Part 18: The Dark Abyss

We interrupt this quest to bring you something completely different!


Chat here! I bet you didn't know that the ocean has more secrets than Aifread's hidden caverns! Let's take a look at our map...




Here I've marked a suspicious place just north of Balir's castle. It's a dark shadowy cave that has never been explored. Well we're going to be the first! Join us on our underwater adventure today!


Not so fast, Chat! The oceans of Inferia have some secrets of their own. Why, a vessel mysteriously sank a long time ago somewhere over here!




Let's check out this site as well! That is, if you're up for the challenge.



Part 1 (Shadow Cave): [YOUTUBE] (~15 minutes)
Part 2 (Sunken Ship): [YOUTUBE] (~13 minutes)

Join us as we explore the mysteries of the deep ocean!

Bonus: Shadow Live (warning: kind of boring because we kicked his fuckin' ass)



Boss Time!



Compared to other craymels, Shadow isn't so tough. He's slow, kind of clumsy, and has lousy spells. He does have a couple of cohorts, though.

Shadow mainly walks around and attacks with his blades. His most annoying attack is Dash Counter, where he spins his blades in front of himself and then knocks you away. He does this when he's idle and you run towards him - the counter for this is to either walk or charge in when he's being buffeted by magic. He also packs a jump counter, but this doesn't really come up. His other attacks include a wide overhead swing, as well as a thrust attack that sends him forward through your party. The latter is very damaging and it also gets him out of the corner if you've pushed him back. Finally, he can cast Dark Force.

He also has a pair of living doll enemies that will walk around and chop party members with an axe. Despite their surprisingly large amount of health, they are even slower dumber pieces of shit than Shadow is. If you have human casters, they can just move away from them when necessary. Even with CPU-controller casters, the dolls are still worth ignoring. You only have to take out Shadow in order to win the fight. Target him with your most devestating spells and ravage him with the Excalibur that he so helpfully gave to you back in Volt Temple.

Defeating Shadow lets you summon him, doing a pretty big amount of damage to all enemies. How about Fringing?

Shadow gives you the spell Dark Force. A beam of darkness picks up the target (doing decent damage), drops them, then explodes (weaker, but enough hits to add up). The scoop is practically undodgeable.

5 15 Deep Mist will lower the enemy's accuracy, making it more difficult for them to land solid hits and break your guard.

20 9 Ohh baby, Cyclone is one of the best spells ever. A giant whirlwind appears, scoops up and savages everything that touches it. It only reaches up to the top of the screen so it deals damage slower once they hit the top of the cyclone and start bouncing on it - this doesn't apply to "heavy" enemies who can't be picked up and are forced to eat the bottom of the cyclone for the entire time (making them easy pickings for your fighters!)

21 10 Ground Dasher / Earth Shaker is a spell you've been looking forward to since the beginning of the game. Earth Shaker chunks some rocks up at an angle toward the target, then decimates the gound with a gigantic quake. I don't find it as damaging as Cyclone, but it makes up for that by having a massive effective area.

5 10 Barrier will raise an ally's defense. Why did they include two of these? We didn't use Resist and we're not using this.

Efreet and Celsius don't fringe with Shadow at all. Not even for a passive effect. What a ripoff!

Next time...