Shipwrecked in Mysidia (FFIV, Day 48)

It was a day like any other, and the calm seas did not betray the monster that lurked beneath. #foreshadowing

True to the Fabul King's word, a ship awaited the party to take them to Baron. SQL's wife was there to see us off and we boarded to calm seas and a peaceful journey across the waves. Except that this is early in the Final Fantasy series and they're pretty fond of absolutely wrecking any and all forms of transportation.



Bon Voyage!

It started out innocently enough, with a slow meandering trek across the world map. Things went south quickly when the ship encountered a random whirlpool in its path though. There were a few clueless moments before all hell broke loose.

This is highly irregular. This needs more fiber in it's diet.

The deck hands and captain were all in a tizzy and started yelling something about a lord of the sea, and it wasn't even time to release the Kraken. No this guy is something bigger. Much bigger- you might even say it was a Leviathan! Um, because it was. It was Leviathan. That sounded more clever in my head. Oh well, moving on.

Up from the depths, 30 stories high,
breathing fire, his head in the sky!
Godzilla!... no wait.

So of course Leviathan is bad news for any puny ships that happen to be nearby, and the subsequent shakeup sent poor Ruby overboard. SQL gallantly dove in after her and disappeared. Meanwhile VBasic suffered the awful fate of... falling down. I was then treated to an unexpected 3D rendered cut scene where the ship swirled into the sea, dragged down by the monster. 

Seriously... Hasn't she been through enough?

An undetermined amount of time later, we join COBOL groaning on the beach as he comes to his senses, apparently the only survivor of the ship's run in with the sea beast.

Life's a beach

If you recall early in the game, COBOL and his Red Wings decimated a town called Mysidia to steal their crystal. Wouldn't you know, a twist of fate has washed our hero up on a shore whose closest civilization is, you guessed it, Mysidia. Understandably, they don't seem to like him there.

It's an interesting experience walking into Mysidia and experiencing various manifestations of the mages' hatred for COBOL. One mage you speak to turns you into a toad. The bartender in the pub poisons your drink. The dancing girl puts you to sleep and pulls a Circe on you - meaning you wake up as a pig.

A visit to the town elder is the only way to advance here, and upon learning that COBOL has repented, he sends him to the aptly named Mt. Ordeals to become a Paladin. That's where the child genius mages Palom and Porum come in to assist. Except in my play through they'll be CPlus+ and CSharp.

Candy mountain!

The trio journeys to the mountain and much like with Mt. Hobs, there is a barrier - only instead of ice, this one is fire. CPlus+ casts blizzard and then gets snarky about it, and CSharp proceeds to smack him over the head for it. Ah, siblings...

Csharp is basically Hermione.

Meanwhile...

meanwhile...

define 'interesting'

We're transported to Golbez's place, for a cut scene. Perl is tied up and guarded by Python. Golbez says some pretty villainy things and then decides that he can't allow COBOL to reach the top of Mt Ordeals. Because he's a troll like that.

Scarmo, baby! Let's rap about a job I gots for yas!

So now we get to meet the first of the four fiends. This one, (I'm not going to struggle to type his name. It's right there already.) is the fiend of earth and commands undead. Which could be a bit of a problem for our dark blade wielding hero. And poor Perl can't do anything about it.

Her schedule had her a little tied up at the time.
*Ba Dum Tish!*

When the scene ends, we're back with COBOL, CPlus+ and CSharp and continue the trek up the mountain. Here we run into a familiar face. It's Pascal! He's here looking for the ultimate magic, and agrees to join the party to help in the mission.

Pascal still want smash.

Shortly thereafter, I had to stop, and saved my progress at the save point right near the top of the mountain. We'll pick up next time and fight through the legion of undead to reach the top and get COBOL some fancy new powers.

Tour de Fourth (FFIV, Days 46-47)

After the uncharted waters of Final Fantasy III, it's nice to be back in a familiar place with Final Fantasy IV. That's not to say I didn't enjoy III. I very much did, but it was noticeably more difficult than most others that I can recall. IV is a different story. Though I haven't ever finished it, I've still attempted it enough times that the early game is pretty much a breeze. It also happens to be my husband's favorite, so I've got a human walkthrough if I get stuck in the late game.

First off I want to apologize for the lack of photos from early on. I'm playing on my husband's PSP and it took a bit of practice to get the photos to come out clear enough for use. I suppose I'll begin with my impressions at this time. To start with, I noticed that the dialogue in the PSP version is much more polished what I remembered from my very first attempt to play through this. The story itself is quite evocative right from the start.

I sort of love the way the hero of the story starts out on the wrong side of things. He starts out as a soldier who is just following orders, but it's quickly apparent that he's mustering the strength to speak out against the atrocities of his kingdom.

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, the game opens as the King's fleet of military airships are returning from Mysidia which they've just utterly decimated to steal the Crystal there for the kingdom of Baron. Upon his return, our main character, who is another Batman class (Dark Knight) expresses his slight disapproval at their actions and is promptly stripped of his rank and sent on a side mission. His best buddy Dragoon tries to reason with the king and is punished by having to go too.

I do want to mention that it was neat to walk around Baron Castle again, especially given the fact that my husband and I once built a replica of it in Minecraft. That might not seem like a big achievement, but we did the entire project in survival mode back in the late beta version. I wonder if I have any photos of that thing anymore?

Anyway, before I go any Further, I'll have you know that true to the poll results, I've already renamed Cecil to COBOL, and Kain is now Python. Admittedly I don't know enough about coding languages to have specific reasons for this. They just sounded good to me, so don't worry yourself looking for deeper meaning.

Once the opening and Star Wars inspired text crawl were done, I took COBOL and Python around town, bestowed their new names upon them, and made sure to grab a few tents and potions. Now it was time to head to the Mist Cave. I decided to travel by chocobo to save time.

The cave, being an introductory dungeon, was none too difficult. For the most part, I had COBOL and Python flee, but made a few kills for XP. The area boss, the Mist Dragon, isn't a difficult battle, just a drawn out one, so with persistence and the foreknowledge to not bother hitting it while in mist form, I got it done and over with. Foreknowledge isn't all good though, considering I knew exactly who it was I'd just killed. 

Once the dynamic duo reached the Village, the signet they were supposed to deliver proved to be a bomb. Or more accurately, several bombs. Much to the shock and dismay of COBOL, it was game over for the Village of Mist. It was there that we first meet the character I've chosen to name Ruby (being Rydia, of course <3). She is the only survivor and COBOL valiantly refuses to allow her to die along with the rest of her village. For now, Python agrees and they speak of turning against their king. 

It's about this time that Ruby decides to fight COBOL and Python, and she summons Titan who proceeds to break the village in half. Python has disappeared, presumably on the other side of the rubble. COBOL takes Ruby to the nearest village, Kaipo and protects her from a few Baron soldiers, thus finally earning her trust.

Also in Kaipo, COBOL discovers that his girlfriend Rosa from Baron has come down with desert fever. I later renamed her Perl, for the record. So now with a new mission to find the thing that will save her, COBOL and Ruby set out for Damcyan, and meet up with a angry old guy in the cave leading there. Tellah, who I've named Pascal in my play-through, asks for our help in defeating the octopus monster at the exit.

This was another boss battle that wasn't particularly dangerous, just long. I'd made sure to grind a little to get Ruby some much needed levels before coming here, so she was able to keep the party pretty much at full health while COBOL and Pascal whittled down the boss. Onward.

Spoony. Whatever that means.

Pretty much upon arrival, the party witnesses the bombing of Damcyan and rushes inside where Pascal sees his daughter lying there, severely injured, and proceeds to try beating the crap out of Edward, the Prince of this here kingdom who happens to be the bard with whom she meant to elope. Edward's new name is Visual Basic, by the way, which I shortened to VBasic because of the character limit.

I very much regret not being fast enough to get a snapshot of the infamous insult that Pascal hurled at VBasic, but I'm sure you at least know of it already. Say it with me: "You spoony bard!"


Pascal Smash.

When Pascal's daughter Anna protests to the battle, it ends and we learn that the new leader of the Red Wings is named Golbez, so this is all his fault. Which makes Anna's subsequent death his fault as well. A raging Pascal leaves the party at this point, vowing to kill the guy himself.

Meanwhile, VBasic is now a crying puddle on the floor and not even adorable little Ruby can snap him out of it, so COBOL gives it a try. I didn't get a photo, but it was something like this:

Exactly like this, in fact.

Basically the Sarlacc pit

Once he wiped his eyes, VBasic took COBOL and Ruby to the Ant Lion den to get a jewel to cure Perl that's actually not a jewel at all, and more like the gallstone of a giant bug. Apparently these Ant Lions are supposed to be docile, but this one attacks VBasic, so of course we have to kill it in a boss battle. I'm actually sort of proud of this one. It's the first time I've gotten through this boss with VBasic alive at the end. He actually got XP this time - Pretty exciting.

Back in Kaipo, Perl is revived, and the party decides that someone has to warn Fabul that Baron is coming for their crystal. That night, Edward hallucinates about his dead girlfriend, and kicks the crap out of a Sahagin to prove his determination or something. The next morning, off to Fabul.

The trip takes them across Mt. Hobs and it takes some convincing to have Ruby cast fire to melt the ice blocking the path. Understandably, the little girl whose village was destroyed by fire is afraid of the stuff, but relents and casts fire anyway. Even as a child, Ruby is braver than some adults I know. (I'm looking at you VBasic.)

At the top of the mountain, we meet a monk who is trying to fight off monsters and doing a pretty good job of it himself until the boss comes out. Mom Bomb isn't the easiest to defeat, but it's not all that hard either. I always sort of enjoyed this battle just for the name of the enemy. It amuses me. Mom Bomb. Go ahead, say it out loud. It's fun.

With that over, we continued on to Fabul, and immediately upon arrival, I changed the monk's name to SQL. Important tasks complete, it was time to continue on to the paltry business of defending the castle against the encroaching enemy.

Perl and Ruby were to tend to the injured while the men went off to battle. This is something that always sort of bothered me. I need my healers, dangit! But I made it through the assault without too much trouble right until Python showed up and proceeded to serve a massive beat down on COBOL and then take the crystal. This is also when Perl gets kidnapped by Golbez because he's not a nice person.

Betrayed by his best friend, COBOL is pretty distressed at the whole thing. Luckily his new friends SQL, VBasic, and Ruby are willing to help him get Perl back. Plans are made to infiltrate Baron and do just that.

I've made quite a bit of leeway considering I've got just over 4 hours of game time logged. I think I might be able to somewhat make up for the excessive amount of days I spent on III.

Current saved progress

Tune in tomorrow for the exciting adventures of COBOL at sea!

And Finally... Victory (FFIII, Days 44-45)

Once I picked back up with my quest, I determined that a reasonable grinding goal would be level 55 across the board. So that's just what I did - I wasn't going to bother with the end game content until I was there. I'm nothing if not persistent though, so the grinding went reasonably well and quickly enough.

Now that I was at my goal level, I made sure to save and heal back at the airship and make what I hoped was my final trip through the Ancient's Maze and subsequently the Crystal Tower. I got into a nice rhythm of having my mages prepare to run away while my melee attackers went for the kill. It didn't matter who succeeded, as long as one of the sets of actions occurred, because at that point I just wanted the battles to be over as quickly as possible.

I managed to basically sprint through the maze with no loss of HP or MP. A quick save on the world map, and I dove in to get the tower done as well. This went a bit more slowly as I had to make careful decisions about whether to flee or fight on some of the enemies, but it went smoothly enough.

I was lucky enough to avoid running into any more dragons on the 7th floor, and made sure to have my casters each chug one of the 22 elixirs I had saved up. MP restored, I went right back into the ring with Xande for round two. My strategy hardly changed for this battle and I found it over more quickly than last time. Of course once he was dead, the Cloud of Darkness was waiting.

And whose fault is that, Xantac?

If for no other reason than the music is awesome, I was able to enjoy the scripted battle this time around. It's a new arrangement of the 8 bit NES version, but I appreciate that they kept a decidedly chip-tune inspired sound to it. I just like it. Have a listen and decide for yourself.

 

This time around, now that I knew the first encounter with Miss Cloud of Darkness was unwinnable, I decided to speed things along and have all my characters attack themselves instead of her. This had the desired effect, and of course the five members of the pure heart brigade were suitably shocked and dismayed when my party was barbecued by a plasma beam.

Extra Crispy

Which meant it was time for another Deus Ex Doga maneuver, and a proper recap of what happens next. Doga and Unei reappear over the fallen heroes and subsequently resurrect them by giving them each a part of their immortal souls. This made about 9 people pretty pleased, and was generally good news for existence as a whole.  Afterwards the duo disappear to 'join the great soul beyond' or whatever. Now our heroes can finish the job and take down the terrible and powerful COD.

"Have fun storming the Dark World!"

A quick dive into a foreboding swirl of of purple and the party appeared in the Dark World. My next mission was to free the Warriors of the Dark so they would help weaken COD for me. This involved visiting each of four portals. Another thing that would make the battle easier was to ensure that all my party members had a Ribbon equipped to protect from COD's Bad Breath ability. If you know anything about Final Fantasy, you know that Bad Breath is pretty much one of the worst things ever.

It's sort of dark here...

Each of the Ribbons I was after was in a chest guarded by a clone of Xanax. By this point it wasn't a difficult battle, just an annoying one. I had to repeat it three times to get three more of those coveted items. Thankfully, I didn't have to do it a fourth time because Po'Ang already had one. So right off the bat, that's three mini-bosses I had to take out.

There are also four dark crystals here and each one is guarded by a boss. That brings the boss battle total to 7 in the dark world. One by one, I had to defeat Ahriman, Echidna, Cerberus, and a literal two headed dragon, who is not in fact related to Hiram McDaniels in any way. In some guides, each of these are supposedly optional bosses, but for every warrior of the dark freed, it drops COD's defense and attack a little. Definitely not optional as far as I'm concerned.

ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD

Having taken a deep breath, I went to the final showdown. Cloudy lady was none too pleased when each of the four Dark Warriors threw themselves into weakening her.

Existence is better than non-existence, ya know?

The battle was nerve-wracking, but I kept a decent handle on things. Po'Ang was entirely dedicated to healing for the entire time, Hemnes was a Flare-casting machine, and Ektorp and Lack just had to melee the heck out of her. I focused on the right tentacle first, to stop it's annoying habit of casting lightning on the party. Once it was down, the rest of the battle was just a stamina test. When Hemnes and Po'Ang ran out of the particular spell level I was using, they got an Elixir, and it was all downhill from there.

Cloud of Darkness Status: PWND!

 I defeated the cloud of darkness, and can officially count Final Fantasy III among my completed games. In my experience. this is probably one of, if not THE most difficult in the series. The final crawl through 7 floors of tower and 5 portals of darkness is BRUTAL. 


There you have it, Folks. I'll be starting Final Fantasy IV now. The naming poll results are in: Disney Princesses in 5th place with 1 vote, Superheroes was 4th with 2 votes, Famous Scientists had 3 votes in 3rd place, EDM Artists were in 2nd with 4 votes, and Coding Languages took first with 6 votes. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Tune in tomorrow when Coding Languages save the world from evil.

Now for some closing life advice from Final Fantasy III:

Hope is generally pretty awesome. (FFXIII Excluded)

Cloud of Darkness (FFIII, Day 43)

 Get comfy. This recap might take a while.

My party was well rested and ready to go when I began my play yesterday evening. Ektorp had some shiny new swords, Po'Ang and Hemnes had some shiny new magic, and Lack was and always will be the punchiest. So it was that I set out for the Crystal Tower once more. The Ancient's Maze is now more of a speed bump than anything, so it was pretty easy to make it through and create a new save on the world map just outside the tower doors.

Next he holds up a motivational poster that
features cat on a branch and the text 'Hang in there!'.

I'd been doing a decent amount of grinding. I was pretty much unscathed by anything found on the first floor. Once I arrived at the doorway leading to the upper floors, I was treated to a cut scene where Unei's key removed the blockade for me. The party expressed their determination, and off we went to floor number two. It had been my plan right from the start to go through the tower at least twice. Once to grab all the treasure. Then I'd head back outside, through the labyrinth to the airship and have a rest. Now, this pretty much went according to plan until I got to the last four chests on floor 7.

I was completely and utterly unprepared for a random encounter with a red dragon. This may not mean anything to you, and at first I didn't expect any issues either. So to tell you why this was a problem, I'll just FFIII Wiki entry for a red dragon: "It is, undoubtedly, the hardest common enemy in the game." As the above quote might indicate to you, I was most assuredly and royally REKT by this thing. Thus was lost about two hours of progress from my last save at the bottom of the tower.

For my second attempt, I decided to stick with the plan, but take the tower in stages. My research revealed that the dragons I now so fear tend to appear only on the upper floors. Stage one of treasure recovery was to grab everything on floors 2-6 and then teleport out to save and then trek back to the airship to heal. Now that I was somewhat familiar with the common enemies, this part was rather easy. Mission accomplished.

Stage two was to grind through the tower again and grab the chests on 7. This time I encountered a Yellow Dragon, and made it through the encounter alive. I was proud of myself until I checked the Wiki which states that: "The Yellow Dragon is the weakest of all the dragons that can be encountered..." Pride deflated. At least I retrieved the loot.

Stage Two down, I initiated another teleport, followed by another trek through the Ancient's Maze to reach my airship and rest, and then another return trip to the base of the Crystal Tower. This left me ready for what was to be my final run. "Run" I did.

Xande is a huge troll.

I avoided battle altogether whenever possible by running away because I wanted to conserve mana and items until I reached the top. It took a good 20 minutes anyway, but I was finally there ready to beat the game. I approached the mirror, and that's when the trouble started. I can't tell if the mirror was cursed by Xande, or if it just happened to be cursed when he got there, but he proceeded to inform me that anyone who looks into the mirror suffers "The Curse of the Five Wyrms" or some equally silly sounding thing. To me it meant that my party was unable to move. Not good.

Time for some "Deus Ex Doga". The recently deceased Doga Wan Kenobi informs the party that while his soul still exists he'll gather the five pure hearts that can dispel the curse. So of course, Doga visits the five NPC's who were in my party at one time or another. He appears to each one in turn who all say 'sure' when a strange old man appears out of nowhere and says they need to come with him RIGHT NOW. I mean, he does tell them that the warriors of the light need their help, but still.

By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!

In any case, Princess Sara, Cid, Desch (who wasn't dead, yay!), King Alus, and one of the random old men who were masquerading as the Warriors of Light earlier, all rush to the scene to break the curse of the five wyrms. Thus our heroes can GET ON WITH IT. They do so by going into the very mirror that had just cursed them.

That's what they all say.

On the other side, Xande is waiting. With a Yellow Dragon already under my belt, this guy wasn't actually much of a threat. All I had to do was keep Po'Ang on healing duty, and let everyone else wail on him until he died.

"Can't touch this." You know, because of the hammer pants.

But if you know Final Fantasy, you know that's not the end of the story. There's always a bigger badder boss after the presumed final boss. In this case, that would be the Cloud of Darkness which is actually pretty glowy for being 'darkness.' It's basically "The Nothing" from The Neverending Story. I entered combat and promptly died. For a brief moment I was rather upset until it was made clear that this was a scripted battle that I wasn't supposed to win.

Stupid cheap unwinnable battle.

Sigh of relief there. Doga and Unei end up resurrecting the party, but from this point on I'm going to keep my description brief.  Suffice to say I made it all the way through the bosses in the world of darkness, made it back to the Cloud of Darkness, and fought the good fight. Much to my dismay, it wasn't enough.

So here I am, defeated. I load up my save. I'm back outside between the Maze and the Tower because there are no places to save once you enter the tower. I'll leave it to you to imagine all the non PG-13 things that I yelled at that point.

I think I'm going to do a bit of grinding and try again, at which point I'll properly recap everything that happens between fake final battle and real final battle.

Getting Classy (FFIII, Day 42)

Yesterday, I started looking up some tips for getting through these last few dungeons. On a whim, I decided to read through a list of job descriptions to see what I was missing out on. For those of you that already know what's coming here, you can stop sighing and/or shouting at your computer screen. I can't hear you and frankly it's weird of you to talk to your computer without some sort of voice activation software. Which when I think about it, many of you may have at this point as such technology becomes ubiquitous. So... I mean...  you can yell at Siri if you want to I guess.

Back to the topic at hand. I've been using the wrong classes. As in, I now know that Devout is White Mage 2.0, Magus is a much better Black Mage, and a Black Belt is even punchier than a Monk. I already picked up on the reasonable progression for Ektorp, who has levels in Knight and Batman, but I didn't catch on for the rest. Don't worry, I rectified this error in judgment before I set off to grab the goodies in Eureka, the forbidden land that apparently exists in a pocket dimension.

I enjoyed the music in Eureka. It reminds me of Pirates of the Caribbean. Suitably epic for a so-called forbidden land. Now that I had my character classes properly upgraded, I made my way through the small dungeon. I had a pretty easy time of it too. For each legendary weapon, there was a Mini Boss that was the spirit of that weapon, so I had to defeat them to prove myself worthy. Piece of cake - especially considering that the game fully heals you every time you defeat one of them. It was a rinse and repeat sort of situation with each enemy. As you can see, Po'Ang was very bored with the whole situation.

Bored apathy is just what one would expect from a cat, so...

Items all acquired, I got to the end of the dungeon and paid a visit to the vendors there. Among other things, I left with a tidy pile of level 8 spells for Po'Ang and Hemnes. Nice. I finished up by making a quick run back through the labyrinth to have a rest on the airship.

Tonight or tomorrow, I think I may actually finish this. You know what that means... NAME POLL TIME! Click HERE to go to the poll and choose the next ridiculous category for my FFIV characters' names.

Stalling for XP (FFIII, Day 41)

Clearly, at the end of my last post, my intention was to go and kill the boss guarding the Earth crystal. That did not happen. Instead I went exploring because it's totally a smart move to start going after optional bosses when you're trying to finish a game more quickly. /sarcasm

Some self-flagellating part of me doesn't want me to finish this game. Or maybe it's the part of me that just wants to slow down and enjoy the ride. As much as I complain, I'm really enjoying this game. I know that the remake has a great deal more character development than the original, but I don't care. I'm playing the remake and I enjoy it.

This is Pronounced: "You have a game
 to finish, Kate! Quit wasting time!"

Whatever my motivation for doing this, I took the Invincible to the Floating continent to see what I could now reach with it's mountain hopping abilities. The first place I happened across was a cave in a protected little valley. At it would happen, I found myself in Bahamut's Lair. Now, as I mentioned before, I don't NEED any summons, because I have no interest in training up a summoner this late in the game. Regardless, I was there, so why not beat the stuffing out of a legendary dragon who gave me a fright earlier in the game? It was surprisingly easy given how over leveled I was for him.

Next on my point of interest list was a random lake in the northwest corner of the floating continent. I'd been curious earlier in the game as to what that giant swimming shadow might be. The answer: Leviathan. Another summon that I could get and not use at all. Again, I was higher level than necessary so it made for a concise and clean battle.

It was only after these two unnecessary battles that I sought out the real boss, Titan. By this time, I was also a bit over leveled for him as well, and the details of the battle are frankly boring. I used the same tactic as on Bahamut and Leviathan. Po'Ang heals, Ektorp attacks, Hemnes casts Bio, Lack attacks. Rinse and repeat until boss is dead.

Dude, Titan is RIPPED.

Sure enough, another sentient crystal granted my party a new pile of job classes, and played Exposition Fairy while I pressed the A button until it stopped.



Shhhhh.

Sorry, this is all of the words for today. Until next time!

Are we there yet? (FFIII, Days 36-40)

It feels like it's taking me forever to finish this game.

Now, I deliberately took some time off from posting because it was my birthday over the weekend and I felt like it. Despite this, I did not take any time off from playing FFIII, so buckle up for a long post today. If all goes well, (It won't) I may only be making a couple more posts about this one.



We all live in a yellow submarine.

Our last cliffhanger left me at Odin's doorstep, about to wreak some havoc on him. Things did not go according to plan. I mean... He was an optional boss anyway, so I opted to move on instead. I continued the main quest to find Noah's Lute, and spent a fair amount of time looking for the underwater Temple of Time. And, no, there was no green garbed hero inside.

I finally found it and went inside to find a short, but confusing dungeon. So far, I've found DS style maps of every single dungeon. Not this one. I ended up winging it with a map from the original. Somehow, I managed to make it through. I collected some neat loot on the way, most of which was actually pretty useful, and finally found the thing I'd come for. It played a jaunty little tune and I promptly teleported the heck out of there.


This magic lute is magic loot. Your mind is blown, I'm sure.

How strange! I'll put Lack Sidetable on the case!

So my next stop was to go and wake up Unei, another one of those Jedi Master types. She promptly joins my party and starts ordering them around. She informs them that they need a new airship. To my relief, this need did not coincide with another destroyed vehicle. After my real life experience last Thursday, I don't think I could have taken it! Anyway, off we went to some ancient ruins.

I don't really remember the ancient ruins giving me much trouble. Also, there were funny little researchers all over the place who were upset about a cave-in. So Unei took care of the junk that was in the way by hitting it with dream stones. As far as I'm concerned the stuff was basically antimatter. I mean, it destroys itself along with whatever it touches. Between Unei stepping into battle now and then, and a 'town' area in the middle of the dungeon where I could upgrade my stuff and take a rest, I had an easy time of it. Also, I had a decent map once more.

Nice ride.

Once I found the ship, I was treated to a tour by Unei, and discovered that now I basically had a flying village. With beds, shops, and even a fat chocobo, everything I could need was right there. With that, Unei left to go work on something with Doga. Then I got a cool little cut scene of the airship surfacing out of the ocean. I flew around for a bit, then figured out my next move.

The cave of shadows awaited. In some ways, I really liked this dungeon. It was annoying to have to keep finding the secret passages to move around, but the aesthetic of it was really cool. In the first room, I met a Batman (Dark Knight) who gave me a Kotetsu and then promptly died. Free Kotetsu! I took this as a hint that I should probably switch jobs. Thus Ektorp Sofa became Batman.

Batman was helpful. The enemies here decided that dividing would be fun - meaning that if you hit one with the wrong kind of damage, you end up with two of them. Dark Knight weapons seem to neutralize this effect, so that was pretty darn convenient. If nothing else, this game has taught me to pay attention to clues about effective classes. With Ektorp "Batman" Sofa now tearing it up, this dungeon became much less of a challenge, and I reached the Fang of earth with ease.

Hemnes has been taking lessons from Lack.

Beefcake Boss

The boss, Hecatoncheir, showed up and gave us a 'over my dead body' sort of look when we were about to take the item, so the party was happy to oblige. This was one of the easier boss battles in the game, and for that I was thankful. He lasted a couple of rounds, and then fell like a brick. So we took his treasure.

After the battle, and once we had the last of the 4 fangs, Po'Ang excitedly mentioned that now we got to go back to visit the creepy old Jedi couple who were cooking up something special for the party. So that's at least interesting, I guess. At this point I'd gained several levels and decided I wanted to do something before resuming the main quest.

That's right. This guy again.

I realized that I had to go and grab the Nautilus to get back to Doga's manor, so on my way back I decided that Odin was going down. With my new levels and Batman powers, I dispatched him in something ridiculous like two rounds. Now if I decide to change someone to a summoner I can summon Odin. (Spoilers: I wont.)

Getting back on track, I sped off to Doga's house, and was invited to step into the magic circle to Doga's Grotto. Dude keeps lots of gnarly monsters in there, that's for sure. The dungeon was short, but tough. The enemies are all quite resilient, so I took my time, and had to keep a careful eye on party health. I teleported out once or twice to take advantage of the wellspring water and revive book in Doga's manor, before I made it all the way to the end.

 Doga and Unei were waiting for us. The surprise was actually a bit surprising as they revealed that we had to kill them to move on. I'm just glad they attacked one by one. They even healed the party between fights, so that made what could have been a disaster into a manageable event.

After the battle, the music got all sad and everyone was really sorry that they were dying. We got the standard 'it's all up to you now' sort of vibe before they disappeared, Yoda style. Now, the death of the mentor is a pretty standard part of the Hero's Journey, so objectively the scene makes sense. But there's an elephant in the room. Why is no one even remotely surprised when the kindly old wizard people transform into cthulean nightmares in battle? I started fighting and I was like, Wat?!

That brings us to the final part of my progress. I went back to trade out the Nautilus for the Invincible, and flew over to the four statues. One by one, they crumbled as I passed, and then a short hop over a mountain left me right in front of what I've been informed is phase 1 of a three-part final dungeon.

I travelled through, and made it out the other side of the Ancient's Maze, only to realize I was nearly out of mana, and I haven't seen a single tent or sleeping bag type item to use on the world map. So I trekked back through to the outside of the maze and took a nap on my airship. It's a good thing too. I apparently accidentally skipped the boss. Oops.

Tune in next time for Kate's Adventures in Backtracking (TM).

Progress in the midst of setbacks (FFIII, Day 35)

Allow me to start with a disclaimer: With everything going on, I'm afraid this post suffers from a lack of actual game photos, so I've made substitutions where applicable.



True Story.

I've made a little progress, but far less than I would have liked. Most of my regularly scheduled play time yesterday was sacrificed to the gods of bureaucracy while I spoke to my auto insurance company. I was driving home from work yesterday and got hit by a pickup truck. My poor car, that I've had for less than a year, will be admitted to the repair shop for a few days (hopefully not more than that) and I'll be picking up my rental at the same time. The good news is that I'm fine other than some anger based emotional trauma and that delightfully painful muscle tension that comes from being stressed out. So yes, I'm intact, and still playing games regardless of how frustrated at the current situation I may be. I'm going to try to keep a positive outlook about everything and remember that things are just things, and I'm lucky I wasn't hurt. :)
Enough of my rant about the (Ugh) "REAL WORLD" let's head back to the land of... did they even name the world in Final Fantasy 3? Hold on while I go look this up. *Shuffles away into the internets.*

Nope. No name. Back we go to "Nameless Final Fantasy World", then.

Disclaimer: Gameplay images are simulated.

As promised, I was able to finish the Sunken Cave and I left there with a tidy pile of shiny new loot that I basically stole from a quartet of monsters hiding in treasure chests.

I believe I also neglected to mention that before going down there, I paid a visit to Doga's Village - which is essentially a Mall for Magic where you can buy almost any spell in the game. This is another location you can only reach by using the Nautilus's submarine mode. There is a short underwater passage that lets you pop up in the lake nearby.

Accurate Portrayal

Now, unfortunately I didn't have much money when I visited, so I'll have to make another trip there soon. Especially considering the fact that I earned quite a bit in the Sunken Cave. Once I'm done with my current dungeon, I think I'll try to remember to pay another visit.

My next destination was the Catacombs of Saronia, located beneath the city. It seems like this might also be an optional dungeon, but then again, any chance to earn some XP seems to be a good bet in this game. Currently, I've reached a secret room with 8 treasure chests, four of which are Phoenix Downs, and the rest are Elixirs. A nice payday, but I do have to fight monsters that are guarding each chest. No big deal, because I can defeat them in one round, and they each drop a nice pile of XP and a fat stack of Gil.

As of this writing, I have two more chests to open, and then I apparently get to go into the next room to fight Odin. My reward for this will be a summon, according to the walkthrough, and while I've not been particularly invested in using a summoner, the battle alone should be worth it for the Experience boost and money earned.

Tune in next time for something a little more substantial.

Good Doga (FFIII, Day 34)

My brand new speedboat of an airship is a welcome change. Careening around the world map is extra fun when you've got a zippy zeppelin like the Nautilus. A name which bothered me by the way, considering it's an AIR ship and not a sea ship. Luckily this discomfort was resolved eventually. More on that later.



Jamie Hyneman as Doga

I took my sweet new ride for a spin and paid a visit to my next destination. Earlier in the game, right after I completed the Water Crystal leg of my journey, I may have mentioned that Ektorp Sofa had some sort of fever dream. Well I was on my way to find the guy that dream had told me to find. Doga, one of the students of Noah who was kind of a big deal. Basically a Jedi Master.
So we arrived at Doga's Manor and met the guy, but not before he sent a pair of moogles to adorably threaten the party. He took us for a stroll through the house, made mention of the wannabe Sith Lord Xande, and told us we had to escort him to his magic circle. Ok. Sure.

Pictured: Doga's Vape Lounge

I was not at all pleased to learn that this was another dungeon where Mini was required. Have I mentioned that I hate job transitional periods? At least Doga had some medicinal pot lying around. No really, it was a pot of wellspring water. What did you think it was...? Anyway, I changed Ektorp Sofa and Lack Sidetable to Red Mages and sent them to the back row with a pile of Elemental Staves so I wouldn't get totally REKT in there. The linear dungeon was thankfully rather short and when we reached the end, Jedi Doga cast some spell that made the Nautilus worthy of its name - it's now a submarine too.
 

It's only weakness is explosions.
That never happens to you, right?

After that pleasant surprise, Doga sent us out to fetch some fancy harp to wake the third student of Noah, Unei, from her epic nap. Somehow I also have to get a hold of this ancient ship he was excited about. It's apparently called the Invincible, but knowing the track record on ships in this game, I somehow doubt it's actually invincible. Regardless, I was relieved to be teleported back out of the mini dungeon and got my party back to full size post haste.

Following along with my walkthrough again, it suggested I use my newfound nautical travel capabilities to find the underwater cave at the southeast corner of the world map. It's a small dungeon but it's absolutely packed with loot. I grabbed some, ran back outside to heal, and then went in for the rest.

There are 4 hidden chests in the very back of the cave, each guarded by a powerful monster. I killed one, then the next, then the next. I made it to the fourth chest and promptly ended up losing a chunk of progress when I dropped my DS. It just so happened to fall in such a way that the cartridge popped out. It's my own fault for falling asleep mid-battle, (to be fair it was way past my bedtime.) but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.

Oh well, that's how it goes sometimes. I hope to properly finish the dungeon tonight. Check back here tomorrow for the next Installment!