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In case anyone is interested, Genow (one of Bug Fables' lead devs) did a stream of Abomi Nation along with its lead dev earlier today (I believe I mentioned this game earlier in the thread when they first announced it was going to feature a Bug Fables crossover). This stream shows more of what the gameplay is actually like, and they also discuss how the crossover came about. The game is intriguing enough: it's a roguelike mons game, and according to the creator it's directly inspired by randomiser Nuzlockes in Pokemon. It's only out on Steam right now, but they do plan for console releases eventually. I definitely think this is a game I'll end up giving a go at some point, probably once it comes to Switch. Edit: oops, new page, heh. If you missed update 66, that's toward the bottom of the previous one.
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67: Chekhov's Howitzer Last time, we left off here at the upper exit of Rubber Prison. It feels odd starting an update with no music link, but there's no music right now, just silence with occasional blowing wind.  Let's take a quick look at our medals before we move forward. I don't have any special plans here, I'm just going to proceed with the same setup I've been walking around with, but I think it's worth reminding us what exactly that is.      Most of this should be pretty familiar. I've kept on a few of Leif's party buffs with the MP I didn't otherwise have plans for; this playthrough has definitely given me a better appreciation for them.  Anyway, let's head east and see what's waiting for us!  13 - It's Getting Scary!      How many times must I knock you down before you learn? Third time's the charm, eh? I don't have time to deal with vermin.  (Oh dear.)  What in the sideways Bee's stinger is that!?  Make it quick, and painful. Do not let anyone cross this door! (The Wasp King and his cadre just casually walk away.) Tch. Let's follow his advice. Quick and painful.   Click me for video! 76 - Battle Against Ultimax, Who Has a Tank Well. That is certainly General Ultimax driving a tank. Remember how back when we infiltrated the Wasp Kingdom, we saw a hangar with three bays and only two tanks in them? The third tank isn't missing any more! This is also probably what they attacked the Ant Palace with. (And let's not forget Vi called him "General Guy" earlier... there are lots of reasons we should have seen this coming.) The name of the battle music here is very on the nose: the wiki theorises it's a reference to the final boss theme of Super Mario RPG, "Fight Against Smithy, Who Likes Transforming". It's militaristic and intense, as you might expect; I like it, but it's probably my least favourite of this game's boss themes, there's just a certain je ne sais quoi to the others I don't get here. Let's see what we're up against here.  My horn can still pierce through... For Bugaria, I'll take this thing down!It seemed only fitting to let Kabbu do the spying here.  1 defence seems a bit low for a tank, honestly (you'd think it'd be harder to damage), but this thing is no doubt packing a lot of firepower.  We'll give Kabbu a quick relay so he can hit first. (Several of the spy dialogues suggest using Kabbu's horn attacks against its defence, which isn't a bad suggestion, but unless you've gone out of your way to avoid damage increases you shouldn't struggle to damage this thing.)  It seems only prudent to have Leif boost our defences, so let's start off with that.  Vi can attack normally for now as well.  As can Chompy. She'll stick with the Pretty Ribbon for this fight; the tank is nearly immune to status effects (it's immune to everything except Numb, which it has 85% resistance to, disabling strategies are a bad idea).  The tank starts off by launching a barrage of cannon fire at us! This attack launches 2-3 balls, each of which deals 4 base damage. Like many attacks we've seen, each shot chooses its target randomly.  And after that, it launches two missiles into the air! These are a delayed attack, hitting two turns later. (The tank's attacks on this first turn do not appear to be random. As far as I know, the tank always opens with a 3-shot cannon barrage followed by two missiles. Later turns use the usual weighted-random enemy AI.)  In this case, both missiles are targeting the centre position, where Leif currently is. They sometimes target different positions, though.   For now, we'll just keep doing normal attacks.  And have Leif relay to Vi for some healing. We hadn't taken that much damage yet, but staying on top of our HP isn't a bad idea, and we can set up some regeneration this way.  Chompy attacks too, of course.  Ultimax likes to summon allies, sometimes, instead of attacking.  The allies get to attack immediately, so it's not like he's taking the turn off. These Wasp Troopers have the same attacks as they usually do.  They have reduced maximum HP, though (only 5), as we've come to expect for enemies summoned during boss fights.  This is a great opportunity to use Kabbu's Under Strike! These Troopers stand very close to the tank, so we can kill them with piercing damage and get damage in on the boss while we do it. Vi's Needle Toss is also a good choice for this.  Let's take advantage of the fact both missiles are targeting Leif, and have him shield himself.   And since we've been blowing through TP, let's have Vi use a Crisbee Donut.  Chompy does her thing.   Are you feeling lazy, General? He decides to call allies again instead of doing something else. This time, it's a Wasp Scout.   He also launches more missiles. He does this every second turn (with one exception we'll get into later), so there's almost never a moment during this fight when missiles aren't present in some fashion.  The Scout gets to attack us immediately. (Mercifully, the scouts summoned here don't get to call allies themselves.)  And after the enemies are done taking their turn, the missiles fall. That could've been nasty if we didn't shield! (The missiles hit for 4 base damage each, which can add up if you're not careful.)  Once again, the missiles are both aiming at Leif. The summoned Wasp Scouts have 7 maximum HP, rather than the usual 15.  It's a waste of her charge-ups, but Vi can swat the scout in one hit, so let's do that.    The others will just keep hitting the tank.   ...Are you going to do anything else? (Let's note that Wasp Troopers and Wasp Scouts are the only enemies that can be summoned here, the other kinds of soldiers don't show up.)   The Scouts have their needle attack also, and can still inflict poison with it if you don't block.  We're making progress, I guess? Let's keep on the way we've been doing.  Vi takes down the scout.  Then attacks the tank.  And we'll have Leif block the missiles again. (Even better, we have Kabbu in the middle this time, so we'll get Favorite One activations out of this!)  Chompy makes with the chomping.  This is different! Like many other bosses we've fought, the tank has a charge-up sequence. It gains +2 charge-up, as well as Defence Up for a turn, and queues up a specific attack for next turn.   Missiles blocked.  Wait, it didn't fire more missiles? This is the exception I mentioned earlier: if it charges up, it skips launching missiles that turn.  Well, let's deal with this. Vi can attack as usual...   But we'll use Kabbu's turn to relay to Leif, then use Bubble Shield on everyone. (I'd rather spend the action now, since I have it, than be down one next turn.)  With the defence buff from charging, Chompy has a harder time getting through.  At the start of its turn... the cannon shakes and explodes? That doesn't look like a charged attack! Once you reduce the tank's HP below half, the cannon explodes at the start of its next turn. This means it can no longer use the cannon fire attack, and will start using a different attack instead (which we'll see soon enough).  This is the charged attack. It just tried to run us over! That looks like it would have hurt if we hadn't blocked! (This attack is 5 base damage, but usually has +2 from the charge-ups.)  We're doing well so far, so let's keep going.    Let's keep it simple, and just stick to standard attacks.  (Chompy doesn't have a choice about this.)  Here's a new attack! With the cannon busted, General Ultimax starts popping out to chuck bombs at us instead. He has access to all the status bombs you'd normally expect (which do 3 base damage), and also Spicy Bombs (which hit a bit harder, 5 base damage), just like the Wasp Bombers we've been fighting.   The missiles are also back, of course.  Here we go, they're targeting different positions this time! When they're spread out like this, I usually prefer not to shield against them.     For now, we'll just keep attacking. We're getting close to the end here...  Ouch! Run over again, and this time we couldn't prepare for it! The animation's different when it doesn't charge up beforehand (spinning out instead of blasting off with blue flames), but this is the same attack, dealing 5 base damage. It hurts.  The tank's definitely on its last legs now, though. Can we finish this?     Not quite! We've dealt with the tank, but we still have to contend with the general! (And the missiles are still incoming, let's not forget about that.) This can actually be a nasty surprise, depending on how you've paced this fight. If you've had a close fight and are low on HP and/or have a downed party member when you finish off the tank (perhaps assuming the fight will end so you don't need to heal), you can end up in a pretty bad position here. Especially if you used your last action of the turn for the finishing blow, and Ultimax gets to hit you before you can respond in any way. The one silver lining here is that the tank's explosion will kill the summoned wasp soldiers, if any of them are still around.   Kabbu relays to Vi so she can heal him with one of the many Crunchy Leaves we've been picking up. (Obviously, he could have healed himself, but Vi has the Heal Plus medals on.)   Meanwhile, Leif and Chompy start in on the general.  Um, oops? General Ultimax's flailing attack is usually something of a joke, each hit's only 1 damage... but Vi has -2 defence thanks to her Power Exchange medals, and I'd forgotten to heal her (I noticed Kabbu was low, but not Vi!), so this is easily enough to KO her.   And here come the missiles! (Vi's already unconscious, so I guess in a sense she gets to dodge hers? It's a strategy, I swear!)  We've been in worse positions than this, though. All the general can do now is flail at us (not quite helplessly, as we've seen, but it's still not nearly as intimidating as the tank was).   A quick Pep Talk and Vi's back in action again...  And one Hurricane Toss should be enough to end things from here.  There you have it! That's the Chapter 6 boss, Ultimax Tank. We saw pretty much everything it can do there, aside from variety in the bombs; it can be a bit more dangerous if it spends more time firing the cannon than calling allies, but this wasn't too atypical. I like the concept of this fight a lot, but in practice it tends to be something of a paper tiger (ironic given it's the only thing we fight that isn't paper-style sprites), hence why I chose to fight it this way instead of using more sophisticated strategies. I really think it should at least have had more defence; 80 HP and 1 defence really isn't enough to stand up to the kind of power we can typically output at this point in the game, and definitely doesn't feel tankish enough to me.    Knock it off! You already lost!   T-This isn't normal! That Wasp in the kingdom said everyone'd gone nuts... Could this one be controlled too?    ...I guess that's one way to deal with this problem. That king employs such distasteful tactics. Let's leave this poor guy to the Ant Kingdom. Indeed. Let's secure the area so reinforcements can come in. Then, we'll have to give swift chase! I will send the signal!We fade out briefly... 39 - Drums of War  (The cavalry are here! That's a lot of people. It's especially tricky to tell who's saying what in this cutscene, even ingame when the sprites move. The first speaker while it was dark was obviously Mothiva; this is Gen talking here.) .png) Yeah. It's gonna be smooth sailing from here! We cannot celebrate yet. The Wasp King is brutally powerful. He's gonna pay for bruising you! Muh muh!  Are we sure it's alright with everyone having come? Queen Bianca has gracefully offered to protect the Ant Kingdom while we fulfill this mission. Woah, I thought she was a super pacifist! Can't reason with a mad bug. None have returned from it. We have no legends, no way to know what's inside. But if we do not face this challenge, we do not deserve tomorrow's freedom! Let us pray to Venus and charge! What a magnificent rally! I'm pumped up! Hmm. She's come far, hasn't she? Even you were moved, eh Leif? Time to kick some butt! It's time... Bugaria will be saved today, but I too will reclaim my people. Let's go! Idols first! After another brief fade-out, we regain control. All our explorer friends from the Ant Kingdom are here now! ("Drums of War" keeps playing here now; the name is a lot more apropos here than when we last heard it in the Bee Kingdom security check.) There's a new general banter here: Giant's Lair is up ahead. Is there really no info at all? None. It had been sealed even before Elizant arrived, they say. No wonder it fell with one swing. Ancient doors are super high quality. We think the king's just a brute.Also, before we go talk to everyone, there's a shared banter for everyone who's shown up: Everybody's here! Yeah! We're good enough, but this is great! It's very reassuring. Heh. We've made good friends. We cannot afford to lose, for all of their sakes!I've always enjoyed this moment, it's nice seeing everyone again and definitely helps set the mood as we move into the unknown. Also, before we forget, let's take a look at those achievements we just earned.   As expected, we get one for completing the chapter, and one for defeating the boss on Hard Mode. One chapter to go!   Let's head all the way west and then work our way back across.  The soldier here doesn't have much to say. She does get a different banter, though: It's gotta be rough working so close to the Giant's Lair. We can only hope no monsters ever come out...Let's head back east now.  First up, we have Team Maki here with Elizant.  Yin is eloquent as always.  That jerk messed with the wrong family!Kina is aggressive as usual, though at least this seems a productive direction for it.  Even before the Wasp King struck... I'm glad I gave you a permit. S-Sir Maki...! I told ya I was worth like 4 Bees! We missed that whole thing. You'll have to share the tale over some food when we're done.Heh, that's right, Leif wouldn't have seen that conversation.  ...But thank you, for escorting me through the Forsaken Lands. Thank you, our Queen, for making the journey. It's thanks to you we got the submarine. It was my duty and honor. I hope you will escort me once more. Aw. That's nice to see.  Next up, Team Mothiva.  You're too decent to tag along with Mothiva. That's for me to decide. Look. Whatever. Just beat a bunch of baddies up! Hah! That's the plan. Break a leg. B-Break a leg? ...It, uh, it means good luck.Heh. (I never have quite gotten that expression, honestly, so it's fun to see the game poke fun at it.)  Have you chosen to laugh just because? I'm just delighted. We're going to be famous! The books will speak of the great Mothiva's valiant role of saving Bugaria! Yah. In a little corner next to our portrait! We'll see indeed. But today, we are comrades.Mothiva is still Mothiva. She's never going to change.  Up here, we have... a new shortcut?   Very well. Please talk to me if you ever decide to go.This is the final Ant Mines shortcut, and it's unlocked for us automatically. Also, there's a different banter for this soldier: T-They should install a fence here! What a terrifying post! Or ask a Hive soldier! At least they can fly!Haha.  Next up, Gen and Eri.  Chin up, Gen! Remember when we set up that bomb trap?.png) Heheh, yeah. That was pretty cool. We'll be counting on you. Oh gosh. No pressure, right? Well, just a bit of pressure. Let's do this, Sis!It's always nice to see them. (I've been told Gen and Eri won't appear here if you haven't completed their sidequest yet, though I've never verified this for myself.)  And here we have Levi and Celia.  We'll pull our weight this time, and repay the debt! It was nothing! You helped us protect Neo, after all... Hey. I'm a bit nervous... We're a bit nervous too. But Levi's super pumped up, so I won't let any fear show! That's what true courage is, facing our fears! Let's bravely face that tyrant and save the kingdom!I do enjoy their camaraderie. (Like Gen and Eri, I'm told Levi and Celia won't appear here if you haven't completed their quest.)  Finally, we have Queen Vanessa.  This is all she has to say, though.  And there's one last guard by the now-open entrance. The game's very clearly telling us to head inside, and we really should... but, awkward as it is, I'm going to break the momentum a bit here because there's some new stuff we can catch up on first and I'd rather do it here than later.  Let's make use of the shortcut here and go see Artis, for one thing.    Above us here is the emblem for Rubber Prison. We've finally completed all the paths here.  Let's get out of here.  As expected, Artis has a reward for us.   ... Was it too challenging for ya? You deserve a reward. Here, take this! Come back later when you've bonked some extra hard heads with that Medal, will ya? For defeating Ultimax in his tank, we get a second copy of Antlion Jaws. While these only affect normal attacks, they can still be pretty useful, and with two of them there are some shenanigans you can get up to by stacking them. The same glitch in the combat system that gives us extra damage when combining skills that "ignore 1 defence" and Defence Down works with these: if the enemy has at least 1 defence (before debuffs), these medals trigger independently (so, for example, if you put both of them on Kabbu and attack an enemy with 1 defence, he'll do 2 more damage than expected, or 3 more if it has Defence Down). You can also play fair and just use them against enemies with defence, of course. But you're likely to see unusual numbers now and then when using them even if you're not deliberately trying to take advantage of it.  Right. Back to Rubber Prison now. 75 - Rubber Prison Rather than head back in this way, we're going to take the elevator down and head in the main entrance.  We must now retake the Queen's trust.Because now that the Ants have regained control of the facility, there's lots of new dialogue to see! We'll make a quick sweep through and see what's going on here now. It's back to normal for the guards. I must commend them! I'd need a vacation, at least! Paid vacation! They've earned their hard-worker fame, for sure.We'll see this banter for most of the guards.  There's not a lot to see in the first few rooms, though this area's different now. For one, the Venus bud that was in the cell is no longer here. And also, the Ruffian inside the cell here can still be fought, but it's the only active enemy in the entire prison now (and therefore the only way to fight Ruffians after finishing the dungeon).  Also, there's a guard about now, telling us they've managed to get the prisoners back into the cells.  There's another guard in the cafeteria.  She's not alone, though! If we go through the room again, there's another one back here behind the cannons.  I don't think I buy this explanation, but, well, at least there theoretically is one?  East of that room, the cellblock is all closed up now!  We can flip the switch and open them all, though...  Cenn and Pisci are still here.   Like before, they still aren't particularly inclined to leave.   Neither is this Burglar, though he's a bit more upset about it. (I'm not sure I understand how this works, though... why would they extend his sentence?)  On the next level up, there's now a guard checking out the broken bridge.  How are we supposed to reach the office now!? I can't fly!Yeah, that could be a problem until they get the bridge fixed.    Incidentally, we can absolutely reach the office, if we drop down from above and then start flying in midair. (There's a short lag between when Vi's upward momentum and Leif's, weirdly, you can see how much further he fell than her before levelling out.) There's nothing interesting to see or do in there, though.  By the entrance to the gym, we can see a guard having a conversation with a Burglar.   Are you serious!? Community service doesn't pay well at all!Heh. So prisoners can earn berries, huh. Cheap labor for the good of those they've wronged. Well, something good's come out of villainy...Our party is surprisingly positive on the subject of prison labour...  We can open this gate and head into the gym, too.  There are a bunch of people to talk to in here, actually.  The guard here isn't very enthusiastic.  Huh, what? You're explorers? Uhh... I said nothing. I'm innocent. I swear!This guy has a unique banter, too. Didn't we see this one in the Bandits' Hideout? Hm? We didn't turn any of them in, though... Wonder what he did to end up here...This is actually a good question. I guess the ants have been independently arresting a lot of the bandits?   And you know what? This is much better than I imagined. I wish I was arrested sooner.This guy, meanwhile, is very positive about his situation. He gets a banter too: S-Someone who enjoys prison!? Well, there's free food! How could that possibly be a good enough reason!? Uh oh. Kabbu's having a crisis...Wouldn't be the first person to view prison as an improvement over their prior circumstances; guaranteed regular meals is unfortunately not something everyone can take for granted.   Also, if we go through the rigmarole to get up here again, we can be rewarded with even more dialogue!  Poor fellow. What should we make of this? Prison's rough for the weak villains, huh. Sadly, not many think about that before ending up here...I guess there's something to that, but also, it's important to keep pointing out that the expectation of mistreatment by other prisoners shouldn't be part of the punishment.  Also, what's this?   Um. So love can bloom between chaos and order. ...Let's go.Honestly, I'd rather not get into the power dynamics that would be involved in a relationship between a guard and a prisoner (and I suspect the game doesn't really want us to think about that either). Kabbu has the right idea; let's just go.  There's a guard we can talk to here on the way to the security room, but she doesn't have much to say.  There are lots of people here now.    The situation here still doesn't seem great, does it. The ants are still going to have their work cut out for them.  At least if we dig back into the control room here, we can see everyone who was trapped did manage to get out safely. (That was them we just talked to.) Also, there's a new banter here and in the main security room: A machine that can show what occurs in another location! Incredible! It's impressive, but kinda creepy. Imagine a room where you can see everywhere at once. That's just Venus with eyes, right? ...Well, yes.Were you expecting to get musings on the subject of a panopticon? This one's a bit weird, though: you'd think you could see it any time after activating the computer, but I'm pretty sure I checked before and didn't see it. Anyway, that's the last of it. There's a lot of neat dialogue in here, and I think it tends to be pretty obscure (since a lot of players don't bother looking for it) so I wanted to make sure I showed it off. Now, let's get back to the bridge... 39 - Drums of War Let's go in.  When we try to go into the Giant's Lair, Queen Vanessa interrupts us. She didn't have much to say before...   I think the Wasp King is hiding something. The source of his strength... It probably lies in his crown. Huh? How's a crown gonna pump you up? Before I explain, I want you to have this. 16 - Lost Treasure  What is this amulet? It feels so... warm. This is the Wasp Kingdom's royal heirloom. My mother gave it to me, and told me to protect it no matter what. Queen! Is it really alright for us to have this? Of course. See, this emblem's been protecting me all this time... I don't get how this is gonna help. This amulet's magical. I don't know how, but it always protected me against the Wasp King's flames. I am not a fighter, but you will most likely need this more than I do now. We will safeguard it. It is an honor to be trusted with a royal treasure! Be safe. And beat the heck out of that usurper!Well. That was a nice surprise! Maybe with this, we'll stand a chance after all.  She returns to her previous position and the game gives us back control.  Now, let's actually go in.  77 - Chapter 7: The Everlasting Sapling ...See you next time, in Chapter 7. Explopyro fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jul 13, 2022 |
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Jul 13, 2022 05:55
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Jul 13, 2022 06:55
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welp, here we go.
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Jul 13, 2022 07:52
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Explopyro posted:
"Sorry, Neville." Explopyro posted:
Nobody knows for sure but the main theories are either that it was unlucky to tempt fate by wishing someone good luck so you'd wish misfortune on them instead, or that it was a complicated Yiddish-German pun - the Yiddish hatsloche un broche, 'success and blessing', became the German Hals- und Beinbruch, 'neck and leg (bone) break'.
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Jul 13, 2022 09:37
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That tank looks like bug spray. I'm surprised they didn't use spray as an attack instead of just normal cannons and missiles
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Jul 13, 2022 12:32
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FYI, I made a few minor edits to the post. Nothing necessitating a reread, the main thing was I'd forgotten to mention that the tank exploding kills any summoned minions.Quackles posted:welp, here we go. Oh yes. You have no idea how much I've been looking forward to this. Black Robe posted:"Sorry, Neville." I didn't see that parallel until you pointed it out, but, um. It fits. But what a juxtaposition. I don't generally associate murder hornets with those books (but, you know, nowadays... maybe it would be an improvement). Black Robe posted:Nobody knows for sure but the main theories are either that it was unlucky to tempt fate by wishing someone good luck so you'd wish misfortune on them instead, or that it was a complicated Yiddish-German pun - the Yiddish hatsloche un broche, 'success and blessing', became the German Hals- und Beinbruch, 'neck and leg (bone) break'. This actually makes sense! Thanks. Slaan posted:That tank looks like bug spray. I'm surprised they didn't use spray as an attack instead of just normal cannons and missiles This never occurred to me, but that would have been a lot more terrifying. (I think it's probably the red colour? A lot of bug sprays come in red packaging, don't they?)
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Jul 14, 2022 21:46
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So, um, this is not an update. It was supposed to be: I have the footage recorded, but I've come down with something Covid-adjacent (tested negative but I feel pretty lousy) and just don't have the energy to work on capturing/editing screenshots and writing the update right now. I will get to it when I can but it might take me as much as another week; I feel guilty for the delay, especially given where I left things last time. Thanks in advance for understanding. In other things, I recently have become aware of this tool (thanks, Bug Fables Discord!) which might be of interest to people messing around with the randomiser mode. It attempts to deduce your seed and the likely locations of medals based on information you give it about what you've already found. What I don't know is the mapping between its order and the actual ingame locations, so I suspect there's going to inevitably be some guesswork involved still, but it's pretty neat regardless. I'll edit a link to this into the post about randomiser mode so it'll be available to anyone who reads this in the archives later.
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Jul 25, 2022 19:18
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I just received an email from makeship saying that my Kabbu plushie is on the way.
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Jul 26, 2022 02:39
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I got one about the Vi plushie on Saturday, and Kabbu yesterday. Nothing about Leif yet. I find it a bit strange they're all apparently being sent out in separate shipments, but maybe that's just the way they do things?
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Jul 27, 2022 00:31
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 Kabbu says Hi!
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Aug 4, 2022 01:58
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68: What Can Eternal Lie (Part 1) Right. It's been a while; my apologies for the delay. Covid utterly destroyed my energy levels and it's been difficult getting back into the mindset to work on this. Entering the Giant's Lair marks the beginning of Chapter 7, and with that comes a new title screen! It's not a big change, but Jayde has now joined us (she's right behind Kabbu). 78 - The Giant's Lair (Recommended listening!)  ...What's this? As soon as we enter, we immediately get both a discovery and an achievement. (Thanks for the interruption, game.) Let's see what those are.   Very mysterious. This is more or less just a summary of what we already knew.  Also, this is the achievement we got. It's for finding all 50 Discoveries. We'll have to check in at the library at some point for our final reward, too.  Let's also take a moment to appreciate the music in here. It's very different from anything we've heard so far in the game; between the general gloominess and all those discordant sounds woven through, it is very good at setting the mood. What is this place? What is this feeling? It's as if I was carrying many boulders... Yeah. It's some sort of violent aura. I'm fine. Aren't you guys overthinking it? B-But it IS kinda creepy in here...If we check the banter, our team are definitely picking up on it too.  Let's head in and look around.     So far, it just looks like there's rubbish everywhere...   Get too far in, though, and a voice stops us.  Oh, it's Venus.   ...Listen, this is very important. I've been keeping track of your travels through my buds... But this is my limit. I can't help you past here. You'll be on your own! We can feel some strong bloodlust coming from the area ahead... Disgusting, heinous creatures roam that area where giants lived... They are stronger than anything you will find in Bugaria. I can't fathom why they've never tried crossing over. The Roaches braved such horrors just to hide the Everlasting Sapling!? Makes sense, right? It's the ultimate challenge! This isn't a game. I'm serious! The Wasp King seems determined to go on ahead, beyond reason. Even though it's dangerous, we can't risk him succeeding in his quest. Yeah. We can't let him roam around. For everyone's sake. Oh, please be careful. I've grown so fond of you all... If you need any healing, just ask me. I really won't be able to help later. That's one hell of a warning from Venus. We should definitely take this seriously (though obviously it's not going to stop us going in!). Also, I have to admit, it always amuses me when characters say things like "this is not a game".   Once she's done talking to us, Venus poofs away over to a spot near the northern wall, where she'll stay.   She gives us the usual options of healing and chat. Let's see if she has anything else to say first. I wish I could help you more, but my roots can only reach this far. The Dead Landers are extremely powerful! Please flee if you must!Another version of the same warning. Also, it's good to have a reminder that we can flee battles, that can be an important tactical option sometimes and it's easy to forget you have it. (Putting on the Quick Flea medal here might not be the worst idea, either.)  We're still injured from the boss fight, so we may as well take her up on the healing too. Here you go, some Venus special healing! Please come by again, I'm always up for a chat. All right. We're as prepared as we're going to be (thanks, Venus!). Let's head deeper in.  We're also presented with a save crystal here. And that purple fog looks pretty ominous...  Nothing for it, though. In we go.   Uh... what is that?  E-Eeep! What the HECK is THAT!? It's monitoring the area. Looking for things to... devour? I would prefer if we never learn what will happen if it sees us... Um. So. This big eye is here. It sweeps back and forth, with the area it can see represented by the bright area. (Is the eye actually emitting light? It looks like it...)  Let's just check out where it isn't looking?  There's a spot we can dig here.    It's our penultimate Crystal Berry! We have only one more to find. Let's just take that.  Right...   I wonder if the Crystal Berry is here in part to remind us that we can dig? You can avoid being seen with good timing without it, but burrowing underground is even safer (it can't see us even while we're moving, despite the dust cloud).  Um. What is this thing? Is it some kind of lamp?  ...No. It's alive.  78 - The Giant's Lair This thing is an enemy! That doesn't narrow down what it is very much at all. (Also, the music doesn't change, the area music continues to play when battling enemies here.) Let's try to find out what on earth this is.  When we pressure it, it burrows to hide. It won't expect our ice magic underground! This is called Dead Lander Alpha. It looks like some kind of cross between a stick insect, a lamprey, and a desk lamp? (If you look closely, it seems to have some kind of mouth at the end of each limb.) I don't even know. Even without seeing it do anything, the stats make it more than obvious that the enemies here are a big step up from everything we've been fighting so far.  For now, we'll just start off attacking.  When Leif attacks, we can find out it's weak to ice! That's interesting. (Aside from the fact it's useful to exploit, the only enemies weak to ice are plants, fungi, and the Roaches' constructs in sand mode... I don't know if that tells us anything or not.)   Vi and Chompy finish hitting it. Let's see what this thing does.  Ouch. This is its most straightforward attack, some kind of headbutt or bite thing that deals 6 base damage. Whatever they are, these guys hurt!  We didn't make that big a dent in it, either. We could use some of our stronger attacks, but good TP management is quite important here (unless you've been investing a lot of levels in it, you can't really afford to go all-out in every fight).    For now, I'll have Vi heal Kabbu back to full; pacing ourselves isn't a bad idea, and we'll get the TP back this turn from TP Core.  Chompy, at least, doesn't seem intimidated at all.  Ouch. Missed the block this time. (These things definitely have other attacks, which we'll see soon enough.)  This time, it stays underground after attacking. Their moveset doesn't change while burrowed, and there's always a chance they'll go underground after attacking regardless of the move they choose. We know how to deal with this, of course.  Leif can get them out quite easily. (Of course, if Leif's out of commission, it's much more of a pain. Vi and Kabbu can only hit underground enemies by spending TP.)  I have an action to spare, so we'll have Vi heal Kabbu again. We'll get the TP back after the battle from Victory Buzz, and we can still finish this enemy this turn.   There we go.  Whatever the hell they are, Dead Landers are worth a lot of EXP!  Right. That's that dealt with, at least. (Also, uh, why is there a huge chasm in the floor with a knife hanging over the edge? What on earth happened here?)  I should probably have just flown out over the chasm, but I decided to double back instead... 79 - ??? (Recommended listening!) And, uh, this happened. This is what happens when you get spotted. Scary music starts playing, and some kind of hand (?) comes from above and tries to drop one of these things on us. If you manage not to have it land on you, it'll give chase, and they're pretty fast too. (The only mercy you get is that the eye beam goes away while it's here, so you don't have to deal with multiples.) I have a lot of questions.  So, uh. What's this one? It's got a spiky metallic-looking shell, and some kind of enormous crab claw? What kind of organism has five limbs? (As before, the ambient music continues playing through the battle, but this time it's "???" which is substantially more stressful. That song is basically this enemy's theme.)  We must block those spore missiles, but that claw cannot be ignored either! Say hello to Dead Lander Gamma. These things are pretty terrifying, those are outright miniboss-level stats and some of their moves are seriously nasty. The game comes right out and suggests running from them (and it's worth considering). We're not going to, though.  Let's start out by having Leif cast Break. We've got to deal with that 2 defence somehow.    For now, we'll just start off with normal attacks. We want to see what this thing can do, after all.  This claw strike is the least dangerous attack they have, at 6 base damage with no added effect. As much as it hurts, I'm usually pleased to see it rather than something else.  We could play it safe, or we could get more aggressive here. That last turn didn't make much of an impact on it...    For now, I'm inclined to caution. We'll have Vi heal Kabbu back up and otherwise conserve our TP.  Chompy does the usual.  Thanks to First Plating, this attack doesn't do anything to Vi. But this one's a bit scarier. The beam deals the same 6 base damage as the claw, but it inflicts sleep and can be tricky to block with how fast it comes out.  Okay, enough messing about, let's get more aggressive.    Vi's Needle Pincer is a solid choice against these, since it goes right through their defence. Depending on how the numbers work out, Hurricane Toss is also a good option, or even Fly Drop (which was a popular way to fight them before it got nerfed).    Unfortunately, I miscalculated here and didn't end up doing quite enough damage to kill it...  Which means Vi ends up eating a claw to the face. Ouch. That definitely could have been worse, though.  It only has 2 HP left! I could easily have finished it last turn with something like Heavy Strike or Frigid Coffin.  Regardless, we can finish it now.  At least these are worth a lot of EXP! That's enough to bring us to Rank 26, too.   We'll keep on with our MP plan, of course. (We get no other bonus this time.) 78 - The Giant's Lair We don't even get any berries? These things are stingy! (There are a few things they can drop, rarely, including Dark Cherries - in fact the only renewable source of those outside the shop - but they don't give us cash.)  As soon as the Dead Lander is gone, the eye comes back. Did you think it'd be as easy as just killing them? No reprieve for us!  With our new MP, I decided it might not be a bad idea to slap Resist All on Kabbu for now, as a bit of insurance against bad blocks. A lot of the enemies here can inflict disabling statuses, and their attacks are scary enough you really don't want to be a sitting duck.  Let's get out of here!   Uh. Is that the same eye or a different one? How many eyes does this thing even have? (No escape for us, of course it wouldn't be that simple!)   ...Sigh. 79 - ??? Um, can we hide from it underground? We don't have a lot of room to manoeuver here...  Nope. Touching enemies while underground forces us out.  Right. Another one.  Break still seems like a good idea to me.  But this time, we'll get Vi in front afterward and use Hurricane Toss. It has enough defence that we're not getting any extra glitched damage here, but that's still 15 damage right off.    We'll just keep swinging after that.  Not bad! First Plating takes the claw attack for us.  It might be unwise of me, but I think I'd rather conserve TP than try to finish it this turn...    Sometimes the numbers just work out that having Vi attack three times is better. (When you stack enough attack boosts on someone, the exhaustion penalty is more of a suggestion.)  Chompy does her bit too.  And Vi gets shot with a sleep laser. (We still haven't seen these things' most dangerous attack, but don't worry, we will.)  And now we can end this.   They're still worth loads of EXP, even after that Rank Up. 78 - The Giant's Lair Still nothing to show for it.  And, of course, the eye's back right away. Maybe we should try a different route...   Maybe these platforms to the south will be better?  Conveniently, most of this platform is out of sight even when the eye faces it, the beam angles downward into the void. I don't know if that makes sense, but I'll take it. (Sense-making is the last thing I'm concerned with right now.)  That safe platform makes it much easier to avoid being seen, we can let the eye pass us and then book it.   Guess I wasn't fast enough. 79 - ???  ...And we're caught. The hand moves faster than we can fly.   I don't feel like fighting this. Let's try to flee.  Out of here!  This is a neat trick. We fled from battle while flying over the void, and once we get out the Dead Lander plummets right into the void. That actually gets rid of it. (You can't knock most enemies into pits in Bug Fables, but mercifully it does work on these.) 78 - The Giant's Lair  Well, we've made it across, at least.  There's nothing to the south but more rubble.   ...Of course there are more eyes.  Also, what's this weird thing?  Whatever it is, it's an enemy!  These ones are pretty easy to first strike with Kabbu's horn when they approach you. But, uh, what is it? It has a tongue sticking out the centre of its... face?... and it's spiked all over and floating on balloons?  No matter how much I hit it, it's not coming down... guess it's up to me! This weird thing is Dead Lander Beta, the third type. I have no idea what it's supposed to be. Vi highlights a very important detail, though: uniquely for a flying enemy in Bug Fables, these things are always airborne and can't be knocked to the ground no matter what you do. Vi's the only one who can hit them without spending TP. (Like the other Dead Landers, they're weak to ice, so Leif's Ice Rain can absolutely shred them.)  Well, let's give her a relay, get her in front and have her do what she can.   Not bad. As you can see, though, it's still airborne, and we can't relay any further turns to Vi.   Kabbu's Under Strike can hit them, but it's pretty underwhelming when he's not in front and has no attack boosts. Probably wasn't worth it.   For now, we'll have Leif and Chompy just do nothing. (Chompy can't do anything to these at all.)  ...Ow. These things have some nasty attacks. Dropping on us deals 6 base damage to the entire party.  And now we've brought it low enough on HP that Vi can just swat it, so let's have her do that.    Like the other Dead Landers, these things give us loads of EXP. 78 - The Giant's Lair A smattering of berries this time; it's only the Gammas that refuse to drop them.  Uh. What do we do now? The eye seems really fixated on that bouncy mushroom; we're not going to get on top of that book without being seen... (It's hard to tell from screenshots, but once we get here the beam stops sweeping over the area, and just moves slightly back and forth over that mushroom by the exit.)  Let's try heading south. First off, there's another Alpha here...  We didn't see this before, but they have projectile attacks! They launch these blobs out of the, uh, appendages that are vaguely handlike?  At least we have Crazy Prepared, so we don't take a first strike from it. Let's fight this thing, I guess.      We'll just do our normal attacks for now.  And here's what the projectile attack looks like in combat. This is actually quite nasty: it's 5 base damage per hit, always fires three times, and can inflict Numb if not blocked. Supposedly it can also shoot purple blobs that inflict poison instead, but I rarely see them. Numb Resistance medals aren't a bad idea here, though these feel pretty easy to block to me.  Also, it burrowed after attacking.     We'll just keep attacking for now, though it won't be quite enough to get the kill.  Ouch. I missed the block on this, and that made it enough to KO Kabbu.  That said, thankfully, we don't need him to finish this.  Leif has enough power to just take it out right away.  These are still worth good EXP too.  Well then. (Amusingly, the berries spawn at its location, not ours, since it hit us from a distance.)  There's another mushroom here.  Before we head up, though, I'd really prefer not to leave Kabbu on 1 HP. These Crunchy Leaves we picked up in Rubber Prison should do nicely.  Much better.  Now we'll head up.   There isn't much up here, except this stone we can move with Kabbu's horn. What are we supposed to do with this?  May as well knock it down for now, I guess.  Oh. It seems to have caught the eye's attention! Once you knock the block down, the eye fixates on it instead, meaning the path forward should be open now.  ...Uh. Is that its hand? Let's stay away from that, shall we?  Our path is clear, let's just go!   We can get a clean view of the eye from here, though no real clues to what kind of being this might be...  Let's go. Further up and further in. (Splitting the update here thanks to the character limit. This is going to be a long one.)
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Aug 8, 2022 05:51
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68: What Can Eternal Lie (Part 2) 78 - The Giant's Lair  After an area transition, we find ourselves still on top of the book. Um. Let's check in with the party. We're just gonna keep ignoring those giant eyes, right? It's not just the eye! They're super massive! It's a good plan, Leif. We're ignoring them... preferably forever.We can't do anything about it, so I guess that's one approach?  Regardless, it is certainly not gone. We're going to be dealing with it in this area too.  Much like the last area, this one is also full of rubbish, and we'll be contending with the eye beams again.  There's a flower dripping water in the corner here. Let's make note of that, we'll probably need it for something shortly.     The path east is mostly blocked; it looks like the only way forward is via the stacks of coins.  We'll need an ice block to get up high enough, so let's go back and make one to start off.   There we go.  Um, oops? (The timing here can be a bit tricky, and I got careless.) 79 - ??? Foolishly, I tried to keep going, and it caught me anyway.  We know what to expect now, but it doesn't make these things any easier.   Let's try something a bit different this time. We'll use Break first, but we'll follow it up with Empower+.  Then Vi can Hurricane Toss for 20 damage.  And attack again.  Chompy, of course, does her thing too.  And we get lucky: it goes for the claw attack, and runs into Vi's First Plating.  With the boosts still in place, we can finish it off this turn.     There we go! That was a bit easier. Though, of course, we burned through a lot of TP with that strategy, we can't do that every time. (Hard Charge is another really good option, and if you use it well you can delete them in a single turn, but that also has some sustainability issues.) 78 - The Giant's Lair Still nothing. Right, let's try that again and do better this time.  79 - ???  Why'd I have to say that? drat it.  Let's try something different this time, again. I'm a bit low on TP, so maybe I shouldn't spend them on status moves?     Here we can see the Gammas have the same ice weakness as the other Dead Landers. Once again... just what are these things?  Chompy does her part too, though she has a hard time getting through. (Without the Pretty Ribbon, she wouldn't be damaging this at all.)  Oof, this is nasty. This spore attack is the last thing they've been hiding, and it's seriously terrifying. This launches 4 spores across the party, dealing 4 base damage each and inflicting sleep if not blocked. If you get unlucky, this can send the entire party to sleep (and then they can stunlock you to death; this can easily become a TPK if you're not careful).  I'm not entirely sure how the sleep duration from that attack works. I think it's 2 turns from the initial hit (which immediately reduces by 1 in end-of-turn cleanup), and subsequent hits the same turn only add 1 turn? Well, we don't have a lot of options here. Queen's Dinners can come in very handy here (as the only full-party status cure), but I'm reluctant to waste one right now. Let's just do as much damage as we can.    Needle Pincer seems like the way to go here.  Chompy does what she can; every bit helps, I suppose.  Okay. That hurts, but I think we're good now.  Leif's still asleep, but the others should be able to handle this.    Needle Pincer gets us there.  Whew. That one was a bit rough. Do not underestimate these enemies, the battle can turn against you very quickly even when you think you're doing well. 78 - The Giant's Lair Right. Can we get through now?   Okay, we're in the clear this time.  Of course, once we get to the other side, we're immediately confronted by another eye.    This one isn't too difficult to avoid, so far.  Of course, there's an Alpha here, which we're going to need to deal with.  In the interest of trying to keep this update a reasonable length (ha ha ha, good one), I'm going to skip this battle. We've seen everything the Alphas do, though they're still by no means trivial.  Anyway, let's move on.  Um. That's new.  It's a completely new item! All the Dead Landers have a chance of dropping these, though they're a bit uncommon. (Admittedly, not as rare as they may appear from this LP, I usually find more of them than I did this run.) That description is certainly suspicious. These are pretty risky to use. They can either heal you 8 HP, or deal 8 damage (though like other items that do damage, at least they can't kill you).  Here's a demonstration. (It took me a surprising number of takes to get this to happen. I don't know the exact odds but I think they're more likely to heal than harm.) So, we don't really want to eat them if we can avoid it. Things become more interesting if you cook with them, though: these are a bit of a Paper Mario reference too, and like the "Mystery?" item can produce multiple outcomes. There are two different recipes, with different outcome tables. Recipe 1:  Mystery Berry alone, or Mystery Berry + another item Mistake (4/11) Big Mistake (2/11) Roasted Berries (2/11) Berry Juice (1/11) Succulent Platter (1/11) Berry Smoothie (1/11)Recipe 2: Combine two Mystery Berries Mistake (1/13) Big Mistake (2/13) Succulent Platter (3/13) Berry Smoothie (2/13) Roasted Berries (1/13) Berry Juice (1/13) Tangy Jam (1/13) Spicy Bomb (1/13) Burly Bomb (1/13)By the time you have access to Mystery Berries, most of these outcomes (other than Berry Smoothies) aren't particularly interesting. If you have a bit of time on your hands and some tolerance for savescumming, though, you can turn every one you get into a Berry Smoothie. Of course, you can also just buy Dark Cherries and/or Tangy Berries to make them yourself; these are more of a novelty than anything else, really. I got the listed odds from the wiki, though in my personal experience it feels like I receive Berry Smoothies more frequently than this. Maybe I've just been lucky? Anyway, we have room, so let's take that with us. (I wouldn't throw away useful items for Mystery Berries, but as long as I have room I'll definitely keep them.) For now, let's head onward.  And of course, there's another eye again. Will we ever escape this thing?  There's more rubbish here, and another book. This might be tricky to navigate.   Along the northern edge of the book, we can eventually spot a lever up on a ledge. We'll probably have to get to that somehow...  Let's check out the rest of the area.  There's nothing in this corner, just some gears blocking us in.  Let's be careful here, we don't want to be spotted again...  And here we can see that the book is on the edge of yet another chasm.    Getting through here without being spotted is mostly a matter of timing... of course, this is mostly a dead end, but it looks like there's something we can collect over there.   It's a new medal, though! Those are always interesting.   Status Mirror is a really weird one. For 3 MP, when an enemy attack inflicts a status effect on the equipped bug, this medal will attempt to inflict that same status on the enemy. (This doesn't work with Attack Down or Defence Down; it applies to any status effect that can be cured by items, i.e., Freeze, Poison, Numb, Sleep.)It's a strange and niche effect, and honestly doesn't seem worth the MP to me. Because of how late in the game it comes, I've never made much use of it; I've always kind of hoped to get it early enough in a randomiser run to play around with, but that hasn't happened for me yet. That said... I always thought it worked differently, until I did some testing with it in anticipation of this update, and it's not quite what I thought it was. I had previously thought it also worked with buffs like Attack Up and Charge Up, and worked if your party members inflicted the status. So, for example, you could get more mileage out of Leif's single-target buff spells, or get more value out of poison items/Weak Stomach, etc, by having the target equip Status Mirror. It doesn't actually work like this, though (and never has, I tested in earlier versions of the game also), which makes it a lot less interesting. Status Mirror is nearly impossible to use in a proactively strategic way. Incidentally, now that we've found Status Mirror, we've seen every type of medal in the game! We still have a few medals left to find, but we know all the medal effects now.  Anyway, let's head back, there's nothing else we can do here.   Right. Now, how do we progress?   There's another Dead Lander Beta up here, I guess we'd best deal with that first.  Once again, in the interest of trying to keep this concise, I'm going to skip this battle. We didn't see any new attacks from it, just the same flying slam. As long as we relay a lot of turns to Vi, these go down pretty quickly (though their attacks still hurt!).  Let's move on.  Before that, though, let's have a look at their other attack, since I didn't manage to get any of them to do it. In addition to the slam, they have this poison jet attack, which deals two hits (4 base damage each) and can inflict poison if not blocked. The slam is probably scarier, though this attack can put out a lot of single-target damage and is devastating against anyone with negative defence.  Right, where were we?  We can get on this paddle, but it doesn't really lead to anywhere...   Although if we walk along the shaft (carefully, it's thin), we can get to the switch we saw earlier. What happens if we hit it?  The switch causes the paddle arm to extend, giving us a way to get across!  As an added bonus, the eye doesn't seem to be able to spot us up here!  And we get across.   This area's pretty scary, especially with all the giant spider webs...  Of course there are still eyes. (How many drat eyes does this thing have? Is it following us, or is it just everywhere?)  That said, it's not all that difficult to avoid here, it's just sweeping the area.  Another Beta?  Oof. This is a bit nastier, it actually has an Alpha with it!  I don't think I want to let both of these get a turn, and the Beta has less health, so we'll start off with a Hurricane Toss from Vi.   With two more hits, she can kill it. That took almost our entire turn, but it's worth it to reduce the number of attacks we're going to take. (All of these enemies are very resistant to status effects, so disabling them isn't a great option. All three types of Dead Lander are immune to Freeze and Sleep, and have 75% resistance to Numb.)   Leif and Chompy can get a start on the last one.    Thankfully, I manage to block all of the numbing shots.  From here, it's a normal fight against a Dead Lander Alpha. We're a bit low on TP, so it might take a few turns of back and forth, but it's not terribly interesting to watch so I'm going to skip ahead to the end.  Though, unfortunately, it does get quite a few licks in. I wouldn't say I was in danger of losing the fight, but I wouldn't want to fight another Dead Lander in this state...  We're close to ranking up again, but not close enough I'd want to get my healing that way...  Right. What is this area, exactly?  Uh. That's a... red crystal? We've never seen one of those before. Is it a good idea to hit that, do you think?  For better or worse, it's up high enough that we'll need an ice block to reach it, so let's make one.   Right. What is this going to do?  It fully healed us! That's pretty nice. Didn't give us the option to save, though...   Also, the ringing sound of the crystal immediately gets the attention of the eye thing! The beam moves very quickly toward us once we hit it and is basically impossible to avoid. 79 - ??? So we get our healing, but it comes with one of these guys. Lovely.  I've shown enough fights against these that you should have a general idea of what this is like, so I'm going to skip this one. (We've already had plenty of combat in this update...) That said, I got pretty lucky, and managed to end the fight in a position where, after Triumph Buzz and Victory Buzz, I ended up with the party on full HP and TP. That was pretty convenient.  Getting close to that level-up now! 78 - The Giant's Lair (If you want to ensure being on full health for the next area, another thing you can do is just run away and book it after you get out of the fight. You might need to run from battle a few times if it keeps catching you, but we're close enough to the area transition that you can make it there, and the Dead Lander won't follow us between screens.)   Right. Where are we headed, exactly?  There's light here, at least. And a save crystal, which we should probably make use of ASAP. Look, there's light over there! Civilization? We must check it out!Our team remark on it too.   Once we approach the light source, we walk into the beginning of a cutscene.  And our allies catch up with us!  Those Dead Landers aren't anything to mess with, either. (Is that a refrigerator? How on earth is that thing still running?)  It seems to be a machine. The giants handled power at such a large scale... It reminds us of the Lost Sands' Castle. Well, whatever. It can be as tall and as cold as it wants. We're gonna climb it!  What is it? Everyone, we've been surrounded! 79 - ???  ...This doesn't look good. We should fall back! There's no way out. They've completely pincered us! Everyone, there is no choice! We fight as one! Well spoken, my knight. I shall assist thee as well!    Click me for video!  This is a pretty unique fight, to the point I'd probably consider it the miniboss for this area, so I thought it deserved a video. (If nothing else, all three Dead Landers count as minibosses for purposes of Spy Cards.) We've got one of each, and we also have the assistance of both Maki and Elizant.  And yes, Elizant being here means we have access to Royal Decree. That seems like a good idea, let's use it!   Much better. Now let's do some damage!  Like before, the Beta tends to be the weakest link since it has the fewest HP, so I'm going to take it out first. A Hurricane Toss from Vi gets us most of the way there.  Now, let's take care of the rest.  Kabbu's Under Strike seems like a good choice here! He's in front and has an attack boost this time, so he can do solid damage with it. That's done for the Beta, at least, which should make our lives a bit easier. (Similarly, if you've boosted Leif's attack a lot, maybe with Hard Charge and/or Last Attack, you can nuke the poo poo out of this with Ice Rain and maybe even take out two of them on turn one... but I'm not doing that this run.)   For now, we'll make what attacks we can on the Alpha.  Don't leave Maki out, either! He can still output some solid damage, and he pierces their defence too. (Maki will always attack the enemy in front, which is worth keeping in mind when planning.)   That could have been much, much worse. We definitely got lucky there.  Right. The Alpha's seriously damaged, so we should be able to get rid of it this turn. Let's try to clear the way for Maki to hit the Gamma.    There we go, that wasn't too hard.  Chompy can't do much, but damage is damage.  And there goes Maki. God, it's satisfying getting to fight with him again.  Okay, we're in the clear now I think. Blocking the beam means we don't get sent to sleep, and the worst of this fight is definitely behind us. (It's much, much scarier if the Gamma uses the spore attack, especially if the others are still alive when it does.)  Right. Can we finish things this turn, perhaps?  Let's get Vi in front, then have Leif cast Break.  We can do serious damage with Hurricane Toss after that!   A few more attacks...  And with the 6 damage from Maki, we've managed to get precisely enough!  It's enough for us to Rank Up, too! 08 - Getting Stronger! (Heh, neat, Maki's still here on the level-up screen!)  We'll pick MP again, of course.  Oh, wow, this is nice. At Rank 27, we get a bonus of 3 MP, which is basically a free extra level.  (Um, that's awkward, the achievement notification showed up during the cutscene. We'll talk about that in a moment. Also, this cutscene plays out without music.)   Everyone, you did splendidly! The coast is clear! Well, duh. You were with us! Let's press forward. We need to find a way to get the others to come over. We were fortunate to have help... The Dead Landers must be slowing the Wasp King down as well. Let's catch up! We regain control. Before we have a look around, what was that achievement, anyway?  It's for having reached the level cap. Which is Rank 27. That might seem like a peculiar number; I can't think of any reason for it other than a Paper Mario reference, because 27 was also the maximum level in Paper Mario 64. The thing is, there was a sensible reason for it in that game (it's a consequence of Mario's maximum stats being 50 HP, 50 FP, and 30 BP), and there isn't anything like that here. Regardless, it's a sensible number from a game balance perspective at least. With the way experience gains work, it's fairly normal to hit the cap around this point (or perhaps earlier, if you've been grinding). One thing worth pointing out is that the Dead Landers (and some other enemies up ahead) are exempt from Bug Me Not!, so you can't get out of fighting them by being overlevelled the way you can with a lot of other enemies.  (Here's a look at our status screen, since it's been a while.) Of course, there's also a new banter here. By Venus, if we'd been ambushed alone... We woulda been fine! It's fine to admit we needed help, Vi. ...I know, but I don't wanna think we woulda lost!Heh. It's definitely winnable, but even with our party at max power, it could be a bit iffy and RNG-dependent (unless, of course, you go all in on Ice Rain, that takes most of the edge off).  Let's have a look around here now.  Elizant and Team Maki are hanging out over here. Let's talk to them.  (Climbing that thing will be a monumental task, however...)Elizant is, of course, determined to press on.  Handling such great power, how could they have vanished? And with the state of this place, how could it happen in such a terrible way?Maki is asking the questions a lot of us have probably been thinking.  Kina is very impressed with the refrigerator.  And Yin isn't any more talkative than usual. There's also a banter we can see. At least with everyone here, this place feels less oppressive. It's only getting more dangerous as we go. We can't stop! If the Wasp King can, we totally can too!Nice to see everyone's still determined.  To the south, we can find Zasp and Mothiva.  They stayed behind. The Dead Landers were too tough for them. Maybe we can open a path for them to come over? Maybe. But this place is... something else. For once, I fear for our safety. It's gonna be fine! We've all gotten super strong! ...Thanks.Heh. Who'd have ever thought Vi would be giving Zasp a pep talk?  Are you, uh, nervous? N-No! It's gonna be fine! It's gonna be fine... ...It will. I promise. We will protect you! We... we don't need it! Seriously! Heheh. We're gonna do it anyways!Let alone Kabbu trying to reassure Mothiva? It just goes to show how serious this situation is. (Protecting someone out of spite is such a Vi thing to do, too.)   If we explore a bit past where Mothiva and Zasp are, we can find this interesting sight. That looks like the plug for the refrigerator... apparently it's drawing power from one of the magic crystals? I guess that explains how it's still running (and we don't need to think about the state of the power grid).   And this is where we're going to be stopping for today, since there's a save crystal here. Next time, we'll attempt to climb a refrigerator. So, was anyone expecting outright eldritch abominations? Your guess is as good as mine as to what the Dead Landers actually are. The giant thing with the eyes and hands, by the way, is known as Dead Lander Omega, and there is very little information to go on about it. There is speculation that the large shadow we saw moving around from the telescope was it, but as far as I know that hasn't been confirmed.  Gameplay and atmosphere-wise, this section is absolutely fantastic. There's just enough of a horror aesthetic to be unsettling, and the enemies here are hard enough to really sell that (especially when you don't know what's coming or how long you need your resources to last), and make you think through your actions. And while the Dead Landers are a bit out of left field, I feel like the game's been dropping enough hints that this area is strange and fearsome to justify something like this. Whatever else it is, it's certainly memorable. Explopyro fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 05:52
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:
Noooooo, how can I resist ordering a Kabbu plushie if you post adorable pictures of it?!? Great update as always Explopyro. I have a feeling the devs are setting up the caterpillar (Yin?) to "hatch" any moment now. I'm super excited to find out why the humans vanished. The stuff like the knife doesn't seem to be too old, my vague impression is that their vanishing (and the bug's awakening) is merely decades in the past. And probably not that many decades. The roaches surely wrote down their theories about the "giants" in the same hidden location where they put the Everlasting Sapling. Don't feel bad about not showing off all those combats. To be honest, I didn't find the new enemy combinations in the prison itself that interesting, and skipped those parts of your post. Seeing new enemies is nice, but I'm so much more invested in the story and the characters. If the next few areas before catching up with the Wasps is full of these tough enemies, feel free to just note that you cleared the room or something. At least I don't mind seeing less combat and more puzzles and plot.
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Aug 8, 2022 09:46
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The Dead Lands are cool. In an 'oh poo poo' kind of way.
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Aug 8, 2022 09:46
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A small typo, you've got a quote:(ha ha301 good one)
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Aug 8, 2022 15:20
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I don't like getting spooked so this part of the game was a bit tough for me, especially as I didn't fully clear out the areas on my first run though before I really understood how to handle things around here. I like the united front for the triple fight at the end though. My less optimized setup I think gave me more trouble against these enemies overall. The best of all this is yet to come, though.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:39
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My personal dumb theory is that nothing awful happened to the humans at all. The bugs just live near one of those run down old shacks with a yard covered in trash and the people don't go outside much.
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Aug 8, 2022 19:54
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Torrannor posted:Noooooo, how can I resist ordering a Kabbu plushie if you post adorable pictures of it?!? Hah, it really is adorable. Unfortunately, I think you're in luck as far as resisting goes: as far as I know they were only doing the one manufacturing run, so it's not possible to order them any more  I'm still waiting for Leif, but I'll definitely take some photos to post once I have the whole team together. Torrannor posted:I have a feeling the devs are setting up the caterpillar (Yin?) to "hatch" any moment now. We are definitely going to be learning some things soon, I can say that. Although I should warn you that we won't get answers to every last mystery, and some things do end up being left in the realm of speculation; I tend to like this, because it makes the game world feel bigger than just the story we play through, but I can understand if some find it frustrating. As to the question of how long the humans have been gone, I honestly don't know. (For that matter, we don't actually know if the humans' disappearance and whatever gave the bugs sentience were the same event; the lore books imply it, but in a speculative tone and it's never confirmed elsewhere.) Most of the implications do make me think it's a matter of decades, but then we also had the hidden Plant God Room in Snakemouth that suggests it could have been much longer (if Venus and Mars being over 300 years old implies there were sentient bugs that far back). But then I'm also not sure whether the bugs mean the same thing by "years" as we do. For what it's worth, Genow has given ages for Team Snakemouth (though it's never stated ingame, and, as I said, what are years anyway?). Vi is ~17, Kabbu is mid to late twenties, and Leif was in his early thirties when he died. He may have given more precise numbers, but if so I don't remember them. Torrannor posted:Don't feel bad about not showing off all those combats. To be honest, I didn't find the new enemy combinations in the prison itself that interesting, and skipped those parts of your post. Seeing new enemies is nice, but I'm so much more invested in the story and the characters. If the next few areas before catching up with the Wasps is full of these tough enemies, feel free to just note that you cleared the room or something. At least I don't mind seeing less combat and more puzzles and plot. I have good news for you, then, the next couple of updates are going to be pretty combat-light. I know there's a tricky balance to strike here and that not everyone is interested in the blow-by-blow, but for this sequence in particular I thought it was important not to gloss over too much, because the difficulty of the fights contributes a lot to the atmosphere. Quackles posted:The Dead Lands are cool. In an 'oh poo poo' kind of way. 100% agreed. Honestly, I'm impressed at how well it works, because it's definitely a tonal shift and these weird mutant things superficially don't fit with the approach the rest of the game has taken to enemy design. When I think about it conceptually, it probably shouldn't work, but they pulled it off and I love it. Discendo Vox posted:A small typo, you've got a Thanks for the catch. I don't even know how I did that... (Honestly, if this is the only error that slipped past me, I'm doing well this time.) I think the Bug Me Not exemption is just accomplished by making them higher level than 27 under the hood (which also may affect the experience formula). We'll be seeing this for some other enemies in this chapter as well, which aren't classed as minibosses in the same way. Regardless of how they did it, I do appreciate the devs' foresight in anticipating players were likely to hit the level cap, because if Bug Me Not did work it'd take a lot of the edge off the content. Alxprit posted:I don't like getting spooked so this part of the game was a bit tough for me, especially as I didn't fully clear out the areas on my first run though before I really understood how to handle things around here. I like the united front for the triple fight at the end though. My less optimized setup I think gave me more trouble against these enemies overall. The best of all this is yet to come, though. It's definitely a big change in atmosphere, and I can see it being unsettling. (The first time I got here, it was pretty late at night and that certainly added to it, heh.) I will say that I did not have nearly as good a showing against these things the first time I got here, they're much more dangerous when you don't know what to expect and I got absolutely pasted by Gammas until I started taking them more seriously. I think it might be even more of a difficulty spike on Normal, honestly. I am definitely looking forward to showing off what's coming, though  FoolyCharged posted:My personal dumb theory is that nothing awful happened to the humans at all. The bugs just live near one of those run down old shacks with a yard covered in trash and the people don't go outside much. Hah, this would be pretty funny, wouldn't it. I love it.
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Aug 9, 2022 04:46
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Look who finally stopped by for a visit!
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Aug 14, 2022 01:35
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Explopyro posted:Look who finally stopped by for a visit! These look amazingly adorable, I love this pic! Leif finally joined his friends 
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Aug 14, 2022 19:28
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69: A Chilly Reception 78 - The Giant's Lair Last time, after fighting our way through the Dead Lands and surviving the final Dead Lander ambush, we found ourselves faced with an enormous (well, from a bug's-eye view, anyway) refrigerator. And it appears to be the only way forward, so we're going to have to climb it. Before we go in, though, let's put on some more medals. We also reached the level cap last time, which means we now have the maximum possible 86 MP.    For now I'm not going to do anything too fancy. Vi gets Leaf Cloak to keep some enemy attention off her, Leif gets Hard Charge and Status Relay (which I've always liked as a source of emergency burst damage), and we'll put on a few more TP Pluses. I've removed the status resistance medals from Kabbu to make room. I promise I will show off some crazy builds in the postgame (there are several boss rushes and enemy gauntlets that are perfect for that), but for now I want to keep things straightforward.  With that taken care of, let's head into the fridge.  It's a fridge. Complete with incredibly rotten food (just how long has all this been here?), I don't want to think about how it must smell. Though I guess it's possible bugs could find it pleasant. I-I-It's c-c-coold...! Jump and stretch, Vi! You must keep your body warm! You seem fine, Kabbu. The chub must be helping. It's muscle!The banter in here is cute. Though it does raise some questions for me - what would stretching even mean to bugs, given they have exoskeletons? Also, we have yet another joke about Kabbu being fat, which according to the artbook is actually poking fun at the devs. (I may have mentioned this before, but Kabbu underwent a visual redesign early on because they found the first version tricky to animate. I've never thought the new version looked all that pudgy either, honestly, but for better or worse that's the joke.)   Taking a few steps in, we can get a better view of the area. We've got geysers, water droplets, ice blocks... clearly, we've got some puzzling ahead of us.  Also, there are enemies here.  We get these cool frozen-looking leaves in here. (Just like in the Dead Lands, the area music continues playing over the battles.)  And some very familiar looking enemies (in ice mode, naturally). Finding Roach-built constructs here is certainly interesting... also, the battle background's pretty fun, with all the food containers. That said, they're exactly the same as they were in Chapter 4, and we're a lot more powerful. This is an effortless fight, so I won't be showing it.  Also, here's what the battle-end screen looks like now that we're at the level cap. The metre stays filled at 140/140 EXP and we will gain zero from now on.   Thanks, I guess?  Right, now for the puzzle. There's a bouncy mushroom we can just barely see on top of the box, and we need to get up there somehow. Interestingly, most of the puzzles in here are pretty open-ended, and have multiple possible solutions. I don't know if the solutions I'll be showing are the intended ones; I always kind of end up feeling like I'm janking my way through.  To start with, we'll make an ice block.    Then we'll move the big one around. The big ice blocks pass right through unfrozen geysers, but if you need them to stop instead, you can freeze the geyser to enable collision. (I don't think I've ever found that necessary though.)   We'll put it in the corner.   Now we'll wait for this geyser to reach a reasonable height (somewhere between the small ice block and the large one), then freeze it.   We'll move this a bit closer, then get on top of it.  Now we fly over to the frozen geyser. (Remember that we gain about a jump's worth of height when we start flying.)   From there, we can fly up on top of the big ice block. It doesn't quite look like we can make it here (I should've made the geyser a bit taller honestly), but it's pretty forgiving, and the edges of the ice cube have a bit of slope to them that let us get up.  Now, of course, our goal is in sight.  We just fly over to the tin of tomatoes, and we can get on top of the box from there.  That was easy! Up we go.  Right. Another floor, which no doubt means another puzzle. (Incidentally, there's no new banter here, the fridge is actually one giant interconnected room.)  Before we head in, there's a sneaky gap between the wall and the bottom of that milk carton! And if you look carefully, you might see something hiding there.   It's Crystal Berry #50!   We get an achievement for having finally collected them all.  Right. With that out of the way, let's fly back over to the main part of this shelf and see what we're dealing with here.   More ice blocks, of course.  Let's also note the icicles hanging down. Those might get in the way...  And on top of that soda can, yet another bouncy mushroom. There's our goal.  We'll start off by making an ice block with the droplet here.   Then move it over here, to make stairs we can use to get up. One thing worth noting (that might get a bit annoying here) is that the edges of that icy floor are a barrier we can't move ice blocks past. In other parts of the game, we've been able to give them altitude and knock them up ledges, etc, but that doesn't work in here for some reason.    From there, we get the big ice block down.   Right. What do we want to do with it, though?    Here we can observe that the small ice block works as a barrier to stop the big one's movement...   So let's make a new one (it's faster than moving the other) and put it... here looks good.    This way, we can line it up to go further east.  There we go.   Now we just put the stairs together again...    And we can make our way up here. Great?    Actually, it's where we need to be. We can get just enough flying distance to make it over to the second (immovable) big ice pillar.   And from there, we can fly around the icicles, and make it to the block we moved earlier! (The trick to this puzzle, such as it is, being noticing that the block is absolutely needed to cross this side, while we don't need it to reach the first pillar.)  Then we fly over to this cup.  And up we go.  Right. Another level.    First, let's deal with this enemy? It's another very easy fight...   But we get nothing for defeating it, and it pops back into existence shortly afterward. We're probably going to need to freeze it for the puzzle. Let's get our bearings first, though.   We've got lots of geysers, two big ice blocks, and some kind of wooden platform up high? We should try to get up there.  Right. First, we'll freeze the respawning enemy.     To start with, we'll put both of the large ice blocks near the platform.   Then send the larger one west. Once again, we're more or less building staircases here (once we account for our flight).    Then we freeze some geysers at variable heights, like before.     Now, we'll just do our flying in stages.    This always feels a bit janky to me, but it works well enough to get us up here.   The fight here has a Haunted Cloth as well, but it's still not much of a challenge.  Moving on.  More Magic Ice, hooray. This enemy does stay defeated, though.  From here, we can fly over to the ice block.  Then get on top of the can.   And from there, we can fly over to this bottle. It may look a bit precarious, but the cork at least is a sturdy platform.   What's this?  Why is there a lift in here? Well, nothing else for it, let's ride it.    It brings us... somewhere? We've reached an upper level, at least, but what will we find here?   We can drop down and find solid ground, at least. This place... Is this...?The banter isn't particularly helpful, is it.   Our allies file in behind us...  13 - It's Getting Scary!    No way! So some didn't vanish after all.  Please, allow us to explain the situation. We're short on time.    ...S-Sorry, Elder. No! Please, in the name of my people, allow me to explain... Everything fades out and the music goes silent briefly while they explain. 78 - The Giant's Lair  To think that after uneventful generations guarding the sapling... So many would come for it in just one day.  Disgusting. How can he treat his loyal followers like that!? Huh. You do have a heart! Please, allow us to go after him! And what will you do when you get the sapling from him?  I had a dream. To use its power to fulfill my wishes... But the lust for that power has only brought turmoil to Bugaria. I will destroy it!  She entrusted her dream to me. And I've fulfilled it. The land teemed with explorers searching for the ultimate treasure. She... would be proud of me. She deserves to rest. Elder! If they destroy it... what will be of us? Our life's purpose? That crook may be mad, but he wouldn't desecrate our treasure like you! Humph! The elder storms off.   No, Vi! This is not the way to solve this! They are blinded by their devotion... understandable. Elizant, our Queen... We will support you. We must plead our case once more.  Well, that didn't go well, did it? We've certainly learned some things, though. The Roaches aren't completely gone, for one thing: at least some of them survived in this village, and have been guarding the sapling the entire time. Also, they've confirmed for us that the sapling does exist, at least. So some Roaches were alive after all... It's surreal. They're just like the ones from our time. ...How long have they had to deal with Dead Landers?There's a new banter now, too. Vi's question is a pretty good one... Anyway, let's have a look around.  We'll start with this house.   This Roach picks up on Leif's magic immediately and gets suspicious. It would probably take too long to explain, wouldn't it...   There are a fair number of people we can talk to outside.  Wherever they are, what purpose did they find without the sapling...?Their lives revolve around the Sapling, but they don't seem very thrilled about it. Let's check the banter. It's super dangerous, but they're all pretty calm... When you live surrounded by danger, it seems you get used to it? No way! I could never get used to the Dead Landers! And yet, they've had no choice...We'll see this one for most of the Roaches. Despite everything we went through to get here, the Roaches' attitudes go a long way toward establishing a mood of ennui at best.  Also, a lot of the Roaches here are injured; they do seem to have tried to fight the Wasp King, though not to much success. The Roaches fight the Dead Landers frequently, yet they're this hurt... The Wasp King will answer for this!There's a different banter for the injured ones. Let's hope we'll be able to do better?  Gen and Eri are here. Let's see what they have to say.  We... We somehow made it through! But it's too much! We believe in you! You can do it!They seem a bit overwhelmed, but at least they have some words of encouragement for us. Our comrades are hurt... Without them, we'd be even more hurt, as well... Grr... That dumb Wasp King's the reason everyone got hurt! I'll show him!There's another banter for our various allies.  What's this?  It's my duty to watch over this lift. Ask me anytime.If we talk to the roach here, he'll let us ride this lift if we want. This is a very convenient shortcut, and means we don't have to slog through the Dead Landers again if we want to get back here; we won't be taking it just yet, but I'll show where this goes later this update.  Right, let's find everyone else.  Levi and Celia have made it here as well.  I will entrust the Ant Kingdom's future to you, Team Snakemouth. We've got to get through this!They seem a bit demoralised, but at least they still believe in us?  Over here, we have a save crystal, and a couple of roaches guarding a pen full of scorpions. Let's see what they have to say.   I'm sensing a theme here. Scorpions as PETS!? That's nuts! Their cuteness could stand to be a bit higher... Bleh. After the desert we hoped we'd never see one again. By the Queen! I never did ask! D-Does your back still hurt? O-Oh yeah... We're fine. Thanks for worrying, though.The scorpion handlers do get a unique banter, if we check. This one's cute.   There are more familiar faces over this way, too.  Zasp is a bit worried.  Maybe I should tour here sometime to liven things up!And Mothiva's feeling altruistic for once. (Signs of the world ending, perhaps?)  ...What's Amber doing here? When in blazes did Ms. Amber follow us here!? H-Hey, that's right! How did she cross!? This commitment to her job has turned absurd! E-Even though she's acting strong, she's shaking...Our team wonder much the same thing in the banter.  If we talk to her, she won't comment on it, just offer the usual storage services. It's convenient, at least; I'm not sorry to see her.  She's not just offering storage, though! She's actually running a shop too, so we can refill on items if we need them. Let's take a look at the inventory.  Leaf Salad (6 berries) Magic Seed (17 berries) Glazed Honey (8 berries) Burly Berry (11 berries)She has something of an odd mix of items: nothing too spectacular, but they're all serviceable enough, and will get the job done if you don't have anything better. Also, everything's very slightly discounted, she does seem to be trying to help us out.  Let's buy a Magic Seed to see what she says.  Y-You can do it!Even Amber's rooting for us. If we back out of buying an item, she'll say this instead: P-Please! Make sure y-you're prepared!It's nice of her to be thinking of us.  At the west end of the area, a few roaches are guarding the exit.  But we won't let you pass through.(He's not lying, if we try to walk past him we'll see this same dialogue and be sent back.)  ...Constructs, you say? That's not ominous at all.   Inside the house by Amber, we can find someone else to talk to.  She's running an inn of sorts, and will let us sleep for free if we need to. Sure, why not?  I'm hoping you don't snore... 20 - Night at the Inn It's still good for healing. If we talk to her and decline the offer, she'll just say this: Don't push yourselves. 78 - The Giant's Lair Right. That's everything here on this level...  So let's head up via this mushroom.  Right.  Continuing the theme of the Wasp King overpowering everyone...  Also, here are Kina and Yin.   Neither is particularly talkative right now, though.  And, finally, we have this larger building.  Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the Elder's residence. Is the Elder, like... the Roach Queen? Doesn't seem that way. Everyone just seems to respect her very much. A Queen chosen by the people... In the north, we also had such a system.If we check the banter, we can also learn a (very little) bit more about Kabbu's homeland.  Talking to anyone in here starts another cutscene.  Please, you must listen! Team Snakemouth, you're here. Perhaps you have some words of persuasion? A few, if you'll allow us. ...Please. Leif hesitates for a few moments, before beginning to speak. 15 - The One Left Behind (Leif's Theme) We served under the first Queen Elizant. W-What!? Is this true, Kabbu!? Y-Yes. It was not our secret to tell. When we were found, we discovered they'd all disappeared... And no one knew why. But during our travels, we found a laboratory... Roaches had experimented on others, creating vile monsters! All in the hope of replicating a fraction of the sapling's power! What good has the Sapling done anybody all these moons? All it's done is plunge explorers into danger. And now that mad King's gone crazy for power... Even our late queen was tempted by the promise of eternal life. The sapling's only hurt others by existing! Even you!  Leif... Thank you for your words. Won't you reconsider, Elder?  "Good, evil... it all comes from this sapling. It is sacred." "So sacred that we endure to protect it." And so we have, for so long... Every time a child strays too far, never to be seen again... It's the sapling's fault! Sacred, my husk! T-Then, you'll reconsider!?   We will find a new purpose! One that doesn't doom us to live on the edge of violence. One that lets us enjoy the plains of legend again! Elder, thank you... You are welcome in our Kingdom, to explore that possibility. We'll let you pass to the Sapling Plains. Go destroy that sapling. Our new future depends on it. We coulda done it sooner! Let's run! (bug-fables.png) That's why she's our Vi. Let's finish this. 78 - The Giant's Lair And with that, we regain control. I'm never quite sure how to feel about this scene, honestly: these are all the developments we've been building to, and nothing happening is unreasonable, but everything still feels a bit too abrupt. Elizant's newfound conviction that the sapling should be destroyed is a conclusion she came to offscreen, away from us, so while she has no doubt been thinking about it for a while, that doesn't come through explicitly in the text... and then it only takes us one conversation to convince the Roach Elder. There is actually another version of this scene, where Leif's speech is a bit different. You see this one if you don't explore the Snakemouth lab, in which case Leif doesn't know about it to reference: This is something only Vi and Kabbu knew, but... We are not of this time. We served under the first Queen Elizant. W-What!? Is this true, Kabbu!? Y-Yes. It was not our secret to tell. The Roaches used to roam Bugaria, even if they secluded themselves a bit. When we were found, we discovered they'd all disappeared... And no one knew why. But it's not just the Roaches. Many teams have vanished since then. What's your point? What good has the Sapling done anybody all these moons? All it's done is plunge explorers into danger. And now that mad King's gone crazy for power... Even our late queen was tempted by the promise of eternal life. The sapling's only hurt others by existing! Even you!So instead of talking about the atrocities it drove the Snakemouth roaches to, his argument instead rests on the explorers going missing searching for it. (There's only one line that's new in this version, but it does make the texture of the scene a bit different, so I wanted to show it in context.) Either way, Leif's argument does eventually get through to the Elder, and she gives us permission to go after the Sapling.  Its power is too strong for any bug to handle... Because of it, we are the last Roaches in these lands. Please destroy it once and for all. We cannot do that ourselves.If we talk to her again, she certainly seems to have taken our new goal to heart.   But we will have time for sight-seeing later. Let's go after the Wasp King.Elizant and Maki have a bit of new dialogue for us too.   Right. Before we chase after the Wasp King and the Sapling, let's take a quick detour via this lift, there are a few last-minute errands we can do.   The lift takes us down...  And we come out here. Where is here, exactly?  Oh. We're right at the entrance to the Giant's Lair, as you can tell by Venus' presence. That's certainly convenient.   And from there, we have easy access to the Ant Mines. 18 - In the Court of the Ant Queen Our first stop is the Library, since we've now found all the Discoveries.    This time you have 50 Discoveries, last time you had found 47... Looks like you have enough for the next reward tier! Here you go!  Heheheh. Get ready for the next reward! Well, not really. That's kinda all we had. Huh? The Queen's budget covered 10 rewards. The program's complete! It feels like forever, but we did it! Welp, without rewards Vi ain't gonna donate anything else. That's fine. You've all helped so much! Thank you! Well, it was pretty good while it lasted! And there we go. The final reward for collecting Discoveries is a Heart Berry, which is pretty nice. We got quite a few nice goodies along the way, too (the most valuable one was definitely the Victory Buzz medal, though). I usually think of this Heart Berry as being postgame, but we can technically get it as soon as we've entered the Giant's Lair. We'll have to decide who to give it to.  If we talk to Libren again, this is all she'll have to say.  Right, where to next?  34 - Dodgy Business We have all the Crystal Berries, so let's finally go clean Shades out! Before that, though... we didn't see Stratos and Delilah here before, did we?   My only regret is that I didn't get to see it. Heh.  Bugaria's way safer now, thanks to you clearing those bounties!They both have some new dialogue congratulating us on defeating the bounties. There's also a new banter for them: That's a wrap for the bounties. Thankfully, we had their tips to find them. It's kinda weird to take all the credit... They're satisfied having found the monsters and sent us to them... I'm grateful, but you're right. It's not enough! Bea! Some juice for them!This is another cute one. (For better or worse, the game doesn't charge us for buying them a round.)  Now let's buy Shades' last medal.  Kehehe! Here you go my lovelies... Come back if you still have any berries left to spend! Kehehe! But we don't have any berries left to spend, do we? Let's talk to him again...  Your fault for selling super good stuff! We can already get in, though... Kehehe... There's a "menu" you can input that on. Menu? I do not understand... Keh. Sorry. That's all I know. Thanks for all the business! Kehehe!!!So, our reward for cleaning Shades out is yet another Menu Code. I can't say this is one of my favourites... what "FRAMEONE" does is disable normal blocking, so only Super Blocks work (which doesn't precisely require frame-perfect timing, so the name is slightly misleading, but the general idea comes through). This obviously exists for challenge run purposes. It's not to my personal taste (I tend to find making the game more dexterity-dependent frustrating, and prefer ramping up the difficulty in other ways), but you might like it as a way to spice up a replay.   Right, we're done here. Where to next? 37 - Defiant Root Our last stop for now is in Defiant Root, to check in with Sun the berry salesman.  Ooh. That sounds very nice, but let's see what he says if we decline first.  No problem, travelers. I hope you're back soon, before this chance slips away.Going for the hard sell, there, but he doesn't really need to convince me.  I absolutely want this thing. Use it well, travelers. I do not have any more berries with me at the moment, but I might find some more in the future. Please come back some other time.Heh, this is actually a lie, at least where the game mechanics are concerned. The Iron Seed we just bought is the last item he'll get in stock (it became available when we started Chapter 7).  If we talk to him again, he'll actually admit being sold out.  We now have to decide who gets to eat both of these berries! Honestly, in one sense it's a bit of a no-brainer, there's only one Uncle Iron Seed after all... and even if it weren't for that, he tends to be the best able to make use of it. But as always, I will put myself at the mercy of the thread. Please vote for who gets each of the berries! I will also accept "nobody" as an answer: because most players tend to get these in the postgame, finishing Chapter 7 without using them is a more representative experience.  Right, detour's over, let's head back.   Getting back is very simple, we just walk into the gap and the lift picks us up automatically.   We'll stop here for now. Next time... will we finally catch up with the Wasp King? I'll see you then! Explopyro fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Aug 25, 2022 |
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Aug 25, 2022 05:52
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The basic roach talking portrait is too big. Not much to say about this part. I like the last bastion sorta vibe of the area, though. It's not an unseen or unique sorta thing but it's definitely still standing in stark contrast to the game so far.
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Aug 25, 2022 06:07
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Alxprit posted:The basic roach talking portrait is too big. Ugh, thanks for pointing that out. Apparently I can't maths tonight. I've replaced the portrait, hopefully the new one is better. Alxprit posted:Not much to say about this part. I like the last bastion sorta vibe of the area, though. It's not an unseen or unique sorta thing but it's definitely still standing in stark contrast to the game so far. Yeah, this is fair, I don't disagree with any of this.
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Aug 25, 2022 06:21
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I like ice levels, so you puzzling your way through the refrigerator was pretty neat. I did not expect any roaches to have survived. But there being a last colony defending the sapling makes a lot of sense. I agree that Elizant and the roach elder changing their mind about the Everlasting Sapling was a bit abrupt, even if the game kind of lays the groundwork for those decisions. Now I'm super curious what species the wasp "king" really is, and where they got their fire magic. Roaches have been strongly associated with ice magic all game long, so the wasp "king" wielding the opposite power is extra intriguing. I also can't wait to finally see the Everlasting Sapling.
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Aug 25, 2022 07:10
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Give Leif both the berries.
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Aug 25, 2022 09:53
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Leif's true power isn't ice magic. It's the power of Black Robe posted:Give Leif both the berries. 
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Aug 25, 2022 12:09
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iron seed should go to an ironhearted individual so naturally, give them both to Vi this is a joke, you know who I'm voting for really
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Aug 25, 2022 12:55
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DACK FAYDEN posted:iron seed should go to an ironhearted individual Yeah, another vote for Leif
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Aug 25, 2022 13:33
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Heh, definitely seems like Leif's winning the poll so far (though I'll leave it open a couple days at least yet). His appetite consumes all.Torrannor posted:I like ice levels, so you puzzling your way through the refrigerator was pretty neat. It's not bad as far as ice levels go, and it's fun to work through although I do think the ambiguity of what you're supposed to do sometimes feels a bit weird ("that worked, but it can't be what they wanted me to do, can it?"). I do think it's a good change of pace to have this more relaxed, puzzle-focused section after the tense and combat-focused Dead Lands. Thinking about it, for all the ice magic in this game, it doesn't really feel to me like it has any "ice levels" per se. There are some sliding block type puzzles with ice floors, but none of them are too crazy, and there aren't any places where you lose walking traction or anything like that. Torrannor posted:I did not expect any roaches to have survived. But there being a last colony defending the sapling makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I hadn't expected it either; I definitely think I prefer it to the alternative of there being none left, and it feels slightly subversive to have them still be around. (On the other hand... they're roaches, the whole stereotype is that they're impossible to get rid of. Of course they were going to still be around.) Torrannor posted:I agree that Elizant and the roach elder changing their mind about the Everlasting Sapling was a bit abrupt, even if the game kind of lays the groundwork for those decisions. I don't know if there's really any way they could have written it and not had it feel abrupt, without adding at least some content to break it up rather than just being two sequential conversations. It might feel less abrupt if we had to do some kind of test to prove ourselves, or a fetch quest, etc (or maybe help the Roaches fight off some Wasp soldiers?) between Leif's speech and the Elder's acquiescence, but all of those options have their downsides and might ruin the pacing in their own way... Torrannor posted:Now I'm super curious what species the wasp "king" really is, and where they got their fire magic. Roaches have been strongly associated with ice magic all game long, so the wasp "king" wielding the opposite power is extra intriguing. I also can't wait to finally see the Everlasting Sapling. This will definitely be answered. I think technically we've been told enough to figure it out, but it's cryptic enough (and some of the clues are in offhand dialogue that wouldn't seem important) that I'd be surprised if anyone has. Slaan posted:Leif's true power isn't ice magic. It's the power of Hah, sounds about right really.
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Aug 26, 2022 22:53
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70: Through the Fire and Flames 78 - The Giant's Lair Last time, we climbed a refrigerator and discovered a hidden village of Roaches, who stayed here to guard the Sapling. After some fraught negotiations, Elizant and Leif were able to convince the Roach Elder that the Sapling would be better off destroyed and got her permission to chase after the Wasp King.  Before we get on with that, we have a bit of minor administrivia.  We have to allocate these two stat-boosting berries. There was a pretty firm majority opinion in favour of (trying to) slake Leif's appetite: he's getting both.    Like so. He's going to be very difficult to kill (which would be nice if he weren't sort of already dead, but, you know). Strategy-wise, the correct decision is usually to give the Iron Seed to Kabbu because defence boosts synergise with his taunting, but this will work just fine. (And there are potentially valid reasons to put them elsewhere. For instance, if you're going to use Taunt + Bubble Shield Lite + Favorite One consistently on Kabbu, he doesn't need the defence, and it'll help the others against party-wide attacks.) Regardless, this is what we've chosen and we can definitely work with it. Also, medals.   Quick Flea and Break can come off for now, we're not getting a whole lot of benefit from them.  With the 3 MP that frees up, I'll finally put on the fifth TP Plus. 30 TP is the most we're going to get on an all-MP build (and it's more than enough). A bit more of a buffer is convenient here, and I don't need the MP for any more sophisticated plans yet.  Here's Leif's status screen, showing his newly increased stats.  Also, before we head out, let's make a quick stop at Amber.  Let's drop off some of the junk we picked up in the previous areas.  And while I'm at it, I'll grab some nice things out of storage; we may as well. I don't know if I'll end up using these, but they could be convenient.  Right. Now that that's done, let's press onward and see what's waiting for us! 52 - Ant Kingdom, Under Attack!  We can barely take a few steps in before encountering a crisis situation. (We've heard this music before, when the Wasps invaded the Ant Kingdom, but it tends to feel very different in this context for some reason. A lot of people, myself included, were genuinely surprised to learn it's the same song.)    That monster... he put the place on fire and rushed through the flames...! (Yes, that's a stove. Though I've never seen one that makes tall cyclones of fire... maybe the Wasp King's magic is influencing it?) Through the flames!? That's... Even our Bubble Shield couldn't pull that off... Save your strength. Everything's fine now!   Ugh. You just had to say that, didn't you. Everyone, protect this Roach! I was just waiting for you to say it! (Just like in the previous chapter 7 areas, the area music continues to play through the battles.)  Welp. More new enemies! Though these look kind of familiar... and we can already see their HP?  Indeed, if we try to spy, we'll discover that the game considers us to already have done. These are fire variants of Krawler, Warden, and Haunted Cloth; previously we've only seen sand and ice variants. This form does have increased maximum HP relative to the others.  Also, Maki's fighting alongside us again. (And so is Elizant, we have access to Royal Decree in this battle. I never feel the need to use it in this fight, so I always forget it's an option.)  We'll start off with some normal attacks.  Interestingly, the fire forms are all weak to ice.    A few more attacks from Vi and Chompy, and we can take out the Krawler right away.  Leaving Maki free to start in on the Warden. He doesn't have any problems hitting airborne enemies.  The Warden's laser attack is familiar, though of course it's a fiery variant. This deals 4 base damage, and if we hadn't blocked, we'd be seeing a new status effect: fire attacks, naturally, can burn us. (We'll talk about burning soon enough, once we actually see it happen.)  The Haunted Cloths still have their HP-draining attack, though at base 2 damage it's more dangerous than it was last time! The healing can start to add up now, if you don't take them out in a single turn. (It's dealing 3 damage here because Kabbu has Favorite One on.) You may already be picking up on a trend: the fire variants' attacks are all stronger versions of attacks the other forms had. (And any status-inflicting attacks inflict burning instead of what they used to.)  Right. Let's press the attack, then.   Vi and Leif make quick work of the Warden.   Then we get started on the Haunted Cloth.  Maki does his part too, of course.  The fire Cloths also have the spin attack, though it's a more threatening 4 base damage now. (Between Back Support, the Iron Seed, and guarding, Leif only took 1 damage from it!) We've now seen all the attacks from the fiery variant of Haunted Cloth: they don't have a counterpart to the ice form's freezing breath.  That wasn't so bad. Let's finish this.  First, though, let's heal Kabbu. He took a lot of damage, and we'll get the TP back after the fight.  And down it goes.  It's theoretically possible to get EXP from these enemies, but I have no idea how lucrative they actually are, I don't think I've ever not been at max level here. (One of these days I do want to attempt some low-level runs...)   They were like those in the Sand Castle... They're usually harmless, but that monster's appearance riled them up... As if that wall of flames wasn't enough trouble. We'll have to find a way to cross, or shut them off.   (I think Mothiva speaks for everyone here.) W-What did we even do to them... Team Snakemouth. My Queen. Leave these to Kina and me. Trying to hog all the glory, eh? Stop being annoying. We need you to turn off that fire! Team Mothiva. Team Snakemouth. I will remain to assist Maki in defending the village. A-Are you sure? We could stay as well! Time is of the essence. I need your teams to quell those flames! Make haste! Bugaria is counting on you! We'll be back before you know it. Yeah! Let's go! Try not to slow us down. Ohohohoho! The cutscene ends there, and we regain control. Before we head out, there's a new banter here, and we can talk to everyone again. A machine that can produce flames... the giants could create such dangerous things. It could burn down all of our kingdoms in no time... O-Oi! Focus on what we've gotta do!Our team do not seem particularly thrilled by the concept of machines that shoot fire. Right, let's talk to people. First up, Elizant:  Don't worry. It's nothing we can't handle.She seems to feel a bit guilty about sending us in, but we don't really have a choice in the matter. Everyone's counting on us. We must turn down those flames! Easier said than done...If we check the banter for any of our allies, we can see this one.  The roach sentry is appreciative, at least. He also gets his own banter: He picked the wrong scouting shift, huh. It's not every day a mad king blitzes through an ancient fiery land. Yet he scouts knowing it was possible! Commendable!He does seem to have gotten the short end a bit, doesn't he.   Kina and Maki don't have too much to say; we can count on them.  Keep Mothiva in check. We won't take long.Zasp seems a bit overwhelmed, honestly.  Yeah, yeah. Just do your job until we're back!And Mothiva's still Mothiva. (I do find this a little weird... not too long ago, she was definitely talking like she and Zasp were planning to come with us, but now they're definitely staying behind to help guard. Oh well. They won't get in our way, at least.)  Right, on we go. We've barely taken a few steps before encountering more of these flaming constructs... we're probably going to have to fight a lot of them. (In case you're wondering, these are immune to Bug Me Not, just like the Dead Landers were.)   First off, let's use the rubble to gain a bit of height and fly over to this buried item spot.   Of course, we'll have to deal with this enemy group before we can dig it up. I'm not going to be showing these battles in depth, because quite frankly they're not very interesting. For the most part, these are toughened versions of enemies we've already fought plenty of, and while they're not completely trivial, they're not a huge challenge as long as you pace your resource usage. (One thing that's good to keep in mind right now is that with Vi's attack as high as it is, if we put her in front, she can very easily take out Haunted Cloths with a Tornado Toss followed up by a normal attack. We'll do that here.)  We do get to see another attack from the Warden this time. They still have their dash, which is 4 base damage.  Right, let's move on.  ...What's this?  It's a new item! All of the fire constructs can drop these, and it's the only way to get them.  Flame Rocks are a little weird. They're another attacking item, and in fact the only way we can attack with fire. They deal 2 damage (modified by defence), and attempt to inflict burning status. The damage increases to 4 against any enemy weak to fire. (In fact, any enemy that is weak to ice is also weak to fire, and vice versa, so you could say it's actually an "extreme temperature" weakness. You can fight fire with fire if you want.)Another neat thing about Flame Rocks is that they can substitute for a Spicy Berry or Spicy Bomb in many recipes. Anyway, we'll take this with us for now.   The dig spot, meanwhile, has a Magic Seed in it. That's not bad either.  Let's head back south now. First up, of course, are more enemies.  Here we have a Krawler and a Warden. Let's spread out our damage a bit, so we can see what the fire Krawlers do.  They have the beam attack, as you might suspect, though of course fire elemental this time (and able to inflict burning). And the base damage has increased to 4.  They can also charge us. This attack deals 5 base damage (though of course here First Plating is blocking it) and can inflict burning.  Moving on.  The fights here are worth a lot of berries.   ...Of course there are more. Let's get this one out of the way too, I guess.  Three Wardens. That could be a bit tedious...   So let's just blast through them. Hard Charge + Ice Rain is pretty brutal even without attack boosts.      That's the vast majority of their HP gone already. (And this is with Strong Start on him, so he's actually only getting a net +1 attack after the exhaustion penalty, the rest is just weakness damage and the positioning bonus. I should probably have moved Strong Start elsewhere in anticipation of doing this.) From here, it's just cleanup.  We do get to see they still have their charge-up move, giving +2 charge-up and Defence Up for 1 turn. The turn after, of course, they'll do a massive self-destruct explosion, though it's usually easy to take them down before that happens (so I don't have a GIF of it this time). The explosion is base 3 damage (+2 from the charge-ups) and can inflict burning.  Anyway, we finish the battle from there. Let's keep moving.   This may look like a dead end at first.  But this gap can be crossed, whether by flying or by walking across the narrow pipe here.  This doesn't feel particularly safe, does it? We're very close to the flames, but do we really want to be standing on the inactive burners when they could come alive any moment? We don't have much choice...  Regardless, we have more Krawlers to fight.  In the course of this fight, I miss blocking one of the charge attacks, and Kabbu gets burned!   So let's talk about burning. It's the last new status effect we'll be seeing, and behaves very similar to poison, dealing damage at the end of the turn. Of course, it's more damaging than poison: as is evident here, the minimum damage it can do is 2 (the damage increases to 3 if you have 30 or more maximum HP). Burning can be cured by items, though only items that cure "any status effect" will work. Interestingly, burning uses the same resistance stat as poison. So you can use Poison Resistance medals to prevent it, and when throwing Flame Rocks it checks against the enemy's poison resistance. That said, despite these similarities, it isn't poison and won't enable any of the medals that benefit from poison. (Of course, you can be poisoned too if you want, though the damage will really start adding up then.) When a character is burning, you'll also see flames flickering all over them; it doesn't look pleasant.  We finish the fight after that.   Another Flame Rock!  We're out of space, but this Dry Bread is pretty expendable, so we'll just use it and take the rock with us.  Right. How are we going to turn off this oven...  We can drop down here and get to what looks like a control panel. Could it be that simple?  Well, for starters, gouts of flame shoot out of the gauge periodically, and we need to watch out for those! What kind of oven is this?   As long as we time the crossing well, we can get across safely. Let's flip the switch?   There must be something else we missed... Let's look around, then.Of course it couldn't be that easy. Let's explore some more and see what else we can find.   Back we go.  There isn't anything we can interact with on the stovetop...   There does seem to be another path here, though!  We have to fly from on top of the flat rock if we want to get high enough to land on the book.   Then we can have Kabbu smash this boulder.  Of course there are yet more fire constructs waiting for us.  Two Haunted Cloths and a Krawler. A bit annoying, but it's not all that difficult.  Nothing noteworthy happened in the fight, so let's just move on.   Another one of these! These aren't particularly rare as drops go, though I've definitely had runs that were stingier with them. Let's leave this one behind, we don't have the room.  There's another boulder to smash here.  Breaking it exposes a pipe. Though do note, it's quite easy to fall off the edge while smashing this one, and if you do you might have to backtrack a bit (the respawn point is on the other side of the area).  Once the boulder's gone, the pipe starts blowing a current upward. (If we hadn't flipped the switch earlier, there wouldn't be any gas blowing here, and we'd get the "have we missed something? let's look around more" conversation on breaking the boulder here instead. Is this some kind of gas leak from the oven? It really doesn't seem safe...)    Regardless, we can use that to gain some altitude and land up here!  Of course, there are more enemies.  Two Wardens. (I know I'm treating the enemies here a bit lightly; if you aren't careful, the damage output absolutely can add up and wear you down by attrition. Balancing your TP usage against TP Core/Victory Buzz and knowing when to have Vi heal instead of ending a battle immediately goes a long way.)  Moving along.  Now, what's up here...  Not much on this side, just a different viewpoint of the flames...  But we can climb up the pile of gears, and from there get to the bouncy mushroom.   It launches us all the way up to another level! It looks like we're inside some kind of cupboard now? This room is pure chaos! It reminds us of Snakemouth, in a weird way... We've grown really strong since then, huh? This room's no match for us!Heh. Let's have a look around and see what we're dealing with.  Before we get too far in, of course, there are more enemies. These things are everywhere!  Three Krawlers. This might not be a bad place to use Ice Rain again, if we want to end things quickly.   Let's move along.  We have water droplets and moving platforms...   Lots of moving platforms.  Let's get this last enemy out of the way before trying to figure out the puzzle.  Two Haunted Cloths and a Krawler.  This was interesting. Leif is under the effects of Back Support here, and also has the Iron Seed, so you'd think he'd take zero damage from this. Apparently this draining attack can't be completely negated.  That aside, we finish the battle.   Right. There's a sealed door blocking the way forward, and if we look carefully, a pressure plate on the ledge above us.  To the south here, we have enough items of different heights that we can make our way up.   From the blue lid, we need to fly over to the fallen pillar.   This mushroom just launches us into the air. What are we supposed to do here?  We need to aim the launch from the mushroom to land on the moving platform.   From there, we can get over to this pillar and freeze the ice droplet.  Then knock the ice block onto the platform. From here, it gets a bit tricky. We need to use these moving platforms to get the block all the way to the pressure plate at the other side; this can be frustrating, especially because you need to start over from the beginning if you miss and the block falls down.   First up, we ride this platform west and then get the block onto the pillar.   Then launch it diagonally onto the next block.  Then we get onto the platform ourselves. (The block's positioning here was awkward enough I actually had to fly around it. Oops? Better than it falling off.)   Onto the next platform. The timing here can be tricky, since both platforms are moving.   Then we just need to get on here ourselves, and get it onto the ledge.  Ugh, it's not quite on the switch...   After waiting for the platform to get back in position, we can hit it one last time and get it onto the switch.  The door opens!   Right. What's on this side?  Unlike the previous room, the platforms here are all stationary. We might have to change that. Also, the ground is covered with thorns.  Of course, we have Leif's Bubble Shield for that. Let's check out the rest of the room.   There's a switch on the side of that pillar...  More pillars in this corner...  And another switch on this one.  Well, let's start here, since there's a ramp we can use to get up.   Of course, we have to fight more Wardens first.  Right, where were we.  We hit the switch with Vi's Beemerang.   That starts one of the platforms moving! Though right now that's not much help to us, it's still too high to reach.   We can't get onto these platforms from the thorns...   But we can fly over from the ground on this side, so let's do that.  Another fight, of course.  It ends like all the others.  Wow, that's a lot of berries.  Also, another Flame Rock. I don't have the room to keep this.  We fly over to this little platform.  And from there, we can hit this switch also.  That causes the other platform to start moving up and down. That should help.  Right. Let's get on the elevator.   Then wait for the other platform...   We'll ride it over and get off on this pillar. What now?  We can fly from there to the last pillar. And from here, we can see into another room.  All we have to do is fly over this pipe and drop down.   Not much to see here, except a Dead Lander Alpha. (Remember those? Apparently there are some on this side too...)  It has a Beta with it too. This is a bit tougher than the flame constructs, but still, nothing we can't deal with by now, we've dealt with this exact formation before. (The easiest way to deal with this, I think, is to get Vi in front and take out the Beta immediately with Hurricane Toss and a normal hit or two, then slug it out with the Alpha over the next few turns.)  We've dealt with worse.   Oh, nice, another Mystery Berry! I don't really have room, but I do have four Magic Seeds, I can afford to toss one of those to keep this. (Honestly, the Magic Seed is a better item, but these are kind of rare and might be fun to mess with later.)  The only way to go is down.  We drop back down onto the stovetop again, but this time on the far side of the flames!  Of course, there are more constructs here.  This one's two Krawlers with a Haunted Cloth. There's still not much interesting to say about these; unfortunately, I do have to say the fights in this section get a bit repetitive.  Let's keep going.     There's not much here, but a mushroom which can launch us down to find more gauges.  Let's hope these ones are more effective?  There we go! That's one burner down.   And that does for the other!  Alright! Let's go meet up with the others!(We have a brief fade-out here.)   Whatever. Queen Elizant, how is the Roach? We sent him home when the flames were doused. There were many "constructs", but we defeated all of them. Nice job! The Wasp King's gotta be up ahead for real now. Hearing he crossed those flames by himself... I'm still quite shocked. Muh! Everyone, we must not falter. With our combined might, we are Bugaria's hope! Heheh. He's got no chance if we're all together! Yeah. Even Mothiva should be able to help out a little. Don't doubt it. We'll pull our weight. Everyone. Let's go! After that conversation, we regain control. Where did it place us?  Ah. We're on the far side of the oven, we've seen that knife before.  Also, it's worth noting, if we check our stats we'll find were given a full heal after that cutscene.  On we go!  ...This doesn't look good. There are a bunch of dead scorpions; normally, we probably wouldn't mind that, but these look like the Roaches' domesticated ones...  Leif! Are you ok?! There is... some strong magic here. We don't know what it is. We have never felt anything like that before... It's gotta be the sapling! Let's finish this!If we check the banter here, we can get a bit of insight; Leif's picking up on some very strong magic, and our team definitely know we're close!  For now, though, we'll stop at this save crystal. Next time, we finally confront the Wasp King! I'll see you then. Explopyro fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Sep 19, 2022 |
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Sep 7, 2022 04:30
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Never realized a lot of the unique fire stuff for the code in the game, it's neat the bytes it shares and such. Really looking forward to the final fight coming up here! Some of the best music in the game coming up.
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Sep 7, 2022 06:25
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Hm, OP made a mistake and linked to the wrong music here, this is the actual soundtrack for this area. Also of course the gang don't like machines that spit fire, they're all 2x weak to it. 4x in Leif's case.
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Sep 7, 2022 09:46
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Alxprit posted:Never realized a lot of the unique fire stuff for the code in the game, it's neat the bytes it shares and such. Really looking forward to the final fight coming up here! Some of the best music in the game coming up. It's interesting to me that they implemented the burn status that way, because the game's files aren't huge and it's not like they were beholden to a ROM size or anything like that. It makes me think maybe they added it later in development, after they'd already finalised the data structures for resistances and weaknesses etc. You are absolutely not wrong about the music, several of these upcoming tracks are among my favourites and I'm excited to share them with everyone. Black Robe posted:Hm, OP made a mistake and linked to the wrong music here, this is the actual soundtrack for this area. I should have just done this. (Also I had to go back and edit the update title, I'd apparently forgotten the song didn't have a second the in it. Oops?) Black Robe posted:Also of course the gang don't like machines that spit fire, they're all 2x weak to it. 4x in Leif's case. Heh. And, of course, now that we've encountered Burn, it becomes apparent that the major status effects in Bug Fables line up with the ones from Pokemon (Poison, Numb/Paralysis, Sleep, Freeze, Burn). I genuinely don't know whether that was intentional or not.
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Sep 8, 2022 02:14
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FYI: I had been hoping to be able to get the next update out this week, but I'm running quite behind and I don't know if I'll be able to manage it. The next couple of weeks are going to be quite busy for me for a variety of reasons and I can't predict when I'll have time (or, frankly, energy) to work on the LP. I hate leaving things at a cliffhanger like this, but I also don't want to rush things. In other things, I ended up doing some research on the poison and burn damage formulae. I found a post on discord that claimed to have the exact formulae, but a quick bit of testing showed those weren't correct either, and I ended up having to investigate further. In the end it's both simpler and more complicated than I had thought. I don't know how it works internally, but empirically I found the following breakpoints depending on maximum HP: POISON 1-20: 1 damage 21-30: 2 damage 31+: 3 damage (player characters only, caps at 2 for enemies) BURN 1-29: 2 damage 30+: 3 damage I couldn't get poison to deal 4 damage even when raising a character's HP to the highest value legitimately possible. And, yes, the breakpoint for 3 damage does differ by 1 HP between poison and burn. (I didn't thoroughly test damage breakpoints on enemies, but I did verify the maximum burning will do is 3.) Most of this is of only academic interest, regardless, since in my experience it's unusual for players to increase HP this much. But I thought it was interesting.
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Sep 19, 2022 02:37
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So if I'm reading it right, 20 HP seems to be the best stopping point if you're looking to bulk up a character that way. 20 HP lets them survive up to ten ticks of burn and 20 ticks of poison while 21 HP changes the math to 11 ticks of burn (+1) and 11 ticks of poison (-9).
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Sep 19, 2022 19:27
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This is another "the update isn't here yet" apology post. Unfortunately, I ended up encountering some technical difficulties that ruined my first recording (over an hour of footage) and, while I have since managed to get a successful take, I haven't had time to do any work on the update beyond that. My grandmother finally passed away yesterday after a long struggle with cancer and several other illnesses. This isn't entirely unanticipated or unwelcome (she's been suffering for the last several years, and especially the last 3-4 months have been very unpleasant, and it's honestly a relief to see that come to an end at least), but I'm frankly not in a mental state conducive to working on LP, and there's a lot to deal with right now; at bare minimum this coming week is going to be an absolute mess. Thank you for understanding and I'm sorry about the delays.
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Sep 26, 2022 17:44
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It's all good, and I'm glad your grandmother finally found peace. We'll be here when the update is finished, take your time.
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Sep 26, 2022 18:53
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Don't worry about the delays. It sucks to lose a grandparent, no matter how much of a relief it may be for them to pass one. Take care of yourself first before going back to the LP.
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Sep 27, 2022 10:40
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 19:49 |
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Edit: Update was originally here, I've moved it to the next page instead.
Explopyro fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Nov 10, 2022 |
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Nov 10, 2022 08:02
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