Part 9: Mythe's Adventure - Part 9

Unlimited Saga, Part 9: Let's Do Some Sidequests

We're still unprepared to take on the next story mission, which has a big giant in it that will kill us. I tried! I really did. So, instead, let's go explore the Sunken City.



Known for its beautiful red rooftops, the famous city of Roanne was once called Florid Roanne, and was inhabited by aristocrats who used it as a summer resort. But Roanne was swallowed by an unprecedented flood, and the city submerged into the marsh. Only the beautiful rooftops, covered in mud, remain. Roanne, little more than an abandoned city covered in mud, is now known as Miry Roanne.

You came to this city because you were hired by a former resident who longs for the memory of Roanne. Bring back a meaningful memento!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVWHQ2C0gsQ



This mission has a unique tileset and several gimmicks. Essentially, we need to explore Roanne and find a nice souvenir for the people who hired us. There are a lot of treasure chests to find, and lots of areas to explore. Also, lots of fish.



By coincidence, the party was also attacked by fish that turn. It wasn't as a result of the fish swimming about, though.



Laura has a Damascus Axe, now, as well. Axes are very good at dealing damage, though they tend to be inaccurate. One specific axe technique is the most damaging attack in the game, but they are generally quite good. In my experience, usually lighter weapons will have attacks that do less damage but have better special attacks; however, this is not always true. Anyway, Time Lapse doesn't do amazing LP damage but it can spark Reverse Delta, which is the best attack. If you don't like the reels, though, just make really heavy weapons and you'll probably be OK; level 4 or 5 techniques are going to be amazing regardless.

Marie and friends are still learning lots of spells.



It'd be nice if I got Magic Blender on Marie since she starts with a wide variety of lame spells. I never will, though.

As the party explores, the number of fish nearby increases.



Some houses have open windows to climb into, like so:



Inside, you may find treasure, or a monster, or nothing at all. In any case, the fish go away when you do. If too many fish start swimming at once they attack in a big group, which would be dangerous if we didn't have so much great all-party damage to deal with them.

Some areas have a broken archway or bridge. If you have someone with Obstacle Crossing, they can do a check to see if you can climb over it.



I didn't find too much in this mission as a result, but sometimes there's unique items behind skill checks like this. Sometimes it skips whole areas, making the adventure much easier! So it can pay to keep someone around with Swimming or Obstacle Crossing if you're going to do a dungeon.



The town is quite large, and you don't need to check any attics to find the memento. But it's a good chance to level up a bit and everyone has a magic tablet to learn, so it can't hurt to spend some time here. If you let the fish become too numerous, this happens:



And then this happens:





So the fish are not a problem. I think the fish are set encounters, though, so if you came here early they would be a real danger.

After searching many attics, we reach the northernmost point of the town.



Sounds like a good place to find a memento.




So, we have a boss fight with this big monkey guy. He is quite dangerous, in that he has a sword and can put out a lot of damage. However, he has trouble hitting multiple targets at once, and if we spread his attacks out with a large group he's less likely to eat through someone's HP and do LP damage. Still can, though, if he gets lucky (or if he hits Marie).



I like his reaction when attacked, though.



Now, anyone who has played SaGa games knows that bosses are very useful because you can spark stuff on them. Thus, even though it's not as efficient, I have everyone use attacks they don't yet have special attacks for. Tiffon's bow apparently shoots arrows that are, like, seven feet long:




When you start dealing LP damage you know it's time to switch to piercing attacks... if you want to win quickly. I wanted to get someone to spark something so I kept using axes and martial arts. Not much luck, though. Grace learned Cut In, as seen in this incredibly ugly screenshot. Don't zoom in so close to the sprites! It looks awful!



The monkey guy is cool, though. He's very good at breakdancing, for example (the break is your bones when he kicks you)

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/AnchoredS...frog-mobile.mp4

Finally, I got very lucky:


https://thumbs.gfycat.com/CluelessU...seal-mobile.mp4

The giant ape is unable to stand up to this onslaught and dies instantly. Nice!



The Melody Disc from the music hall that symbolized this town... A perfect item to reminisce through. Let's take this back!

We got a lot of treasure and money from that, so I bought everyone some armor. I've found that Bone Mail is pretty good -- it doesn't have amazing defense, but it has very high defense against piercing attacks specifically. Piercing damage is what you really need to worry about, so it's good. Heavy, though, so if you have a martial arts character give it a miss and go for crocodile armor or something like that. By the end of the game you'll be swimming in cash, and it's easy to buy up lots of iron to fix everything, though it may still be hard to afford Diamond (if you're lucky enough to even find it in the shop.)

Fun fact: when repairing an item, there's a chance you will reveal or hide one of the traits on the item. Fun times. If one goes away that you need, you have to fight and hope it unlocks again, or I guess reload a save cause that's annoying. Depending on your item you may not use or care about the lowest skill, though.

In addition to the regular adventures, there are also sidequests that ask you to clear the Seven Wonders. They range in difficulty, and I found that Nakle Lines (Laura's dungeon) is hardest when I tried to complete it and got destroyed by the dungeon boss. So we'll return to that later. Instead, let's do Deities' Table, which is much easier. The dungeons are somewhat different when part of a main character's plot, though the degree to which that's true varies a lot. For example, I think the Hanging Garden is just straight up a different dungeon when it's the final one.

Deities' Table is Judy's dungeon, and when she goes there she must find a bunch of items around the dungeon to complete it. Plus it's longer and has mini-bosses and stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVbQ9zOjo_U




When we begin, we're on the ground, looking up at the Table. We proceed forward, and:





The Deities' Table is sort of a weird maze, where you can't see the walls. As you walk around, the ground fills in, which both looks kind of neat and also makes it very clear where you've been and where you haven't looked yet, so it's not a maze you can get lost in. It's perfectly fine. The other thing about it is that everything just looks like mirror shards and glass, so you don't know whether you're examining a monster or a trap or whatever. Sometimes shards will fly at you, requiring a skill check.



I was not aware of this at the time, but apparently the enemies you fight if you fail have a good chance of dropping magic tablets. Generally that's true of special monsters in these dungeons, though. Of course, since it's random, it's not like I could have deliberately failed to dodge them, but I could have spent some time farming here, I guess?

Humorously, the mirror thing even applies to chests... except they forgot to do it to the notification that you've found one.




I guess if there were traps and chests in the same spot you could be confused, but it's still silly. Here's some enemies:



Because I still didn't remember to just go and get Laura an axe panel (it's very easy to do if you want one!) her odds of actually doing Reverse Delta are low. If you have her lead a combo and have perfect timing then it'll work but... I don't!

Marie is almost done learning Power Surge, which is a fire-type spell that boosts damage. By a lot. It's really good! Laura actually knows it by default, but it never hurts to diversify. When I have more money to burn I'll buy a bunch of carnelian and try to get Fire Arts on Laura's axe, so she can cast it too.



After the Mirror of Sins is the Mirror of Dreams.



It's followed by the Mirror of Time. Sadly, it's hard to get a good overhead shot of these areas, because the mapping skills work by how many nodes away things are, rather than distance on screen. Like this:




Several of the Seven Wonders play around with the board game theme and form shapes or things like that, but it's hard to really get across with pictures. And my favorite Wonder, which is the one in Chapa, will have to remain unseen since Mythe can't actually go there...

Anyway, at this point, the bird shard things appear in big groups. A good chance to get tablets, probably! But I didn't, no.



I was so proud of how often I dodged these things, hah. Anyway, when you warp out of the Mirror of Time area, you get sent to a boss fight. We're here to fight a big bird on a weird triangle mirror thing so let's do that.



This guy is a pushover. He's actually weaker than the big monkey dude we fought in the city. It's sort of a phoenix, I guess? So it does fire attacks, which are worthless against our party because all the mages are basically set up to deal fire damage and, thus, they also have high fire resistance. Sapphire could just stand in the way of the fireballs and be fine, and so that's what I had her do. Laura also has a relatively good fire level, though not nearly as high as it would be if I built her to actually use it, so she got to help too. Ultimately, not much of a fight. The Nakle Lines boss, on the other hand, caused a full party wipe in three turns, so that one's maybe just a little bit more powerful. But who cares!



Hooray!

Everyone got good panels, and the enormous amount of treasure lying around the Wonders means we're rich, too. Laura finally got that Axe panel, and Grace got a Lv3 bow panel while Tiffon got a Lv4 Dagger panel, so I had them swap weapons again. No worries, it's fine. Everyone either has spells to learn or a panel to spark stuff, so next time we really will go check out Iskandar's mausoleum and find out what's up with Silver Girl. And also, an unrelated cemetery! So stay tuned.