Before we begin: I never got a good picture of the path from the Medal King's realm to the cave with the Zenithian Armor. I've had some navigational troubles, doing this LP, but I'm pleased to say that I made this trip without incident.
Speaking of the Zenithian Armor, let's show it off a little. Here we have Jessica, clad in the finest armor mere mortals can produce. Here's what this world's divine beings can do:
...oh.
The Zenithian Armor is great, but yes, you can buy stuff that's better. Still, Jessica is the Chosen One, so she hands her old armor to Nara.
Last time, we came up with the idea of sneaking into the monsters' castle to get a read on their plans. Or, ok, a slime
gave us that idea, but the point is that we have it, we like it, and in order to execute we need to be able to disguise ourselves.
The Royal Crypt, pictured here, is said to contain the Staff of Transform. With it, we can take monstrous shapes for a while.
We've been here before, you may recall, but
this time we can get in.
Through the gap in the wall...
...and down the stairs.
The Royal Crypt uses the same trick to defend its treasures that the Sorrettans did - remember the Padequia Seed?
They up the dick factor right away by sending us sailing past a stairway we'll probably need, but ultimately it's no different, or worse, than anything we've seen before.
We're sent to a different stairway, so I suppose it's fine in the end.
The ensuing walking around introduces us to some fine new species of monster. Bebanbars throw Firebane, Hambalba paralyzes on attack, they're all jerks. But this is a frightfully powerful offensive party, so mostly nothing lives long enough to do its worst.
More forced movement.
Even more forced movement.
Though, ok, this does a lot to relieve the tedium. Metal Babbles are Metal Slimes on uppers: faster, more prone to run, and - in principle - worth more XP. They're hard to kill, but we're well-set up to try it: Alena in particular is a perfectly-tuned Metal Babble assassin, with two attacks and a phenomal chance of a one-shot critical kill.
The one in the screenshot got away, though.
Random blundering around brings us here. The Staff of Antimagic stops
everybody's spells, so it's strictly worse than the Sphere of Silence AFAIK.
More blundering around the Royal Crypt follows, but what the hell, this isn't a walkthrough. Let's skip straight to the meat:
Yeah, yeah, that's the stuff.
Learning from experience, because she's clearly not lethal enough.
(And everyone else leveled too, I guess)
Dragonits aren't very tough, but they have a strong fire-breathing attack.
When they all use it at once, this can happen. Jessica pulled it out, of course, but still.
More wandering around, some doubling back, a few Metal Babbles that got away, and then this:
Dire Palace time!
Only not quite. Now that we have a real party figured out there's a problem we really have to address before tackling Necrosaro's castle. We're officially in the world-saving tier at this point, our every action has global scope, and we really need four Chosen Ones firing on all cylinders at all times.
What we
have are three Chosen Ones and Taloon.
Don't get me wrong - Taloon is great. Just...not mechanically. His hit points are mediocre, and he's lucky to deal half the damage Alena can on any given turn. His special attacks do help, from a pure powergaming perspective they're fine action denial, but they don't close the gap. We're going to need more.
Luckily for our heroes, I know where to get it.
Zap is a high-damage single-attack spell for Jessica. We were going to learn it from our hometown's resident Friendly Old Man way back at the start of Chapter 5, but...yeah.
We start by visiting the one accessible town we've hitherto neglected, a small seaside village.
See?
Seaside village is quiet, sleepy little town. Here we have an old man, reminiscing about the past...
Wait, what? We're not familiar, so:
SPOILER: we'll be picking this up in a bit. It's a nice easy way to un-screw yourself if you get careless in a random encounter.
:This graveyard is submerged by water each night, like a man drowning in the sea.
I'm starting to rethink this whole "sleepy little town" thing.
Never mind, there we go. We'll be back, also at night, to see what his special shop sells.
: leaving the treasures they'd stolen deep behind a water cascade somewhere in this world....
: They say among the treasures was the ultimate weapon, the Metal Babble Sword.
This will bring Taloon up to par. All he was missing was prodigiously huge damage output.
Oh, ok. But we get no more clues as to where to find the foolish thing, so we're not really any better off than we started.
The item shop has a back door, so of course we drop in to visit. But are rebuffed, alas. We'll be back after dark.
:
If you know what I mean.Or, maybe we'll leave these two alone at night. That would also work.
Brey casts Day-Night, &c &c &c
NARA: Goodness. I wonder where the Stone of Drought is.
The game designers tricked us! There isn't really anything worth looking at in the Seaside Village at night; it's just a parade of excuses to get us in here when the tide's in so we'll spot the Stone of Dought.
So that's Phase 1. Phase 2: "find the cave where the pirates hid the Metal Babble Sword". We might add in Phase 2a, "find the cave where the pirates hid the Sandglass of Regression". It's not that useful in general, but it's nice to be able to recover from stupid accidents in random encounters, like that ugly near-miss with the Dragonits earlier.
You may have noticed this before: our map has a big black X on it. Like, the kind of X that marks the spot. When you're a pirate.
It seems like a good place to start. There's a problem though:
Whatever's in there is surrounded by a vast desert and a vaster mountain range. We can't even spot it with our magic third-persovision.
Even using the Magma Staff at the point of closest approach does nothing. If we want to get in there, we're gonna need to fly.
Here's how you
really find the Metal Babble Sword:
See the little black arrow on the right side of the map? We just off the shore of a coastline we haven't really explored.
Head inland...
And you'll find an obscure cave. No one knows it's here AFAIK; you just have to search the whole world. This is not as onerous as it might sound; we've visited most of the world already.
Welcome to the Cascade Cave.
Water is everywhere, and the walls are made of rippling waterfalls.
The monsters have an aquatic slant, but it's been years since they've seen a human and they're not filled with rage like so many of their kin.
They were even nice enough to give us their gold, presumably as an apology for the ambush.
One particular waterwall tile stands out. Use the Stone...
...and it'll soak up the whole waterfall, giving us a way in.
If you were expecting a separate long quest for the Sandglass of Regression, well, no, it's in the very next room.
Well said, Taloon. Well said.
The rest of the cave is straightforward: open spaces and the odd random encounter.
Do not ever use this. The Mask of Corruption grants 200 Defense, more than twice as much as the Metal Babble Armor, let alone any of the available helmets. But it also Confuses the wearer; your newly unkillable ally is working for Team Monster. Harsh, but if you equip something called the "Mask of Corruption" and don't even test it out in a safe area, then what happens next is entirely your fault.
Jessica gets the best healing spell before our alleged healer. When you're the Hero you're the best at everything, it's in the rules.
After some more walking:
Tada!
Taloon now hits harder than Jessica, and about as well as Alena. Mission accomplished.
Back to Riverton. We know Necrosaro's castle is somewhere on this island, but we've explored everything we can reach without finding it. To progress, we're going to have to cross that little strip of river, but how?
Next time on Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4: the answer.
Poll
Author
Topic: Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4! (Read 56409 times)