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Edit: Update is on previous page.Alxprit posted:An early line has Vi say "reased" instead of "teased", and one of the screenshots of talking to Honeycomb is either out of order or meant to be something else, the one mentioning roach technology. drat it, I could've sworn I proofread this. Fixed now. Thanks for catching my screwups as always. Alxprit posted:It was interesting to see how they applied bug logic to scenarios like this with the hive and the queen and everything. I've had a few friends who are interested in nature appreciate their commitment to at least trying to address how real bugs work here. Oh, absolutely. While I'm not going to say it's perfect, I really appreciate the amount of research they put in. It also seems to have been a goldmine of inspiration for them, I was surprised at first how many of the character dynamics etc end up having an explanation from nature behind them. These dialogue-heavy updates are always tricky for me, honestly, trying to balance letting the game speak for itself and actually doing some kind of commentary to make the updates flow decently.
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Jun 9, 2021 15:07
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I adore the different reactions here. This is a totally reasonable reaction! Explopyro posted:Kabbu seems to have some body image issues, doesn't he. ...do the bugs in Bug Fables have exoskeletons? One would assume so, but I can't remember any specific mention of them. Explopyro posted:It's really easy to tell the Lost Sands are a sandbox from this height. Explopyro posted:And the gigantic wall and door are an actual human house. All of Bugaria does seem to be in this house's backyard. Explopyro posted:
Explopyro posted:It's interesting to think about what the familial dynamics for sentient eusocial insects must be like. Man, it's really weird to think of Elizant II being a mom. Are Gen and Eri her kids, too? They seem rather young and inexperienced, I doubt they've been around since Elizant I's time.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:18
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I was one of those people who went "Wait secret princess?" when Bianca mentioned being Vi's mom, most people don't think too heavily about insect colonies when playing an RPG, and besides "princess in disguise" is a pretty commonly used RPG trope so it makes sense people would immediately think that. The one thing that bothers me about this sequence is the acquiesce/ac-squeeze exchange only works in text, not if it's spoken.
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Jun 9, 2021 20:19
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Is it just me or does it seem like the game is blaming Vi 100% for what went down with her leaving, rather than admitting that if someone has been teased to the point of snapping and running off then maybe the other person bears some fault as well?
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Jun 9, 2021 20:28
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senrath posted:Is it just me or does it seem like the game is blaming Vi 100% for what went down with her leaving, rather than admitting that if someone has been teased to the point of snapping and running off then maybe the other person bears some fault as well? It's more that she didn't paint a great picture of the hive itself beforehand, but that turned out to be untrue. So it's her overblowing what happened when the conflict was really with a few individuals. It's basically kind of flipping "this entire faction sucked/is evil so that's why I left" plot device to a more innocuous reason.
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Jun 9, 2021 20:39
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I don't think the game is blaming Vi, but Leif and Kabbu very clearly don't want Vi to lose those close to her because of her pride. Vi also was being truthful when she admitted that she was the super mean one, but we'll see that after this chapter's dungeon, it's definitely a situation where she owes some people apologies even if she's not necessarily at fault. There's also the dynamics of bee society where "everyone has their job, for the good of the hive" that when someone tries to go against that, that the rest of the hive is going to discourage them from leaving.
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Jun 10, 2021 01:21
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Twelve by Pies posted:The one thing that bothers me about this sequence is the acquiesce/ac-squeeze exchange only works in text, not if it's spoken.
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Jun 10, 2021 16:26
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Alien Arcana posted:Y'know... come to think of it... how does that work with an exoskeleton? It shouldn't be possible for bugs to get fat. You know, this is a really good question. Nothing in the game ever says they don't have exoskeletons, and they certainly look like they do... I think the remarks about Kabbu getting fat are poking fun at the development history, actually. There's an aside in the artbook that talks about how his original design was slimmer, but they found it hard to animate and settled on his current (slightly chubbier) appearance as a solution. So he's gotten fatter in a meta sense, even if not in-universe. Alien Arcana posted:This applies to the ants, too. So every ant we meet is the daughter of either Elizant or Elizant II. The only ant that I know for certain is from a prior generation is Rebecca, the castle caretaker (and she's old enough that I'm actually not sure if she's Elizant I's daughter or sibling). I like to think Zaryant (the bodyguard) might be from the older generation, but there isn't any textual support for that. The artbook also states Monsieur Scarlet is from a foreign colony, so he's not her child either. The rest of them definitely are though, and I agree it feels odd to think of her being a mother. (I don't know exactly how old Elizant II is supposed to be, but we do know she took the throne before Vi was born, and Vi is canonically 17. Then again, I have a hard time knowing what to do with ages in general in this, the bugs are significantly longer-lived than they would be in nature, but I don't know if "year" in Bugaria means the same thing it does to us.) Twelve by Pies posted:I was one of those people who went "Wait secret princess?" when Bianca mentioned being Vi's mom, most people don't think too heavily about insect colonies when playing an RPG, and besides "princess in disguise" is a pretty commonly used RPG trope so it makes sense people would immediately think that. It's fair enough, I guess (and it does make sense to get there from the RPG trope priming). It just always surprises me when I see someone say it, because, you know, insects. Thinking about it, it's a neat way to play with or subvert the trope, and something most other games can't do since 'social insects' isn't a common theme. senrath posted:Is it just me or does it seem like the game is blaming Vi 100% for what went down with her leaving, rather than admitting that if someone has been teased to the point of snapping and running off then maybe the other person bears some fault as well? I can see why you'd interpret it this way (especially at this point), and it would be unfortunate if that were the end of it, but I think they're trying to do something a bit more nuanced. Whether it quite succeeds is another question, but let's leave that until we've seen the resolution. Vi definitely portrayed herself as the (only) injured party when she was talking about it earlier, and that isn't the case, but it's also not true that nobody ever treated her badly. We're just dealing with familial conflict rather than exile from societal oppression. Araxxor posted:It's more that she didn't paint a great picture of the hive itself beforehand, but that turned out to be untrue. So it's her overblowing what happened when the conflict was really with a few individuals. Yeah, pretty much. Twelve by Pies posted:I don't think the game is blaming Vi, but Leif and Kabbu very clearly don't want Vi to lose those close to her because of her pride. Vi also was being truthful when she admitted that she was the super mean one, but we'll see that after this chapter's dungeon, it's definitely a situation where she owes some people apologies even if she's not necessarily at fault. I do think it's possible to read Leif as being overly harsh in how he talks to her about it, but it makes sense considering where he's coming from. And yes, I do think it's important that the "everyone has their designated place" atittude is real, because even if it's trying to be more benign/benevolent than Vi gave it credit for, it's absolutely something that doesn't work for her and she was definitely chafing under that even before the conflict with her sister got as bad as it did. Twelve by Pies posted:The one thing that bothers me about this sequence is the acquiesce/ac-squeeze exchange only works in text, not if it's spoken. Yeah, it's a bit awkward, and my first thought was it's possible the devs didn't quite know how the word is pronounced. On the other hand, Mothiva's clearly putting on a persona trying to butter up the Queen, so it's possible Vi's reaction is meant to indicate she doesn't know how to pronounce it either (which I could see, it's not likely to be the sort of word she'd use regularly and I doubt it's in her song lyrics). I definitely prefer that interpretation. DACK FAYDEN posted:maybe Mothiva doesn't know how to pronounce it and she said "ack wheeze" or something Or, this.
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Jun 10, 2021 18:00
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Explopyro posted:I don't know if "year" in Bugaria means the same thing it does to us.) The game script does uses moons/seasons a lot instead of year, I actually wondered if the bugs didn't have a concept of years, but Leif says the word "decades" after meeting Elizant II near the beginning of the game. As you said a year in Bugaria might not necessarily be the same as a year to us, though I don't know what else you'd base a year on aside from a complete rotation of seasons. Then again it's always fall in the Golden Settlement and who knows what else happened after the apocalypse.
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Jun 10, 2021 19:37
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So I came across this cute little animation and I felt like the thread would appreciate it: https://twitter.com/kumoketu/status/1404925830619226116
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Jun 17, 2021 03:44
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senrath posted:So I came across this cute little animation and I felt like the thread would appreciate it: That is wonderful, thank you for showing it to us  FYI, next update is in the works but is probably going to take me another day or two to finish.
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Jun 17, 2021 16:10
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senrath posted:So I came across this cute little animation and I felt like the thread would appreciate it: Kabbu is so adorable!
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Jun 18, 2021 07:57
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24: Lockdown (Part 1) It's time we went into the Honey Factory, as Queen Bianca requested, to witness the cores being exchanged and have a tour of the premises.  43 - Work That Honey Looks like we're pretty much the last to arrive.   Amazing, right? Here's where we produce all of Bugaria's honey!  (The placement of speech bubbles looks a bit awkward, but the asides are coming from Mothiva in the background.) .png) Yeehaw! Can't wait! Sounds like a good opportunity, doesn't it? Science is incredible, but not the best spectator sport. (notice Mothiva and Zasp slinking out of sight while everyone else is talking) So go on, have fun! Thank you, Doctor. We will enjoy this for sure! Knowing how the honey is made... This is an opportunity we cannot miss. It's seriously nothing that cool... Maybe for a bee. For us, it's a great experience! Alright, alright. Geez... It'll be fun, I guess. Everything shakes.    Factory has been compromised! Alert Code 32 Engaged! Complete Factory Lockdown in Effect! 13 - It's Getting Scary! All the doors loudly slam shut.  What...? But Code 32 is... Code 32 means... The factory has been attacked by hostile forces!But how? We didn't see anyone on our way here... Doctor, we must leave! We can retrieve the artifact later! Indeed. It's not just us. Tourists and workers need to evacuate too. Guide, do you know where the Overseer is? N-no! It's routine checkup time... She could be anywhere! ...Tch. Without the Overseer, we're stuck. What!? That is, unless the Overseer enters the disarm code. We suggest turning our trip around the factory into a rescue mission. ...Great idea! Finding her will fix all our problems, really. A-alright. We'll help! With such a capable group of explorers here, we should be okay. For now I will work on the core's replacement... You should focus on the rescue mission..png) Let's do this! You heard that, Mothiva? Let's- Huh, he's gone too... I bet they have something to do with this...! For this once, probably not... Guess we'll have to search for them too. Cuz we didn't have enough to do... Let's go, team! 43 - Work That Honey With that, the scene ends and we're back in control. This is certainly a situation, and we're going to have our work cut out for us (never mind "lockdown" feels a lot more salient nowadays than when this was written). First, though, let's assess the situation, have a look around and talk to everyone. This trip didn't go as I'd hoped... That's what I get for doing the Queen a favor... It's just another mission. Let's stay focused, and take in the sights.The banter in this hub area is nice and simple.   Dr. H.B. is with us... She will figure something out...!Her text is shaking a lot. Most workers are surprisingly... calm. Never combine those words ever again. ...Besides, they're used to staying here a good while. Even so, we do not know what caused the lockdown. We must hurry so they can evacuate!This banter's fun (and is shared between most of the guards and workers in the factory; honestly, it seems a bit less fitting for this one). Vi, please don't tempt fate.   Doctor HB and Crow are hard at work here. (Is that a floppy disk on top of the pile? I'm genuinely not sure.) Look at 'em go. Goodness... They're assembling the pieces at an unbelievable pace! Looks like a bunch of junk. Is this really going to make a new core? I can't wait to see the end result!They're going to be pretty busy, let's stop bothering them.   ...I've never actually seen the core itself before. Wonder how it looks like. If we head down that passage, we'll immediately hit a dead end. The door to the core is firmly shut and we can't interact with the console in here, the Overseer is going to have to do that. This is the core room. Great. It's locked. Let's find the Overseer and get this overwith.Our team don't have much to say in here either. Let's go back.    Gen and Eri hint we should be looking for a key card if we want to get into the Honey Processing area. It's a relief to have other teams here with us... THEY should be relieved we decided to come along! Why not both? We'll have to work together to get through this. Meh. If you say so...Honestly, I'm surprised Leif isn't taking Vi's side here, he's certainly grumbled enough about them in the past.  This console is obviously where the keycard goes, but we don't have it.  This area's locked off too.  That's a bit of a lead, at least. Seems at least one is frazzled... It'd be weird if everyone stuck to protocol.She gets a different banter, at least.   Maybe they had something to do with it?That's a bit suspicious. Do we think they're malicious enough to sabotage the factory? What would they get out of doing that? Something to think about.  The guide seems pretty frazzled too. Poor Tuvi... It must be rough, being a tour guide. What about us? We're the ones cleaning up the mess... Let's check out the lower level.  Maybe you can find something to help there?We'll check this out in a moment.  There's someone crying in the corner by this door. This poor bee is distressed! We simply must- Yeah, yeah. Let's talk to her.This banter can be seen only before talking to her.   I just got the job, and everything's already ruined. Ruined! Why does this always have to happen to meeeeeeee?! With the factory closed, I can't sell stuff to fill up my quota, and I'll get fired! Noooooo! Err, management doesn't have quotas during emergencies... Huuu... Some make believe won't hurt, Vi. Miss, we'd love to shop here, if you'd have us. Y-you will...?  She unlocks the shop and goes inside. Let's see what this is about.  If you want a delicious honey treat, stand next to it and press (A) to call me.So, yes, this is a shop. With the lockdown in place, we can't leave, and this is the only reliable place to get items (certainly the only place we can get anything that's been cooked; enemies can still drop items, of course). Yikes... Why'd you have to say that, Kabbu? Now we HAVE to buy things. Vi, we cannot leave until we complete our mission. More supplies will be helpful! I mean, it's not like we walked in here with our pockets empty. And if we run out of berries, it will be hard to get more. Let's just be very responsible with our exploration funds, then.(Don't tell Kabbu, but I didn't bring in any berries to spend anyway. Leif is also overstating his case a fair bit, you can earn plenty of berries from battles.)  Amber is also here, and will happily let us access our storage if we need it. Poor miss Amber's been trapped as well! Thankfully. It'll be handy to take our items from storage. Think about her feelings! I dunno. She seems fine to me... Does she even know there's a lockdown going on? If she doesn't, we better not tell her.Once again, the game's hanging a lampshade on the mechanics here. I do enjoy that they're willing to poke fun at themselves about things like this. Let's check out the shop's inventory.  Honey'd Leaf (10 berries) Leaf Omelet (10 berries) Glazed Honey (9 berries) Honey Ice Cream (20 berries) Shock Berry (11 berries)Vi wasn't wrong when she said the shop here is overpriced, though it's not quite as bad as she might have led us to believe. The basic food items here can come in handy in an emergency, and they do have a few new things. Honey Ice Cream"This honey flavored ice cream's a real guilty pleasure! Restores 5 HP and 10 TP. It may cause brain freeze!" Freezes user (2 turns) Honey Ice Cream is a recipe, though we couldn't make it right now even if we could get to a chef (it requires an ingredient we don't have access to). When the description says "may cause brain freeze", it's a bit misleading: this will always freeze the eater unless they have immunity from a medal (which we don't have, and can't get until later in the game). This is hard to use strategically right now, unless you get it specifically for out-of-battle healing. If you came in here unprepared, you might end up using these whether you like them or not. Shock Berry"This high voltage berry tastes great, but really shocks your system! Restores 7 HP." Inflicts numb (2 turns) The Shock Berry is another new item, and I believe it's actually exclusive to this shop. As far as cooking goes, it works the same as Agaric Shroom in all the shock-based recipes. If you want to numb a character as part of a strategy, this could be useful.  We can also check out this hologram, though it doesn't have much to say. (I do like the way they have the text of digital entities periodically have glitches flicker in.)  That's it for the shop, though. It's worth keeping in mind if we find ourselves needing supplies, but let's keep exploring.  Looks like we've found a dormitory? So many beds! Are these needed with the Hive close by? Workers don't really leave the factory until their shift's over. Sometimes it's days long... That sounds suffocating. And illegal. Pays super well, though! And then they go on a huge holiday! How come you didn't become a worker, then? It'd get you all the berries you want. No way! It's so boring! Once was enough for a lifetime. I wanted to fall asleep every second of it! I'd rather be poor! Alrighty then...When Leif says illegal, I have to wonder what labour laws he's thinking of. This factory's run by the Bee Kingdom, the ruling Queen obviously approves.  If you need them, just come see me.This worker in the corner will sell us overpriced Magic Seeds. Once again, we really don't want to have to buy them, but the option's there if necessary. Sorry, can't make the deal any cheaper. Not even for you, Vi.She also has this line if you try to buy one while not having enough.  If some turret shoots it at you, make sure to block!This is a hint at a core mechanic in the upcoming areas, we're going to be facing a lot of enemies with attacks that cause Numb if not blocked.  The last worker in here offers us the ability to rest for free, which is quite convenient. I'll take her up on this, we're not quite at full health. Alright, I'll wake you if something happens. 20 - Night at the Inn That's it for this room.   There's one place left we haven't checked.  Call it a hunch, but we think this is the Overseer's office. Mhm. Incredible! How did you figure it out?! ...A hunch. ...Oh. Ahem. Vi, there's no way the Overseer would be hiding in here, right? I sure hope so. Would make our life way easier. Then she's definitely not here. But let's look around anyways. Looks like there's some kind of card on top of the bookshelf. One thing at a time, though.  This is all we get interacting with the computer.  It's not like that. This is the honored employee portrait! Bees that work really hard get to be put up there for a few days. Is there no hall of fame for all the honored employees? Yup. It's inside the Hive, though, so you two can't see em. So in our team, Kabbu would be the honored employee? I-I would? No way, it'd be me! We get a discovery for interacting with the painting.   And, as per usual, once we have it, checking again just yields a short description:  Let's go get that card.  We can climb up using these boxes and sundry as a staircase.  And Vi can snag it with her Beemerang.  Just what we needed. (Make sure to read the description on this one!)  Let's open the way.   Heheh. It's our time to shine, Eri! Can't let them do everything, right? Y-You sure we won't get in the way? Relax. It's just a factory! Let's go in and do what we can! Gen and Eri head inside. Uh oh... The factory's super dangerous! It's full of sentry bots! W-What!? Team, we must give chase! Onward we go.  Certainly looks like there's a lot going on in here! Alrighty. We're officially in the worker zone! We can just catch the tram and... Doesn't seem to be working, does it? Argh! Everything's going wrong! Wouldn't be a mission if it was easy. We'll have to walk around normally.Let's have a look around.    Contact Malbee for repairs.Sounds like there's supposed to be a tram system here, but of course it's inoperative. Nothing is ever that easy. These little friendly robots are called Menders, we'll see them in various places throughout the factory. An intelligent machine that speaks!? What is this sorcery!? Has technology advanced this far so quickly? It's not intelligent! It only knows, like, three sentences! This is only the start, Vi. How long until three becomes thirty? And then even more!? Will we be replaced by machines!? How would something we create replace us? You two seriously need to learn how to think less.This one always makes me smile.  Let's head downstairs.  Looks like there are a few different new enemy types down here!  The battle-start animation is completely new in here: instead of the various leaves we're used to, it's honeycombs, and they move vertically instead of horizontally.  Let's see what this... bee drone? is about. (I'm halfway convinced the main purpose of the bees' technological advancement is to create opportunities for drone puns.)  ...Of course it's called a Bee-Boop. Well, let's see what it can do.    Whenever you hit them, Bee-Boops swap between their two modes. It's not going to come into play in this battle, because we can kill this one before it gets a turn, but they have different attacks in each mode and this means we have some control over what they do.   Hitting it again makes it switch back. Leif and Vi will proceed to finish it off.  Hey, we're getting EXP again!  Really don't know why Leif thought it was going to be a problem to get berries. Let's check out the other enemy now.  What are these odd things?  Denmuki are based on Monema flavescens, which is also known as "Denkimushi" or "Japanese electric bug". These ones are literally electrified. We'll throw a full round of attacks at the one in front and see what happens.  This is their attack, they charge up and attempt to shock us. If you don't block this, it will numb on hit.  As we see when the second one hits Kabbu. Oops.  This is what Numb looks like. Kabbu's completely immobilised, though being numbed does give +1 defence so it could be worse. We're only losing out on one action, anyway.  You can still rotate the party even if one member is disabled, so let's get him out of the front so we don't miss out on the attack bonus.  Vi finishes off the first one.  While Leif gets in a nice chunk of damage on the other with the positioning bonus.  At least I blocked this time!  Now that Kabbu's recovered, it's trivial to finish this off.  These are worth a bit less than the Bee-Boops. Regardless, though, these enemies are definitely a step up in challenge and will punish you for getting careless.   It dropped an Agaric Shroom, too. Item drops aren't that uncommon in here either, so there's less need to resort to the shop than you might expect. We can't cook this, and using it in battle is probably not a great idea, but for TP recovery outside combat it's handy.  With the enemies gone, we can quickly realise there's nothing we can do on this level.  What we actually needed to do is strike this switch.  That starts the elevator platforms moving up and down. It also immediately triggers a scene.  S-Shocked!? Whew, good thing I can fly... What are you doing, Leif? No way. What if I need to cut or freeze something?  The platform starts flashing while Leif stands on it.  Looks like that shield comes in handy!   We took some time to think about it... And we can control it. If we hold down (B), we should be able to all cross safely. Can't really jump or walk fast while doing it, though... Eh, if Gen and Eri got through, we would have found a way. Let's go.(This does make me curious how they actually got past this...)  You can also move while using it to push away enemies! Leif can also use the Bubble Shield skill in battle!This unlocks Leif's second field skill, and a combat skill to go with it. Didn't we already have Bubble Shield, though?  What we had before was Bubble Shield Lite, which protects one person. This is the big version. For 7 TP, Leif can put a bubble on every member of the party at once. The downside is that it costs him two turns to use: if he has multiple actions, it'll spend two, and if he doesn't, he can take a loan from the future and skip his next turn instead. Even accounting for that, this ability is very strong (though 7 TP is a lot). It's a great way to dodge big attacks you know are coming (such as delayed or charged attacks), and one of the few ways to safely use Abombinations (though those will remove the shield). This spell is very exploitable, and a staple of challenge runs (often seen alongside Hustle Candy, to help mitigate the action losses).  The field version of this ability lets Leif wrap all of Team Snakemouth in a protective bubble. This lets us travel over hazardous terrain (like these electrified platforms), which allows us to get across this room.  It also protects against enemy attacks, meaning this turret's shots won't hit us. Touching enemies with the bubble stuns them, making it a very easy way to get first strikes.  Like so. This is a new enemy, let's see what it's about.  These things may not look scary yet, but they're very dangerous.   To start with, they have 2 defence, so Kabbu is really the only reliable means of attack against them without spending TP. So he'll do that, while the other two hit the Denmuki instead.    The first thing we see the turret do is cough up two missiles, each of which hits for 4 damage before blocks (I somehow Super Blocked both hits here, so the numbers look deceptively low; this can rack up damage fast). Each missile is targeted randomly at our party, so they can hit the same bug or different bugs.  While the Denmuki just attacks us. They, at least, only have the one attack.  It's easy to clean up from there, at least, so this one presents no further issue. We'll see what else they can do in later fights.  That could've been worse.  It leaves behind a Honey Drop for us too, which is nice.  Let's move on.  The next room has even more complex machinery everywhere. This is the most honey we've ever seen... Heh. It only gets better as you go. This factory's design is quite... unorthodox. Moving about is quite difficult. It's made for bees. We just fly around. Can't you carry us? Not if there's another way! Now shield up! This power-up was a mistake...Leif, you have wings too.  There's a Bee-Boop guarding the bridge. (If you look down, you can see honey drops moving past on a conveyor belt, and much of the floor in this room is a gigantic pool of honey.)  This fight has two of them, so we should finally get to see their attacks.   Kabbu attacks the first one twice after getting a relay from Leif.  When Leif attacks, something special happens: Charmy's spell triggers! This gives him +1 attack before striking, which makes it enough to get the kill.  Though as you can see here, the boost is only for this turn. I guess with a relay you could potentially get more use out of it, though with exhaustion that comes out mostly a wash.   Vi's attack leaves the Bee-Boop in its visored mode.  When in this mode, they attack with this diving charge. It hits pretty hard! Overall, though, I think this is probably the easier attack of theirs to deal with.  That said, we can finish this now.  We're starting to get some nice EXP yield from these battles.  Now that the enemies are gone, we can get our bearings. There's a switch on one of these electrified platforms which we obviously need to hit.   Judicious use of Leif's shield makes this a simple matter of timing.  That switch activated the platforms leading north, making them move up and down.  Unfortunately, it also activated the electrifying mechanism on them.  But we can get up just fine.  There's a Denmuki waiting for us up here.  We'll just have everyone attack the Denmuki for now. It attacks Vi and doesn't do much, but on the other hand... the Bee-Boop is in gun mode.  In gun mode, they launch these honey globs. This hits twice with a base damage of 2 (we're seeing more on Kabbu thanks to Favorite One), and will also cause Numb if not blocked. It's annoying.  After that attack, Charmy decides to heal us! This can trigger after any enemy attack, and heals everyone 20% of their maximum HP (though it looks like it's rounded down). Not too bad.  We can finish off the Denmuki easily enough, and do some damage to the Bee-Boop at least.   I missed the block on Vi and got her numbed, so I left this in, both to show the attack does this and so you can see her numbed sprite.  Easy enough to wrap up from there.  Now we can figure out how to move forward. This setup is much like the cranks we saw in the Golden Hills: we need to constantly turn one of these cranks to raise the platforms so we can cross.  Thing is, the platforms will lower down again if Vi releases the Beemerang, so we can't swap to Leif to shield against the shocks. Instead, we just need to hurry across with good timing between the shocks.  More enemies lie in wait.  The turret has a Denmuki with it.  After having Kabbu get some damage in on the turret, I decided to have Leif try to freeze the Denmuki, but it didn't take. This is a bit unlucky: all these enemies in here have 50-60% freeze resistance, so Frigid Coffin is significantly more likely to work than not. Still, more likely isn't certain.  On the other hand, Charmy decided to refund Leif some of the TP he spent. It looks like this is rounded down too, it's supposed to be half of the cost.  The turret does something new this time. This is a delayed missile, which hits one turn later. Honestly, though, I like seeing this, it's less scary than their other moves. The Denmuki just attacked Vi.  Although it did something new afterward! Denmukis sometimes elect to curl up after attacking or being attacked. This temporarily gives them 2 defence. Flipping attacks can knock them out of it, and after attacking they return to normal. The rest of this battle isn't terribly interesting, so I'm going to gloss over most of it, except for this:  This is what the delayed missile landing looks like. It's only 3 damage for some reason, so not only is it only a single hit, it's less damaging than the other missiles which it fires twice.  We're starting to get close to the next rank, which I appreciate.  After that fight, I decided to use the Agaric Shroom to restore some TP.  That's this room sorted. Let's keep going. (Once again, this update required splitting. Back momentarily.) Explopyro fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jun 19, 2021 |
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Jun 18, 2021 11:00
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24: Lockdown (Part 2) 43 - Work That Honey It's hard to see just from this entrance, but this room has a lot going on in it. This is the Connecting Room! But... the pump seems to be broken. Uh oh. The factory must've shut it down. How could you tell, Vi? The honey levels are a bit weird. It's pooling up. ...If it keeps up, honey's gonna pile up in the basement! Abomihoneys can come out! We still don't get why that happens. It's dangerous, okay? Be careful! Heading west, we get a bit of a respite at least. One of Venus' buds is here, as well as a save crystal.  Contact Malbee for repairs.The Mender doesn't have much to say.   Don't think I need healing just yet, but let's see what Venus has to say.  A factory inside a tree? You Bees sure know how to impress! It is a bit tricky to get my roots out here, but I'm here to heal you up if you need it!Much appreciated, Venus. We'll be back.  Let's fight this Denmuki, I guess?  This one has an Abomihoney with it! These aren't exclusive to the Crisbee quest, we'll be fighting quite a few of them in here. They're no different from when we saw them before.  I decided to freeze it while we deal with the Denmuki. With Venus so close, I'm less concerned about being frugal with my TP.  Charmy decided to help Kabbu attack this time.  At the end of the fight, the Abomihoney decided to go into bomb mode, but it's not much of a threat alone.  They actually have a different death animation when killed in bomb form!  Abomihoneys are worth a lot of EXP!  The console here expects a keycard, but we don't have it yet, so let's keep exploring. We could head down that passage to the north, but let's check out the south side first.   Both sides here are identical: we can turn a crank with the Beemerang to raise these platforms and reach the upper level.   There's a lot going on up here: the electrified platforms are constantly making a circuit around the room.  Enemies await us as soon as we disembark.  We're getting used to these enemies, so this fight isn't anything of particular note.  Although we finally see the last attack the turrets can do. Instead of missiles, it can also launch globs of honey. These come out really fast, so they can be tricky to block, and while they do less damage than the missiles (3, compared to 4), these will cause Numb if not blocked.  After the battle, let's get our bearings. There are two other stationary platforms up here, each leading to an exit; we're going to have to ride the moving ones to get to them.  It's easy enough as long as you remember to shield.  Let's head north first.  What's going on in here?  What's this room even supposed to be? The training obstacle course! An obstacle course...? They make the platforms fly around everywhere, and whoever grabs more honey off the trams wins! We're glad the platforms are stuck to the ground, then...Sounds like a convenient excuse for more puzzles. Let's see what we're dealing with.   We have a crank, a floor that periodically electrifies itself, and a wall with a switch behind it.   Turning the crank makes the wall retract, though just like the last time we saw this gimmick, we need to time our crossing because Leif can't bubble while Vi is using the Beemerang.  We make it to the switch.  The wall starts closing again, but there's a bouncy mushroom back here just in case.   Flipping that switch caused this enclosure to be lifted, revealing another crank. What will this one do...?  Well, let's get the lay of the land first. The stairs lead down to this gigantic electric floor, and there are some enemies milling about too.  Let's eliminate them.  We're getting quite close to ranking up now!  There's another of these walls on the far side, blocking our progress. Let's clear out the other enemy too, then get back to the crank.  Getting a first strike while under the effects of Strong Start means Leif starts the battle with three turns.  Though this can be awkward: if you look carefully here, you can see that after relaying once, Leif's icon for Turn Relay has been greyed out. I'm not sure exactly how the restrictions work, but it seems like, when under the effects of Strong Start, a character can't relay multiple times in the same turn. Leif's going to have to take at least one action under the effects of double exhaustion.  It doesn't affect the use of items, though, so it's fine. It was a bit wasteful to heal here, really, considering we're about to level up, but Leif couldn't do much else so I figured I'd play it safe.  And there's the level-up.   No special bonus this time, but the usual benefits are still appreciated.  I decided to use our new MP to give Prayer to Kabbu. I don't know if I'll use it, but it can be handy and I want to show off how it works. (I also swapped Leif's Status Booster out to give Vi Poison Needles, though I didn't end up demonstrating them this update either.)  Let's get the crank going.  This room's a little tricky. We don't have time to get all the way across this floor before the electricity starts, so once again we just need to time it well. As soon as the electricity stops, we'll start moving, then release the Beemerang and switch to Leif for shielding once it starts flashing again. That should give us enough time to get through.     And we've made it, though as you can see the wall had started closing by the time we reached it.  There's a keycard up here. Let's take it.  That's all for this room, so let's head back.  We need to wait for the platform so we can move on to the next portion.   There's not a whole lot on this side of the boxes, but it's still worth checking out.  Though this fight might make you think again... two turrets at once is nasty.  Dash Through is really good here. Especially when you follow it up with Heavy Strike and kill the first turret immediately.  Levelling up had a dramatic effect on our EXP gain: these enemies have all stopped giving anything beyond the pity EXP now.  Hiding in the niche behind this box is a new item.  Shell Ointment is  Tardigrade Shield in a can, if you prefer not to use the medal. We'll eventually be able to buy these, but this is the only one we'll see for a while.I'll be saving this for a specific purpose, but if you're playing along, don't necessarily feel obligated to.  That's all there was to find over there, though, so let's ride the platform to the next stop.  And into the next room.  This looks interesting. Let's check out the room.  Looks like we have floor switches and water droplets, so it's going to be an ice block puzzle. Let's get rid of the Denmuki first, though.  It comes with an Abomihoney. Still, this isn't too difficult.  And done.  There are two water droplets in here, and two big switches on the floor. Naturally, we need to get a block onto each switch.   We have to use the first block to get up to this ledge first, though.  Knocking this one down is easy enough.   While it's certainly possible to get the block we'd knocked against the ledge free with sufficient effort, it's easier to just refreeze the droplet. This causes the original block to despawn at the same time the new one forms.  Now we can put them on the switches.  Depressing both switches makes this honey geyser rise up with the platform. Now it's just a matter of waiting and riding it up.   Before going to the left, let's check behind this pillar.  Sneaky! It's been a while since we've found one of these, hasn't it?  Now for the main platform.  Oops, looks like Leif got stuck somehow. Let's fight the turret, anyway.   I got a bit sloppy here. The turrets can really output a lot of damage if you're not careful!  The keycard is behind this screen. But how do we get it?  Let's finally check the room banter. Hmm... So the gate closes when the geyser rises. We can only control so many ice cubes. Let's use that to our advantage.That's our hint. This puzzle's kind of weird, in that it relies on the "one ice block per source of droplets" limit.  When we freeze the droplet and make a block up here, it causes the block we put on the switch to despawn. It's the kind of puzzle that can make you feel clever when you solve it, which I like, but don't ask me to explain the physics behind it: everything about this puzzle makes zero diegetic sense. I'm not sure how to feel about this one, really.  Let's go get our prize, anyway.  It's another one of these.  That's all for this room, so let's head back.   We can ride the platform back to where we started, completing our circuit of this upper level.  So let's just drop back down.  We've taken a bit of a beating, so let's stop in to see Venus before proceeding.   Much better.  This exit is the last one we haven't tried. Unlike the platforms we've been dealing with thus far, this one is constantly electrified instead of being on a timer.  Still, the solution is just to cross it while in a bubble.  There's a lot going on in this room, too. Though do note, all of the platforms are currently not moving. Are those Gen and Eri? They seem to be in trouble. We should check it out.The first time I played Bug Fables, I actually got stuck in this room for quite a while. I just didn't know what to do.   What we need to do is freeze these honey geysers, so we can cross to where Gen and Eri are. Between the fact these geysers are honey rather than water, and the last geysers we saw were in Snakemouth Den and Ant City, it's kind of easy to just forget about them or fail to make the connection. Nevertheless, it's easy enough once you realise.   When we get across, we can see Gen and Eri desperately dodging the fire of this Bee-Boop.  H-Help! Please!  We're thrust straight into the fight. It's only two Bee-Boops, though, so it's nothing too hard. Let's just clean them up.    We may have to start charging 'em... Nonsense, Vi. What did you do to get rushed by Bee-Boops? Oh yeah! We were, like, trying this switch out?  (...oops, even the writers mix up Gen and Eri sometimes, apparently. I feel slightly less bad about doing so myself now. Gen is the one with the blue scarf.) This place is too dangerous, you shouldn't split up! You should return to a safe place. We will take care of this. W-Wait! We can help! Seriously! We can stay here and press the switch, right? Then all of you can cross! That's a fantastic idea, we're impressed. It'll settle our debt with Vi, too! But will you be ok? What if you get ambushed again? Eh, doesn't seem to be anything dangerous left around. This is how this room works. Pressing (Back) now, instead of triggering a party banter, will signal to Gen and Eri to flip the switch and toggle which direction the platforms move (they each move between two endpoints, either horizontally or vertically depending on the platform). These platforms also shock periodically, so we'll need to be shielding while we do this.  So once this one gets to us, we can get on it and then have them send it back again.   Some of these jumps can be a bit tricky, going from corner to corner. There might be a cleaner solution intended, but this is how I always end up doing it.  We make this platform go left and it meets up with this one.  And that final platform, after another toggle, brings us to our destination.  There's yet another keycard for us to grab here, as well as a switch.  Flipping the switch causes these platforms to rise out of the honey, meaning we don't need to reverse the journey over those platforms.  That's that. We can return to the main room now. Now for some dialogue no player would normally see. If we leave this room and come back in, there's a banter we can see (but we can't get it otherwise, because the button is toggling the platforms instead). We can't really move here without Gen and Eri, now can we? Vi could carry us around, or something. There's nothing here! Just get out!It's kind of cute, anyway.   They'll also say this if we go back to the platform they're on. There's no reason to actually do this, though: finding the card key was the last meaningful thing to do in this room.  Now, back to this console.  Inserting one of the cards causes this bulb on the wall to light up.    Once all three cards have been inserted, the way forward opens.  This seems like a good place to stop, though. Next time, we'll continue our exploration of the Honey Factory, and hopefully find out what's happened to the Overseer at least.
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Jun 18, 2021 11:00
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Explopyro posted:(The placement of speech bubbles looks a bit awkward, but the asides are coming from Mothiva in the background.) Explopyro posted:Doctor HB and Crow are hard at work here. (Is that a floppy disk on top of the pile? I'm genuinely not sure.) I just want to point out... if someone hadn't dropped their keycard here, everyone in the factory would have been completely hosed! We can't get out without the overseer, the overseer's stuck in the storage room, we can't get into the storage room without fixing poo poo in production, and we can't get into production without a keycard. So without this conveniently-dropped card, everyone would've been stuck in the factory for a full week. And as we're about to see, this place is going to hell in a handbasket fast. Explopyro posted:...Of course it's called a Bee-Boop.  Explopyro posted:(This does make me curious how they actually got past this...) Explopyro posted:Leif, you have wings too. Explopyro posted:When in this mode, they attack with this diving charge. It hits pretty hard! Overall, though, I think this is probably the easier attack of theirs to deal with. Explopyro posted:This is what the delayed missile landing looks like. It's only 3 damage for some reason, so not only is it only a single hit, it's less damaging than the other missiles which it fires twice. Explopyro posted:Though this can be awkward: if you look carefully here, you can see that after relaying once, Leif's icon for Turn Relay has been greyed out. I'm not sure exactly how the restrictions work, but it seems like, when under the effects of Strong Start, a character can't relay multiple times in the same turn. Leif's going to have to take at least one action under the effects of double exhaustion. Explopyro posted:I got a bit sloppy here. You don't say.Explopyro posted:
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Jun 18, 2021 15:23
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Alien Arcana posted:Bug Fables has a real problem with getting the tails on the speech bubbles to actually point in the right direction. If you don't pay attention to the "talking" sounds, it can be hard to determine who's saying what. I never noticed how big of a problem it was until doing the LP. I don't find it too hard to know who's speaking while actually playing the game (between the sprite animations and the sound effects), but to write the updates I'm transcribing screenshots, and it's a lot less clear. I keep having to go back and rewatch the video while transcribing to double-check. Alien Arcana posted:Floppies don't have those three divots at the bottom; there'd be a single metal panel, covering the magnetic tape. But I don't know what else this could be either. Yeah, hence why I said it was unclear. The shape looks right aside from the number of openings if you assume the shield was removed (although older variants before the 3.5" didn't have the shield anyway, the shape of this looks like the hard plastic 3.5" case). Multiple apertures is really weird, though (I could've sworn I'd seen something like it at one point but can't recall what or find anything now). Also it might be a bit small, though this game doesn't always make sure everything is to scale anyway. And now I feel old. Alien Arcana posted:I just want to point out... if someone hadn't dropped their keycard here, everyone in the factory would have been completely hosed! This is a good point (although I still find the cynical item description amusing). Alien Arcana posted:Really? I'd much rather deal with their other attack, since each hit is weak enough that a Super Block can block the damage completely. The diving charge will always deal some damage. Maybe I'm just good at blocking projectiles. I suspect it's residual from my first playthrough, when I wasn't too great at blocking. I was thinking that losing actions to paralysis is a lot more annoying than a bit of extra damage (well, and for whatever reason I find the block timing of the charge more comfortable). You're right though. Alien Arcana posted:Delayed attacks in general are rather underwhelming. It's a neat concept, but in practice they don't matter much. Yeah, the vast majority of delayed attacks in this game are weak enough that I'm generally relieved to see them rather than the enemy doing anything else. Alien Arcana posted:Nothing to with Strong Start specifically, there's a general once-per-bug-per-turn limit on relaying turns. (A character can be relayed to any number of times, though.) I'm clearly going to need to do some more thorough testing on this at some point. You're probably right, but I swear I remember doing more relaying than this before (I ran a weird Status Relay build for a while in one of my playthroughs). Alien Arcana posted:You know, if we hadn't actually seen Vi fly near the beginning of the game, I'd be starting to wonder if she was unable to. She's really adamant about this. I honestly would too. I don't think they ever manage to justify her reluctance about this, either, so I tend to interpret it as a concession to game mechanics more than anything else.
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Jun 19, 2021 16:47
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Maybe the ant team could cross because theyre wearing rubber shoes? Ants always come prepared
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Jun 19, 2021 17:20
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Explopyro posted:When we freeze the droplet and make a block up here, it causes the block we put on the switch to despawn. It's the kind of puzzle that can make you feel clever when you solve it, which I like, but don't ask me to explain the physics behind it: everything about this puzzle makes zero diegetic sense. I'm not sure how to feel about this one, really. As it stands, the best explanation we have is 'magic'.
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Jun 21, 2021 01:30
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Bacchante posted:Leif says, "Oh, it's cold in here so it's not so hard for us to keep things frozen, we think we could manage an extra one". Or "It's so hot here... we can only keep two things frozen at once." There, now it's what Leif would say. 
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Jun 21, 2021 11:10
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Slaan posted:Maybe the ant team could cross because theyre wearing rubber shoes? Ants always come prepared Could be. I've also wondered if maybe they've just been climbing walls/boxes/etc or something, nothing says they're restricted to the same kinds of movement Team Snakemouth are (although we won't see anything like that in the game). Bacchante posted:Here's where giving you a hard limit on the number of objects Leif can keep frozen at once would have helped, I think; rather than making it so you can only have unique instances. I can appreciate why they did it the way they did but if you could only have, say, three different things frozen at once (two enemies and a droplet or a geyser and two droplets) then that would have allowed for order-of-operations type puzzles and made stuff like this more sensical. In certain areas you could even decrease or increase the limit. Leif says, "Oh, it's cold in here so it's not so hard for me to keep things frozen, I think I could manage an extra one". Or "It's so hot here... I can only keep two things frozen at once." That kind of thing. This would probably have been a more sensible way to do it, you're right. It'd require a bit of change to the puzzle design (e.g. in this room, you'd no longer need to get up to the second source of droplets if you could just make two ice blocks from the first one; they'll do that sort of thing again later too), but I'm not convinced that would be a bad thing, especially when the end result is the puzzles making more intuitive sense. There aren't that many puzzles that work this way, I think it might just be this one and one other later in the game (which, incidentally, I'm dreading trying to document in screenshots)? It's definitely one of the weirder decisions they made though. Twelve by Pies posted:There, now it's what Leif would say. Good catch!
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Jun 21, 2021 17:32
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25: The Blob 43 - Work That Honey When we left off, we'd ventured pretty deep into the Honey Factory, and just collected the three key cards needed to open this door. Let's head on in.  Hm? Something's going on up ahead. M-Malbee? We've gotta help!We're too far back to see what's going on, but Vi clearly knows whoever's in trouble...  13 - It's Getting Scary! Whoever this is, she's retreated from the Abomihoneys and gotten trapped on top of that machine.  We'll keep you safe! Vi? What are YOU doing here!? Talk later. We're getting rid of these pests. 029 - Team, This One's Stronger! (Miniboss)  For all that it's playing the miniboss music, this is just a basic fight against three Abomihoneys. Still, this could be scary if they decide to blow up on us.  Let's start off by having Leif use Frigid Coffin to put one of them out of commission.  Kabbu attacks the one in front.  This is actually kind of a problem, I didn't quite think it through. Leif, with doubled exhaustion from Strong Start, can't get this front one out of the ground because he won't do any damage to it.    I decided to try Hurricane Toss to get it out of the ground. It kind of worked: Hurricane Toss did force it to surface, but then it immediately went back under again. I wasn't expecting that; apparently not all attacks that can hit underground enemies are created equal (although this reaction may be unique to this enemy).   So Kabbu attacks the second one instead (after Charmy provides a convenient boost).   Not the best showing from me on blocking. I sometimes forget how fast the damage adds up if you don't block; this is a good reminder!  Turn two.  Kabbu finishes the first one.   While Vi and Leif knock the second down to 1 HP.  Here's evidence that Spiky Bod damage can't kill.    Cleanup is easy from there.  A nice chunk of EXP for us, Abomihoneys at least are still worth some.  That takes care of that, at least. 43 - Work That Honey   We, um... are glad to see you're okay. Vi, who is this? This is Malbee, the maintenance chief. That I am! Glad you still remember that. Who are those two with you? Vi's exploration team. At your service! So you did go and build up a team instead of doing your shift here, didn't ya? I didn't. The Vi from back then wouldn't have managed. HEY! Guess something changed, though... It seems that I owe ya in the end. So thanks. Who knows what could've happened. Uh, I'm glad we could be of help. By the way, Miss Malbee. We're looking for the Overseer. Would you be able to help us? Oh, her? She's got to be trapped in the Storage. With the security in place, the vents shut down... Honey's heating up, and those Abomihoneys are popping up. She won't last long by herself. What do we do? The storage is locked. That's because the pump shut down. I was about to fix it when I got jumped... Can you fix it now? Yup. Hang on tight for a few minutes. She goes off to do something while the screen fades out.  When we fade back in, the pistons are chugging away and the conveyors in the background start moving.   Thank you! Now we've just got to walk back... Oh, you're gonna like this, Kabbu. With the machines working again, you can take the tram back. Will it bring us back to the entrance? Yeah. Saves a lot of time. And you get to see the factory from a whole new angle. That is fantastic! We do get to tour around after all! Thanks, Malbee. We're gonna go do our mission and stuff. Hmph. Vi, if you don't think you're cut out for that exploration stuff, I'll actually rehire you here. Could always use more folk pushing the boxes. Never! Let's go, team!With that, the scene ends and we're put back in control. There's a bit more dialogue we can see here before heading back. First off, let's talk to Malbee again: Don't forget my offer, Vi. I can always use more help. Right... See you later!Vi's not particularly pleased with this offer. There's also a banter: So Malbee was your boss, Vi? Yup... I hate having a boss. It sucks! Being an explorer is way better! But isn't the Queen our boss now? At least it doesn't really feel like it... Indeed. Exploring sets the soul free!Sometimes it's the small differences that matter. That said, I'm not sure Vi and Kabbu aren't talking past each other a bit here.  Moving toward the machinery to get a closer look. The pump is a fascinating piece of technology! It makes the Golden Settlement look way behind the times. I dunno. It just looks weird and ugly to me. What's its appearance got to do with anything?The area banter has them discussing the machinery. Honestly, Vi's perspective is pretty realistic: nobody ever seems to think much of tourist attractions that are right in their backyard, no matter how amazing they might be to people who aren't used to them.   We may as well head back, there's nothing else to do here.    It lets us off right here, at the beginning of this path. (Also in evidence here, me screwing up at pacing. For some reason I could've sworn there was at least one more room between the locked door and where Malbee was; this all really belonged at the end of last update. Oh well.)  Back in the central room. Let's check around and see if anyone has something new to say before heading to the storeroom.  Guess this lockdown isn't going that great for her... Gen and Eri have already made it back, they're hanging out here now.  And this worker on the lower level has a new line for some reason. The others don't, though.   Thank you! I will guard it with my life.I take this opportunity to drop off the Shell Ointment we found with Amber.  And we may as well take a rest to heal, since it's free.  All right, back to work. The storage area is this way, and it's open now.  44 - Store That HoneyI recommend giving this area's music a listen, it's a much more somber and spooky twist on the theme from upstairs.  What a grim atmosphere. Must we always find an elevator in our travels? This connects the fun part of the factory with the boring storage part! Down we go! Hit the switch with the Beemerang...  And the elevator starts to go down.  Let's go see what's here.  That is a lot of boxes. (As well as a save crystal, if you need one. There are a lot of them in here.) I have never seen so many boxes in my entire life! We feel like all of Bugaria could fit in here... Vi, do the bees need this much honey? You never know, right? Maybe someday we'll have to feed all of Bugaria! Given what'd have to occur for that to happen, let's hope not.Wooden boxes don't seem like a very effective storage mechanism for honey to me, but what do I know? I'm not a bee.  There's another keycard scanner up here, but we don't have one, so we'll need to take another path first.  Like this convenient gap between the boxes.    The boxes in front block our vision of the team (though we can get a preview of some other areas!), until they come out here. Let's deal with the Denmuki first, before trying to solve the maze.  These fights are starting to get more interesting, mixing up all the enemies we're familiar with now.  That said, we know how these enemies work, taking care of them is just more of the same still.  Heading through this gap, we can find the area in front we saw earlier. There's a lever in here.  Hitting it causes the dangling box to rise up or come back down. Why could that matter? Let's leave it alone for now, though we'll definitely need to come back to this later.  There's one other way we can go from this little hub area.     It's a linear path (at least there's enough transparency now for us to see where we're going!). We can also see one of Venus' buds waiting for us in a room to the front, though we can't reach her from this side. Instead, we have a turret to fight.  Turrets alongside Abomihoney are new.  Turn one is pretty ordinary (I had Kabbu hit the turret twice for piercing, and the other two focus on the Abomihoney), but the Abomihoney choosing to go into bomb mode definitely throws a wrench in things. I don't want to take any chances here.  Looks like a job for Kabbu's Dash Through!  It's just enough damage to get the turret out of the way, and leaves Leif and Vi free to (just barely) finish off the Abomihoney before it can go kaboom.  Turrets are apparently worth 0 EXP now, as well.  It may be hard to see here, but there's a gap in the left wall we can go through.  But it takes us to a dead end. There's a giant box in our way that we can't get past, and none of the ledges are low enough for us to jump onto. What to do?   We need to go back and flip this switch.  That switch toggles all of the cranes in the room, which includes the one that was holding the big box on this side. With it out of the way, we can climb up the ledges to the bouncy mushroom.  And get on top of the maze of crates.   We can jump down from there to the alcove where Venus is.   Maybe she'll have some information for us?  Thanks, Venus. How enlightening.  May as well avail ourselves of her healing while we're here, too.  That said, before we head down the path south of her, let's finish exploring this room.   It can be pretty tricky to see, but there's a secret here.  There's a gap we can fall down right here.  And at the bottom, there's a medal for us.  Shock Trooper is yet another of the "turn a status effect to your benefit" medals, this time for Numb. It's 2 MP, and this one will just straight up make the character invulnerable. This sounds pretty good, but honestly I find it's hard to justify using over something like Bubble Shield.   We can cross this bridge to the far side, but it doesn't look like there's any way to get up to that Crystal Berry we can see on the box...  The crane is the key to this puzzle. What we have to do is go back to the switch, throw the Beemerang so that it'll hit it on the rebound, then hold it there and make our way back up to the upper level.   Once we're across the bridge, we can finally release the Beemerang to toggle the positions. I always think I need to be on the bridge while doing it, but thankfully it's not quite that precise.  I'm pretty sure you can make the jump to it from up here, if you aim it just right.  But it's much easier to just walk around to this side and climb the stairs.  Let's take this and get out of here.   What's this room about, then? (Aside from yet another save crystal, despite there being one in the previous room too...) I must say this storage room is somehow more grim than the last. It's like the bees went and made their own Snakemouth. Heheh. You'll cheer up when you see this Beemerang trick!Vi hints that we're going to need her skills again in here.   First things first, let's deal with the enemy.   A straightforward battle.  There's a switch here, but let's see what the sign says first.  When the halt stops, it returns a bit behind its launch coordinates... Hawk says it's a malfunction... IT'S A FEATURE!I think we know who wrote this. Anyway, this is a tutorial for using the Beemerang to activate switches remotely, if we hadn't figured it out already in the previous room. (This should also be a familiar mechanic for anyone who's played Paper Mario: TTYD, it's nearly identical to how Koops' shell worked.) Before we solve the puzzle, can we get that Magic Seed on the box in the corner?   This jump is just barely possible, if we take it from the highest point.  Easy enough. Can't have too many of these.  Now to do the thing. Throw the Beemerang here...  Get on the box...  Then ride it over.  Is this a dead end?  There's gotta be something, somewhere! Is it that weird for there to be an empty room? ...Yes! ... Wait... What's this feeling...  13 - It's Getting Scary!  Ready up, it's coming! Click me for video! 029 - Team, This One's Stronger! (Miniboss)  And we thought the Abomihoneys were bad! This one's much bigger and angrier. Let's get some information.  We've gotta get rid of it, but we can't ignore the Abomihoneys, either!(This name doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well, does it?)    Let's start off with a round of basic attacks.  For its first attack, Ahoneynation spits balls of honey at us, which rebound off and become baby Abomihoneys. It can shoot either once or twice, so we had a bit of bad luck here.  You may notice something a bit off with the baby ones - their defence reads as "???". They actually have -1 defence, and if you hit them with most attacks it will do additional damage.  Dash Through is a convenient way to get rid of them. Though you will notice there's no extra damage here, it seems any attack which ignores or partially ignores defence also ignores the negative defence. You win some, you lose some. If you don't kill them, they have a bite attack for 3 damage, or supposedly they can also rejoin the main Ahoneynation to heal it 3 HP (though I have never seen this myself, I tend not to let them live).   Leif and Vi just attack.  This time, it uses its turn to charge up, instead of attacking us.  It gives itself +2 charge and enters this angry mode. In addition to the usual benefits of +2 charge-up, this also means it has a particular attack queued up for next turn.   I don't want to be hit by it, but I'm going to need some more TP first.   Kabbu goes to attack as usual, but Charmy steps in to give him a bit of extra punch.  And this, of course, is why we needed the TP. Leif can use Bubble Shield to block the big attack.   That looks like it would have hurt.  Even though Kabbu took no damage, that still counted as being hit for purposes of Favorite One.   We'll just attack again. Do note that Leif didn't get a turn, since he's still recovering from using the shield.   Ahoneynation decided to charge again.  Since I didn't have enough TP for another Bubble Shield, I decided to try Frigid Coffin instead. The odds were in my favour: Ahoneynation has 50% resistance, so after -30% it's an 80% chance to succeed. Nevertheless, a 20% failure chance is not zero.   So we're going to play it a bit risky and just keep up the pressure.  Ouch! That's some serious damage (keep in mind, this is Super Blocking: the attack does 5 damage at base, and then 2 more from the charge-ups, and it hits everyone).  But while that's a lot of damage, we survived it, and it's low enough we can finish it off.  Ahoneynation is actually quite a capricious miniboss, and can often be underwhelming. We saw most of its moves during that fight; between Bubble Shield or just freezing it, and the fact it wastes turns charging up, you can often take it out without seeing it do anything particularly interesting. I'm pleased to have been able to show a run where it was threatening.  The attack we didn't see is this gigantic punch, which hits one bug for 6 base damage. Also, here's a highlight from a run of this fight I decided not to show:   Ahoneynation is very vulnerable to poison (only 20% resistance), so Vi's Poison Needles can do a lot of work here if you use it on the first turn. Both hits successfully poisoned it here, for a total duration of 4 turns.  Although poison damage is capped at 2 per turn on enemies, it still adds up to quite a bit over the course of the fight! It's not a bad strategy, though this isn't a particularly tough fight regardless.  The Ahoneynation explodes and... is that...?  ...W-Woah! Are those...  What happened? We found this keycard, and then... A "thank you" would be enough. N-Never! This NEVER happened! Argh! She storms off in a huff.  Humility is hard to come by... Hmph. You're welcome. You must have been terrified! We were. We really thought that was it for us... Try not to bring it up, okay? Even Mothiva can get very scared. And why shouldn't we? Take this. ...I trust this makes us even? We were even from the start. Go, you wouldn't want to keep her waiting! ...See you upstairs, Team Snakemouth.  What matters is we've got the card. I'm sure we can save the overseer with this! It'll be so hard not to rub this in her face... Guess we're better than that, though. Let's go. Well, isn't that interesting? It seems pretty unlikely they were behind the sabotage then, at least. (Zasp is really quick to code-switch as soon as she's out of earshot, isn't he.) Mothiva sure can run when she's mad. Heheheh. Don't be like this. Can you imagine the fear of being eaten alive? They're fine! Chill out!We can see this new banter before leaving the room.  Venus is right in our path on the way back, it only makes sense to heal up. We took some heavy damage in that fight.   Another key, another door.  The Overseer's GOT to be in here, I can feel it! Can bees feel each other's presences? That's not what I meant!I like this one.  There are a lot of Abomihoneys in this room.  They're all by their lonesome, though, so they're not too threatening. That said, even with a first strike and Strong Start, we can't quite kill them in a single turn without spending TP.  Still, they're simple to deal with.  Abomihoneys also frequently drop... Abomihoneys. Of course they do.  We could use that crank to lower the drawbridge, but there's no need to bother right now.  We can just drop down here, though there's another Abomihoney waiting.  It's just more of the same.  That said, in this fight we finally see a new Charmy effect! This one gives everyone Defence Up just before it attacks. If this one triggers in a fight with multiple enemies, it can really have a big impact.   We can just climb up these stairs, no need for the bridge. Although there aren't any stairs back up on the other side, so we will need the bridge to get back later.    Yet another lone Abomihoney fight.   And we've reached the far side. It looks like someone's up there on top of that box. Could it be the Overseer, finally?  Oi! We're here to help! We've come to save you! And have you open the core room. Mhm. Team Snakemouth to the rescue! Team Snakemouth... That was you in it, huh? Guess your explorer gig did pay off! I feel kinda bad for not believing in you at all... S-Sorry! What I meant to say is, I'm impressed! I would never expect a Code 32 to happen just on the day we would replace the core... The vents have shut off and the honey is becoming volatile! The abomihoneys are taking over! We do need to reset the core, fast! But I can't get past all these monsters... Worry not. We shall escort you to the exit. Just stick with us. We'll make sure nothing harms you. S-Sure hope so... Or I'll just come running back! 24 - Oh no! WASPS!! Yes, it uses the wasp battle music here, even though there aren't any wasps around. It works pretty well as a general panic theme. Anyway, the Overseer is following us now, and the gimmick is we have to get her out of this room without touching or getting too close to any Abomihoneys (which have conveniently spawned to fill the room even though we just killed off all the ones we saw).   If you mess up and get caught, this happens and sends you back to the start. We don't get the chance to fight them here.  The easiest (and presumably intended) way to do this is to rely on Leif's Bubble Shield. As long as we're in the bubble, we can just bump them away from us and move past.     Though we can't stay in the bubble the entire time! We need to knock the enemies as far away as we can, then release it so Vi can turn the crank to lower the drawbridge. (Remember, there aren't any stairs on the far side!)    The Beemerang needs to be held in place to keep the bridge down, but once you get onto this side, it's safe to release it.  And get back into the bubble for the home stretch.  Once you reach this point, you're safe. (Incidentally, it is totally possible to get through this section without using Bubble Shield. I didn't think of that solution on my first playthrough, and while it was incredibly frustrating and took several tries, I was able to get through by some combination of platforming on top of the boxes and using the Beemerang to stun Abomihoneys from a distance. I do not recommend this, but it can be done.) 44 - Store That Honey  (Oh dear.) Yeah! I've just gotta restart the system, and everything should stabilize... We've gotta review this protocol, seriously. That's a relief. Explorers can be pretty cool. Thank you! I'll go to the core room. You should be able to get out then. When H.B.'s ready to switch the core, feel free to tag along! With that... I'm out! Praise will get you anywhere, eh Vi? Yup. Anywhere, anytime. Time to finish this job!At least somebody appreciates her Aside from herself, I mean.There's a new banter in this room before we go: This place could use some endearing posters! The storage's not really part of the tour. And it shows. Let's get out of this place.I'm only too happy to oblige.  Though this seems like a pretty good place to stop for now. Next time... we've solved everything, right? What else could possibly go wrong? Explopyro fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 07:21
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The bees are clearly more industrialized and technologically advanced than the other bugs. I wonder where that comes from. Are these non-floppy disk tiny human data storage disks? Or did the bees make those themselves, reverse engineering human technology? It seems like there are no humans around, even though there are lots of human "artifacts".
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Jun 24, 2021 09:01
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Explopyro posted:
Explopyro posted:It lets us off right here, at the beginning of this path. Explopyro posted:I recommend giving this area's music a listen, it's a much more somber and spooky twist on the theme from upstairs. Explopyro posted:Wooden boxes don't seem like a very effective storage mechanism for honey to me, but what do I know? I'm not a bee. Explopyro posted:(This name doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well, does it?) Oh poo poo who let Goopy Le Grande into this game?  Explopyro posted:Well, isn't that interesting? (Zasp is really quick to code-switch as soon as she's out of earshot, isn't he.) Who are you even talking to? Do you usually narrate to yourself in times of mortal peril? Explopyro posted:(Incidentally, it is totally possible to get through this section without using Bubble Shield. I didn't think of that solution on my first playthrough, and while it was incredibly frustrating and took several tries, I was able to get through by some combination of platforming on top of the boxes and using the Beemerang to stun Abomihoneys from a distance. I do not recommend this, but it can be done.) I think I ended up freezing the Abomihoneys so I could get enough time to lower the bridge... or maybe I tried doing that and it didn't work. It's been a while.
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Jun 24, 2021 13:29
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Alien Arcana posted:Is Malbee's name supposed to be a pun? I feel like it is, but I don't get it. Now that you mention it, Malbee's portrait makes it look like she has a full beard, making the pun male-bee...
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Jun 24, 2021 14:17
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Explopyro posted:
Such a video-game way of saying 'you pick up your enemy's corpse and carry it as rations'. It's not like that's unusual for insects. Torrannor posted:The bees are clearly more industrialized and technologically advanced than the other bugs. I wonder where that comes from. Are these non-floppy disk tiny human data storage disks? Or did the bees make those themselves, reverse engineering human technology? It seems like there are no humans around, even though there are lots of human "artifacts". I've encountered several fantasy novels that use the concept of beehive structure creating rudimentary computers.
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Jun 24, 2021 14:47
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Here's a question: how do the various invincibility things (bubble shield, shock trooper, anything else we might not have seen yet) interact with the Devourer's "eat a party member" attack?
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Jun 24, 2021 15:02
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serefin99 posted:Here's a question: how do the various invincibility things (bubble shield, shock trooper, anything else we might not have seen yet) interact with the Devourer's "eat a party member" attack? I can personally confirm that Bubble Shield offers zero protection against getting eaten. The more I learn about the Devourer, the more I wonder WTF the devs were thinking.
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Jun 24, 2021 22:38
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serefin99 posted:Here's a question: how do the various invincibility things (bubble shield, shock trooper, anything else we might not have seen yet) interact with the Devourer's "eat a party member" attack? It doesn't. You have no way to protect against that attack at all. Bubble Shield and Bubble Shield Lite was still invaluable to getting my win cause it was still good at protecting against every single one of its other attacks because there's so much going on in that fight. If Leif got chomped, that was the end of that run cause then my other party members would have no defense against all the other poo poo that goes on in that battle. Spoilered the strat before, but now that the skills have been shown off, I used Bubble Shield while Kabbu Taunted to mitigate most of the damage coming towards the party. Sometimes I used the big bubble shield if I really couldn't afford the party to take much damage. Then once Kabbu (or in worse cases, Vi) got eaten, it was mostly just bursting down the plants with Leif if Vi got eaten, or wailing on Devourer as much as possible with Vi if Kabbu got eaten. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 23:14
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Bug Fables is currently 40% off for the Steam Summer Sale if anyone wants to get the game.
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Jun 25, 2021 00:00
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Torrannor posted:The bees are clearly more industrialized and technologically advanced than the other bugs. I wonder where that comes from. Are these non-floppy disk tiny human data storage disks? Or did the bees make those themselves, reverse engineering human technology? It seems like there are no humans around, even though there are lots of human "artifacts". These are good questions. We'll get answers to some, but not everything. I think all we really know right now is that the roaches (who are missing) had advanced magical technology based on crystals and Doctor HB is trying to reverse-engineer it. It's not clear how much of the bees' technology is the product of this endeavour and how much is separate. Alien Arcana posted:Is Malbee's name supposed to be a pun? I feel like it is, but I don't get it. Torrannor posted:Now that you mention it, Malbee's portrait makes it look like she has a full beard, making the pun male-bee... It could be a pun, but if so I don't know what it is either. My best guess would have been that it's derived from "malfunction", since she's the maintenance director. (Or maybe they had originally planned for her to be meaner and we're back to "Mal is bad, in the Latin".) I checked her entry in the artbook since it often mentions things like this, but it didn't have anything to say about her name. (On the other hand, apparently an early design for her character would have ridden around in some kind of mech walker... I don't know.) Alien Arcana posted:It's honestly a bit disappointing that we don't actually get to see the factory from the tram. I actually meant to make some kind of comment about this (along the lines of "Team Snakemouth might get to see it, but we as the players won't") and then completely forgot to put it in the post. Oops. It would have been nice to see, but I guess I can understand why they decided not to include it. Alien Arcana posted:There's parts of this track that really remind me of the True Laboratory from Undertale. You're not the first person I've heard say this; I wouldn't have made the connection myself, but I can see where it comes from. I think it's mostly down to whatever that chant-like/reverb sound is. Alien Arcana posted:Hmm. They're all about honey, but they don't use beeswax at all, do they? It is something of a weird oversight, isn't it? From the colouration and such, I would guess the hive itself is probably made out of wax still, but as far as I know there isn't a single mention of beeswax in the game script. (Maybe the reason is as simple as they wanted to have a room full of boxes for puzzle purposes? and/or as a reference to the Mario RPGs because several of them had a room like that?) Alien Arcana posted:Oh hey, I feel slightly less stupid now. I feel like the game could have made it a bit clearer that's what you're supposed to do; even just having Leif mention his shield so you remember that's an option? Oh god, I felt so dumb when I found out you could use Bubble Shield for it. I really hated that room before that, they definitely could have signposted it better. It's so obvious once you know. Black Robe posted:Such a video-game way of saying 'you pick up your enemy's corpse and carry it as rations'. It's not like that's unusual for insects. I was not expecting to find realism in the honey abominations of all things (mind blown  ). Well done.Black Robe posted:I've encountered several fantasy novels that use the concept of beehive structure creating rudimentary computers. Honestly, that could've been a great way to justify it. It's a shame they didn't lean into something like that more. serefin99 posted:Here's a question: how do the various invincibility things (bubble shield, shock trooper, anything else we might not have seen yet) interact with the Devourer's "eat a party member" attack? Alien Arcana posted:I can personally confirm that Bubble Shield offers zero protection against getting eaten. Araxxor posted:It doesn't. You have no way to protect against that attack at all. This discussion made me curious, so I went and did some testing on one of my completed files. Um, a lot of testing, it took a while to get all the things to happen that I needed to (it was surprisingly tricky to get the paralysed character eaten while keeping the other two alive, but I did eventually manage it). Things I've learned: Shock Trooper doesn't prevent what I'll call "end of turn damage", such as from being poisoned or being inside the Devourer (nor, of course, does it prevent being eaten). It prevents everything else, as far as I can tell. Bubble Shield is the same way (you will still take poison etc end of turn damage), though that's what I expected because the shield animation wears off before the end-of-turn effects happen. Now for the big one. The Devourer won't eat a character if the Head Slam attack leaves exactly one bug alive. I didn't know that before. The Head Slam can still cause a game over if it eats someone and then a flytrap or delayed missile takes out the last person outside (as I demonstrated in the LP), but it won't if there's only a single person standing after the damage is dealt. This means there is, in fact, a foolproof way to avoid being eaten, but it's a tricky one to build a strategy around and costs you even more action economy than being eaten would. If you make Kabbu extremely tanky and use Miracle Matter on one or both of the others, you can ensure the slam KOs both Leif and Vi and then eats nobody... this does work, and makes fighting it in the boss rush RNG-proof, but it's not really practical for fighting it normally since it requires too many late-game medals. Everything I've said criticising the boss design still stands, but at this point I'm weirdly fond of what a hot mess it is, honestly. senrath posted:Bug Fables is currently 40% off for the Steam Summer Sale if anyone wants to get the game. Thanks for pointing this out! I don't think there's anything I can say to encourage people to buy the game beyond what I already have; I think it's a great value even at full price, but if you can get it discounted so much the better.
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Jun 25, 2021 01:53
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If 40% off isn't good enough of a deal, Bug Fables is joining Xbox Game Pass in July.
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Jun 25, 2021 05:19
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Explopyro posted:These are good questions. We'll get answers to some, but not everything. I think all we really know right now is that the roaches (who are missing) had advanced magical technology based on crystals and Doctor HB is trying to reverse-engineer it. It's not clear how much of the bees' technology is the product of this endeavour and how much is separate. My interpretation is that anything that has the weird glitchy text is probably based on HB's reverse engineering, which is why it doesn't work quite right. At the very least, we know that HB made the hologram outside her lab, which has that glitchy text. We also know Honeycomb and HB are the last survivors of the previous generation and the roaches haven't been gone that long (Vi says it was shortly before she was born, and she's fairly young), so HB trying to reverse engineer it probably is pretty recent (since if it wasn't, she could have just asked the roaches). This makes sense to me since most of the tech we see in the honey factory outside of the Menders looks like it uses gears and pistons and such, which means the bees probably made it themselves. We do know that the core is roach technology (an artifact specifically) but since the bees didn't even know it was an artifact until the events of the game, it's reasonable to assume they didn't really study it and thus didn't base their technology on roach technology.
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Jun 25, 2021 07:50
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I'm a bit conflicted. After having played around with the Devourer a bit more, I ended up recording a couple of videos I think some of you might find cathartic. They include: killing the hardest version of the Devourer without it ever getting a turn, and a build which can last indefinitely against it even with Hard Hits on, that's completely RNG-proof with respect to getting eaten. (Both of these are more novel than practical, and more applicable to the boss rush than fighting the thing normally.) But I don't really think it's a good idea to post them yet, because I did the testing on a completed file and they're full of spoilers for late-game mechanics (abilities, medals, etc, plus a specific other thing). I don't want unspoiled readers to see them, or the thread to turn into nothing but black bar redactions... I'm sorry to be a tease about something like this, I know that's probably frustrating, but I will definitely post them when I find an appropriate time. Also, one other very strange thing I learned over the course of this testing: if you have Miracle Matter equipped to a bug who gets eaten and then dies inside the Devourer, the duration before they auto-revive is one turn longer than it should be. I have no idea why this happens. Twelve by Pies posted:My interpretation is that anything that has the weird glitchy text is probably based on HB's reverse engineering, which is why it doesn't work quite right. At the very least, we know that HB made the hologram outside her lab, which has that glitchy text. We also know Honeycomb and HB are the last survivors of the previous generation and the roaches haven't been gone that long (Vi says it was shortly before she was born, and she's fairly young), so HB trying to reverse engineer it probably is pretty recent (since if it wasn't, she could have just asked the roaches). I think this is right, yeah. There's also a mention somewhere (I think in one of the lore books, maybe?) that Queen Bianca is particularly interested in technology and has been directing the bees to focus on research, and a lot of the recent developments have come out of that. As per usual, though, timescales in this game are fuzzy, so it's difficult to say too much one way or the other (which I think is deliberate).
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Jun 26, 2021 17:06
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Explopyro posted:There's also a banter here: Nobody else seemed to bring this up, but, didn't Kabbu and Neolith meet in the Lost Sands? It stands to reason they'd walk the rest of the way together since they were both headed to the ant kingdom.
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Jun 28, 2021 17:29
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026: Drone Strike 44 - Store That Honey Last time, we rescued the Factory Overseer. She should be able to get us into the core area, so hopefully we're into the home stretch now.  There's nothing else to do in the Storage area, so let's head back up the elevator. 43 - Work That Honey Let's head back into the main area.  This worker has new dialogue; she'd previously commented on Zasp and Mothiva having gone into the storage.   So do Gen and Eri. Also, take note that the pile of materials is gone from the centre of this room, and that Doctor HB and Crow are nowhere to be seen. The room looks pretty empty now.   Zasp and Mothiva are back too, still their usual selves.  There's only one place left to go. Before that, though, a quick check:    I took a quick opportunity to rearrange some medals. Among other things, I thought it was finally time to take Poison Attacker out for a spin, so we're going to let Vi play poison games. Otherwise, this is pretty similar to what we've been using throughout. This is also a good time to take a free nap and heal to full, if needed. With that done, let's proceed.  This antechamber feels pretty crowded now that we're not the only ones in it. The Overseer's here... Let's exchange the core!You get this banter both for the room and the Overseer herself.   A bit of chatter from Crow and the Doctor. I find it a bit strange she and Kabbu have exactly the same line, but I guess that's not completely unreasonable given the content? They built an ancient artifact replica in... like an hour? Incredible. Bee scientists have truly earned their fame! ...Yeah.A slightly more interesting banter for the scientists. Anyway, let's talk to the Overseer.  If we say no: That's fine, you probably need some time to handle the majesty of it!That said, no more dawdling: Ok, here we go!   The gates open and the camera zooms in to let us see inside. (I don't know who's speaking, I think maybe the Overseer?) The "core" of the factory seems to refer to two separate things: the giant machine that's chugging away, and the artifact which has been slotted into the centre of it. (Don't ask me how this works.)  Heh. It was definitely designed with function over form. This is such a big day! The core's never been replaced! If this goes awry, the whole factory will explode... CROW! I told you that was a 0.004718% chance! Shut up! S-Sorry, Doctor... Phew... I don't want to be here if it's going to blow up! Oof... Please do not scare us like that.   She goes to approach the artifact, when an alarm sounds and red light starts flashing. What is it now!? 13 - It's Getting Scary! I don't think anyone was expecting that.  Everyone, be on guard! Deactivation code 940906!    Doctor! W-What do we do!? Leave it to us. We'll knock this thing out. Yeah! We ain't leaving without the artifact!  Everyone... Alright! Take care of all the Bee-Boops! We'll take care of the big one! You'd give ME such a simple task? Shut it! They're coming! Just do your job! Grr... Whatever, let's go! Click me for video! 45 - MECHA BEE DESTROYER BLASTLORD (Recommended listening!)This is one of my favourite songs in the game (definitely in my top three or four), I can't get enough of it. And yes, the title is consistently in CAPSLOCK everywhere it appears, including the ingame list and the OST. Enjoy. Have some fan remixes: Remix Guitar cover 8-bit Remix   Looks like our chapter boss is going to be this giant robotic drone. Before anything else, let's spy, of course.  Vi can knock it down, but we must be wary of its delayed missiles. Our formation will be crucial.This isn't a bad hint, though of course we'd figure it out soon regardless. Also, take note that at 65 HP and 1 defence, Heavy Drone B-33 is representing more durability than the Devourer did. This boss is not messing around.  I'm going to do something a little different here, and use the Swap Positions command to switch Kabbu with Leif. This way, he can benefit from Back Support (or, right now, cancel out the penalty from Favorite One) while still leaving Vi in front. Vi definitely belongs in front for this battle, the enemy is flying and she's going to be doing the lion's share of attacking. Leif's also going to relay to her this turn. I always feel a bit dirty doing this, honestly. "Swap Positions" was added in v1.1 and, having played the game several times before then, I got used to this particular formation being impossible. That said, what is a tool for if not to be used?  And once he's in back, Kabbu will taunt. Whatever he's saying, it even works on robots.  Vi will just attack normally for now.  It doesn't fall down, though. Like Venus' Guardian before it, being hit while in the air doesn't knock the drone down, only puts it off-balance. It'll take a second hit to bring it down.   Though, of course, that's not a problem for Vi.  At the beginning of its turn, the Heavy Drone always rises back into the air before attacking. Knocking it down only does so much good. This laser attack is pretty nasty, hitting the entire party for 4 base damage. It's unlucky seeing this on a Taunt turn, though not that unexpected: this boss does have single-target attacks, but it has a lot of things like this too. Maybe we shouldn't bother with Taunting. (Truthfully, it's a bit of a gamble and it does sometimes work out well, but I'm going to stop using it for the rest of the fight.)  After the laser, it launches a big missile into the air. This is the delayed missile Leif was talking about, and it will land in 3 turns. Launching the missile is a follow-up attack it can use after most of its other actions, though it has a cooldown so it doesn't use it every turn.  Here we can see the delayed missile is targeting Leif's position.  With the charge-up from Favorite One, I decided to have Vi use Hurricane Toss. Her multi-hit moves are generally a good choice in this fight, since they can get the drone down with a single action instead of two. (They also do pretty good damage!)  Leif gets lucky and freezes with Frigid Coffin. The drone is strongly resistant to most statuses (outright immune to poison and sleep, and 70% resistance to freeze and numb). I usually don't expect to freeze it more than once, and it'll become outright immune after being frozen twice.  Since it's been frozen, let's not break it out. We have this Succulent Platter and everyone's taken a bit of damage, so let's mitigate that.  Because it's the last action of the turn, and the enemy doesn't get to act, it goes right from the item-use animation into the end of turn triggers. (Also, there's something a bit interesting here. The platter didn't trigger Vi's Weak Stomach. If I'd thought to, I could have relayed to her and had her use it instead, and it would have. I'm not sure why it works this way, but some items - specifically, items which don't target a specific bug, and don't outright restore HP - will only trigger Weak Stomach if the bug wearing the medal is the one to use the item.)  Here you can see the icons for HP regeneration. We'll get another turn of healing from the Succulent Platter.   Our TP's getting a bit low, so Kabbu uses a Honey Drop.  Giving Vi enough to use another Hurricane Toss.   Charmy's nice enough to refund her a bit of TP afterward, though it seems like that's it for the spell.  Leif attacks for a measly 1 damage.  On its turn, the Heavy Drone summons a Bee-Boop.  Which immediately attacks Kabbu, though it doesn't end up doing much.  The Bee-Boops summoned are perfectly normal, unlike the weaker Abomihoneys we saw in the miniboss fight.  Thanks to the refund, Vi can afford to Hurricane Toss again. The Bee-Boop attacking Kabbu helped us more than it, really, she appreciates the charge bonuses.   Leif and Kabbu attack too.  The Bee-Boop attacks before the big one, but it's still not doing very much.  When reduced below 65% HP, the drone's next turn will start with this malfunction that causes its armour to crack. This changes its stats for the rest of the fight: it gets a permanent Attack Up, but also Defence Down.  It then spends its turn charging up. It won't do this move before the armour breaks. Like the miniboss we just faced, in addition to gaining a charge-up status, this queues up a specific move for its next turn.  Also, it's that time: the missile lands on Leif. It's 4 base damage, so it's not exactly pleasant to get hit by, but it's pretty manageable. Bubble Shield Lite can block it, but honestly, I'd usually rather just take the hit than spend the TP and a turn.    Here you can see the three status icons on the boss after that last turn.  I don't want to get hit by the big charged attack, but we're going to need some TP to use Leif's Bubble Shield, so Vi pulls out a Crisbee Donut.  Because she's the one who used it, the doughnut triggers Weak Stomach and poisons Vi (activating Poison Attacker and Poison Defender). If anyone else had used it, that wouldn't have happened.  Kabbu attacks the Bee-Boop for lack of anything else to do.  And Leif shields everyone.  Even though we have shields up, we can still block, and in this case still get Spiky Bod damage.  The turn after charging up, the drone will do this ram attack. It hits the entire party. How grateful are we to have avoided this?  If we hadn't shielded, it'd have looked like this instead. The base damage is 5, but it's effectively 7, since it always comes when the boss has Attack Up and +1 charge. At least this attack is always telegraphed, so you can avoid it with good TP management (honestly, I think the laser is scarier since you don't see it coming!).  Here's where things stand now. It's not the easiest thing to see in this screenshot with the charge-up icons, but Leif's sprite is already greyed out as though he'd already moved: he doesn't get an action this turn as a consequence of using Bubble Shield. (This also means we wouldn't be able to change our formation this turn if we wanted to. It doesn't matter here, but that could be important in another fight!)  Vi's got a lot of boosts now, so Hurricane Toss hits quite hard. (I think she's actually benefiting from the "ignore 1 defence" bug here too, thanks to the boss having given itself Defence Down.)  She'll hit harder after the boosts than he would, so Kabbu relays to Vi and she attacks again.  This Bee-Boop still isn't managing to be very threatening.  This turn, we finally see the drone's last remaining attack. It fires a salvo of 2-3 missiles, each of which can target a different bug. These are normally base 3 damage, but it has Attack Up now, so they hit a bit harder. This is the only move it has that's affected by Taunt: if taunted, the missiles will all be aimed at Kabbu.  Also, it's time for it to fire a new missile. There's a 3-turn cooldown on this ability, so it generally launches a new missile the turn after the previous one lands, but it looks like it doesn't get a chance to launch it in the charge-up or ram turns, so this one's coming a bit later than expected.  Vi and Leif are looking a bit worse for wear after that barrage, but we can finish things this turn.   Kabbu starts off using a second Crisbee Donut to restore our TP. God, these things are so good.  Vi finishes off the boss with one final Hurricane Toss.  And Leif can finish off the Bee-Boop with Frigid Coffin to end the fight. (It always ends up feeling a bit anticlimactic when the boss dies before the adds, but what can you do.)  That wasn't so bad! Heavy Drone B-33 is often a wake-up call; I know I struggled with this fight on my first playthrough (I do sometimes wonder if my fondness for the music has to do with getting destroyed by it multiple times). This is a fight that really rewards you for knowing how to use Turn Relay, thinking through your formation (especially if you have Back Support on), and remembering you have Bubble Shield. There's also the fact you could be facing it with a limited arsenal, if you didn't prepare well for this area and bring in outside items (I'd have needed another turn to finish the fight if I had been using Glazed Honey instead of Crisbee Donuts, for instance), or skipped collecting a lot of medals. It feels a bit toothless to me now that I know what I'm doing, but I still respect this boss, and I hope that comes through despite this run perhaps making it look easy. It's a great fight and I really appreciate the things it makes you think about. (I deliberately didn't do it until the game forced me to, but it's worth remembering you can exploit the "ignore 1 defence" bug throughout this fight by having Leif cast Break.) Also, of course, I'm tickled that the boss of the bee chapter is a literal combat drone, it just hardly merits a comment after we've been through this entire mechanised factory.       Hmph. Good moves. At the very least, we've accomplished our goal. We can agree for once. Uh... Yup! Good job, everyone! You did almost NOTHING! S-So mean... W-Well done, teams! We can replace the core now! Still, what a shame... Such a beautiful machine reduced to scrap. W-We'll fix it later, Doctor. Could you replace it? I really want to leave! No kidding... Feels like we've been here forever!  When she pops the artifact out, everything shuts down and the lights go out, only to immediately come back on when she slots the replacement in. Looks like it worked!  There ya go. Bet ya can't tell the difference. I'm a genius! Awesome, Doctor! Mission complete! We can finally leave! Of course. She walks over...  And hands it to Leif. 16 - Lost Treasure  Despite Vi's foul mood, the team took the Defiant Root's elevator, arriving at the Bee Kingdom. Leif had a scare, but the team learned more about what happened in Snakemouth Den. Vi was convinced to reconcile with her sister, and faced the Queen of all bees. Although the factory tour went a bit awry, the explorers worked together to replace the core. Now, all pieces have been assembled. Is the Everlasting Sapling finally within reach?  Fascinating. Your condition... I haven't forgotten. Think about my offer, okay?  Hm. You're growing bolder, you brat. N-Now, now. We can all go home, surely that is reason to celebrate! You got it! We're going for some Succulent Berries! See ya at the palace! Gen and Eri leave.  Shall we go, Mothiva? Yeah. Whatever. Tomorrow's a new day for glorious fame!  Zasp and Mothiva leave.  Sure thing, Doc. Ah. You're dropping by? I better ask the Queen about the shutdown real quick, then... Um. Thanks for everything, see ya! The scientists leave.  You've got a real weird idea of fun. We should go hand over this artifact. Let's go, everyone. Finally, there's the end-of-chapter save prompt.  Also, the game reminds me to check my achievements.   As usual, we get one for completing the chapter, and one for the boss on Hard Mode. That's a wrap for Chapter 3! The summary really does highlight just how far we've come. It may not have seemed like it in the moment, but looking back, Chapter 3 definitely feels like an escalation compared to what came before. Expect more of that from here on out. Next time, we'll get a look at what Chapter 4 has in store. See you then! Explopyro fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jun 29, 2021 |
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Jun 29, 2021 05:17
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This made me snort.
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Jun 29, 2021 05:39
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I didn't play on Hard but I don't remember struggling with this boss. I think I really took advantage of Break to up my damage. It was probably a somewhat close fight. Maybe I remembered Bubble Shield? I don't know, I'm sad that it's felt like so long even though I only played this game a year or so ago. Glad to have this LP to remind me of all the little things!
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Jun 29, 2021 05:58
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Explopyro posted:
Explopyro posted:[quote="Explopyro" post="515843739"] Explopyro posted:Kabbu starts off using a second Crisbee Donut to restore our TP. God, these things are so good. Explopyro posted:Heavy Drone B-33 is often a wake-up call; I know I struggled with this fight on my first playthrough (I do sometimes wonder if my fondness for the music has to do with getting destroyed by it multiple times). This is a fight that really rewards you for knowing how to use Turn Relay, thinking through your formation (especially if you have Back Support on), and remembering you have Bubble Shield. There's also the fact you could be facing it with a limited arsenal, if you didn't prepare well for this area and bring in outside items (I'd have needed another turn to finish the fight if I had been using Glazed Honey instead of Crisbee Donuts, for instance), or skipped collecting a lot of medals. The dialogue box coming from behind the "you got a thing" starburst is perfect. Shut up, Mothiva, you're not relevant here. (You know it was totally Zasp who handled the Bee-boops, too. What's Mothiva going to do, sing at them?)
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Jun 29, 2021 13:26
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It would be called B-33 wouldn't it
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Jun 29, 2021 13:35
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Slaan posted:It would be called B-33 wouldn't it Isn't it UN-B-33-LIEVABLE? 
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Jun 29, 2021 16:19
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