It's a game with the good kind of bugs! Let's Play Bug Fables

W-What the heck!?

A Bee... and a Beetle!? In this place!?

Leif, you... you get them?

That language, is it...

They won't listen. Ready up!

29 - Team, This One's Stronger! (Miniboss)

Who or what is this? Let's try to find out, I guess...

Its carapace is absurdly tough. Leif, support me as I strike it!

Ugh! Leif... can you use your ice magic on them?

It seems there are more cordyceps-infested bugs in here than just the Zombiants we fought so long ago. Now there are bees and beetles as well (with punny names, because of course). These are definitely stronger than they were. And they're not going to listen to reason, so let's make some attacks and see what they do.

As fungus-based (cordyceps-infected) enemies, they're weak to Leif's ice. That'll help.

Chompy will bite zombies the same as anything else. She's such a trooper.

The Zombee, on its first turn, throws needles at us! This is eerily similar to Vi's Needle Toss attack; it does 4 base damage, hits twice (potentially switching targets between hits), and inflicts sleep if not blocked. Poor Kabbu got knocked out here, as I'm a bit out of practice with the timing.

The Zombeetle is even scarier! This is a variant of Kabbu's Dash Through attack (I guess this is just standard beetle procedure?), dealing 5 base damage and hitting the entire party. (Also, having been sent to sleep, Kabbu can't block even when the others do, so he takes an extra point of damage. At least he wakes up.)

Ouch. One turn in and our party is nearly dead. Let's turn this fight around.

First things first, we'll have Vi use the Sharing Stash to spread some healing around. We can't be stingy with healing when this kind of party damage is around.

Kabbu finishes off the Zombee.

While Leif uses Frigid Coffin to freeze the Zombeetle and spare us another turn of pain. In addition to being weak to ice damage, these enemies also have a meagre 30% freeze resistance, so the first Frigid Coffin of the fight is guaranteed to successfully freeze them.

After Chompy skips her turn so the beetle stays frozen, things look a lot better. We should be able to clean this up easily now.

There we go!

And we're receiving EXP again. Loads of it, in fact. It's a bit odd how this works out, sometimes; especially on Hard Mode, Bug Fables' EXP system tends to generate large bursts of it until you gain a few levels and then it's back to the pity EXP until you progress to the next tier of enemies. It can feel a bit odd sometimes.

73 - Lab Over Snakemouth

Don't jump to any conclusions! We... we must delve deeper, and find the truth.

...Right. Let's move on.

The party take a few steps forward, only to immediately be faced with a large body of water.

Mmm... We have an idea.

Er, is it safe?

They'll probably melt out. We'll have to be quick.

Not a problem!

Leif has gotten a new field skill, and a new battle skill to go along with it. Let's take a look.

That's certainly an expensive skill! (It used to be even more so, v1.1 reduced it from 13 TP) This skill is probably the biggest draw toward TP-heavy builds; if you like it, investing in a big TP pool goes a long way toward being able to use it reliably. We'll discuss what it does in more detail once I find an opportunity to demonstrate it.

Before we move on, there's also a new banter here.

Qerjlsk rbaljae... "Who goes there... Intruder!"

It's a real language, huh. I thought you were just mumbling and stuff.

Of course it is. No one can mumble that creatively!

(They sure know how to take the edge off things.)

This is a cute one. Also, it's kind of funny when you know Genow said in an interview that this language was generated by randomly smashing a keyboard and is not translatable.

With Leif's new icicle ability, we can build a path to the west. There are some quirks to how this works: the platforms melt after a short while, and there can be a maximum of three out at once, so when you make a fourth the oldest one disappears. It's not that hard to use, but it can get a bit tedious slowly working your way across bodies of water (and if you mess up and fall in, you're starting over from the beginning, though some platforms might stick around).

What's over here?

Well, first things first, the mushroom is actually an enemy!

What's this thing? A giant bearded mushroom?

It should be equally weak to ice. Let's be wary of its poison and counterattack!

It's certainly a bit more durable than the mushrooms we've fought before! Let's do what we can.

These are also weak to ice, like everything else in here.

The main attack these have is just pouncing on us with all their weight, for 5 damage. It looks painful, but they're very slow, so it's easier to block than many other attacks.

From here, we can finish it off easily.

These are worth a lot of EXP too. We're getting close to ranking up again!

Let's keep looking around.

That message is very clear. Too bad we're obviously going to ignore it.

That said, our path forward is also immediately blocked by this pillar.

Easy enough to dig under it to the far side. What now, though? The door onward is shut. There's a switch up on a pedestal in the corner, but we can't get up to it...

Leif's new icicle ability drops from high enough to hit it, though! It's not just for crossing water, and the game makes sure we figure that out immediately.

That opens the door.

So let's keep heading forward.

What's this? We get a discovery as soon as we enter this room.

This is very mysterious. Are we going to like what we find here?

Also, there's a new banter:

Such a colossal facility's been hiding in plain sight...

Well, the trapdoor was a pretty good distraction.

The artifact kept explorers distracted, too.

But we're here now. Time to unearth this place's secrets.

Well, Leif is determined, so let's press on.

This room is full of water, so we're going to need to use ice platforms to get around it.

It's a simple matter to cross to this central platform. There's a save crystal here if we want it, at least.

What's this machine? Let's try interacting with it...

It projects a hologram of a roach.

We can't latch onto the sapling anymore. We must find a way to become eternal on our own...!

That sounds ominous. What exactly were they doing here?

We can also read these notes on the table. They were studying the crystals too...

Let's make our way to the west first.

It's not a long distance, but we do need to cross the water. What does the tablet say?

Containment offices? Oh dear.

Let's check it out.

Is that Venus? What's she doing here?

S-Something's up ahead... We're not sure if we should go...

Have courage, Leif! Your answers could be at hand!

Something about this room is making Leif apprehensive. Maybe Venus will be able to help us?

This is all she has to say, aside from offering the usual healing. Hopefully there are some answers here, but are we going to like them? This is getting spooky.

Before anything else, we're going to have to deal with this guy. The big mushroom we could see was, of course, another one of these.

This Bloatshroom comes with a Zombee. That's right, despite the way we encountered them before, they weren't minibosses but rather the normal enemies for this area.

We'll focus damage on the Bloatshroom for the first turn, which isn't quite enough to kill it.

Meaning it gets to attack us. When you fail to block, it lands with a crash instead of bouncing off; this hurts!

Also, more needles from the bee. I missed blocking the second one, meaning Vi got sent to sleep. Oops?

Let's deal with this, I suppose.

Kabbu finishes the mushroom off.

Leif and Chompy do some damage to the bee.

Ouch. I really need to get better at blocking these. Kabbu's asleep now too, on top of all that damage. At least Vi should wake up in time for the next turn.

That said, Leif and Vi can finish this without difficulty. It could have been much worse.

Also, this is enough to push us over the threshold for the next rank, so all the damage we took will get healed anyway.

As usual, we'll get more MP.

As a special bonus for reaching Rank 19, we get an upgrade to our item capacity: we can now carry up to 15 items! This is very convenient, and also the last upgrade of this type, 15 will be our maximum item capacity for the rest of the game.

Conveniently, it gives us the space to keep this. I guess this isn't bad to have? Bloatshrooms seem to drop these quite frequently. (Aside from these, enemies here drop basic items fairly frequently, but it's the same Crunchy Leaf, Honey Drop, and Aphid Eggs we saw all the way back in the lower regions of Snakemouth.)

Let's take a look around this room.

There are some notes we can read on this table here. Uh, that kind of thinking rarely leads to anything good...

There's a door leading onward, but it's firmly shut.

Trying to interact with this panel prompts us to insert something, but nothing we have works. Guess we're going to need to rustle up some gears at some point, hopefully that will open the way?

Also, we can climb up the pile of machinery at the back.

Though all that's up here is this sad Mushroom. I guess we may as well take it; these are even more underwhelming now than they were back at the start of the game.

For better or worse, this room is a dead end for now, so let's head back to the central chamber.

This room, while it may not immediately look that way, is wide open thanks to our icicle ability and presents lots of paths we can take.

Let's start with this corner and work our way around clockwise?

There's a locked door here, we're probably going to need some kind of keycard to open it. Guess this one's a dead end.

We can drop down from there to another path, though. Let's deal with this enemy first.

Oh, how cute. There are Zombiants here too. This is a pretty simple fight, the Zombiant doesn't present much of an additional threat so this is barely different from fighting the Bloatshroom by itself.

Easy enough.

Let's see what's to the north, since we can actually go this way.

There's a lot going on in here! Let's have a look.

There are some notes on this table tantalising us with hints about what may have gone wrong in here, and also providing what sounds like a hint for the room. Also, let's check the banter:

The "test subjects" sure caused the roaches a lot of trouble.

The roaches caused the subjects a lot of trouble too...

Even so, they refused to stop their research...

This is all very intriguing, but we still don't have a good sense of what happened here... let's keep looking around.

Before we try to figure out what to do with all the switches, there's a Zombeetle prowling around that we should probably deal with.

It has friends. This could get nasty if we're not careful.

Kabbu attacks it, since it's in front.

But let's have Leif take at least one enemy out of commission with Frigid Coffin. This is a good habit to get into in here in general, since everything is very vulnerable to freezing (every enemy in here has exactly 30% freeze resistance, so that first freeze is guaranteed).

We'll get in some more damage on the beetle, but not quite enough to kill it, meaning we're going to face some retaliation.

Yeah, that hurts.

Aww, it's trying!

After that turn one, we've more or less neutralised this fight.

We finish off the beetle.

And the ant for good measure.

Chompy will choose to do nothing, so as not to unfreeze the remaining enemy.

From here, it's a simple matter to clean up.

We're done here. Let's get back to our exploration.

The door here is closed and we can't get past, but looking carefully we can definitely see there's a gear on the far side. We want that. Guess we need to figure out how to get the door open...

The key is going to be dealing with all the switches along the far wall. Our only clue is that cryptic message to "direct power to the pipes"... well, we can see a few pipes along the wall aligned with certain switches.

This is a mechanic we've seen before, in the bees' Power Plant: hitting any switch toggles both itself and the two switches adjacent to it. It's tedious to give an exact play-by play of this, so I won't: we'll work our way from right to left across the room, ensuring the switches next to the pipes are on, and the other switches are off. As long as you're methodical and keep the goal in mind, this isn't too difficult (the main challenge in this puzzle is figuring out how to interpret the clues).

Here's our desired end state. Just doing that wasn't enough, however...

We also need to trip this lever.

Once we do that (if we got the switch configuration right), the door finally opens! (Also, there's that glowing Sapling emblem again...)

There we go, we've found one gear at least. Let's take it.

Also, there's another one of those projectors here...

If we could create thunderous spells as well, it would bolster our productivity!

Frost magic, you say? Is that something to do with Leif? Also, blight magic doesn't sound very pleasant, does it...

Well, we have a gear, and we have some more information. That's all we can find in this room, so let's head back and keep looking around.

What's to the east of us?

Ice platforms can get us to the lowest part of this platform, and we can jump our way up from there.

Oh well. It's another keycard lock, we can't proceed here.

That said, there's a convenient shortcut back south to the central platform, so this isn't too much of a detour.

There's a path to the south, so we still have more places to look.

We should deal with this Zombee first, regardless.

With the help of a first strike, we can eliminate the Zombee on the first turn, and be left with nothing but the Zombiant afterward. This fight is trivial for us.

Let's just move on.

We could head west over the water, but let's take the obvious door that's right here first.

This room's enormous, there's a lot going on here!

This room makes us a bit nostalgic... With the platforms going up and down.

Climbing hills, trees, castles... we just keep going up, huh.

I don't think that's what he meant...

This room is certainly reminiscent of our earlier visit to Snakemouth Den.

Before we try to examine anything too closely, we should get the enemy out of the way.

This could be problematic if we're not careful.

We use the first turn to eliminate the Zombee; with Chompy's help, we can just take care of it.

Here's a new attack from the Bloatshroom! It releases a cloud of spores, which uses a button-mashing action command. The damage isn't really the scary part here (I think it's only 2 points if not blocked? I managed the Super Block timing here and completely negated it): it can inflict Numb if you don't fill the bar to block normally, and it heals any fungus enemies for 3 HP. If there aren't other enemies present, this can also spawn a Jellyshroom.

Also, ouch, another Zombeetle dash attack. This is never pleasant to be hit by.

How are we going to handle this? (Also, I just noticed something peculiar here... the counter damage from blocking the dash got applied to the Bloatshroom instead of the Zombeetle, somehow? I don't understand.)

Let's freeze that beetle to get ourselves some breathing room.

We'll get a bit of damage in on the mushroom.

While Vi heals back most of the group damage.

Chompy does her part.

Oh, that counter damage will help.

That's much better. Let's see what we can do now.

First off, let's finish the Bloatshroom off.

It might have been better to do nothing with Vi and Chompy, then finish things the next turn, but I got impatient (and this way we at least get the damage bonus for breaking the ice).

Ouch. We finally get to see the Zombeetle's other attack, though! It's another move out of Kabbu's skillset, this is Boulder Toss. It hits the main target for 5 base damage, and splashes 3 to the rest of our party. This is a bit less threatening overall than Dash Through is, but I find it trickier to block.

Zombeetles only have these two attacks, so regardless of which they pick they'll be doing damage to the entire party. They are scary, and by far the most dangerous enemy in here. It's a very good idea to get in the habit of either freezing them, killing them first, or both.

That said, from here it's trivial to finish this one off.

Glad to have that out of the way.

Now to look around this room. There are a few conspicuous switches on the ground...

Hitting this one doesn't seem to do anything, at least not that we can see from this vantage point.

While this one causes the platforms above us to move. Still not particularly helpful to us down here. Let's get a different perspective.

There's an enemy up here, we should deal with that first.

It's only a lone Zombeetle.

When they're by themselves, Zombeetles aren't too bad. Especially when a single Frigid Coffin, combined with our attacks and Chompy (or a second turn's attacks, if we didn't have her and/or didn't get the first strike) is exactly enough to finish it off in one turn. It doesn't even cost us anything, thanks to Victory Buzz giving us back the TP.

Also, apparently, if you finish off a frozen enemy, the freeze status icon stays visible during its death animation (as you can see here). That's interesting.

Not bad.

From here, we can get onto the platform at least.

What to do now, though? There's nothing obvious to interact with, and the platform is stationary...

The trick is remembering that we can now hit things vertically with Leif's icicles, and that switch is on the floor below us. Drop an icicle on it, and...

The two platforms both move to the centre, and we can jump to the next one...

Then ride it over to the far side.

Once again, there's an enemy waiting.

One of each again, this should look familiar.

Now that we've seen all their attacks, I have no compunctions about aggressively freezing Zombeetles. Don't let them get turns.

Finishing this fight is pretty unremarkable from there.

Now, how do we progress from here?

This switch would be the obvious thing to interact with...

But all it does is make a platform on the level above us move toward us. That's not much use right now...

If we come over here, though, we can hit the switch back on the lower level...

That makes this platform rise up, but we need to hustle to get to it or it'll leave without us (if you look carefully, it's already started lifting off by the time I reach it here).

That said, that's only part of the answer, because now we're stymied again.

Let's try this again.

As we're headed up, let's drop an icicle on the second switch.

And now when we reach the top, the next platform will be in position so we can jump to it.

We ride that platform to the right, but it eventually stops.

There's an obvious switch we can hit here...

But it's easy to miss what it does if you're not looking carefully: it makes another platform approach in the foreground.

We can ride that one back east...

But once we jump to this last one, it appears we're stuck again. There's nothing obvious to interact with, and the platform is stationary.

But if we drop an icicle, we can hit that very first switch again!

And that lifts us up to this area, where we can disembark. I like the way this room makes you think about the space you're in and recontextualise what you can do with icicles.

As we should probably have expected, there are enemies waiting for us.

It's not too different from the fight we had before, except that there's a Zombiant here too.

First things first, let's freeze the beetle to give ourselves some breathing room.

Kabbu attacks the Zombee.

While we'll have Vi hit the Zombiant; I'm trying to set up getting rid of it early, since we can't kill the bee regardless. It's not really threatening, but it's enough of an annoyance I'd rather not have it there.

Chompy, of course, doesn't have options.

There we go! After all this time, here's the Zombee's other attack. It's Needle Pincer, just like Vi has. Like their needle toss, this one also inflicts sleep if not blocked (and unfortunately for Kabbu, while I blocked the first hit, I missed on the second one so he's still going to sleep).

An interesting little bit of trivia: this animation is very similar to Vi's basic attack in the earliest beta, before they decided to give her the Beemerang. Likewise, Zombeetles' body structure and stance bear a strong resemblance to that same beta's version of Kabbu.

Anyway, on with the fight: the Zombiant tries its hardest. They are still capable of doing non-negligible damage, but they're not that noticeable.

This is pretty much done now, even with Kabbu asleep.

We'll finish off these two.

While Chompy does nothing so we can avoid taking a big hit.

From here, it's not too much trouble to finish off the Zombeetle.

And we're done. That EXP is starting to add up again!

Now let's take a look around. This room looks to have sustained some damage...

There's another terminal here.

Food will not last long. To think it'd end like this...

It definitely sounds like things went badly for the roach scientists in the end... but we still don't quite know what they were doing that led to this.

At least we can grab this inside the broken capsule! This should open some paths for us.

There's nothing else to see, so let's head back down. Conveniently, most of our traversal here was vertical, so we can just drop right back to the entrance.

And back to the central room.

(Once again, the character limit rears its ugly head, so we'll continue momentarily in the next post.)

Explopyro fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Nov 6, 2021

# ? Oct 31, 2021 22:14

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# ? May 27, 2024 14:57

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

46: Unearthing Horrors (Part 2)

73 - Lab Over Snakemouth

There's nothing in this southeast corner, but it does give us a nice view of the room's overall structure.

Let's head west.

There's another exit over here, so let's see what we can find there.

What is this room?

What's this place supposed to be?

Is that a containment cell...?

The water's moving with a lot of force. Maybe we can use it to find our way inside.

Looks like there are more puzzles ahead of us! Before that, though, let's fight the enemy. Surely it's not just a Zombiant?

No, no it's not. I guess they're at least a little more threatening in a group (and that Bloatshroom in the back could cause some problems if it heals them).

So let's just kill them all at once. Leif empowers Kabbu...

And a single Dash Through does the trick.

Now we're left facing just the single Bloatshroom, and that's not a challenge to deal with.

Easy enough.

The game really seems to like giving me these. I don't understand what's managing to cook them in here, but okay.

There are some cryptic notes on the table. Is this a Frankenstein's monster situation?

Also, that big mushroom is an enemy. Are we even surprised now?

This isn't too bad.

Let's just get rid of them and keep moving forward.

Okay, this is just getting silly now.

Let's deal with the actual puzzle in this room. The water here has a strong current, so if we freeze an iceberg in it...

We can get on and ride it as it drifts east.

Also, we'll pass this crank along the way. Getting the Beemerang to turn it will lower the bars to the cage on the far platform.

Once we drift close enough, we can jump over and head inside.

Also, this guy is here.

But he's alone, so he doesn't present much trouble.

He also leaves behind a keycard when defeated. Thanks! (Though once we're no longer holding the Beemerang, the bars rise up quickly, which makes it a bit more difficult to see. Also, we're going to need to find another path out, clearly...)

There are some notes on the ground. This is really ominous...

And here's the path out. We can climb up this path of junk, then dig our way through that cracked wall.

We come out up here.

And from there it's a trivial matter to get back.

Let's head back to the main area again.

At least now we have both keycards, so we can open those two locked doors.

Also, with our ability to make ice platforms, the room's structure is more of a suggestion than anything else. We can just take the direct path there.

Let's open this and go in.

There's that glowing Sapling symbol again.

On we go.

Oh, this room. An enormous expanse of water, plus some other things we'll see the function of soon enough...

This is quite a lot of water!

And there's a bunch of pipes... does science use that much water?

Who knows. But it looks like the perfect playground for our icicle magic.

Leif knows what's up here.

Let's check out this upper level first though.

As usual, the mushroom is actually enemies.

Also as usual, freezing the beetle first is the key to the fight going smoothly. Simple enough.

It also gives us enough EXP to rank up again. Twice in one session! (This isn't too unusual for this dungeon, the enemies in here are very generous with EXP.)

We'll get more MP. That's all we get this level, there's no special bonus.

Looking around up here, there's nothing we can do yet, so let's head back down.

We need to look across the water first.

Flipping this switch turns on a plethora of geysers along the back wall of the room. We're going to need to use those to make our way across...

So let's head back and see what we can do.

Building a path across here can be something of a pain. If you're too high relative to the geyser, Leif can't hit it directly, but needs to drop an icicle on it (and then there's a delay, so it's trickier to get it to stop at the height you want it).

The easiest way to do it is to drop the icicle as the geyser's rising, and freeze it as close to its peak height as possible.

Also, dropping icicles lets us freeze the horizontal spouts too.

Halfway there!

A few more waterspouts and we can reach this big platform with machinery on it.

We can see one of the gears we need, but of course there's an enemy waiting first.

It took me until this point to realise I hadn't demonstrated Leif's new Ice Rain spell yet. Uh, oops? Let's do that now.

It targets "all enemies", but how exactly?

Ice Rain bears some resemblance to Leif's earlier skills, but it's much more powerful. The reticle moves horizontally, and we can press (A) to make it drop an icicle wherever it's currently positioned. These icicles explode, just like with Icefall, so if you aim well you can catch multiple enemies in the blast each time. And we get to drop four of them.

Each icicle deals damage equal to Leif's attack (we haven't even boosted him here, the only bonuses we're seeing are from being in front, enemies' ice weakness, and the extra point for hitting frozen enemies where applicable) and attempts to freeze the enemy. You may also notice that, unlike the other multi-hit attacks, the damage here doesn't degrade: each hit does full damage. (And against Golden Seedlings, each hit does 1, so this makes it very easy to kill those if you want.)

This move is expensive, but it's worth it (though it can be underwhelming if you don't boost Leif's attack first; on my first playthrough, I first used it when Leif wasn't in front and was puzzled by the TP cost, because it didn't seem very good when each hit only did 2). With even minor attack boosts, this can quickly become devastating. The only thing I don't quite like about this move is that it quickly burns through enemies' freeze resistance, so it's not always a great idea to use it early in a fight if you think you might want the utility of freezing things later. Then again, if you're using this, you probably aren't planning for fights to go long, so that often just doesn't matter.

Spamming Ice Rain is definitely the biggest draw of TP-heavy builds, if you want to go that route. It's by far the easiest way to destroy groups of enemies.

After that one attack, the battle's already over. If I'd had better aim with the explosions, we wouldn't even need to clean this up.

Let's finish this and move on.

We can now claim the Big Gear. We're nearly there, just one more to go.

Backtracking along the geyser pathway seems like a pain, so let's not bother! There's no need to reverse our steps when the entire room is filled with water, we'll just build our own way back.

Easy enough.

Let's head back. There's one more locked room to explore.

Let's open the way.

Just like the other one, the Sapling lights up and the door rolls away.

What could be in here?

This looks... interesting?

...I don't get it.

It seems those pillars can transfer energy if placed right.

We'll have to take note of what pillars get raised by which plates!

So, yes, it's an obvious puzzle room. Before that, though...

There's something inside the broken capsule over here!

This medal will make our lives much easier trying to solve the puzzle in this room (and also in a few other places, later on in the game).

It's also completely free to equip, so there's basically no reason not to put this on and then forget about it. It doesn't make enemies stay frozen indefinitely, but it extends the time long enough that it rarely presents a problem. (Also, I think in this room the enemies thaw more quickly than usual, to ensure we make use of it? At least, it feels that way.)

On the eastern side of the room, we can see a locked door next to these platforms. It looks like we need to complete a circuit on the side of the platforms for it to open?

We'll start off by freezing this convenient Zombiant.

Then put it onto this centre switch. It can be a bit hard to see, but the switches have coloured markings around them that correspond to the colours of the platforms: this is the green switch, and it made the green platforms rise.

With the green platforms raised, it forms a staircase we can use to get up here, where there's another Zombiant and the final (yellow) switch.

To start with, we'll put it on the yellow switch.

First off, how do we get to this Crystal Berry?

Simple enough. Swap the green switch for red, and we have stairs.

I'll just take that, thanks.

But now we can't get back to the yellow switch, and that's a problem, so let's move it back again.

Now, to actually make progress, we're going to need to move this frozen Zombiant down to where the other switches are.

Let's look at the platforms. Green looks to be part of the circuit, as does red, so we don't want to mess with those. By process of elimination, we need to press the blue switch.

There we go! With frozen ants on green and blue, the circuit completes and the door opens.

Inside this little niche is the final gear we need!

And, with that, we're done here, so back we go.

Whew. That's been a lot; I think we'll stop at this save crystal for now. This place is very mysterious, and we still don't know exactly what the roach scientists were up to in this lab... I can only imagine what Leif must be thinking right now. Next time, we'll put the gears into place and see if we can get some more concrete answers to just what happened here. I'll see you then.

# ? Oct 31, 2021 22:17

FoolyCharged: Oct 11, 2012; Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

Next time: we finish up resident weevil

# ? Nov 1, 2021 11:47

Slaan: Mar 16, 2009; ASHERAH DEMANDS I FEAST, I VOTE FOR A FEAST OF FLESH

The dead are fungis

# ? Nov 1, 2021 12:39

Alxprit: Feb 7, 2015; <click> <click> What is it with this dancing?! Bouncing around like fools... I would have thought my own kind at least would understand the seriousness of our Adventurer's Guild!

Ice Rain is quite an interesting ability and one that I ended up not really using myself since I was playing back during its 13 TP days. 11 isn't much better, but it is better, and probably could've made the difference in my tactics depending on how easily I was able to buff up Leif's damage. It's not like it's hard to fuel if you have a lot of TP anyway, I suppose.

But also, oooooh spooky lab, what going on?

# ? Nov 1, 2021 14:54

Torrannor: Apr 27, 2013; ---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE

So Leif is another Roach experiment, right? I guess they captured him when his team got caught, and their experiments made him long-lived and gave him ice magic? Perhaps his companions died in the experiments? But I don't understand why they would dump him in that spider nest.

# ? Nov 1, 2021 21:59

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

I can't help but notice the colored steps room has a fan in it, which I'm sure you didn't mention since you can't interact with it at the moment. It's weird that it's there though, I don't know how it would be helpful even if you had come here later.

# ? Nov 2, 2021 09:12

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

FoolyCharged posted:

Next time: we finish up resident weevil

I really wish I had thought of this, that's excellent.

Alxprit posted:

Ice Rain is quite an interesting ability and one that I ended up not really using myself since I was playing back during its 13 TP days. 11 isn't much better, but it is better, and probably could've made the difference in my tactics depending on how easily I was able to buff up Leif's damage. It's not like it's hard to fuel if you have a lot of TP anyway, I suppose.

Yeah, Ice Rain is very expensive and I've found unless it's the centrepiece of your strategy it's hard to justify using. I might be overcompensating a bit, because personally I don't tend to use it much, I've found focusing on it tends to warp your whole build around it and turn your party into a one-trick pony. (It's a very good trick, though!)

Torrannor posted:

So Leif is another Roach experiment, right? I guess they captured him when his team got caught, and their experiments made him long-lived and gave him ice magic? Perhaps his companions died in the experiments? But I don't understand why they would dump him in that spider nest.

All good questions. I'm going to hold off saying anything until the next update, when hopefully things should become clearer.

(I realise it's probably infuriating that I keep saying this)

Twelve by Pies posted:

I can't help but notice the colored steps room has a fan in it, which I'm sure you didn't mention since you can't interact with it at the moment. It's weird that it's there though, I don't know how it would be helpful even if you had come here later.

This is a bit weird. (And yes, I didn't mention it because there's no way to interact with it now, so it'd have broken the flow for no gain.) I've never tried it, but as far as I know you can use that later ability with it to get over to the other side, so I guess you'd save a few seconds relative to going down and moving the ant back to the other switch?

I think it's really just there as scenery, though. There is another place in this facility where you can come back with a later ability and find something new, which we'll look into later once that's possible, but as far as I know this room isn't hiding anything.

# ? Nov 2, 2021 16:57

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

47: Truth and Reconciliation

73 - Lab Over Snakemouth

Last time, we began exploring the upper level of Snakemouth Den and discovered a mysterious lab. We still don't know exactly what happened here, but whatever it was certainly doesn't seem to have ended well.

Before we go any further, let's put on some more medals (we gained two ranks last session, so we have some unallocated MP). Let's try out Status Relay and Hard Charge on Vi. I've also put on our second TP Plus, bringing our maximum to 18.

Now let's get going. We've explored all the side paths from this central room in our search for the gears, so we need to head back to the mechanism that needed them.

On we go.

Also, Venus is here, so we should take the chance to heal.

Here we are. Let's put the gears in.

The big gear goes on the right.

The small gear goes in the centre.

And the medium gear goes on the left.

(Yes, you need to put each in the proper location, though there's no actual challenge to doing so. You'll just be told it doesn't fit if you try to put one in the wrong place.)

Once all the gears are in place, they start turning, which causes the door to light up and open.

Opening the way to the next room. Let's head in.

This room is full of tanks. Some of them are broken, and others still seem to have test subjects inside.

This feeling... Everyone, let's search every corner of this room.

There's something... We can feel it.

Checking the banter gets us this ominous statement from Leif. Let's keep exploring, I guess.

There's a console here, but inspecting it only gets this message.

From this angle, we can get a better view of the subjects in the tanks. Beetles, bees and ants are all represented...

What's this at the far end of the room?

When we get close to this big shattered tank, Leif decides to stand inside it.

Has it triggered any memories!?

N-No, we're sorry.

After all we did to get here!?

It's... worrying. But mostly just raised more questions.

Mmm. You think the last Queen built this place in secret?

No. That's absolutely impossible.

You remember we were scouting Snakemouth? This is probably what she was investigating.

...If only we hadn't messed up, we could have reported this cruel facility.

It wasn't your fault!

Let's make our way back. There's lots to think about.

Guess the tank was a false lead, then? At least Leif's starting to put some pieces together, I suppose...

There are also some papers on the floor over here.

Maybe we should go out and try to get some more of them.

This is confirmation of a sort. It seems like the roaches were trapping whoever happened to come into Snakemouth to experiment on, but might not have reached the point of active kidnapping yet (though it sounds like they were considering it!). These researchers didn't have much by way of ethics.

For better or worse, it doesn't seem like we're going to find much else in here... let's head back?

Of course it wasn't going to be that easy.

74 - The Other One (Recommended listening!)

...What is that? Is that a moth? (Or... was it a moth?)

Sibling!? Leif, did you say sibling!?

T-That doesn't make any sense!

Vi! Ready your Beemerang! We must protect Leif!

Click me for video!

Whatever this is, we're going to have to fight. And Leif's out of commission! Whatever he's going through seems to have overwhelmed him enough that he can't move. (The Strong Start medal's effect is going to waste, I guess I should have moved it to someone else. Oh well.)

Let's see if spying sheds any light on this.

Whatever memories have awoken... we shall face them together after this battle!

110 HP and 1 defence. That's going to be a lot to get through, especially if Leif can't help... well, nothing else for it, I suppose. Let's do what we can.

That's got to be it for now. What are we up against?

This attack's pretty nasty, especially to start off with. It launches two spheres of blight magic (this must be the test subject that was mentioned in the log...), each of which hits for 4 base damage and inflicts Poison and Attack Down for two turns. Blocking will prevent the poison, but not the attack debuff. This can change targets between hits, though it didn't this time.

The poison damage isn't necessarily a big problem (especially since we only got two turns' worth, we blocked one hit), but we're not set up to take advantage of it so it's definitely an annoyance.

Four turns of Attack Down on Kabbu is going to be significantly more annoying. (For better or worse, though, we'll just have to endure it, items and skills can't remove this kind of debuff. We could remove it by getting him KO'd and reviving him, but, uh, let's not do that.)

Also, despite being unable to act, Leif still gets the charge-ups from Favorite One triggering; that's interesting. Maybe we'll be able to take advantage of that later.

For now, let's just attack with Kabbu. He can still do some damage, at least.

Also, I want to heal him. We've been picking up all these Cooked Shrooms, so we may as well use some of them.

Conveniently, it's just enough to heal him to full and cure the poison too.

Chompy will keep doing her thing.

We must strike quickly!

On its turn, the Zommoth charges up, gaining Defence Up and +1 charge. As our team are quick to observe, this probably signifies something big is coming next turn...

Between 2 points of defence and Kabbu having Attack Down, this could be tough to get through.

Although he still deals 2 damage for some reason. I'm not sure why that happened, though by this point I should be used to unusual numbers occurring when attacks that partially ignore defence interact with debuffs.

Faced with 2 points of defence, I had Vi go for Needle Pincer to ignore it and get some better damage in.

Chompy struggles to get through.

I... I have no siblings! As if I could be related to this beast!

Leif, are you okay? You're...

Looks like Leif came out of his trance just in time to shield us from the big attack! Good save. That does not look like it'd have been pleasant to be hit by.

And now that Leif's woken up, he's back in action for good. (The first three turns of this fight are partially scripted. Zommoth's attack is chosen randomly on its first turn, but its second turn is always the charge-up, followed by the laser attack which Leif automatically wakes up and shields. After this point, things are less predictable.)

Let's have Kabbu just keep attacking for now.

Since Leif's awake now, let's have him cast Break. (I should have done this before Kabbu attacked, I wasn't quite thinking.)

Now let's get a bit tricky. Vi can relay to Leif...

And with Status Relay, sets him up to attack with +3 next turn.

Leif can then relay right back to Vi, so she can attack without wasting the bonus.

Chompy contributes too.

On its turn, Zommoth just walks up and smashes Leif. This is probably its weakest attack, though it still hurts, especially since I missed the block.

Time for Leif to shine! Let's get him in front.

It's time for Ice Rain. With +3 charge and Break active.

Ouch. That's 29 damage! Ice Rain really pays off when you combine it with damage boosts. (It can be a bit risky using it early in a fight, since it does waste your freezes, but I don't expect to need them here and Zommoth's base freeze resistance is 75% so it's hard to reliably freeze when you need to. This trade-off is worth keeping in mind when planning strategies, though.)

Let's keep going. Vi will just attack.

While Kabbu uses a doughnut (considering he still has a turn of Attack Down remaining, he's the best choice to do it). After that Ice Rain, our TP was looking very low.

Chompy keeps chomping, too.

Zommoth's revenge is paltry by comparison. This attack isn't all that scary.

Let's get Kabbu back in front now. Things certainly look more manageable now, don't they? We should probably take it easy this turn, though, and maybe we can set up another explosive burst turn a bit down the road.

Kabbu and Leif will just attack for now.

While Vi heals Leif. These mushrooms are certainly coming in handy! (Honestly, I'd normally have been inclined to use her Stash skills instead, but these were free and using them relieves pressure on our TP so we can keep affording Ice Rain.)

Chompy knows what to do.

This is new! Zommoth can cry out to summon reinforcements. It gets a Bloatshroom here, though this can also summon other fungus-based enemies (including the other types of test subjects, and Jellyshrooms).

The summoned enemy gets to attack immediately, also. Normally I wouldn't be thrilled about that, but hitting Kabbu triggers Favorite One and that's always helpful.

How are we going to deal with this?

Well, if we get Leif in front and have Vi do the relay dance, he can immediately cast Ice Rain with a +2 bonus.

I didn't have the best aim here, considering only two of the shots managed to hit both enemies. But it's still more than adequate to do the job, destroying the Jellyshroom and racking up 17 damage on the boss on top of that. (Though do note that after this second freeze, Zommoth's freeze resistance is over 100%. We won't be able to freeze it again.)

That's much better.

We'll finish out the turn with some more attacks.

On Zommoth's turn, it charges again. (This is an attack it can use normally, and thanks to what happened before, we should know how to handle it...)

Let's be careful and protect ourselves. (Admittedly, if we got aggressive we could probably finish things this turn, but there's nothing wrong with playing it safe.)

We're going to need more TP to be able to afford Bubble Shield.

Simple enough to do that now.

Here's a neat trick, though. Let's have Vi relay to Leif this turn. This will immediately consume the action and end our turn, but doing this lets us spend the action now and start our next turn normally.

Chompy does her best.

There's the blight beam again, but thanks to Bubble Shield it's completely harmless.

Favorite One still triggers, though, which makes things considerably simpler for us.

Once again, let's take advantage of Status Relay and pass the boost to Leif. We have exactly 11 TP left...

Which means we can finish things with another Ice Rain. (I thought it was only fair for Leif to get the spotlight in this battle.)

And with that, the battle is finished. Zommoth can be a pretty intimidating boss fight, especially if you go into it not knowing what to expect. It has quite a bit of variety in its attacks and its ability to spread negative conditions around the party, so there's a lot to deal with and the conditions you're fighting under can change suddenly. I ended up with a pretty clean run of it, but that's aided in part by using an aggressive approach. The longer you let this fight go on, the worse off you'll probably be. It has a few other attacks we didn't see:

This tail swipe (actually, is that tail made of fungus? eww) is slightly more damaging than the overhead smash, but is still ultimately a basic attack.

On the other hand, this shriek is terrifying in multiple sense of the word. This deals 4 base damage, and on top of that inflicts Defence Down on the entire party for 2 turns.

And here's what happens if you don't block the beam. It's not pretty. (This fight is a lot harder if you don't remember Bubble Shield exists; I'm embarrassed to say that I forgot about it on my first playthrough, even with the explicit reminder...) The party had Defence Down in the run I got these screenshots; the base damage is 4 on the first pass and 3 on the second, but it's effectively 5 + 4 since Zommoth will always have +1 charge from the previous turn (unless you used Cleanse for some reason). Like the blight spheres, this beam also inflicts Attack Down and Poison (2 turns per hit) on the entire party. Even under the best circumstances, getting hit by this will leave you struggling for the rest of the fight.

Let's get back to the story. Will we be able to learn anything from this ambush?

Hey, calm down! You're acting weird!

Did that monster spark your memories?

48 - The Ones Who...

Seems like the console's suddenly turned back on?

It's a failure. Yet another one...

Disgusting. If it keeps up like this, our research...

(The screen-tearing effect in the footage is deliberate here, and does a good job of making it look shaky and unreliable.)

Eh? But you're here with us!

It's not me, Leif. It really is... Us.

...

Muse, Elizant I, and everyone...

They are people "Leif" held so dearly...

While he was in the Spider's cocoon, at some point... I...

I wanted to care for them too. And before I'd realized...

It goes without saying, after everything we've seen, that this facility researched cordyceps.

But everything we've found in here is cruel and heartless.

Uh, yeah. But not you! You're, like, a pretty cool dude!

Am I? Or was "Leif" a cool dude?

Err... I don't really know...

But you didn't know us before, right? We still became good friends, though.

...Are you seriously trying to make it that simple?

That's... so like you, Vi.

It's true though, isn't it? You've chosen to take Leif's mantle!

So to us, you're Leif anyways!

That's messed up. What about his family...?

Do you still care for them? Do you... care about us?

...

...Well, yes. We're very grateful for everything. And... it's been fun.

You don't have to decide right now how you feel.

Truth be told, this is an unbelievable scenario.

But you're our friend! It's okay!

......

That's right, we... never faked anything.

...

Let's go. We have a lot to think about, if we're going to meet our family.

Take it easy, okay?

We'll listen when you decide what to do!

Thank you. Let's get out of here.

As soon as they're finished having that conversation, we get this prompt offering to let us go right back to the Ant Kingdom. Let's... let's go, I guess? That's a lot to process. (I love how supportive Kabbu and Vi are here, though. They handled that very well.)

17 - Ant Kingdom

After a brief fade out, we're right back here in the plaza. We could take some time to stew over that and figure out what to think about it... or we could go reintroduce Leif to his family, since we're so conveniently close. Let's do that.

Who are "we"? Who was I before I met Leif?

...We don't know...

...

For better or worse.

If I threw out his memories and personality... These precious thoughts would get lost.

Maybe I can't discard them, even if I tried.

Um, what do YOU want to do?

I want the same things Leif does!

Then do them! Carry on Leif's will! At least, I believe that will be okay!

Yes. That's... what we decided, too.

I'm not Leif exactly, but we're still Leif.

Even though he got lost to time, and fused with a cordyceps...

We will live on as Leif!

Phew. Glad you won't go missing on us!

You're our friend, so this changes nothing!

Do we stay out here?

No, please come with us. I want my... my family to meet my friends.

They head into the house.

15 - The One Left Behind (Leif's Theme)

Mom, it's Team Snakemouth! They saved us from the wasps!

Oho! Wow, it's an honor!

Err, yes. These are my friends Kabbu and Vi. And we're... Leif.

It's nice to meet you.

A pleasure!

Yup!

Hm? Young lad, you...

Really!?

About that, that's why we're here...

W-what?! F-Father! What is the meaning of this!?

O-Oi! I have brothers! Don't jump on me!

You're my uncle? Really? You're not lying!?

......It's something like that.

I can't believe it!

We'll be leaving now...

N-No, wait! It's a GOOD surprise!

You've gotta stay for dinner! Your friends, too!

Aw yes, free food!

Is it really okay?

Of course! You're family!

We're not completely sure...

Besides, you're the coolest explorer! My uncle's so cool!

We fade out for a moment.

It's... it's been so good to meet you. But we've got a mission to go to.

Oh, that's not an issue. Come back anytime!

You've got to tell us more explorer stories!

And bring some souvenirs!

We will. Please take care until then.

The food was super good, thank you!

Thank you very much for your hospitality.

You'll always have a home here. Have safe travels, alright?

17 - Ant Kingdom

How're you feeling, Leif?

Thank you. We can never truly repay you.

Oh, it's whatevs.

Seeing you happy is ample reward!

We're truly fortunate to have met you back then.

You saved us in more ways than one.

If something else troubles you, just come to us!

Heh. Same. Let's get a move on, then. There's a lot to do.

Well, okay then. That was sudden! (And also a bit incongruous, this skill's goofy name feels strange given when and how we learn it.) This is a team skill that involves all of Team Snakemouth, reflecting their newfound understanding. We'll take a look at it momentarily.

We also get alerts to the fact we've completed the quest, and earned a new achievement.

The achievement is simply called "The Truth", reflecting our new understanding of Leif's situation.

Before anything else, let's head back into the house, there's a bit more dialogue we can see.

Muze and her father both have new things to say. Let's start with her.

Thank you, Muze. We'll pace ourselves.

There's also a new banter.

Muze... We can't believe even their names are similar.

I'm not superstitious, but... it has to be fate!

Do they act the same and stuff, too?

...Nah. Muse was loud, confident and outgoing... Kinda like Vi.

She had pretty strong kicks, too.

You two must've been a super strong team!

...Heh, well. She did a lot of the work. We had no magic back then.

That's right...! I'm so used to your magic, I'd forgotten.

It's nice seeing him able to get a bit of closure.

When Muze's husband stops working at the lab so much, maybe you'll get to meet him!

...Heh, we'll have some good stories ready for then.

(This is interesting. We've already met her husband, actually. It's Hawk, Professor Honeycomb's assistant. If you look closely at Tod, he actually reflects both of their colouring: he has two pink wings and two yellow ones.)

There's a new banter for him too.

Leif, does he look anything like your father?

Well, he wears his wings the same way... but nah.

Father was tall, and quite thin.

Woah, even taller than you!?

Yeah. He was a bit of a wimp, too.

I truly wish we could have met your family!

Poor Leif.

There's not a lot to see upstairs, but Tod's ball is a nice reminder that we've been interacting with this family occasionally even before we knew who they were. (Also, I wonder how old that painting of Elizant I is. Was that Leif's originally?)

The one thing that's still a bit unclear to me, timeline-wise, is exactly how many generations there have been. Muze's father (who unfortunately doesn't have a name, he's only ever referred to that way or as Tod's grandfather) could be Leif's son, or there could be another generation between them still. Regardless, I like to think that he recognised Leif, but decided not to contradict Muze's assumption they were brothers in recognition that Leif didn't want to come out with everything (I think the dialogue implies this, but it's ambiguous).

Also, it's hard to tell ingame (the only look we get is in the washed-out Roach recording), but it's likely Leif's colouration while alive would have been similar to Muze's father's.

Here's a piece of concept art that shows what he may have looked like.

A lot of little things make more sense in retrospect now, don't they? Venus' inability to sense him, Leif's immunity to Kali's pheromones, his enormous appetite (and possibly his preference for mushrooms, even), the presence of Roach crystals inside him... even his all-white eyes. The pieces were all there, just waiting to be put together.

Anyway, while we process everything we've learned... let's go bowling?

Like our previous team skills, this appears in every bug's skill menu, since they're all involved and any of them can initiate it. This sounds... weird. Let's go try it out?

Seedlings are always good for a first test.

This sounds pretty involved, but let's do it.

Leif's job is to freeze Vi inside a giant snowball...

Then Kabbu launches it at the enemy.

Frost Bowling costs everyone an action to initiate, and deals damage equal to the party's combined attack (though nobody gets the positioning bonus, it seems) to all enemies. As you can see, it's also capable of inflicting freeze. There's something else, too, though we'll need some more durable enemies to show that part off properly. Let's go find some.

These guys should do nicely.

Let's do this again.

Vi's role in this attack isn't just to be the projectile, but to detonate it from inside! At any point during the attack, you can press A to make Vi explode it, which deals a second hit (for 2 fewer points of damage) to every enemy in a radius around her. This does, however, end the attack, so if you do it too early an enemy in the back might not get hit.

This attack has always seemed gimmicky and impractical to me, considering it costs three actions to perform; I honestly don't think I've ever used it in a serious fight, especially when Ice Rain is there as an alternative. It's neat, though, and reasonably powerful.

With this, we'll wrap things up for today. Next time, Leif's new icicle ability should open up some more paths for us... I'll see you then.

Explopyro fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Nov 8, 2021

# ? Nov 7, 2021 06:24

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Poor Leif.

# ? Nov 7, 2021 07:40

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

And there's the reason why Leif refers to himself in the plural, because he's two beings (the cordyceps and the body of Leif), though he uses the singular a few times in this scene to talk about himself as the cordyceps separate from the body.

It's a cool thing, and I feel like sometimes people miss it because a lot of the lines Leif speaks where he says "we/us" can be interpreted as him talking about the party as a whole, rather than himself specifically.

I do also like how Leif points out it's kind of messed up for Vi to be like "It's okay if you're only pretending to be Leif because we didn't know him anyway!"

# ? Nov 7, 2021 08:48

Slaan: Mar 16, 2009; ASHERAH DEMANDS I FEAST, I VOTE FOR A FEAST OF FLESH

If it looks like a Leif and walks like a Leif and remembers like a Leif, then it's a ship of Leifeus

# ? Nov 7, 2021 12:16

Torrannor: Apr 27, 2013; ---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE

So this is Leif's secret! This is a difficult question of identity, but I think calling himself Leif still makes sense. I really loved how Vi and Kabbu were quick to state that nothing changed in their friendship, it warms my heart.

These Roach scientists are pretty evil. What is their connection to the Everlasting Sapling? I'm not sure it's a good idea to actually find it.

# ? Nov 8, 2021 12:32

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

I didn't find a good place to discuss these in the post, but I also don't want to leave them unsaid, so... how about some random Leif trivia?

Fun fact the first: Genow has said it's intentional that 'Leif' is an anagram of 'life' (to dovetail with the fact that he's ~~still alive~~undead). I'm given to understand they gave his name similar connotations in the localisations, though I can't personally confirm.

Fun fact the second: In an early concept, the moth party member was going to be female (and tentatively named Cerice; this is completely unconnected to the character named Cerise we did get, as far as I know). They decided to rewrite him as male once they came up with the idea of him having left unknown descendants.

Fun fact the third: in early builds of the game, you could cheese the Zommoth fight a bit if you lost and restarted, because Leif wouldn't be disabled at the start of the fight on a retry (then again, you had to actually pay for Bubble Shield this way, instead of getting it automatically...). They caught and fixed this pretty quickly.

Quackles posted:

Poor Leif.

Yeah. He's been through a lot. This is definitely one of the heavier arcs in the game, though I really like it and hope I managed to do it justice.

Twelve by Pies posted:

And there's the reason why Leif refers to himself in the plural, because he's two beings (the cordyceps and the body of Leif), though he uses the singular a few times in this scene to talk about himself as the cordyceps separate from the body.

It's a cool thing, and I feel like sometimes people miss it because a lot of the lines Leif speaks where he says "we/us" can be interpreted as him talking about the party as a whole, rather than himself specifically.

Yeah, that brief use of singular pronouns speaks volumes here. I certainly didn't expect it, even after having had the reveal.

I spent ages wrestling with how to handle Leif's pronouns for purposes of the LP. I eventually decided to use he/him pronouns just for readability (there's never any indication he identifies as anything other than male, at least, so I don't think it's incorrect), but there's definitely a case I should have been using plural pronouns for him throughout.

I do agree that the we/us thing can get confusingly ambiguous in places, too; there are definitely some lines which I needed to read twice, but I think it's something you get used to.

Twelve by Pies posted:

I do also like how Leif points out it's kind of messed up for Vi to be like "It's okay if you're only pretending to be Leif because we didn't know him anyway!"

Hah, yes. He's definitely the one most bothered by it.

Slaan posted:

If it looks like a Leif and walks like a Leif and remembers like a Leif, then it's a ship of Leifeus

I love this.

Torrannor posted:

So this is Leif's secret! This is a difficult question of identity, but I think calling himself Leif still makes sense. I really loved how Vi and Kabbu were quick to state that nothing changed in their friendship, it warms my heart.

Yeah, for better or worse, even if he wanted to call himself something else I don't think there are any obvious alternatives. He doesn't really recall being anything else.

The others' reaction seems a bit abrupt to some people, but I think I like that about it. The devs are pretty open about the fact that, ultimately, this game is about friendship, and you can really see that here.

Torrannor posted:

These Roach scientists are pretty evil. What is their connection to the Everlasting Sapling? I'm not sure it's a good idea to actually find it.

That would be the question, wouldn't it?

# ? Nov 9, 2021 00:20

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

Explopyro posted:

II spent ages wrestling with how to handle Leif's pronouns for purposes of the LP. I eventually decided to use he/him pronouns just for readability (there's never any indication he identifies as anything other than male, at least, so I don't think it's incorrect), but there's definitely a case I should have been using plural pronouns for him throughout.

Other characters refer to Leif in the singular with he/him so I think it's fine for an LP to do the same, especially since Leif using plural pronouns for himself seems to be something he's been doing unconsciously since even he doesn't really remember his origin. Plus prior to this point there hasn't really been a need to differentiate Lief, the dead body, from "Leif," the cordyceps, since the cordyceps admits that it genuinely thought it was Leif.

Of course now that this whole thing has come to light, part of what I wonder is how much of the cordyceps is actually sentient on the level of insects, or if it's purely a result of its taking over a host. If it were to be separated from Leif's body, would it still understand speech even if it couldn't communicate itself? Would it retain the memories it got while it was in Leif's body, and still have the same personality? If it took a new body as a host, would it keep the memories it got as Leif while making new ones? What would become of its identity?

Obviously that's outside the scope of the game's story, and Kabbu and Vi would absolutely be of the mind of "Leif is Leif and our friend no matter what!" and I wouldn't expect any less of them. But it's interesting to idly speculate about. Personally I sort of feel like it'd be like the Trill from Star Trek, where the Dax symbiont would still retain memories of previous bodies, but more or less become an entirely new person when it joined with a new host body. And Kabbu and Leif would still call them "Leif" much like how Sisko would call Jadzia "old man" sometimes. :v:

# ? Nov 9, 2021 00:45

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

Twelve by Pies posted:

Of course now that this whole thing has come to light, part of what I wonder is how much of the cordyceps is actually sentient on the level of insects, or if it's purely a result of its taking over a host. If it were to be separated from Leif's body, would it still understand speech even if it couldn't communicate itself? Would it retain the memories it got while it was in Leif's body, and still have the same personality? If it took a new body as a host, would it keep the memories it got as Leif while making new ones? What would become of its identity?

Obviously that's outside the scope of the game's story, and Kabbu and Vi would absolutely be of the mind of "Leif is Leif and our friend no matter what!" and I wouldn't expect any less of them. But it's interesting to idly speculate about. Personally I sort of feel like it'd be like the Trill from Star Trek, where the Dax symbiont would still retain memories of previous bodies, but more or less become an entirely new person when it joined with a new host body. And Kabbu and Leif would still call them "Leif" much like how Sisko would call Jadzia "old man" sometimes.

There are a lot of unanswered possibilities to speculate about, and for better or worse the game won't really address them.

For instance, I find myself wondering a lot about what Leif's future prognosis might be. We have the example of the Zommoth as one possible end state, and it's a pretty horrifying one, but Leif himself seems pretty stable. Is this because Leif is in an earlier stage of infestation (I think the implication is Leif's cordyceps didn't find his body until after breaking out of the lab when the Zommoth went berserk), or is it something to do with why the Roaches dismissed him in particular as a 'failed specimen'? (Obviously there's a level on which the answer is 'he's stable because game mechanics', but that doesn't address the in-universe side.)

Also, it's a good thing he doesn't seem to be contagious, shedding spores, etc, otherwise taking him into e.g. the bees' Hive could have been disastrous. (They recognised him as a threat initially and later decided he wasn't, but... given what we actually know, the original impulse was kind of right?)

I also wonder whether the original Leif was fully dead when the cordyceps found him, or if he'd merely been in the process of dying and we're dealing with a true merged consciousness (I think the implication is not, but it's interesting to think about; I'm not sure whether I think it would actually change anything, but it could be a way of explaining why he's more coherent than the other test subjects ended up).

Also, the ambiguous timeline makes me wonder whether the spider we killed in Chapter 1 was actually Leif's killer, or its descendant.

# ? Nov 9, 2021 19:11

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

48: The Hermit and the King

06 - Outskirts

Last time, we finished exploring the Upper Snakemouth lab, finally got some real answers about Leif's past, and helped him get at least some amount of closure in meeting his descendants.

Today, we're going to follow up on the more mechanical side of what we uncovered. Leif's icicle skill opens up some new areas to explore. Also, we defeated a boss, so Artis should have a reward for us; let's start there.

Hey! You're back. Let's see how you have been doing with that Medal of mine.

...

Was it too challenging for ya? You deserve a reward. Here, take this!

Come back later when you've bonked some extra hard heads with that Medal, will ya?

Let's take a closer look at that medal.

Our reward for defeating Zommoth is

Block Heal. For 4 MP, the equipped bug will recover 1 HP each time they successfully execute a Super Block. This seems like it could be quite helpful, if you have the skill to hit Super Blocks reasonably often.

In fact, "quite helpful" turns out to be an incredible understatement. Block Heal is arguably the most broken medal in the game, thanks to the way it's implemented: this medal's healing is applied after all damage, but before determining if the bug would be knocked out. This means that, with it on, if you Super Block an attack that would be lethal the bug will instead survive with 1 HP. If you're sufficiently good at the timing, this medal offers effective immortality. (But for better or worse, if you're not that good, it tends to be a bit underwhelming in how much recovery it offers.)

I don't plan to use it. I'm not that good regardless, and it wouldn't be very interesting if I did trivialise things to that extent anyway. At least we know how it works.

Regardless, we'll take it with us.

Now that we have Leif's icicle ability, there are a few new areas we can reach. Let's start in the eastern portion of the outskirts.

Remember these little islands in the stream? We can cross over to them now by freezing a path.

It doesn't look like there's very much over here.

Or at least it doesn't until we cut the grass (none of which has anything special in it); doing so reveals there's a digging spot. From certain angles you can see this from a distance, so it's not a complete surprise it's here. What's inside?

Dark Cherries. These are always nice to have.

That's all there was to find there, though, so let's head back.

In the next area, we can quickly come across another one. This island's dig spot is readily visible even from this side.

Let's cross over to it.

This one has a Tangy Berry inside. That's also very nice to have, though it'd probably be more impressive if we hadn't already gone to Metal Island and met Skirby (this is one of a very few places you can reliably get one without going there or hunting Golden Seedlings). Still, I won't complain.

That's all there is to find on the island, so let's head back to shore. (And narrowly avoid that encounter.)

That's all for secrets in the eastern side of the outskirts, so let's move on.

In the southern part of the Outskirts, let's return to this waterfall. This place will no doubt be familiar as the place we woke up after being washed out of Snakemouth Den in Chapter 1. Returning here now, we can cross the water and see if there's anything on the far side.

Looks like there's a cave entrance! Let's go in.

This cave is very small, and there's no music, just the sounds of running water. Also... there's someone living here? Let's see if our party have anything interesting to say first.

What a cozy place... It's quite secluded from everywhere else.

They should build a bridge here! Then they could build houses and stuff.

How dare you. And ruin this beauty!?

Leif certainly likes the atmosphere.

There's not much else to do except talk to this fellow.

Our apologies for disturbing you!

We're, err, simply looking around.

I thought I'd finally... I was finally alone. But even here, society follows?

We're leaving, okay? Sheesh.

Try to have a nice day.

...

Well, that was enlightening.

If we try to talk to him again, this is all we'll get; he really doesn't seem like he wants to engage with us. Maybe the banter will be more enlightening?

I wonder what's the point in doing nothing all day...

He could just feel tired, or something.

Leif, this goes quite beyond simple fatigue!

Not particularly.

I guess we should leave?

Who else would detour into this cave?

...

What can we do for you, sir hermit?

My name's Elom. I can feel... that you have something extraordinary. Something I miss.

But I can't put it into words.

Probably a healthy side of optimism.

YOU'RE an optimist?

It's not that. I can feel you've been somewhere beautiful. Removed from others...

I know what I miss is there. Can't you try and find it?

Err, we usually get less vague requests...

And we go to super awesome places all the time!

It's better than nothing.

It's a tough request, but we'll keep you posted!

...Thank you. I will keep trying to figure out my role in this world.

Hmm... A spiritual Golden Paradise...

Well, then! Looks like he actually has a sidequest for us. Let's check it out.

That's not a lot to go on, although "golden paradise" is a pretty unsubtle hint, and is pointing in a pretty obvious direction.

This is something of a "hidden" sidequest, in that it doesn't get posted on the board, and the only way to begin it is by finding this cave and talking to Elom. (We don't necessarily have to have completed Leif's Request before doing this, though we do need to have at least entered Upper Snakemouth to get the icicle ability.)

Now we can actually leave. (If we tried to talk to Elom again, he'd just partially repeat the conversation we just had, there's nothing new there.)

Let's check out a golden paradise.

30 - The Sacred Hills

If we return to the upper portion of the Golden Hills, where Venus lives, maybe we'll be able to find something.

This lady's new! We certainly didn't run into anyone else up here before...

Well, before we talk to her, let's check the banter.

It seems Venus has granted this cricket access to the hills.

Huh. So it's not only by winning offerings?

What could Venus' criteria be...?

There's definitely something mysterious about this. Let's talk to her.

If only she had been able to see it too...

It's truly something. Here on a pilgrimage?

O-Oh, explorers! What a wonderful surprise. I am indeed. Aren't these violet leaves just amazing?

This whole area is so full of beauty, yet it's still dangerous. Please be careful as you take in the sights.

Thank you, miss. Be safe as well!

...Wait a second!

Huh, what?

You three look like you are looking for something up here, are you not?

That's very perceptive of you. Indeed we are.

Do you think I could help you?

...I doubt it. But we thank you for your offer.

Oh, come on, try me! I know these hills inside and out.

Kind of a weirdo, right?

...Could you take me to him?

For what purpose?

I don't know... I think I can help. Trust me?

This whole request chain is a bit abnormal... very well.

Please stay close to us, and we'll escort you to sir hermit.

No rush. Don't forget to enjoy the sights you came here for!

Once we've finished talking to her, she starts following us. Um. Okay then. Let's hope this works out, I guess.

Back we go.

Like when characters followed us before, we could take whatever shortcuts we wanted, but there's an intended path where the character will be visible on the overworld the entire time. We'll take a short detour and escort her through the Golden Path.

It's the same Golden Path we explored before, there's not much new to see.

A quick trip through this cave, and we'll come out where we need to be.

Now back to Elom.

In hindsight, probably not what a hermit wants...

Hello, I've heard of your quest. That you've been here for so long...

And? You will try to make me see the bright side, like all the others?

Oh, not at all. I think this place is lovely.

If it's kept you entertained, it must be full of hidden wonders!

Would you mind if I stayed and looked around?

...!

...If that's okay.

You're not searching for the meaning in things.

I think things happen just because. I love to admire the results!

...

I would like you to stay.

Call me Tekci. It'll be my pleasure!

Y-Yes?

Thank you. I never expected you to go this far for me...

Uh, me neither. Did we just play matchmakers?

As long as everyone's happy...

This is the one worldly thing I have left.

It is from my younger days... I'm glad I kept it. If only to give it to you.

I must thank you too, although I have nothing to give...

Don't worry about it. We'll leave you to your introspection, and stuff.

If you ever need us, just post it in the town's quest board!

...and with that, we've completed the mole cricket matchmaking quest. All right then. This one's always seemed a little strange to me, both in how vague it is, and how quickly it's over. We meet these characters, introduce them to each other, and get a Lore Book; that's it. Good thing they happened to be the same species!

(Also, read their names backward, it nearly spells 'mole cricket'.)

There is a bit more dialogue we can see, if we go back inside.

I'm blessed you made us meet.

At least they seem to be happy. There's also a new banter we can see now.

This quest did not end as I expected...

Eh, they're both happy. It works out.

The client's always right!

Is it just me, or does it feel a little strange how self-aware the game is being about this quest? We haven't had anything quite this meta in a while.

Well, for better or worse, that's it, so let's head back and check out the Lore Book.

18 - In the Court of the Ant Queen

Ah, wonderful. That is one of ours, yes. I'll put it on the shelf, so check it out whenever.

Let's see.

The Ancient Crystals. Many crystals exist around the world, filled with a mysterious power. The old roaches learned how to harness their magic, and crystals are now used as power sources for machinery and many other things. No current side effects from crystal exposure are known, making them relatively safe. Some children's tales mention that sometimes sounds can be heard from them, if in a quiet enough place; probably fake. Archaeologists say these crystals appeared at the same time the Day of Awakening started, suggesting a link between them and that event.

This is intriguing, though the new information raises more questions than it answers.

Sorry... It doesn't seem like you have enough for the next reward tier. But don't give up! Keep trying and come back when you do!

Also, while we're here, I decided to check and see if we'd reached a new reward tier for discoveries. We're still one short. Oh well, let's move on.

06 - Outskirts

Remember how we ran into Stratos and Delilah here, ages ago, hinting there was a dangerous monster nearby in the Outskirts? Well, we have the ability to reach it now...

First, though, let's do some quick medal management. The only thing I'm changing here is moving Hard Charge and Status Relay from Vi to Leif; let's get fiddly, shall we?

All right, let's go.

This is the very first screen we ever got to explore after leaving the town in Chapter 1. That area on the far side of the river always looked a bit suspicious, but we never could reach it before.

We can now, though!

It's a bit hard to see before cutting the grass, but there's an exit leading north hiding in the back.

What are we going to find here?

This area's pretty suspicious, isn't it?

Woah! That's a huge Seedling!

We should think real hard before pressing forward...

The banter doesn't mince words, the Seedling King is up ahead (as we'll soon see; I guess our team's vision extends a bit beyond the screen the player can see). As you may recall, this is one of the Bounty bosses, and the next one we're able to face. Let's check this out.

There's not much to this area, it's just a straight path leading to a slightly larger clearing...

That's a big boy.

Click me for video!

35 - Reckless for Glory! (Bonus Boss)

The Seedling King, it seems, also comes with his little attendants holding him up. Let's do some spying and see what we're up against here.

But it keeps spawning mini-Seedlings! It's a cuteness factory! ...Sigh, alright.

Let's try to keep the small ones at bay while we defeat this one.

(There's no way I was going to let anyone but Leif do the spying for this one.)

We've faced enemies with more durability, but this heavily implies we're not going to have only the King to deal with, so that might be a bit deceptive. Well, let's start fighting and see what he can do.

Kabbu will attack first, to start things off.

Let's try out Hard Charge! We haven't used it yet.

It's as simple as it sounds. Leif spends 5 HP and instantly gets +3 charge. This is incredibly useful for a variety of things, but I have a very specific purpose for it in mind right now.

Status Relay lets us do some fun things! Vi relays to Leif, then Leif relays to Kabbu, transferring the charges to him.

Then Kabbu relays back to Vi. (Notably, each character can only relay once per turn, so you do have to be careful with this. Vi's no longer able to use relay after that chain finishes.)

But that's okay, because what I want her to do is heal Leif back to full with Secret Stash.

Chompy finishes out our turn. It looks like she's biting the attendants there, but that's a cosmetic thing, they're not actually separate entities from the Seedling King in gameplay terms.

Now for the King's turn...

The King shakes his head, launching Tangy Berries that instantly sprout into Seedlings of various types. This time, it's two Underlings, but it can also generate normal Seedlings, Acornlings, and Cactilings while doing this: quite a lot of the extended Seedling family!

The newly generated Underlings also get to attack us immediately. That's a bit of a beating for Kabbu, but I'd rather they hit him than anyone else.

Because that means my plan worked out as intended. (Also, we can see here that all of the spawned Seedlings start with indefinite-duration Attack Up and Defence Up, but have lower maximum HP than the versions we'd encounter in the wild; these Underlings have only 6 maximum HP. They're more threatening but also more fragile than usual.)

With all this collective charge across the team, let's try out Frost Bowling!

Boom. I think that's a strike! (I'm not entirely sure how the damage of the explosion part is calculated, since the reduction doesn't seem to be a flat number. I'm beginning to think it's percentage-based, and the explosion does something like 60% of the initial damage.)

That pretty effectively got rid of the Seedlings and dealt heavy damage, but the downside of this strategy is that it cost us our entire turn. Only Chompy is left.

We could have her do nothing to spare us the counterattack and give us a turn to regroup a bit after that, but I think I'd rather just keep things moving.

...Yay, more Seedlings. Just what I wanted.

Just like before, they get to attack immediately (though none of them hit Kabbu this time). Could be worse, could be better.

The regular Seedlings only have 2 HP, so they're pretty easy to eliminate. Unfortunately, we're not really set up to just bowl everything down again.

I've had these Spicy Fries for a while; I want to keep everyone's HP topped off as best I can, since if I'm planning to use Frost Bowling more we might get fewer opportunities to heal. May as well get an attack boost while I'm at it.

Kabbu can have this for now.

Dash Through is also pretty effective in this fight, though it unfortunately won't quite kill the Underling even with the boost. (I may have miscalculated there.)

This is less than ideal.

Still, with a relay, Leif can finish it off. It just means we won't be able to do much else this turn.

At least with it out of the way, Chompy can bite the King again.

Well, that's a bit different, it sprouts an Acornling this time.

And, as usual, they both attack immediately. Focusing on Leif is even more awkward than it would be usually, since he now can't afford to use Hard Charge; that said, we'll deal with it.

The Acornlings also have reduced maximum HP (only 3, in fact), but they keep their innate defence, and with the buff from the boss, they can be a bit of a pain.

First off, let's get some TP back.

Dash Through deals with them just fine. (The damage on the Acornling might seem a bit peculiar until we recall how flipping works; the Defence Up boost is still applied while it's flipped, but its innate 2 points aren't, and the flipping attack deals damage as though the enemy were flipped first.)

Leif, meanwhile, can finish off the Underling. Unfortunately, this means we don't have a spare action to heal him this turn, which could get awkward if they decide to go after him again. This is a bit risky, but I preferred it to the alternative.

Chompy keeps doing her thing.

This is different! The first turn it begins under half health, the Seedling King will bound into the air and squash the Seedlings holding it up.

Then it immediately follows that up by charging Vi. Being on the ground gives it access to a few new attacks, of which this is one. It's a straightforward hit with a base damage of 6; this hurts quite a bit, but it's not the worst thing it can do.

From this point on, it also gets two actions per turn for the rest of the fight. (Presumably, the form change counted as the first one last turn.) In this form, it also gains a point of defence it didn't have before. It is significantly more aggressive and threatening from here on out, and this is definitely where the real fight starts.

We'll start off with a Sharing Stash from Vi; she and Leif both need the healing, and the regeneration will absolutely be welcome.

Kabbu can just attack for now.

I'll have Leif use this Baked Yam. He was on lower HP than Vi anyway, but also I'm more inclined to want him at full to open up options with Hard Charge.

Chompy contributes what she can.

For its first action, the King spawns Seedlings again (the form change doesn't preclude it doing that!). This time, we get a normal Seedling and a Cactiling.

The Seedling hits Vi.

But then the King is next in the sequence, and it still has an action left! This attack is pretty terrifying. Rolling through the party hits everyone for base 5 damage; in itself, we've seen worse, but on top of everything else it's doing it can be a nasty surprise.

And of course the turn hasn't ended yet, the Cactiling gets to attack too! Thankfully it didn't go after Vi, at least.

We are making progress, but we should probably do a bit of damage control here. (Also, we can see the Cactiling's stats here, they have 4 HP in this fight. Underlings are probably the most annoying ones at 6 HP.)

Let's get a bit tricky here. First, Leif relays his charge-up to Kabbu.

Then Kabbu relays back so he can use Hard Charge.

Another doughnut to recover our TP...

And we're set up for another round of bowling!

That play was definitely on the risky side, but we're rewarded for it with a lucky freeze.

I'm not inclined to press my luck here by having Chompy attack; let's let the freeze wear off naturally instead of having to take counterattacks.

Here, though, we see the flaw in my plan. Taking actions on the previous turn in addition to using Frost Bowling means we begin this turn with an action deficit, and only Kabbu has any actions to take. There's not a lot we can realistically do.

In the end, I decided just to have him attack normally and figured I'd deal with things the next turn. In retrospect, it would almost certainly have been better to relay to Vi and use Sharing Stash, or something like that...

But, regardless, Chompy at least is unaffected, and gets to act as usual.

And here's where everything comes crashing down. Yeowch. That's a double roll attack; even if I'd managed to Super Block the second one as well, that wouldn't have saved Leif or Vi. If I'd healed instead of attacking this last turn, I might not have ended up in quite so dire a position.

This isn't good. I dithered for a bit here, trying to decide what the best approach might be...

...but, ultimately, situations like this are what Miracle Shakes are made for.

As simple as that, everyone's up and ready to go again. There were no doubt other lines I could have taken to finish the fight, and I don't like making a habit of using these, but ultimately it's worth showing off at least once and this fight gave me a golden opportunity to do so.

Now, let's finish things. Leif's got enough HP to use Hard Charge now, so let's do that.

There are plenty of ways to end the fight from there, but Frozen Drill is convenient. Vi relays to Kabbu so he can initiate it; even with a turn of exhaustion each, Kabbu and Leif should do plenty of damage once the charge bonuses are factored in.

And there we go!

That got a bit dicey at the end, didn't it. The Seedling King is pretty straightforward as far as bonus bosses go, so I thought it might be fun to try a bit of a gimmick strategy. I don't actually recommend fighting it like this, though it was certainly fun to make Frost Bowling the core of a strategy for once. More straightforwardly, Ice Rain is very good here (since the King is weak to ice, as are all of the Seedlings he can summon), as is Dash Through. You can also boost Vi's attack instead, and just try to focus down the King instead of eliminating the Seedlings each time they spawn.

Here's the one attack we didn't see. In addition to spawning Seedlings, the King can also launch a barrage of Hard Seeds, which does 2-3 hits across the party, each hit dealing 4 base damage and inflicting Attack Down for 1 turn. It can do this regardless of whether it has spawned Seedlings with it, but killing all the spawns makes it less likely to see this since it's likely to keep making more (it won't spawn Seedlings if it already has some).

There's one other potential wrinkle in this fight. In earlier versions of the game, this fight was a bit glitchy; the Seedling King was considered to be flying while it had the attendants holding it up, and hitting it would cause the "falling down" sound (with no visual changes to accompany it). Some attacks would hit it normally regardless, but others wouldn't until it was "knocked down". It doesn't make the fight all that much harder, just a bit weird and unintuitive (to the point I'd even wondered if it was intentional design, though it seemed unlikely), but this was one of many issues that version 1.1 fixed.

Like the other Bounties we've fought so far, the Seedling King leaves behind an item, which Vi immediately picks up.

Also, we get a Discovery?

Apparently, this area is called the Seedling Haven.

There's also a new banter here now.

Alright! We took their king down!

Are Seedlings gonna stop showing up?

If only... There are sure to be more Seedling Kings, hiding from explorers.

It's not all that bad, Vi. We can keep looking for Golden Seedlings.

Bleh...

In case we had any concerns that we might have destroyed the local ecosystem or something... we probably haven't. Probably.

There's not much else to see here, though, so let's head back?

Actually, though, there is. If we leave and come back...

We'll find the area is now brimming with Seedlings. The encounters here are special, in that they have a higher base chance of spawning Golden Seedlings: 7.5% each, in comparison to the usual 1% throughout the rest of Bugaria. This is potentially the prime grinding spot in the game, should you wish to gather some combination of EXP, berries, or Tangy Berries. Or if you just want to have fun fighting the things, I guess. (There's actually a way to boost the chances of finding them even higher, but we're still a ways away from finding that.)

I don't intend to do any grinding here right now, but it's good to know it's here. If you don't want to buy Tangy Berries from Skirby (or don't want to go to Metal Island for whatever reason), you can get them pretty easily here.

Let's head back and report in about the Bounty.

On the way, we'll notice that Team Slacker are gone now. As soon as we defeat whatever Bounty they're hinting towards, they move on.

Let's go see Doppel.

34 - Dodgy Business

May I have that crystal it dropped?

...

...Yes, this is a genuine deal. Here is your reward.

Nice doing business with you. Please find the other bounties and your reward will be waiting.

That's new. He does actually have a bit of variety in what medals he can give us, it's just that doing things in the order we did them meant we got both copies of Last Attack first. Defeating the Seedling King rewards us with a second copy of TP Core, which is definitely pretty handy, though it's not nearly as abusable as Last Attack is. The two Bounties that remain will have other rewards for us.

One last thing, before we wrap up: we were one discovery short of the next reward, so let's take a quick trip back to the library.

18 - In the Court of the Ant Queen

...

This time you have 35 Discoveries, last time you had 34...

Looks like you have enough for the next reward tier! Here you go!

That seems to be all for now! Come back once you have found more Discoveries!

This time we get a Crystal Berry, which is definitely one of the nicer rewards (though I admit I have mixed feelings about the reward for getting a bunch of one collectible being a different type of collectible; part of me thinks those systems should have been kept separate). Still, it's nice to have, especially given how many we've spent recently. This brings our total to 5, which is enough to potentially buy another medal, but I think I'm inclined to wait for now until later when Shades might get more stock in again.

For now, this seems like a good place to wrap things up. This takes care of all the cleanup we can do with the icicle ability; with that Bounty fight behind us, we'll be continuing with our actual mission next time. It's time to head into the Far Grasslands and head north. I'll see you then.

# ? Nov 14, 2021 03:01

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Man, Miracle Shakes are really cool. It's always nice seeing the bonus bosses taken down, as well.

# ? Nov 14, 2021 10:52

Alxprit: Feb 7, 2015; <click> <click> What is it with this dancing?! Bouncing around like fools... I would have thought my own kind at least would understand the seriousness of our Adventurer's Guild!

You might say it's a Miracola!

# ? Nov 14, 2021 16:10

Gertrude Perkins: May 1, 2010; Gun Snake

dont talk to gun snake

Drops: human teeth

I finally beat the game a couple of weeks ago (on Hard mode no less!) and it's a flawed gem. I really like the way you've been presenting it - you're showcasing a lot of the highs while not shying away from some of the weaker aspects of the design. It's also been really nice to read through and relive the earlier parts of the game, building the characters' relationships and so on. Keep it up!

# ? Nov 17, 2021 11:30

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

Quackles posted:

Man, Miracle Shakes are really cool. It's always nice seeing the bonus bosses taken down, as well.

It's funny. I wasn't sure whether to keep that take of the boss fight or keep trying for a better one, but in the end I decided it was a good opportunity to let that item shine and I'm not sure I'm going to get a better one. (In retrospect, I think either healing the previous turn, or using Pep Talk twice and then a Queen's Dinner, might have been slightly better lines.) Also, by that point I was tired of losing takes due to messing up the button sequence for Frost Bowling, this was the first clean run I got where that didn't happen at least once.

I really enjoy the bonus bosses in this game, and how many of them it's willing to give us. One of the surest ways for an RPG to disappoint me is to present an interesting battle system, but not provide enough actually challenging fights to engage with it. I've never felt starved for content in Bug Fables.

Alxprit posted:

You might say it's a Miracola!

Oh no, we're in StarTropics now!

Gertrude Perkins posted:

I finally beat the game a couple of weeks ago (on Hard mode no less!) and it's a flawed gem. I really like the way you've been presenting it - you're showcasing a lot of the highs while not shying away from some of the weaker aspects of the design. It's also been really nice to read through and relive the earlier parts of the game, building the characters' relationships and so on. Keep it up!

I really appreciate getting this kind of feedback; thanks for reading, and I'm glad you're enjoying it.

# ? Nov 17, 2021 18:52

Torrannor: Apr 27, 2013; ---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE

Bug Fables is 50% off on Steam right now. I just bought it, but probably won't have time to play it this year. I just couldn't resist the opportunity, since this LP is such a great advertisement for the game

# ? Nov 20, 2021 08:05

Alxprit: Feb 7, 2015; <click> <click> What is it with this dancing?! Bouncing around like fools... I would have thought my own kind at least would understand the seriousness of our Adventurer's Guild!

It's a good deal. I feel like I've only ever seen 40% off as of late.

# ? Nov 20, 2021 17:48

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

FYI, I'm running a bit behind on the next update, I'm hoping to have it done within a day or so but I can't be certain. After that, the next update might be a bit delayed, as American Thanksgiving rears its ugly head and I have some obligations I can't quite escape... ah, well, such is life.

Torrannor posted:

Bug Fables is 50% off on Steam right now. I just bought it, but probably won't have time to play it this year. I just couldn't resist the opportunity, since this LP is such a great advertisement for the game

Thanks for posting about this! (And, heh, I'm always glad when my evangelism sells more copies of the game. I hope you enjoy it once you get a chance to play, and that my obsessive thoroughness hasn't left you feeling there's nothing more to discover.)

Alxprit posted:

It's a good deal. I feel like I've only ever seen 40% off as of late.

I don't pay close attention to the prices, but yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the lowest I've seen it. It's a great time to grab the game for anyone who might be considering it; looks like the sale's still going to be in effect for another two-ish days.

(Also, in looking closer, I've learned there was apparently a "v1.1.1" update that came out a few months ago. It seems like this was mainly to incorporate a Brazilian Portuguese localisation and hasn't made any other changes. I don't plan to update for purposes of the LP; I doubt it would break anything, but it doesn't hurt to be careful.)

# ? Nov 21, 2021 03:04

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

49: Maki the Mighty

37 - Defiant Root

Last time, we used Leif's new icicle skill to find a few hidden items, a sidequest, and a Bounty fight. With that all behind us, it's time to get back to our mission. Let's hope nobody's upset we've kept them waiting... anyway, we'll start out in Defiant Root, as it's the closest to where we need to go.

Also, as per usual, some item restocking, we've been going through a lot of them recently. I'm sure Crisbee's grateful for all the business. We've got more doughnuts as usual; I also made a new Miracle Shake to replace the one I used, and a few oddball things for variety that may or may not end up being useful.

Let's be on our way. We need to meet Maki at the Far Grasslands entrance, which is east of here.

36 - Lost Sands

We don't have to go very far - this is just one screen east of Defiant Root.

Here we are. Things look a bit different though...

Oh no! The gate is destroyed!

A shame, but we can enter the Far Grasslands with ease now.

With permission, we could've crossed anyways...

Apparently, the wasps destroyed the border gate in the course of their invasion. That's probably not good.

Maki and his team are waiting for us. We know Kina, but who's the third person?

(Um. Yeah. Let's say we did, Maki.)

...Muh! Muh!

So who's the cute little thing?

Just some stray from the streets...

This is Yin. I found her while spying on the Wasps.

She should have become a Moth moons ago. And, well, her condition fascinates me.

...Is that so? That's weird.

Yeah! Never heard of a super old caterpillar!

Whatever. We've got work to do. I just hope she doesn't slow us down.

We'll head in first. Make sure you're well prepared.

We've never been more ready!

Uh, right. See you there.

They head north.

We'll follow them shortly.

Before that, though, let's investigate this area a bit more.

The gate guard appears to be hiding back here. She really looks traumatised; ingame, her sprite is constantly shuddering.

Did you see who did it!?

Vi! Can't you see she's in shock?!

It was her job to watch the gate, though...

Her will's more broken than the gate. Let's leave her alone for a bit.

Wow, good going, Vi. She's surprisingly supportive a lot of the time, but then we also get moments like this, where she manages to say precisely the wrong thing...

Let's talk to the guard again?

M-My only job... A failure!

Let's leave her be for a bit.

I don't think we're going to be able to do any good here, unfortunately.

Let's head north.

It's the Far Grasslands! We've seen a small portion of this area before, but now it's time to explore it for real.

Far Grasslands...

Heavy foliage here.

This is part of the Wasp Kingdom, they probably don't care much about cleaning stuff up.

Lots of wild creatures live here. We need to be extra careful.

(...Still...)

Kabbu's definitely worrying about something. Let's go meet up with the others, though.

Hey, Kabbu. You're from the north, right?

We do recall hearing it once or twice.

You had many tales of this land when we first met. Would you serve as our guide?

...Yes. To be sincere, I've been waiting to return to this wretched place.

Uh, what? Wretched?

You've been acting weird. What's going on?

These are the Far Grasslands. They connect the Lost Sands with the Wasp Kingdom.

Given the state of affairs, it is likely their walls are sealed. Even if we went north to them...

We wouldn't be able to get in.

There's obviously some off-path or something...

That is correct. East of here... is... the Wild Swamplands.

Hideous monsters, wild tribes, thick water at every turn...

Kabbu, I had no idea it was this dreadful...

I'll take your words to heart, Kabbu. It's clear this is not a journey we can underestimate.

Kina, you should stay behind with Yin.

What? Are you crazy? You know how strong we are together!

I cannot risk this young bug suffering a harsh fate.

Please, I beg you to watch her until I return.

Kina... Please, try to understand your brother!

Kina takes Yin and leaves.

We aren't at the swamp yet, but we cannot relax.

Yeah. It's east of here, right? I'll make sure there's no traps around!

This area changes constantly, so I can't tell what's ahead.

Stay close to me. Let's go!

Um. Just what are you up to, Kabbu?

Anyway. After that conversation's over, we regain control. And Maki is following us now! He'll be accompanying us throughout this area. Also, if we check the banter now, we'll get a new one:

All being said, it's an honor to travel with you!

Despite my rank, I'm pretty normal... So please, don't feel the need to be too respectful.

You act anything but normal!

Now that Maki's with us, he'll participate in the banters too.

We're supposed to head east, but, well, there's also a path to the west. Let's explore that way first. (Despite the game telling us there's time pressure...)

We immediately find a digging spot, trying to hide behind this foliage in the foreground.

It has a Crystal Berry inside! Not bad. I'll happily take that.

Also, there's an enemy waiting for us.

Let's take a moment, once again, to appreciate the new battle music. We've already been hearing this in the battles in Upper Snakemouth, but players who decided not to go there quite yet will hear it here first. (For fun, here's a dance remix with a cute animation.)

Anyway, we encountered Wild Chompers briefly before, when we came to this area early. If not, they'd be a new enemy. Their 2 defence can be troublesome. Also, it looks like Maki's joining us here in the battle screen too.

Let's have Kabbu attack.

But for now, everyone else is going to do nothing.

Because after Team Snakemouth is done acting, Maki gets a turn! And unlike our previous experiences with guest party members, he is very strong. Maki will always attack the enemy in front, dealing 6 damage and ignoring all defence. Suffice it to say, that Wild Chomper is very dead.

We're back to receiving pity EXP again. This is, among other things, a consequence of going to Upper Snakemouth as soon as possible; generally speaking, if you go there first, you'll be a bit overlevelled for here, and vice versa.

Anyway, that's that battle done with. Having Maki along is certainly going to make things go a lot more smoothly here!

Just past that Chomper is a path to another area. Let's go.

What are we going to find here? Let's check the banter first.

It's way too messy in here! I can barely make out the road!

It's not like there's a town nearby. We're just plowing through the wildlife.

The Ant Kingdom and its outskirts took a long time to tidy up. It makes you appreciate the workers more.

We've taken them for granted...!

This one's cute, and it's always nice to get these little worldbuilding details.

Moving forward a bit, there are lots of enemies milling about here, including a new one we haven't seen before...

First things first, though, let's climb up this ramp that's barely visible in the foreground. We're going to have to fight that spider before anything else.

Well, spiders. These are Jumping Spiders; we've seen them before on the path to the Wizard's Tower. Though as that area was optional, this could easily be your first time facing them.

Team Snakemouth's combined attacks can eliminate the front one right off.

While Chompy and Maki put quite the dent in the second one.

Here's something we haven't seen before, though! If you fail to block, Jumping Spiders can steal items with their attacks. That's my Queen's Dinner!

This will not stand.

Thankfully, it's a simple matter to kill the spider and get our item back. Just like with the bandits, any flipping attack will make them drop a stolen item (or you can just kill them), but they'll escape with it if you let them.

Anyway, that's over.

The reason we needed to come up here was to grab this Crystal Berry. This one can be easy to overlook, if you're not in the habit of checking everywhere.

Of course, we're not quite done here yet. Let's clear out the rest of these enemies.

Mantidflies are another enemy we got to preview earlier. They're not all that sturdy, but they innately get to attack twice per turn, which can get annoying quickly.

The combined efforts of our team and Chompy are enough to kill the first one.

Leaving Maki free to take a big chunk out of the second.

Good thing, too, because that could have gone badly! The surviving one hit Kabbu twice and brought him to 1 HP.

The Mantidfly itself is nearly dead, though. Before we kill it, let's do a bit of damage control.

Two uses of Vi's Secret Stash and Kabbu's back to normal. The after-battle recovery medals can take care of a lot, but if we're not using our TP for anything else, it's often a good idea to supplement them (especially since we'll recover most of the TP right away anyhow).

Now we finish things.

That could definitely have been worse.

There's not much to see on this level if we head west, just some weeds we can cut for a handful of berries.

We can climb up these rocks and flowers, though.

Guess it's time to find out what this thing is.

A new enemy, of course, means it's spying time.

Kabbu said to focus it, but I'd rather leave it for last. Hmm...

These are Flowerlings. They're another Seedling variety (though I always think they look a bit like UFOs). As the spy dialogue suggests, these are something of a support enemy.

We'll start out by attacking the spider, though not quite enough to kill it.

Well, that's useful! Maki's attack is perfectly capable of hitting airborne enemies also. That said, he also didn't quite do enough damage to kill it, so we'll get to see the Flowerling do something.

One of the more common things we'll see them do is heal other enemies (though they can't heal themselves, and they're smart enough not to try to heal enemies that don't need it). It's only 3 HP, though.

The spider immediately undoes the Flowerling's work by landing right on Kabbu's horn. Good going, spider.

From there, it's a trivial matter to finish them both off. That's not all that Flowerlings can do, we'll see more from them as we explore this area.

Also, it conveniently left behind a Honey Drop for us. That could be useful.

We climb up the rest of the flowers and reach this ledge. There's not much up here, just a few weeds we can cut down and a path to the next screen. Guess we'll keep moving.

This area certainly looks overgrown!

Blasted thorns... my one weakness! Whatever shall we do?

Buckle up. We're going on a safe and magical ride.

...! What incredible magic...

Heh. I guess we never had reason to tell him about all of Leif's abilities before, did we? He certainly seems impressed.

Before actually showing him how to cross thorns, let's deal with this.

Kabbu attacks the Wild Chomper to start off.

Vi knocks down the Flowerling...

And Leif kills it with Frigid Coffin. I'd actually just been thinking to disable it here, forgetting how little HP they have and the fact they're weak to ice. Oh well. Dead works too.

And this leaves Maki to effortlessly finish off the Chomper. With just a bit of planning around him, Maki's 6 damage can end a lot of the fights here very efficiently. It's hard not to feel overpowered when he's with us.

Easy enough.

This area is full of thorns. Without Leif's Bubble Shield, we wouldn't be able to get anywhere.

This platform is a dead end; we can't get past this boulder. It's worth remembering this location for later, though.

Maybe we'll have better luck going this way?

Not really? The southern part of this island just has more of these rocks, and crossing the thorns further doesn't take us to anything.

Let's get this Mantidfly out of the way before anything else.

This doesn't seem too difficult. We can eliminate the Mantidfly the first turn, at least...

Which allows us to see the Flowerling's basic attack. It's not very effective; this attack only does 2 damage at base. If they don't have another enemy around to support, this is all that Flowerlings can do.

It's a trivial matter to finish it off after that.

Now let's get a better look around.

This ledge slopes down just enough that we can climb up.

And from there, we can use the flowers to get up here. This place might look familiar! On the other side of the big rock is the 'preview area' we were able to access before, which leads to the Wizard's Tower. We can't get through the rock, though (and trying to dig under it doesn't work), so even if we wanted to go back there, this is a dead end.

We've now explored all of the western path, so let's head back east and try another direction.

Okay. Back where we started. That was a nice detour?

Just east of the entrance, we encounter another Jumping Spider.

That said, it's alone. With Maki along, it's trivial to kill this thing before it gets a turn.

Let's just move on.

The path splits here: we could go east, or north.

Let's check out the northern path first.

There's a lot going on here! Looks like that's the entrance to the Wasp Kingdom in the distance...

There's the border. Well guarded as usual.

Not a fight we want to pick...

You're absolutely sure we can't just blitz in?

Say the word, and I'm ON IT!

They're too many. Our only chance is to sneak in. Let's go.

Leif and Vi are feeling a bit bloodthirsty today, it seems. Something tells me a frontal assault wouldn't go very well, though.

Ooh, is that a Lore Book? Before we can get it, we'll need to contend with this Chomper.

It has a Jumping Spider with it, but with Maki along, this fight goes pretty effortlessly and there's not much to see.

So let's just move on.

We'll take this with us. (We could take a detour to the library and read it, but let's not... we'll get plenty of opportunities later.)

Let's explore the rest of this area, shall we?

We don't have to go far before encountering yet more enemies! There are certainly a lot of them around here...

This could be a bit of a problem.

Seems like a good time to break out Kabbu's Under Strike. This goes a long way to softening up both Mantidflies, at least; I'd rather not take that many hits.

We can finish off the first one easily from there.

I could probably have planned this better, as it's a bit overkill, but at least with Maki's help we've eliminated the second one as well. That was the main goal I had here.

Wild Chompers aren't exactly harmless, but I'd much rather deal with them than the Mantidflies' double attacks.

From here, it's simple to clean this up.

The enemies here are certainly being generous with items today. It's almost enough to make me regret stocking up, since I don't quite have the room to keep them; still, may as well use them immediately to keep ourselves topped off.

Let's not forget to check that island in the centre, with the conspicuous dig spot on it! Leif's icicle ability will make us a bridge, as usual.

Nice. More Dark Cherries. We'll definitely make room for these.

Back to the shore.

More enemies are lying in wait. (With all the big plants around here, it's sometimes hard to see them!)

This is interesting! This Flowerling has several different varieties of Seedling with it; we haven't seen these a lot recently, or at least not outside the Seedling King encounter.

Let's get a little clever. Kabbu hitting the Underling sends it below ground, then Leif's attack brings it right back up... leaving it above ground, and on exactly 6 HP. Perfect for Maki to finish off.

Vi and Leif can start chipping away at the Flowerling, instead.

We will have to waste Chompy's turn, but that'll end up being more efficient in the end.

Good work, Maki.

Acornlings really aren't anything to worry about.

This is new, though! This is the last thing Flowerlings can do: in addition to healing, they can also buff their allies, giving either Attack Up or Defence Up.

It's not going to avail them any, though. We can finish things easily from here.

Let's move on.

We're clearly not supposed to approach the Wasps' fortress, but... can we?

Let's look for another route.

Nope. Maki will stop us if we try to get too close.

And if we head east instead of trying to go north, we'll just find another dead end. There's nothing here but some more weeds to cut.

So let's head back.

And now actually go east.

What have we here?

What dense foliage... It's getting tougher to press forward.

It's kinda nice though. In a weird way.

The Ant Kingdom used to have more plants in it. Maybe they could have built around them better?

Such is the cost of building a city...

Leif seems to have a bit of an issue with urban development.

Barely a few steps in, and we're faced with more spiders...

Well, that's different! It's been a while since we've stumbled upon a Golden Seedling; that's a pleasant surprise.

And this time, we have Ice Rain! Ice Rain really makes short work of them, because unlike the majority of multi-hit attacks, none of these hits are going to get nullified. It's an easy way to tear through their HP (and, conveniently, lets us damage the other enemies a bit as well).

This shouldn't be too hard to clean up now!

Golden Seedlings are still worth loads of EXP, unlike everything else here!

Kabbu can easily finish off this spider.

And this gives me a convenient opportunity to demonstrate something. Let's have Chompy skip her turn.

Maki's attack may ignore defence, but it's not doing flat damage. His damage can still be increased in certain circumstances, like when the enemy is frozen.

The Underling survives to attack us once, but that's all it will manage to do.

There we go! What a haul.

This, too. That's a lot of berries!

And we'll make room for this.

Toward the back of this area, we can notice this bounceshroom behind one of the tall stone structures. Let's look around a bit more before trying it out, though.

There's also a Chomper here. Let's get that out of the way.

Looks like it's a pair of them.

I could definitely have been more efficient about this; our normal attacks weren't quite enough to finish it off, so it fell to Maki to finish off the first one. It's honestly worth spending some TP to get through their defence, though I often can't be bothered (even though we'd recover most of it after the fight); it's a bad habit.

At least we get to see something new! Wild Chompers can summon their own kind of Mini-Chompers. (And they seem to do it just by shaking, instead of launching seeds like their red brethren.)

It also gets to attack immediately. Aside from the colouration, it seems to be just the same as other mini-Chompers.

Spawning also doesn't cost them a turn, so the Wild Chomper still gets to attack normally.

Well, that's different. Despite attacking like normal baby Chompers, these ones have 1 defence, but only 3 maximum HP.

Which ends up making them even easier to deal with, because Kabbu in front can one-shot them without any assistance.

Easy enough to finish the battle from there.

Our exploration quickly reaches its limit. Just a bit further east, we encounter an impassable wall that covers the full length of the area. No going around this, we're going to have to approach this a different way.

Let's head up and see if we can find another path.

Between the stone platforms and the plants, we can make our way east up here. It's just a bit of platforming.

Though there are also enemies up here.

This isn't too bad to deal with, though.

Another convenient Honey Drop, which we can use to replenish any TP we may have spent in the battle.

At first glance, this might appear to be a dead end. Where are we supposed to go?

Why, jump down, of course! If we fall off the right side of the platform, we'll end up on the far side of the wall.

And now we can head onward! (This isn't a point of no return; portions of the wall are low enough on this side that we can make our way over it if we have to. Though that is one-way, we'd need to retrace our prior route to get back here again.)

This area just keeps going!

The path seems to split. Anyone's got a guess?

No need to take chances. If we keep moving north, we'll get there.

Heh. I guess it's not surprising Kabbu appreciates having Maki around, there always seemed to be a bit of mutual admiration there.

We can just about see the path splitting here; let's deal with the enemies first, though.

This is simple enough. We're practically guaranteed to eliminate the spider before it can do anything, and Flowerlings are nearly harmless on their lonesome.

Nothing to be concerned about.

Let's divert to the south first?

There's a stream here, but the lily pads provide a convenient crossing. (For once, a game where walking on lily pads makes perfect sense!)

Um, who is this?

We've gone a bit off-track. We shouldn't disturb this settlement...

Whoever this is, he seems like he might be raring for a fight. But Maki won't let us get closer, so we're going to have to turn around for now.

https://blueskittlesart.tumblr.com/post/189262597609/it-occurred-to-me-today-that-zelda-can-see-every

We can't do anything here for now, but we should probably make note of this for later. Let's head back.

Let's follow the path north.

There are more enemies, of course. But with Maki's help, they're still not much to write home about.

Let's just keep moving.

This one could be a bit annoying.

Team Snakemouth can clear out the first one easily enough, but the second hangs on a bit even after Maki's attack.

That could've definitely been worse. It's usually a relief when they go for the piledriver attack, because it's not very difficult to button-mash out of it and render it harmless.

And now, of course, it's effortless to finish things.

On we go.

Let's keep pressing onward.

Well, this looks different!

...

Stay steadfast, Kabbu. We're almost there.

Yeah!

Sorry, I was just thinking. Let's go.

Mhm.

Kabbu is really not good at hiding the fact he has something on his mind. What could be going on...?

There's a big pool of water here, which we can try to cross if we want to.

That said, it's a waste of time right now. This platform on the other side is piled with boulders we can't do anything about, so there's nothing we can do here. Maybe this will offer some kind of shortcut once we have an ability to do something about them, but right now we're out of luck. Let's head back.

And here we are. This definitely looks like the entrance to the Wild Swamplands. But as there's a save crystal right here, and we've already been exploring for a while, that'll have to wait until next time. Kabbu's definitely worried about something, but we have Maki with us! Surely everything will be fine.

# ? Nov 21, 2021 09:11

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

Design Interlude: Time and Ludonarrative Dissonance

This may fall into the realm of "my personal pet peeve" more than generalisable design principles, but the game gave me a perfect opportunity to talk about it, so who am I to refuse?

Stories often use time to establish a sense of urgency and raise the stakes. That's a perfectly reasonable writing choice, and in a vacuum it's all well and good. In the context of a video game, though, problems can emerge when that time limit is there for narrative purposes (and exists in-universe in some sense), but doesn't exist for the player.

Take, for instance, what we just experienced in Chapter 5 of Bug Fables. We fended off the Wasps' invasion, and were ordered by the Ant Queen to start a counteroffensive and try to get the artifacts back while they might still be in disarray. We're explicitly told time is of the essence and we must hurry (repeated several times for emphasis!).

Instead, what we actually did was spend several updates' worth of gameplay faffing around doing sidequests (some of which, like Leif's Request, are genuinely important, but others are a lot less justifiable, like the mole cricket quest which explicitly has no time pressure whatsoever) and fighting optional bosses, before finally deigning to meet up with Maki like we were ordered to.

And then, when we got there, he still praised us for coming quickly!

The player's behaviour tends to produce a sequence of events that is narratively incoherent. And, worse, this is more or less encouraged by the gameplay structure. It's really hard not to notice it, and it interferes with suspension of disbelief. (In my experience, this kind of thing tends to lead to players separating the gameplay and story somewhat, and thinking along the lines that "in terms of the story, the characters rushed to their destination appropriately, the sidequests just happen off in some vaguely non-canonical aether". Worse things can happen, but this isn't great as far as headcanons go.)

(What's even more awkward about this particular example is that, in terms of the overarching narrative, it's obviously expected that the player complete the Leif's Request sidequest at some point, but there's never quite a point where the urgency of other things lets up enough for it to be considered the 'appropriate' time. It's always just slightly incongruous that we're taking a break from time-sensitive missions to do it, yet that never causes a problem, and by the end we'll obviously have done it. You can make a case that the 'intended' route is to finish the storyline first and uncover Leif's past in the postgame, but I don't think that feels quite right either.)

Let's contrast this with another way Bug Fables creates narrative urgency, in the aforementioned Wasp invasion sequence. The game interrupted what we were doing, presented the scenario, and forced us to deal with it before we could engage with any other content. (We saw something similar earlier with the Honey Factory lockdown, also.) This is a much more effective way to evoke urgency, in my view, but there are obvious disadvantages: whether you frame it in terms of inconvenience to the player (in temporarily locking them out of the primary gameplay loop or removing access to content, etc), that taken to an extreme it produces linearity, etc., this is an approach that works best when used sparingly.

What we're talking about here, ultimately, is a form of ludonarrative dissonance. Or, in simple terms, a mismatch between the story the gameplay itself tells ("ludonarrative"), and the story the game tells you it's telling ("narrative", for lack of a more specific term). (Alternatively, here's a hbomberguy video.) This has become a popular concept in the games criticism conversation over the last decade or so, and while I do think it's sometimes overused, I think it's an important lens that can reveal issues that are otherwise hard to identify.

The reason I get stuck on this particular one is because the obvious way to "fix" it (something like "TIME BOMB SET GET OUT FAST!") doesn't quite work. I certainly don't want to impose time limits on every game! Nor do I think it's bad for games to have sidequests, or content that can be engaged with in an order of the player's choosing. It is often possible to solve it with some more careful writing, whether to imply the urgency isn't specifically time-related, or the "clock" doesn't start ticking until the player chooses to begin the task, etc.

The ur-example of getting this wrong, to me, will always be The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which, don't get me wrong, is a game that I love; that just doesn't mean I'm blind to its writing mistakes). As soon as the game deigns to tell you what's going on, the narrative hammers home the urgency: Zelda currently has Ganon trapped, but her power could fail at any time, so you need to build Link's strength and break the stalemate as soon as possible before it does. This urgency is reflected nowhere in the gameplay, which primarily concerns itself with exploring and enjoying the environments, taking your time to get as much out of them as you wish to, and so every time it was mentioned I found myself doing a bit of a double-take. (And, again, this would have been easy to fix: play up the "stalemate" angle instead of emphasising its precariousness. The situation is currently stable, and breaking it is irreversible, so the important thing is to ensure Link is as prepared as possible before doing so.) Far better to lean into the feel of the game than to force a narrative that's constantly fighting it.

(Edit: more succinctly and amusingly expressed in this comic, linked in the thread by Twelve by Pies)

I don't have easy solutions to propose that are universally applicable, but this is the sort of writing issue that consistently irritates me, and at the same time, seems like it can often be resolved fairly easily on another pass of editing (unlike a lot of other, more insidious forms of ludonarrative dissonance, which might necessitate a full rewrite). As such, I wanted to take some time to talk about it.

(Well, okay, the other reason I wanted to talk about it is that, unfortunately, I currently continue to be busy and overwhelmed with life things, and I'm probably not going to be able to do a proper update for another week or so, but a design interlude post is easier to throw together in the interim... the dirty secrets of LP writing, let me tell you them.)

Explopyro fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Dec 3, 2021

# ? Nov 29, 2021 05:01

Qrr: Aug 14, 2015

In this case at least there's a clear way to help with the dissonance: Maki's dialogue. "Good. You've arrived quickly." only works if you did, in fact, get there quickly.

So put a condition on that dialogue, and if you take a long time Maki can say "Luckily the wasps are still here." It's not perfect but it acknowledges the situation and provides an explanation. Sometimes you just need to hang a lampshade on a gameplay feature.

# ? Nov 29, 2021 06:19

Alxprit: Feb 7, 2015; <click> <click> What is it with this dancing?! Bouncing around like fools... I would have thought my own kind at least would understand the seriousness of our Adventurer's Guild!

I'll be honest, I don't think it even sunk in for me that there was a line praising how quickly I had arrived when I hadn't. I think I'm just able to suspend my disbelief really easily for the sake of a story I'm enjoying, haha. I dunno if it's a superpower or a curse. I will agree though that the severity of the plot only increases from here and diverting for sidequests can feel worse and worse, especially for something as big as the hidden Snakemouth... but, the team are explorers, at the end of the day, and if there's something to explore, it shouldn't be ignored. I think that's how I justify it.

# ? Nov 29, 2021 06:58

Captainicus: Feb 22, 2013

I think it is easy for some players to mentally make a small adjustment or ignore one line, or even ignore very big weirdness, it just depends how much it grates on you vs how much it amuses you or is easily ignoreable. I had honestly forgotten about BOTW telling you things are urgent because obviously that doesn't come up for the next 30 hours of gameplay.

Obviously as games get more realistically styled or themed any kind of gameplay/narrative dissonance gets much, much worse. No-one wants to play a shooter game in which you die in one bullet, but people have to die in one bullet in cutscenes. My favourite example which I find hilarious is in Mass Effect 3, Shepard shoots Kaiden in a cutscene. Shepard has a low power pistol you can use in gameplay. Kaiden is wearing combat armor, which means he also has barriers. In gameplay, even on high diffculty, the barrier could catch 12+ bullets and his armor could catch another 12+ bullets. He gets shot once in the stomach and dies immediatly, and there is nothing sci-fi medicine could have done. Grunt, an alien who has multiple redundant organs, a huge amount of health in gameplay, combat armor, and a rage mode that is described as a neurological feedback loop that makes him nigh impervious to bullets... also can get shot once in the stomach and die.

# ? Nov 29, 2021 07:39

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

Explopyro posted:

The ur-example of getting this wrong, to me, will always be The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which, don't get me wrong, is a game that I love; that just doesn't mean I'm blind to its writing mistakes). As soon as the game deigns to tell you what's going on, the narrative hammers home the urgency: Zelda currently has Ganon trapped, but her power could fail at any time, so you need to build Link's strength and break the stalemate as soon as possible before it does. This urgency is reflected nowhere in the gameplay, which primarily concerns itself with exploring and enjoying the environments, taking your time to get as much out of them as you wish to, and so every time it was mentioned I found myself doing a bit of a double-take.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 19:56

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

Qrr posted:

In this case at least there's a clear way to help with the dissonance: Maki's dialogue. "Good. You've arrived quickly." only works if you did, in fact, get there quickly.

So put a condition on that dialogue, and if you take a long time Maki can say "Luckily the wasps are still here." It's not perfect but it acknowledges the situation and provides an explanation. Sometimes you just need to hang a lampshade on a gameplay feature.

Yeah, that would have been a good way to fix it. Although it's not always perfect, because a certain percentage of players will perceive this as shaming them or telling them they did something wrong ("Well, you certainly took your sweet time getting here" or something like that). It might even work just to have the line always be along those lines, if you don't want to have the game time it (or tie it to sidequest completion), and just let that be characterisation for Maki (it's not like he doesn't already have a perfectionist streak).

I agree that hanging a lampshade helps, though depending on how you do that it can just send the message of "don't take this story seriously"; that's perfect for some genres, but there are other narratives that will just destroy.

I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution, for better or worse. I do think, as I said, that individual instances can often be fixed with fairly minor tweaks, which makes it all the more baffling that it so often goes unaddressed. I guess this just isn't a thing that bothers most game writers.

Alxprit posted:

I'll be honest, I don't think it even sunk in for me that there was a line praising how quickly I had arrived when I hadn't. I think I'm just able to suspend my disbelief really easily for the sake of a story I'm enjoying, haha. I dunno if it's a superpower or a curse. I will agree though that the severity of the plot only increases from here and diverting for sidequests can feel worse and worse, especially for something as big as the hidden Snakemouth... but, the team are explorers, at the end of the day, and if there's something to explore, it shouldn't be ignored. I think that's how I justify it.

Honestly, this sort of thing doesn't ruin games for me, and I usually am able to headcanon it away to some degree; I just find it vaguely irritating, and impossible not to notice.

Ultimately, I'd rather a game have side content and this kind of incongruity than not have side content.

Captainicus posted:

I think it is easy for some players to mentally make a small adjustment or ignore one line, or even ignore very big weirdness, it just depends how much it grates on you vs how much it amuses you or is easily ignoreable. I had honestly forgotten about BOTW telling you things are urgent because obviously that doesn't come up for the next 30 hours of gameplay.

Oh, it's definitely easy to forget about this in BotW! (And it's easy to not be bothered by it if you can forget about it!) Which is why, if pressed, I would say the mistake was trying to put in urgency, rather than leaning further into the strong ludonarrative they already had.

Captainicus posted:

Obviously as games get more realistically styled or themed any kind of gameplay/narrative dissonance gets much, much worse. No-one wants to play a shooter game in which you die in one bullet, but people have to die in one bullet in cutscenes. My favourite example which I find hilarious is in Mass Effect 3, Shepard shoots Kaiden in a cutscene. Shepard has a low power pistol you can use in gameplay. Kaiden is wearing combat armor, which means he also has barriers. In gameplay, even on high diffculty, the barrier could catch 12+ bullets and his armor could catch another 12+ bullets. He gets shot once in the stomach and dies immediatly, and there is nothing sci-fi medicine could have done. Grunt, an alien who has multiple redundant organs, a huge amount of health in gameplay, combat armor, and a rage mode that is described as a neurological feedback loop that makes him nigh impervious to bullets... also can get shot once in the stomach and die.

This kind of issue seems to crop up a lot where bullets are concerned, doesn't it. That does sound entertainingly absurd.

Twelve by Pies posted:

https://blueskittlesart.tumblr.com/post/189262597609/it-occurred-to-me-today-that-zelda-can-see-every

This is perfect and really expresses this a lot more succinctly than I did. Mind if I edit this link into the post?

# ? Dec 1, 2021 01:00

Twelve by Pies: May 4, 2012; Again a very likpatous story

Explopyro posted:

This is perfect and really expresses this a lot more succinctly than I did. Mind if I edit this link into the post?

Go for it. :v:

It was the very first thing that came to mind when you mentioned BotW.

# ? Dec 2, 2021 17:10

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

50: A Bridge Too Far

It's been a while, hasn't it? (Team Snakemouth kept Maki waiting long enough, now here I am adding to the problem.) I'm sorry about that. I've had a lot to deal with offline and it's been rather overwhelming, so I haven't been able to find much time or energy to work on this. Hopefully now I've gotten back on track and there won't be further delays, but I can't quite be certain.

We travelled through the Far Grasslands and reached the entrance to the Wild Swamplands everyone finds so fearsome. It's time to head inside.

Before we do, though, a tiny bit of medal management. Numb Resistance is very helpful against certain enemies here, so I'm going to put these on (and in this case, I prefer to stack both on the same bug for total immunity). I'll go into more detail when it becomes relevant (which may not be in this update), but for now just be aware I'm doing this.

With those preparations complete, in we go.

The music here really sets an ominous atmosphere. We get a discovery as soon as we enter, too. Though the game won't quite let us look at it yet, because our team start a conversation immediately.

I wish I could say it'll get better as we go...

This is the only way to the Wasp Kingdom, though. We'll have to deal with it.

Chill out. We're gonna be fine, Kabbu. Okay?

Only if we keep our guard up. The Leafbug tribes are sure to attack us.

Is diplomacy not an option?

They don't speak our language. Our words are lost on them.

Let's make haste and cross. Listen up.

During my scouting of this area, I've found a few structural weaknesses in the Wasp Kingdom's walls.

We can sneak inside through one of these at the back of the swamp. Stay close, and stay vigilant!

Kabbu's still acting a bit cagey, isn't he. What's going on with him? Well, regardless, we've established our mission, best be about it.

We're in control again. Let's see what the discovery says.

(That's a bit of a spoiler, game. Come on.) What kind of a beast, and what exactly happened to Kabbu here? Maybe he'll open up more if we give him some time.

Let's check the banter too.

Dreadful as ever, this cursed land...

Kabbu, this is the time for some helpful advice. Wouldn't you say so?

Oh, lemme guess! Stay together, don't fall in the water, and don't fight spooky things!

Sounds about right.

Indeed.

Vi can always be counted on to lighten the mood, at least. Let's start exploring.

This room is mostly just an open space with some weird-looking weeds we can cut down, though.

Or is it? What's this thing? It just came charging out of nowhere!

It's been a while since we've fought spiny caterpillar things, hasn't it? Let's see what this thing is about...

We hope its high defenses protect its self-esteem as well. Kabbu, flip it over. We've got a special icicle waiting for it.

This is a Madesphy, and it's a lot more dangerous than it looks (though we're unlikely to see that until later battles with them).

Incidentally, these are based on a real insect, but I cannot for the life of me find the name despite having seen it before ("madesphy" is a deliberate misspelling of the scientific name, and is used only in this game); please do tell me if you know it. The Bug Fables artbook only says "the real one is even uglier".

We'll start off by having Kabbu flip it. (The damage here is a bit peculiar. When we've flipped enemies before, it's reduced their defence before calculating the damage, but against these it deals the damage against full defence first. I'm not sure why the change, but it's consistently how these work.)

Then everyone else can attack, though it's not quite enough to get the kill.

Maki cleans up for us. We'll see what these things can do later.

Unfortunately, we're still getting only pity EXP, even though these are new enemies (a continuing consequence of our having done the side content first). In spite of that, it's a bad idea to underestimate the enemies here.

It seems to be a fairly common experience for people to have Bug Me Not equipped on their first visit here, skip the encounters by accident, and end up finding this whole section of the game underwhelming as a result. Please don't do that, this content is good and it deserves to be experienced.

For now, let's move on.

It leaves behind a Crunchy Leaf, but we don't have room to keep it.

With it dead, we're free to look around, but there's not much to see.

Let's head onward.

This room looks a bit more involved. Let's check the banter.

I'm not a fan of the water, but these pads look serviceable.

It's way calmer than I expected in here!

"Keep your guard up." Right, Kabbu?

Please.

Everyone's got really good eyes, to see what's on that upper level; I certainly can't. We'll go there soon enough.

Let's fight this enemy first.

This Wild Chomper has a Madesphy with it. That's a lot of defence to go around.

Let's have Vi start out with a Needle Pincer against the Chomper (thanks to Victory Buzz and TP Core, we can afford to spend our TP a bit more liberally). It's not quite enough to kill, but...

It's precisely enough to get it in range for Kabbu to finish off.

Now Kabbu can flip the Madesphy.

And everyone else cleans up. We're done here.

Let's keep moving.

Cutting down a weed here yields us a Honey Drop. May as well eat that now to get back to full TP, since we don't have room to keep it.

Let's head up.

Ah, there's the water (and lily pads) everyone was talking about!

Let's fight this Mantidfly first, though.

It has a Jumping Spider with it. This fight is still very straightforward, though. With the extra turn from getting the first strike, our team can easily kill the Mantidfly on the first turn.

Leaving Maki to hit the spider, though as we didn't soften it up at all, he can't kill it.

Still, one attack later, we can finish this off effortlessly.

Let's just keep going.

This could be a problem. How are we going to get across this murky water?

If we get on the lily pad, we'll quickly see we can cut this weed. Will that help at all?

Once we cut the weed to free it, the lily pad starts drifting slowly east.

It moves to this point, then reverses direction and heads back. From here, though, we can easily jump to the next one.

We'll just repeat this process and free the next one.

Which floats us over to this corner, where we can jump off on the far side. (The third lily pad isn't part of this path, but it will offer a path to backtrack if we need it.)

It's another big empty clearing... is there nothing here?

Spoke too soon. As soon as we get near the exit, these guys jump out! Is this an ambush?

Oh, aren't these cute...

Raise your guard. These are the vicious Leafbug tribes I mentioned!

Seriously? These look super harmless...

We'd best give it our all!

29 - Team, This One's Stronger! (Miniboss)

Well, that's that, guess we've no choice but to fight them! Let's see what information we can get, this could be a problem.

Not only do they hold powerful strikes, they can even multiply! We'll have to hit many of them at once!

Leafbug Ninjas have an illusion trick, which this is hinting at.

They're definitely annoying enough that it's worth focusing them down. Let's get on it, Vi, before they call for backup.

Leafbug Archers are archers that do archer things, but they also have the ability to summon more leafbugs.

Time to show 'em what real skills look like!

And Leafbug Clubbers are the heavy hitters. That's a reasonably well-balanced party we're up against here!

Despite this setup looking like a miniboss fight (and this fight isn't trivial!), this is merely our introduction to Leafbugs, which we'll be facing as normal enemies throughout the Swamplands. We'll be very familiar with the capabilities of all three classes by the time we're through here.

Leif relays to Kabbu, who hits the first one...

Oh. Oh no. Is that...

Yeah. Looks that way. The Leafbug Tribe have an additional gimmick, which is very similar to our own Favorite One medal. Any time you hit one of them, any other Leafbugs that see it happen immediately react by gaining +1 charge.

And unlike when we do it, their version can trigger multiple times per turn! This can build up really quickly if you're not careful: you want to be thoughtful about when you piss these guys off, especially in multiples, because it doesn't take a lot to make things turn deadly.

As we're quickly about to see, because Maki does not know the meaning of restraint either. He's finished off the Ninja, but its two companions are now at maximum power.

First off, archer does archer things. That's a Super Block, and it still hurt! This arrow's base damage is a very reasonable 3 points, but if you let them charge it up it gets significantly scarier.

Ow.

(This attack deals 5 damage at base, but that's small comfort when we're getting clocked for 8. This turn could have been significantly worse, though: there are other moves he could have used.)

Well, then. How about we don't let them do something like that again?

(The first turn of this battle tends to go badly if you insist on spying everything at once, and aren't using the Spy Specs medal to prevent it costing actions. Alternatively, you can pace the spying over a few turns, and let Leif freeze one or two of them. But, for better or worse, the first time you get here you aren't going to know how these enemies work, and that means this first turn usually gets bloody. I wanted to make sure I showed that properly.)

To start with, let's move Leif in front and have him freeze the big guy with Frigid Coffin. In addition to keeping it from attacking us, when frozen (or suffering from another disabling status), Leafbugs won't react to us beating up their comrades, so it's an even better tactic than usual.

Let's have Vi do a Tornado Toss on the archer. It's been a while since we've used this move! Hurricane Toss is almost always better, but we don't need it so we may as well save the TP.

This worked out perfectly so that Kabbu and Chompy could finish off the archer...

Clearing the way for Maki to eliminate the Clubber, who was on exactly 7 HP.

The amount of EXP you get is not remotely indicative of how challenging the fight was, sometimes. Still, we got through it!

Having been beaten, the Leafbugs quickly flee.

This area is their territory. We must try to get through without confronting them.

It's truly a shame they do not understand us.

(Vi, are we talking about the same fight here?)

Let's go, then. Worst case, we freeze them over.

Kabbu is still being shifty. Come on, Kabbu, talk to your friends.

And we're back in control. We certainly haven't seen the last of the Leafbugs. These guys can be a real difficulty spike, especially since it might take a few turns to figure out how their gimmick works (and in the meantime you'll probably take a lot of damage!). I think it's a good kind of difficulty spike, though, in that the player absolutely has the tools to deal with it but will need to think tactically and carefully choose their moves. They're really satisfying to fight once you start figuring them out.

Let's move on to the next area.

Looks like another watery expanse we're going to have to get across somehow...

I shoulda shut up... It's getting intense!

Nothing that cannot be solved by thinking on our next step.

We can really imagine Kabbu and Maki on the same team...

Heheheh. Really? I'd never leave you both now, though.

The banter here is cute (and a nice callback to the game's opening!). Anyway, let's explore-

Wait, that plant was a ninja?

Oh. Well, we didn't get to see what these are capable of in the last fight... and we're not going to in this one either, because even without getting fancy we'll eliminate it before it gets a chance to attack.

That said, let's take the opportunity to have Vi heal Kabbu with Secret Stash; he's looking a bit worse for wear after that last bludgeoning.

I promise we'll get to see Ninjas do their thing in due time.

Well, that's convenient. We can eat this Honey Drop and get back to maximum TP right away.

This branch is our way forward, though it's a bit precarious: the angle's kind of awkward, and it's really easy to fall in the water if you aren't careful.

Also, there's a Clubber lying in wait at the far end, so let's get ready.

I tried to get a first strike there, but he was faster. (Leif's Bubble Shield would probably have worked better, that's usually a solid approach here if you want to get a first strike or try to avoid the encounter.)

These guys have enough defence that it's tricky to get through with basic attacks; Maki helps make up the difference, but this was really inefficient and another approach would have been better. This does mean we didn't touch the Madesphy at all...

And it will get to attack us. This is actually their less scary attack: everything they can do hits the entire party. These things really punch above their weight, and you don't want to take them lightly.

That said, alone it's not much of a threat, since we can finish it off before it gets to do anything else.

Let's move on.

With that out of the way, we have some more platforming to do.

Once we get here, it can be a bit tricky: we need to drop down, but it's hard to see much of the log we're trying to land on.

There we go. The lily pad there would take us back, since otherwise this would have been a one-way path; let's ignore it and keep going forward.

There are some more lily pads to cross, but... um. Where do we go now? How do we get up to that ledge?

Let's try hitting this rock?

Chain reaction! That wasn't quite what I expected, but it seems to have worked...

Now that we've knocked everything down, this ramp gets us right up.

We also need that rock to get us over this fallen log.

Let's head on to the next area.

The banter in this area is very short. Um. Let's head onward, I guess?

...That doesn't look good.

Yeah, this definitely isn't good. (Although Vi remembered she can fly again, I guess that's something?)

No kidding...! Everyone's fine?

...Tch. I hurt my leg...

(Just how did Maki end up so far away from the rest of us, anyway?)

Yikes. I know he has to hear you, but...

It's okay... I'll wait here! Help Kabbu and Leif reach me too!

You've heard him! We must rendezvous with haste! Let's look for another path!

Uh, right. Time to search!

The game's given us back control, but this seems like a pretty sticky situation! We seem to be pretty well trapped here... (although there is a yellow save crystal at least; it's been a while since we've had one of those!)

There is no time! We're pressing on!

If we check the banter, Kabbu will just urge us to keep moving. Um. Let's see what we can do?

One of these giant rock piles is blocking the way forward, but we can try to inspect it.

Ugh, we're stuck already!? This is bad.

Ngh... Gr...

Uh, Kabbu?

W-Were you always this strong?

We must save Maki! We cannot let anything happen to him!

Well, yes. But how did you...

So let's go. We must hurry!

Oi, what's all that hopelessness talk!?

Everything's always worked out fine. Why are you so frazzled?

Just tell us! We'll get it!

...

...Very well. I will tell you the truth.

I've spoken enough of how dreadful this place is.

In my hometown, it is regarded as a graveyard of naive explorers who drowned before they noticed...

We wanted to see Bugaria's vast and beautiful kingdom.

Despite many warnings, and to avoid the Wasp Kingdom, we crossed the swamp.

You can't mean...

Even though I was the rookie, they... made sure I would...

Y-Yeah. You're always telling us you'll help us!

The pain of that journey... I wished to bury it. To overcome my regrets in a new life.

Alas, I find myself back here. Haunted!

I-It's gonna be ok, Kabbu! We're gonna cross it together!

...Yeah. No one's getting left behind. We'll save Maki and get out.

K-Kabbu... Come on, say something!

It's a promise. Let's watch each other.

You got it! Team Snakemouth's ready to go!

Vi, Leif... thank you. Let's go!

(And I'm sorry...)

Well, that was quite heavy, but at least we understand a bit better why coming here has been so hard for Kabbu. Through the power of sheer determination, he can now crush boulders by dashing into them, and he's cleared the way for us to move forward. It's a powerful moment.

That said, it's a bit awkward, because he hasn't actually gained any new abilities. It's the same dash we've been able to use since Chapter 3, but it breaks boulders now when it couldn't before. And in battle, Dash Through is the same as it's always been. This is a consequence of the dash being moved earlier in v1.1 and having the running function added to it: in earlier versions, this is where Kabbu's dash unlocked and he learned Dash Through for use in battle. In fact, this is one of the bigger reasons I briefly considered using v1.0.5 for the LP, but I eventually decided it wasn't worth giving up the bugfixes and quality-of-life features just to strengthen this single moment.

(Also, game balance wise, I think Dash Through unlocking earlier is a significant improvement. When it unlocked here, I never found myself using it much, and the situations where I think it's most useful are already behind us. I certainly don't think it's overpowered, and it opens up a lot of options. Then again, in its absence, maybe other skills like Boulder Throw would get a chance to shine more; no change is without consequence.)

Here's what the dash looked like in prior versions (don't mind the blue crystal, I recorded this on a completed save). It didn't help you move faster, it was just for smashing boulders.

Anyway, with the boulder destroyed, we can now see there's a path we can take to the south (that doesn't look like it's going toward Maki, though, does it...).

That said, we'll explore further next time. And now that Maki's no longer with us, all the enemies we've gotten used to him helping us kill are going to present a significantly bigger threat... well, for better or worse, I'll see you then.

# ? Dec 11, 2021 06:57

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

I'm sorry for the continued delays; I'd hoped to have an update ready by now (it's been a week), especially given the last one was on the short side, but offline life continues to be a problem in ways I hadn't planned for. I'm currently in the process of moving (which I found out I need to do on very short notice, what fun) and have been preoccupied with that, so I haven't had time to work on the next update. Once that's finished, I should be able to get back to posting on a more regular schedule.

I feel guilty because this is another excellent section of the game, and I feel like I'm doing it a disservice by continually disrupting my coverage. Unfortunately, I didn't have a better option. Please bear with me just a bit longer; thanks for your patience.

# ? Dec 19, 2021 01:53

Alxprit: Feb 7, 2015; <click> <click> What is it with this dancing?! Bouncing around like fools... I would have thought my own kind at least would understand the seriousness of our Adventurer's Guild!

A move is always stressful so don't blame yourself for the lacking of activity. We'll be here when you're ready to post the next thang.

# ? Dec 19, 2021 05:44

Torrannor: Apr 27, 2013; ---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE

I was without internet for a long times this month (internet providers :argh:

), and lacked any free time at all during the pre-Christmas crunch, so I missed the update. And it was a Kabbu heavy update at that! (FU Vodafone! :argh:

)

So many things become clear now. Why Kabbu has always been so overprotective of his team. It even explains the strong reaction to meeting the other beetle, as the last beetles he saw before that one on Metal Island were likely his friend and his mentor before they died. And of course it all makes sense that Kabbu behaved so oddly the last few updates. That said, he hasn't stopped being shifty. That beast that killed his previous team, it's probably still in the Far Grasslands. Is Kabbu aiming for revenge?? :ohdear:

Don't worry about the update pace slowing down. Yes, I'm metaphorically at the edge of my seat, wanting to see what happens next. But your updates are always so great, you do such a fantastic job in showing of this game and it's story, each update is worth waiting for. Good luck with your move, we'll still be here when you update next

# ? Dec 25, 2021 14:58

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

51: Heart of Darkness

Um. It's been a while. So, where were we?

Oh, right. Sorry, Kabbu.

This is where the dungeon-ness, for lack of a better word for it, of this area starts ramping up. We're stranded with no way back, and we don't have Maki to lean on any more.

Let's head south.

S-Should we worry?

Just make sure we don't slow him down.

Normally I try not to screenshot the banters, but this one's great. Let's hope this doesn't go to Kabbu's head... but for now, I'm inclined to let him rampage.

Smashing rocks is the order of the day; there are plenty of them blocking our path, like this one. It's pretty satisfying just watching Kabbu barge right through them.

Although some of them are just... here. (Or it was, anyway.) This one wasn't blocking any paths or hiding anything, but of course you can't know that until you smash it.

The way forward is over here, past a simple puzzle.

Leif can freeze the Flowerling to make a platform, and we jump across. Nothing to it.

Then we can cross the natural bridge to the far side.

There are some weeds blocking the way here, but that's easily dealt with.

As is this boulder.

Which gives us access to this makeshift bridge of fallen wood. I've always found this one a bit awkward to cross: it's at a slight angle, so you can't cross by just holding a constant direction; it's easy to fall off when you have to adjust.

A Leafbug Archer is waiting to ambush us on the far side. That's not very nice. Having Crazy Prepared equipped is very helpful here, because they will shoot you and it's tricky to dodge. Bubble Shield can also be a big help in approaching them.

Let's fight! This archer has a Madesphy backing it up, which is pretty annoying, especially since being in the back makes it trickier to flip.

We have enough firepower to take down the Archer in a single turn, even without Maki. (Though it's pretty close, and we wouldn't be able to do that without Chompy! This area's a lot harder if you don't have her along.)

The Madesphy uses its rolling attack. It hurts a lot less when you Super Block.

Thanks to the chip damage from Spiky Bod, it's a simple matter to take it down this turn. If not for that, we might have needed to spend some TP.

We're still getting only pity EXP. (Although we're close to ranking up regardless.)

Oh no! My berries! A lot of those ended up falling into the water. I don't think I've really discussed this, but the game tries to be friendly when this happens, and respawns them on land after a second or so. Unfortunately, sometimes they just end up falling into the water again (especially if the terrain has a lot of sloping textures, like this log) and you get an item cyclically respawning, then falling right back in, until it times out and the game despawns it.

Anyway, let's take a look around this side. There's not much to see here, except for that boulder...

Let's smash it.

Wait, what now?

Let's not forget our other abilities! We need to dig and burrow under this fallen branch.

Um. Would you say that plant looks a bit out of place?

It's a Leafbug Ninja!

I promise we'll see what these guys can do soon, but if they keep trying to fight us alone, they're not going to get to do anything.

So let's just swat him aside and keep moving.

Just past the Ninja is the path forward. This room does a really good job of feeling like an arduous obstacle-laden journey, even if it doesn't actually ask a whole lot of us gameplay-wise.

Let's head onward.

Kabbu notices something as soon as we enter.

(What's the matter?)

The camera pans up and we can see this... thing... walk by in the shadows. (The music also goes completely silent here.)

You mean the one that...

Look, it seems not to have noticed us. With some luck, we'll avoid it, Kabbu.

Yeah, we'd better get a move on!

Kabbu is definitely out for revenge; he's not really trying to hide it any more. This doesn't seem like the best idea, but, well, if we encounter it we may not have much of a choice.

(I couldn't resist. I can't be the only one thinking it.)

Anyway, with the cutscene over, we regain control. Let's check the banter.

There's a lotta weird machines around...

It almost seems like they built them randomly.

Some of them seem to be damaged... Probably by that monster...!

We can't see it from here at the entrance, but it certainly sounds like there are going to be some puzzles ahead. Let's start exploring.

To the south, we can see some enemies. Let's deal with that first.

Hmm. This combination is new. How to deal with this?

Let's swap Vi into the front and use Needle Pincer. Wild Chompers' defence can be annoying, but this is a pretty efficient way to get rid of them.

The rest of our turn can then go toward attacking the archer.

On its turn, the Archer fires an arrow into the air. This is a delayed attack; it has a base damage of 4, but will also benefit from any charge-ups the archer might have at the time of firing. Like most delayed attacks in this game, it's not particularly intimidating, but this one can hit hard enough to make you pay attention.

The arrow would land next turn, but we can easily end the battle before then. (That's the other problem with delayed attacks: they often just do nothing.)

We only get a single point of EXP, but that's enough for us to rank up! (If I'd been paying closer attention, I'd have blown more TP to finish this in a single turn, since we'd just recover it all regardless.)

As usual, let's grab ourselves some more MP.

We also get a pretty nice bonus for reaching Rank 21: a free point of HP for each bug. It's almost like we gained two levels at once! (Internally, this is treated like every bug got to eat a Heart Berry, rather than a level-up in HP; that can make a subtle difference later, but for now I'm just going to make note of it and move on.)

I've seen some players get frustrated by this particular level-up bonus, because it can mess you up if your strategy relies on a specific maximum HP value (e.g. if you're using

Hard Charge and

Last Attack, you want to have at most 9 maximum HP), and the game doesn't give any warning it's coming. I've mentioned in passing that this game does eventually give you the ability to respec, but that's still a chapter or so away. It isn't catastrophic, but it can be annoying if you don't know about it and get caught off guard.

Of course, if you're playing "normally" (whatever that means), this is just a nice bonus and you'll probably think nothing of it. In our case, we're fine anyway if we want to use those strategies: the thread was nice enough to give each of our bugs one Heart Berry, so this bonus brings Vi and Leif each to exactly 9 HP before HP Plus medals are taken into account.

Anyway.

I wasn't quite sure what to do with our newest MP, and eventually settled on equipping a second copy of TP Core. I'm not sure this will matter since most battles aren't going long enough to trigger it, but it might come in handy eventually.

This Madesphy now demands our attention as well.

Well, it's actually two of them, and there's a Flowerling here too. This could get nasty.

Let's just get rid of the Flowerling right away, before it can do any annoying support things. Vi's attack and a Frigid Coffin from Leif will take care of it nicely.

After that, we can start attacking the Madesphy, but we don't have enough actions left to eliminate either of them (without spending a lot of TP, anyway).

What the...? On their turn, the first Madesphy finally decides to show us their other attack. This shriek is absolutely terrifying; thankfully, I managed to block and nullify its worst aspect.

The Madesphy's shriek attack hits the entire party for a base damage of 3, and if you fail to block, inflicts Numb on all of them. If we'd failed the block here, we'd immediately be facing down an attack from the second Madesphy, and then an attack from each of them next turn (all without the ability to block) before we'd get to take any actions. That'd be some serious damage even discounting the possibility of getting numbed again and extending the combo.

This is the reason I went out of my way to equip a bug with two copies of

Numb Resistance, and I think it's generally a good idea here even if you're confident in your blocking. Having one bug immune to Numb puts a limit on how bad this can get, and eliminates the possibility you'll be facing a TPK out of nowhere if you miss the block. These enemies are seriously dangerous, so don't take them lightly.

The second one uses the roll attack instead, which is significantly less frightening (especially since I managed to Super Block again).

Now let's end this.

Kabbu's Under Strike is the perfect tool here, since it both pierces their defences and flips them to set up for the others.

One.

And two.

Let's move on.

First off, let's smash this boulder.

Unfortunately, we quickly find this is a dead end. We're going to need to find a way to move this crane, it seems. Let's look around a bit more?

We can get a better view from over here, but that's about it.

But if we cut these weeds...

We can expose this ramp leading down into the brambles.

Leif's Bubble Shield lets us cross and reach this switch. Will this do the trick?

There we go. Let's head back.

Well, the crane's gone, but it looks like we're not quite done. It hasn't opened a path, just exposed another switch we can hit.

Well, let's see what it does! Nothing visibly changes when you hit this, but it does make the sounds of a crane moving; let's have a look around.

If we return to this point, we'll find another crane has lowered and we can use it as a bridge to get across.

What's over here?

Well, enemies, to start with.

Here we've got a Leafbug Clubber backed up by an Archer. It's not the full complement, but this could still get dangerous quickly.

Let's start out by freezing the archer with Frigid Coffin. The Clubber will charge up once, but at least this will prevent the Archer from reacting when we start hitting its companion. This is usually a good tactic to keep in mind when fighting Leafbugs.

We'll get in the hits we can. It's not quite enough to kill; it could have been if we'd used a skill, but I'd rather conserve TP where I can.

This hurts, but it could have been much worse.

And now we have this one in the bag.

Kabbu finishes the Clubber right off.

And then we deal with the frozen Archer. Nothing to it.

We get the usual things for winning the fight. Before we move onward, let's check out that pile of boulders to the north.

We can smash it, of course...

Revealing a patch of dirt where we can dig.

Two levels of security; someone really didn't want us to have this Crystal Berry! Let's just take that.

It's worth making note of the wooden platform here. It looks like it might be an elevator, but there's no way to get it moving from this side; it'll probably be a shortcut we open later.

Let's head onward.

All the areas here have a very similar look to them; it would be pretty easy to lose your bearings and get lost, if the overall design were less linear.

Anyone else get flashbacks around so much water?

I didn't know the flood had been that traumatizing.

It's not just the flood. Let's add the lost years too.

Yikes... Let's just get outta here soon!

As usual, our team have a bit better vision than we do, and comment on things in the party banter before we've quite seen them. Looks like there's water ahead. (I do appreciate the way our characters will bring up things that happened before and how they feel about them.)

There are some weeds to cut down here, but there's nothing to be found in them.

Also, enemies. Yay.

Yet another new formation. Let's get rid of that Madesphy first, shall we?

This is new! On its turn, the Clubber powers up before attacking, giving itself one turn of Attack Up. They will always do this if they're alone.

Could be worse. (I barely noticed the boost, since more often than not these guys have charge-ups when they're hitting us.)

Leif's looking pretty injured here, but we can deal with this fine.

We'll freeze it to gain some breathing room.

Freeing up Vi to give Leif some Secret Stash healing.

And we'll have Chompy do nothing for now so it stays frozen.

It's trivial to finish things now.

Simple enough. Let's keep moving.

This weed has a Crunchy Leaf in it; we don't have the inventory space to keep it, so let's feed it to Leif and get him back to full HP.

Now for the watery part of this room. Let's cross this path of lily pads.

At the end of the path is this wooden plank.

Heading south along it, we reach this platform. It's a dead end, but there's a crank here: using the Beemerang on it will make the plank rotate.

Which means we need to hold the Beemerang on the crank and ride the spinning plank to the next series of lily pads.

On the far side, archers are waiting to ambush us again.

This one has a Flowerling with it. This fight's barely worth showing: we can eliminate the archer right off, which just leaves the Flowerling to attack us ineffectually for a turn before we kill it.

Sometimes you want to kill them first so they don't support the others, but if you kill everything else first they can't really do anything.

Let's move on.

Hmm. How can we get up there?

What's behind this plant?

When we go behind the plant, the camera automatically moves, to reveal yet another boulder. Let's smash it.

Hidden in the boulder is another crank we can spin. Is this connected to the elevator?

Yes it is! Let's get on, then release the Beemerang and ride it up.

There's nothing spectacular to see up here, just some weeds and a Wild Chomper hiding in them.

Let's deal with this.

Hmm. How to approach this? Wild Chompers are hardy enough that that Flowerling could prove to be a problem...

Let's have Leif Empower Kabbu.

Under Strike takes a big chunk out of this, nearly killing the first Chomper and the Flowerling.

Let's just finish those two off.

And Chompy does her best to hit the last one, though it'll probably just heal this back.

I'm not sure if I've shown this attack before. It can launch 2-3 Hard Seeds, which each hit for 4 base damage. That's pretty dangerous.

Now to deal with this last one.

Basic attacks aren't quite enough to take it down; I often find myself miscounting and ending up off by 1 against some of these enemies, which is a bit annoying.

It accomplishes more than I might have expected on its turn, spawning a mini Chomper to attack us as well.

Still, it's only delaying the inevitable; we can clean this up easily now.

Let's move along.

It dropped a Hard Seed also, but we don't have the room to keep it.

Now we can head back north.

Well, this room looks complicated!

Alright! Let's hop on the lilypads!

Hm? I thought you would hate the risk of falling into the water!

We do.

Just trying to make things fun...

Heh. It was a noble attempt, Vi, but I'm not sure lightening the mood is going to work right now.

Also, Venus is here.

This place is daunting, isn't it? I hope my help cheers you up a bit!

Heh, looks like Venus has noticed the mood too.

We'll take her up on the offer of healing, even if we don't need it that badly. Might as well, 5 berries is nothing to us.

Please come by again, I'm always up for a chat.

There's a Mantidfly on the other side; let's get rid of it.

It has a Wild Chomper with it.

Let's bring down the Mantidfly, and have Leif freeze the Chomper. From there, we can do enough damage to finish off the Mantidfly this turn with normal attacks.

And then it's a simple matter to clean up the frozen Chomper.

Now for this mess. Some of these lily pads are stationary, while others float back and forth on fixed paths.

Like this first one, which we can ride across to this platform.

There's a block we can move over here, but it's not enough to get us anywhere...

But if we smash the boulder, it turns out it's hiding a second one.

Now we can stack the two blocks, and build ourselves a makeshift staircase.

And that's enough to get us to the upper level.

Let's fight some Leafbugs! Will we finally get to see what the Ninjas can do?

Well, let's start off by putting Vi in front and having Leif Empower her.

A Hurricane Toss isn't quite enough to kill this Clubber in one attack, but it gets us quite close.

Then Kabbu can finish it off. The Ninja gets two charges, but at least doing it this way kept it from getting three. (Using setup to make fewer but harder-hitting attacks is another way to try to play around the Leafbugs' reaction.)

Now we can injure, but not kill, the Ninja. What's it going to do?

Well, this attack is fairly straightforward...

But this is different! Here's the shadow clone move. Leafbug Ninjas will do this at the end of their turn if they're alone, splitting into three.

So what does this mean for us, exactly? Well, let's try attacking them.

I guess that wasn't the real one? That one goes poof, but the others react to us hitting it just as if it were an actual Leafbug!

Looks like this one wasn't real either. Notably, Kabbu only did 2 damage when it had 3 HP, but that was still enough to make it go poof: the amount of damage doesn't matter, any hit to one of the incorrect clones is enough to make it vanish.

The bonus charges might be scary if it could survive long enough to attack again, but, well...

No.

That's that dealt with. At least we finally got to see some interesting behaviours from this enemy!

Anyway, there's a switch up here.

Hitting the switch causes this cage to sink under the water, freeing the trapped lily pad and enabling us to move forward.

Let's head back down.

Now we need to wait for the lily pad to come to us.

We can ride that over to the stationary ones here. There are two ways we could go here: there's a moving pad we can ride toward the north exit, and there's a path of stationary pads to the south. Let's head south first.

There's a buried item and a Madesphy on the platform over here. Let's get the enemy out of the way first.

It has a Leafbug Ninja with it. Every enemy formation we've seen in this update has been different! (It's not a big thing, this kind of variety doesn't necessarily matter as long as the battles are sufficiently interesting, but it's still nice when an area has enough enemy variety to support this.)

We'll get rid of the Madesphy first; let's start by flipping it.

Let's have Leif use Frigid Coffin for some extra damage; we can afford it TP-wise, and it'll make it easier to guarantee we get rid of this thing immediately.

There we go.

Chompy gets started on the Ninja.

The Ninja attacks Kabbu but doesn't accomplish very much.

Of course, it also follows up that attack by cloning, so this could get a little tricky.

Or... not. The fact that it didn't go poof when Kabbu hit it means the clone in front is the real one. Good going, Mr Ninja, excellent tactics there.

Interestingly, the fake clones' HP doesn't adjust when you damage the real one.

Anyway, we know which one's real, so let's finish it off.

The clones vanish when the real one dies, as you'd no doubt expect.

That was very silly.

Well, let's see what we got for doing this.

Not bad. These are always nice to have; let's see if we can make room.

We still had a Cooked Shroom lying around; we'll toss that. Simple enough.

And now back to the fork.

Let's ride this one over to the far side.

That's almost certainly a Ninja waiting there.

Yep. Of course.

But it's a silly one trying to fight us alone, so it's a foregone conclusion.

Let's just forget that happened and move along.

A quick bounce to the upper level...

And we have a path to the next area.

Hmm. Does this area look familiar at all? It's hard to see from this vantage...

But we've been here before. This is the room where we had to move the big cranes; we're just on the upper level now.

Flipping that switch turns on this elevator, which is now a convenient shortcut if we need to head back.

Also, this Wild Chomper is up here. Best be about dealing with that.

It has a Leafbug Clubber with it.

We'll go with the usual expedient of Vi stabbing the plant to death before we fight the Clubber. From there, it's just a typical Clubber fight, there's not much to see.

Let's just move along.

That's interesting. I don't think I knew they could drop these. That said, I don't have room to keep this, and I'm not at all bothered about leaving it behind.

Conveniently, there's a save crystal up here, so let's make this our stopping point for now. Next time, we'll continue exploring the Wild Swamplands, including a puzzle room I've been dreading trying to explain since the beginning of this LP. I'll see you then!

# ? Dec 30, 2021 05:20

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

This is getting interesting.

...would you say that puzzle room has been bugging you? :v:

# ? Dec 30, 2021 23:14

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

Alxprit posted:

A move is always stressful so don't blame yourself for the lacking of activity. We'll be here when you're ready to post the next thang.

Torrannor posted:

Don't worry about the update pace slowing down. Yes, I'm metaphorically at the edge of my seat, wanting to see what happens next. But your updates are always so great, you do such a fantastic job in showing of this game and it's story, each update is worth waiting for. Good luck with your move, we'll still be here when you update next

Just wanted to say I really appreciate the support and the patience. I've at least gotten through the move now, I'm hoping I can get back to a more regular updating schedule now but something else unexpected might still come along (sigh). It was harder than I expected to get back into the writing mindset after such a long interruption, and there's a lesson there too.

Torrannor posted:

I was without internet for a long times this month (internet providers ), and lacked any free time at all during the pre-Christmas crunch, so I missed the update. And it was a Kabbu heavy update at that! (FU Vodafone! )

So many things become clear now. Why Kabbu has always been so overprotective of his team. It even explains the strong reaction to meeting the other beetle, as the last beetles he saw before that one on Metal Island were likely his friend and his mentor before they died. And of course it all makes sense that Kabbu behaved so oddly the last few updates. That said, he hasn't stopped being shifty. That beast that killed his previous team, it's probably still in the Far Grasslands. Is Kabbu aiming for revenge??

I'm sorry to hear that (ugh, the holiday season sometimes), but regardless, I'm certainly glad to have you back! I always enjoy seeing your speculations.

Quackles posted:

This is getting interesting.

...would you say that puzzle room has been bugging you?

Haha. Oh dear. Yes, it certainly has.

It's not even necessarily that the puzzle itself is difficult (though I do think it's one of the less intuitive ones), but room is gigantic and its layout is intrinsic to the challenge it sets, so I'm probably going to need a carefully planned route and far too many screenshots in order to make it intelligible to someone who hasn't played the game. There are a few areas like this coming up, though this particular one's been on my mind since the beginning. We'll have to see how it goes.

# ? Jan 1, 2022 19:01

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# ? May 27, 2024 14:57

Explopyro: Mar 18, 2018

52: Too Angry to Die (Part 1)

Last time, we took a circuitous detour through the Wild Swamplands, and eventually reached this upper level. How close are we to finding Maki and getting out of here, anyway?

Let's head north.

Oof, this room. This room is huge, and complicated (there's a lot we can't see yet from this vantage point). Let's see what our party think first.

...We can't figure out what they were thinking.

Yeah. Why all this stuff? Just build a bridge!

Given what they did to us, maybe they just don't like bridges much?

Whatever. There's plenty of droplets and enemies around. Let's see if we can press all these buttons.

Let's not forget the suggestion to freeze enemies; that's going to be a very important hint for what to do around here. (Also, I am absolutely here for the bridge conversation, I love that the characters get to gripe about that.)

This archer is going to get in the way of our exploration, so let's deal with them first.