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S01E09: The Upper West Saga 4: Taking Big Cow Out To Pasture.
Can't believe I forgot something I'd even said in one of the first posts! That status effects on weapons mean they inflict them, not confer resistance! No Thoughts, Head Empty.
Also as I mentioned in another post, I was kindly reminded that the Diamond Jewel casts a very good debuff called Love Me. I'd mixed it up with another item.
It's time to do two encounters just west of the path into the Tangar Mountains.
That sign I ignored before...
Whose above the lords?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-egGn5WYrk
I don't get it. Was looking up a trick?
Anyway, we fight this battle twice. It's easy as sin.
The third battle is also easy but its a bit disconcerting the wolfen, dwarves and octopi are teaming up.
Anyway, I'd confused this sign for another nearby encounter, that is much, much more dangerous. I had to search it out for a while. Turns out to be exactly north of the sign.
The Harp is a non-threat. 26XP.
The Harpy Queens are also non-threatening, they're really just tankier than the Harpy. 38XP, 500GP.
The Harpy Ki- Wait. Wait. That's an awfully buxom king. I wonder if Indinera was hoping no one would notice, or maybe it's just a rung on the pecking order. Or maybe it's a D&D/Pathfinder Lamia type thing.
The Harpy King is actually mildly challenging, it has well over 1000 HP and good defenses. It also hits everyone for decent damage. I didn't bother casting Protection though.
Guaranteed Diamond drop, 59XP and 650XP.
Hoo boy. The ArchMagister... in addition to a King. Well! The Archmagister is Stronger than any boss we've fought, but a bit more fragile. But not that fragile. Still has a ton of HP and defense.
So I -did- cast Protection first thing this time. Not that it helped. She cast Attack Up on herself and then one shot Random with a 383 damage hit even with our defenses maxed. Randoms HP hasn't even broken past 300 yet!
But like I said, she's somewhat fragile. She dies after a few turns because she cannot weather Pure, Unbridled Power.
She drops a guaranteed fether and is worth 104XP and 1500GP.
What do you mean. We just walked into it and committed genocide on this tribu.
Well, whatever.
While walking to our next dungeon, we finally encounter the mythical Blue Dwarfs. Uhm. Not much to say about them at this point.
Sometimes drop Brutal Axe, and are worth 38XP and 60GP.
The key we got from Gudar's Old Silent Church opens the gate.
Why yes, that room on the right is filled with lava and stuff in it is on fire.
Whatever you say, guy.
How come Ancient Vampires got their name right but not these guys? It's been a long time since I looked at defaults, but it might actually be the default name of the vampire sprite.
Anyway, these dudes both suck. Lone Soldiers can drop a Golden Sword and Antic Mummy's a Main Gauche.
Lone Soldier is worth 28XP and 30GP.
Antic Mummy is worth 31XP and 13GP.
We go to the little east wing first.
Tacky.
The south side of this room has another room with this. And that's it. We backtrack to the elderly man.
We follow the hall west a long ways, then north, ignoring a bunch of paths.
Then east onto a new screen and east more still past some paths to the south.
Surprisingly, this is a random encounter, not a mimic chest. It's weak as... except the fact that it double hits, so it's quite capable of doing a fair bit of damage to Sarah and Luci. Can drop a Medicate. Worth 44XP and 10GP.
We grab some loot...
And go down the last southern path.
There's a series of four alcoves with mimic chests here. The third and fourth chests even have TWO mimics inside, apparently!
There's only some gold in here. All the bookshelves in this dungeon just say they're some odd books.
We backtrack to one of the southern paths we skipped.
Summoning/Protective circles and beer seem like a bad combo. There's a lot of beer in this area.
Also a bunch of empty chests.
Summoning Circles, then.
... What. Why is that guy just standing in it?
...
Well, we sort of n-... don't need this.
We go back upstairs.
:/
There's only some GP in here, so... I egress to the start and go back to the western storeroom I skipped on the way here.
It has someone else's Orb inside. I think this is meant to be a trick to see if you were paying attention to Leanda's dialogue way back when, but who knows.
I don't think it has any use in the whole game.
I go back to the next screen and up another southern path I'd skipped earlier.
We can't see it, but there's a path back the way we came.
There's a bunch of lava filled rooms with nothing at all on the way down this hall.
Only one has anything.
We come out into a large room with... whatever the hell thats meant to be. It's almost like a stupid high place for a throne.
I haven't exactly mentioned what all the ores and alchemy items are for. Well. They're for Laxius Power... 3.
There's this... dump through the northern doorway.
The south exit is where we want to go.
Cool, except everyone has better stuff, except Coryool, who has the other Percussion Ring.
Hm!
Well, I love the crap outta treasure! We continue on down.
Gudar is waiting for us, and attacks. Leanda says something to the effect of 'Lookout, he's nasty!' and Gudar responds with
So, this was a brutal fight for me. Another one I didn't recall being so challenging. I still won on the first attempt but Coryool was the only one standing for a while. I had everyone back up by the end. Anyway, the spell in the picture? It's doing that much damage AFTER Protection has been maxed out. It's an ALL targeting spell too. And it does more to Random and Sarah. It also has a good chance of Shocking, which is what nearly dooms me. Sarah gets shocked by it a lot and thus no one gets healed. Coryool only takes 1 damage from that spell so...
A couple times people get Revived just to be KO'd again immediately. I eventually manage to get everyone up, and Sarah uses the Diamond Jewel to weaken his damage output as well.
The spell either has high MP cost or he doesn't have much MP, because he runs out after casting it like 20 times in a row. He normal attacks as well, but he only rarely did it for me until he ran out of MP. His normal attack is much, much more manageable.
Well, all's well that ends well.
Let's collect our treasure.
We get the RuthGarden Key.
Sarah swoons over all the GP.
The Cyyuper Shield isn't terribly much better than what Sarah had, and worse than Luci's. She has it equipped for a moment, I Egress and then the very next random encounter with Minotaurs drops a better shield.
Still not super great but you know.
Time to move on to the last big thing in the Upper West that is not mandatory.
Both of these two are also worried Dorado might start a war with the Deport as a whole.
Not all the Big Cows are friendly, though. There's also random encounters here, where we can encounter Big Cows, Minotaurs and Minotaur Lords.
Minotaur Lords aren't much to speak of. Rarely drop Korka Hammer and are worth 45GP and 12GP.
We kill another two Lords going potty together, for some reason.
The purple stuff makes everyone Mad if you step on it. Thankfully, Whales cure Madness.
That's not even enough for a Bread!
I think this is armour for the pets.
No idea what this is about. Flavour?
Luci learns a new spell.
You can only walk along the shore of this big pool of purple but it's enough. These two lords want to throw us into the lake.
All for nothing, though!
We backtrack back to the centre and head south.
It's weird also having the normal water for the majority of the map.
This is such a goofy trick.
You and the other several dozen punks have and will fail anyway, bud.
Excuse me, -what- time?
I'm guessing this is from before King Dorado. Perhaps even his own doing.
Coryool gets upset when he learns Dorado has forbidden sales of anything but water.
The other Minotaur just says he misses his daily whiskey.
We leave the bar.
Climb up to the roof and slaughter yet more Lords.
Indinera has screwed up this barrel. It gets a new shield every time you leave the map and return.
Uhm... I hope this is meant to be a stair down or we've stumbled into a Escher painting.
Uhm... Maybe more of Dorado's doing?
Dorado asserts Minotaurs are in a war against mankind.
This is a easy battle, however.
Dorado sometimes drops a Korka Hammer and is worth 120XP and 560GP.
Probably good to mention that Luci's got a lot of the higher level spells that are actually summons now. Giga Flare was the second such spell AFTER Mega Flare, which is what this is.
I'll probably put the info on this stuff at the end of the update.
Luci notes the generals are escaping, however. If we had gone inside this last building before fighting Dorado, we would've met one. And he'd have nothing interesting to say, at all.
37 Dwarven Gauntlets, 25 Iron Shields, 11 Palace Shields, 7 Cyuper Shields and 3 Gold Shields. Sarah is upset with this loot but Luci points out it can all be sold for coin.
Sure is. Let's go inside and loot.
There's more GP in the next room too.
This guy, if we'd spoken to him before Dorado, would have revealed he and Dorado are the ones behind Fake Gold Bars being spread all over the Deport. We've not seen any yet.
Anyway, since he's not being paid, he says he's gonna run off with all this stuff. Sarah gets upset and Random blackmails him by threatening to tell the other Minotaurs, so he gives us a share.
And that's that.
I backtrack to now hopping bar.
Everyone happy and drinking again. Apparently gambling and other pleasures were also banned. No one really says anything interesting.
We Egress back to the entrance.
Be sure to talk to this guy to get the actual next leg of the quest.
Unfortunately, they're still pretty far away. They're on the Minotaur Coast near SankT Leona.
We have one last place to check, to the north.
Damn! is right.
We just got afflicted by an unresistable status. It's also incurable except by resting at an inn. Or dying.
It drains MP pretty quickly, and also drains HP. I think it also is a big debuff on Attack and maybe other statistics. Your accuracy also seems to go way down.
It's impossible to avoid getting it too, without exploiting a bug.
There's non-hostile undead wandering around the village ruins. It's also unlike all the other dungeons thus far, in that it's a very big open area.
We also slaughter the traumatised survivors while we are here. Dunno what the kids do, we kill them in one hit. The men cast Dark Wave.
Haunted Boys are worth 7XP.
Haunted Mans are worth 16XP
Haunted Girls have magical attack that's not super strong but does drain your MP.
Haunted Girls are worth 15XP
Anyway, I wander around collecting lots of shitty minor loot I won't bother representing if the spot didn't look remotely interesting.
We also fight these guys. They're also random encounters here. They have an annoying attack where they POUNCE and it hits everyone in the party for decent damage, but removes them from the battle.
39XP and 16GP.
Also most of the rest of the undead in the Upper West that we've seen except for Ancient Vampires are hanging around here too.
Hmmmmm... I don't switch.
This hole in the ground leads us to our destination.
None of the tunnels off the main tunnel actually lead to anywhere.
Though one has this.
Helpful. Also it leeches Death somehow? How? I guess Death is like an actual form of energy in this setting, like the spell.
Maybe it's like Negative Energy in D&D/Pathfinder.
There is one new enemy here, but it seems to just be a stronger Antic Mummy.
45XP, 200GP.
For some reason, the undead wandering around in here are more hostile than the ones outside and do in fact attack you.
We find the cells! But cannot interact with them. There's six and they all have people inside. One has an old man and a bunny girl.
!!!!!
Unfortunately, we cannot get in. But it seems Orfuls has something to do with her cell, so that'll be somewhere to start. When we get to SankT Leona.
I Egress out. And that's that. We're done with all the optional stuff in the Upper West. Next time, we'll be hitting the road to SankT Leona again. And coming face to face with probably THE biggest stopping point in the game, even for people who like the game or have played it before. I've had runs die on it before. It's not -bad-. But... you'll see.
And there's the info on the dudes Luci summons for the spells we have thus far. Of those spells, Luci does not have Giga Freeze and Over Bolt.
the end