Part 47: The Treasure of Aifread
Do you like sidequests? I like sidequests. In fact, I love sidequests! I love sidequests so much we're going to be nothing but them from now on. They're (mostly) fun sidequests though, so let's get the most treasure-filled one out of the way first.
Now that we've been to Dhaos' Castle (future edition) this guy turns up in Freezekiel's item store.
: You wouldn't be interested in hearing my request would you?
: Yes.: Really? You'll hear me out? My name is Graham.
: I assume this isn't your first time hearing the name "Aifreid"? I'm the only son of the Pirate Aifreid. Although my father is dead and gone, the glory of his legend lives on. I've sold my father's last remaining possession, his ship, in order to live in these hard times.: Then the request you mentioned was... Maybe you want us to search for your father's lost treasures?: That's right, but it's not quite what you might think. What I want you to search for is neither gold nor silver. Have a look at these documents if you would. They may hold clues to finding the secret locations of his treasure; all contained in this riddle.
: You can keep any treasures that you find during your search. In exchange, I ask only one thing: that you bring me this <<greatest treasure>> mentioned in these old records.: I understand. We'll help you search for that treasure.
Oh boy, time for a treasure hunt! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!
But, seriously, Aifread's Treasure has some pretty great things in it.
Skit: Aifreid's Greatest Treasure
: It's gotta [be] really valuable, huh?
: Huh? We have to give up a treasure like that?
: There's no choice. That was the deal we made.
: What a waste...
On top of Aifread's <<greatest treasure>> we can talk to Graham again, so as to get clues to the locations of the other treasures. In a sense these are worth more to our purposes than the main goal, since they contain a fair few nice things. And lots of free money (as if we needed even more of that).
The first few are easy to find; case in point, this one is just south-west of Euclid. They're all in locations you'd have no reason to go to normally but you can come to these locations any time once you get the Rhea-Birds. There's no point to though, since the treasures don't spawn until you talk to Graham.
Most areas with treasure in, have three to collect. There's some with more and some with only two, but even in those cases there's usually only really one worth mentioning. In this case, the best is a Protect Ring which is quite unfortunate. The only other treasures are a Pelt (...Aifread had lots of these) and 10,710 gald. Bleh.
The second treasure trove is just south of Venezia. On top of a Pelt (...) and a Mental Ring, there's actually something worth a damn here:
The Hyper Gauntlets are only equippable by Cless, and they're his best Gloves (the Star Gauntlets go to Chester like out-dated hand-me-downs even though they're still kinda good).
The extra 2 defence is pretty bleh, but the 20 accuracy helps a fair bit too. What the game doesn't tell you is that on top of being the best gloves, they're also one of the items that make up the treasures from the Legend of Ishtar.
There's also a second screen to the right of this of this area that contains nothing but Gald.
The last area from this first clue is just east of Demeter's Manse. It's probably got the worse treasure out of the entire quest.
The money is the best thing here! There's another Pelt and a Rebirth Doll in the other chests but they're only worth a token mention.
Our next location is pretty much directly next to Lone Valley and surprisingly doesn't have a Pelt in it! It has less than 10,000 Gald (woo), a Silver Shawl and some Jet Boots. Nothing new or particularly exciting but at least the Jet Boots are handed to you at this point for the Legend of Ishtar.
Due north of the Cave of the Spirits we can find not one, but two treasures in this one location! Amazingly that's a 100% decent item rate for this location; don't expect it to last very long.
The Blue Candle is a special item you can use from the menu. It only works in a few locations though, and it's required to beat one dungeon. There's two more items like it that we need before we can beat said dungeon though.
The Sephira is a unique accessory that increases Gald received after battle by 1.5x iff the person that's equipped with it deals the final blow of the fight.
Throw a Rune Bottle on it, and it becomes the equally unique Blue Sephira which doubles post-battle Gald with the same needlessly complicated and unlikely requirement.
Just east of the Morrison' manse, there's an incredibly obvious peninsula that contains our next treasures.
The other two here are a Mental Ring and an Elixir. The Dark Seal's just a contingency for if you don't get one from a drop in Dhaos' Castle I would imagine.
There's a mini island just south of this peninsula that has the next two treasures; just some gald and another Rebirth Doll.
The treasures on Early and Fenrir are quite well hidden compared to most of the other stuff. Early as a continent consists of two islands which are quite large and have no small islands floating around them. Fenrir is just one giant landmass with a bunch of tiny islands around it. The game gets around this by using places on the main islands you could reach any time but were utterly pointless otherwise. This one east of Early (the city) is a good example of that.
Here's the guaranteed Wall Break which gives a 50% chance of nullifying Earth. I can count on one hand the amount of enemies worth mentioning that use Earth attacks.
It's two, and both are Dhaos.
Next set of treasures is north of Early (the city). As you'd imagine, it has the nigh-requisite Pelt and Gald.
If we didn't fight Odin earlier, we wouldn't even need this to cheese him any more. The Mumbane would do that more than effectively enough on its own.
Fenrir hides its treasure in one of the many, many possible places and its not even on one random tiny island. It's one of the several alcoves in the mountains; kinda hard to tell but it's sorta southwest of the city.
On top of the Moon Crystal we wouldn't want to think of using any more, there's yet another Pelt and more inconsequential Gald.
I know I keep ragging on it and that it would be a decent amount added up (around 300,000 total) we really don't need the money any more. We don't really have anything to spend it on other than the Reaper and even then we'll only be seeing him again like once more and by then we'll have a good 6 or 7 million to spend.
Just to the east of Ymir, we can find money and a Force Ring. Nothing of interest or of value here. The Force Ring wasn't even particularly good much earlier so why it's giving us one now I can't even begin to guess.
On this island northeast of Ymir (or southeast of Alvanista; either, or), we can find three treasures that don't actually contain gald this time! It's a Silver Shawl instead again. The Pelt is still a Pelt and the other item is a Reflect Ring. I promise these items will get actually worth it soon!
Oh and the clue for this area said there's three treasures but I can only find two so I'm assuming it's a translation error. I even looked it up and there's no third treasure that the one guide on GameFAQs has found so either it's really well hidden or Absolute Zero actually made an error that isn't a mispelling or forgetting to put a word in.
This clue is pretty badly worded. It's actually referring to four treasure locations; two in Alvanista and two in Freyland.
Northeast of Alvanista, we can come across an island with an oddly shaped place of grass that is pretty blatantly indicating that there's something here.
There's a Pelt as usual here but there's another Fairy Ring, which means we nearly have one for everyone. Not sure why you'd want one for everyone, but the option is there eventually.
There's also this in place of Gald. I say "in place of Gald" because it's not particularly an item we can use and it's a Valuable so it exists solely to be sold but it's one we haven't seen yet so it has that going for it if nothing else.
The next set of treasure is hidden in this forest southeast of the previous one. This one doesn't have a Pelt (hurray!) but it does have some gald.
The ?Halberd here is a Saint Halberd which is a Light elemental spear that's not even close to as good as the Gungnir we've had for many, many in-game hours at this point.
A bit northwest of Olive we can find this oddly shaped island. I keep thinking this is the one where the "greatest treasure" is but it's not. It seems like it would be since you can see Odin on the map here.
On top of 2 Elixirs and a Pelt, there's a second Drum Set here for... if you don't get the one that's not missable at Morrison's house I suppose.
Northeast of Tower of Odin, we can find this island which seems like it could fall into the same possible "greatest treasure" location but not really. You can't get the locations of Odin and Fenrir to match the description from here.
There's 9 chests in this area. They all contain the same thing.
Lots of Coral for free right here. Since we're pretty close to Olive right now we might as well go sell it all for the maximum profit.
This one set of treasure alone is worth more than all the free gald we've gotten thus far. A fair bit of that 369k we have on-hand is leftovers from spending a bunch on the Reaper.
Out of this last set of five locations, only one of them is undeniably terrible.
I can't think of how to describe this location other than as the sort of... oddly shaped... island northeast of the island full of Coral.
The Red-Line Shield is a bit of a step back from the Star Shield but it really depends on if you want Defense or Evasion.
I kinda, sorta, want Defense when it comes to, y'know, armour so the Red-Line Shield isn't that great. The one advantage it does have is that its part of the Legend of Ishtar so we get to cart it around until we're done with that.
This is a Duel Sword which we've got tons of already. Since they drop from enemies in Dhaos' Castle pretty freely. Bleh.
The other 4 things here are an Elixir, a Tapestry, a pair of Elven Boots and an Hourglass.
Next cache of treasure is directly south of the bridge that led to where Dhaos Castle was in the past.
The Blue-Line Shield is Cless' best shield.
It has the same Evasion as the Red-Line but more Defense than the Star. It's also the second shield that's part of the Legend of Ishtar.
There's also the Green Torch here, which is basically the Blue Candle with a different coat of paint. We're still missing one last item that makes up this set, and we won't be getting it for a little while.
The other stuff here is an Elixir, Stun Charm, Black Onyx and... Pelt.
Northwest of where Dhaos' Castle was in the past.
The N.G. here is Klaus' best weapon and we can get a second one later.
Well, it's true for a given value of "best". It's not like he'll ever be using it for physical attacks and it doesn't make his summons deal more damage since nothing does. The end-game's kinda cruel to him since pretty much everyone else pulls so far ahead while he just stagnates (Suzu doesn't count).
The NG itself is an actual magazine that was released from 1983 until 1993. I want to say it stands for "Namco Gamer" but I can find nothing to either confirm or deny this.
This is a Luck Blade which I'm told is really good but I'm not inclined to believe it.
I'm sure if I did give this seemingly mediocre-at-best weapon a fair chance, I might be proven wrong but I don't exactly like things that require me to spend ages to get it to work effectively.
There's also some Elven Boots and a somewhat well hidden
Somewhat Northeast of the White Birch Forest on one of the rare parts that aren't covered in snow. It has a Marble, an Elixir and some helmet.
More specifically, Cless' best helmet.
Much like everything else of Cless' we've got that has been his best equipment this is another item from the Legend of Ishtar.
A bit to the southwest of the White Birch Forest we find the last part of other treasures. They're just three Pelts. I don't even know anymore.
Let's just get the final treasure so we can be done with this now. I never realised just how much crap Aifread had that he considered treasure until looking back on it.
Its on this tiny, tiny island that you probably wouldn't even see if you weren't actively looking for it. It's near the port that takes you from Moria to Freyland.
This alone will pay for one batch of EXP from the Reaper. Nice of them to give us an almost worthwhile amount of gald. After spending 20 minutes flying around the entire world.
...Forget that "almost worthwhile" thing. In this scenario 10,000,000 would fit the almost.
And here's the greatest treasure. Graham wasn't kidding when he said it wasn't gold or silver.
No, this is something far more valuable than either of those. It's also completely and utterly impossible to truly buy. It has no monetary value whatsoever...[/i]
: This is... it's my mother's...: It seems this is his <<greatest treasure>>, that you were searching for.: This is my father's greatest treasure? This, this is... This is greater than how many hundreds of millions of treasures?: Perhaps your father...
: A treasure that cannot be bought for any price... Thank you. Truly, thank you. Please, take this with my gratitude.
Skit: The Perfect Treasure
: I think I understand a little.
: Yes, me too.: But it's kind of a let down...
: To Aifread, his wife was the greatest treasure of all.: Perhaps a disappointing prize, but a perfect answer.There's something else to this sidequest however that you have potentially seen but may not have realised what it was. Throughout the locations of the treasure we have been dogged by the most difficult enemy in the entire game bar none.
He only appears on these maps and you may not even realise he is there. Unlike other things of his ilk, however, he is impossible to miss in the traditional sense. You can see him right now, even if you don't know it.
Behold, our ultimate nemesis: the Crab. With his inpenetrable defense and vicious attacking might, can we best this foe?
I fear this may be impossible.
To keep this up any longer. The Crab doesn't attack. Most of the time your attacks won't do anything either. 70% of the time, it'll nullify anything except water. Which will always be absorbed. That's it. There entire thing exists to irritate people trying to get a complete Monster Encyclopaedia for two reasons (1. you might not know it exists and 2. you have to use Suzu at least once) and to be a giant joke at the player's expense.