Zynga’s FarmVille and Helping Out on Farms

So I decided to check out FarmVille recently. Makes me wish I were playing Harvest Moon – I should dig up one of those games sometime. Maybe even the GameCube one.

Anyway, one of the game’s mechanics caught my attention. You can help out on the farms of your friends – scare away crows, or do some weeding. You only get suggestions to help on the farms of your friends; you don’t get anything for random strangers, unless you happened to friend someone like that.
So what does helping neighbours with their farm do for those neighbours? For the helping player, it’s a quick visit to another farm, and clicking two buttons, in return for a small amount of currency and experience. It’s also an automated notification sent to the player they ‘helped’.

For the helper:

• A way of getting money without waiting for plants or animals to reach a harvestable stage. It’s instant and doesn’t require spending anything, but doesn’t get you much – about the profit from a single
• A way of getting experience, similarly.
• Tells the person you helped that you’re playing?

For the helped:

• They now know the helper is playing, if they didn’t already. The helped player can then ‘help’ the player that helped them.
• More notification spam.

For FarmVille:

• Reinforces player relationships?

If it doesn’t actually do anything for the helped player aside from informing them someone plays, then the action is a little… selfish. Players aren’t helping people to genuinely aid them; they’re helping people to make a little extra cash on the side, or they’re informing their friend that, yes, they play FarmVille too.

It’d be nice if helping out on the farm lengthened the period of time crops remain harvestable, or maybe even harvested (some) ready crops for the helped player. Maybe weeds or birds trying to eat things could be actual problems for a player.
Come to think of it, are there problems to encounter in the game? I suppose something like that would have players checking too often, worrying too much, though. FarmVille is definitely on the casual, low-interactivity side.

MMOs and Region-locking

A few friends of mine have been very excited about the Dungeon Fighter Online open beta, recently. I personally don’t understand the appeal of the game, but then again, I never tried the Japanese version, so they probably know something I don’t.
They’re both a bit pissed off right now due to the Nexon version being for Americans and Canadians only. Apparently Nexon never saw fit to inform them or the community about that. So neither of them can play, whilst they were as hyped up about the approaching open beta as the American hopefuls were. I suppose. I don’t know about whether it wasn’t announced – I get the feeling Nexon were hoping all the references to ‘North America’ and nowhere else were going to do the job, but a lot of people are posting right now asking why they can’t play, living in… Europe, Hong Kong, or South America, for example.

So one of my friends came up with something; why IP block places that don’t have – and probably won’t have – a version of the game in the foreseeable future? What advantage is there in a licensed version of the game that won’t accept players from regions that don’t have their own version of the game?
Granted, if a version of a game is subsequently developed for one of the areas without, and that area is then blocked from accessing the other versions, you’ll have a lot of people moaning about their characters, accounts and possibly the money that went into the other version. Depending on whether it’s the same company now managing both versions or not, there could possibly be character transferrals from one version to the other – if the company decides that doesn’t give character-transferring players an ‘unfair advantage’ if there’s a significant focus on direct/indirect PvP, if it’s a manageable amount of work and not too complicated…
If it’s another company handling the localisation, foreign players would be a little screwed. They might, might be able to get a refund to money they put into the now-locked version. Maybe. Or they might be told ‘You paid your money, you had your fun. Now go play and pay that other version you wanted.’ They wouldn’t be able to get back the characters they invested time in, though.

But if people were only locked out of other versions once their region got its own version, what incentive is there to companies bringing new versions out at all? The audience you want to approach is possibly already satisfied by another region’s version of the game, and you’re not guaranteed to get that entire audience if you localise the version for them – some might have burnt out already on a existing version. Some might be irritated because they spent money on a version they’re now locked out of, and even if they play this new version, might not be interested in paying anything more, as they paid once and got burnt. Some might be irritated as they have friends in the other version that they can no longer play with.

I like Guild Wars’ approach; all versions are the same, can connect, can play with each other. Lobbies are by default your own region, but you can hop over into, say, the Japanese or Korean lobbies should you so wish.
Then again, Guild Wars has to be nice. People have to pay – once, admittedly, but still have to pay – to play.

Nota bene:
I’m still a little twitchy about Mabinogi, where more or less the same thing happened. As of today, Mabinogi’s wikipedia article states that it has… lessee… Korean, Chinese, Japanese, North American and Australian versions, but no European version.
I also play Turbine’s DDO, the North American freemium version, rather than go for the subscription-based European one. Really, no general outcome of this problem is going to satisfy me entirely, let alone everyone.

Miniview: Deep Labyrinth

I love…
…the story. Well, the one I’m playing right now; the game has two stories, or chapters, and I’m not sure whether and how they connect. I started with the first as, well, they might connect, and the difficulty is supposed to be lower. I’m not used to real-time games, and I figure I should learn to play before I start running. This one’s supposed to be the ‘lighter’ story, but thus far it’s turning out to be darker than what I’d expect from that.

I like…
…the magic system. Like Lost Magic, Deep Labyrinth has you drawing characters with the stylus for spells, and though most work separately, you can combine some characters to make more spells; I just love this kind of magic system, even if it rarely comes close to what Words of Power did. Enemies are usually colour-coded to show element or elemental weakness, and provided you can recall what the glyph is for the spell you want, magic is a pretty good way of dealing with things, as long as you have MP.
…the graphics. It’s 3D like Eternal Ring is – I should play that once I’m done with this – but it doesn’t try to do much more than the system can do. It’s all passable-to-good; environments are good and there’s a decent amount of variety in the decorations, whilst NPC models – mice in particular – are somewhat samey. Enemy models are fairly good, and outside of the dungeon you encounter them in, don’t repeat – they are reused to show off enemy elements or weaknesses, I guess, but it isn’t overdone, and with only one exception every model in the second dungeon is different from those in the first. Boss models look nice, too.
…the music. Sound effects are probably going to get repetitive, eventually, but haven’t yet, and the music is pretty nice, and doesn’t sound too synthetic.

I loathe…
…sword combat. Well, I don’t loathe it, but I’ve got three sections here, two of which are positive and one negative. Different stylus gestures mean different sword strikes – across the diagonals, or straight down, or horizontal. Enemies have weakspots, and the game suggests that some of them are weak to certain strikes, but it’s really difficult to tell whether you got a good hit in, or whether you got a lucky critical. Some enemies are invulnerable to the sword except in certain bits of their animation, and some can’t easily be hit by certain strokes, and that’s pretty nice, but I don’t know about weakness to specific strokes otherwise…
…boss stun animations. Thus far, every boss has been a matter of running straight up to it and hitting it until it dies. That’s all you have to do to avoid being hurt – no boss thus far has had an attack that works faster than my attack, and being stunned from getting hit interrupt their attempt at attacking me. Most also don’t move, and don’t seem to have ranged attacks, so there’s little to save them. One gave me hope, then they threw me against a dragon which stayed where it sat. I hope future bosses are more tough.
…movement. Everything but this is controlled by the stylus, and everything else controls fairly well. Movement, however, is via the d-pad, and is pretty insensitive – aiming for magic is a chore, as you can’t target-lock things unless you’re within melee range. It’d be worse if they also tried to control this via stylus, but as-is, my hand aches and I haven’t been playing for too long.
…swordsmen who throw their swords and then instantly have another reappear in their hands. That move is powerful, they do it when you’re out of melee range, and dodging it in a corridor is difficult. I wish it had a cooldown.

Verdict
Worth getting, as it’s pretty cheap for how good it is. Nothing much brings it above less-obscure games, though, aside from that. It also boasts of being the ‘First ever 3D first person RPG for NDS’ on Amazon… and is, I guess, as it came out before Orcs & Elves, which it surpasses. The plot’s more interesting and it’s more challenging.

Labyrinth of the Dead (2) – How to Kill Adventurers Via Negative Status

Sorry that this is horribly belated; I played through Labyrinth of the Dead a few days after my last post, but once again I’ve taken a long time to get this written out. Labyrinth of the Dead doesn’t have all that much for me to talk about, and I’ve gotten used to being verbose from the last few areas. All in all, it’s just very difficult for me to finish writing up.

So, here I am again at the Labyrinth of the Dead, on the tenth underlevel. I can't go outside this room right now, but I'm here already.

Fooling around aside, it’s an easy matter to get down to the fifth underlevel; I spent a few minutes longer than usual on the holy water purification floor, as I had determined to get through without using the map. I ‘died’ about three times consecutively on one jump, being completely unable to see both the ledge I was jumping from and the ledge I was aiming for, but otherwise the total ‘deaths’ numbered less than I expected.

Did you know one casting of Earth Javelin (with Extend Spell in effect) is all you need to take out Dullahan?

As expected by this point, the first part was no challenge whatsoever. The second part is where things begin to get interesting. The first thing anyone’ll notice is that the Labyrinth becomes distinctly Egyptian-themed in its second part; coffins disgorging the undead are still a fixture, but here they’re replaced by sarcophagi mounted on the walls, which open to release mummies, rather predictably. Some of the maps are even painfully complicated; the rest are rather straightforward, but sometimes it’s relieving to be able to get lost even with the map.

Half of the areas here aren't even conventionally-accessible. You MUST fall through traps to get to them.

There are no less than three different varieties of mummy; ordinary white-bandaged mummies, red-bandaged mummies that may be a little stronger, and a single gold-bandaged mummy guarding some rather nice treasure… but more about that later. There are also things that look like zombies but move as quickly as the evil undead monkeys – apparently ghouls – from the first section, large knight-like enemies with red crosses on their shields, and two-dimensional shadows that throw off spells. Oh, and the purple ghosts from the holy water area return with… very little vengeance, as they’re horribly weak compared to everything else the area throws at you.

I remember everything in this area as being somewhat tougher when I came here as an Elf, but…
Well. Okay. I’m playing a Sorceress. Our schtick is supposed to be casting spells. We’re supposed to be good at resisting magic, great at casting magic, and mediocre at best at doing anything else. Even with a legendary weapon, I should not be one-hitting all but one enemy in the area, without the buff. Level 190 is probably overlevelled for this place but aside from going through the Old Palace twice and the Ancient Ruins a couple of times, I haven’t been doing much extra exploration with the Sorceress. The only reason this area remains a challenge to explore at all are the status effects most things can throw at you – I counted poison, drain, silence and paralysis this time around – and the traps.

Oh, yes. The traps.

Labyrinth of the Dead actually has effective traps. You don’t notice them coming of you don’t expect them – and it’s been years since I played so I’d long forgotten them – and they usually dump you in the middle of a pit full of enemies with a not-totally-obvious exit. If the enemies here were actually challenging, I’d have a problem, but as it is the traps are still very inconvenient, necessitating climbing back up. Again, in the cases where you fail a jump or forget to jump or have no other way out. After a while you’ll probably start to get paranoid about everything in the area.

This? Trapped.

It’s unfortunate that most of the later traps were designed by whoever put together the traps in the Old Palace and the Palace of the Immortals, but this level is pretty entertaining.
There is, however, one big mystery, here. Among the Souls.

This is somewhere around the... 7th or 8th Underlevel, maybe the 9th. I don't remember exactly.

Does anyone have any idea where this small passageway is supposed to lead to? The name is reminiscent of the boss area in Old Palace, ‘Among the Summoned’, and slgihtly further in it had ground similar to the sections of floor that lowered when you push a block onto a switch, but I couldn’t find out how to lower this section to get through. It’s not necessary to solve the area, as I completed it after skipping whatever this is, but there’s probably treasure there and I hate missing things out like that.

The boss! The Lord of the Dead, who has dominion over the souls of the dead, or… something. The guy responsible for the infestation of the undead in the crypts here.

'Honour your ancestors or else we'll eat you'? That's probably not the right reason to respect them.

Remember that underlevel in the first part, where you had to let the undead IN to progress? I’m figuring that’s his work – the zombies trying to get at the altar crucifix were probably his, also, but once he realised they couldn’t actually touch the thing, he probably just had a minion or two lock the way onwards and deeper unless the grave robbers or adventurers, or whoever disturbed the rest of those lucky enough to be interred on that specific underlevel, shifted the thing for him. The deactivation of the holy water purification plant was probably his doing, too; if the souls of the dead become monsters he can control when left impure for a long-enough period of time, then disabling the holy water production would ensure him a lot of minions and/or guardians, given patience.
And he’s a lich. He has a lot of time to fill. Taking out the holy water plant was probably the start of the infestation, as that would likely be responsible for keeping all floors purified, not just the single underlevel. Also probably the only entity in the Labyrinth that can write, so he may be responsible for the signs dotted around the place, too.

So. Bleh. The boss. As interested as I am outside of a fight with him, the battle is just… sheer pain. It took three attempts, and I was never able to hang around for long enough to learn all of the attacks he could do; he’s the deadliest yet. Whilst the other second-part bosses tended to defeat me through slowly-whittling my character down or never giving me a break to recover HP and MP, the Lord of the Dead fight is all about praying you don’t get hit with status effects. He took three attempts to beat, and I was rather close to death at the end of the third, anyway.
He comes accompanied by two purple ghosts, two zombie/ghoul halflings, and two or three Dullahans, responsible for some of the status effects thrown about during the fight, so it’s a pretty good idea to deal with them quickly.

Status ailments you can ‘acquire’ in the course of the fight:
Poison. I think this was a Dullahan’s fault. It was also the first ailment I got struck with, and had me cursing ditching the Cure Potions in order to take a Sol Crown earlier on. Then I died, started over, and got hit by the following bunch in subsequent attempts, which made me feel better about that.
Confusion… maybe from a chest trap, but nasty all the same. Today, I learned that you can’t cast spells whilst confused. I somehow managed to outlast this status with only 50 HP left, and then he threw Chaos Flare on me rendering all my effort for naught.
Silence, the doing of one of the purple ghosts. I knew they could throw this about from earlier in the region, but considering how long any status takes to wear off naturally, in here it was a threat.
Slow. The Lord of the Dead has the Fairy spell, yes. This is probably the best thing you could get afflicted with, as it doesn’t slow you as much as Paralysis does, and doesn’t directly do anything nasty to your stats or health. The spells everything throws about in the fight are the ones normally hard to dodge, anyway.
Drain from the Lord of the Dead, and this is probably the only situation where you can’t just laugh it off and keep hitting things. At least Poison only gradually reduces your health; this will completely destroy your offensive capabilities, no matter what class you are. The purple ghosts can probably do this to you, too.
Berserk, probably the Lord of the Dead again, and his eyelasers. This is probably bad for a spellcaster, but as I was confused at the same time, I didn’t get a chance to see what it’d do to my spells.

I’ve got Curse in my head, now, but that list up there is from the attempt at writing this report post-boss, and I don’t think I’d have left it out of the list if it had happened in that fight. Hmm. Maybe I got hit by Curse elsewhere in the area?
Well, Curse is just nasty to contract for a Sorceress. We’re MP-fuelled and usually turn pathetic without our spells.

The Lord of the Dead acts like an Archmage from the Old Palace; he floats, making himself difficult to hit in melee, and he casts spells fairly frequently. Unlike the other Sorcerer-type boss in the game, the Lord of the Dead is actually pretty resistant to physical attacks; I was only able to do around 50 damage to him unbuffed, rising to around 100 buffed. He may have been resistant to Holy; sensible, but odd considering nothing else in the area has that resistance, and he’s presumably undead himself.
On the other hand, with Extend Magic, Blaze does around 300 damage a cast to him, or more if he dodges back into the path of the flames after invincibility wears off. The best tactic for any character is probably to go entirely on the offensive; the longer you hang around in the fight, the more chance you’ll get hit by one or more negative status effects. The minions are a huge threat in this one; the Dullahans can Poison, the ghosts can Silence, and the zombies that act like ghouls can… I don’t know, but they can probably do something to you. The ghosts can also cast Dark Wave, and multiple Dark Waves in effect make it very difficult to dodge anything else.

Special Bonus Content!
…because I don’t particularly want to make this any longer, and I’ll go over loot in a later post.

So, throughout the various screenshots that actually made it into this post, you may notice my character went through several colour-changes; this wasn’t just idle screwing-around. As you may know, the save-icon for any game in Blaze & Blade is a tiny icon of your character’s face, and it naturally differs depending on your character’s class and gender. It also changes slightly depending on your selected colour.
So, whilst running around with the Sorceress, I hit all the savepoints in the area whilst switching colours, and used MemcardRex to export the save icons.

1

2

3

4

After going to all that effort… I think the first and second alternate colourschemes are pretty nasty – the blue-haired one doesn’t have enough variation in the colours of her clothing, and the brown- or yellow-haired Sorceress is just a rather nasty set of shades. The basic colouration and the third alternate are my favourites, despite my usual dislike of pink in favour of blue.

Labyrinth of the Dead (1) – It Went Better Than Expected

In which the Sorceress takes on the Labyrinth of the Dead, condemns a formerly-untouched area to the predations of the living dead, saves a ton of lost souls to make up for the karma loss, and deals with something that has haunted her nightmares for a long time.

So I'm not sure why these screens deliberately avoid the better party members to use in most areas.

So this is a post I’ve been procrastinating about since… last summer or so. Back when I started writing these posts, part-way through the game; I think I’d just started picking up Blaze and the rest of that set of spells. I’d tried taking on the first part of this area just so I could write about it, and ran into a couple of serious problems.
This attempt went better.

- The Labyrinth of the Dead -
The underground crypt where the dead of Foresia are put to rest.
The dead which have been touched by unholy sorcery wander freely in the crypt…

So, undead. Zombies, evil undead (?) monkeys that move really quickly, assorted swordsmen of the undead, demonic and evil human (?) variety, ghosts that act as a cross between the Palace of the Immortals ghosts and any given wisp, and the odd Slime or two. This is the place that Turn Undead was made for… but I’m not playing a Priest.
I’m playing a Sorceress with a Holy-element weapon that hits for around 220~ damage unbuffed. Fun.

Not so much a puzzle as an opportunity to really annoy the other player.

This isn’t really the multiplayer puzzle/skill-test of the area, unless holding down a button whilst someone else picks up treasure is a skill. There’s no way for the person inside to open the door if it closes, just like one of those really poorly-designed walk-in freezers that Nickelodeon’s live-action shows loved using as a plot device. Oh, and the player holding the lever can’t fight anything whilst they’re doing that… but, honestly, not a problem as having the door close on the person inside doesn’t actually kill them.
Unless the person at the lever dies; that’s essentially a delayed game-over in a situation like this. Good thing this is one of the first rooms in the area, and that most people who turn up here won’t have gotten very far at all.
Incidentally, I’m not sure whether that’s a locked chest or a green chest. This whole area, annoyingly, has very low illumination for anything that isn’t an enemy or a player. Whilst it’s not overly apparent at this point, later on it gets troublesome for me, as the monitors I use won’t display the area brightly enough to compensate, unlike the TV I used to use.

Approximately half the coffins on the first level will throw zombies at you, save that one that throws a skeleton, instead.

Atmospherically… I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, or tried to in that long-lost procrastinated-out-of-existence post, but I remember this area as being slightly better than it is here; that music was omitted in a certain area before a certain event happened. Even without that, this area does better than the rest for cultivating a given atmosphere; better than Palace of the Immortals, anyway. It’s by no means great at horror, but it made a spirited attempt.
Though, once again, I’m annoyed by the highlighting of quest objects. It’s visible through a container, which takes the fun out of the first underlevel.

Iunno about paranoia, but she's talking to herself.

The second underlevel is another of my favourite areas in the game, though I do swear I remember there being no music until you activated something.

Who put this sign there? Who set up this sadistic puzzle?

It is also, on reflection, one of the more… uh… hm. It’s one of the more mean puzzles in the game. I don’t mean to the player; you get an unlimited amount of time wandering around the open areas sans harrassment from the living dead until you solve it, and there are no environmental hazards lurking in the area. You can’t die on this floor if you haven’t started on the puzzle, unless you happen to be poisoned and unable to heal yourself in time. I mean, it’s mean on the part of the players. This is a pristine level of the Labyrinth of the Dead, almost entirely untouched by the horrors and abominations that stalk the rest of the complex, and to move onwards a party of adventurers has to deliberately break what protection the place possesses.
I have my theories about why this puzzle is here, but I’m keeping mum about them until I deal with the second part of this area. For now, it’s worth nothing that the only enemies you encounter on this floor – pre-completion of the puzzle – are four zombies in a fixed spawn, hovering around an object you need to take. Kleptomania FTW?

Nice job breaking it, hero.

So, with this floor defiled, one of the doors blocking the way onwards will open up. Not the obvious one, though, but one of the side doors. I don’t know whether you can ever open up the first locked door on this floor.

The third underlevel… ugh. Okay, the point of this floor and one attached mini-area is to repair the catastrophic loss of karma from the second underlevel and ensure you don’t get a meteorite dropped on your head as soon as you step outside. On this floor, you get to save a bunch of lost souls by repairing the holy water purification plant. I’m not sure why they can’t pump that water throughout the entire place and purify all of the undead hopping around, but I guess that wasn’t in the original specifications of the place.
Bad design, not accounting for the possibility that an ancient unliving horror might take up residence in your mausoleum.

Probably the darkest room in the region. Not as irritating as the not-quite-as-dark area about to come.

Now, I never used to hate this area until I started playing on a computer monitor rather than a TV; it’s the puzzle in this portion of the Labyrinth that requires the most walking about to complete, and hence the most time even if you know what you’re doing, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the Palace of the Immortals. The bulk of the process is finding and fixing the problem in the holy water purification area, which involves boiling out the contamination in the water. Apparently the place was made so that the process of making the water holy and hence forbidding the infestation of the place with the living dead can be… uh… switched off.
Another bad design decision.

Some of the 'ground' here is really a bottomless pit from which you will never escape, as you will drown there. Can you see it? I can't.

The reason I hate this area is… I can never see the safe areas in the water, here, until the area’s puzzle is completed. On the TV I could crank the brightness up far enough to be able to distinguish ’safe’ from ‘unsafe’, but the brightness is already at maximum here, and I still keep needing to check the map every few steps to avoid surprise drowning. It doesn’t help that the holes all have steep slippery edges, either. It’s only the usual amount of falling/hazardous-ground damage, but getting around is time-consuming whether you attempt to avoid it or not.

Easily-spottable if you use the map frequently, but it'll catch you by surprise a few times before you start doing that.

The water in each of the purification rooms brightens considerably once you start boiling the impurities away, but the main area’s water doesn’t actually clear until you’ve visited and activated all of the purification columns. Until then, it’s either exploiting the lamps in the ceiling, which show you the floor or lack-thereof beneath the water when you look through their small aura of light, or constant checking of the map.

I still spent far too long doing this, though.

Clearing this floor makes most of the ghosts on the third underlevel disappear, having being freed of their mortal bounds or something like that. Going back to the priest-ghost will open up the way onwards.

There isn’t much of anything on the fourth underlevel for a single player; there’s an unlocked treasure chest, and Dulahan/Durahan/Dullahan, the boss with more alternate spellings over multiple games than Griffin/Gryphon, and that managed to kick my butt ages back when I was armed with Blaze and a blessed robe rather than… well… a blunt stick and a hand-me-down from an ordinary sage.
Neckless Dulahan isn’t much of a challenge… unless you’re wearing anything with Holy element on it. Then he becomes a living nightmare capable of killing you in short order. That’s what happened last time.
This time he was wimpier due to the aforementioned all-powerful holy blunt stick I’ve been using recently.

Seriously, though, Durahan is a dull boss; he’s essentially a larger version of the evil skeletons that throw directional shockwaves at you. He has greater range than them, has more HP, will dodge and attack faster than they do, and has the standard boss AOE debuffs to attack and defence.
That’s all. He doesn’t do absurd damage unless you wear armour with Holy element on it, or get caught out by one of his flurries of quick attacks that he does occasionally. The fight is more of a headache due to him turning up accompanied by four of the aforementioned skeletal mini-hims, which make dodging things slightly more difficult due to their directional-shockwave attacks being thrown into the mix.

Him beaten, the last things on the floor are an entire area accessible only to two people working in concert, and the ways back to the surface and further down if you have the Sagestone and enough jewels. The whole area took much less time than I expected, and it shouldn’t be troublesome at all for me to reach the entrance to the second part if I leave here, so…

Loot

Flame Rod [Weapon]
[At.34, Fire.12]
[Fai]
1 of the 4 given to the elven king by a dead king.

Poison Rapier [Weapon]
[At.26, Poison?]
[Elf]
A rapier which poisons anyone it wounds.

Holy Orb [Object]
[All]
Orb of holy power.
(Activates Barrier)

Cross [Accessory]
[Holy.10]
[All]
A holy cross which protects against all spells.

Flame Rod is, like the Earth Tiara and the seasonal cloaks, an item that tells the player about the existence of a set of items with similar traits; in this case, a bunch of weapons with elemental properties. For a Fairy, I suppose this particular one means they’d no longer need to cast their fire-element buff on themselves if they need this kind of damage, but it’s not something to take to the volcano.
The Poison Rapier… well, I’m guessing it’ll cause poison status on your enemies. That’s a good thing, if you want to use hit-and-run tactics, but I’m not sure whether bosses would be immune or not. Either way, I can’t use it.
It’d be nice if the Holy Orb had a Holy-element attack spell in it, but you can’t have everything, I suppose. Barrier is a Priest spell that I don’t yet have with the Priest I’m using for multiplayer with Llama; it apparently creates a barrier to ‘protect against spirits’, but I don’t know whether that stops them from approaching or attacking you, or reduces damage from them, or… what. I’ll test it out when I go back to the Labyrinth, though, as that’s there it’s most likely to be useful.
Finally, the Cross. I know what the description says, but it doesn’t actually improve your Magic Defence. As it’s available for 12 Fate Coins from the Knight, it probably has some non-obvious reduction to spell damage, like the Tiaras do for their respective set of elements. Note the Holy element – whilst I picked this up in the Labyrinth of the Dead, it’d be a very bad thing to equip there, as most of the enemies have Evil-element attacks, and I’ll take more damage for the holiness on this thing. According to the Item FAQ – awesome thing, pity it’s no longer updated – the Cross just protects from Curse. That’s nasty on a magic-user, as your MP constantly reduces under its effect… but I didn’t cast any spells save Teleport during this trip, so it’s a little pointless.

Item of the Day

Cure Potion [Object]
[All]
Restores the body.
(Slowly restores status)

Okay. This is important.
This is a Cure Potion. It drops off most poisonous enemies, and very frequently from the evil undead pink monkey things in the Labyrinth.
This is how you cure poison status, and other bad statuses by extension, but this is really the worst unless you’re a Sorcerer, Priest or Fairy and get hit with Mute in a boss fight. When facing a boss that can cause the Poison status – both the Labyrinth of the Dead and the Palace of the Immortals have bosses like that – this is a life-saver. Granted, carting these around mean one less slot for loot, but you don’t get to take anything back if you die.
Anyway, I didn’t need these today, but it was about time I posted another item like this. I’ll probably be needing them whenever I go back.

Spell of the Day

Earth Javelin
[Sor, Elf]
MP: 45
Command: □ ∆ □ X ∆ □ O X O
Power stone pellets rain down on the enemy.

So I was looking through my spell-list when I went to the Labyrinth and was wondering what spells I hadn’t touched since getting them. Most of the second- and fourth-level spells, for example. It’s understandable that I never used this one much before, though, as it’s the upgraded form of Poison Cloud, one of the least-damaging spells available. Okay, so it and the other maintainable spells are probably more efficient on MP than the spells that simply cause all their damage instantly, but the longer an enemy is alive, the longer it can hurt you, and if you stand around waiting for a cloud of poisonous gas to take them out, they’re going to have a lot of chances to hit you. However, this spell is awesome for one- no, two reasons.
First, it’s the only fifth-level elemental attack spell that doesn’t require hitting two keys simultaneously. Even with a gamepad, getting that to register as ’simultaneous’ is a little hit-and-miss, and half the time the spell never takes effect. The game is picky, and the casters are punished.
Second, this spell has one of the most inaccurate description of all spells in the game. It doesn’t fire anything at the enemy, and nothing gets dropped on anything. Rather, this is that spell that caused all the spikes to pop up from the ground around Behemoth; it’s a caster-centered AOE that persists for long enough to hit things multiple times, and it hits a reasonable area around the Sorcerer, not the tiny little area that Smash hits.
So it’s easier to cast than the other spells of its level, costs about the same as all but Freeze Beast, and aimed properly will hit everything on the screen. Except maybe flying enemies. I don’t know whether it respects that. The key thing is that I won’t have to attempt casting it three times in a row before I finally get the game to recognise the command.

The Wood of Ruins – Two’s Company

No Hunter? They're missing out on a lot of treasure...

So, yesterday I got off my butt and worked on getting the CyberPad plugin for ePSXe working.
To everyone’s surprise, it did. Eventually. Turns out I needed a different video plugin that supports openGL or it just kept crashing instead of running, and an older version of ePSXe or it just wouldn’t detect the game correctly.
I’m not sure I have the plugin properly set up, as you can tell from the slightly uneven font in these pictures, but overall it looks better than the default.

Whilst this could be handy elsewhere, the Wood of Ruins doesn't have any undead to turn.

So, how did it go? Well, since Llama started as Player 1 and the character he used was a level 25 Hunter, whilst I started a new Priestess, we began with me slightly out of my depth, in the Woodcutter’s Cabin. Llama killed a few random bears so I’d gain a level or two and get access to Healing, then I started helping out by being the first person to encounter monsters and playing heal-tank whilst Llama shot at the things now not chasing him. Hunters aren’t great at short range against anything that can fly, as it seems they need distance to be able to hit anything above the ground.
With a few levels under my belt and a new weapon, I became a bit less useless.

The multiplayer 'puzzle'. This happened a lot.

So, finally with someone else to help, we went back to the multiplayer ‘puzzle’. The one in the Wood of Ruins is more luck-based than any of the others; it’s Pop Up Pirate, Foresia-edition. Happily the damage from guessing wrong isn’t anywhere near crippling, even to a low-level character.
Of course, landing properly so you can pick up the key is difficult in itself, as you don’t know when you’re going to be launched up, and you can’t simply hold the right direction as that makes you overshoot. Eventually Llama had a turn or two in the barrel and got it on his second jump. I’m not sure what the reward is, though, as Llama opened the chest and it turned out to be equippable only by him, anyway. Should probably try it again sometime, and see if it’s always something equippable by the first person to open it.

There are more secret paths in the Wood of Ruins than I expected. The treasure is actually very good.

As Llama was playing a Hunter, we spent a while hunting for secret paths. There are four pieces of treasure available on the boss map itself, from the area with the shortcut back to the beginning of the area, and they’re all usually pieces of equipment you’d normally find several areas later on in the game; Llama got a crossbow. Nothing for me, naturally.
Oh, and we got an Ambrosia. Now that multiplayer works, that kind of item is actually useful. At least until I pick up Resurrection, anyway.

Strangely scenic.

There are also a pair of treasureless areas that look… okay. Somewhat scenic, but they’re nowhere near as good as some of the later regions. They’re also somewhat out of place, as woods don’t normally end in cliff faces above ominous yellow mist. The hidden paths are horrible to try to navigate, though, as the trees are placed very close to the walkable area and tend to obscure it, no matter where you have the camera.

If only the Priest could cast Explosion...

The boss was reasonably easy; Llama had his shiny new high-damage crossbow equipped, and I could… poke it with my mace. I’m going to be more useful in later areas, as I now have both of my basic defensive buffs, and the game never stops throwing magic-using enemies at you, but Llama’s still many levels higher than I am. I know Priests aren’t supposed to output high damage, but I did find myself missing my Sorceress.

Anyway, that and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite have been where I’ve been for the past few days. Regular nuking of regions shall resume when I’ve gone home for summer and tweaked the new plugin to display at the right resolution.

…oh, yeah. CyberPad. We were using the Kaillera version, rather than the original one that just has you connect to a person via IP. The Kaillera CyberPad plugin works with ePSXe 1.6.0, will detect the game and version of said game to warn people if they’ve got a different version, and is generally fairly user-friendly. You do have to make sure you’re using the right video plugin – anything that supports OpenGL is good, apparently – and that you have the same settings, but it’s not really troublesome to get it working, in the end.

Miniview: Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

I love…
…being able to import a character from a MHF2 save file. Nice to be able to continue with that one, if I want.
…the new and improved Item Box. Instead of stacks limited to sizes you can carry, everything seems to stack to x99. You can still only carry, say, 10 Potions at a time, but all of a sudden there’s much more room for loot. You can also combine things within the item box, with all valid combinations automatically being highlighted, not just known ones. In most cases relating to items, you can now take or throw things directly into the box – when employed Felynes ask for items, or when dealing with the loot post-mission.
…the Felyne stuff. Comrades are very nice, aside from the unfortunate tendency to hit ME with the bombs more often than the monsters. Employed Felynes now throw up a menu when they ask for items, which suggests they’ll be asking for more than one type at once, eventually. Also, I swear the dismissal sequence didn’t look like that in MHF2.

I like…
…how this one has a proper manual. MHF2’s was more of a pamphlet than anything, with minimal information on things gameplay-related, and less on anything else. Unite’s manual explains things much better.
…that the bow now has a paint shot. That was a really strange omission, given bowguns could do it, and I was always better at hitting stuff with a bow than with something thrown.
…the random nice little touches all around the game; you’re told when your Guild Card is updated, you’re allowed to throw items won after a mission directly into the item box, you can now change your basic clothing along with your hairstyle… though you’re ever less likely to see it than hair.

I loathe…
…Kushala Daora, still. I can’t think of anything to do with MHFU specifically, though.
…oh, wait. I’ve got something; the acronym sounds slightly rude.

Verdict

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite is essentually MHF2+. There are a fair number of extra missions floating around, though right at the moment I can only access one, thanks to Kushala Daora. There’s some new music, the most obvious piece playing during Data Install – Unite’s improvement on F2’s pre-loading option. New weapons, too. Since Unite isn’t the cost of a full game by default, I think it’s a good purchase if you’re interested in the series, and a great point to start at if you’re new.

The Palace of the Immortals (1) – wherein I get really confused over the place’s name

So I finally worked out which place to visit… with the help of a friend who’d never played the game, whom I just confronted with the choice ‘Mausoleum or Mansion?’
He picked ‘Mansion’, so here we are, at the Palace of the Immortals. Or the Palace of the Immortal. Once again, we have an area named different things on the map and on its description.

Hmm. This looks familiar...

Oh, yeah... this place. Well, there aren't any harpies, but it looks similar.

I’m not quite sure what most of the classes are, here. From the dress, the woman in the centre should be a Priestess, but she looks more like a Sorceress with long hair and a staff, or maybe a Priest gone crossdressing. The woman in the back looks like a Priestess, though. There’s the male Thief at the front, the only one I can definitely identify, and then a female Warrior or Hunter to the right.
And harpies. Lots of harpies. The loading screen got that right.

So, the Palace of the Immortals. I always thought it was more of a mansion than a palace or castle, name aside, but now that I look at it again, it does seem to be laid out like a medieval castle; lots of guest bedrooms, a very sizeable kitchen area, large dining hall for the peons… but whatever it is, it would happily fit into almost any horror-themed adventure game from the 90s. I swear every single one of them involved a mansion at some point; House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil…
I’m halfway certain this is a parody, with the amount of fetching quest items you need to do to get through this area. I must remember to screenshot the quest item screen at the end of the area, just to show off how many items you end up with. Well, first I must remember where on earth I’m supposed to start; I remember the rough chain, but I can’t remember the beginning of it.
So much for this place being quicker. Well, it is… if you know where to go, and I know where to go, except for the first item. It’s been slightly under a decade here, so it’s not surprising I’ve forgotten bits and pieces of it.

Well, I know I need a flask here to collect water...

I’ve never been able to remember the start of the sequence, though. I need a flask for water here, to put out a fire in one of the fireplaces in a dining hall, to collect… a key? An emblem?
Then there’s a book that I need to slot into a bookcase in the library, to open a nearby door or passage with another item at the end. And there are the rooms that need keys, and the thing that combines two different gems into a purple gem.
But I always end up wandering around randomly, having forgotten the place where the first item can be found.

Would any sane person drink out of a fountain decorated with a skull? No.

So, how about I go on about the general area instead, whilst I search? The Palace of the Immortal is, as mentioned earlier, a mansion; convoluted nonsense puzzles aside, it’s probably the most sensible area in the game. It’s instantly recogniseable as a house, albeit very large and with far too many bedrooms.
Like the mines, this place has a lot of dead ends and mostly-pointless areas where the only thing you’ll find is monsters, in the form of a lot of the rooms you end up searching.

Like this room, here; you'd think there has to be something important, and yet... it's totally irrelevant.

Unlike the Mines, dead end rooms in the Palace of the Immortal tend to just have monsters there as soon as you enter. It’s a good place for levelling or grinding for loot, as if they’re close to the entrance of a room, you don’t have to spend much time between encounters, but otherwise they’re a timesink. Some of the spawns even change depending on whether you’ve been in the room previously; at least two of the rooms full of red warrior-type evil-element enemies change into rooms full of plain zombies when you return. At least, if you ignore the warriors and just go straight through. Maybe you can get something good from the warriors and the game doesn’t want to let you farm them? Who knows.
A further room doesn’t do that… but if you kill the red warrior-types, you always seem to get to fight a few extra zombies in the next room. Kind of minor interesting, but interesting nethertheless.
I think every single room being a part of the puzzle would be worse; as contrived as the puzzles are, it’d be moreso if every single room were ’significant’ in some way. The Palace of the Immortal makes some sense as a house, and every room looks like it should be part of a house. That’s enough.

Booooook...

I should probably have searched this one first as it's closest, but... eh. I keep thinking they're both locked.

Yay, finally. Okay. Basically, all you need to do in the first floor of the Palace of the Immortal is look everywhere and watch out for a glint like this. However, the interval between glints is pretty long, and it’s entirely possible to enter a room, take a cursory look, and leave thinking there’s nothing there. The Palace of the Immortal is one of the only areas in the game to rely on visual clues and items; not everything you need to do is highlighted by a glint. For example, this book; you know I’m going to take it to the library, as I mentioned that earlier, but…

If you look carefully, you'll notice the gap. And the colour.

There’s no glint where you’re supposed to take it. The Palace of the Immortal is one of the few areas you’ll see a glint being used to highlight an event object, as in most other areas they’re being kept in chests or bags, or are large environmental things like the river or the cave of glowmoss in the Mines. I’m not really sure why they’re used here, either; the Gate Crystals in the Old Palace/Ancient Tower weren’t glinting, and some the objects here that aren’t keys ARE visible.
So I like the Palace of the Immortal for not simply handing us everything and solving its own puzzles, but sometimes it just treats the player as an idiot and assumes it needs to highlight a book.

Aren't portals normally red?

This is the shortcut you can take to and from the end of the first half of the level. You know, like the lift you can take back to the first underlevel of the Mines after beating the Baby Dragon, or the portal initially blocked by the stone totem head in the Wood of Ruins. Nothing comes to mind for the Old Palace except going through that horrible, horrible level for the portal back up, or just climbing down normally, though.
In some cases it’d be handy to be able to access these when you’re capable of taking on the second half of each area, but they’re all unavailable unless you’ve reached that far, and reset if you leave the level. They’re rather pointless for me now that I have Teleport, but for any other class, or if you forget to bring a Rope of Return, these… save you the humiliation of being killed by a bee on the way back, or something.

More skull-themed decorations. They're probably Ogre skulls from the size, but they're still creepy. Also pictured: zombies. I'm not kidding about the RE-ness.

Moving swiftly on, the second floor is really more along the lines of the first; quest-item collection to open up further areas. Boring. How about another tangent? Skip down to the next picture if you don’t want to read it.
According to GameFAQs, Resident Evil predated Blaze & Blade by approximately half a year, but Resident Evil wasn’t the first game I encountered that had you wandering aimlessly around a mansion. Alone in the Dark came first, via a demo CD on a computer magazine at some point.
Resident Evil was just the one that made no sense to me. Alone in the Dark – the original one, from 1992, not the new one that dropped the numbers since the makers decided no one would have played the original trilogy any more – was a vaguely- to moderately-Lovecraftian horror adventure with horrible controls and a penchant for killing players less than a minute after starting, if you don’t know how to push stuff. It being Lovecraftian, and dependent on a ‘humans are insignificant and will be driven insane by the true nature of things’ atmosphere, contrived puzzles such as firing an arrow at a painting on the wall to ‘kill’ it before it kills you sort-of made sense, as ‘magic’ exists in such a setting and strange things like that may work. Taking the direct approach to killing stuff usually just got you killed.
Resident Evil, however, is a setting based in science; a virus, rather than magic, creates most if not all the enemies you end up fighting in the course of any but the most recent games, which took the phrase ‘virus creates zombies’ and replaced ‘virus’ with ‘parasite’ since everything science!zombie-related started copying them after they got successful.
So if it’s based in science and rational thought, why does a sentence like ‘use this jewel on the tiger statue in the white hall, and it will move around to the side revealing the wind crest’ need to appear in a walkthrough of the game? Rational people don’t build mansions like that. (Most) rational people don’t want to have to solve three puzzles before they get to eat breakfast. At least in something based on Lovecraft’s works, you can rationalise that the architect was driven insane thanks to the influence of very inhuman creatures. Or, in the case of the standard Haunted Mansion area in Shining the Holy Ark, the owner and possible architect IS an inhuman creature. It’s much easier to forgive strange architecture and puzzle where magic of some kind may be involved, I guess.
Additionally, to my eyes, very few of the human enemies in Resident Evil had good motivation for what they did. ‘They’re insane’ isn’t great by itself; it doesn’t tell us why they’re insane, or why they think releasing a potent virus into the city’s water supply (or something; it’s all as forgettable as a Metal Gear Solid plot to me) is a great idea, or even how they’re insane beyond the plan that will kill us all, doom all life on Earth, et cetera…
Thankfully, storywriters since seem to have realised the error of writing antagonists like this, and tend to give them motivation and ‘reason’ to do what they do and oppose the main characters, but I still never got why Resident Evil was so popular.

Anyway, back to the game.

Here's a not-so-secret entrance to a not-so-deadly area.

This place? It’s not really hidden because it hides a key that’s necessary to continue. However, it doesn’t appear on the map at all, just like those rooms in the Ancient Ruins, and possibly the hidden area in Amongst the Summoned… though I never checked the map there, as I just teleport out after reaching that point.
Still, there aren’t many true secrets in the game; probably only the Old Palace area with the spell applies. Oh, and that Wood of Ruins (2) area where the Fairies learn their Forbidden Spells. The rest are either very obvious, as here, or hinted at by text in the area, like the rooms in the Ancient Ruin.

The second floor has some stupid traps that must have been designed by the architect who built the Old Palace, but for the most part it still looks like a mansion or castle; more like a castle, as this point, as it has at least two courtyards, one with a built-in waterfall. For some reason the pool in that area is bottomless, but otherwise it sort of makes sense.

Unlike the fountains on the lowest floor, these are usable. One or both are poisonous, naturally, but what did you expect? Also pictured: I'm about to be draaaained again.

Something else odd about this area; the Ghosts can reliably hit a level 184 Sorceress with Drain status. This doesn’t really impair my ability to tear things to pieces here, but it’s odd when every single other spell tends to get resisted. You can ‘outrun’ the drain spell if you keep moving away from the projectiles; they only move at approximately the same speed as any character save a Rogue, and if you reach a door before you get hit with Drain status, the red sparkles just whirl upwards angrily whilst you go to another location. The sparkles fade to invisibility as they chase you, but that’s really just to get you to drop your guard; I’ve never managed to run around long enough that they time out and disappear properly. That said, running long enough seems to lower and/or negate the chance that you’ll get hit with Drain status. Maybe it relates to the distance from the Ghosts?

I'm rich, I'm fabulously wealthy, I'm comfortably well off! ...hey, wait a moment, no one takes GOLD as payment in this game. Hmph.

I always used to think this was a room of straw or hay, honestly. Maybe the old TV screen couldn’t handle the small sparkles? Maybe I just didn’t notice?
Either way, we have a roomful of gold and it’s not actually VALUABLE in this setting. Everyone uses Gels for currency, which are something like disks of demon bone or crystals or glass or SOMETHING that isn’t gold. Maybe the Sagestones could mass-produce the stuff, and therefore devalued the element?
Not pictured: stupid tiny jumping section with collapsing platforms or the door that locks behind you in the previous room, making you go back through the waterfall courtyard again. I swear, most of the place makes sense as a mansion rather than an adventure location.

That entrance I'm pointing at? Needs a Rogue. This is probably the largest 'locked' room in the game.

Whilst most areas have some use for either the Rogue or Elf, this place is skewed heavily towards the Rogue for unlocking doors; conversely, an Elf is more useful than a Rogue at the Old Palace. Just so you know.
Of course, I’m neither, which is a bit annoying.

Looks rather empty...

Here’s the multiplayer bonus puzzle for this area. It’s similar to the Abandoned Mines puzzle in that both players need to be reasonably skilled, or at least work well together; the pressure plates on the right cause floating platforms to appear, and if you’ve only got two players, that means one player needs to jump just slightly behind the other. Naturally, this one’s much easier if you have the full four players in-game, but it’s still doable with just the two.
Strangely, you don’t get treasure for completing it; you just get a shortcut through the rest of the area, though by this point you nearly have all the items to get through, anyway. It just saves you from needing to backtrack all the way around again. It’s perfectly usable from the other side, too, as there’s a plate that makes all the platforms permanently appear, to let the other person or people across.

I kinda want to own this place now. It has its own cinema. Well, technically a theatre, but it looks more like a cinema than a stage...

It's a pity I can't remember what speech option I picked. This makes more sense than any of the others I've read.

Well, I’ve already typed more than enough for today, so I’ll just skip through the rest. The third floor, like the first two floors, is another series of puzzles to progress, this time involving summoning unholy forces through four ready-made magical circles and a ready-brewed ‘elexier’ to animate… gargoyles standing in front of doors, so you can transform them into itty-bitty stone fragments and proceed to the upper portion of the floor. The fountains are once more not-drinkable, and on the upper section you can unlock several rooms on the lower section, one or two of which may be useful, depending on your class.

Happily, there's a shortcut.

Unfortunately, to get the Elexier, you need to go back down to the first floor and use a few keys you’ve picked up. The Palace of the Immortal is one of the few areas I’ve seen that has a first-part mid-point shortcut, in addition to a shortcut at the end of the whole first section. This one takes you to one of the rooms you’re liable to think is ‘useless’ up until you know this is here, and then you’ll bless its existence, as it shows the designers do care after all. Then later you’ll curse them again for putting in a mid-mid-boss to waste the time you saved using the mid-mid-point.
I suppose it makes up for them giving up on putting items outside chests and signifying them with glints sometime part way through the second floor, hm?
Anyway, this is the bit – aside from the whole ‘mansion with zombies’ thing – that makes me almost certain the whole area is a parody of Resident Evil and other ‘you’re stuck in a haunted (?) mansion’ games, involving combining a red and blue gem to make a purple gem to break the seal on a door. Or did the designers slowly run out of colours for the keys?

Anyway, third floor over, you hit the Clocktower. There’s really very little to say about this area; you climb upwards, you throw a lever, and you climb further, the lever having… lowered a section of platform, or something.
Oh, and don’t forget the blasted oil. Mmph. The lever you need it for is an infinite source of the red warrior-types, by the by, if you need to train or something. They dropped a creepy/nice looking sword whilst I was there, must remember to keep that for IDing.

Soon afterwards, the name of the area changes to ‘The Fantastic Palace’.
Why can’t you be consistent with area names, Blaze & Blade? I started out uncertain whether to call the place ‘Palace of the Immortals’ or ‘Palace of the Immortal’, and now you’re calling it ‘The Fantastic Palace’?
I also swear I remember the gears moved after you turned the lever, or something. Maybe I’m getting it mixed up with Mario 64, or something. Or maybe the version Europe got was better.
Oh, and don’t trust the fountain.

The area had one last 'screw you' for me, though...

I’m just not sure how to get through here. I can’t remember how. Maybe it’s part of the short way back from the second portion of the whole area? I don’t know. I’ve forgotten far too much about this area, though memory says the second part is less of a slog through one giant puzzle and more just somewhere to get terribly lost.
The way onwards is actually through the library, so I’ll need to remember where the Iron Book is for once, anyway. Though it seems that I NEED the Jewel from the Labyrinth of the Dead to go onwards, since it’s not opening right now.
Maybe that is also the way onwards after the boss? I’ll check when I return, whenever that will be. I think I’ll try taking on the Fire Dragon again for a break from horribly-long areas, before going to the Labyrinth of the Dead. I need a break from listening to the same piece of not-that-likeable music for five hours straight.

Loot

Blood Dagger
[At.42, Evil.10]
[Rog]
A dagger stained red by the blood of its victims.

Feather Gloves
[Df.4]
[All]
Gloves made from feathers.

Bloodsword
[At.20]
[War]
Red from the blood of those it has killed.

Silver Anklet
[Df.4, MDf.4, Int.8, Wil.8]
[All]
A beautifully decorated silver anklet.

Blood Dagger drops off the Weretiger, and if memory serves is a nice weapon for a Rogue, as it has a life-stealing effect. Has pretty good attack if the Bloodsword is anything to go by, too. Any item that can keep your health up without taking up a slot normally used for loot is great, if you don’t have a Priest around to let you completely dispense with the things in favour of anything better. Not that it’s easy to find anything better than equipment that heals you.
Bloodsword is the nice/creepy weapon the red warrior-type evil-element enemy dropped near the lever. I just like the look of the thing. Apparently it also drops from Durahan/Dullahan, and drains life like the above dagger, if you couldn’t guess from the name.
Using either is a bad idea against the undead, though.
The Feather Gloves apparently do nothing but those four points of defence, and are rather pointless as a result. The Silver Anklet boosts your normal and magic defence by four points, and on top of that adds eight Willpower and Intelligence, making it a better pick both in general and for a mage.

Item(s) of the Day

[Red/Gray] Ash
[All]
Supposedly from a Saint’s hand.
(Increase[s STR/AGL])

Ah, stat-raising items. Ashes are a lot less common than Fate Coins and Blood Extracts, but they work on your base stats rather than something derived, and as a result they can raise more than one thing, indirectly. They also don’t have the chance of lowering the relevant stat, as Fate Coins can. I’m not sure why the description leaves off the ’s’ for Gray Ash, though; lack of proof-reading? In this case, I picked up the Strength and Agility Ashes. Handy for anyone who needs to melee… less handy for someone who can fry stuff on command.
The Palace of the Immortals is probably the best place for stat-raising items; wolves, as always, drop Blood Extracts, but Zombies will happily drop at least one or two types of ash. I’m not sure whether one was dropped by the red warrior-types, though. I didn’t pay attention to what I was killing.
Is there an item for raising MP? I’ve never seen it.

Choice – Necropolis, or Resident Evil-Style Mansion?

So I have the choice of either visiting the Labyrinth of the Dead next, or going to the Palace of the Immortals; Labyrinth of the Dead is a sprawling location similar to the Abandoned Mines in structure, whilst Palace of the Immortals is closer to the Old Palace, in that it’s a large place, but if you know where you’re going it’s much quicker to get through.
However, I’m not looking forward to either, for a simple reason; the end bosses of both areas can poison you, and I don’t really want to spend an inventory slot carrying potions to cure that. I… do not like poison status, and recent adventure only reinforced that.
Hm. I’ll probably go to Labyrinth of the Dead. There’s something nice there, and I’m not wearing a robe with Holy element on it this time, and I’m more powerful besides, so Durahan/Dullahan/that headless guy shouldn’t be as bad as it was last attempt. But there’s something I want to check at the Palace of the Immortals, and I want to get the twin of the Earth Tiara sometime.

Incidentally, you’d think Blaze & Blade’s translators would have at least made sure map names were consistent with names that appear in the area descriptions. The Old Palace is called the Ancient Tower in the description after you enter each time, and the name fits far better, considering we already have a Palace of the Immortals.

Old Palace (2.5) – Looting and Pillaging

It’s interesting how a Sorcerer can very happily function as a melee unit in the Old Palace. I just completed a run through with no spells save Striking, and there were only two places I had problems with.
There was the red crystal room with the darker skeletal centaurs; those are reasonably-tough, defensively, and come close to matching the resistance of the green slimes but with more HP. I think you only need to fight this variety in this set of rooms, though, and if they spawn anywhere else you can just exit the room to avoid them.
Then there was that icy room, with the two transparent blue-green enemies that are effectively the Dark Elf with less HP and a few more annoying spells. Unlike that entire level in the Abandoned Mines, the ice here does result in less friction underfoot, and you go sliding around whenever anything hits you. Like, say… ranged spells, such as Lightningbolt or Magic Missile. If you don’t kill the two enemies in here from afar, you’re liable to take a few hits of falling damage as they keep knocking you off the platform.

Other than that, though? Depressingly easy.

Loot

Symbol of Darkness [Accessory]
[Dark.8, Pow.32]
[All]
Talisman that amplifies dark powers.

Dominion Feather [Accessory]
[Holy.30]
[All]
Beautiful feather with hidden holy power.

Rune Amulet [Accessory]
[Pow.6, MAt.12]
[All]
Engraved with runes that enhance magic.

Renugeton [Accessories]
[Int.20, MAt.16]
[Sor]
Magical book containing knowledge about demons.

The Symbol of Darkness provides a fair boost to Power, in addition to the small boost to Darkness, and it looks like someone picked out Sauron’s eye to make it.

The Dominion Feather’s ‘hidden holy power’ isn’t quite so hidden, as it gives a respectable boost of 30 points to Holy. This fell from the Dark Wizard, and might explain why she’s a bit pathetic. According to the Item List, it’ll fully resurrect you on death with 50% breakage, similar to the Fool’s Puppet, which must be how the Dark Wizard survives her spontaneous post-battle combustion every single time.

Finally, a rune-engraved item that I can equip. I was beginning to wonder whether there was anything other than the wand. The obvious bonuses it provides are a little lackluster, but according to holypriest’s list, it adds +50% to Magical Attack? That’s on-cast, rather than actually shown, but it improves 50~ damage to 80~ damage. A very nice accessory.

Renugeton… there aren’t all that many accessories linked to one class and one alone; most accessories are equippable by everyone, and some are equippable by three or so classes, like the Element Cloak. Renugeton is good for Sorcerers only, so… I’m glad I got this one and not an accessory for a different class, huh. Renugeton is one of the items you can get from the Roadside Inn’s locked room, so… once again, I get an accessory well ahead of the conventional ‘easy’ route.
Unfortunately, Merlin’s Ring provides a better boost to my stats, and Rune Amulet provides a much better bonus to damage above that. I don’t know if Renugeton does something special like increase my damage against demons, but for the moment I don’t feel like testing anything more.

Item of the Day

Wand of Apollo
[At.121, Df.-20, MAt.82, MDf.-10, Holy.25]
[Sor]
A wand that can destroy 100,000 things at once.

My base defence is 67. Wand of Apollo has NEGATIVE 20 DEFENCE?!

Ahem. Yep, negative defence. Equipping this wand penalises your defence, both of them. Holypriest’s Item List never mentioned that, and neither is it mentioned by the weapon; you’ll only see it if comparing your stats unequipped to equipped, so you’ll only ever find out if you’re a Sorcerer. No wonder the lists don’t mention it.
Penalty aside, the Wand of Apollo is worlds better than my Wand of Runes, even with it now at 75 attack. 20 defence isn’t a big difference even for a Sorcerer; my Robe of Spirits is now at 118 defence, so even with the Wand of Apollo equipped I’m ahead of the basic defence the Robe gives me. The Holy element isn’t a problem, either, as Holy element demons turn up once in a blue moon.
I finally have a new weapon. At least this doesn’t look identical to my last one, as happened in WoW.