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4. Climate Change Now that Shrug has freed the Earth Crystal, everything’s pretty again.   You’re welcome, pal!  Everyone handled the whole “rapidly age and de-age” thing really well. That’s nice!  Kaeli’s mom is still pretty mad but who can blame her?  In the flesh!  Here’s the Elixir. Why don’t I go to Aquaria first and look around? Where is it? It’s through the Focus Tower and to the northeast. “Get the gently caress out of my house  ” If, for whatever reason, you decide to go back to the Level Forest or haven’t cleared out the Battlefield nearby then everything will be this pleasant shade of green.  Now that we actually have a world map to explore, you should know that there isn’t any real exploration like other world maps in Final Fantasy or other JRPGs. You push a direction and Shrug finds his own way there. It’s sort of like a glorified level select screen now that I think about it. It’s an interesting option because it doesn’t really account or prepare someone for getting lost on a world map and running into enemies waaaaay beyond your abilities and sort of eschews the whole exploration thing altogether. I think, ultimately, it does a pretty poor job of preparing a player for any other games in this genre because it was pretty unique in this respect but in doing leaves this hypothetical new JRPG player completely confused when they’re thrown out into a big world that doesn’t just get them where they need to go if they play another game in this genre. On the other hand, I don’t think Mystic Quest was giving people enough credit to figure things out on their own and that could also be the problem right there. The positive is that you can pretty much never get lost but the downside, and I think it’s a pretty big one, is that the world is never very interesting to explore nor fleshed out. I mean, the world is seriously just called the World.  The only thing left to do around here is this Battlefield containing Bone Dungeon enemies—Minotaur Zombies, Basilisks, Sandworms, et cetera. The reward here is 150 GP, which is actually a pretty considerable amount since we’re barely sitting at 400.  As an aside, these guys are weak to earth attacks like Quake. This is only worth mentioning so Shrug can keep killing them in one turn.   I like the Focus Tower as a set piece, as I do most other things in this game. A lot of the art in the North American manual portrays a super cool looking world that, obviously, couldn’t be realized in the game. While I’ll never call Mystic Quest totally innovative, it has some interesting ideas. I guess. My point is that I think a tower like this could make for an awesome dungeon or something.  The Focus Tower is smack in the middle of everything, which is... I guess you could call it our hub? We’ll be coming back here a lot, in any case.  There’s a secret path here for the true adventurer, or you could take the much longer way around. Hmm, that’s a familiar looking cloud tucked away in the corner.  Who?  Who?? But I’m going to Aquaria! Maybe you’ll find her along the way... I—okay? Thanks, I think?  This is where the Focus Tower branches out, ergo we’ll be coming here the most. Each coin we pick up lets us access a new area of the tower so let’s head through the Sand Coin door.  If you don’t have the coin, it won’t open. This is more or less the end of the world if you’re a kid and don’t quite realize how short the Bone Dungeon and battles actually are.  The Focus Tower has a whole lot of cool poo poo in it, as evidenced by all the fancy treasure chests. Fire will come in very handy where we’re going and will have almost totally eclipsed Quake in value soon. You’ll see what I mean in a bit.  I always thought this area was a bit of a slog when I was younger but now I’ve realized that this is where Mystic Quest has basically opened up. We nearly have a full arsenal of weaponry, we’ll be collecting new equipment, and we’re finally going to be able to see what the deal with “Wizard” spells is. There’s basically a lot of cool stuff to see from hereon. I’d say that it’s considerably longer than the Earth section of the game because compared to one dungeon (Level Forest is not a dungeon by any stretch of the imagination), we’ll have three to tackle. We’re not going to take on that Battlefield solo though, so let’s go find someone to join our party.   Well, the world map stops us here so I guess the game's over now. Might as well look around this anticlimactic final area.   Good effort, Shrug.  Aquaria is frozen, people are sick, Grandpa is trapped...  I smell another fetch quest! What luck! Let’s go free him.Shrug’s good people to offer this considering he just met this person a couple of seconds ago and has no idea who she is. But we can’t! I’m going home...She tries to leave again but Shrug is nothing if not persistent.  You know, thinking about it, this is a weird point in the conversation for these questions to come up.  YOU are Phoebe? Then I’m going with you! It’s more like Shrug joined Phoebe, but whatever!  Here is Phoebe much more practically dressed for the part of the world that’s suffering eternal winter. I actually think she looks sort of cool  Definitely the best of the European character artwork, if you ask me. She’s apparently an adventurer of sorts herself and her stats definitely reflect that because she’s hella competent.  Pheobe is really good and easily our best party member. She has a huge magical repertoire and she’s no slouch with her physical damage despite Shrug easily being capable of outdamaging her physically soon—but magic is far and away what she should be doing. She’s very clearly intended to be our “mage” archetype and she accomplishes that with flying colors. Look at how many magic charges she has! Much like Tristam, her HP is higher than what it should be at her level—680 rather than 600. Unlike Tristam, her resistances of water, wind, and silence are actually worth a drat because we'll be dealing with water type attacks very soon. She also gets the first Wizard spell of the game: Thunder. Artix posted:((Pow * 6) + (Mag * 9) - (def * 2)) * weakness / number of targets  And that’s not all! Her weapon, the Cat Claw, inflicts poison and paralysis similarly to Tristam’s ninja stars but has the benefit of not having to concern yourself with ammo. She also won't be killing in one hit so the paralysis/poison will actually do something.  Now that we have a party member who is, again, much better than us we can go to the Battlefields with no problems whatsoever. This one nets us 90 EXP, which is a pretty boring reward. Or is it? Keep a close eye on Shrug’s level.  And, of course, new areas mean new enemies. First up is the Mintmint, a palette-swapped Brownie. He’s learned how to Stare at you long enough to confuse you but otherwise he’s nothing special.  This Battlefield gives us a solid 300 GP and that’s certainly a pretty nice amount.  We’re also introduced to Giant Toads, yet another palette-swap. They can paralyze as well as poison so that’s pretty annoying!  Here they are properly clobbered. Now’s a good time to point out that the amount of ‘injured’ sprites an enemy has determines their... threat level, I guess you could call it. These sorts of mooks have two, while mini-bosses and their palette-swaps get three. Big bosses like Flamerus Rex get four. Some enemies increase/decrease in size and the targeting reticle changes accordingly. It’s a cute little detail.  This is the first time we’ve run into paralysis and it’s about as fun as it sounds. You can’t act at all which can be really frustrating to watch. Fortunately it wears off with time, doesn’t last outside of battle, and is a non-issue to heal but it can be a huge pain when stacked with poison. You may have noticed that Shrug jumped from level 8 to level 10 somehow as well. It’s difficult to communicate through screenshots, but as someone reminded me in the thread, Battlefields let us perform the double-level glitch. I’m not too focused on the technical aspect of the game in this playthrough but I figure this is worth pointing out. If you level up at the end of a battlefield and you are rewarded with EXP, you’ll just level up again because the game thinks you’re already there since it doesn’t reset the EXP counter for your next level until after the fight. Unfortunately, you can’t use this to just skip a whole bunch of levels since the game just gives you roughly two levels worth of EXP to gain til your next one. I can see the value in the short term but otherwise, eh, I don’t think it’s really worth the set up. To get Shrug's EXP into the area where the trick would work, I had to put a dent into the last shown battlefield before clearing out the other one and, honestly, that’s just sort of a hassle for two quick levels.  This Battlefield has something very cool indeed. If you’re going to do any of them in this area, do this one.  They also have another new enemy. Scorpions can predictably poison you, but they can also blind you. Their Rapier attack can hit for as hard as 120 or so damage, so hope that doesn’t happen too often. They have a weakness to fire that’s easily exploited now. Fire is a better spell than Quake because it’s not mandatorily attacking all enemies so you can choose your target. Fire is a weaker spell with a power of 85 (compared to Quake at 125) and in fact the weakest Black magic spell we’ll get. Sure, if you get an enemy alone then Quake is definitely superior but when most enemies will still die in one hit from bombs in such a scenario, why waste a Black magic charge? The damage bonus you get from attacking weakness is nothing to scoff at either. I’m still going to give Fire the edge due to its versatility. Also, there are a whole lot of enemies here that are actually weak to Fire.  Here's the spell in action.  Here they are after being set on fire a few times.  And here’s Phoebe’s Thunder spell for good measure.  This is our reward for clearing this Battlefield and it finally gives Shrug his first piece of equipment that does more than add to his defense total. Shrug will never be silenced again so he can sling spells all day. ...though I guess Shrug never actually got silenced to begin with. Really, the benefit here is the small defense boost because, well, we haven’t seen Silence yet and we’re never going to. The status ailment exists but regardless of whether or not you actually have a resistance to it, the ailment is never set if an enemy tries to hit you with it. There you go, I guess   I can’t really explain why, but I really like this whole tiered equipment system that Mystic Quest does. Maybe it’s just the appeal of getting cooler, better things and seeing how your basic and boring equipment slowly becomes more impressive. It makes for a nice sense of progression, I feel. Maybe it’s just because combat feels more visual and exciting, I suppose, in Mystic Quest than other JRPGs of the time so seeing your new weapon plays a part in that. I just really like opening chests and finding the upgraded weapon or armor.  I know I really gave Phoebe the upsell, but Shrug is already catching up to her in several stats. Phoebe is going to take a further lead again soon.   Huh, I just now realized that Foresta and Aquaria’s music have the same melody with different instruments.  We have our first actual inn that we need to pay for. 95 GP is actually almost 1/10th of our money but you’ll probably be using inns to replenish your magic stock more than anything so it's nothing to fret over. The old man would sell us Cure Potions, but...  Have you considered walking in and out of a room, because that seems to work for me  I guess this is their economy without Cure Potions.  All these years and I’ve just now noticed that this not-at-all important or unique plant is just a big leaf and not a shiny heart   The woman in the northernmost house has a helmet for sale for whatever reason. 200 GP is nothing and you really should just get it.  Very stylish. Like most of the other first level pieces of equipment, it just raises defense. The Steel Helm gives Shrug an extra four points of defense. But Shrug can’t bum around town forever so it’s off to Phoebe’s house we go.  Phoebe, why would you leave your door open in this weather? Next time: Dungeons galore I'm not totally sure why the .gifs are blurry or darker for that matter since they look fine before being uploaded. I'll try to figure out what's up with that and replace them. I'm not using VirtualDub but I appreciate the advice all the same, Yapping Eevee! cardinal direction fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jul 2, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 21:35
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I personally always loved this game as a kid and occasionally feel the urge to go back through it every once in awhile. Even though certain aspects of it (Mostly just the dungeons after awhile) start to slog on and you start wishing you could just get poo poo over with already, most everything else is surprisingly decent considering the game was more or less just cranked out to sell an RPG. And all hail the almighty shrug animation.
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Jul 1, 2014 23:26
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cardinal direction posted:I'm not totally sure why the .gifs are blurry or darker for that matter since they look fine before being uploaded. I'll try to figure out what's up with that and replace them. I'm not using VirtualDub but I appreciate the advice all the same, Yapping Eevee! I wouldn't describe them as "blurry" so much as "smoothed over and de-jaggied, a la anti-aliasing". I have no practical experience in the matter, but it's probably the sort of thing where something, somewhere, has a setting for it. On another note, I also enjoyed the armor progression in this game. Simple as hell, of course, but there was definitely something satisfying about "same role, but now new and improved with this benefit too!".
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Jul 2, 2014 00:34
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Oh good, we're getting close to what was my least favorite part of this game as a kid. Even now I'm kind of cringing thinking about it. Spoilered below in case my ever-so-eloquent opinion ruins part of the surprise. gently caress the Ice Pyramid, now and forever.
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Jul 2, 2014 00:59
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Hooray, another FFMQ LP! This game rocks. Literally.  Something amusing about the Blind status ailment: I'm pretty sure it either doesn't work or works backwards. At the very least, I remember Phoebe getting a lot more critical hits when blinded than not. Artix?
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Jul 2, 2014 01:50
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BTW, one thing I'll compliment you on. Thank you so much for making the music cues loop, instead of ending after just a minute or so! That's really awesome that you did that!
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Jul 2, 2014 02:20
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How exactly are you making the gifs? Without having anything else to go off, my best guess would be that whatever program you're using is resizing the footage with a filter, which is why it's getting that anti-aliasing effect. Anyway, not much to add this update. Phoebe owns and is far and away the best party member in the game for a number of reasons, not the least of which are her great resistances and crazy repertoire of magic. She's also our first source of wizard magic, which is basically identical to black magic, aside from doing more damage. Specifically, wizard magic runs on this formula: ((Pow * 6) + (Mag * 9) - (def * 2)) * weakness / number of targets Curiously, Thunder is actually the weakest spell in the entire game (44 Power), but running it through the wizard formula makes all the difference. Under the black magic numbers, Phoebe's Thunder would have a base power of 353 damage (assuming no defense, no weakness, one target); under wizard numbers, it shoots all the way up to 795. TooMuchAbstraction posted:Something amusing about the Blind status ailment: I'm pretty sure it either doesn't work or works backwards. At the very least, I remember Phoebe getting a lot more critical hits when blinded than not. Artix? Nothing I can find holds that up. Not saying it's not possible (because this game is glitchy as hell), but my own anecdotal tests say that blind works as intended, dropping your accuracy down to about a third of what it usually is. Although speaking of glitches, cardinal direction, are you going to show off the resistance glitch or should I?
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Jul 2, 2014 03:04
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Oh boy, the deal with the gifs was dumb as all hell. I just forgot to change some emulator settings before capturing the gifs, which is why they were getting that anti-aliased look. I'll start on replacing them now. I'm really good at this, I know. Here's a quick and dirty test. My eyes are pretty bad but I'm pretty sure that this looks better. Let me know if I'm wrong about that though. From what I can tell, Blind does exactly what it says. I imagine the RNG was just in Artix's favor, but who knows! Mystic Quest does some weird things now and then. I'm pretty sure that Silence is the only status effect that just outright doesn't work. As for the resistance glitch, I was planning on covering it when we encountered Reuben and went to the Volcano/Mine, maybe getting a little extra challenge out of it, but if you want to do it now that's totally fine by me!
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Jul 2, 2014 03:36
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That GIF looks a lot better. As for Blind, maybe I just got lucky.
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Jul 2, 2014 03:56
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Nah, if you're holding off on the resistance glitch, I'll wait until then to talk about it.
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Jul 2, 2014 04:05
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Back when I played this as a kid, there was a weird problem in one particular dungeon; I think it was in the ice dungeon. What would happen is that the game would freeze every time you finished an enemy encounter. Back then my family couldn't figure out the problem, and eventually we called the Squaresoft hint line. A certain percentage of launch SNES consoles exhibited this problem, and they told us that one way of getting around it was to manually save immediately after each enemy encounter, and then reset the game and continue onward until the next enemy encounter, and rinse and repeat until we got out of there. It made the dungeon a slog, but I always think back on this as an example of the days before consoles being online and being able to be patched was commonplace and expected. I still have that launch SNES. FF:MQ is the only game that ever gave that system any trouble.
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Jul 2, 2014 04:21
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Of course it was freezing. First-generation SNES consoles didn't have any insulation.
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Jul 2, 2014 05:15
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cardinal direction posted:Huh, I just now realized that Foresta and Aquaria’s music have the same melody with different instruments. This is actually true of all of the town themes. They all have the same melody but they are flavored in a way that represents their location.
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Jul 2, 2014 06:57
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Wow I've never seen that picture of Phoebe before. It's funny, I never picture her using the cat claw since she almost immediately gives it to you.
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Jul 2, 2014 20:58
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I love how much freedom artists take on old games like this. Blonde girl with blue armour and white cape = blonde girl dressed in red head to toe, with a huge red shield.
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Jul 2, 2014 21:13
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matrix ripoff posted:Back when I played this as a kid, there was a weird problem in one particular dungeon; I think it was in the ice dungeon. What would happen is that the game would freeze every time you finished an enemy encounter. Back then my family couldn't figure out the problem, and eventually we called the Squaresoft hint line. A certain percentage of launch SNES consoles exhibited this problem, and they told us that one way of getting around it was to manually save immediately after each enemy encounter, and then reset the game and continue onward until the next enemy encounter, and rinse and repeat until we got out of there. It made the dungeon a slog, but I always think back on this as an example of the days before consoles being online and being able to be patched was commonplace and expected. If memory serves, this was a glitch that could occur with early versions of FFMQ as well as early-gen SNES consoles. After a certain point in the background music was reached the game would freeze up. Any dungeon that used the BGM in question was vulnerable to this bug so the options were to either do as you did (save after each fight then reset whenever the console/game locked up) or turn off the music so that the game would never have a chance to reach the locking point. I guess you could also get into the habit of turning off the music after a bit then turning it back on, but that's almost as clunky as resetting every fight or two.
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Jul 3, 2014 01:46
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:I love how much freedom artists take on old games like this. Blonde girl with blue armour and white cape = blonde girl dressed in red head to toe, with a huge red shield. It's more likely that the production artists make these awesome paintings, then the pixel artists look at it and say, "What. How the gently caress am I suppose to make that with 126 pixels and 4 colors?" and the in-game art comes out quite different.
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Jul 3, 2014 12:54
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Mystic Quest is an interesting case because the Japanese art, for lack of a better term, is more or less completely faithful to the sprites. That character art is in the OP but it'd probably be smart to edit it in alongside the European stuff so it's a little more visible. In any case, since Mystic Quest pretty much exists as a marketing tool, I'm pretty sure that Square thought the artstyle was too cutesy or otherwise unappealing, and lo, dark, brooding knight fighting a huge dinosaur was born. I have no case for the European art because Kaeli and Phoebe are the only remotely appealing designs while everyone else looks either tremendously dopey or just sort of off. Anyways, got an update kicking around but I'm traveling so hopefully I can put it up tonight. We'll see how that goes.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:17
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5. Between a Rock and a Cold Place In the tunnel he was digging under here. The dirt is frozen solid, so he can’t get out. Can’t we melt it? Not until we get Wakewater from the Spring of Life. But a monster from in the Wintry Cave stole the Libra Crest which warps to Life Temple. Wait, what was confusing about that?  Libra is not a hard word  Right! To the Wintry Cave!And we’re off!  This Battlefield will get you 99 EXP so I’m not even going to bother. Maybe I’ll come back when Shrug can get a double level.   The first of three ice themed dungeons, the Wintry Cave is mercifully short and you don’t even have to fight a whole bunch. I imagine you could very easily get two levels worth of EXP here though if you fight everything, so it doesn’t hurt to go out of your way.  Edgehogs can be pretty irritating since they can blind and paralyze you but since Phoebe is packing the Heal spell and 21 white magic charges, persistent status effects like blind aren’t as big a deal. They’re weak to Fire and Phoebe just one-shot all of them at once with it. Phoebe is awesome, in other words.  The Land Worm is a Sand Worm palette-swap and they’re about as threatening as their lesser forms were in Bone Dungeon. They have a Quake analogue, which can hit fairly hard, but they’re still weak to Quake and axes so you should be able to take them out pretty quickly.  This seems perfectly normal.  Shrug died as he lived—flailing about like an idiot  But won’t you just fall like Shrug did now?  Select the Claw, hold down the A button down, and press the Control Pad. Now it’s yours! Well, the final weapon tree is available now so this place isn’t a complete waste!  Out of all the weapon trees, the Claw family is physically the weakest. It does give Shrug a slight boost to his magic and has the benefit of causing status effects. Right now, it’s only three points weaker than our Steel Sword but it’ll fall behind really soon.  But Phoebe won’t be going unarmed. She replaces her claw with the crazy strong Bow of Grace. It’s basically doubling her damage output and is even stronger than our bombs. I think it even boosts her speed considerably. Not only that, but it’ll blind enemies presumably because she’s shooting them in the eyes. Unfortunately, she has to work with ammo but it’s not like that’s ever been a big deal.  The Claw works as how Phoebe described it. If you see these step/handhold things, you can climb them. Shrug looks like a dork so it’s business as usual here in Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest. We can walk under the floor with the icicles so let’s go to the left.  Deeper in the cave, you’ll find these chumps. They’re weak to axes and Thunder, and at level 11 Shrug will one-shot them with the axe. These are probably the least effective and interesting enemies in the dungeon.  You’ve probably figured as much, but 99 is the cap for all ammunition based weapons.  Uuugh, Centaurs. Odds are if you’re fighting these guys, one of your party members is going to get confused because they love using Riddle. Phoebe’s new weapon will hit us for 300 damage, and at his level right now I’m pretty sure that Thunder will just kill Shrug outright. They come in groups like this often and you’ll frequently be seeing two of them at a time.  Shrug doesn’t feel sorry for beating them up even after they throw down their weapons.  After a gauntlet of enemies, Shrug finds himself under the ice. That’s more or less where you’re trying to get to here.    So this dumb giant squid thing snuck out of this cave and stole some magic crest? Mystic Quest is the best. Squidite is nothing to worry about. It’s also got some friends in the two Sparnas which are, you guessed it, upgraded Rocs. The Sparnas are packing Iron Nail, which lowers your defense, and Tornado. The latter of these can potentially be pretty threatening because it deals 140 damage. They’re still nothing to worry about because the Bow of Grace is a shooting weapon and was already doing crazy good damage even in spite of their weakness, plus Sparnas are still bogged down by low HP.  Electrapulse is sort of weird. It does 1 damage and lowers your magic stat. ...I guess that’s the game’s way of telling you that spamming Thunder won’t work here but it totally will. Other attacks include Blackness, which might blind you; Choke Up, which hits both characters; Sucker, which drains a negligible amount of HP; and lastly, 6 Pseudopods can hit extremely hard if each of the six hits connects. All the same, this is probably the only real problem attack it has. It’s also immune to paralysis but not poison meaning the Cat Claw can shine here and whittle the Squidite down slowly but surely.  Here’s Phoebe’s bow in action. I told you she went for the eyes!   All in all, nothing to worry about with Shrug on healing duty.   And that’s it for this place, so let’s get out of here. It's a relatively brief dungeon and it's hard to get lost so hooray, I guess.  After clearing the Wintry Cave, we can access the other Battlefield. But Shrug’s close enough to a level that he can get the double level so what the hell, let’s do that one from earlier.  In the newly opened Battlefield, Shrug meets Desert Hags (not sure why they’re here and not, you know, in the desert/earth area) which are pretty blasé monsters. Their attacks don’t hit for very much. The only really unique thing about them...  They can counter if you hit them with an attack that either hits them directly (so not bombs or magic) or doesn’t kill them in one hit. At least I think that’s the case. I hit them with the Cat Claw and it didn’t trigger a counter. It’s pretty pitiful damage when they do it, but it can be annoying to have the window pop up all the time if you like using the axe or something. They’re weak to Fire if you’re into overkill.   This Battlefield, for some reason, only has Desert Hags in a variety of formations. It’s worth 600 GP so it might be worth your time after all.  With the Libra Crest in hand, we can use this glowing tile. Stepping inside teleports us to...     It’s hopeless now. Don’t give up yet. There’s someone inside. Let’s have a look.I have this feeling that if Phoebe tripped and fell, she would just lay there forever because what’s the point? And who the hell would be here, in the temple that was impossible to get to without the crest  and even if it wasn’t is totally inaccessible from every other possible direction? Shouldn’t this be a little more mysterious to you, Shrug?  Oh. Figures as much. I know that. We need Wakewater to melt the ice… But the Wakewater has dried up! It’s hopeless! Whoa, dang, no need to yell. All that’s left of the Wakewater is in this bag. Take it and go back to Aquaria. He flies away and, for the first time, Shrug doesn’t shrug about it. He’s learning! I bet this’ll help Aquaria out.  “You got it, boss”  Ha ha, oh well, this town’s boned, I guess. Vil in the thread pointed out that healing this plant means that you can buy Cure Potions from the old man at the inn again. If you're struggling/don't like to use white magic charges on Cure, it could come in handy. That’s it? I guess this town will stay frozen until the Crystal of Water shines again.Oh, so there was a solution this whole time? Meaning it was never hopeless? Phoebe’s learning too! Then we’d better hurry to the Ice Pyramid! Do we have to...?  Before we can go... there, we have another little dungeon to tackle. We can’t get started immediately though, Phoebe pops up to tell us to move the pillar out of the way. This is a rudimentary puzzle dungeon with very few enemies. The “challenge” is in not screwing up the puzzle and having to redo everything and reset the encounters.  So take that first pillar and push it here so we can use it as a bridge to jump across. Jumping is good so I can forgive this area.  Lamias can confuse you and put you to sleep but their physical attacks are pretty pathetic and Thunder will kill them easily. Really, your biggest threat here is Phoebe when she’s confused.  I don’t know why I thought Lamias looked like weird baby bibs when I was young. The imagination of a child, I guess? Sleep acts how you’d expect it to. You can’t act but you’ll be woken up as soon as you’re hit or after a few turns.  Move the pillar behind the Lamias here to, again, use as a bridge. Are you seeing a pattern yet?   Puzzles.  For this bridge, you need to push one of the other pillars that you no longer need. That’s it for this place other than the boss and the cool treasure chest.  Heal’s definitely an interesting spell. Of course, it does as you might expect and functions like a Heal Potion. But if you use it on an enemy instead, you can mess with them. We’ll probably check it out next time. You could actually miss this spell! I mean, you’d have to be a big ol’ idiot or intentionally missing it, but you technically could because as soon as we’re done here Falls Basin is closed off forever.  The boss is definitely more threatening than Squidite, mostly because this sucker hits incredibly hard. Physical attacks are usually in the 200 range and its Water Breath attack will hurt Phoebe considerably despite her resistance to it. Shrug, lacking any worthwhile resistance, will take a walloping from it. Naturally, you’ll want to pick off the Desert Hags beforehand.  Don’t bother with Fire, either, because Snow Crab is immune to it. I guess that’s the developers trying to pull a fast one but they forgot that Phoebe has Thunder, sooo He’s weak to axes so Shrug can deal a good amount of damage here. E: I went back to check and either Shrug just has some incredibly wimpy black magic or Snow Crab is also immune to Quake. My money's on the latter.  Still not too threatening but certainly a step up from Squidite.  Where did you get these?  Where did you get these? Next time: Seriously, do we have to...?
cardinal direction fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 19:35
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...Oh you're right! drat that's kinda mean, Heal is pretty useful.
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Jul 6, 2014 19:47
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cardinal direction posted:
 Reviving this plant does mean the dude in the inn starts selling cure potions though!... Not that they're much good still, but, ya know, the option's there.
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Jul 6, 2014 20:06
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Isn't there some kinda bug with the claw weapons?
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Jul 6, 2014 20:10
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Man, fuckin' basin falls. Miss one jump and have to start all over. Stalled my one attempt through the game real good, that.
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Jul 6, 2014 20:24
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:Isn't there some kinda bug with the claw weapons? I think there's something along the lines of: if an enemy is afflicted by one of the statuses the claw can commit, they are afflicted by every status the claw can do. This doesn't matter for pretty much anything except the final claw, which has the option of petrifying the enemy, resulting in an instant death.
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Jul 6, 2014 20:31
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Although you can't see it in screenshots, your fight with the Squidite reminded me of how  it is that a fight with only floating/flying enemies features their sprites bobbing up and down, but throw one earthbound enemy into the mix and the animation doesn't play.
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Jul 6, 2014 20:32
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That also happens in at least Final Fantasy 4 / 2us. Possibly 5 as well, but I haven't played that one as much to know for sure.
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Jul 6, 2014 20:33
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I don't get why everyone's so down on the Ice Pyramid. It's kind of a slog, but it's nowhere near as bad as the last crystal dungeon.
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Jul 6, 2014 20:35
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ultrafilter posted:I don't get why everyone's so down on the Ice Pyramid. It's kind of a slog, but it's nowhere near as bad as the last crystal dungeon. Presumably because of the gimmick and the way of solving said gimmick and the fact that it's the loving Ice Pyramid and it can go to hell Well, screaming rage overreaction jokes aside, I honestly don't know why the place pisses me off as much as it does, it just does. Anyone else have any ideas?
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Jul 6, 2014 23:48
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One thing about those bird enemies -- to this day, I can't manage to not see them wearing a diaper all the time. It's frickin' weird. Betcha the Desert Hags didn't counter because you paralyzed them with the Cat Claw. Unfortunately there's no message when this happens (or when you cause any other status ailment, for that matter).
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Jul 7, 2014 00:08
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While we're talking glitches, I remember one that would erase items from your inventory, including key items. I lost a coin and it prevented me from continuing on in the game. I think the glitch involved a seed shop or something.
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Jul 7, 2014 01:15
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Derek Barona posted:Presumably because of the gimmick and the way of solving said gimmick and the fact that it's the loving Ice Pyramid and it can go to hell I just remember as a kid that gimmick was frustrating as hell. Plus I remember the boss being unusually difficult at that point in the game and the dungeon itself is way more branching and convoluted compared to the other ones up to that point (and even beyond, I think). As an adult that section is a slog, as a kid it was pretty drat difficult.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:48
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My take on the Ice Pyramid is that unless you know exactly where to go, it's a royal pain in the rear end to get around in, especially if you don't know how to deal with the gimmick. The fire dungeon shares a lot of the same issues, but we'll talk about that can of worms when we get there. Anyway, the claws boost our magic by 5 points whenever we have them equipped, which isn't anything to really write home about, but you can equip it for a small boost in power if you know you're going to be using spells on an enemy. Orcs and Ostriches posted:I think there's something along the lines of: if an enemy is afflicted by one of the statuses the claw can commit, they are afflicted by every status the claw can do. This is correct. Anytime the claws (Or any weapon that has status ailments, for that matter. Tristam's ninja stars work the same way) proc their effect, it applies all of them at once. It's more obvious with the later claws since there's more chances for it to come back and say "Hey, this enemy is strong against poison/paralysis/whatever", but if the enemy doesn't have any immunities, it'll drop all of them at once and the only way you'll know it happened is that they suddenly stop attacking or start taking poison damage. Also for what it's worth, the claws can totally trigger the Desert Hag's counter, you just got lucky and paralyzed him.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:09
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Artix posted:This is correct. Anytime the claws (Or any weapon that has status ailments, for that matter. Tristam's ninja stars work the same way) proc their effect, it applies all of them at once. It's more obvious with the later claws since there's more chances for it to come back and say "Hey, this enemy is strong against poison/paralysis/whatever", but if the enemy doesn't have any immunities, it'll drop all of them at once and the only way you'll know it happened is that they suddenly stop attacking or start taking poison damage. In particular, the aforementioned claws that can petrify enemies come along right around when you start encountering slimes that are immune to a good half-dozen status ailments, but not petrification. So any time you see "<whatever slime> is strong against poison/paralysis/confusion/etc./etc./etc./" you know it's an immediate prelude to the slime dying 
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Jul 7, 2014 03:23
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I just went back and tested it a few times, since I couldn't recall seeing any poison damage when I recorded it. Desert Hag is resistant to paralysis but it countered the claw each time thereafter so Chalk it up to Mystic Quest being weird, I suppose! I guess it doesn't really matter since they're throwaway enemies at the end of the day. I'll have more to say about the Ice Pyramid next update, but if you want the quick version: I've always found it just kind of boring to get through. It's third ice dungeon so I'm already kinda tired of them, I find the music just sort of dull and monotonous, both the gimmick and getting anywhere is sort of a pain... all those combined with the fact that I never feel like I'm actually going somewhere and it's all blurring together, it's an unpleasant and bothersome experience. Not to mention that it's a huge leap in difficulty (or at least patience-trying) compared to Bone Dungeon.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:45
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cardinal direction posted:I just went back and tested it a few times, since I couldn't recall seeing any poison damage when I recorded it. Desert Hag is resistant to paralysis but it countered the claw each time thereafter so Oh wait, I think I remember how the claw bug works now. It's not so much that it always applies every status ailment that it physically can if a status ailment procs; it's that if the monster is vulnerable to any of the ailments, then they all get applied, even if the monster has resistance. So e.g. I think those slimes I mentioned actually are supposed to be immune to petrification, as well as damned near every other status ailment. But their defenses aren't 100%; one of the statuses that the claw applies still works, and therefore they all work, and therefore the slime gets petrified. I'm not 100% sure on this, but it seems to match my memory.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:03
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Carbolic Smokeball posted:While we're talking glitches, I remember one that would erase items from your inventory, including key items. I lost a coin and it prevented me from continuing on in the game. I think the glitch involved a seed shop or something. I don't remember how I triggered it, but once as a kid on my SNES I loaded my game in the third zone to find that I had, for some reason, Thunder Rock. That irrevocably broke a certain later trigger and stopped my progress cold.
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Jul 7, 2014 04:11
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 This is not a shrug. This is Benjamin flipping his incredibly stupid world the double-bird. I love this game but drat is it silly sometimes.
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Jul 7, 2014 17:28
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Maybe it's an invitation to a hug? Hugs, not shrugs.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:38
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Raitzeno posted:
I can't not see that anymore and now my childhood is slightly more tarnished than it was. Thanks for that 
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Jul 7, 2014 23:19
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| # ? May 6, 2024 01:07 |
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Ciaphas posted:I can't not see that anymore and now my childhood is slightly more tarnished than it was. Thanks for that Glad you liked it. 
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Jul 8, 2014 00:12
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