Ancient Ruins (3) – abusing Teleport for fun and profit

I always thought the female Fairy hair looked stupid, but I still can't tell if that Elf is male or female.

I need a break. Old Palace lasted longer than expected and I wrote more than I thought I would.

Not that easy to spot unless you like having the camera almost horizontal.

So, those siderooms in the Ancient Ruins. There’s some nice loot in there, but at the point you technically have access to it, the large number of enemies in a confined space that guard each treasure will probably either make you run, crying, or kill you because you stepped too far away from the door and got stuck in there.
Now that I’m several tens of levels more powerful, I figure I can deal much more easily with the metal wisps performing guard duty. Specifically, ‘Extend Magic and Explosion’ ease, which kills them in a single cast if you catch them with both hits, or sometimes just a single hit if they don’t resist. You can get to them without needing to go through the boss first, if you know where to drop down, and MP expenditure doesn’t matter so long as I can clear two rooms of that in short order, then hit Teleport afterwards. If I keep Teleport on the autospell, I can even practice casting Explosion by command.
The metallic slimes are a bit tougher, but still go down to one or two Explosion casts, usually, and if not can be taken out by a few physical attacks afterwards. That’s MP-intensive, and I fail the command for Explosion half the time; a much more effective way is for me to just to put Striking on and throw Water Bullets at them if they try to jump on me.

Loot

Dropneal [Accessory] x3
[All]
Treasure said to bring the bearer great wealth.

Whoo! Dropneal the first time around! This handy little trinket increases the amount of experience you get, and apparently the chance of looting Fate Coins, to boot. It also increases the money you pick up, but that’s kind of worthless. I’ll probably take this along the next time I go to the Old Palace.
The metallic slime-things will also drop these.

Mirror Armor [Armour]
[Df.52]
[War, Dwf]
Silver armor with a fine reflective exterior.

Can’t remember if I covered this previously, before I started putting in the images. Well, here it is again, complete with icon. This dropped from one of the metallic wisp types.

Guardian Shield [Shield]
[Df.31]
[War, Dwf]
Made by warriors, increases magical power.

So, once again we have a non-Sorcerer, non-Priest, non-Fairy item that works on magic. It’s probably more related to magic defence, but that kind of description looks silly on any class that deals in melee and melee alone, unless they make heavy use of magical objects.

Guardian Robe [Armour] x2
[Df.92, MDf.90, Str.24, Con.24, ]
[Pri, Sor, Fai]
Powerfully protective. Made by hell’s guardians.

Yaay, Guardian Robe. But this is a little bit of a disappointment. Whilst it’s better than the Robe of Spirits by Strength, Constitution and Magic Defence bonuses, it’s worse in terms of Intelligence, Will and Power. And, well, basic Defence, but that’s because my Robe of Spirits has at least twenty Material Magics on it.
Worth keeping around for hitting the Fire Dragon, I suppose, as I’ll need a lot of Magic Defence in addition to regular defence. Based on its bonuses, it’s built for someone who’ll melee more often than use magic for attacking – at this point, a Priest, or a Fairy without or unable to use its Forbidden Spells. Or, admittedly, a Sorcerer in the Old Palace.
Oh, yeah. Note the red jewel that appears on both the Guardian Robe and Guardian Shield. Seems to be a common trait of Guardian gear thus far.

Guardian Sword [Weapon]
[At.75, Df.20]
[War]
Sword of the arcanes, strengthens magical power.

Another melee piece that ’strengthens magical power’? I’ve ranted enough about those. Like the Guardian Armour that I apparently found some time back, the Guardian Sword helps both Attack and Defence – put together, the pair give a very nice 91 Attack and 115 Defence, and probably a host of stat bonuses on top of that.
It’s also the first Guardian piece I’ve seen not to have a red jewel on it somewhere.

Silver Shield [Armour]
[Df.48]
[Rog, Hun, Elf]
It has fine protective sigils to turn back demons.

This is another random drop from the metallic-wisp-things. For something with little but a metallic body and eyes, they carry a lot of armour with them. Including things they shouldn’t be able to touch, if the ‘fine protective sigils’ here really worked.

Also:

Material Magic x4
One of these from a chest – disappointing – and one from a Gargoyle. The third from a metallic slime, and the fourth from a Chimera. This place isn’t quite as good as the Crystal Maze, but it’s a nice bonus if you’re hunting other things. Fifth from another metallic slime.
Incidentally, watch out for the Chimera. They know Thunderbolt, in addition to the much less dangerous third-level spells.

Ice Jewel x1
Dropped by one of the metal wisps.

Blood Extract x1
Brown wolves drop these. Actually, a lot of beastly enemies drop this – the undead bears in the Abandoned Mines, for example. More HP is always a good thing for survival.
Have I mentioned these before? I swear I have…

Of course, watch out for poison. Apparently if you finish casting Teleport whilst poisoned, and drop to 0 HP as you fade out to go to the map, you still get game over. Happily, I didn’t actually lose anything.
Aside from four Material Magics and three levels. Blast. Well, I’m done here, anyway; I’m going to run through Old Palace again and hope I don’t get Bolt of Larie this time.

The Old Palace (2) – always two there are, a master and an apprentice

There's a fundamental flaw with these kinds of traps...

So, back to the Old Palace. I’ll spare you the rush to the Dark Elf, you’ve seen it before. I did manage to fall off the bridge on the first few attempts to get across, but thankfully there’s that savepoint on that floor. If that weren’t there, I’d probably just abuse Teleport and memorise exactly where the windows illuminate. Nothing interesting happened, anyway.

It turns out that you don’t need to beat the Dark Elf more than just the once to get into the second part of the Old Palace, unlike the bosses of other areas; the Dark Elf doesn’t sit on a route you need to take further down, so you can ignore him on all further visits if you want.
Naturally, I didn’t. I amused myself for a minute or two defeating him with Striking and Enhance Weapon, instead.

The upper portions of the tower are pretty similar to the lower.Lots of magically-themed enemies, puzzles that don’t require traipsing over the entire level, yet more ‘kill everything’ rooms, and yet more inefficient traps.

Stupid Trap A

This one… well, remember the spinning dragon-headed things that spat out water? And remember the wall-mounted dragon-headed things that threw fireballs? This is a spinning dragon-headed thing that throws fireballs. Imaginative, eh?

Stupid Trap B

Then there’s this thing; a slowly-rising crystal-fuelled lift that rises through the paths of yet more fireball-spitting things. I’d be scared of this thing… if, you know, it just incinerated whatever was on the lift, rather than doing 20 damage per hit in an easily-avoidable pattern.

Semi-Effective Trap A

This one, however, is a more effective version of the corridor of bladed pendulums; the knights swivel as they swing the swords. The spot in which I’m standing is still a safe spot, but it’s a bit more difficult to tell, in this case, than the pendulums.

I always thought the area immediately before the boss was similar to the second floor of the Palace of the Immortals; it has an upper and lower area, a central bit that you can’t do anything with the first time you visit, a magical circle (or four, in the mansion’s case), four places to use items to open up the central bit…
Needless to say, we need to make a little detour to get the items we need to use. Trying to activate the stands at the moment tells us we need Gate Crystals, which we don’t have. How do we know we need them? The magic-emitting pedestals probably speak to us like the monoliths in the Ancient Ruins, or something along those lines. A teleporter on the fifth floor will bring us up to the sixth floor, and a suspiciously-familiar bridge.
From the loading screen. Not that one that forces us to spend half an hour climbing back up.

Okay, so I took this long after the battle. I admit I forgot earlier on.

I feel sorry for the Dark Elf, now. He’s little tougher the second time you fight him, and he still does a pathetic 30~ points of damage with his Blaze compared to mine doing 150~… Extend Spell enhanced, admittedly, but it’s still somewhat rubbish in comparison. The real problem in the fight is his pet Black Wyvern, which will happily keep you poisoned for the entirety of the fight, but it automatically dies if you beat the Dark Elf.
That’s not really why I feel sorry for him, though. His master drops a meteorite on him after he gives up, and it’s not possible to avoid this fight. I need to learn to hit the button I’ve linked to the screenshot utility quicker, as I keep missing stuff like this.

Aaaand here we are, the point at which I gave up after finding myself here instead of comfortably before Dullahan in the Labyrinth of the Dead. I don’t like this floor; it’s as tedious as the floors you get dropped down to if you fall off that bridge, and this time the enemies are reasonably strong normally, but made worse by a particular effect on this floor.
To move onwards, we need to destroy a set of eight red crystals. These red crystals are actually a fairly good security measure, as they do several things to the room they’re in; first, all of your enemies in a room with an intact crystal are invincible. Destroying the crystal fixes that, but in the mean time they’re interrupting your spells and dealing damage. Second, the crystals are ‘poison’ crystals, and slowly deal damage to you over time. You can’t leave the rooms until all enemies are dead, either.
So the whole floor will slowly wear your HP and MP bars down, as the corridors between the crystal rooms aren’t entirely safe, either. Last time I was here, I was about ten levels lower and less well-equipped, and kept getting torn to pieces by the skeletal centaur-like golems. This time I’m holding my own, with Extend Spell hanging around. One good thing shared with the original hated floor is that enemies have a tendency to drop a useful object; this time, Material Magic.

Another good thing is it connects to an area with some of the best music in the game.

I really do love the music in this area. Back when I could still remember where the memory card with my characters was, I used to simply spend all the effort to get to this area, then leave it sitting paused for hours simply to listen to it. This area’s theme, like the boss theme for the area later on, is a variation on the main area’s theme; both sound far better than the original, in my opinion, though that may be far less in the way of repetition, as far as the boss theme is concerned.
I wish the Blaze & Blade soundtrack weren’t so stupidly rare.

Anyway, music aside, this area has a few other interesting qualities to it. The floor – presumably made of crystal – periodically changes from purple to black and back again. Since the area’s backdrop is also black, this makes it easier than most places for you to accidentally fall off. The game doesn’t pull the same trick it did at the bridge, and it’s still negligable damage, but it still adds up, and is annoying to boot.

There's also absolutely no map for the area.

So, for once, it’s a legitimate maze; unlike everywhere else, you can’t simply pull up the pause screen to work out where to go next. Finally, only one kind of enemy spawns here; crystal gargoyles. They’re tougher than most of the other enemies in the Old Palace against magic, but slightly less tough against physical attacks than the rest of the enemies that turn up in the second part. They also only ever drop Material Magic, if they drop anything; this is a great place to take legendary weapons and armour for strengthening, just like part one of the Old Palace is great for Fate Coins.

Cue taking ten pictures in a row just to find one good shot...

All in all, it’s not a great challenge; as the only enemy that shows up is not so hot against physical damage, and drops weapon-strengthening items, Striking is the perfect spell to use, for once, and Enchant Weapon on top of it will improve your damage further. The only troublesome thing about them is they rarely inflict Silence, but by the time one of them actually DID that, I had about fifteen Material Magics on my weapon already, and was doing around 60~ damage unbuffed. They give out nice amounts of experience, too.

So, about twelve levels later, I decided to get on with my job.

There are only a few situations in which a Sorcerer is better off using melee attacks than magic; this is one of them. Material Magic is for the most part only useful for a Sorcerer’s armour, as it’s impossible to raise a weapon’s stat bonuses, and those – affecting magic – are far more important than how much damage you can do in melee. All the same, I’ll be holding on to this stick, as I’ll probably want to return here at some later point.

The aim of the area is to grab the Gate Crystals we found we needed earlier, and to get to the top alive, as there’s no other way out that will let us keep the crystals; Teleport or a Rope of Return are escapes, but they seem to induce bag ‘o spilling when quest items are involved. The general structures of the separate floors we’ve seen before; the first floor involves walking halfway around a circle, the second is reminiscent of the floating platforms from the Abandoned Mines, the third floor isn’t even a maze but has two treasure chests you shouldn’t miss, and the Highest Point has the Gate Crystals and the way out. Falling off drops you to a lower level, if you land on anything – it’s all technically the same map, so there’s no transition.

Happily, the red crystals don’t respawn whilst you’re in the maze, so you can just take whichever side you took when getting to the maze’s entrance on that floor. Also happily, a teleporter that bypasses Stupid Trap B activated after you make it up the first time.

Can never remember where to get the key for these, though.

There isn’t much else to do here save beat the boss. I’m not sure if you need to be a specific class to open those doors at the bridge, though something makes me think I may need to be an Elf.
Radical species-changing surgery aside, I’m not getting them open. To the boss!
After I heal, anyway.

Must remember to check the magical circles in the Palace of the Immortals...

Some people say the Dark Wizard is female, but I can't see it here. Maybe it's another speech setting.

I think the Old Palace is the only place with properly-chatty bosses. The others don’t listen, won’t understand you, or just don’t give you a choice.

Naturally, the Dark Wizard has a bunch of spells up his or her sleeves. Starting with…

Meteor Smash
This is the spell that did insane (200+) damage to me when I made a very-failed attempt at the Fire Dragon. So long as you’re not within a certain area in front of… hm. I’ll stick with ‘her’, it’s reasonably easy to dodge, and it has a long cast-time, so you’ve plenty of time to get out of the way, but if you’re within the target area, the meteors strike randomly, so it’s difficult to tell where it’ll hit next.
This is probably the spell she used on the Dark Elf. That or a minor variant thereof. Sorcerers don’t have any other meteor-calling spells hanging around. I don’t have this yet, but one of the Forbidden spells is in the Old Palace, and I’m not leaving until I get it.

Fusion
This is the other Forbidden spell the Dark Wizard has access to; it looks like she’s throwing a ‘tiny’ universe at you, and hurts about as much. Like Meteor Smash, this has a large casting time, and also hits a large area in front of her; it moves forward until the spot she cast it at is on the edge of the effect, then stays in that spot for a while, spitting out arcs of magical lightning at the edges and probably killing anything caught inside. She turns as she’s incanting it, but you don’t really have any excuse to be hit with this if you can see her.
The main threat from this spell is that it obscures a large area, and she doesn’t take damage from standing within the area of effect; you can’t tell what she’s doing in there, and she may be winding up for another Fusion or Meteor Smash.

Shining
This is a worrying spell if there’s anything else is attacking you; it’s a maintained spell that automatically and constantly hits the target, so even if you’re resisting every blow, it will still do a fair amount of damage, and slow you greatly for the duration, with nothing you, personally, can do about it.
If nothing else is hanging around in the arena, though, this is simply a matter of surviving the damage. Try not to have your HP fall too low in case she uses this one.

Smash
Maybe dangerous if you’re meleeing her; it’s a second-level spell with a short cast time, so it’s both more difficult to avoid if you’re already in range and you expect one of her longer-cast spells. It probably doesn’t do comparable damage to anything else she has, though, and like Shining should be easier to resist. The range is pitiful and really will only catch you if you’re in meleeing distance. Given the other spells she can throw at you, it’s probably best to put some distance between you whenever she casts, as odds are it’s not this spell.

Her minions – the two bulky demons – can spit out ice breath, or attack physically. They’re not particularly tough, or resistant to magic, and will probably just be taken out whilst you’re aiming for the Wizard.
As befits any Sorcerer, the Wizard is very tough against magic; with Extend Spell applied so I’m at 310 MAt, she still takes only 25 damage a cast of Blaze if she doesn’t resist. She might possibly be fire-resistant, though. Also as befits any Sorcerer, though, she’s pathetic when confronted with an angry adventurer wielding a blunt stick and Striking.
Gee. Good thing for us she owns and made us go through that crystalline maze full of creatures that only drop Material Magic, huh?

I have absolutely no clue how I discovered this the first time. Maybe I was trying to dodge Fusion?

So, don’t forget the secret northern passage with boss loot. See, this is why I wonder some bosses don’t seem to have loot chests. Am I missing a secret passage somewhere? Did I miss something earlier?
Anyway, aside from a random piece of treasure that is usually something useful for a Hunter – we’re in a Sorcerer’s tower, why can’t a Sorcerer’s item be more common? – that room has ‘Meteor Strike‘… AKA, Meteor Smash, and one of the Priest’s Forbidden spells. Looks like the Dark Wizard – or her ancestors – lived here for a very long time…

I mean, the Bolt of Larie is all well and good, and the Expert is probably right to be shocked by a legendary weapon that, like many, seems to have a demon sealed within it… but it’s one of the most common items in that chest owned by a Sorcerer.

“Bolt of Larie! My word, where did you find this?!”
“Huh? Oh, the master of that tower in the southeast has a chest full of them. Do you want more?”

Loot

Berserker Bones [Accessory]
[At.12]
[All]
Skullbone of a fallen battle-mad warrior.

Necklace of Evil [Accessory]
[Evil.24, Lck.14]
[All]
Engraved devil’s prayer gives unholy power.

Wand of Evil [Weapon]
[At.43, Evil.8, Pow.12, MAt.21]
[Sor]
A wand with the power to curse.

Falconbolt [Weapon]
[At.50]
[Hun]
A special bow which can shoot two arrows at once.

Berserker Bones really only do boost your attack, stat-wise. They do boost your critical rate in general, and put you into berserk status for stronger attacks when in ‘critical condition’ – somewhere below half maximum HP – according to holypriest’s Item List, though. Nice for a Warrior, I suppose.
There’s a necklace for every element; this is the third I’ve picked up, with Holy Necklace and Water Necklace found elsewhere already. Unlike the Water Necklace, this one boosts my Luck, rather than Intelligence; a nice boost, but less than what dedicated Luck accessories do. Evil is a fair element to have for defence, as outside of magic, not many creatures seem to do Holy element damage.
Evil Necklace, Wand of Evil, floating swords that deal Evil damage, skeletal centaurs, gargoyles, floating armour… hmm. Yeah, the Old Palace is pretty Evil. So is this wand; I hate things that come with already-applied elements, and whilst Evil is okay on a defensive piece, on an offensive piece it tends to suck as a lot of things that deal Evil damage are resistant to Evil damage. That said, it doesn’t apply to the wand unless I’m manually thwacking stuff. Happily for me, Wand of Runes tops the Wand of Evil in all areas save MAt, where it loses out by all of 6 points. I’m sticking with the buffed Wand of Runes, but thanks all the same, Old Palace.
Falconbolt is somewhat obsoleted by the discovery of the Bolt of Larie. To make matters worse for the hapless Hunter who finds this and then the Bolt of Larie, it’s the weapon offered by the Knight in exchange for Fate Coins from a Hunter; for some reason, Hunter rares are stupidly common. I wonder if there’s a typo somewhere? I mean, beyond it being called a bow when obviously it’s a crossbow. It probably has an increased rate of fire, but I can’t check, not being a Hunter.

Item of the Day

Bolt of Larie [Weapon]
[At.92]
[Hun]
A cursed arrow made by the demon Larie.

Because… well… I already covered Material Magic, and this is the first properly legendary item I tend to pick up in any game. Blasted chest. I’d be happy if I could play Hunter, but the aiming on that class is so finicky I tend to leave it to AI, and I rarely drag AI characters around with me because, as I don’t level them, they tend to be as bad as wet paper.
Anyway. Bolt of Larie. The first legendary that ANYONE gets, and curse the people who get better.
This is also one of the sillier descriptions in the game, worse than Falconbolt. As ‘just’ an arrow, unless it strikes and returns like Mjollnir, it’s the worst artefact ever. Between this, the Elven Bow, and Falconbolt, I have to wonder where the right place is to find decent Sorcerer gear. Labyrinth of the Dead? Palace of the Immortals?

Spell of the Day

Striking
MP: 10
Command: □ X O
Amplifies inner strength and increases attack (AT)

A Sorcerer’s answer to a Sorcerer, this is an expensive spell at the time you receive it, but it balances the cost by potentially being able to take down many more enemies than a single Water Bullet; as many as you can kill off whilst it is in effect, anyway. Striking, like Extend Spell, doubles an Attack stat; this doubles Attack, and Extend Spell, its upgraded form, works on Magic Attack.
As you can tell from today, it’s still useful long after you pick it up, as it still just doubles your attack. With this in effect, a Sorcerer probably still won’t be the equal of a Warrior or Dwarf, but might rival a Rogue or Elf for damage. Perfect for enemies with high magic defence and low physical defence.

The Old Palace (1) – Tedious Trap City

Today’s theme shall be… crystals. Too many crystals. The whole area is lit by crystals, and most of the area’s puzzles involve one of more of the blasted things in some fashion or another; whoever built this place definitely had a thing for crystals. They also don’t like sunlight, for some reason. I could make a joke about goths, but…

So that's a female rogue, female dwarf, an elf of indeterminate gender, and a female hunter.

Well, anyway. The first floor is a reasonable-simple, though slightly-tedious puzzle involving windows, natural light and crystals, and I tend to just run straight through it nowadays.
I forgot to take pictures. You’re not missing much. You can, technically, solve this puzzle before even activating it, if you’ve memorised where the beams of light fall after opening the windows, but I’m always slightly off with at least one crystal. I don’t think you get anything from doing that, anyway, aside from possible bragging rights.
The second floor is likewise mostly boring – flipping four switches to activate a tiny bridge. Again, I forgot to take pictures because this puzzle is dull and I try to get past it as quickly as possible. It also possesses the earliest save point I’ve seen in any level, probably because this floor will do something very nasty to you if you don’t watch out. More on that later.

So, there are two interesting things on this level. First is the area’s obligatory multiplayer-bonus. This one, unlike the one in the Mines, requires good timing and little else. I also swear it’s possible to complete alone, with a Rogue, and a lot of attempts. It’s ’solved’ by deactivating all four purple-sparkle generators by standing on them; they reactivate after a short period of time, and walking normally you’re going to have at most two deactivated at once. As I said, somehow I managed to complete this at one point, and I’m reasonably certain it was using a Rogue character, thanks to their dash. Your milage may vary.

The other thing…

If you fell down here, you’d expect to suffer approximately 8 points of damage, right?
Well, you’re practically guaranteed to fall off the bridge in this room. The Old Palace is probably the most intentionally trap-filled area in the game, featuring quite a few ‘kill all enemies’ rooms in addition to pendulum traps, spiked ceilings, and fire-breathing wall fixtures, but this particular trap has to be one of the more irritating ones lying around.
First, the bridge starts collapsing after you, once you’re more than a few ’tiles’ in; if you continue walking, you won’t be caught out by this, and it happens slowly enough that you can keep ahead of it. As you may have noticed, there’s a spiked gate at the door you entered by, and there’s a corresponding one at the far exit. So there’s an enemy to kill, in the room. That enemy is the real problem of the room; it’s a floating armour, it’s resistant to most attacks and spells you can throw at it – I was only doing 50~ damage with a third-level spell – and it has several times more HP than you’re expecting on enemies at this point in the game. Worse, all its attacks are knock-back attacks; if it catches you before you’re between it and a wall or the door, it can very easily toss you off the bridge. It probably does nasty damage at the time you first reach this point, to boot.
So the first few times you come here, you’ll probably be falling off the bridge. Rather than a negligable amount of damage, doing so dumps you two floors below ground; you have to work your way back up to even be able to exit the place. Successfully getting out of the room by the door lets you skip all of that.

Of course, I’m dropping down anyway just to show you the area. Note that I’m heading in the ‘wrong’ direction here; leaving the floor and then returning causes the bridge to reappear, and it collapses from whatever side you entered by, just to make things trickier for you.

Welcome to the second underlevel. I always thought the area you fell in was vaguely reminiscent of Dullahan’s boss arena; it’s a roughly-circular area of moderate size with exits at the cardinal directions, and chains hanging around. Much brighter, though, and of course it lacks the headless boss.

The floor can pretty much be split into four separate areas; north has a suspicious-looking open area up there, so let’s start with north. What looks like the direct entrance to the area is on a raised area that we can’t reach, but there still seems to be two side entrances, so let’s try those.

Magical forcefield windows?

Another general theme of this area would be ‘taunting the player with stuff they can’t reach yet’. The guy in black posing with his minions down there is the boss of the first half of the Old Palace, but we can’t get to him yet.
Well, technically, we can, as I went ahead a little and opened the route to him before deciding to go through this bit anyway, but there are more interesting things to see and do down here that you miss if you ace the bridge the first time. Going around the other side is the same; another magical green forcefield-window thingy blocks your way.

Back to the centre, that leaves us with three options; let’s go… west.

There’s another suspiciously round-ish area there, and since this isn’t the Mines, there’s liable to be something interesting there. Most of the ‘built’ areas have something interesting in each room, whilst ‘natural’ areas like the Abandoned Mines or the Wood of Ruins tend to have useless places and dead ends. Nice touch; why build something if you’re never going to do anything with it?

Totally not significant...

This one’s particularly interesting as it gives us backstory. Few areas in the game give us history lessons; the Ancient Ruins are one of the areas, as is the Old Palace. There’s a third area, but I probably won’t be seeing it for a while, and then there’s the Jester guy in the Roadside Inn, who sometimes mentions interesting things.
The ‘correct’ order to read these things is from north to south; it doesn’t solve any puzzles, but it’s nice to get the story straight.

Something is written on the monolith…
Foresia, a land plagued by demons. Saturated with magic like no other land.
For those of us who control the power of sorcery it is the true paradise.

We, who are called sorcerers, could create flames and wind from nothingness through the art of magic.

The sorcerers were given power through the Sagestones…
Arcane artefacts created by the Twelve sages, the Sagestones strengthen the sorcerers and help them to master the art of magic.
To this day there is still nothing comparable, with which one can attain such mastery of sorcery with such ease…
With such power we could perform miracles, we would be like gods.

The Twelve Sages established a great kingdom with abundant magic through the use of the Sagestones.
But in mortal hands this power became too much, and this overabundance of power became a danger to us.

Many sorcerers dabbled foolishly with infernal magic…
And they begat demons of terrible and maddening power.
It may only be a matter of time before the demons destroy us.

Well, straight-ish. I’m guessing that this was written during or shortly after the fall of the ancient civilisation mentioned in the introduction sequence, as whoever wrote it still remembered the Twelve Sages and their relationship with the Sagestone…s. Plural. It’s also biased towards what the Sagestone meant for Sorcerers. I’m feeling right at home, here.
Pity there’s just the one left, huh? And it isn’t really doing anything for the rate at which I learn magic, though that could be because it’s incomplete, and because I’ve already learned all the spells I’m going to learn naturally.

That’s all there is here, so now… east, I think.

…except we can’t go there as the door’s sealed right now. Pity. We can’t get there from the south, either, because it’s another raised area you can’t jump to. We’ll be back here later.

South takes you into one of the more annoying kill-all-enemies rooms, depending on where you entered from. All of the enemies are the flying goblinoids-that-aren’t-gargoyles-because-those-are-made-of-rock. They move quickly, are annoying to hit in melee, and troublesome to cast spells at as they tend to throw the Fairy Sleep spell at you frequently. Falling off here, if you came around from the eastern section of the level, means a fair bit of backtracking.

Taking the teleport beyond brings you to the first underlevel, an area more tedious than anything else. The point of this area is to open two doors that will allow you to get back to the first level of the area; the teleporter on the northern side of that level leads here, but the door’s locked until it’s opened from this side. It’s full of kill-all-enemies rooms, right from the beginning, and even has a short timed section that happens to be the main source of tediousness if you’re just a bit too slow.

There are, of course, yet more traps here.

The good thing about this area is that a fair portion of the enemies can drop Fate Coins. The Old Palace in general is a good spot for hunting those, especially later on when you’ve opened up the second part, but the Blue Lizardmen here seem to be the most generous of all the early enemies.

If you forgot to pick up the keys near the entrance, you have a bit of backtracking to do.

The two doors you’ll want to open – to progress or to go back to the Inn after this ordeal – are coloured blue or red. The southern door is blue, and the northern red. The locked doors here contain a symbol on the wall matching the doors to the teleporters, and a crystal, which is somehow keeping both doors shut.

Or... maybe this was the blue exit, instead...

It’s still not much of a puzzle, but this is why I try to avoid falling off the bridge in the first place, especially if I’m playing a melee class; you have to make it around the circular-ish area to the corresponding room on the other side, and there’s always one kill-all-enemies room in your way, populated with four slimes and a couple of other enemies. Slimes are notoriously-resistant to physical damage, so if you’re not playing a Sorcerer or Elf, you may want to go clear out both rooms beforehand.

Successfully activating the second crystal whilst the first is still activated opens both doors. I hate these floors; there’s no loot before you beat the boss, unless you’re a Rogue – there’s a locked door on one of them and there may be treasure behind that – and it seems like they’re just there to waste time, with the exception of the history monoliths.

Bringing us happily back to immediately after the bridge room. Whoo.

Okay. South teleport takes you onwards – back to the second floor – whilst the north teleport takes you back to the first floor. Perhaps I won’t forget it, this time.

Right. Third level. Which I already completed, before deciding to go down to the underlevels. This floor’s puzzle involves more light, crystals and running long distances, and I’m just going to skip giving you the solution, as I’m lazy, there’s little to see, and this isn’t a proper walkthrough. Just don’t forget to collapse the floor in the room east from the red lizardman room, as backtracking is a headache here.

Getting through that floor brings you back to the… Second Underlevel. This time you’re on the raised section that leads to the proper entrance to the boss area, and there’s a little pillar-thing you can push down so you can get back here after jumping down to find the save point.
Never forget to do that, hm? It’s a crushing feeling when you forget.

Okay, NOW is the time for goth jokes...

So, the boss. Meet the Dark Elf; here, he’s about to throw a hissy-fit because you avoided all his traps and killed all his ‘friends’ who set out to attack you. Seriously, though, the Dark Elf is one of the more annoying mandatory bosses, as he’s almost as small as you are, and moves relatively quickly, making him difficult to target or pin-down by any character; he also cheats, like the goblinoid magic-users, and has spells from both the Fairy and Sorcerer lists.
Apparently you can talk him out of fighting if you’re an Elf, and already have the Sagestone jewel from the encounter, but I suppose he might have loot.

Attacks:

Slow (Fairy)
This is really annoying, as you don’t get any chance to dodge it, and at the time you first encounter the Dark Elf, you have little chance of resisting it. Slow, as you can expect, slows you down for a period of time; as much of this battle involves dodging the Dark Elf’s high-level spells, getting hit by this can be painful. I didn’t see him use Slow in this fight, but memory tells me he can use it. It also makes sense that he’d have it, as he has the rest of the first-level Fairy spells available to him.

Sleep (Fairy)
Fairly annoying, but this one only means a single guaranteed hit, unless you’re somehow lucky enough not to be hit for the duration of the status. Sleep as a status lasts a very long time, so don’t count on it, but the projectile the spell releases moves very slowly, and is easy to outrun.

Haste (Fairy)
Makes him move faster; his physical attacks suddenly become a lot more difficult to avoid with this active, but it thankfully doesn’t affect his casting speed.

Lightningbolt (Sorcerer)
Much like the Sorcerer version, this one is unpredictable and rarely fires in a straight line. Just keep moving on the other side of the arena from the Dark Elf and pray it doesn’t hit you. This is actually one of the nicer spells the Dark Elf can use; it doesn’t have a chance of hitting you multiple times, and it doesn’t cause any bad statuses if it does hit.

Blaze (Sorcerer)
Same as the Sorcerer spell. Not too tricky to dodge, but it will hit multiple times if you hang around in the affected area.

Blizzard (Sorcerer)
I swear this one has a slightly larger range than a player’s Blizzard spells do, but otherwise it’s exactly the same as the Sorcerer spell. Like Blaze, this one can hit you multiple times, which will probably kill you the first time you visit. Even if you’re not in the direct path of the spell, watch out, as the blue-tint to the screen whilst the spell is active makes it difficult to spot the Dark Elf.

Finally, his normal attacks – he seems to do karate or some other kind of martial art – do dark-element damage. Wearing something with light-element protection is a bad idea; probably the best protection would be Wind, as I stuck around for ages and didn’t see him try to use Poison Cloud.

For such a small opponent, it seems like the arena is pretty large, but you can’t forget that he tends to use spells that have a long range, or can hit multiple targets; he also starts with three minions that can throw off a selection of offensive spells themselves, so you may need the space for dodging.

Sensible, really - always keep Teleport memorised for dangerous situations...

All that said, however, he’s a Sorcerer and is gracious enough to not have much in the way of health. Just dodge his spells and keep hitting him, and he’ll retreat fairly quickly.
I was also lucky enough to get loot. Not-usable loot, but loot all the same.

Well, I’ll be heading back for now. I’ve a fair amount of new loot that needs IDing, and it’s really not difficult to get to the second part. Unlike the Wood of Ruins or the Abandoned Mines, the Old Palace doesn’t require much running around if you already know what you’re doing. You may even be able to skip the whole Dark Elf encounter, but I don’t know whether a certain door will open if you do that. I’ll check next time.

Oh, yeah. Now that the Dark Elf has been beaten, we ought to be able to check out that sealed area. There’s a Rogue-only door, two chests that only contained HP and MP potions, some more defeat-everything areas, including a very small room with no less than four floating mages, leading to… a Wand of Runes, that I’m already using, and a room with two chests for a Miracle Powder and a lamp of some description.
Kinda disappointing.

Loot

Elven Bow [Weapon]
[At.65]
[Hun]
A magical bow, made for the king of the elves.

Trueheart [Weapon]
[At.15]
[Hun]
A first class bow of great workmanship.

Battle Axe [Weapon]
[At.20]
[Dwf]
A heavy battle axe, the favored weapon of barbarians.

Long Sword [Weapon]
[At.18]
[War]
Longer than a normal sword.

Fairy Powder [Object]
[All]
Made from fairy wings.
Activates Anti-Circle.

For somewhere that’s supposedly good for Sorcerers, this place has a lot of non-Sorcerer loot lying around. One of the chests on the third level is a guaranteed piece of Warior/Dwarf/Elf armour, if memory serves, and a lot of the enemies tend towards dropping Bows or Axes.
The Elven Bow probably pales in comparison to weapons you can attain later on, but for the point of the game at which it appears, it’s insanely-powerful; Trueheart and the Composite Bow are two bows you tend to pick up more frequently from the enemies here, and are examples of how strong Hunter weapons tend to be at this point. If you’re a Hunter and are lucky enough to get the Elven Bow from the Dark Elf, you’re set weapon-wise for quite a while.
Finally, Fairy Powder. I think I have a new favourite item; I don’t care what it does, that’s just an amusing description when your party may include Fairies. Anti-Circle is one of the highest-level non-Forbidden Fairy spells, and apparently protects the party from magic and bad statuses. Having never used it, I can’t say, but it’s an exceptional drop for the first part of anywhere, given how high-level and costly that spell really is.

Item of the Day

Fate Coin [Object]
[All]
It shows the Goddess of Luck.
(Changes Luck)

I’ve mentioned Fate Coins a couple of times previously; they’re the closest thing the game has to a proper currency, as one of the NPCs in the Inn will trade items in exchange for these, and they’re the easiest way of changing your Luck stat.
There are a couple of catches, though; using one of these may or may not raise your luck – it could lower your luck, too. Best to save at the Roadside Inn or somewhere else before using these, if you want higher luck. Second, the Knight sells many items in exchange for these, but some of the more expensive items depend on your class, and the expensive items are… expensive. Good, but expensive. The Old Palace is a great place for accumulating these, but the Labyrinth of the Dead isn’t that bad, either.

Hi-ho, Hi-ho…

Why do they have a Rogue? There aren't any doors to unlock...

I mean, the Fairy kind of makes sense, as there are a number of damaging-floor areas, and the Dwarf makes sense as this is the only area I’ve seen which uses the special ability to break rocks, much like the Hunter and tracking in the Wood of Ruins. The Warrior works everywhere as almost everything can be melee’d to death, but the Rogue? There are no pickable locks!

Guaranteed weapon?

I’m not sure how I managed to miss this every single time I visited the area previously, as it’s mentioned on the map and all, but the chest here is a guaranteed weapon; later on, there’s a chest with a guaranteed piece of armour for whoever opens it, too. They’re both similar to those two chests in the Volcano, but they contain pathetic stuff.

The area's puzzle for the bonus multiplayer treasure

The multiplayer puzzle for this area is interesting; it’s the only one I found that actually depends on some semblance of skill. If you take the glinting item at the end of the pier, it collapses, leaving whoever took it floating across the lake towards a waterfall. The other player has to hop across the rocks in the water so the first player doesn’t get pulled off the raft with the camera, and make it to a switch that lowers a bridge in time for the first player – with the key – to jump to that. Falling in the water loses the key.
I’m not sure what’s in the chest. Unlike the one in the Old Palace, there’s no chance of a single player somehow managing to complete this, as there’s nowhere safe to leap without the bridge, and you can’t reach the rocky outcroppings if you’re on the raft.

This makes less sense than the rest of the floor.

You’ve heard me rant about this floor before; the one with the bottomless pits. This thing, whilst a nice-looking method of transportation over an inexplicably-deep small body of water, makes no sense as something that would be built in a mine. Where the threat of demons or cave-ins is great enough that they don’t need the risk of drowning on top of it.

Looks like its not just available from the Volcano, after all...

Incidentally: hey, looks like I hadn’t necessarily visited the Volcano before, anyway.
Not that I got anything from finding it there.

So the baby dragon is still a baby...

Odd death animation, though. I can’t remember if any other bosses do the same. I know the Troll erupts in a fountain of blood, and that no other boss does that, to my recollection.
Hum. I wonder if all bosses have unique death animations? I suppose I’ll have to go check, now.

Loot

Water Necklace [Accessory]
[Int.14, Water.24]
[All]
Wearer is protected by the powers of water.

Minotaur Horn [Accessory]
[Str.32]
[All]
Said to give the bearer great strength.

Resist Cloak [Accessory]
[Def.12, MDf.24]
[All]
Cloak that protects against magical attacks.

Pandora’s Box [Object]
Brings both hope and despair.
(? ? ?)

Misty Pendant [Accessory]
[All]
Mysterious locket with misty swirling surface.

Who knows what the Misty Pendant does; no stats, no defense, no elemental affinity… its description fits, at least. It’s probably one of the ‘protects against [status]‘ accessories that never mention what they do. Likewise Pandora’s Box; the description is not illuminating and I don’t really want to open it.
The other items I picked up today were, happily, much more obvious in their usage. Mostly. The Water Necklace naturally boosts your defence against water-element attacks, but also has an unmarked boost to Intelligence, making it a fair pick for magic-users when not going to the Volcano, though you should have better things by this point. The Minotaur Horn provides a hefty boost to Strength, and would be great for anyone planning on melee, whilst the Resist Cloak gives a small boost to Defence, and a larger boost to Magic Defence.

Item of the Day

Earth Tiara [Accessory]
[All]
One of a pair of tiaras created long ago.

I said I’d get it.
And it only took… how many reloads? Ten? Twenty? At least four passed-up Robes of the Elder, at any rate. I’m very lucky there’s that savepoint sitting nearby. Almost as if they expected people would want at least one item from that chest.
The Earth Tiara is, like the Misty Pendant and the Pandora’s Box, another of those ‘what on earth does this do?’ items. It has no stats, not even any points towards defence. I stumbled over the use of the thing by accident; it, and presumably the other tiara, the one I never found, provide defence against certain elements. Rather than do this conventionally, through elemental affinities, it just… nullifies a sizeable portion of the damage from certain elements. Get both Tiaras and wear them, and… I don’t know. Might make you invincible to any form of elemental damage. Might clash and do nothing. Who knows.
I consider this one to be the more useful of the pair, as it works on a certain optional boss and it’s the only one I ever tracked down, anyway.

Volcanos and Tiaras

Notice anything odd here?

That’s right. The Volcano of the Fire Dragon finally unlocked itself.
I’m never sure of exactly when it’ll unlock. It always seems to happen after you’ve got the first half of the Sagestone jewels, but not immediately; this certainly wasn’t unlocked before I went into the Labyrinth of the Dead or the Old Palace, whichever I was doing last, as I make a habit of checking between each visit anywhere. It might be level-based, I suppose. Yesterday’s jaunt into the mines brought the Sorceress up to 145. That’s still probably too low for the Volcano, but there are a few reasons to head there early.

Of all the mini-areas in the game, this one has to be one of my favourites. The music is very nice to listen to, there’s little in the way of suggestion that this place was left unfinished by the developers, and it doesn’t take long at all to get to the boss. Getting out afterwards takes longer, but…

Interestingly enough, this volcano ISN'T active until you unlock it...

Well, today we’re not going to the boss. We’re going to take a quick jaunt almost all of the way there, peer at a couple of chests, and then retreat.

Here's the short route

See, this area offers an almost-free equipment upgrade if you manage to get to this area whilst under-equipped; right before the boss, there are two chests guaranteed to hold a weapon and a piece of armour for the class of the character who first opens them.

The southern chest always contains armour, and the northwest chest a weapon

It doesn’t take much work to reach them, either; as I said, the bulk of the work is in getting out of the place after you’ve beaten the boss. Well, it’s actually in beating the boss, but you don’t need to beat it to get out that way. There’s little point to going past the point of no return in this place unless you do want to fight the boss, honestly. You can easily get out via the floating platform shortcuts as long as you don’t drop down.
I don’t plan on fighting the boss today; I don’t have that item I wanted from the Mines, and I had trouble enough with an Elf ages back. Unfortunately, both chests here contained things I had or have surpassed already; a Robe of Spirits, and a Skystone Wand. No improvement there.

So, out again, sans any loot whatsoever. On the positive side, I did get to test the Dark Orb from yesterday – as long as you have X held down, the effect is maintained at the cost of MP – and I did get to test a method of taking screenshots easily.
I’ll return later when I’m not liable to be burnt to a crisp.

Item of the Day

Robe of Spirits [Armour]
[Def.72, Wil.22, Int.5, Pow.4, MAt.40, MDf.22]
[Pri, Sor, Fai]
Amplifies its wearer’s magical power.

I may have been here before, as according to the Item FAQ, this is only obtainable from the armour chest in the Volcano. That’d explain why I also had the Skystone Wand, but… well, I don’t remember visiting here any time in the past year.
As with any item that boosts both basic stats and the attack/defence stats, it’s difficult to tell what’s a direct boost by the item, and what results from the basic stats it improved; the boost in MDf likely results from the boost to Wil, but the MAt.40 is probably mostly the Robe. Either way, this is very nice gear for a caster. Better than the Skystone Wand, anyway.

Of Trolls and Dragons, again…

So, to test out my new gamepad, I decided to run through an easier area. How about the Abandoned Mines? See, I know there is more loot to pick up than I found the last time, including a certain Accessory…
I didn’t find it this trip, but I still got practice in with the controller, and, most importantly, got used to casting spells again.
The Troll fell just as easily as it did the first time I beat him; three Thunderbolts with Extend Spell active did for him, and… naturally, he failed to give out any loot.

Loot

Lucky Earrings [Accessory]
[Lck.24]
[All]
Beautiful earrings which bring luck.

Ambrosia [Object]
Nectar of the “Changing Flower”.
(Resurrection)

Dark Orb [Object]
Enchanted with dark magic.
(Activates Dark Breath)

Mysterious Clock [Object]
Glowing Sandglass.
(Heavy slow! 33% dest.)

The Lucky Earrings here give 24 Luck when equipped, but if you’ll cast your mind back, remember the Luck Talisman that tends to turn up in Underlevels 1 to 5? That gives you 32 Luck. To make matters worse for the Earrings, it turned up twice before I reached them. The Earrings have the advantage of not looking like they were pulled from Dragonball, but there’s still no real reason to use them over the Talisman; I’m bemused as to why they turn up in the lower areas, really, given a better Luck item is available earlier on. The only reason to use the Earrings is if you don’t have a second Talisman and want yet more luck.

Of the consumables, Ambrosia is a good way of reviving your friends. Unlike the Miracle Powder, it’s a one-shot item, but also unlike the Miracle Powder, it’ll fully heal your friend on resurrection, as opposed to only slightly healing them and doing nothing as they get one-shot by the boss that killed them initially. Kind of pointless if you’re adventuring alone, like I do.
Dark Orb is another spell-replication item, this time copying Dark Breath from the Sorcerer list, so it’s not really useful for me. It’s one-shot, unlike some of the other spell-copy items out there, but Dark Breath is a maintainable spell. This kind of item is probably why Warriors and other pure-melee characters get any MP in the first place, as there don’t seem to be any enemies that drain MP to knock people out temporarily, but I’ve never really tested them.
Finally, Mysterious Clock. Self-destructing on a third of all uses is a fairly high rate of breakage, but in this case the effect is pretty useful, as it will greatly slow an enemy down. Which gives you more time to dodge and fire spells, or hit it with clubs, or whatever you want to do whilst it walks as if wallowing in mud. I probably only find the Fairy spell items more useful as I habitually play Sorcerers or Elves, but… elemental damage can be replicated pretty easily and more conveniently for melee classes through weapons and Materials; you don’t have to watch your already-low MP, or stay prone whilst using an item, if it’s just on the weapon you use normally anyway. Methods of replicating Fairy spells – which mostly cause status effects – are much more rare, limited to a few odd weapons and these kind of items. There’s no item to add ‘Sleep’ status to your weapon.

In addition to this lot, I also saw some Material Evil, but as I wasn’t too interested in corrupting either my weapon or my armour right now, and had much more interesting things already in my inventory, I went on without it.
Another Princess Locket, too. That’s a shame; I swear that area is where I managed to get the Earth Tiara in my original game, but it’s just the locket – which you’ve seen before – and the Mysterious Clock that turned up this time. I was probably insanely-lucky to pick it up the first and only time I went down there, but I was still rather lost as to what to do with it… until I realised it lowered most of a certain boss’ damage to pitiful levels.

Item of the Day

“Holy… that’s a high quality prize. That Healing Amulet, that’s a really useful object, and it’s valuable too. Don’t you feel a little unworthy to carry that?”
“I worked for this. I got bitten by snakes and giant millipedes and undead bears and why are there undead bears in the mines? I’m worthy.“

Healing Amulet [Accessory]
[All]
An ancient amulet that heals the body.

The Healing Amulet is something else. Unlike the other Accessory I picked up today, this thing’s actually very useful. The Amulet is available from the Knight who loves his Fate Coins, for the cost of 20, which is fairly steep if you’re aiming for anything else, but it’s for good reason. I’m pretty lucky to find it, then; much like the Healing Robe, this nice little Accessory bestows a permanent healing effect for as long as it’s equipped, and without being locked into using the same piece of armour. So I can wear a better robe without innate Holy element that causes me to be torn to shreds by Dullahan or anything else using Evil, and still have the healing effect.

Spell of the Day

Extend Spell
[Sor, Elf]
MP: 32
Command: □ ∆ O □ X O
Increases the strength of a magical attack.

When you want to kill things quicker but don’t have any more powerful spells? This is the spell to go for. Extend Spell doubles your Magic Attack, hence doubling the output damage, for a short length of time; enough to cast at least three or four third-level spells through X, anyway. Not just one spell as the description suggests, unless you try one of the fifth-level spells through X. I’m not even sure it’ll last through the entire casting time in that case, though.
Works best with the elemental third- and fifth-level spells, in my opinion; the third-level spells are quick enough to work through X or the code, if you’re good, whilst the fifth-level spells really need to be cast via code to make the best use of Extend Spell. It does boost your output greatly, especially if you’re targetting a weakness.

Returning to Blaze & Blade…

…I am surprised to find my main character – Rebecca, the level 136 Sorceress – in the second portion of the Old Palace, rather than sitting at the savepoint before Dullahan, as I remembered, sulking about how her current robe, with the wrong resistances, keeps getting her killed by something she could easily beat earlier on.

She’s there with a full inventory of loot, to boot. Score. That said, after a little screwing around and trying to fight in the room I found myself in, and gaining a level, I realise that…

I really need practice using my new gamepad, and retreat back to the inn for now.

Loot

“Holy… that’s a high-quality prize…”
“Don’t you feel a little unworthy to carry that?”
“…well, no. I’m feeling more annoyed than unworthy; it’s a Runic Shield and I can’t wear it. It’s made for people with muscles.”
“That’s too bad. Are any of the other adventurers at the inn interested in them?”
“Nope. They’re happy with what they’ve got, even if I say I’ll give these away for a song.”

Technique Book [Accessory]
[At.15, Def.0]
[War, Rog, Elf]
Book containing the secrets of swordsmanship.

Runic Shield [Armour]
[At.0, Def.60]
[Rog, Hun, Elf]
It is engraved with runes to enhance magical power.

Wand of Runes [Weapon]
[At.29, Def.0]
[Sor]
Has magical powers through the runes engraved on it.

If anything is ‘engraved with runes to enhance magical power’, it ought to be something a spellcaster can equip. Elves aren’t good enough; mages want armour too. That wand looks shiny, but… well, it’s weaker than my current one. It looks nicer, but looks aren’t everything.
Not much in the way of good loot today, right? That’s really only to be expected as I think most of this would have come from lower down the tower, in the portions that any character can access early on. Pity. I had such hopes for the book, too.

But hold on a moment…

Item of the day

Skystone Wand [Weapon]
[At.40, Def.0, MAt.8]
[Sor]
A magical wand created from a meteor.

I’ve no idea where I found it, but it’s what I was using when I loaded up the save. Might even be included in the loot lists from previous explorations.
It’s an object lesson in why you shouldn’t rely purely on only the stats Blaze & Blade ever deigns to show you.
The Wand of Runes listed in the loot up there is… deceptive; my current weapon, up until working this out – the Skystone Wand here – has a higher attack value, but only provides 8 to magic attack. The Wand of Runes, whilst being less suited for attacking, adds 15 points to magic attack. This makes a bit of sense, as what’s good for your magic may not be good for hitting people over the head, but it’s annoying that any stat changes aside from attack and defence need to be checked manually; unequip weapon, check base stats, equip weapon, compare stats with base stats…

It looks nicer, but looks aren’t everything, hm?

Spell of the Day

Teleport
[Sorcerer]
MP: 80
Command: ∆ X O □ X□ ∆O ∆XO□
Allies are teleported to a safe place.

We bring you a break from our scheduled programming today in order to showcase the spell that saved Lioleus’ butt when she expected to find herself in a relatively-safe underground area on loading the game, and instead found herself high up a tower; Teleport.
This is a spell for lazy people, though it’s also a spell for people who didn’t bring a Rope of Return in the hopes of one more good item in the loot. This replicates the effect of a Rope of Return, but it costs MP and takes much longer to kick in… or has a code that I keep stumbling over. That said, it does save you a spot in your inventory, and as you have only ten slots open and shared with your equipment, you can see why this spell is handy to have around.
If you can pull off the code, it’s combat-usable. With X, however, it’s horrendous, and if any enemy can throw you around and interrupt your casting, you’re liable never to get the spell off successfully.

…so, yeah, I’m playing Spectrobes (2)

…which is, as I mentioned previously, what I suspect to be Disney’s answer to Pokemon.

Then I went off in a long tangent. I initially wanted to discuss Spectrobes specifically. There are a couple of things that bug me about it.

First, the game starts as if you already know the characters; it’s like tuning into the third season of Sabrina – with few exceptions, such as season-end episodes, and season-long arcs, it’s all episodic and features the same set of main characters. The events of one episode don’t affect the next until the season-end, at which point they’re all pulled together and are supposed to mean something. Otherwise the season went absolutely nowhere.
So Kallen and Jeena know each other, and say they ‘need to do well on our next mission’, which suggests they haven’t done too well in the past, which further suggests we ought to know these things, as they don’t say what they did, and generally references to some shady incident in the past are tackled more subtly in other games, or at least not brought up in the first few moments of the game. ARE we supposed to know them from somewhere?
Who knows.

Second… augh, battles are as awkward as I remember. For those who don’t know, Spectrobes is ostensibly a monster-training game; you raise a few monsters, called ‘Spectrobes’, through battle or walking around, they become more powerful, and predictably evolve at some point. There’s a wide-variety of Spectrobes out there in a number of different evolutionary paths, though I think it’s all ‘immature -> mature -> special’ with no branches for any of them?
In battle, you’re on the map accompanied by one or two Spectrobes, as are your enemies. This is probably sounding like Lost Kingdoms or Trapt right now; it is like them, in that you’ll be relying mostly on your Spectrobes to do the damage for you. See, though the main character can attack on command, this starts out doing 1 damage at pitiful range whilst the Spectrobes do 40~. In my previous experience, this didn’t really improve, even when I bought weapons. If an enemy can get at your character, you’re doing something badly as they can deal nasty damage, and you lose if you die.
So, awkwardness. Each Spectrobe has a specific attack with a certain range. However, they’re always located somewhere to the left or right of the main character, one on either side. Essentially, your attacks are launching from a non-centred position, which throws off aiming. Some Spectrobes – the starting one that can charge – does a bit of auto-aiming, but since it’s located somewhere to the right of you, aiming at anything to the left of the screen with that Spectrobe is next to impossible as it never wants to do that. Other Spectrobes might only ever attack towards the upper edge of the screen, or roughly where you’re facing, or have pitiful range in addition to not being the main character, making aiming a bit more difficult, and…
You probably get the idea. Trapt keeps things simple with non-centred attacks by making them stationary. Your traps don’t move from where they are unless you, yourself, move them. Lost Kingdoms, on the other hand, centres every direct-attack card on your own position – the Dark Raven swoops down from above and always passes above or through you on the way to the area it can hit, whilst the lizardmen are all temporarily summoned right on top of your own position and strike in front of you. You still need to aim, in both cases, but you either placed where the thing attacks from yourself, and know where it can hit, or the attack is always relative to the direction you’re facing.
Meanwhile, Spectrobes take some time to turn when you turn, and don’t always go where you want. Battles even a short way into the game get a little… tedious, to say the least.

Speaking of which, high enemy HPs. From the controls and the troubles in attacking, Spectrobes isn’t as much focused on dodging as a game like Monster Hunter is. It certainly shouldn’t have been, if it is. Monster Hunter gets away with high health on some of its monsters because they’re a test of how long you can keep yourself alive, dodging, versus how much damage you can deal in a given length of time. They’re endurance; even if you can dodge perfectly in the beginning, you’re going to get tired eventually. Deal enough damage before you take too many attacks and collapse, and you win. Fail to deal enough damage before Yian Garuga steps on you for the last sliver of health and you lose.
With the low variety in attacks on both your part and the enemy’s part – each Spectrobe can do all of ONE thing in a fight, and you can do two things, charge and attack – battles get just a bit tedious.

Oh, and… ‘3D on the DS, bleh’. The DS should stick to sprites and pixels; the contrast between how good character portraits in dialogue look, and how outdated the 3D environments and models look, is immense.  Dragon Warrior Monsters: Joker was the same; it looks ugly in battle by itself, and hideous compared with the pixel renditions of monsters in the DS Dragon Quest remakes.
There’s something odd here, though; Spectrobes tends to use both the top screen and bottom screen to display the environment, somewhat like what Animal Crossing does but without any view of the sky – it’s just the normal environment to the north of you. The DS Dragon Quest remakes do this too, but it’s slightly more useful there as you can rotate the viewpoint, and hence change what you see on the top screen.
Instead of considering the top of the lower screen to be the bottom of the upper screen, they put a blindspot there that’s approximately the same size as the DS hinge. Weird.

Don’t get me wrong. There are things I like about Spectrobes; the whole excavation thing, for example, and some of the designs of the Spectrobes. It’s just they’re not what the game actually focuses on.

So I’m playing Spectrobes… (1)

…which seems to be Disney’s attempt at answering and/or leeching from the success of Pokemon.

Not that Pokemon was the first or the only successful monster-training game out there; the Shin Megami Tensei series has apparently always been popular in Japan, but most of it didn’t arrive over here due to censorship-type concerns – apparently people get offended if the Judeo-Christian God is obviously the true final boss of a game. Come to think of it, what changed that they brought SMT3 over here? The success of spinoffs like Persona?
Persona’s another game that fits under a broad definition of ‘monster-training’, but that series is odd in that a character’s Persona determines a portion of a human character’s statistics, so the monster is really just a piece of equipment that can level up. Then there’s Digital Devil Saga, which completely dodged the whole issue of monster-training by making them plain ordinary characters; part of the whole ‘monster-training’ mechanic is that you potentially have a very large pool of monsters unlocked – by capturing them, or by befriending them, or… whatever system the game uses to justify more becoming available – and tailor your selection in order to deal with the enemies you encounter. For instance, putting a lot of fire-element creatures in a hypothetical party if you’re about to go somewhere flammable that you don’t really care about.

But then there are games like Lost Kingdoms 1 and 2 on the Gamecube – your main character could temporarily summon all kinds of monsters to fight for her… which was kind of necessary due to the utter lack of a direct attack on her… but could only summon the ones in her hand, drawn randomly from a constructed deck.
But is this a monster-training game? The cards the monsters are contained in expire as they’re used – use some once, or a certain number of times, and they’ll run out. Likewise, monsters that are summoned and walk around for a time expire when their health – the ‘health’ of the card, displayed in the same way uses-left are, as the card gradually burning to ashes – falls to zero, and it drops every single moment they’re on the map. If you pick up any cards in an area, you can replace cards in your own
deck with them, even cards that are already expired due to use, but if
you run out of cards in an area, you’re still screwed, so there’s that
element of tactics; it results from a limited number of cards in the deck, a limited number of uses or length of use for each card, and only limited opportunities to refresh existing cards by either replacing them, or restoring them with another card – heavily limited in the second game since most players worked out how to have a five-card ‘infinite’ deck in the first game. Running out of cards tends to be an automatic fail on any area with a boss at the end, as you can’t do anything to enemies or bosses when that happens, and you tend to need certain cards to navigate certain areas, so… strategy, yeah. And that’s without factoring in how certain cards are better at beating certain enemies due to elemental weaknesses/strengths, the area the card effects, odd things like how fast the attack happens or whether it ignores defenses… or whether it’s one of the rare and expensive card that lets you capture enemies defeated with it…
Additionally, cards you use in battle gain experience, and with enough experience you can duplicate the cards, or turn them into more (or… less) powerful cards – essentially, breeding and evolving from the Pokemon games. But a single card does not gain strength with experience – a card cannot become more powerful as itself.
So, is this a form of ‘monster-training’ game?

Whatever you think, then what about Tecmo’s Deception/Kagero series of games? This has somewhat-similar mechanics; you have a hero or heroine who can’t physically attack by themselves, who needs to rely on something external to defend themselves from attackers. In this case, rather than monsters (…mostly), they rely on traps; things like boulders rolling down stairs, or trapdoors in the floor, or wall-fixtures that breathe fire. In most games, the player needs to trigger these themselves through a buttonpress, rather than have them automatically trigger on enemies; one or two of the four games in the series had the option to add something to the traps to add that functionality, but it was apparently rather limited through either availability, or other things you could add to the trap instead.
In these games, killing enemies through traps nets you currency; between levels, this can be used to buy new types of traps, like invisible boulders or wall-mounted lasers. Depending on the game, buying certain combinations of traps or combining certain items would produce new, otherwise-unobtainable traps.
Is this some kind of ‘monster-training’ type of game? There’s definitely strategy in there – you can only ever have three different traps active in a room, one on the floor, one on a wall, and one on the ceiling. Certain enemies are immune to certain traps or entire kinds of traps, and have different patterns of attacks, so some types of traps are going to be more or less effective at hitting them in the first place, or at dealing damage even when they connect. It doesn’t just rely on luck, as generally the same types of enemies have the same attack patterns, and the games tend to warn you ahead of time of immunities. That didn’t always make sense, but served to keep you from using the exact same combination of three traps through the entire game.
However, I don’t think individual traps ever gain in strength – once they’re made, they’re fixed at the same level of power and always will be that strong. You can make a more powerful otherwise-identical trap, and you can make a new kind of trap that, say, electrocutes the enemies in addition to picking them up, but the original cage isn’t going to do more damage, ever. You’re not ‘raising’ your traps, you’re always replacing them. They still exist when you switch to something similar but more powerful, unlike Lost Kingdoms and its cards – if you ‘evolve’ a card, the card you evolved changes into the new card, and isn’t available for use any more unless you buy another version of it. This series’ ‘pool of experience’ is essentially the currency you get from enemies ,and rather than being specific to anything, it’s used by everything. You can still focus on developing a certain type of trap over all others, if you want, but you’re a bit more screwed in this game if you spend everything on something that just won’t work on an enemy; in Lost Kingdoms, each specific card-type – like the Dark Raven, or the Hellhound – has a pool shared only with other instances of the card, and in most games, experience is specific to one instance only.
So despite having similar mechanics, I think the Lost Kingdoms games are monster-training games, and the Deception/Kagero/Trapt/whatever series isn’t; being able to improve a specific monster or creature after using it for a length of time is just as important as the collection aspect, or the strategic aspect.

I don’t think I’m playing Spectrobes any more. I’m just musing about
the nature of monster-training games. I’ve probably missed out key mechanics somewhere, and I’ve deliberately kept away from most of the traditional monster-training/raising/taming/whatever games, like Monster Rancher, the main Pokemon games,  Jade Cocoon 1 and 2, and the majority of the Digimon-themed games (Digimon World Championship (DS) is a nice… Tamagotchi), in the name of keeping this from growing to proper essay-size. It’s fairly large as-is, really, so I’m glad I didn’t go into more detail.
I’ll… write about Spectrobes in
a different post, I suppose, for neatness, since this turned into a talk about something else. I still have things to say about it.

Miniview: Fathom (Browser-based)

I love:
…the atmosphere; the music, the surroundings, what the game looks like it’s a copy of. It’s lovely in the same way that Cave Story or Shadow of the Colossus are. Or, well, Eversion.
…the final area of the game, though I’m still not sure what on Earth happened.

I like:
…that boss. That fight is interesting on a couple of levels.
…what happens after that. It’s difficult to tell with only the small visible area, but pay close attention to the areas you’re exploring.

I loathe:
…the controls for the ‘main’ part of the game. Controlling your movement is difficult when you can only see clearly in the direction you came from, and can’t clearly see yourself, let alone what’s ahead.
…how the ending is a bit ‘…what on Earth just happened?’ Scratch that. See: the second point I love.

Verdict:
Go on, just play it. It won’t take long.