Part 40: Tales of A Frozen Tundra
Welcome to the continent of Freezekiel. As the name would imply, it's bloody cold here so let's get this over with quickly. Alternatively, we could stay here fight the few random encounters it has to get a ton of Pelts and sell them here for maximum profit but that's dumb and pointless so let's not do that.
Skit: New Weather Woes
(Even if you normally skip these, and I'm sure you do, you should click that link and watch this one. Seriously.)
: Now you're going to have Efreet warm you up!?
: Yeah, I can't stand this cold...
: Uwah! Fire! I'm on fire! H, hot!
: Hot! I, is everything under control!? That burns!: This isn't good! U, Undine!!: That's freezing!!: It's like we're just running in circles...
: Ugh... Just leave it be.
Freezekiel's a pretty weird town. It's in a state of eternal winter, because it just is, and so some NPCs are huddled around fire. The ones that aren't insane and standing outside for no reason have taken refuge inside where it's slightly warmer.
The weapon store sells
Also in the weapon store is this prick who sells us a collectible card for 50,000. If I wasn't getting all of these, I'd be tempted to take the "mug the bastard" option instead. As that doesn't exist, though, we waste our money on the item with no real use.
Freezekiel accounts for one of our missing recipes. I even checked after getting this to be doubly sure and we are, indeed, only missing one now. I know where it is but it can wait until later.
At the inn, there's a kid who does nothing but reference Tower of Druaga in case we missed it the first time. He doesn't tell us the gear we need to finish the quest though, so we don't care about him.
We can also buy this for 33,000 gald. That's what I'd call "reasonable" and "cheap" considering this is pretty much the best arcane arte for random encounters. Roaring Fang AND Shining Strike? Oh game, you shouldn't have.
No, really, you shouldn't have. Now randoms have lost that little bit of "being a threat" they'd managed to build.
Anyway, we're here for a reason so let's just go and get it over with. I'd imagine the Fenrir Cathedral is a good place to start the search what with being still named after Fenrir.
The thing with the Fenrir Cathedral is that you can't get in it until you know you need the Sword of Ice. The door's outright sealed until this scene. Conversely, since we've been to where the Sword of Fire blatantly is a few times already we could have had that since we got the Rhea-Birds. Doing that IS possible, incredibly fun and actually challenging but it's also incredibly stupid and super frustrating for reasons we'll see shortly.
This guy's your best bet for beating these two dungeons in a reasonable length of time. He sells rings that you "need" for 100,000 gald each. Oh, he says they cost 10,000 but he's lying.
He'll only sell you one of each charm before you're stuck going into the dungeon without them and whilst it is doable, I do not recommend it. You see, these rings are magic and shit. We'll need at least four Fire Charms so the solution is...
Use a Rune Bottle on an Ice Charm of course. By doing this, we can buy another one from the ghost, Rune Bottle that one and repeat until we have enough Fire Charms.
You COULD head into the dungeon without any, get a few Ice Charms as drops in there and then Rune Bottle them if you'd prefer but I ended up getting some as drops only after I'd bought 6 charms in total. I guess [insert deity of choice] is just really big on spite.
Oh, and once we get to the obvious boss fight... I'll probably still be using the Fire Charms actually. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
I'm sure you're not interested in NPC ramblings, so let's just skip through this to the dungeon. It's past the clearly suspicious marking behind the altar.
The Cavern of Ice itself is a mostly straightforward dungeon; it's heavy on the Sorcerer's Ring in places and has one area that's a bit of a dick move but there's nothing too taxing in it.
It has some nice treasures though. This helmet being one of them; it's pretty much as good as the Rare Helm only it's free.
1 point of defence lower is kinda silly to worry about. The thing that holds this back compared to the Rare Helm (and why I didn't wait for it) is because it doesn't have an elemental defence.
Rooms like these are terrible. Unlike most environmental hazard-y places, these will hurt you even if you're not moving. On top of that, it won't leave you with 1 HP. Oh no, these will kill the shit out of you if given the chance. How do you get around it?
Pop a Dark Bottle, run like crazy and cook after every fight without hesitation. Alternatively, equip a Fire Charm to everyone you care about not dying. Doing it the first way is the only means of standing a chance without the charms though; I'd recommend Steak since it heals 35-40% HP depending on mastery level.
This dungeon is a nice place to get a lot of money too. You can get a bunch of Tapestry from it! I know I mentioned before that they sell for a lot but I neglected to mention one little detail: they sell for the second most out of everything. And I do mean everthing. Selling 15 of them for maximum value will net you 1,388,475 gald. Plus you can get swords here that also for a fair amount if you don't mind the slews of Longswords you'll get as well.
I'm sure it won't come as a shock to hear that this is another Star Cloak. Mint gets this one.
At level 40, Suzu gets a title. If it weren't for these cropping up occasionally, you'd be forgiven for forgetting she didn't even exist.
Further in, we have this statue that we can't move until we use the Sorcerer's Ring on it. We need to move this statue but as a change it's not for a switch!
We need to move the statue into that gap in the left wall. A "strong wind" comes out of it that will blow out these candles just before you can get through the door ahead otherwise.
About halfway through the dungeon, we come to this area. A maze of rooms that look completely identical and the environmental hazard that will murder you for taking too long. Great.
In terms of treasure, the only one we're interested in for the time being is Tidal Wave. The best Water elemental spell and, in some Tales of games, the best spell period. It's pretty generic "hit everything on screen for lots of damage" but with this...
We can run out and go take on the Tower of Flame. Don't worry, I'm not being indecisive or completely insane; there IS a reason for what I'm doing, I promise.