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S03E09: End of Day 2: Sweet Little Swamp
Last time: We finished most of the sidequests available on Day 2!! Technically there's more stuff we could do since the fire ants overlevelled us so much, but we did everything 'intended' to be doable on Day 2.
Here we go.
The first Tangar Mountains of this game.
Yes, I said the first.
Rainy AND foggy...
I don't know if this counter is run by the community we heard about that helps swamp explorers or if it's like a guard post type thing like a couple counters in LP1 were.
And it doesn't look like we'll be able to ask anyone.
Hm!
Definitely murder!
But there's nothing for us to do here, even in terms of loot, so let's be on our way.
The fairy then says but that was yesterday and now a dark cloud is going to destroy everything. The fairies can't figure out whats going on at all because the dark power is actively confusing them and pass on a legend to us:
And then the secret of the swamp will be revealed!
We move along.
This guy tells us many of the fairies are lying to us.
This is a scam...
... because he's selling it for way more than it's worth! But twice the price is his last offer, so we take it. He tells us it changes the colour of lying fairies' dialogue.
BTW if we talk to the first fairy again, nothing happens.
In a shocking misuse of this sprite, these are complete pushovers I could not tell you anything about.
Also, there's random encounters here too.
There's a lying fairy just past there. I backtrack a bit to take a northwest path.
What are those
Three non-threatening mini-boss enemies. They do very little damage but they have enough HP that generally it takes a full round of attacks or maybe a bit more to kill one.
There's also this flower enemy... (the chest is a Phoenix Feather)
Complete non-entity. One hit kill.
Yeah but we're completionists and there's still something to do this way.
Approaching a random scarecrow causes a monster to burst out of the water at us.
Did you mean 'Die by the sword'?
Anyway, yep. Optional boss fight, except this one is probably one of the easiest thus far. Kill it in two turns. This dungeon was made for fresh new level 1 non-import characters and it shows.
We should be able to make caviar.
Roe/Caviar should give you a way better boost than this. I give it to Wendie. She deserves it. And needs it.
Weird choice but okay. Counts entirely on inquisitive adventurers showing up to check every possible thing.
Or someone looking for a new scarecrow????
We back track to the first area.
And take the south east path. This is where the fairy with colour changed text told us a thing was.
And the only thing here is another liar!
Backtrack again and take the path past the first lying fair, south west.
Two monsters pop out of the ground.
High defense, low HP. Another non-entity.
A little further on, an optional King Abaecus demonstrates that even Random can get shitty ass Slayer levels.
Wow! More nothings!
A fairy LIES to us, but thankfully the north path dead ends pretty much immediately anyway. I didn't even check out the southern one for now but we'll go there later.
Examining that flower gives us an optional battle against these guys, who, while having a bit more HP than most enemies here, are still pushovers.
We don't get anything for this either.
Fight more flowers.
This fairy warns us off a dead end but I go explore it and end up fighting more flowers and swarm of mosquitos and...
Hornets! Hornets and mosquitos in this dungeon have a nasty habit of poisoning or envenomnating the whole party prior to the battle starting. But they're both one shot kill enemies.
Here's the nice waterfall.
I go north to another deadend next. This tomb has nothing to do with anything ever. I even checked the event.
Backtrack to the fairy that told us the shrine was to the west. While she was speaking truthfully, the way to get there is not dead west.
Dead on west just leads to a dead end with this mysterious blocked cave and an enemy that has high defense and silences everyone before the battle.
Back track to the fairy again and head north west instead.
We can fight the dragon we saw earlier. It's not one of the special eight dragon bosses, but it does have a.... whole 1% chance to drop a Lycose Pearl. And there's not that many of these in the whole game! They don't respawn!
So, there's already been infrequent hurt floors here but now we're doing this shit too.
We start getting ambushed a bunch by living horrors and mosquitos as we head west.
Yep. Just Lava Wall 'em.
argh we found the 3rd one first! that kills me
Woo!
The next one is right there but Random and co. are too much the cowards to jump.
Backtrack all the way to the well...
We go the south way I ignored earlier...
I'm not even sure what the lie is supposed to be here since we actually are nowhere near -anything- right now. I guess we are on the right path though?
I go east first and get into a fight with more nothings.
I just noticed Sarah has much more Mind than Luci for some reason so I give this with its amazing resists to Luci instead of her.
North of there is a transition that takes us back to the second map of the swamp!!!!
There's a full-heal fairy though. Not that we need her.
I backtrack back to the prior fork and continue south.
Another Erk and another Swamp Dragon here.
Also a fairy that teases you by telling you this and that we look decent but then tells us she has no healing powers.
At least we're finally starting to get loot from this mess.
A map that costs 10k on the same map as a chest with 26k is kind of funny resource balancing.
Anyway this guy tells us he's marked the Monuments of the Sun on the map as black dots.
And this is accurate SO WHY DIDN'T HE FUCKING LIGHT THEM IF HE WANTS TO FIND THE SHRINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DUMB ASS
And yeah that might look like a joke map but its extremely helpful if this is your first time through the swamp. Like it does a good job of giving you an extremely rough idea of where things are in relation to each other, and the way to reach them. We're currently on the far east line headed south.
We continue south.
A fairy tells us to find the tall and beautiful Duchess to help deal with the cold fog.
And here's a deadend we want to visit.
The south path just has fights, this fairy...
And a save point that is way too out of the way to be useful.
The north path makes you fight 9 Marlboros at once for a shitty helmet.
Backtrack to the sign and go south!
South south south and a fairy gives us a slight tip that would be handy if the map hadn't indicated to us already that no monuments lay past the inn.
Just past here and a cutscene plays where a plant eats a wasp that was about to attack us. Sarah takes the opportunity to complain about how while the party was warned of mosquitoes here...
!
Scary Sarah.
We come to another split and I go south first.
Then east at another split.
Then a north-south split. I go north first.
Just has this blank book I feel like mentioning for some reason.
The south path leads to this place.
Apparently this won't last though because 'Mud is spreading' and the dark cloud is doing stuff.
Backtrack to the split prior to the last one!
Is it called the Fairy Star because a Far Cry that is actually worth honouring does not actually exist?
How come Indy adds one more star to the lore with each game?
Ohh maybe we can quickly snag-
oh dammit
Shut up
How are you meant to to interpret this? Does Wendie not think Sarah is an idiot??? Did Sarah not have the idea about asking a qestion about her love?? Ehhhh???
I think the hat is somewhat faulty given this and the prior conversation, actually.
Backtrack!
In the cave we get a quest for much much later in the game.
Deeper... swarms of mosquitoes come at us now.
Only Luci can learn this spell, I believe. It's a weak non-elemental spell.
Anyway, there's two paths here. One is a long path that makes you fight a bunch of enemies for no gain but for slightly amusing dialogues and the other leads to a magic sword and is much shorter with less fights.
They both lead to the same place. I take the long path first. I didn't screen most of it because... well... it's just a bunch of swamp maps.
Random really goes hard on the 'I'm an adventurer thats just what we do' shtick.
And another piece of evidence that Sarah is the worst fucking elf.
As if to prove the point, the very next flower we kill causes this to happen.
16 MP to heal 8 MP... the hell is- Oh. That's to -everyone-.
Now we can even spam with Random.
You're not as clever now as you can be in Laxius Force, huh.
Thank you.
Eventually you'll come to this cave that's a free rest spot. That's when I backtrack and take the short path this time.
Wow, that sounds like a Forbidden Inn. I want to sleep at the Forbidden Inn.
Wh-
What's the fucking Underkings problem. Anyway these guys are nnothing and we have to fight them one by one.
The third one will even scream at us in French after we kill him and come back to life.
He turned into a skeleton!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This should happen more often.
Not far from there...
Goodness, Random. Pulling swords is like a favourite activity of yours.
Random has to be level 18 to manage this.
It's a pretty good sword, especially that Legend element. Yes, I said Legend element. The TeAndal is probably still better. Higher Crit rate plus its own element and gives you a skill that lowers resistance to it? Done deal.
Also I think the Sword of Ages costs MP with every swing.
A bit further on...
Luci stops the party because no one else hears the noise. Not even Sarah's elf ears. Her elf eyes do spy something in the sky though.
HEY!!!!! You're not even here!!!
Are you supposed to be a demon or dragon or what
Anyway this guy isn't a difficult boss and I could probably kill him before he got to use either gimmick if I didn't let him.
On turn three he summons minions.
And on turn 8, he 'morphs' which gives him a stat boost. Then I let loose and destroy them all in two turns.
We already did that Wendie, and we didn't even fight rabbits! We fought nothing!
The Duchess is right there but we need to follow an incredibly circuitous path to reach her.
So close and we've not even found a second monument yet.
The fairy also mentions the deep dark fog hides the temple and she thinks it's because of a strange creature that settled there. HMMMM.
Secret here.
The Frozen Rod blows but the Fairy Herb is +5 MP and Mind. I give it to Wendie.
Hm.
Havenlaunst is quite the name. I like it, actually. Anyway, we get a quest to kill the evil fairy from this one.
I believe going west from here would go towards the inn and temple so I take this path that leads directly north of the cave.
Why is this guy standing on hurt floor. it's even a dead end back there. Whatever. I buy his Pine Apple.
Random comments on saving his money here.
lol
The long winding path eventually leads us to the Duchess.
Who immediately demands 1500PP to remove the ice crystal we haven't even seen yet.
It would've been really annoying going here and then finding we couldn't reach the monument.
It blinks away.
If this is saving your ass why did you charge me 1500 PP, you asshole????
I'm glad Randoms having fun at least, but he needs come up with better jokes.
He gets some incredible one-liners in Laxius Force but his Laxius Power performance is severely lacking.
So what's the deal here. What are save points. Wizards can move save points to study them in their guild. What
What kind of existential crisis is this going to lead to for the Deport
And then Sarah whines at a fairy about mosquitoes.
Right after that we have to fight a slew of mosquitoes and hornets. One. By. One.
A swamp dragon and its two mosquito ?flunkies? are the last obstacle between us and the second monument.
Wow. this one must be either Podaga or Far Cry because it didn't brighten the place one bit. Actually, the light from the other one seems to have faded too. What a rip!
I backtrack a looooong way, but not all the way to the cave area.
This sign is a lie. There is no monument in this next region.
This whole area is just a million deadends with monsters and no loot and fairies with useless info, even the supposedly honest ones. The shop is really basic stuff too. And the shopkeep is nice so I don't know if that fairy was meant to be a liar???
Sarah complains some more to the shopkeep anyway.
Random is no Shroud, babe. He's more like a Rhue that can't jump.
Back track to the sign and then some...
Meh.
This'd be alright if we weren't overlevelled, I guess. Sucks in the long run though!
Three hornets were guarding these faces but you can't interact with them.
A couple fairies here and there talk about how the swamp used to be wonderful and how it never used to be so mazey. Now that is mazey, even they don't know how to fully navigate it.
You have WINGS can't you just fly in a straight line????
Woo!
If I hadn't paused to take this screenshot we would've been struck by lightning, I think. It was just a couple tiles to the left.
Liar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck off!!
This book teaches Anti-Tek.
Thanks Luci
We start crossing a long, long, long series of long bridges. When it gets dark we start hearing a lot of hornet buzzing too.
Random just walks over these holes.
When we turn the lights on, we immediately have to flee for our lives.
As a swarm of hornets come after us and I can't be fucked fighting those. If you even fight them and don't game over or something. Pretty sure you're meant to run, especially as the game makes it quite thrilling by having lightning striking at you and the bridge and blowing new holes in it.
Wagh
But we escape by leaving the very long map. Hornets don't have much stamina and neither do lightning storms.
Then we backtrack all the way back to Havenlaunst which... takes a few minutes.
And continue west.
Wow, slams on blondes out of nowhere, from a blond boy no less.
Uh oh.
Well, it sounds nice anyway.
I used to do that too when I was like 4... 5? Cool kid. My grandparents used to sick me on them at their huge back yard garden (apparently as an intentional pest control measure I discovered only a couple months ago) and I'd gleefully collect them and watch them and sometimes crack the shells off to see what was going on but one day I stopped doing that forever when my very young uncle told me that kills the snails and I cried until he got in trouble and someone told me birds eat snails anyway and that's good for the birds.
We haggle this guy down from 15k. The Fog Bandana isn't very good, but it is unique!
Brad
Wow. This is like the 'three victims were young and sexy elves' guy in LP1.
Anyway, the inn has three floors and a lot more NPCs in it, but there's nothing of interest but for a couple normal shops and the fact you can rest here.
Let's head to the Unknown Temple!
Okay, what's the Underkings goddamn problem? We have to fight both at once this time, not that it makes it anymore challenging than before.
MEH
It's shocking she's only just getting her first one though. She's still a mandatory party member!
So we want to kill this fairy, got it.
There she is.
Cute fairy that loves to go SICKO MODE
Anyway, she doesn't have much health but she has great defense and poor offense, so it still takes a few turns to kill her despite the fact she has less than a thousand HP.
Just copying Wendie now.
We all love murder here.
Going back for the reward isn't even really worth it!
I mean it's like a four minute walk for like 2000PP or something. Maybe less!
Could this THING be THE THING, Dagayel'rr??????
That waterfall sucks
This could've been an all time great Player vs. Author fuck you.
The evil swamp fairies grow ever more desperate.
That's a lightning bolt striking at the top of the screen. It looks like it strikes a small campfire.
The party investigates. Sarah implies the wound is so bad it's incredible that he's even barely alive.
The dying man tells us he won't last long and to not enter the temple (Random asks 'What temple?!')
Then he dies.
Luci posits he may even be the cult member we've tracked here, but apparently there's no way to ever know for sure now.
I would say she's right but who knows, evil monsters Cenodemons or otherwise may kill their own allies just for food or the fun of it.
Also, why is she pointing out she didn't say anything.
Anyway, the party then says they're tired.
So they decide to sleep next to the corpse of a man who may have been their enemy, in the pool of his blood that is mixing with rain and swamp water even.
Sleeping in the rain. In front of a cave that a mysterious monster entered after sluaghtering the man whose blood they're sleeping in.
And the Inn isn't even that far back!
That's probably normal and enjoyable for Wendie going by how she loves to kill and adventure.
It's even raining on the chapter screen.
Anyway, we're done with Mosquito Swamp for now. We're far from completely done with it, but we'll never need to roam the whole thing ever again, just go to a couple places here and there.
You know. This dungeon is better and worse than Tangar Mountains. It's less open-ended and confusing than the mountains but it's still super huge and has a billion dead ends even if it's much more linear and you get a helpful map and vaguely helpful hints -sometimes-.
The maps also make it a bit more confusing to navigate because it's not like 3-4 really huge maps like Tangar was. It's... like 90 maps. 90. And I went through every single one of them. A couple are doubles for reasons, but it's the high eighties at least. This game has like 1078 map files so we just went through like say 8.16 percent of the game in terms of file count with this donjon and update alone.
This dungeon and update took hours. Compare to last update where I did like 6 dungeons in like a hour and the long part was writing the update and the fire ants.
the end