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4 Kobolds aren't too tough to take down, really. We got through 3 last time after all. Rewards are pretty underwhelming, but the Ordinary Hammers are really handy crafting materials and this saves us $3600.



Oh yeah and I picked up 6 Small Petals for good measure. Enyclopedia are crafting materials too, and are very rarely used at all. There's multiple ways to get them and by the time we're done with the first layer we'll likely have more than we need. Like completely.



Anyway, let's make some glasses.



On a pretty simple level, they're kinda objectively the best accessory we can get in the first layer. There's ones we can't get until after these and they're worse in every way.

I don't even know either.



Gonna let that sunk cost fallacy kick in and upgrade our weapons a bit more. I figure I might as well at properly least try Small and Big Swords at some point, and I know just the silly time to do it. No, it's not now.

Cutlass becomes a Kukri and it certainly looks underwhelming, but who knows? If we didn't have the objective best accessory thus far in a pair of glasses, maybe that +5% Accuracy would be useful.



The Tinku Blade that we've already shelved for the Sabre becomes the Sickle Sword, which is... worse than the Sabre. This one is kinda my fault for pacing it this way, but it sure stands out.



Lastly, the Claymore becomes an Estoc. I sure think that th Charge ATK value is how fast it charges up at this point, by the by. Increasing the power of subweapons is odd but kinda nice. It makes switching weapons around sometimes maybe worth considering.

Mostly sticking with the Sabre for now though, because it's just that good.


Ruins Exploration 2



Back into the ruins we go, then. Just gonna drop down two conveniently placed holes to get right back to where we left off. This one between the two Pill Bugs is especially nice for it.



I don't really "get" what this screen is for, in some respects. It's a transition screen between areas, sure, and it's good for resource gathering so I can't complain.

Oh, right, by this point we're far enough in the dungeon to get Aloe and Foxgrass instead of Mint and Sage. This will be relevant later. Like an hour later, but still.



Secret pro-tip: the convenient Kahaku before drops Small Petals rarely. This one drops them commonly. Yes, this is a thing that happens. You just kinda learn to roll with it eventually.



This one has a Kobold behind it too, but this rude boy also has a pit in front of him. If we get close to the edge, that's usually enough to make him run back at least.



Get past there and we find another Pill Bug! This one is strategically placed to lose to Obi-Wan Kenobi.



It's also secretly a stronger variant, so it drops its shell instead of exactly one of its legs.



Couple bats and a Living Dead too. These are also technically stronger (the bats still die in one hit though) so give new drops.



Black Pteras now switch out the Noisy Bug for a Soldier Ant, which we can definitely find in grass later. Living Dead adds a thing grossly titled "Odouriferous Liquid" but I end this run with 0 of them.



Carrying on the straight line to the left for now we find a room almost entirely taken up by Audrey 2 a bigger flower. It's a Kahaku but its sprite is bigger and so are all it numbers to compensate. We don't move off the stairs and just throw knives at it. Also stab it when it lowers its head.

Remember that Haku Seed we got as a quest reward before? This drops them fairly regularly. Not this one though. Almost determined to prove me wrong or something.



It's guarding a skill book, so probably worth coming here for this alone. The other chest was a Life's Guidepost and we're not leaving yet.



Immediately I remembered I skipped over a thing and return to the hole before the smaller Kahaku. And jump in it.



There was a slime here but its dead now. We get a free hammer from this chest and... that can't be all? There's literally no other way to get here.

Wait, no, I see something amiss with that wall.



It has a conspicuous gap in it! We can leap over the chest and enter a secret area.



It's the same room, so we get a good look at the wall. It's a nice wall.

Also a skill book is hidden back here. That's a more worthwhile reward for exploring!



This spot is isolated so down a big pit we go!



Keeping going left afterwards and we get to a room that has no enemies until 2 Green Gels just kinda... drop in. You're supposed to run forward so it lands on you, but I'm not falling for a silly trap like that.



...It's not even worth it anyway.

And I've still not remembered to use one of these! I'm gonna have to at some point. Let's see how long it takes.



We can only go right, so we'll go past more bats and Jack o' Lanterns. Very ho hum this.



We get to a very annoying room that drops a Giant Moth on you almost instantly, hems you in with a Kahaku and...



...There's a Kobold just off-screen too. He starts sniping if you do the sensible thing and jump, ever, to try and hit the moth. Gotta be ducking while on the ground here to not get shot by him.



Even after all that, there's another moth but at least this one is reasonable. The only thing in this room that could be.



By the end of it, we hit a door that we can't even open yet. There's no switch here so it's gotta be on the other side. I suppose its meant to be a shortcut, but well... you'll see.



Just a bunch of small rooms that have nothing but staircases in them between us and where we were before.



We'll loop back around and go down the stairs by the Big Kahaku. For once, we'll go right first instead! This leads us to the main part of the room that the Swordplay book was in.



It has statues and a... bat-ball-thing... This is a rare use for the dodge part of the roll right now. It flies down in an awkward arc that we can roll under, if we do it early, but cannot merely duck beneath.



This thing is the Murmur and there's exactly one in this room. Makes killing 6 a little awkward but I'll manage.



It drops its talons for us, which is nice. Gonna use a lot of these later.



Along with the regular, indestructable statues there are also evil statues mixed in too. Athena is very awkward to deal with at first, but once you understand her gimmick she's not too hard.



That crystal ball will eventually glow pink. When it does, she's about to fire a pretty potent laser at where you were when she started charging it. Quickly moving out of the way makes her pretty harmless.

There's more than one Athena in here though, so gotta keep a little alert. Also, she's a statue. She drop rocks.



Went through all that for... a scrap of paper. Great.



This one at least tells us about something we haven't seen yet but will eventually. Geez game, tag your spoilers.



Doubling back to the left, and we can find our first genuinely vertical room. This one has a bunch of Ghosts and Jack o' Lanterns in it. If you fall down the right hand side, you'll likely fall through one, get an ailment of some kind and then be mildly annoyed at the very bottom of the room.

If we drop, carefully, down the left we can avoid all of that. Instead we find a door midway that leads to...



A save room! And also exactly one of an item that cures Burn. The save point is nicer though, since this makes a good spot to warp back to town if you're low on something or other. Or have a quest done. That works too.



Directly opposite that, there's a very naughty doggo who we gotta boop a lot.



...OK, granted, he IS a Hellhound so of course he's not the best behaved. He attacks by jumping at you, like slimes do oddly enough, but more telegraphed. Ducking at the right spot or rolling under it is how we dodge this. It's a bit tighter timing than it sounds though.



Hellhounds have a decent amount of possible drops, which includes meat! Two different kinds, even. We can't eat this meat though. It's uncooked after all.



Past the Hellhound is... a pillar. That we can't get past. Great.



Since dropping to the bottom is clear progress, let's take a quick break. I'm gonna take a minute to kill 6 Murmur and then use this convenient warp point to head back to town.

Okay, look, I changed my mind and doing it here is just a really good idea.


End



We've got a couple of skill books to have Charnet read to us. Both are quite good, really. Swordplay [Part 1] gives us a skill that increases our main weapon damage.

And a badly formatted text box. Well, this is quite the rare occurence.



Barriers [Part 1] similarly gives us a defense increase.

Because I'm good adequate at video games, I opt to not equip either of these. I didn't forget, don't be silly.



Honestly, kinda think the best part of the Murmur reward is the Blue Mint. Having those now is very good if you really wanna mess with crafting.



We've got two new quests available thanks to that, so we'll do the one that requires no effort first. Dirty Cloth is dropped by the Ghosts that also drop Thin Iron Bars. If I didn't have 8 by now something would have gone wrong.



Magatama is an accessory and we could have made one already if we really wanted to. It has exactly zero advantages over the glasses though.



This one is a bit more interesting than normal. Don't gotta fight nothing, or farm items or anything. Need to find a Green Gel and just go... talk to it.

Fortunately, we've seen where it is already!




(I won't talk no matter what, wiggle! I've already made up my mind, wiggggle!)
Hey.
......
Did it not hear me? ...No, it's ignoring me?
Hey!!
......
...?
Oi... You're Polum, aren't you?



Oh. So you CAN talk.
Goo~~~...!! I'm not supposed to talk to humans, wiggggle...!!
B-but, how come you know Polum's name, wiggle??
Have we met before, wiggle?
No, it's not like that.
I'm actually here because I took on a request from someone named Raith, who wanted me to come and see how you were doing.
Raith...?



But... Raith suddenly stopped coming to play, wiggle. He probably forgot all about Polum, wigggle...
After that, I decided never to trust a human again, wiggle! So, I'm done talking to you, wiggle!
Wha- Hold on a second!! Raith asked me to pass on a message to you!
...A message?
Are you going to listen to me now?

Ren told the Gel the full picture, why Raith suddenly stopped going to visit, and how he still cares about Polum to this day.

...Meaning, he didn't suddenly stop coming because he didn't like you, or anything like that.



I'm a bit sad, but if that's what it was, it's okay wiggle!
Polum has made new friends in the ruins too, and we have fun, wiggle!
Please tell Raith not to worry, wigggle!
Alright, I'll tell him.
Well then, I should be getting back soon.
Wiggle! Come back to play sometime, wiggle! And say hi to Raith for me, wiggle!

As if that scowling face from earlier had all been a lie, Polum bounced up and down happily.

Seeing that, Ren let out a gentle sigh of relief, and slowly walked away.

Well, that was pretty cute! Polum does have a new bit of dialogue, but we'll eventually pass through here again so we'll see it then.



That little conversation was the entire quest. We've seen 3 of the 4 types of quests now by the way. Yeah, not really pushing the boat out with these. They're fine though. Mostly.

We got 2 of every status cure for this too. That'll be very handy later, I'm sure.



Talking to Polum unlocks the next quest and it's... it's almost like the game is trying to prove me wrong or something. 10 Jack o' Lanterns, yay...


Ruins Exploration 3
covers the rest of the update



Not gonna do that one right now. I considered it but then decided to just carry on with the ruins instead. Two more Murmur in this room, so it's more convenient to fight those here.



Above them is a Living Dead and a bat that's placed in such a way I'm pretty sure it literally cannot hit you on your way up.



I think that zombie is the most convenient spot to farm Odouriferous Liquid in this layer. It's what I tend to use for it anyway.



More interesting than this scrap of paper, at least. Literally tells us nothing we didn't already know from the first cutscene.



The door in the top-right, opposite the zombie and useless bat, leads to another pillar. Making note of this for later, then!



Loop back for the lower path then. First thing down here is a stronger version of a Skeleton.



As a stronger variant, it stops dropping a non-specific bone. Instead we take its... pelvis. And it is splendid.



Another Hellhound just past there. We can handle this one just fine.



We can go back up to the higher path here. There's only one thing past that pillar before it hits a wall you see.



Oh, Kobolds can drop Ethanol. That must be pretty rare, since I've not had it happen at any other point before (or since) this.



These trees are pretty similar to the ones we've seen before. This is new though.



1, 2, 3, 6. Yeah, that sounds about right. We'll get 4 and 5 later.



This one basically tells us what a boss is going to be. It ain't exactly subtle about it.



Top-right door is sealed. Guess we're stuck leaving from the bottom half then.



Following the stairs down and going left we roll to avoid getting attacked by this mimic!



Just like its more blandly named bretheren, it is pretty Gross sure. It just leaps in an easily ducked arc so we can kill it effortlessly.

It drops an Encyclopedia or an Ordinary Hammer. This is kinda why we'll definitely have more Encyclopedia than we'll ever need.



It was guarding this quite useless item. It increases your movement speed temporarily. I'll pass, thanks.



Back on the critical route we have a badly placed Knight! Bronze Knights take a moment to charge the lunge forward with this swing. Dodging this normally isn't so bad, but this guy had the high ground.

...Just because I managed it doesn't mean it's easy.



They drop Copper Ore quite often. Technically not the best way to grab it, but it's effective enough.

There's also two stronger Ghosts in this room. They swap out their drops for... Rhegium Iron Ore and Pellucid Crystals. Things we can easily mine in many, many locations.



Next room and we gotta leap over this Skeleton immediately. We'll go up this ascent in a second.



Along the bottom we run into a second Ogre.

This one does manage to hit me. It does over 100 damage. We still have 400HP. Wow, what a jerk!



Presumably this Log we take off its corpse comes from it club or something. We'll need 5 Logs for a quest much later down the line, but we definitely will have them by then.



The Ogre was guarding... this. You can't see it because the item acquisition text is in the way, but there's a Kobold up on that platform.



Wyman believing the switches we've been hitting are The Magicite is interesting. If it was true, the game would be very, very short though. It's a neat idea at least. I can see them being fragments, that's fine, but not the actual thing.



It's too high for us to jump to from here, but we CAN jump on the treasure chest.



From there we can jump up onto the higher area. I am pretty sure this is intended, considering this isn't the only time we can do this.



Oh yeah, this Kobold and the one from earlier are stronger variants. They drop full Supplements instead of Suppli-Extract. Heals 100HP instead of 50. Boring but functional!



The door here is locked but DOES require a key! Pretty sure the chest jump is intended so we can find this for later. It'd be annoying to track down otherwise.



Another door to the right directly above the one we just usea and it leads to this save room. No chests in here, but that's because there's also an exit to the right.

We're not heading right from here today.



Back to the climb and this Skeleton... Easiest way to fight it is to carefully time jumps and throw knives at it. It's slow but it works.



Ohey that platform is going into the wall. That's not suspicious at all!



It's just a temporary Defense buff, but I'm okay with that. We might even use this one.

Y'know, eventually.



At the top of this room is a switch that opens the door the left. This lets us get back quickly to that room before with 2 Moths, a Kahaku and a Kobold.

We will never actually do that. It's kind of pointless.



Heading to the right from here instead and we find a stronger Hellhound. We can often take this one's spine.

The rocks its blocking are the best spot to mine Copper Ore by the way.



Another Knight further in. This one's technically stronger tha the others but its drops are identical.



A whole lotta spikes attempting to stop us from going further now. That platform moves left-to-right letting us pass by safely.

Spikes do a fixed 50 damage. Sometimes its arguably more convenient to just tank that and deal with it. This is not one of those times.



Hey, that Skeleton is facing the camera!






*Creak...*
...Hm? It seemed to move just then...
...Must have been my imagination.

It didn't seem like anything was about to happen, so Ren continued on.



We'll head down in a moment, but there's another path behind the wall here.



...Why was this back here? This is a bad place for this.



This is all we can get here too. What is the point of that?



Dropping down to the lower area and we can fight... a Green Gel. But it's stronger than normal. It is as fun as that sounds.



Door here is sealed, but the switch is on the other side. What else is down he--



Oh, it's another slime. But it's big this time.



Ooh, it dropped Raw Green Stone! I think we can mine that at the rocks here as well. There's a much better spot to get this, but we need to beat the first boss to get to it.



The pillar here has its cracks up near the top. This does actually matter!

Well, it
will matter. Once we can interact with them meaningfully. Right now it's just a fun difference.



Gonna take a break here. Give me a moment to go beat up the Jack O' Lanterns and gather a bunch of materials for some stuff. I have some upgrades to do, because, well...

It's about time we should go fight the first boss at least.