Part 18: Armic's Adventure - Part 5

Unlimited Saga, part 18: Lots of Volcanoes

Last time, we got Yun to unlock the third dungeon -- in our case, that's the fire one. As you read this update, however, please remember that you're free to do it first, in which case you would have to do the entire thing with four people and almost no equipment. Good luck with that.



So, as you might expect, we're going to get another party member in this dungeon. That means we have to leave somebody behind, and I went with Nuage. He shall be replaced with Rebecca, as seen here:



Hello.

What are you doing here? Go home. It's too dangerous. I bet your parents are worried sick about you!

But not yet, because she runs off and leaves us alone. But it's a straight path until we reach her again -- I don't even think enemies can appear at this point.



I'm Armic of the Chapa Tribe. I don't want to go, but my village asked me to.

Oh, I see! Your parents should be so proud of you! Let me come along! I'm Rebecca, nice to meet you.

I don't know how old she thinks Armic is -- he's definitely not a kid, so regardless she's wrong -- but, hey, she's in the party now. Rebecca is a mage, and she's pretty good with fire. She is Judy's mom, too! As you'd expect she is skilled in fire magic but, weirdly, she does not know any good magic. But she comes with lv4 Familiars, so we'll just use those to make her useful. Importantly, however, she does know a few water spells, which is important for this dungeon.

Also, if I seem to be skipping over random encounters, that's because they all end like this:



Anyway, the reason it's important to realize Rebecca knows water magic is that this dungeon is a volcano, and it's full of magma flows which will damage you if you walk through them.



However, if you cast a water spell on them, like so:



You can clear out the magma and proceed unopposed. Otherwise, the magma will deal massive damage and by the end of the dungeon everyone will be dead. That's sort of the main gimmick here, and there's a lot of magma about, but if you know how to handle it you're fine. Rebecca even comes with an accessory that lets her cast the spell, so you're not going to be caught out by it; the trick is simply remembering you can cast magic on stuff and figuring out what to do.

The party proceeds into the volcano, and crosses a rickety bridge.




If you come here as a sidequest, this prevents escape, but of course since this is for a plot we can't leave anyway. No big deal.

There's a lot of powerful demons in this dungeon. Those demons from the Nakle Lines can appear now, for example, and they're just as liable to deal LP damage. Thankfully we have Vearst to soak up the damage, and Edel and Henri to kill it afterwards. Everything is fine.



If you just follow the path and clear out all the magma, the dungeon's not so bad -- though the boss may pose an issue. However, there's optional paths with great treasure, like this:




If you did the fire dungeon first you probably wouldn't have a way to pick this lock, but on the other hand you wouldn't be able to kill these demons. There's three of them, but how bad could they be?



Ah. Ok. Still, the room is full of treasure chests, and so the prize was worth it.

Even random encounters can drop a lot of money now, which is nice. The level of chests that enemies drop depends on the global encounter level, so if you really want you can deliberately kill lots of enemies and boost their level. I don't think that's really necessary, though.




The second floor is more of the same. There's a fork in the road, and the top route leads to more demons and treasure chests.

Near the end, there's a pool of magma even Rebecca can't clear. But fortunately, to the north there's a boulder we can push into the lava.



You pushed the rock! The rock rolls off the cliff, drops into the magma, and breaks into pieces!



Right after that, the dungeon ends. And that's pretty much it!



Something may be found here...

It must be a magic tablet!



Oh no, it's a dragon! Hopefully, this'll be a good fight. Vearst's LP has been cut down drastically, mostly by those demon encounters, but we do have a full party. I can't imagine this being doable with just four people.

The problem with our party, however, is we have two mages without good single-target damage output. Vearst can heal, which is nice, but he can't do any damage; Rebecca doesn't know anything but Bubble Blow, which she is predictably weak in casting, and Shock, which doesn't do too much damage because it's a target-all spell. She can certainly chain a few together to deal some damage, but it's not as much as someone else would.




So she's useless in this fight, or so you would think -- however, the fact she knows Purify at all is very helpful because the dragon's roar paralyzes people. Paralysis works weirdly in this game: it doesn't prevent action, but instead replaces a bunch of panels on the reel with paralysis panels which deal reduced damage and can't trigger special attacks. So it basically does nothing to mages, but is a real problem for physical attackers.

This dragon is just generally very powerful, though.

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/Delirious...bird-mobile.mp4

Even the legendary suplex cannot defeat it!

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/Elaborate...rbet-mobile.mp4



Thankfully it's also a good way to spark attacks. Here's one that Edel learned:

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ThoseSimilarImago-mobile.mp4

And in the end it was Edel who prevailed, dealing the final damage to the dragon and killing it for good.

We did find one.

It wasn't a magic tablet after all...

You'll find one soon.

Right. I'll keep looking!

One more to go. Maybe I can do this after all! But then again...

So, that's that. The final dungeon opens up when we finish the list, so let's see how that looks.



We do have obsidian, too; it's just equipped to someone so it doesn't count. Similarly, a fair amount of stuff on the left is missing, since it's being worn by the party. As for the rest, well, I checked the shop in Vaftom and found a Hydra Skin on sale there. Nice! I couldn't afford it at first, but I sold Henri's spare Ash Armlet and thus got enough money together to buy the thing.

I realized I was short on cash, so I used up some of our bestial materials to turn silver into platinum. And this paid off magnificently, because look at this:



Now, I knew that I could get a dragon scale somewhere else, and that I had enough obsidian, but a diamond for my platinum was an excellent deal. I made the diamond into a spear for Nuage, who I decided to swap in for Henri because he was, frankly, not holding his own. Not because Henri is a bad character, but simply because he joined too late to keep up with the others.

So, Henri told us about a dragon scale in the treasure of the Regal Lion. But to get that, we have to do a different quest first, because the two together form a story -- ironically, more of a story than Armic seems to have at this point. So we have to do this one:




Oh... Where did it go?...

This mission's super simple. Follow the mountain path to the Regal Lion's hideout, as seen here:




There's a bunch of rooms here. For example, to the north is a storage room. You can try to search it, but you probably shouldn't!





However, you can also find various rooms dedicated to other Lions. For example, here is the Golden Lion's room:



This must be a woman's room.

Who is the Golden Lion? Well, it's not explained here, but it actually will be later, so we'll leave that for now. Searching the room reveals a secret passage to the big room on the west, which is Regal Lion's bedroom. It's got a spooky skeleton in it!



I don't wanna do this... but...

The body, rid of the weapons piercing it, starts to rise.

Hurts too much... What hurts is... the betrayal of my followers. Can't stand it any more!!!





Open your eyes, ultimate form. Savor every bit of what my sword can do to you.

Not the dreaded EDGELORD! He's going to make fun of Armic on Twitter! He must be stopped!

This guy is a notoriously difficult boss. Because his quest is so simple and easy, you can reach him quite early. And I guess his fight is pretty simple, too. He only has two attacks, both of which are identical in all but appearance. What he does is this:

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/PlumpLikableCuckoo-mobile.mp4

Which he does five times every turn. So, uh... good luck? But the thing is, he's a one-trick pony; he can't inflict status effects or attack the whole party or anything like that. He will deal 7-10 LP to your party every turn, and that's about it. As long as you've got a full party he's not a big deal.

We took the rusty swords from his hands, and marked his grave with them. Engraved on each handle was the name



Please don't frighten the mayor anymore...

Let's report back to the mayor, now that the wandering soul is at peace.



I should have known it was him...

The mayor started crying.

Long ago, there was a legendary thief named Regal Lion...



His three loyal followers were Blue-eyed Vernal Lion, Green-eyed Gold Lion, and Scarlet-eyed Elder Lion.



Together, we almost had the world in our hands! I.. I mean in THEIR hands. But one day, they got into a heavy argument over Regal Lion's treasure.



The remaining three tried to find the hidden treasure, but none of them could disarm the booby-traps Regal Lion left behind. The fools were forced to give up on the treasure. They then separated, never speaking to eachother again. If you want to prove yourselves, go to the cavern. Here, take this with you.



So we'll be going after the treasure ourselves... next time. This is the notorious ORB QUEST, which is very annoying and poorly-explained, but it does have a dragon scale for us to find. After that, we'll be doing some Wonders, make some money, and open up the final dungeon. Should be fun!

By the way, if the Gold Lion sounds familiar, by the way, that's because we met her in Mythe's story. Remember Pharr?



She's got green eyes, too. Though even if you do bring her to this quest, she doesn't mention anything, because... well, I don't know why. But whatever, it's her. So there you go.