Part 27: Caer Bocram Part 1

Skit: Torim, the Center of Trade
Torim feels a lot more like a port city than Nor did, don't you think?
Yes, it's lively, and the port is full of ships.
That's because Torim is run by Fortune's Market. They control shipping all over the world.
I'm pretty sure Fortune's Market has their headquarters in Torim.
I guess business can keep a city running if people want it to.
I never would've thought of that.




And with that, we're off to Caer Bocram. As most world-map travels, this is rather short and uneventful, except for our new artes:





Repede's Sonic Return, where Repede charges then enemy, then jumps back.






Karol's Nice Recovery Smash, similar to Nice Aid Smash but it heals status aliments instead of HP.







Yuri's Dragon Swarm, an awesome arte where Yuri does some acrobatics to hit the enemy multiple times with his sword and kicks. The disadvantage is that it's long and thus it's possible to either kill the enemy or just plain miss him and then hit some air for a while. After 200 or so uses, though, you can cancel the arte midway by blocking, which negates that.






Estelle's Delight Roll, where she swings her weapon low, throwing enemies into the air.





And Rita's ζ＝δτ(ωρ) "Laplace", where she jumps up and smashes enemies downwards with her book.




And with that, we're at Caer Bocram.

Watch the cutscene!

Dungeon video available!





Man, this place is a total wreck.
Do you seriously think anybody would come to a place like this?
I wonder if we've been fed some false information again.
Again...?



That voice...?!



Nan! All right! I finally found you!
...



Don't take that buddy-buddy tone with me.
Aw, don't be like that. I only got a little lost.
A little lost? That's a good one! You know you just ran away!
I didn't run away, I swear!
Still making excuses, huh?
It's not an excuse! I beat an eggbear, just like I said I would!
More lies.
I-I mean it!



Remind me who it was that said, "I swear I won't run away this time." You always run and hide at the first sign of trouble. You've been kicked out of every guild in the book.



...Hah! Even we've already fired you!
W-wait!
You have been warned by the Hunting Blades! Leave this area at once!



Nan runs back into the town.

Nan!
...
This still doesn't explain what the Hunting Blades are doing here.
Good point.



She never said we weren't allowed to enter.
But what about the "risking our lives" part?
Are you implying that I should listen to that brat? Don't make me laugh.
At any rate, the Blood Alliance doesn't seem to be here. Let's have a look around.




Skit: Karol, Fired
Man...why did it have to end up like this... They said...they said I was f-f-fired...
Karol, keep your spirits up!
I can't be happy anymore... It's like her words are a dagger in my heart...
She was just worried it'd be too dangerous for you. There's still hope.
Huh? Y-you think so?!
...Uh, whatever, I don't care about what she thinks!
The problem is your guild, right? I get it.
R-right, yeah.
I don't care about Nan...
This hurts to watch.
I'm rooting for you, Karol!




Caer Bocram is a dungeon with lots of different areas to check out and paths to take, although they're all closed off right now.



The doors are locked, and the other way to traverse is turned off:



Hey, get your grubby mitts off it!
Of course... It's slightly different from the norm, but it looks like a type of warp blastia. Its activating mechanism is... Let's see... Huh...?
What's the matter?
...There's no activation switch! It's properly equipped with a core, and it doesn't look like it's the type where you can activate it by removing the core.
So maybe there's an activation switch located somewhere else?
Perhaps... If there were another blastia like this one in this town. It wouldn't be too unusual for there to be some device to manage all of them at once.
Oh, so we can't activate it, then? Too bad...
Huh? Why's it too bad?
Nah, I just had a hunch it would lead to something interesting...
Blastia isn't a toy, you know!
Couldn't we just look for the device that's managing it?
Yes...
Sure, maybe we can find it...




Skit: Doesn't Seem Like an Earthquake
Was this town really destroyed by an earthquake? The buildings all look kind of strange...
Yeah. They don't really look like they collapsed from the ground shaking... Something's weird.
Yeah, so...how were they destroyed, then?
Got me. Maybe we can find out by asking someone who used to live in the town.
That's not really why we're here though, so why should we care?
You actually have a point there.




Walking to the left leads us to the room with the activation device after a short walk.



Should we head back? Or...
Hold on, I'm going to have a look around.
Weird, there's not a keyhole or anything...
Really...?





What the...?
I wouldn't want Captain Karol to dirty his hands on such a filthy door!
Oh, uh, r-right, ah hah hah...
*Sigh*
Well, shall we?



Wouldn't it be crazy if a monster just gobbled up your foot right now? Just a giant munch, and oops, no more foot.



Heh, looks fine to me. Let's go inside.
What am I, your test dummy?!



What's this do?
Get your grubby mitts off it! I don't want to have to tell you again!
It seems like it might be an activation switch for the warp blastia upstairs.
Nothing's happening.
It doesn't have enough aer.
Not enough...aer... ...I wonder if that ring I got in the Shaikos Ruins might be able to do anything.
Ah, the Sorcerer's Ring. I'm not sure... But you might as well give it a try.

Yuri shoots the Sorcerer's Ring at it.



Maybe that means we'll be able to use the warp blastia upstairs!
Let's go!


Besides activating the warp blastia, this also opens up the locked doors for some reason.



Inside, we can find some items, along with this thing:




Mysterious. Anyway, going back to the blastia...




So that was the activation device, after all!
Then hurry up and--
Hold your horses.
This is just like in the Shaikos Ruins. If you don't fill up the core with aer, it won't work.
Ah, so I should use the Sorcerer's Ring.
Right.





Using those devices, we can shoot us to different parts of the dungeon, although often some of the choices presented will not lead anywhere. On this one, for example, I picked Forward; going Left or Right would put us back on the same level as the device is, not helping us at all.


Skit: The Hunting Blades
What do the Hunting Blades mainly do, as a guild?
Like their name says, they make their living hunting monsters.
It's not like there's any shortage of monsters once you're outside the barriers. Business must be booming.
Yeah, they definitely get a lot of commissions.
But the Hunting Blades aren't killing monsters just because someone asked them to.
Monsters are evil. This evil must be punished. That's the creed of the Hunting Blades.
I wonder if any of them are doing it just for their own personal grudges against monsters.
Oh yeah. A lot of people. Like, Nan's parents were killed right before her eyes when she was a kid.
Huh. It'd be hard not to hold a grudge after something like that.





Some houses have warp blastia on their roof, which we can reach from inside.



Up here, we find the Hunting Blades, but we keep a safe distance.

Watch the (unvoiced) cutscene!



...aren't here after all.
Those guys are the Hunting Blades.
Th-that man...we saw him in Deidon Hold.
Ah, now that you mention it, we did see him. So he's the leader of your guild, then.
Yeah, he's Clint, the leader of the Hunting Blades.
He's gonna fight that monster all by himself?







He took it out in one hit...?
That was a fatal strike.
A fatal strike?
It's a crazy-powerful technique that extremely skilled swordsmen can use.
Hmmm... So how do you do it?
How do you do it...? H-how should I know?!
"Fatal strike--A strong attack which throws your opponent off balance, followed by a single, well-timed strike to finish the enemy."
Is that something else you read in a book?
Y-yes, it is...



You really want to get back into the guild, don't you?
Wh-what makes you say that?
What...? Karol, are you going to go back into the guild?
I won't go back...! I'm sick and tired of monster hunting.



N-no. I had been planning on leaving for a while.
Oh, really? Well, whatever you say.
So, uh, let's get going.
Well, I'm glad you're staying with us, Karol.
Anyway, what do you think they're doing with such a large contingent?
Yeah, if they wanted to take out that monster we saw, one person would've been enough.
This is actually the first time I've ever seen this many guild members gathered in one place.
Really?
Yeah, a lot of the members are loners. They tend not to travel in groups.



Curiouser and curiouser...
Want to...follow them and see what they're up to?
Nah, that sounds interesting, but I'm gonna keep going.
He's looking for members of the Blood Alliance, after all. Right, Yuri?
Yeah, I don't want to worry about two guilds. One is more than enough!

If we walk a few steps backwards, which we eventually have to to, Yuri gets an idea.



I think I'll try to do that thing.
That thing?
That fatal strike thing.
You can't just imitate what you saw and hope it'll work...
Hey, I won't know if I can until I try. How did it go again?
Uh, uhh, first, you go and attack the enemy to throw it off balance...
Alrighty...
"Alrighty"? Ah...!



I see it!
Huh? S-see what?
I see my opening to attack!





Yuri, that was amazing...
Nah, I was just copying what I saw.
I didn't think it was the sort of thing you can just copy like that...
Well, you need a little skill, but it's not really that hard. You think you could do it while watching me?
N-no way! It takes a skilled swordsman to do something like that...
I know that. But Karol, you're not as bad as you make yourself out to be.
I'm, I'm not?
You too, Estelle.
R-really...?
Alright, let's go.


Fatal Strikes are neat. From now on, our artes have a direction/color attribute - green for sideways, blue for upwards, red for downwards - corresponding to one of the enemy's bars we can see when changing target:



By using an arte, we now deplete the bar corresponding with the arte's direction. You can also use default attacks (side, up or down) to deplete them at a lower rate. When it gets low, some sparks in the corresponding color will appear on the enemy:



And once it's empty, a glyph appears on the next hit with that direction (in this case it must be an arte, not a normal attack!).



By pressing the Fatal Strike button, default RT/R2, while the glyph is visible and the enemy is targetted, you will execute a Fatal Strike.





Fatal Strikes will instantly kill any normal enemy, and do big damage to bosses. By killing enemies with a Fatal Strike, the amount of EXP earned, LP earned or the item drop chance will increase, depening on the color/direction used and the enemy in question. You can increase this bonus by using FS Chains, that is, making glyphs appear on the enemy several times in a row without actually striking: The higher the chain, the better the bonus.

Another thing to note is that different enemies can be weaker or stronger to certain Fatal Strike directions. For example, an enemy's blue bar might take a while to go down, while the red one will deplete in only a few hits. All in all, it's a fun mechanic that makes battles much more interesting.

Doing our first Fatal Strike gives us an achievement/trophy:


Achievement/Trophy:

First Strike


Skit: Estelle, the Historian
Wow... These buildings are from the late Ellicasm civilization! It must be a very old town.
You seem to know a lot about these things...as always.
It's such a shame they just let the city fall apart like this...
Do you really think we're in any position to be sightseeing around this moldy old city?
We do have things we need to be doing...
Then shouldn't we be focusing on them instead of this little tour?
Oh wow... That round roof is using the Lian method, first developed by Emperor Heliorus IV!
But I guess we should do something about that first...
Yeah.


Trying out my Fatal Strikes, Karol learns another arte:





He smashes his weapon into the ground, then pulls it back out, hitting enemies down then throwing them skywards.











More password clues, can you figure it out?






Done with exploring, we actually want to head down those stairs here.



And that's where we stop for today. Next time, we'll see the reason the Hunting Blades are here.

-----

Noteworthy loot acquired in this dungeon:


Strength: Attack +5%.
Defend: Defense +5%.
Anti Break: Reduces chance of getting your guard broken.


Magic Guard Plus: Reduces damage recieved during Magic Guard.


Dash: Increases movement speed in battle. Nice.
Recover


Strength: Attack +5%.
Swords Up: Increases attack power when using a sword.


Backstep
Evade: Speed +5%.