Part 17: Armic's Adventure - Part 4

Unlimited Saga, part 17: Let's Go Shopping

Completing the mines quest unlocks a few more towns, including Iskandaria and Wanda. We could go check out Pharos, but since we do not have Silver Girl or Iskandar with us it's most inaccessible. As this random guy says,



That's fine, though. The important thing is that we unlocked Wanda, which has another party member for recruitment. Before we can do that, though, the last of the Chapas turns up to do some trading.



I actually have some extra stuff right now -- particularly copper, which I'm positively loaded with.



The numbers here don't reflect stuff that's equipped, so I actually have even more lying about. But this dude doesn't have anything extra, so I don't know why he bothered to show up at all, or why he feels smug enough to say this when we leave him:



Armic's doing better than everybody else right now, dude!

Anyway, the Inn in Wanda has an important character hanging about.



Buck up. At least you're still alive, aren't you?

The Dragonscale Knife is among the Regal Lion's riches. It might be useful in rebuilding Escata...

I'm Armic of the Chapa tribe. Let's look for those riches together!

Thank you. I am Henri.

Henri is one of the main characters in Laura's quest, and he's pretty cool. He even has the Blade of Escata with him, which is that thing Laura showed to Mythe way back when. It is a dagger which features infinite durability, meaning he can use it forever with no ill effect.



However, since he is meant to be a starting character, he has 50 -- yes, fifty -- HP right now, and terrible panels as well. Plus we can't get the magical armor that strengthens the Blade, so it's stuck at a terrible 11 attack. Still, if you want to use him he's at least got an easy way to spark stuff without worrying about durability or repairs, I guess? On the other hand he comes with an armlet made of Ash, which means we now have two Ash items! Neat. If you managed to miss the Spirit Bow, this could be a nice secondary source of it.

Also, I managed to pick up some ironstone in the shop there, which means it's time to do some smithing. Remember, with enough wood and some luck, we can make damascus; even if that doesn't work right now, we'll still get steel. So we got o Longshank and



Go away Spry, nobody likes you.

Anyway, we make a dagger out of a mullock spear and some carnelian.



Ironstone and wood gives iron.



Iron and wood is steel, and then steel and wood gives steel also, like this:



But sometimes it gives steel that looks like this:



And when you combine the weird weaker steel and the fortified mullock, you get a black weapon, which is made of damascus.



So that's another thing from our shopping list done! I gave the black knife to Henri, in the hope its power would make up for his lack of stats right now. Of the rare items, we now have Ash, Faerie Steel, and Damascus! Making money is very important right now, so if you really want to farm for money in Unlimited Saga (something you basically only need to do for Armic) here's how you do it: buy silver, then shove every bestial stone you have into it until it becomes platinum. Then sell it for lots of money and now you're rich. Feel free to repair it with stuff you don't need for extra value!

Of course, this is problematic in Armic's story because he also needs bestial stuff for his list. Fortunately, there is always going to be more of that stuff in the shops, so it's no big deal.

Also, it's good to have extras of the rare items lying around, so if you're doing Armic's quest feel free to make lots of platinum and keep it spare in case the Chapas want to trade. Since Platinum, while annoying to make, is at least created from easily obtained materials, it's a good choice for this.



Let's go get the Obsidian Boots.



You know the drill from last time, of course. Since we just want the boots, we only have to follow the quest up until we find them. We hear the old man, follow him to the basement, Henri stabs some books, and we find the Obsidian Boots. Huzzah!



I could probably have finished the quest -- we have a full party now, and they're reasonably strong -- but I did not want to do that for reasons I will explain later. However, we can't leave the castle without clearing the quest or running out of time, so we spend our turns looking for loot and teaching people magic. Vearst is on his way to learning fire arrows!



He will do upwards of 100 damage with them! This is because Vearst is terrible.

Also, because I didn't realize it at first, here's what Diplomacy is for:




The towers of the castle have plenty of cash for us, which is nice.



Normally a round table would simply be some Arthurian reference, but given who we fought in Mythe's story it could also mean the castle is related to them. Who knows?

Back in town, we can actually trade with one of the Chapas:



Because he has extra snake skin, he'll trade it for any regular items he's missing. Sadly, he has enough Copper and thus won't take ours, but snake skin is kind of annoying to find so I still got as much of it as possible with other things.

Now, the reason I did not want to clear Abandoned Castle is that shops refill when you clear a quest, and I had seen that the shop in Vaftom had a meteorite dagger on sale. It was pricy, and I couldn't afford it, but if it got replaced I might have to wait a while to find another. Since I need two meteorites -- one as itself, and another to make meteoric iron -- that would be bad. So I deliberately farmed for money and items in the Castle without finishing it, and thus got rich enough to buy the thing outright.



Now we have four rare items. Six to go, in addition to a bunch of random shop items. Henri gave us a hint to where we can find Dragonscale, but that quest is too tough, so right now the best course of action is to simply go do some quests and make some money, and buy up everything on the list we can.

Sidequest: Monster Extermination. The quest is to wander around the herb field from Armic's story quest and fight a bunch of random encounters until the boss appears, which is this:



You can do this right from the start, as soon as you clear the herb gathering quest, which is suicidal. Our much stronger party is still vulnerable to their attacks, as depicted by Vearst getting torn to pieces by them here:




Unlike the random encounters, this boss is scripted, so it's the same whether you come here with Armic and Norff alone, or with a full party of end-game fighters. And that's why I say that it's the bosses which are the real danger in this game.

They also have a full-party attack which can stun, so basically they're just huge bastards.

After the quest, I bought everything I could, again.



We're doing pretty well now. But the money has run out, and so it's time to go get some more cash from a very nice place to farm indeed:




Starship Anchor is probably the coolest Wonder. It's neat for a variety of reasons, but it's also great for getting money and items because it has a ton of treasure everywhere and you can just walk out the front door when you're done. We will clear it eventually, because it's cool, but for now it's just a way to get some more cash and buy more stuff.



The anchor itself is surrounded by a forest. Not much to be found there, though there's some monsters to fight if you feel frisky. However, there's a few outbuildings off in the woods which do have treasure in them, which means we're heading to those first.



The lock on this chest was too hard for Edel, who failed so many times that monsters showed up and attacked. Fortunately Henri picked up a nice dagger panel when we did the monster quest, and so even with his shoddy Blade he can do an appreciable amount of damage.



I was hoping he'd spark some good skills while using it that'd transfer over to a better weapon later, but it didn't really happen. Anyway, when I eventually opened the chest it had a snake-skin armor inside! Awesome!

The main building is to the East.





This thing is, I think, the same as the wyvern from the Abandoned Castle. I'm not 100% sure, though. Anyway, it's a boss, and you can spark stuff on it, which is cool. Armic learned a new throw!



Henri picked up a few dagger skills, as well. It did a lot of damage to the party, but fortunately it's the only boss we're going to face during this visit.

Killing the wyvern reveals a stone, which causes stars to appear in the dome.



This is necessary for progressing through the dungeon, though it won't come into play for a bit. But with that done, we can go downstairs,



and into the Starship Anchor itself. Like so:



The party starts at one end of the constellation, and to unlock the next area they have to follow it (as helpfully indicated by the line to our right). However, the outlying stars are full of treasure, so it's a good place to get rich!

I like the combat area used for this area, too.



It's just a cool dungeon generally, and, like Nakle Lines, uses the 2d top-down design to good effect. But we're not here to finish the dungeon, merely to loot its upper floor. Which we do quite easily!



By using this new-found wealth, and by stripping the entire party naked, we are finally able to trigger the next Yun scene and unlock the fire dungeon.



But that will have to wait for next time! Stay tuned!