Let's Play Lennus II: The Apostles of the Seals!

[cypsiman2]

Episode 17: Stonefaced.

Fighting monsters when all your friends are stone statues is not the best time, but fortunately unlike the beginning of the game, we won’t be instantly murdered for trying to go it alone. The Shinymanders are also the very first enemies to actually poison us. Yay!!!

At long last I get to use my Anti Bottle. The game could deny me no longer!

Its weird how much smaller these monsters are from how they were in the first game. Must be a perspective thing. In any event, the Monja drops Earth spirits…which is honestly kind of weird because because unless you’re putting in some kind of cheat code or hack you can’t have the Earth spirit at this point. I’m still puzzled by this choice.

Here we arrive in the dank town of Dank. Immediately upon entry we see a medicine recharge station so we don’t need to pay any money for healing. Not that I have paid for anything at all up to this point anyway. My frugality will be paying off dividends soon enough, but not just yet. First thing’s first, we need to do the thing we do every time we go into town and start talking to people.

…Maybe that was a coincidence?

Okay, two is not enough to establish a pattern, everyone knows that!

Okay, enough beating around the bush; the curse that Efrem put on us has made it so that any person we try to talk to will turn to stone. Very very nasty and mean. And obviously she herself was immune to it. Because as she herself would put it, she is a mean and evil bitch.

At this point we may as well turn everyone to stone so that no one is left alone wondering why friends, family, and neighbors are now statues.

Petty theft just doesn’t feel the same when your victims are stone.

If 15 is the number of NPCs in town, then the rest must be inside the shops that we are conveniently not allowed into by virture of the convenient statues standing in our way.

The soldiers are not terribly talkative, so them turning to stone doesn’t change much in the end.

And that is everyone around who can be petrified.

Inside an empty house in the lower right we find this chest with a key and a letter. Let us read that letter and see what it has to say.

Looks like this Petro character was prepared for us. At least it seems like he’s on our side, so hopefully that pans out.

This bout of verbosity out of Farus is, as I understand it, a product of the fan-translation. I could be wrong though and if I find information to the contrary I will post a correction.

Next time, we go to the Temple of Purification to rid ourselves of the Stone Curse.

[RT-55J]

figures that everyone in the town of dank would get stoned

[cypsiman2]

Sorry for stalling once again on an LP. I can make no promises about how consistent I’ll be from here on out, but at the very least Farus’s friends will no longer be perpetually stoned.

Episode 18: Black Magic Woman

We travel northwest to the Temple of Purification and use the Temple Key that we’d obtained back in Dank to actually enter it. Efforts to sequence break will not work here.

The encounter set here is the same as outside of Dank. It occurs to me that since you are all alone for this sequence, its a good thing that the game doesn’t throw new enemies at you in the dungeon, since your ability to adapt to them is highly limited. Good game design.

Oh, and the Back-Kicker drops Light spirits.

I go up the left stairway first because I forget that I want to go up the right hand staircase first in order to get all the treasure most efficiently. I eventually realize my error and come back down and around to fix my mistake.

Up on the second floor we pick up Leather Shoes which give us a significant boost to our speed, which is all the more important when you have only one party member.

The next new enemy for the area is the Babaling, who is utterly unremarkable. He drops light spirits when you kill him, and that’s it. That said, all these enemies dropping light spirits suggests we may be using a lot of light magic in our near future…

By going out through a balcony, we get access to some new treasure that I promptly equip. It is at this time that I realize my error, go back down to the first floor, and take the right-hand stairs so that I can get the treasures I could not otherwise get.

With the bracer and middle sword, I now have new equipment to replace the Twin Arrows. As much as I extol the virtues of weapons that hit multiple times, right now having good defense is just a little more important.

I love it when I only remember to use a stat upgrade item after finding a second one. It really shows how on the ball I am.

The third floor is short and uneventful, featuring only some cool statues.

And now with the Noon Hat, all our equipment is fully upgraded. Now we’re truly prepared for whatever lies at the top of the temple.

And our final new enemy is the Disk Plover, who throws disks at us. They can do an area attack that is meaningless right now, and drop gold and air spirits upon defeat.

We reach the top, and as we walk across this long bridge, this green rotating triangle grows around us. It is imperative that you save before crossing the bridge. You do not want to have to repeat sections of the temple.

As we cross the bridge we run into Efram once more, who continues to be charming as usual.

When I meet Granada, I’m going to talk to him about his hiring policies. His minions seem way to eager to break rank and do their own thing. Or maybe Efram is an outlier?

Those Lovely Shoes she mentions? Those are the same Lovely Shoes that one of the NPCs back in Farus’s Temple mentioned during the opening tutorial. You absolutely want Efram to drop them. They are absolutely key to something very good; your game won’t be ruined if you don’t get them, but you’ll be thanking yourself for making sure you had them when you needed them most.

Efram attacks with every magic type, but they all do about the same damage. Her weakness is Light and if I’d been a little more diligent about raising my Light levels, I could be doing over a thousand damage to her per round, making this fight super quick and easy. Alas, I did not do it optimally so this fight’s going to take a little longer.

After a little snake-hair biting I heal myself and then defeat her. Efram drops every spirit in the game, as will many bosses from here on out.

Full disclosure, I needed to do the fight twice before she’d drop the Lovely Shoes. They have a high drop rate, but it’ll still take some effort to get them.

Like all self-involved people, Efram regards her own death as the greatest tragedy there is.

We cross the bridge and enter the purification chamber, where tiny dust particles fly off of us.

The curse is removed and our party members each have something to say.

Then we get warped out of the temple and that concludes this episode of the LP! Again, I apologize for dithering around so much, I will try and be more consistent from here on out.

[km]

Glad to see this return! Thanks for showing us through this

[cypsiman2]

I’m glad to hear that you’re glad I’m back! That encouragement really helps me keep going.

Episode 19: At Last, Thread Participation!

Now that people aren’t getting stoned by us in Dank, they will be able to talk to us. Some of them will even talk at great length. What this lady says about the Lovely Shoes serves as a hint for their true use.

The girl in the tool shop unfortunately has no useful information for us.

This poor family has lost a warm dinner because of us. We will do the right thing and leave without explaining that it was our bad.

This old man’s punning abilities have not been harmed at all.

This is precisely why I have been spending no money at all up to this point in the game. I need every coin I can get my hand on for the stuff that we’ll be able to buy. I like it, it rewards planning and helps to reduce the grind.

This lady seems a little disoriented. I’m sure its nothing to do with us turning them to stone.

Another guy who knows nothing about what’s going on. I think that first lady might not have been on the ball on how knowlegable the people in town are.

Nah man, you’ve never seen us before. No way, not ever.

At long last, after playing through multiple towns and dungeons with the same party, we can finally get new party members and thus thread participation can happen!

Our first option for recruitment is Mr. Clay Conrock himself.

The bottle spell is of particular note; what that does is it takes the healing from a bottle and spreads it over the rest of the party. It can be an absolute lifesaver, particularly in the end game where you’re facing the really nasty bosses that can bring down your whole party’s health quickly. Heal can remove status ailments, which can be useful when that does happen, but as has been observed, that doesn’t happen much.

There is a catch when it comes to Clay though; every time you go into a dungeon with him, he demands gold equal to 30 times his level. If you refuse to pay, he will leave with everything you’ve got equipped on him, including any bottles you might have on him for his Bottle spell. The only way to get those bottles back is to re-recruit him. So, he’s got some issues when it comes to actually using him.

Also I now realize that enemies around here drop earth spirits so that you can level up his earth spirit if you do recruit him. See, the game does know what its doing!

Buckle up folks, we are in for a ride!

Myra paints quite the picture, doesn’t she?

Myra wants less money, but she also will only stick around until we encounter and kill Gilray Zork. Gilary Zork, who no doubt had a grue eat her family. The monster. That said, there is a good reward if you do make sure to have Myra with you when you fight Gilray Zork.

Myra focuses on fire and has good stats for that.

And here for context is our current party members stats. Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to cast your vote as follows.

1. Who should I use in my party.
2. Who should get the boot.

I look forward to everyone’s votes!

[RT-55J]

I wanna see what happens when you kill Gilray Zork with Myra.

As for who to give the boot to… really hard to say. Joad, maybe?

[km]

I vote Myra too but I don’t know much about the current party members

[username]

I want to see if she lives up to her word.

[stavekoff]

i dunno who to drop for myra, whos been the least useful

[cypsiman2]

All right, votes have been counted up, now on with the Let’s Play!

Episode 20: Midgar’s Got Nothing On Nigel

With one vote for Joad and one vote for the least useful member of the party, I break the tie and give Zock the boot; his stats are the worst of the bunch and his fire magic is redundant with Myra’s. Don’t worry, Joad’s time to get the boot will come for him sooner or later.

Talking to people again after the first time elicits a little more information. For example, this guy credits Potentate Petro with bringing about world peace. Sure there are still monsters roaming the wilderness, but this is a JRPG planet, no amount of policy planning is going to fix that.

This kid is absolutely right. Nigel is the single biggest city of this era of JRPGs, and one of the biggest in any JRPG. Honestly, no small part of my wanting to do this LP was to show off how massive Nigel is.

Sadly there is no cosmetics option in this game, so there’s no fixing our fashion sense.

This poor family is suffering from more bad meal time antics, but note how these people give thanks to Petro for their food; for a man who has come into power only recently, he has definitely made an impact.

In anticipation of what lays ahead of us, I’m going to equip fire and gold spirits.

Everyone’s too busy turning to stone in Dank to remember to lock their doors. Or at least they used to be. Now everyone’s sobering up. In any event, after talking to the guards they get out of your way and you can move on to the next part of the game.

We trek across the land of Eltz, earning a few levels along the way (note Myra’s stat growth, it is quite good), before arriving just outside of Nigel. From this perspective the city has a very natural feel to it, very standout for the sort of place it is.

We now enter the slums of Nigel, which have their own theme. And so will each and every part of this city. They really went all out in making this city truly impressive.

Oh right, we’re in the poor part of town. The only part that’s going to impress us for the time being is how much squalor there is. Also petty theft, not necessarily entirely by us.

A conflab you say? Well I’m sure it won’t be that big a deal. After talking to this guy we go to the southeast to visit the tavern.

This place can get depressing.

I feel like we should petition Petro to do something about the poverty here. After all, the man came into power, he can be ousted if he doesn’t shape up just as easily.

No idea what’s going on with these two. Its not as though we go anywhere where the people talk like that. Not that I remember anyway. Also, no need to worry about them asking about my name. I think that’s what the second guy is doing anyway.

There is a mine that someone may or may not have dug too deep in. We’ll have to find out for ourselves later.

The food is terrible, but hopefully we’ll be able to get away from it before too long!

You do not want to buy this stuff. Trust me.

Warning, potty humor incoming as we go downstairs.

What a charming drunk.

Note that if you do use the toilet, the guys standing guard will charge you for it. Pass.

We go down to the next floor and…

Ha, jokes on you, I already think that all booze tastes like piss! This means nothing to me!

Going upstairs…

Between literal piss beer and actual explosives, I dare say this place is not up to code.

And yet it sells. The world is mysterious.

I tell him no…

But thou must.

And so we are escorted to the rope network, making me feel very nostalgic for the first game.

We get some previews of the other areas of Nigel as we make our way to the castle proper.

Well, looks like we have no choice but to see the man in charge. Next time, we get The Plot!

[cypsiman2]

Episode 21: Almost A Title Drop

First thing’s first, the theme for Petro’s Castle that I neglected to include at the end of the last video.

We enter Petro’s castle and I do a bit of a screw up here; there’s a light card to the left of the air card.

At last, we are now face to face with the man himself, Petro! Warning, he is a politician and as established back in Paladin’s Quest, politicians love to talk.

Farus is unfortunately very good at being bad.

Sounds like we’ve got a ticking clock on our hands. Lucky for us this is a JRPG and the clocks only animate during plot mandated cutscenes.

Strictly speaking we were all already destined to die, but not all at once so I’ll agree that this is kind of a problem.

Hence why Petro kept trying to contact us to tell us to leave them the hell alone. A shame about all the static interference.

Alas, we did, and so here we are, ushering in the apocalypse.

Is it Nosferatu who keeps flicking the lights on and off?

No, it is the man himself, Sir Granada, speaking to us telepathically. The presentation for this scene is unlike any other in the game. I like it.

Like any good villain, Granada enjoys a nice boasting session.

So yeah, Granada’s kind of a smug jerkface.

It figures that if an employee is a murderous maniac, the boss is probably not of the most sound moral character themselves.

It would have been disappointing if Granada had only one minion and we’d already killed them so early in the game.

Petro declares that this is not going to be a navel-gazing JRPG and that we’re to get down to brass tacks.

At least we now know what we need to do. And surely with this being such a super important quest Petro will make sure to supply us with all the money and information that we could ever need to see this adventure successfully done, right? Send his most elite guard with us to clear the path of all danger, yes?

If ever there was a “but thou must” moment, this was it. Not really in the mood to dick around, I say yes.

So yep, no official support. Thanks Petro, you’re a real pal.

And so we are booted back to the slums, now with a vague sense of what we are to be doing but no material support for that.

And how exactly does one get to Lejune without a commuter pass?

…

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I just think this statue looks neat.

Thus far I haven’t had anything stolen, but I’ll be sure to let you know if I do run into any thieves in town.

And in the inn, we find more recruitment possibilities. That’s right everyone, its time for another voting on who gets in and who gets the boot!

At 127 Power, Gond is by far the strongest character we’ve found, and his spear raises his attack power to a truly stunning 181. He even comes with the Peace spell to let us avoid weak encounters, so there’s definitely plenty to recommend this guy. Also, there is a very powerful weapon that he can equip in the not-too-distant future.

Bai’s power is almost as good as Gond’s, and his speed is far and away the best. Plus he comes with the Twin Arrow and you’ve heard me sing its praises plenty of times. Now, there is a downside with him; if we stay at the inn, he will leave the party and take half our gold. Now, unlike with Clay taking money every time you go into a dungeon, I never stay at the inn in this game so we don’t need to consider that at all with him!

So cast your votes everyone; do I recruit both Gond and Bai or only one of them? Note that Myra, as our new recruit, is exempt from getting voted out. Please let me know and I’ll see you next time.

[stavekoff]

kick the other guy out from before and give us bai

[cypsiman2]

Well I’ve certainly kept the thread waiting once again, haven’t I? The longer I wait before making a post the more harrowing it feels to come back but I’m making myself realize how nonsensical that attitude is and just get back to brass tacks and get this thread moving again because I have in fact progressed up to one of my favorite areas in the entire game and I am going to get this thread there no matter what.

Episode 22: Capitalism sucks

We open by kicking out Joad to make room for Bai. We also recruit Gond just to take all his gear for selling off. Now let’s take a look around the slums of Nigel and see if we can’t find ourselves a clue on how we might begin our hunt for the all-important seals.

Employment prospects in the slum are rather slim.

Its a pretty depressing mood all around. Petro, you think you might want to do something about the massive wealth inequality going on in your city? Because its pretty fucking bad!

This is what happens when you try to play capitalism’s game.

Hey guys, I think we’re going to need to go to the center of town to progress. Just a wacky hunch.

I think we met a guy who learned that lesson the hard way.

Get to it Petro, otherwise the guillotine’s coming with your name on it. I mean, its not as though you’re some kind of super magic warrior who could single-handedly put down a peasant revolt or anything, right?

Sounds to me like Master Jubal is the guy we need to talk to in order to progress the plot. But there are still other interesting conversations to have along the way before then, and I am here to give you all the full Lennus II experience.

Or maybe it is Preyzus that we need to talk to about getting the green card we need to leave the slums. At least we have options.

Put simply, this man is running a scam. If we try to use his green card, the border guard will recognize it as fake and refuse to let us through. That said, there is a use for this green card, but I will get into that when the time comes.

Wise words. Let us enter and see what Jubal has to tell us.

Its called the realization of the spiritual destruction that comes with the hoarding of wealth.

Now we have a plan; go to the mines, kill darul, get the glasses, have preyzus make a fake green card, something something, profit!

I have some suggestions, but it depends on how averse you are to setting stuff on fire.

This poor guy did not take my advise and wasted his money on a bad fake. Lesson learned, if you want the real deal fake, you need to go in the mines and fight demons.

A real class act for a real classy game.

Tara rents exclusively to young men who have been on the CW. As we have not, we will pass.

A priest in a JRPG? I’m sure helping him out will be nothing but good!

Do not give this man your money; he will just take it and do nothing with it and will just keep guilt-tripping you if you ever decline to give him more money.

The orphans at the local orphanarium are giving free geography lessons.

I wouldn’t count on it kid.

I’m sure the Black Cross Brotherhood is a perfectly legit religious organization that is not in the habit of abducting super genius athletes to turn into karate bugmen as part of their plot to take over the world.

We don’t have the glasses for him yet, but we do need to talk to him before going down to the mines for reasons that will become apparent.

Lady, Petro tasked me with saving the world and couldn’t even be bothered to give me a dime to help me along. He’s not doing squat for Preyzus.

Yep, we need to talk to Preyzus’s daughter to receive the Spark Lamp so that we can see in the deep dark mine tunnels.

It is literally just for this one dungeon and has no other use. Yay.

I don’t know what kind of dubious dealings could lead to failing eyesight and I feel like I don’t want to know.

But that’s enough of the slums of Nigel; next time (hopefully tomorrow) we make our way to the mines and get Darul’s glasses so we can get a green card and start accessing more of Nigel! See you then.

[cypsiman2]

Episode 23: Minecart Level, Wheee!

On our way south from the slums to the mines (which it looks like I did not screencap so you’ll have to take my word for it) we encounter a pair of new enemies, the Twocan and the Needle Bag. They are nothing special, you’ve fought their palette swaps, and you can see the spirits that they drop in the screencaps. Murder them with ease. Do note Bai’s damage on the third screencap; dude hits pretty hard.

The building on the right just has some of those animals that go swoosh and sway, so I can save on screencap space for this post. If you hadn’t gotten the Spark Lamp yet, this is how the game lets you know that you need to go back and find one.

We’re JRPG protagonists, we know nothing of wisdom and gleefully leap into danger for even pennies on the dollar!

Our first encounter in the mines is an ambush on an unsuspecting Crazy Ball and some Mine Demons. Bai’s physical attack is enough for the Crazy ball, while Myra’s Suzon does a great job softening up the Mine Demons for easy killings. Farus also gains a level with solid gains all around.

Enemies here can hit pretty dang hard, so don’t get careless and make sure you keep your health topped off.

How best to move on from this reminder of our inevitable mortality?

With a super happy mine cart ride! When the arrow prompts come up, press the direction that you want to go. It all goes by pretty quick, so be ready.

They keep talking about Darul going into a sudden rage; it makes me wonder if they’ve been more or less peacefully coexisting with him up to this point and something happened to change things.

If we had recruited Gond he could have equipped the Random Hammer, which as the name suggests attacks enemies at random. Which is okay when fighting bosses because there’s only one of them so all the hits go right at them. The random hammer can hit up to two times.

I also decide at this time to give Myra my Little Slasher and she does pretty good with it.

Farus’s defense is looking much better now.

These guys are streamers and both fire and lightning work wonders on them. Killing them nets us Air, Earth, and Gold spirits.

Momrick also works wonders on them, so no matter what party composition you come into this dungeon with, you should be able to find a way to take them down that works for you.

Having exhausted the treasures available on that end, we now go the other way.

We make our way through the dungeon, dealing with random encounters along the way…

…So. We just got the first seal. No one was guarding it or anything. It was just, sitting out there in the open for anyone to grab. I wonder if all of the seals will be this easy to grab?

Well, we got one of the McGuffins we needed from this dungeon. Next time, we will grab the other one.

[cypsiman2]

Episode 24: No Weeping for the Devil

What better way to open an episode than with a nice level up for Myra? Her stat growth heavily favors Speed and Wisdom, so she is going to be a fast and powerful spellcaster, not so much a tough physical fighter.

New enemy in the Terror Saurus, who can bite pretty dang hard, but not as hard as we can electrocute him with our Lightning attacks. He drops Fire, Gold, and Earth spirits.

The flute here is part of a long running side quest and we will be keeping our eyes out for the remaining instruments, wherever they may be. How a musician lost their flute in the depths of the mines, I have no idea.

We are on the right track.

I get the spear but decide not to equip it, seeing as defense is more valuable than attack, at least for right now. There are going to be weapons that will be powerful enough to change that.
The Highbottle meanwhile is going onto Myra.

In between finding Darul and getting into position to confront him, Yuma gains a level.

He is just so goofy looking! Honestly, he may not be a good guy (He is a self-described demon after all), but I get the feeling that absent Granada he’d just be an annoying pest to the miners and not murdering them all. Probably way more thought than the game designers put in, but what can I say? I’m me, overthinking is my game.

Unfortunately Myra does not have good offensive options for this fight. Which is why I’ve given her the High Bottle, so that she can keep everyone in top shape for this fight.

Darul mainly uses fire attacks, both single target and party wide. He also has a number of different poses depending on which attack he’s using, which I think is a pretty nice touch for this fight.

In the end though, he simply lacks anything that can do enough damage or otherwise incapacitate my party, so victory was only a matter of time.

With that we obtain his magical glasses from another land (Possible setting for a hypothetical Lennus III that we know will never be made?) and thus we have obtained both McGuffins that we have set out for.

But there’s still a little more to do before we leave the mines and get our Green Card.

Gaining levels, spirit levels, item buffing, but most important of all…

Back on the first floor, you might have noticed the distinct lack of guard rails. You can walk right off the edge and end up in this basement level that is full of treasure chests, many of which are Wild Boxes!

The Monster Box is a miniboss that drains health with its attacks and can also eat one of your party members to keep them from acting. Lightning is very effective, so as long as you have the appropriate element you can kill these guys for some very good money and experience. And with where we’re going next, we need the money.

So dang close to the next Gold spirit level on Farus! But as you can see, the Monster Boxes have good odds on dropping a Gold Card, making them even more worthwhile to hunt down and kill. Good stuff.

And in this basement we run into the final new enemy of the mines, the Spit King and its spawn that it spits out! Using Momrick to freeze it so it can’t keep flooding the battlefiend is a very good call. These guys also drop Gold Cards, making this a potentially very good place to farm for them.

And with that we are well and truly done with the mines and can now return to get our green card.

One travel montage later.

Ah, the Bromide. I remember in the Lunar games where you could collect a whole bunch of them. Nothing nearly so elaborate as that here, but we’ll get the Green Card either way so…

Truly we are class acts.

And with that we can now start progressing through to the rest of Nigel.

Even the game doesn’t know what the heck we’re going to do with the bromide, but we do know what we’re doing with the Green Card.

At long last we say goodbye to the slums and enter a very special area of the game that I have been wanting to show off since the start of the Paladin’s Quest LP. Yes, it is that big a deal. Tomorrow you will see.

[iguferon]

IM SO EXCITED FOR TOMORROW

[cypsiman2]

I AM SO HAPPY THAT YOU ARE SO EXCITED THIS IS REAELLY MOTIVATING! :DDD

Episode 25: Three Cheers For Capitalism!!

The moment we cross the border between the slums and Gloucester, we get the very jaunty, jazzy theme for Gloucester. Let the song of Nigel’s roaring 20’s roll over you.

- YouTube

Our first armor shop has some nice wares, but nothing too special. But if we head over to this perfectly ordinary non-suspect wall over here…

We get a secret Martial Arts weapon shop, with some incredibly expensive weapons in it! And this is not going to be the last shop to have such pricy but powerful options available to us! This is the reason why we have not been spending any money whatsoever up to this point. We need every single piece of gold we can get our hands on in order to be able to afford just one of these weapons at this point. But, said weapon will absolutely prove to be worth its weight in gold when we go out into the battlefield and I can show off the damage values we get out of it.

Going upstairs here leads to a pair of weapons shops with some very, very powerful weapons on display. Just take a look at those attack power increases. Over twice the attack power at least, very very impactful.

And we haven’t even gotten to the pricy shops, apparently! This district itself is divided into four precints, each of which is fully populated with NPCs and shops and everything. Nigel, as established, is huge.

Nah, I think I’d much rather put all my money into one ridiculously expensive sword instead of spreading it around much less effective equipment.

Another pair of armor shops, one of which features the Lovely Shoes; if we had not won a pair from Efram earlier, we’d need to pay 4875 gold for them, so we’ve already saved significant money.

No need to comparison shop, just buy the most expensive weapons, because JRPG weapons are never overpriced!

Hints of future locations to visit.

Hints of future people to meet!

And concrete directions for when we need to go to Resolute down the line.

And we still haven’t run out of more weapons and armors to buy!

Not everything is happiness and joy in the most expensive town in the world.

And now we learn how we are going to get the Second Seal. This fetch quest is a piece of cake!

And with that we now enter the second precinct of Gloucester, with even fancier purchases awaiting us.

We’ve learned some local lingo! And also to watch out for pickpockets. Its actually very easy.

Much like the Lovely Shoes, there are certain pieces of equipment here that we really want, and like the Lovely Shoes there are much better and cheaper ways to get them.

Now these are brand new for us; these rings focus on boosting stats for specific elements or attributes, while the canes can be used to cast the appropriate spells for free. Definitely something to experiment with if you ever play Lennus II. Which I highly recommend you do, this is a very good game.

The quality of one’s day is tied to how much cash you have.

If you say yes he’ll steal some of your money and run off. If you say no he’ll just run off. Save yourself some time and just don’t talk to him.

We don’t need this guy to be our tour guide. That’s what I’m here for, to be your tour guide in your journey through the wonderful world of Eltz.

Sorry buddy, not going to happen.

And this is the woman that we need to go buy that overpriced fake green card for. What would our reward be for doing this?

She sleeps with you.

Sorry Farus, I’m not spending 5000 G just to get you laid. I have much more important uses for that money. And this applies all the way into endgame. I am serious, money is going to be that important.

Talking to this guy will trigger a but thou must scenario, where we are forced to eat delicious hotel food. The horror!

We enjoy our food, listen in on our fellow patrons, go to leave and enjoy the rest of Gloucester…

…LIKE FUN WE’RE GOING TO PAY THAT!

So now we have to do a little minigame.

Trash bags drop down one at a time, you push them down off the bottom ledge, repeat until no more appear, talk to this guy, and leave.

And then we pocket 14000 G, netting us a huge profit.

And in the end, we were fully justified robbing them.

This post has gone on for a while, and we are not even done with the second precinct. I will be stopping here for now, but next time I will resume exploration of Gloucester and showcasing everything that this wonderous exemplar of capitalism’s glory has to show.

I will be working the next few days, but I will have my update ready for Friday.

[cypsiman2]

Sorry guys, this weekend is looking real busy. I don’t think I’ll be able to work on the update until Monday at the earliest.

[cypsiman2]

Warning, this update may run a bit long, but I’ve got a lot to show and we’re going to be introducing the next batch of mercenaries and I don’t want them to be divided across two updates.

Episode 26: Let’s Show Them What They’ve Won!

We are not going to Lejune anytime soon and that’s okay, because there is still so much to explore here in Gloucester.

Like this bookstore! Which has many many titles on its shelves that, in the interest of not making this entire update screenshots to show those titles, I will simply transcribe them down below.

Waling in Eltz - Catle of Nigel Press
Lennus: The Novel – Fujimi Books
A World of Magnificent Art: Volume One (Well, don’t ask me)
Wonderful Mister Gube
The Three Paths to World Conquest – By Zaygos
Official Lennus Guide, Shogakukan Publishing House
A Knight of Ecstasy – 14th Volume – Oswald
Nigel Communication
Super Nigel
Nigel Exposed
Nigel Magazine
Blitzkrieg! – Nigel

As we can see, there are some very colorful books on display here.

There is truly no greater tragedy then that books go unsold.

Some very valuable and thematically appropriate loots to be found here.

Some more internal politickings, and a new Air Card which I will remember to use later.

I’m going to be honest, I have never made use of the bank in any of my previous playthroughs. But, it could actually be useful to try it out and see if one could get a ton of money through this method. So, I’m going to put it to a vote; do you want me to try and invest in golden angels and see if I can play the market to get more money, or shall we pass on it and just play the game as straightforward as we can?

The pawn shop is for selling old key items that no longer have any use, but as far as I can tell the Eagle Flute and the White Shadow are the only items that he takes. I’ll have to double check at the end of the game and see if there are any other items that you accrue that he’ll take off your hands.

And now I remembered to use my cards to boost Farus’s magic.

I am feeling the friendship already!

We will be investigating the wounded soldier in due time, but right now I want to focus your attention on the stairway right behind us. We go down it and…

We very much want to get in, but how do we get an Amity card? Put a pin in that for the moment.

Checking the door right above the stairway leads us to this lady who I imagine is going to be important in progressing our quest. But that will be for later.

I’d consider that if booze didn’t taste like toxic sludge to me. I am a teatotler by choice as well as having it imposed on me by my malfunctioning taste buds.

All the other patrons in this bar are useless drunks who have nothing to offer, but Jenka here is our first Gloucester mercenary! We will be going over the advantages and disadvantages of all of them once I’ve encountered all of them. Suffice to say, all the mercenaries here are going to be straight upgrades over Yuma and Bai and as such those two will get the boot. Myra sticks with us, because we still haven’t done her special event yet.

Cute girls? Forget visiting Cameron, we need to see cute girls for only 100 gold!

…Dang it.

All the girls in this bar are all about trying to separate you from your money.

But there is one girl here who will give us something very useful in exchange for what she wants.

Being a Lucite means that Iris has perpetual shojo sparkles going on, something you’ll notice in her sprite if you recruit her and walk around with her. Iris is by far the most powerful mercenary available at this point in the game, and is meant to be balanced out by how expensive the equipment that she wants you to buy for her is. BUT! We’ve already gotten the Lovely Shoes for free, and there is a way to get all the other items at a very significant discount.

I also use the magic of having saved before going in that bar to save on my 1000 gold.

Most of them aren’t, but plenty are plenty strong!

In this bar are a bunch of drunkards, and we need to fight every one of them. They have super high defenses across the board, hit hard with single target attacks, and sometimes they pass their turn to vomit on the ground. All in all, they are pretty annoying and tedious fights and we have a bunch of them to do. Plus they only drop void spirits, so we can’t even improve our magic any. So what do we get for doing all this?

We now have ourselves the much lauded Amity Card that will get us some very valuable items!

Also we have a new mercenary option here. We’ll go over Bo’s merits and flaws at the end.

So we’re 2000 in the hole just getting into position to be able to play a quiz game.

…And I was going to link the music for this quiz game, except that it seems the account that was hosting them has been terminated. That…is very disappointing. The best tracks of the game have yet to come, so I’m going to need to do some searching around to find them, because you need to hear them. But that will be for a later post.

So here’s how this works; we get a series of multiple choice questions about stuff in the game, and we have five seconds to answer each one. You don’t need to get every question right, but I gleefully abuse save states to make sure that I don’t miss any because I can. There are a lot of questions to answer and this update is already running really long, so I’m just going to note that at the higher difficulties, they will give you questions that refer to later events in the game, so repeat players like me have an advantage here.

Our first prize is a solid weapon upgrade, but its not what we really want. Sadly, in order to reset the game, we need to walk on out of town, then walk back in. Fortunately with the Great Green Gate right outside, this is very easy.

You might think that we’re done now that we’ve completed all the easy, medium, and hard questions, but wait! There’s more!

That’s right, we now have special difficulty questions, so let’s make these 2000 gold we’re spending count!

And then we did. Now we have all of Iris’s equipment after spending a mere 6000 gold, saving us 14375 Gold. Yes, this was very much a diversion worth exploring.

Cheche tells the truth, he is not any kind of fighter. But in addition to him paying us to have him join, if we take him with us when we go shopping, he’ll haggle down the prices for goods by 20% or so. With how expensive stuff can get in Gloucester, we very much want Cheche buying stuff for us. I will be recruiting him strictly for that and not for use in battle. As such he will not be in the running for actual party composition.

There are other people to talk to in town, but at this point I’m going to be laser focusing on the remaining mercenaries and save the rest of the amusing dialogue for the next update.

In all honesty, Iris is just completely superior to Karrat in every way. If you weren’t able to afford Iris’s pricy hiring cost I’d consider him, but we’ve taken care of that. Still, maybe flashy guys are your preference.

We will need these for our final mercenary option in Gloucester.

Another mercenary where we need to pay fees before we even get in the door. Will she be as good as the last one?

She better be strong for us to have to go through this nonsense.

Yes, yes she is. Nikita is not just strong for this point in the game. Nikita is endgame level strong. She is our first martial arts character and martial arts weapons can do a lot of damage. Furthermore, she has an excellent selection of defensive and supporting spells, so even against an enemy that is strong against physical attacks, she can still contribute to the party’s success.

So, there we have it. Our options are as follows.

Nikita: Super strong martial artist with excellent support magic, no downsides.
Iris: Powerful light and wind magic, plus the non-elemental Gubo spell that can hit all enemies equally hard.
Karrat: Light magic, eclipsed by Iris
Jenka: Wind magic, also eclipsed by Iris
Bo: Fire magic, not eclipsed by Iris but Myra is already covering fire magic.

So, there you all have it. We have five mercenaries to choose from and two slots to fill. I have made no bones about who I’d like to have join my team, but if the thread wishes otherwise, I will go with it.

Please comment with which two of the five mercanaries listed above you would like to see join my party, and also vote on whether you want me to invest in gold angels or hold onto my cash and earn it the old fashioned way.

[RT-55J]

Nikita and Iris seem like good options.

No opinion on the stock market.