In His House At R'lyeh, Let's Play Cthulhu Saves The World!

Leave: Feb 7, 2012; Taking the term "Koopaling" to a whole new level since 2016.

Update Six: In Which We're Dunwitch The Gnarlyhotep

Howdy, folks, and welcome back! Last time, on Cthulhu Saves The World, we did the first half of the zombie infested city of Dunwitch; we were tasked by our hero, Cthulhu, to kill only as many zombies as need be and recruited the necromancer October to our ranks. Today, we're going to crush Nyarlathotep, so let's get crazy.

I'm never going to be able to spell Nyarlathotep right on the first try; I made sure to add it to my dictionary so that spell check can save me.

It's just a bunch of zombies in this town; why are so many houses half destroyed?

Then again, in the Resident Evil games, parts of Raccoon City are always on loving fire. 'course, there's a lot more than zombies around there (like misguided special forces teams, mutants, explosions, and evil Russians), so maybe that's not the best comparison.

She's probably dead! :buddy:

While it looks like I'm going to kick this guy's rear end for his lies, a fight just started when I was moving away.

I'm not crazy about group attacks, but Fireball is pretty good stuff.

As is this; Insanity, plus an assload of damage.

And an attack that gets stronger the higher the combo is, as well as targeting all enemies? October, simply puts, kicks rear end.

And here's this; Tentacle is a pretty strong attack, especially when all three hits smash the same enemy.

October does not like being thrown up on.

As evidenced by her using the earth itself to counter attack.

We'll see Fireball and Dark Blast later on in this update, by October is pretty well a mainstay in my party. I always have to have a black mage around, just because they are such juggernauts of destruction.

Oh, yeah, Cthulhu leveled up. He gets some stat boosts, instead of 25 HP/MP.

Umi leveled up as well!

There are reasons to take either of these, but I'm going to continue my trend of taking her Strike skills.

That was quick, October.

This could be handy; October has a shitload of MP and it would never hurt for her to regenerate more. Unfortunately, there's no glitch with the girls in this game where they'll regain full MP after each battle.

However, this adds more destructive power, so I take this one for now.

On the bookshelf is a book I'd like to own. You can never know too much about cats.

...Well, gently caress you, Cthulhu.

Unless it was a tiger or lioness. That'd be cool.

I guess we'll just cross right over to--

--the next house...?

Uh, alright, let's just go to this house.

Yeah, sure, I'll take that.

At least they can't fly.

Quick, light the fireplace and let's get the map!

I see that treasure chest. I want that chest.

Alright! Take that poo poo!

...You're a dick, Narrator.

If he keeps this poo poo up, I'm going to find him and knock him the gently caress out.

I think we're doing pretty well on the anti-zombie routine.

Over to the chest is just walking to the left. No complicated paths or anything.

I suppose if I combine this with that other trident, her Poison poo poo would be off the chain. But I don't do that.

Maybe I should have. But, nothing in this dungeon is presenting enough of a challenge that I need to have it constantly poisoned.

Plus, that removes the extra power from Umi's full party attack, which I'm not cool with.

I'm not even sure what would be in here. Does it recommend you get chomped and become one of them? Or keep a supply of brains in your pocket?

So, I have a .gif of Fireball in action, but a lot of the animations in this game are quick, minimal, and don't take a lot of time for pretty looking style.

It's just abruptly thrown in here; I'm not sure what the hell I was thinking, but here you go.

It's not my best .gif, but it gets the point across..

This woman is clearly insane.

Hmm...Door or broken wall?

Mistakenly, I take the broken wall. The other side leads to treasure.

But, we'll get back to the treasure.

There's a parking lot. What the hell?

This is about the point where I realized I should have gone the other way.

To apologize for my mistake, Sharpe gained a level. He's a very proper sword, you know.

The other option is +40 Magic, and I'm making us a slicey and dicey Sharpe, so we need tons of Strength.

I mean, enough Strength that even Conan would ask, "Isn't this excessive?"

Let's teleport back to the door, and see what our new booty is.

Which is also a bit of a walk and looks like it could lead forward, too.

You're all expecting a reason why I took Freeze, aren't you? Joke's on you! We're taking Snowstorm this level, because it's powerful and targets a group (which I don't like, but I do need some of those types of attacks), plus October already has a Finisher, as well as the others in the party. I need to have some group-wide attacks, too.

October is also pretty good for the role of general shitwrecker; at this moment, she can target groups, all enemies, and single targets with powerful attacks. She's pretty versatile, but she lacks good physical attacks and the ability to stand up in a straight slugfest, but with the other party members, that's not a concern.

October might be my favorite character just for those reasons; I rarely see a reason to take her out of the party, much like I wouldn't want to remove Rydia or Toadstool.

Oh, hey, if you were ever curious about Molly the Werezompire, check this out.

I suppose if someone wanted to do a feature on that game, if they were to hash out the details with me via PM or Steam, I wouldn't be opposed.

Anywho, lefterly leads to treasure.

And battle.

Where we can check out Snowstorm.

I don't know what you were expecting, but I hope it was a snowstorm of some sort.

But who saw the level up coming!?

A stronger way to cause Insanity; I like it.

This doesn't sound bad, either, but I end up going with the stronger, Insane, Dark Blast. My logic was that I have Deathblow if I want a combo finisher with Cthulhu, but maybe I should have gone with this one, just for the elemental variation on it. I still have Insane Strike.

Too late to change it now, I suppose.

And it looks like Umi is getting extra Strength and Magic!

Now these could come in handy. There's a boss coming up in a bit that can easily, and probably will, gently caress my poo poo up.

And back over this side, let's continue.

My God, a bridge!

I suppose this is the bridge we saw before we entered the city. Dunwitch is a pretty big city, considering I'm taking two updates to do it, but it's nice that the map shows that, too.

But we're in the latter half of this dungeon now, so it won't be much longer before we're done.

Aww, man, I want secret treasure!

I'm a grimy drawer, myself.

I know the zombies are partying and we can't get past them because of that, but can't we dance with them and get them spun out of the way?

I know why we can't kill them, and it saddens me that Cthulhu is willing to shaft himself on EXP like that, but can't we try to get him to look the other way?

There's a decent bit of treasure within this house.

Uh, church. I suppose this is a church, since it looks like the last church. Or at least the last area where we encountered a priestly guy.

The Bane Sword is an interesting weapon.

Just a Strength boost, one lower than our current sword, and no other stat boosts, but we'll be dealing double damage to all undead enemies.

I would have equipped it, but I only had about two fights left, and I don't think Nyarlathotep is undead. Or maybe he is and I handicapped myself for that fight.

Pull harder! Put your tentacles into it!

B-But what if we meet someone else who's about to have a birthday?

Since we can see bits of other houses on these maps, I'm wondering, does entering a house just warp you to a massive map that has all of the different insides on it, or would it be a series of smaller maps, each with two or three houses on it?

If you're looking at the image numbers, you'll see that I've skipped a couple here and there. I take a lot of shots and a few of them are superfluous, but you never know when you'll want that extra picture.

Ugh, we'd lose pretty much all of our cool points. And maybe take a few from anyone who saw us doing it.

Oh, this is going to be a good story!

Motherfuckers! :argh:

Maybe there's an RPG based on this story, too.

This reminds me, there's a pop up version of one of Stephen King's books. I should see about getting a copy.

By this point, I had completed all the random encounters in the area, so exploration became a breeze.

Limited random encounters is a loving great idea.

Holy poo poo, we've found the Maltese Falcon. Or is this a Lovecraft reference I don't know?

Hell, could it be both? I wouldn't count that out.

Well, this is a boring house.

Hey, look, a bit of commentary! Let's check it out.

: the player switched maps. Switching maps happens frequently here with all of the buildings that the player needs to go through. In its early form, you could go through the entire city with only running into a couple of battles. Rather than reprogram the whole thing, I just lowered the required count to run into an encounter in this dungeon. If you walk back and forth, you'll get into battles much more frequently here than in other dungeons, but if you explore normally, the rate is about the same due to map switching.

I told you there was a reason for it, and I think it's a pretty good reason. And kind of clever, too.

Being able to hear about why they made some of the choices they did is super cool. And maybe even answers a question you didn't even know was able to be asked.

Oh, what's up here?

A dead guy's life savings. Awesome.

Oh, so that's what you call a group of ducks. Good to know.

You know we're close to the end because there's a save point.

Though, our stocks are pretty good, it's never a bad thing to be in tip-top shape.

There's another bit of spoilers in that commentary, but I can show it at the end of the update, which I will.

Jesus, you're one ugly motherfucker.

Why do you have multiple mouths!? :gonk:

Well, he still kind of is, but now he wants to kick your asses.

He still wants to destroy the world and stuff, but yeah, it's a long story.

Better make it your best, son, 'cuz you're 'bout to get wrecked.

Die, monster.

You don't belong in this world.

Despite the group of zombies in the cutscene, Nyarls only has a couple of Fat Zombies as his cohorts.

That's a lot of HP. I mean, wow, that's a lot of HP.

However, we've got a lot of killer attacks, and we'll drive him batshit, too, just for that extra oomph.

I could have started this battle off a little more impressively.

I didn't think he could get any uglier, but I was wrong.

That's a fair bit of damage for just starting the fight, but that's okay. We've got more than enough healing to get poo poo done, with Umi and Potions. Sharpe and Umi are fast enough that they can keep the party healthy with little trouble.

We're going to need to build a combo count, as well as lay on the pain.

Oh, and Nyarls can revive his buddies, like the Necromancer, but he's way better at it than the Necromancer.

That's not bad, but I don't think it'll last on the Fat Zombies after they've been defeated.

The Fat Zombies will keep dying, so making them Insane is a waste of time and MP, and Nyarlathotep is already Insane, so no point in this.

We're going to let this stew for just a little longer before busting it out. While it will reduce Cthulhu and Sharpe's HP to 1, it's going to do a shitload of damage in the process.

This would have been a better use of Sharpe's first turn, but he now has two hits in his regular attack, but I mostly did it for the Agility boost.

While I've been breezing through this fight, don't let yourself think you can snooze through it; Poison will wear you down after a while and Nyarlathotep (holy poo poo, got it right on the first try!) will be getting stronger and stronger, meaning he's going to keep hitting like a son of a bitch.

Suck it down, Crawling Chaos. You can't stand up to one of the Great Old Ones.

And two levels are gained, but by Sharpe and October.

Ooh, with Brave Wind, we can really wreck some poo poo.

...Uh-huh. Yeah, you're learning to Sharpen yourself.

I take the random hits version of Lightning, just for the three hits of it.

Well, I have a good idea of how to pronounce Cthulhu's name, but I had no idea about yours until someone posted that if you say it like "Gnarly Hotep" that I had any idea of how to pronounce yours.