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5: Bariouch Hill (and some other stuff too I suppose)
All right. Deep breaths.
Ovelia herself won't be doing us much good, or indeed any good since all she does is sit in our convoy until we hand her over, but we will happily steal her stuff. The hat is available in stores from now on, and I will be outfitting my entire outfit with them as soon as I can, but the robe won't be available for another several fights, and it's a really nice one, not only providing a good HP and MP boost but a +2 to MA as well.
We're actually starting to look kind of competent!
Hmmm...
Triangle hats for everybody!
What's more, we can now buy poison rods! If only there was a single reason to ever use one.
More interestingly, our oracles now have access to rainbow staves...
...but absolutely no reason to use them either, when cypress rods are better in practically every way. They still don't provide any boost to magic, but I'll put one on every oracle, because when else am I going to use them?
Ouch.
And back on track.
Don't worry, I'm not about to kill Mustadio for experience points.
We're doing this the proper way.
These two are casting high-level spells, I forgot to check what...
...but it's something serious enough that we can hit them with first level magic and kill them before they get to go.
uh archer what are you
Son of a fuck.
She has Wiznaibus.
Wiznaibus drains MP. Unavoidably, every few ticks, for the entire party.
I need that MP.
Fuck damn it Mustard boy, shoot the other one!
This is all I can do right now...
Well, better than Wiznaibus at least!
Especially since it means we can nuke both of them at the same time.
And Mustadio makes himself useful.
We'll repay the favour, since, you know, game over if he dies.
The knights are all that's left, but it's going a little too fast.
Slow down! I want to loot these guys!
...
Well fuck, only boxes... but still, could be something nice-
...and Mustard-o headshots the last knight before I can open them.
...
Why did I decide to save this guy again?
We don't even get any useable treasure.
We do get some backstory, though.
And some new animations.
Both amusing...
...and kind of depressing ones.
But it is all only the calm before the storm.
The storm named Bariaus Hill.
I am not mentally prepared for this-
Anyway, let's prepare as best we can. Nancy is now the only person in the permanent party who doesn't have MAtkUP - we are at least making progress.
Progress... towards Bariaus Hill.
Is there like, any chance we can just take them up on this? He totally dicked me out of those treasure chests, it's only fair-
...Well, fuck.
Bariaus Hill is kind of infamous for a couple of reasons. There's a pretty tough rare random battle you can fight here in later chapters, but the first time through is no walk in the park either. We're up against two knights, two archers, and worst of all, two summoners. Summoners are bad news. Their magic has better range than ours, and doesn't have friendly fire. And of course these two are girls (and thus have good MA), and iirc some pretty decent equips as well though I didn't remember to check what it was. They also start really far back, so it's pretty hard to reach them before they start wreaking havoc, especially with the other enemies getting all up in your grill.
It doesn't help that my entire party is squishy, high-faith characters, either.
Mustadio misses Arm Aim on one of the knights. What a great way to start the fight.
The archers aren't a huge deal - I mean, they can do damage from afar, but they aren't too durable, and they've just lined up in Please Kill Us formation.
But the knights have buckets of health, and this asshole spawned with Yin Yang magic... and the silence spell.
Fuck the silence spell. I still have no way to cure that shit, except maybe killing and reviving the target? I think that clears status, anyway.
Spreading out the team to minimize damage... Of course he lands it, he had a pretty good chance.
Summoners still too far back to do any harm. That's good!
Despite silence, we get off three bolts, downing one archer, bringing the other to critical, and knocking off like a third of this guy's health. Mustadio makes himself useful and takes out the wounded archer. Progress!
The knights are still coming, though. This leaves her at 1 HP. One!
Holy shit that hurts.
Nancy (I'm pretty sure anyway) crits the knight with her dinky little wizard rod and runs away.
First summoner in range, casting! At least I think it's Moogle, so no big deal-
It was Shiva abort abort abort abort
...
Huh. That was underwhelming.
Mages and Mustadio work together to take down one of the knights,
...and Agrias keeps getting lucky with Stasis Sword, stopping the other. This is... actually not going terribly?
Fffff if only I had remained a wizard with a lightning rod I could have oneshotted this chick. Also I don't like that 90% hit rate, it's a recipe for disaster.
Still, it goes without a hitch and she's in critical now. Hoping for the best!
...and success! She casts Moogle, and it heals nowhere near enough to put her out of kill range on the next turn.
But there's still one left, and she freezes my oracle solid.
But that's the first casualty on my side, and now there's only two of them left.
We can't drop the second summoner before her next turn, but we can knock her into critical, so she heals instead of making a mess of us.
Since it's in the bag now, I'll just beat up on Mustadio for exp before we end it-
Oops, sorry about that!
And then Ramza sets her on fire, yo.
That...
...
That actually wasn't that bad, would you look at that.
Meanwhile, Gafgarion is filling Dycedarg in on his recent failures.
"See this shit, Gafgarion? This shit is why I drink."
So anyway the story is Gafgarion still has to kill us all and don't fuck it up next time! We'll see how that goes for him, but for now... let's call it a day.
...
...
...
You know... despite all the cool sprite animations, I feel kind of strangely disappointed.