PROTIP: Don't give your cat to the cat-eating mad-man. Let's Play Phantasy Star!

You absolutely heartless monster.

Guns are usually the way to go, except for when they're not, and you should definitely look into that Noah guy-or-girl.

I feel like the game is non-linear to a point - there's a critical path but you're sort of left to pick up its pieces by yourself. It's interesting that my initial path through the game is so far more or less identical to Jbear's. I can't remember how that changes as you go.

I mean, not necessarily. It depends on how long you get tripped up by the SECRETS and the pet shop (since if you just go in once and try to buy Myau you might never realize that you don't have to pay the money). I'm critical pathing because I know better, but it's not unusual to get stuck for a while with solo Alis and wander around, which is still valuable because you learn more about the various caves and corners of the overworld that we haven't poked our head into yet, not to mention improving her gear and collecting MST, which we're pretty low on for this point in the game. That said, once you get Myau, it's a pretty straight shot to Odin.

Dracula has the right of it. There's a critical path, but the game is designed around the assumption that said path won't be obvious, and that the player will have to chase down clues and find it and stumble across other things as they do so (which is why I've been listing the clues and opening the floor to suggestions, in an attempt to preserve that experience). There are a couple of roadblocks that we haven't stumbled into because we haven't been poking our head into many places off of the critical path so far. That said, there is a reasonable amount of optional content. Given the current suggestions, we'll likely seem some of that next update.

Here's a quick rundown of our current gear options available in stores. Asterisks are prices. * is cheap, ** is expensive, *** is lolno. Pluses are relative to the character's current gear.

• Alis
  • Weapons:
    • Ceramic Sword** (+10)
  • Armour:
    • Light Suit* (+10)
    • Zircon Armour** (+25)
    • Diamond Armour*** (+??)
  • Shields:
    • Ceramic Shield** (+20)
• Myau
  • Armour:
    • Thick Fur* (+30)
• Odin
  • Weapons:
    • Needle Gun* (N/A)
    • Titanium Sword* (+11)
    • Ceramic Sword** (+21)
  • Armour:
    • Zircon Armour** (+10)
  • Shields:
    • Bronze Shield* (+8)
    • Iron Shield* (+15)

Buy the cheap armor for everyone (including the Iron Shield for Odin so he can be an Iron Seamstress Man). I have already voted regarding his primary weapon choice.

I want to vote about a backup melee weapon for Odin but I don't think I can do that without asking for some possible spoilery information.

Yes, that's right, there's actually important news about the original Phantasy Star in the year 2018, shortly after I started this Let's Play, so I am 100% claiming credit. Phantasy Star is coming to Switch! There aren't a lot of details yet, but a couple of features from the Sega Ages remake are cited, so I'm going to assume that that's the version we're getting until I hear otherwise, so I'm getting preemptively excited!

If we assume that this is the remake, then it adds a metric shit-ton of dialogue, new pretty artwork, variable walking speed, new items and equipment, integrated dungeon mapping, and a DQ-style party chat where your party will talk amongst themselves and drop hints about what to do next.

And even if it's not the remake, then it's still a new reissue of Phantasy Star with some modern quality-of-life improvements, and that's worth getting excited about! Especially if you're me! (Which I am!)

Hello there everyone, and welcome back to Let's Play Phantasy Star!

In our last update, we got a cat!!! Some other stuff happened too, I guess. We bought a road pass on the black market, and used it to access the spaceport. There, we obtained a passport and hopped on a spaceship to the desert planet Motavia, where we traded a rare pot for our new talking cat friend, Myau (get it?). Myau had some medicine that allowed us to cure Odin, who had been turned to stone fighting Medusa. The three of us used Odin's compass to enter the Eppi forest, where someone clued us in to the location of a dungeon key. Using the key, we were able to enter the tunnel leading to the Governor of Motavia, but a robot guard blocked the way, demanding tribute. We'd heard rumours that the Governor might be able to help us in our cause and has a sweet tooth, so we join our heroes as they begin preparing to explore a cave that supposedly has a cake shop in it???



Ya'll overwhelmingly voted in favour of the Needle Gun, so that's first on our shopping list for this session.



Odin's Attack stat says 33, which is actually higher than he had with the axe, but don't believe those lies. We'll see what he attack is actually like shortly.



Like say right now! On our way out of the village, we encounter these new friends in the Eppi forest.

These are Were Bats. They're essentially vampires. You all know what vampires are, and you all know what vampires do. Vampires in Phantasy Star are like any others, and attack, of course, by…

EPILEPSY WARNING!
EPILEPSY WARNING!

…rolling up into a ball and hopping up into the air? Sure, why not.

Anyway, let's shoot 'em!



So there's our new gun! 5 points of guaranteed fixed damage to every enemy in the battle. That might not seem like much, but it's already proving its worth here, even against only three targets. Were Bats have higher defense than most enemies that we've fought thus far, so Alis is only doing 5-10 damage per hit, and Myau is doing more like 2-4. We'd be in pretty dire straights without this gun!

Fast-forward several rounds, and we've got them on the ropes. Then this happens:



This is self-buff that a Were Bat can apply at any time at the cost of a single turn, and once they do, they start hitting much harder. We've been very fortunate that none of them used it until this point. If they'd started using it early, I would have fled. As it is:



Yes, that's over half of Myau's maximum HP in a single attack. We're not really ready to fight Were Bats yet.



That said, we fought these ones, and what a haul! The Eppi forest is a good grinding spot once you can reliably handle the encounters there.



A single step later (Alis dropped a couple of HEALs on Myau before moving) and we run into these guys, a slightly harder palette-swap of the Maneaters from last update. They're much more our speed, though, and go down pretty easily, leaving behind a nice 63 MST payday.



By the time we walk to Scion, we're already able to afford a Light Suit for Alis. Affordable new armour across the board was the next most popular vote, so this was the next piece of gear on the shopping list.



A minute or two of grinding later, and Odin gets another new toy, making him a defensive powerhouse. Here's a current stat summary.



Now that our shopping is done (I'm giving the Thick Fur a pass for now, since we had two votes explicitly against it versus two votes for it), it's time to go see what this cake shop business is all about. Onward!

We still don't know exactly where this Naula cave is-- only that it's on the north coast of Baya Malay. Let's try poking our head into this imposing structure first, to see if there's a path through?



We're immediately confronted with a mysterious door that refuses to open, and neither our dungeon key nor searching turn up any results.



So let's go around!



The narrow path continues to the north, wrapping around the mountains.



A new enemy approaches, and an intimidating-looking one at that!

EPILEPSY WARNING!
EPILEPSY WARNING!

The Evildead tries to suck the soul out of our cat, but goes down after only a couple of rounds.



The rewards are thoroughly disappointing. I bet the sequel/pseudo-remake will be better (and funnier).



Just a bit further and our destination comes into sight.



But not before a battle with four Gold Scorpions, which can apparently also be found here. They go down without much difficulty.



Alright, it's time for cake!



$&%#

I assure you, I'm not scripting these flashlight fuck-ups. I really am this forgetful. Sigh.



Hey, it's Destil! Yes, on the way back to town, we run into yet another new friend.

EPILEPSY WARNING!
EPILEPSY WARNING!

These spiders attack by shooting webbing at us, and it stings,as evidenced by Myau's precipitous drop in HP here.



It seems like our new friends are into S&M. They can do this on any turn, in place of their normal attack.



A tied-up character misses their turn, but has a reasonably good chance to free themselves each turn. It often only lasts for a single turn.



Like so!



Near the end of the fight, things are getting a bit dicey, as both Myau and Odin are tied up and Myau is a single hit from death.



Fortunately, the fight ends without incident. That said, I'm kind of over Myau taking 10-15 damage per hit when Alis and Odin are each taking 1-3.

I hear the shops on Motavia sell the best flashlights.



Yup, that's a quality FLASH alright. Well worth the trip.



I mean, as long as we're here...



Much better.



Once more, unto the breach!



Two steps later, this happens. WE HAVE A MAGIC CAT.



With his first spell comes 12 points of max MP, and I'd love to be able to show it off, so just one more trip back to town...



Alright, this is it. We're leaving town one last time, and if we don't come back with a cake in hand, we're not coming back at all.



So the narrow route around the mountains that we have to take to reach Naula cave involves walking on exactly two squares of coast tile at the corners, and wouldn't you know it, we found a fight there!



Since this is our first BEACH BATTLE, I decided to take a moment to show off the animated background! How neat is that? I had to take this shot during our attacks, since the party status panes block the lower quarter of the screen while we're entering commands.



Fishmen attack with their tongue! Ew. Fortunately for us, Odin dodges out of the way!

(The screen doesn't flash during a dodge, so no need for a spoiler-pop. Apparently all I need to do to get GIFs of enemy attacks without screen flash is have someone dodge! Easier said than done, unfortunately.)



Before our most recent round of level-ups and gear upgrades, this fight might well have killed us, but now Fishmen ain't no thang. They can barely scratch us, when they hit us at all. Notably, Odin's guaranteed 15 damage per turn is easily more than Alis and Myau's attacks combined.



Take that, Desmond!



Not a bad haul, either. Pay no attention to the floating treasure chest. >_>



Cake or bust!

Around the first bend, we immediately run into a locked door. Man, this cake shop really doesn't want our business, does it?



Just past the door are some stairs down. This is our first multi-floor dungeon. Exciting.



B2 immediately confronts us with a fork, and there are more forks visible down either side of this fork. The real Phantasy Star starts here.



A short while later, we find a Short Sword in a dead end. Yes, this was Alis' starting weapon. That said, we're actually going to hold on to this one, because reasons.



The encounters inside the are largely things that we've seen before.



...but not entirely! That said, I don't have much to say about these guys. They pay well (are you paying attention, so-called Gold Scorpions?), and are beefier than either of their cousins, but aren't much of a threat to us at this point.



More stairs.



B3 greets us with 4-way intersection. Fortunately, none of the paths are very long.



Really, Phantasy Star? So, it case it's not clear yet, this game kind of drops the ball with respect to dungeon loot. 90% of the fixed dungeon chests in this game contain useless crap. We'll still be collecting Colas and Short Swords right up until the end of the game, so get used to it! That said, this makes the occasional good chest all the sweeter.



Dive! Dive!



Heading straight on B4 takes us down a long passage, and a couple of turns later we come upon this very valuable chest that will serve as insurance against my next inevitable fuck up.



We haven't had to dip into our MP reserves yet, but it's starting to get risky. So let's take a look at our new CAT SPELL!



Wow! That's a much more potent boost than HEAL! CURE restores a massive 80 HP at the cost of 6 MP, which is currently half of Myau's pool. Not only is this four times as potent as HEAL's 20 HP for 2 MP, but it's also more efficient!

Note too that Alis was able to take all 80 points of healing, and is already knocking on 100 Max HP.



Spending the rest of Myau's MP and some of Alis' gets the rest of the party at or near Max (yes, Myau's HP is lagging behind; get used to it). Let's hope we're near the end, because we still need to climb out of this place!

As luck would have it, we find this door waiting around the very next corner! And what should await us inside, but...



A stupidly overpriced cake shop! 1000 MST!? That's two-thirds of a magic lamp! If this guy sells 15 cakes he could afford his own set of Diamond Armour!

That said, we can easily afford it. With the amount of money that encounters down here give, you'd have to actively work at it to not be able to swing 1000 MST.



This has better be damn good cake. Wait a minute, though. Something's not right...



He massively undercharged us! That cake only cost us 280 MST!

How does this guy make any money!? He has a cake shop at the bottom of a four-floor dungeon full of dangerous monsters, with a locked door at the entrance and a long walk to get here, and no one on the entire planet even knows that his shop exists! And anyone who does stumble their way down here has a 1000 MST price tag to balk at, but gets undercharged if they miraculously do decide to buy one anyway!

I have to assume that this is a bug. And it's a reproducible one at that, because...



He will gladly charge us for additional cakes without actually giving us any! And before anyone asks:



No, we can't actually eat the cake. Oh, and one last disappointment: the cake is one of the few items that does not have any associated art in the instruction manual.



Apparently the business model involves trapping folks down here with only cake to sustain them, because the door is locked again on our way out! The trip back to the surface is otherwise uneventful, and mercifully quick now that we can just take the shortest path back out.



Well, I've had enough disappointment for one day. Let's get the hell out of here!



The triumphant heroes finally return, cake in hand. I told you we would!

We've got a bit of extra money burning a hole in our pocket, so I decide to pick up this pricey Ceramic Shield, which is a massive upgrade over Alis' Leather Shield. She now has the highest Defense in the party by a fair margin.



We're off to see the Governor!



Before that, though, we have a trolly challenge to address:


As it turns out, with a full party with higher levels and better gear, a single Ant Lion is trivial.



The rewards, however, are paltry. It's almost like the game wants to disincentivize this!



More to the point, we're dumped back on the square that we left, regardless of whether we win or lose. Ant Lion the creature may now be a speed bump, but Ant Lion the terrain feature remains impassable.



You know what is passable, though?



Hey, give that back! ...He'd better not eat that on his own.



One short tunnel later and we're through! The Governor's mansion looks even more swank up close, but let's poke our heads into the other house here first.



It's another free source of healing. Score!

(When we sleep here, though, there's an odd thunking noise for some reason, instead of the usual pleasant jingle.)

Holy crap, this place looks even nicer inside.






Not only does he know where we can find Noah, but he's given us a letter of introduction!

(A quick aside about Noah and pronouns: As you'll soon see, Noah is rather androgynous, and this is the only time in-game that anyone uses a pronoun in reference to the character. It's generally considered to be a mistranslation, and the instruction booklet uses "he". I missed this in-game pronoun drop completely as a child and just referred to the character as "he", which I'll likely be doing in this LP as well, but I had a friend who always referred to Noah as she. What I'm saying is that we've got a real FF1 white mage situation here, so follow your heart.)



Me too, Governor! I'll be expecting cake!

You're welcome, by the way.



I mean, we literally just did, but sure, why not?



How... worryingly specific.



This seems fine.



The "SACCUBUS" attacks by flashing its eyes at us.



ohgodwhy



Our new friend here just depleted all 82 of Odin's HP in a single attack. I don't like our odds, so let's say "BYE" to this joker!



This just keeps getting better.



Alis managed to deal 3 points of damage before dying, so I'm calling this a moral victory.



YOU DON'T SAY?



So that happened. I guess that must have been an unwinnable fight, huh?

*Puts on a Youtube playlist of training montage songs*

Let's do this.

I guess 10 experience levels and a crate full of Diamond Armor and Ceramic gear must have fallen off the back of a truck. *cough*



Round 2. BRING IT.



Saccubus can't step to this.



The rewards are... underwhelming.

THE PRECEDING EVENTS WERE NOT CANON. WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED LET'S PLAY, ALREADY IN PROGRESS.

What a weird dream! Anyway, here's our letter of introduction. Alas, no artwork again.





There's a cute little message if you turn around and head back in to see the Governor.



Hey, I actually remembered to buy a thing! We're about to go on a bit of a hike, so we'll be wanting one of these to return to town afterwards. I also picked up a couple of emergency burgers.



Let's go meet an Esper!



The trail heads east and then quickly wraps back around the west.



Hey, remember those Jawa farmers that kicked our ass last update? Here's their stronger cousins, all named "Brian"! I kind of don't want to fight them, so let's try some diplomacy!





Awww, we made some squirrel buddies! Yes, we can avoid these difficult fights entirely with just a friendly hello. We'll definitely be taking advantage of this to conserve our resources for the dungeon ahead. That said, they do have neat little attack animation that I want to show off:



Pew-pew! (With every GIF I make, my powers grow.)



Next, the path snakes north-west, followed by a long straight shot to the west.



We run into another pack of Brians, and these ones are surprised that we can speak to each other at all. Me too!



Our next battle introduces us to a new foe: the Crawler.



Eugh. Crawlers are awful.



Fortunately, they die easily, and leave behind a nice chunk of change.



We finally come to the end of the straight stretch, and our destination comes into sight around the bend.



We stumble into one last new encounter on our way to the cave entrance, though. Again with the immediate palette swaps (I do prefer the colours on this one, though). Leeches are a little stiffer than their cousins, but nothing that we can't handle, especially solo like this.



Notably, they can do this, though, and that makes them potentially quite scary. That said, this one dies without incident, and leaves about 1.5 times the EXP and MST of the Crawler.

Leech, you shouldn't have!



I think you can all guess what FIRE does. TERR, on the other hand, is presumably short for Terror or Terrify, and is a great way to waste 2MP. We'll take a closer look at both spells later.



New cave tile! Might this portend a new dungeon colour as well?



Yup! One FLASH later, and we can see that this is similar to the Governor's tunnel, but with a pinkish/reddish tinge.



No sooner do the lights come on, though, as we're immediately attacked by a TARANTUL. I was going to demonstrate our new magic, but then I remembered that we still have old magic that I have yet to show off. Remember CHAT?



WE CAN TALK TO SPIDERS.



And this one has a surprisingly relevant tip! CHAT costs us 2 MP, and just like TALK, it ends the fight afterwards. For easy fights like this it's probably more resource-efficient to fight, but CHAT is absolutely worth it versus large or dangerous groups of foes.

This is what the townsfolk were referring to when they mentioned intelligent monsters having their own language. What monsters are "intelligent" is left up to the player to decide, but in general it's the ones that you'd think. Spiders are a bit of an outlier. (If this turns into a conversation about how smart spiders are, I swear to God I will cancel this LP. Keep it to yourself, or go put it in some awful bug thread where I can safely ignore it.)



Not every conversation is as illuminating. Monster dialogue pulls from a big pool of possible responses, and I'll try to remember to highlight new ones as we encounter them. A lot of them fall under the umbrella of general gameplay tips.

Have we seen E. Farmers yet? These guys fall somewhere in between the N. Farmers that kicked our ass last update and the BARBRIANS that we met earlier this update. It turns out that all of the enemies in that family can be TALKed to, so we'll likely be doing that going forward. In fact, between TALK and CHAT, we can handle a lot of this dungeon without ever swinging a sword!



This looks familiar. You remember that fork that we started in front of? Take either side and avoid any side passages and it turns out that the tunnel wraps around behind the entrance, taking us in a big circle. This definitely tripped me up as a kid!



Way ahead of you, buddy.



Further confounding matters, this inner loops connects in two places to yet another larger loop. It's loops within loops! If you don't realize that, then it's very easy to get lost in here.



Well, I mean, yeah. You want skyships for that. Anyway, it looks like this one might merit inclusion on the ol' hints list.



Sorry buddy, all I have on me is fast food. Do you want a BURGER?



We finally come across an enemy in this dungeon that resists our diplomatic efforts. Fortunately, it's just a slime palette swap, and doesn't put up much of a fight. Even Myau can almost one-shot a Red Slime on a high damage roll.



I... didn't know that they could do that. Anyway, we've already seen how slimes attack, but not with my new-found GIF-ing powers, so here:



Kind of makes me hungry for Jello.



We've finally managed to escape the endless loops and come across our first dead end.



It pays about as well as we've come to expect at this point.



Hey, it's another dead end! I wonder what's in this one?



GAH!

Yes, pit traps are a thing. This dungeon only has one, but we'll be seeing a lot more of them later. This one in particular is really easing us into things, as that's the stairs back up right in front of us. Needless to say, later traps won't be nearly so merciful.

That said, we're here to find someone, so going deeper is exactly what we want. Onward!



Behind us is a fork, and the first end of it we check leads immediately to an empty dead-end. Boo!



So... space?



Another group of slimes gives me a good opportunity to show off Alis' newest toy:



FIRE sends out a pair of randomly targeted bolts of fire for 7-11 damage each at a cost of 4 MP. They are capable of hitting different targets or the same target. 14-22 damage isn't nothing, especially against targets with high Defense, but we'll typically have better things to spend Alis' MP on.



A little bit late there, pal.



This floor, unlike the previous floor, seems to be mostly dead ends. I won't turn down free food and another shot of stupidity insurance, though!



This chest here, on the other hand, can fuck right off. Yes, even fixed chests can be trapped. This one contained a burger, at least, but that's not enough to offset the explosion damage, which was 22, 12, and 11 HP to Alis, Myau, and Odin, respectively. Which, incidentally, is enough to confirm a hypothesis that I had: chest explosions deal 1/3 of each character's current HP, rounded down.



Another Red Slime battle gives me a chance to show off TERR as well. I have no idea what, if anything, this accomplishes. It doesn't stop enemy attacks, since all 3 slimes still attacked this round, and if it lowered their attack strength, it didn't seem to do so appreciably.



Also, as the cherry on top, it often just fails outright. Enjoy that screenshot, as it is the last time that I'll be casting TERR for this LP.



We also can rarely encounter N. Farmers down here. These ones seem mad at us, but I have no idea why. We've stolen so many things! They're going to have to be much more specific. Note, however, that their anger is not so great that we're forced to fight.



A series of corridors and left turns eventually spiral inwards towards this imposing door. Have we reached our destination?



We did it! We found a jerk!



It's entirely possible to come meet Noah before getting this letter, and if you do, this cutscene doesn't trigger and you're shit outta luck.






Noah knows where the underground passage to the Gothic Forest is!



Noah, predictably, is at level 1. Still, he's got pretty good HP for level 1, and comes already knowing the Fire spell, which is good, because with 21 Attack he's not going to be able to do much with that cane. Speaking of that cane:



Upgrade as soon as possible, you say? Maybe we can do something about that...



Remember that Short Sword we found in Naula cave? Noah can equip it, for a whole 1 extra point of Attack! Hooray for tiny optimizations! (In the very next battle, Noah hit a Red Slime for 1 HP. Get used to seeing that number!)

On the way back out of the cave, our HP totals dip enough that we're forced to blow through all of Myau's MP on CUREs, and most of Alis' on HEAL as well.



Near the stairs back up to the first floor, we pause to appreciate this arbitrary section of wall. Let's just lean against it and...



A secret passage!

Yes, as that welcoming spider told us, there are secret passages in the dungeons. There aren't many, and they're typically not required for progression (exactly one is, but we'll get to that discussion much later), but they're there, and they're accessed by just trying to move through the dungeon wall as if it's not there. Most players will never find the majority of them, and will be just fine without.



That said, this one contains a tantalizing stairway to an entirely new floor.



Let's drop a safety save here, just in case.



After a few initial twists, we're met with a fork. I remain on the straight path, and turn left to find...



I AM A FAN OF THIS NEW FLOOR.



So far, this floor seems to have the same encounters as the previous two. This Farmer offers us some dubious advice.



The rest of the floor, which largely consists of a few long empty hallways, passes without incident, until finally we come to one last dead-end. I wonder what's down here.



ohgodwhy



The Red Dragon is an end-game quality foe. Even our power-leveled SACCUBUS party from earlier would have a difficult time taking this thing on. This dead-end exists only for parties that feel like committing suicide by dragon.



Alis is able to escape with Myau thanks to her BYE spell, but I don't feel like carting a couple of corpses back out of the dungeon, so we'll revert to our earlier save, grab the 2000 MST again, and then peace out.



Back on the 1st floor, we find this exciting chest that we missed when our explorations were interrupted by a pit trap. Otherwise, the trip back outside is uneventful, save for a few level-ups for Noah.



Daylight! We're in pretty bad shape to make the walk back, so let's take the express route!



And just like that, we're back in Paseo. Nifty! Now that we're out of danger, there's something very important that we need to do:



Full party parade! I love how Phantasy Star has your companions trail behind you. I adore these silly little walk cycles, and Myau's in particular. Look at the kitteh!



Thanks in large part to secret treasure, we have quite a bit of money burning a hole in our pockets, so I decide to splurge on a new Ceramic Sword for Alis and new suits of Zirconian Armour for both Alis and Odin. What I'd most like to do is shore up Noah's defense, but unfortunately we don't currently have access to any gear that he can equip.

Noah has given us our next major quest goal, but we have one more item on the viewer request list to hit up first: let's see what's in Iala cave, to the south-east of Scion! No one that we've spoken to has breathed a word about it other than to tell us that it's there.



Who the heck is locking up all of the caves around here anyway?

(Honestly, I think that this is just the game being kind. Keeping these dungeons all locked up means that unwary players can't stumble in too early.)



Most of the encounters down here are with enemies that we've already seen. That said, I can use my new-found GIF-ing powers to get cleaner GIFs of their attacks that won't require spoiler pops!



I'm legit considering collecting these for every enemy in the game and hosting a comprehensive gallery somewhere.



In a room just off the first hallway, we run into this disheveled fellow.





Charming. Maybe men haven't returned, but he didn't say anything about women! Let's go kick this room's ass! What could be so bad?



Oddly, on our way to this supposed death room, we find a chest just sitting in a corner, and even more oddly, it's not trapped!



Here goes nothing!



AHHHHHhhhhhhhhhh!

So, for anyone not counting, that was 3 pit traps in reasonably quick succession. It might have looked like I made some choices in there, but rest assured that we were surrounded by pit traps from the time we made that first plunge. We're now trapped at the bottom of this dungeon, and our mission is to escape alive!



We immediately turn around, and the dead end behind us gifts us with another COLA. At least we won't starve down here!



The next chest is not so kind.



Never say no to a FLASHlight. (Especially if you're me.)



So this is new.

As you might expect, Skeletons attack with the swords that they're holding.



These Skeletons are tougher than anything else in this dungeon by a fair margin, but it's nothing that we can't handle, especially with liberal application of Noah's FIRE spell. We did take a bit of a beating, though (especially Noah).



We got an Iron Fang for defeating the Skeletons!

...what the heck is an Iron Fang?



OH. An IRON FANG. Right. Let's try it on!



Ten points of attack might not seem like all that much, but much more important than that is that we now have a weapon-wielding cat.

So, as it turns out, the Iron Fang is the entire reason to come to Iala cave. Everything else is shitty loot, shittier traps, and entirely too many doors. Now we just need to find our way out of here.



Son of a--

So, yeah, you're going to want to take careful maps here, because the only thing that sucks more than falling in the same pits twice is doing it three times. All of the pits that we fell in on higher floors are still there waiting for us to find them from the other side, and the only way to find them is with our face. Enjoy doing every floor twice!



But what's this?



YES PLEASE, I'LL HAVE TWO.



So long, suckers! Yes, as you can see, the EXIT spell allows the party to instantly leave a dungeon, at the cost of 4 MP. Make sure to save the last of Noah's MP for emergencies!




That's probably a good place to call this update. Actually, one dungeon earlier probably would have been a better place, but I just can't put this game down! Judging by my screenshot count, each successive update is growing in size by about 20%!



Here's a look at our inventory too. We have so many BURGERS and COLA. At this rate, we're going to be able to open our own First Food franchise.



Here's where we'll pick things up next time, at the entrance to the spaceport sewers. If anyone has anything else they'd like me to do and/or buy, let me know!


Things that we know:

• Magical locks require magic to open.
• Laconia is the hardest, strongest metal, and makes bad-ass equipment.
• Medusa has a mystic axe.
• Lassic lives above the sky.
• There is a dangerous hill named Baya Malay to the north of Scion bordered by an imposing ziggurut to the south.
• There is an underground passage accessed from the manhole in the Palman spaceport that leads to the Gothic Forest, which is a forest to the west of Parolit. Long ago, a spaceship was built in Dr. Luveno's laboratory there, and Noah would like to pay him a visit.

Outstanding roadblocks/mysteries:

• It's not possible to pass through Ant Lions on foot.
• There's a mysterious locked door at the entrance to the ziggurat south of Baya Malay.
• There are places in the sky where even spaceships cannot go.
• Why the heck does Noah wants us to visit Dr. Luveno?

I love that the cake shop gets a callback in a PSO quest.

How does a TARANTUL living in a remote dungeon know anything about Lassic?

This guy is a real Dark Souls NPC.

Through the world wide web!

He's his former best buddy that was exiled due to minor ideological differences. It's a real Lenin-Trotsky situation.

There's one in PS4 as well!

But the most important part of this update is of course

CAT ARMOR CAT ARMOR CAT ARMOR

I'm under attack

Anyway let's see what Dracula thought about this part of the adventure in 2015:

I've since learned that nope, the cake is just a thing. Apparently I didn't notice the undercharge bug, either. And here's some further intel:

(via)

I'm not sure what to think of this answer. "There was a cake dungeon because women." Okay. Let's, uh, let's move on. Here's an illustration of the dungeon bakery.



More of Dracula's adventure:

"SACCUBUS" still makes me chuckle.

I guess I was confused about Noah's gender also.

Apparently I didn't try to converse with monsters until Noah was in our party, so I put a bit of RP in my write-up to explain why.

(The magic lamp plan did not work.)

I did!

...I think. Curiously, my map does not have the Iron Fang chest marked... I wonder if I missed it or made some kind of mapping error?

Map:

Hahahaha, turns out burying a source of unlimited energy is not a great idea for the long-term safety of your planet

What's there to follow? White Mage is a she. (Still not sure about Noah.)

So Lassic is also guilty of kink-shaming?

Something about the way the Skeleton drops its arm after attacking just makes it seem like it really isn't all that interested in attacking you.

The talk spell works on them...when do we learn the flirt spell