magic. I'm pretty sure you can figure out that he'll be shortly getting two more versions of Bolt.
While doing all the grinding, I discover that the Vacuum Sword (Best guess for Swd Vcm) is absolutely awesome and will hit an entire group of enemies at once. This wasn't obvious for a while because Mute's my primary method of dealing with groups.
Theo's been hitting the
Grindy grind grind. Multi-target electricity spell and a classic from the first game.
Another visit to the gambling place nets us a new cane...
And it's pretty damn useful. I think that's the highest damage we've seen thus far, even including Theo's Fortify boosted attacks.
Once we sell everything off, it's easy to afford some better gear. Theo's up to around 160 in his offense and defense, suggesting that agility plays in to defense. Mute gets the Sword of Wind because it might be necessary at some point and I don't want to spend money on an upgrade for him.
With all of our equipment, it's time to go and get a crab. This guy doesn't look so bad..
Oh. I don't have an image of this guy in combat, but you're looking at it right here. He's actually fairly weak, all things considered, and goes down to a couple of rounds of regular attacks.
Heading east from where we fought the crab dumps us back into Rod's Woods near where we found the bear. That's... incredibly useless.
On the way back to Yota both Theo and Mute pick up yet another healing spell far more powerful than we really need right now. I'm sure it'll eventually come in handy.
You still want my boat? What about the sea serpents? Well, if you're crazy enough to set sail, you'll find my boat at the dock in the port down.
The entire thing here is that he tells us to go ahead and take the boat. We could have taken the damn thing, taken care of our business, and been back without him even noticing!
I hope you choke on it, old man.
It's also the only boat in the harbor. Where is everybody else keeping their boats?
We've got three options for traveling, but we'll be going to Nekojara first since that's where the plot is pointing us. I probably could explore the others partially, but I don't think it would go well..
Hm. Not a sea serpent or octopus in sight. I blame this blatant misinformation on Yota being old and Shaggy being fond of
.
Next time: We explore sunny Nekojara island.