Part 16: .hack Mutation - //Update 03 - Moonstone's Adventure and Λ Nameless Seeker's Prairie

//Update 03

Greetings everyone! I know it's been a long time, so just bear with me. If you need a refresher on what's recently happened in the story, I included the previous update just above. For those of you with exceptional memories, or just the Archives upgrade, let's press on! We begin, as we often do, on the desktop.






Blackrose made mention last time about enjoying swimming.





Kite seems to enjoy picking on his friends. The "Creature from the Black Lagoon" remark was from the wrong e-mail to send. I thought it was too funny to pass up including.







Meanwhile, Gardenia is juggling two different conversations with Kite. The top conversation is actually supposed to happen in Infection, but we only got the requisite amount of Affection just recently, so it's happening now.



This ends Gardenia's Infection e-mail chain. A lesser person might make a crass joke about the suction cups remark, but I like to pretend we're better than that.






At least we're starting to see the beginnings of some sort of personality underneath Gardenia's cold exterior! Gotta take every victory we can get, especially now that we've got another cold silent loner type on our team.

Speaking of Moonstone, he wants us to investigate a level 35 area. Right now Kite is level 36, so while he and Mistral could theoretically carry Moonstone all the way through the dungeon without much difficulty...

(You should watch this to understand why this is a Bad Idea.)

Y'know what, let's go get Moonstone some levels.



I can't pretend I still understand the Chaos Gate system, but there's a dot in the Magic Portals section of this field and despite being only a level lower than the field Moonstone wants us to visit, the monsters are pathetically weak. It's a perfect spot to get some easy levels for him with very little risk involved.

The field was largely uneventful. Moonstone gained three levels somewhere down in the dungeon and he got some equipment.





The Yosetsu & Fuyou weapon are the same pair of hooks that Kite is using.



Also Mistral shows for the first time of several in this update exactly why I love her character. Anywho, back in town after clearing out the dungeon, I stop by the shop to ensure what's coming will be as smooth as possible. Selling all the crap we got in the dungeon got us a not insignificant chunk of change, enough to pay the premium the weapon and armor shop is asking on equipment. As such...







Our resident loner twin blade gets a set of dark equipment to match his stellar personality. This has an unintended side-effect however.



Moonstone's affection shoots to the second highest among all of Kite's friends. Strangely enough, neither Blackrose nor Mistral are the highest.







Gardenia is. Giving gifts breaks the affection system in hilarious ways!

Anyway, if you watched the video that I linked above (and you really should if you haven't) then you will understand just why I dread doing Moonstone's introductory mission. But this wouldn't be much of a LP if I didn't do the mission, so...

Video:

: Annihilate all monsters in the dugeon.

: Do you mean destroy all the monsters in the dungeon?



As I promised in the bonus section of the last update, Mistral got her own pair of gloves so she wouldn't be jealous of Elk.







Though I didn't mention anything, in the level grinding dungeon, we found the sword in the images above. Our only Blademaster (that I'm willing to use more often than once per game) is Mia, so I'm gonna hang onto it for her. Who knows, this may be the weapon that makes her stop sucking.

Once inside the dungeon, Kite helpfully restates our goal for us.



This is not a place to vacation, despite the sunny weather and Fire element. Evils live here that best not be spoken.

Armor Evils.

Video: (You should proably watch this as well. It's only 13 seconds long!)

I can hear you laughing now. But SourceElement DoubleNegative, you say, what could be so bad about them? They look like a generic bad guy. Watch the attached video to understand. They will make you cry. The dungeon is chock full of them.





At least the dungeon is thankfully short. The top floor is the longest, and only because there's a split pathway making you go two different directions before continuing down to the second.

On the third floor, we have the opportunity to check out the Gott Statue before entering the last room. There's some fairly decent goodies inside!









The Hands of Ronin will make an excellent gift for Blackrose, while the Mage's Soul is a nice freebie to get, considering how expensive those tend to be from vendors!

Once we finish the last room in the dungeon, Moonstone speaks up.







That wasn't nearly as painful as it could have been. Frequent savestating may have been in use because I'm not trusting anything to the RNG when Evils are involved.

From last time, you may recall a post on the forums that pointed us to Λ Nameless Seeker's Prairie as a protected area. Mistral is already in our party, so we grab Blackrose and set out to do some SysAdmin sponsored investigating.





Naturally it's locked, but only requiring two B cores is pretty cheap considering.

Nothing of interest happened in the field, so we'll skip into the dungeon when I finally remember that I have a gift for Blackrose.



That right there is basically the only thing that happened in the dungeon. It is a level 32 field after all, and the main trio are all level 37-ish at this point. To call it a challenge would be laughable. Though I do want to make special mention of these little shits right here.



Hysterias were also in Moonstone's dungeon. They are your typical glass cannons in that they can put out a lot of hurt at once, but will die from so much as a stern glance. Their primary attack is a level 2 thunder spell that they won't stop chain casting, which hurts somewhat, but locks you down for a long period of time because of the cast animation. The last room in the Moonstone dungeon had five of them.

Once on the bottom floor, we encounter the purple mist signifying a data bug or boss fight.



Seeing as Mistral's SP was still low from the last fight, I rested in front of the gate to recover it. While doing so, I grabbed some status shots of the party.







Not doing too bad for being fairly early in the game! A small amount of level grinding really can help smooth over rough edges.

Video:

The entire boss fight is captured in that video, which shows just how much of a powerhouse Mistral really is. It also serves to confirm that data protection is only broken after a set amount of damage is dealt, not the number of hits like I had previously believed.

If you do watch the video, there is some minor stuttering that couldn't be helped. It's a definite downside to emulating and I apologize .





The scorpion with wheels takes the initiative and starts to attack Sheraton.

: Oh, no, no, no. He's getting beat up.

: I feel a kinship...

Mistral seriously wrecks the data protection with two casts of her summon spells. She's quite powerful!



And approximately ten seconds later, the monster is dead.



Sheraton: Hello. Do you have End? I want End. Someone give me End.

: Hey... are you all right?

: Yes! I'm Mr. In the Way. Nice to meet you!!



Can I just reiterate how much I love Mistral? She's such a massive goof that you can't help but laugh.

: What was that? It didn't look like... a regular player... Maybe Lios would know something. Let's get back to the town.

Back in town, I disband the party. Before we contact Lios, we have an extremely important thing to do.







Yes. Yes I can.





Now that we've covered our requisite goblin slaying for the update, it's time to inform Lios of whatever it was that happened. Naturally, we have new e-mails to attend to as well.














From now, for the forseeable future, the shot with the Send e-mail bit on the bottom is the correct choice for affection e-mails. Kite's reactions to Moonstone's messages are just too funny to not include.

Back in Carmina Gadelica, Lios is waiting for us.



: Report the situation of the Protected Area.

: The infection is spreading. There was also one Data Bug. A player was attacked, so we defeated it. Wait! A player in a Protected Area?!

: That is probably failed data. They are immune to the protection. But a Data Bug... hmmm... that's worse than I expected.

: Failed data? So, it's not a person?

: Of course. (I think he meant to add not here, otherwise the sentence makes no sense.) It is useless meaningless data. There is nothing more or less. We will initiate the follow-up investigation. I will inform you of your next orders later.



Well, I think that about wraps us up for now. As soon as Lios gates out, we get another e-mail notification. Can't wait to see what the latest news from Moonstone is.
















Λ Ressurecting Confused Judgement is added to the Word List.

I apologize for my re-introductory update for being so dry, but this is the most logical ending point for the update without going into super overtime to accommodate stuff in the next one. Believe me when I say that things will be almost exciting again soon!