Before taking advantage of their free nap, Mara and Nara have a talk with the soldier at the inn:
: The new King of Keeleon has allied himself with the evil ones.
This guy, like most everyone else we've spoken to, has at best a vague idea of who the evil ones actually
are. He doesn't seem to know of any evil ones in particular, there's just an assumption that
someone must be behind all the recent monster activity and castle disappearance and what-have-you.
SPOILER ALERT: this assumption is essentially correct.
The following morning:
: Oh! You must be Edgar's daughters! You're back!
We've been gone a while. How long, you ask?
: The stray puppy Nara took in back then has grown up.
The writers could have just had this NPC say "Hey, Nara, wow, it's been 3 years since you left", but as we learned in chapter 3, everything's better with dogs. This particular dog is an expositional device rather than a fox-hunting hero, but that's fine; not everyone can be as awesome as Tov.
He's got a charm of his own, I think we can agree.
This dog does not defeat fox spirits or advance the plot or anything, he just follows you around at slightly slower than walking speed for as long as you remain within Kievs.
: ...kinda?
: On the one hand, I
really needed something deadlier than this Copper Sword...
: ...and on the other hand, there's this.
Home sweet home
To the left, you can see what I assume is Edgar's grave. Talk and Search don't affect it, though, so there's no way to be sure AFAICT.
We've paid our respects and learned everything we can. Time to head to Keeleon.
North of Kievs, we find the castle proper. Inside...
...we find a bunch of locked doors...
...and one lone guard who isn't letting anybody in.
M&N have no better luck opening the doors themselves. These are Magic Key doors, quite advanced, and utterly beyond our ability to bypass.
So, shit, now what? Our informants claimed that Balzak (or whoever) was running wild with feasts and mad experiments, but now everything's locked up tight. What happened, and how can we get around it?
To find those answers we head north to the port town of Haville.
Oh, right, this. I'd forgotten about this. North of Keeleon the *aras run into a large pack of slimes. Mara doesn't have her area-effect spell ye, but it's fine; they're just slimes, right?
They acted first, and started moving around.
Then they did this.
And then this happened.
The King Slime has over 100 hit points, can kill either sister with a single blow, and will heal himself in the unlikely event that you manage to endanger him. For the first time in this LP I use the 'run' command, and to my great good fortune, it works. Remember: the Sisters don't have the Iron Safe, or Tov to retrieve their beslimed corpses, either.
These are a little more reasonable. Tough, and they hit hard, but as long as you focus fire you can bring them down before they can cause too much trouble.
Despite these dangers, we survive to reach Haville.
...ships? Could it be?
...it sure
looks like...
It is! It may have taken four chapters and ten hours of playtime, but we've finally encountered a non-ludicrous form of water transport.
But what's this?
: It's very difficult to get boarding passes these days.
In between the feasts and mad experiments, the new king has found the time to put himself in charge of customs and immigration. If I were running a mad alchemical kingdom I wouldn't want my potential test subjects leaving all willy-nilly either, I guess.
Now that my aquatic curiosity is satisfied, I let Mara and Nara explore the rest of the town:
...or get sent to the Experiment Pits, presumably. Any serious despot is going to need way more than 3 jail cells.
: The gunpowder? I got it at Aktemto Mine when I was working there.
"Accidentally ignited gunpowder". Uh
huh. Sure.
He sticks to his story no matter how many times you talk to him, so we don't know whether it was an assassination attempt or a surprise party gone horribly wrong or what, but at least now we have a reasonable guess as to why Keeleon Castle is locked down.
: Who's she? Her name is Joy! Hee ha!
Maybe this is the missing guy from Kievs? That's pretty slimy if so, since it was his
wife who told us about it. Then again he laughs like a donkey braying, so maybe she won't miss him.
But ok, our situation is not great. We know
why we can't get into Keeleon Castle, maybe, but that knowledge isn't going to help us get
in. Temporarily stymied, the Sisters return to Kievs.
: Say, didn't Edgar have another pupil? Orin...that's his name, I think.
: He was terribly injured too. Where is he now?
Orin was also Edgar's apprentice, true, but everyone thought he'd died after Balzak's attack. What's
he been up to all this time?
: By the way, this is a secret....
: Orin, Edgar's other pupil, is hiding in the cave west of this village.
: Orin may know Balzak's whereabouts....
Whereabouts we have covered, probably, and in any case how could he have learned anything by hiding in a cave? Mara and Nara have been scouring the continent for over a year, and they only just recently found a solid lead.
The cave lies over the river...
...and through the woods.
Man, two bridges
and a ship, all in the same update. Clearly the people of this continent are the natural seafarers of DQ4.
In what is becoming a recurring theme for chapter 4, the Cave West of Kievs contains an abrupt difficulty spike. The monsters within are far harder than the monsters without, and what I'm presenting as a continuous narrative actually took, like, five trips.
These can spit balls of fire and heal themselves. Monster healing is great for Team Ara as long as we outnumber them; we hit them, they heal, we hit them again, repeat until they run out of MP and die.
Around Haville Xemimes like to appear in groups of four, a much more dangerous prospect.
These guys are old, but it's worth remembering that the unpleasant-looking fellow on the left can poison you. Nara hasn't picked up Antidote yet - I'm not sure when she gets it - so we have to dip into our sharply limited supply of antidote herbs.
I think we're supposed to interpret this as "a tiny face peering out from the cave wall" rather than "a floating mass of hair". Playing as a kid I always thought of these as hair monsters - I guess doing an LP can teach you new things even if you know the game well. Anyway, these have no gimmick as far as I know, they just hit you, get set on fire, and die. It's no way to live, but then again they don't live for very long. So there's that.
Having fought three enemy groups and taken maybe 20 steps into the dungeon, we meet a fellow adventurer:
: I've come from Monbaraba. I think you'd better give up.
: I just can't find a way downstairs.
This guy might lead you to expect another tricksy puzzle dungeon like we grew accustomed to last chapter. What sort of cunning riddle are M&N going to have to unravel?
Well, spoiler alert: they're going to have to stand on a tile. Later, they'll have to stand on another tile. And that's that. No moving walls, nothing fancy, just tiles. This gentleman can't solve the mystery because he never bothers to leave this tiny area of dungeon.
It's a shame there's no "dumbass" smilie. I picked 'embarrassed' because damn it, he
should be. Monbarabans are degenerates.
Using a daring and innovative strategy of "explore the whole dungeon level"...
...Mara and Nara soon find a forking path. The branch above leads to a Wing of Wyvern...
...while the fork to the right...
...leads to a mysterious tile on the floor. When you stand on it, this happens:
...while the screen shakes and a droning sound plays and the game just does everything in its power to make it obvious that you've just stepped on an elevator, ya moron.
In case you were still confused, the completely new surroundings outside the room should provide a clue.
Also, new monsters. Lava Dolls hit tolerably hard, but are vulnerable to Mara's fire spells. No, Lava Dolls do not resist fire in any way. In a level or two she'll learn Firebal, her group attack, and be able to wipe out whole swarms of them with one cast.
Across from the pond we find a second elevator, but if I learned anything from Daggerfall, it's to always, always,
always explore the current level before you take an elevator.
I ran out of Antidote Herbs a while ago, so Nara gets to suffer. Perhaps this will inspire her to figure out some kind of Antidote spell. Anyway, it's not
that bad; poison deals one damage per several steps and while that does add up eventually, it's manageable as long as you're willing to heal up from time to time.
Later, Mara learns Outside, which simplifies the hit & run style of dungeon adventure at the
exact moment at which Team Middle of the Alphabet becomes too powerful enough to need it.
Free hit points will go a long way toward soothing my annoyance. I'm going to try and hang on to these for chapter 5, though; it's not like it's far off.
The rest of the treasure is not as interesting.
Not pictured: a second elevator which we also leave alone for now.
Another old friend. You'd expect these to resist Blaze, but in practice it works perfectly. As a kid I thought this game had some kind of elemental resistance/vulnerability mechanic, but I'm really starting to wonder.
Out of things to do on this level, the party takes the first elevator...
...and emerges next to an underground pool.
What lies on the far side of that bridge?
Oh.
Magemonjas have lots of hit points, cast Icebolt, and would be adorable were it not for the creepy eyes. As with most things, the recommended remedy is fire.
Across the bridge we find a burly gentleman, and also...
...power over space and time. When used, the Lamp of Darkness turns day into night, which is pretty handy for getting into those nighttime eatery places that are everywhere in this kingdom. The name (and art) suggest that it works by pouring out a deep darkness that shrouds the entire earth, but that's pretty horrific when you think about it, so I'd rather look at it as a highly specialized temporal fast-forward button.
Regardless, it's awfully clever work by somebody. Speaking of that...
: Balzack allied himself with the evil ones and gained great magic powers.
: I'll accompany you. Let's go!
Meet Orin.
His character sheet says "Alchemist", but his stats and gear say "heavy combat specialist". He hits as hard as Nara crits, and compared to the Edgarsson sisters (that wasn't bad, I might go with that) he's immune to physical damage.
After all the averted tropes in chapters 2 and 3 this might seem like something of a letdown, and in terms of party roles perhaps it is: we've got a male tank type who stands in front and hits things, supported by two female magicians who die if you blow on them too hard. Now that they've got a big strong man is on their side, the two girls can finally achieve their dream of revenge.
But.
Orin was close to Edgar too. Not as close as a father and a daughter, maybe, but close enough. But he's not out looking for the guilty party, is he? He's hiding in a cave. Early on, he had the excuse that he was recovering the injuries Balzack inflicted on him, but
it's been three years; everything that was going to heal has healed. He's as ready as he's going to be, but that random prisoner from Haville has taken more revenge on Balzak than Orin has!
Orin's in hiding. There's no other word for it. He fought Balzack and he lost and he got hurt and his mentor died and
ever since he's been hiding from the world. The game doesn't make a big deal out of it, but by letting Orin join their quest for revenge, the Sisters are saving
him. Nothing less from the main characters
Also, Nara's gotten a lot better about the "dying if you blow on her too hard" thing; all that grinding really helped. Her sister...well...well. Anyway.
(Not pictured: the exhausted party warping out of the dungeon and back to Kievs for a nap, then delving down a few levels and through the other elevator to reach this entrance)
Nine frigging levels and Nara
still hasn't learned to cure poison. Make no mistake, if Cristo makes it into our chapter 5 party I'm going to bitch about him a
lot, but credit where it's due: he had this shit handled at level
3.
We now have the ability to shut down all of Mara and Nara's abilities whenever we want.
Fantastic.
No King Slimes this trip. Could we have handled one now that we've got Orin? I'm honestly not sure.
Between the grinding and the legitimate needs of the expedition, the party is positively awash in gp. The Haville Merchant's Association is well-equipped to solve that problem for us.
: I used to fight in the coliseum when I was young. I long for those days....
It will be a long time before we get any solid clues about where chapter 4 falls temporally in relation to the other 3. This guy is no help at all.
The Poison Needle has the worst Attack Power in the game, coming in at
0. But sometimes the enemies you prick with it just fall over dead, so there's that.
New monsters. Liclicks can paralyze you with their tongues, and somehow manage to creep me out a lot more than Troglodytes even though it's just a palette swap. Infurnus Beetles probably do something really dangerous and interesting, but they don't have very many hit points so I've never found out what.
Ok then. Meatshield acquired, gear purchased, XP ground, let's get back to Keeleon.
You may recall that we had no way past these doors last time, but Orin swears he can handle it. He
is an alchemist, so he can probably magic it open or melt the keyhole or something.
...or he could just
tear the door off its hinges. Sure.
Nobody raises a fuss, so we're free to wander around indoors. We heard enough in Haville to know that we're probably not just going to trip over Balzack in a bedroom someplace, but what we do find is really weird:
Here's a soldier, explaining to total strangers that he has no idea where to find his monarch.
Here's another soldier napping at his post. Actually it's worse than that - it's mostly obscured by the text box, but the south wall of the jail cell has a giant hole it. That old man can leave at any time.
Here we have a dickish magic user. Wizardry and assholery do traditionally go hand in hand, but the playable spellcasters in DQ4 all are pretty cool guys and girls, so this guy's attitude manages to be a little shocking.
: He'll run screaming into the king's room.
The male soldiers we've met have been kinda disoriented and incompetent, but the lady soldier manages to take things to the next level. At best you could call this a practical joke, but explodey practical jokes are generally best avoided when dealing with government officials. Even in medieval times, they took that sort of thing really seriously.
The grounds are nice, I'll give them that. Anyway, up the stairs we find another soldier:
: Some time ago, the man who made a big sound by the Counsel's room was thrown into jail in the port town.
: Where's the port town? It's on the shore north of this castle.
I can't tell if this guy is just sharing a bit of gossip, or passive-aggressively emulating the lady soldier from earlier. He goes out of his way to tell us how to find gunpowder guy, which is...something.
For balance, let me give you the opinion of someone who really likes the new Castle Keeleon and thinks everything is awesome as-is. Presumably she'll change her tune when Balzack's experiments give her five prehensile noses, but with luck we'll achieve our revenge before matters reach that stage.
Everybody wants to know where the King's room is. This guy, if I'm reading him right, thinks he can con us into doing the hard investigative/escaping parts. The galling thing is, he's right.
And here's the counsel everyone's so interested in. Not a welcoming sort of fellow, but then I don't like it when burly men burst into
my bedroom, either.
And then there's this guy. This guy is the best. Mostly he just wanders around the roof, but sometimes he lies down, like the effort of walking ten steps has just completely worn him out.
When questioned, he explains that he's trying to spy on the people below.
I took a screenshot, but it didn't make any sense as a static image so I'll just tell you: there's no visible way into this space. The area below here is just blank corridor.
So: the military forces of Keeleon are in total disarray following the coup. They're all lolling around demoralized, sleeping on duty, or flat-out advocating treason, while the new king lurks out of a sight in a secret room. We know where the secret room is, but not how to enter it. But the Counsel
does know, and will go there if we frighten him with tools we already know how to acquire.
Ok, so we now have a plan, of sorts. Get some gunpowder from the Aktemto mine, to detonate near the Counsel, them stealthily follow him into the secret room, defeat whatever guards and traps this highly secret room might contain, then assassinate the ruling king of Keeleon.
I won't lie to you guys; this is not a great plan. It's got tons of unknowns, and even Wile E. Coyote would say we were taking too much for granted in some of those middle steps. But it's what we've got.
Next time: the assault on Keeleon Castle. Also: sensible water transportation!
And one more thing:
Here's a special bonus for
bluerobin, and everyone else who's been waiting patiently for the character we named a month ago to actually appear in-game:
It's not plot-critical or anything, but there's a little shrine to the north and west of Keeleon. On the outside it looks quite humble.
But what's this?
I'll just let the old lady behind the desk do the talking:
A pretty weak-ass cameo, I know, but it's what we've got.
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Topic: Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4! (Read 56443 times)