Last time on Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4, we touched down outside the most unreachable location in the entire world. The hope is that we'll find the Zenithian Sword there - that might not pan out, but there's a giant X at this spot on our treasure map so we're more-or-less guaranteed
something good.
Inside, it looks like we're surrounded by...
...yep. Welcome to Elfville, last bastion of Elven civilization. It's a nice isolated oasis in the middle of a blasted waste in the middle of a ring of uncrossable mountains. It seems like a reasonable choice just considering Rosa's experience with humanity, but in fact there's a bigger, better reason:
A giant tree in the middle of town, with a convenient entrance. Why a giant tree? A friendly fox (?) explains:
: Nice! But, er...what
is a world tree, exactly?
: She's not kidding. The dew that condenses on a world tree's leaves can heal any injury, and the leaves themselves can
raise the dead.
: And we have one right here, with more leaves than I can even count. If I could get just a few of these to Neta...
: Bad idea. World trees are self-aware; don't take anything from it unless it offers.
Yeah. Infinite free guaranteed in-battle resurrections would be super handy, but hey, we're just the Chosen Ones. The tree is all about life, sure, but it doesn't care so much
which life - Jessica's quest to defeat Necrosaro is not, from the tree's perspective, any more virtuous than Necrosaro's quest to destroy humanity.
: Which makes it sound kinda stupid, but hey - it's a tree. Trees do not understand proportionate response.
Oh well. A new town means new shops and a new chance to Talk To Everyone.
Ancient Elven Artifacts, here we come!
The Water Flying Clothes are the best light armor money can buy, suitable for squishy caster types like Mara and Brey. Nara can do better though, so never mind that. The real prize is the Shield of Strength.
...which Taloon can equip, I'd forgotten about that.
Delicious.
Before and after. He's now as well-defended as Jessica: a rotund, pyjama-clad tank.
Ragnar would still be better, mechanically speaking, but I have no regrets
We buy one for Jessica too, even though the Zenithian Shield is better. And we buy two more for Nara and Alena, even though neither of them can use it. Why?
We've seen that you can use items in battle, even if you can't equip them. The Ice Blade makes snowstorms, the Sphere of Silence blocks peoples' magic, and so forth. Those are all nice effects, but the SoS is the king: when used in battle, it casts Healmore on the holder.
Let that sink in for a sec. Dragon Quest 4 is all about resource management: the dungeon grinds you down bit by bit, and the real challenge is to survive long enough to do what you came for. If you run out of MP, you have to use Outside/Return to escape and restock. If you overextend yourself, as we've regrettably done a few times, you die.
But using items in battle costs no MP, ever, and the Shield of Strength can be used as many times as you like. If we use our new Shields judiciously, we will never run out of hit points again.
It's the "judiciously" part that's challenging. Jessica can do the long-range threat assessment necessary to use the Shield
before her life is in danger, because
we control her that's the kind of tactical acumen that comes with the Hero class. But the others can't; they'd rather attack than heal themselves, so they won't bother reaching into their packs until they're on the brink of death. At
that point, well, sometimes you're fast enough to use the shield before the Ryvern bites your arm off, and sometimes...you're not.
Hm. It might work better if I set their tactics to Defensive. I'll try that next time.
Anyway, that covers the Ancient Elven Artifacts part of the program. How about some Ancient Elven Wisdom?
: Yep, saw that coming. Anything else?
Not really "ancient" as such, but ok. Monsters in the tree, trapped civilian, time to hero. So who stays behind?
: Not it.
: Hm.
: This is what you get for traveling with the Chosen Ones instead of the Sane Ones.
Jessica settles the impending argument via Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Moe, and Alena has to stay behind.
: This is bullshit!
: We need someone to talk to the rest of the elves anyway. You've met elves before -
: Yeah, and I
robbed them!
: Even better; you can give back what you stole. We still have the Birdsong Nectar, right?
Indeed we do; the King of Santeem only needed a few drops to recover his voice, so we've just been hauling the rest of it around ever since.
Up into the tree-hole.
The tree's interior is pretty accommodating, with lots of wide open spaces and ladders for getting between levels. Probably the elves used to live inside it.
Before all the monsters showed up, I mean.
Though, honestly, compared to Esturk's palace the monsters here are not that bad. Red Cyclones can hit the whole party but don't generally live long enough to do it, and Green Dragons are basically the dragon half of a Dragon Rider. Sure, they're dangerous, but if you've killed Esturk you've got nothing to fear, even with just 3 people.
(There are Eigerhorns and Snowjives too. We've seen them before, they're dangerous but not unmanageable.)
On the higher levels of the tree, you can climb out onto the leaves and branches.
Game design tip: when you're introducing a new mechanic like "walking outside the dungeon proper onto a bunch of leaves", make sure you start with a tutorial or example that the player can't get wrong or ignore. Here the designers did that in three different ways:
1. There's no other path; you can't progress up the tree except by getting into the room to the left.
2. You can see the whole path on the screen, making it easy to figure out what you're supposed to do without risking a fall.
3. The path out of the room on the right starts with a solid-looking branch instead of the less-substantial leaves.
Once your players have mastered the basic principle you can introduce variations. For example, here the designers have combined their new mechanic with their classic "dickishly show the player a staircase they can
almost access but not quite" technique. Dicks.
Here's another way to get players to use your mechanics: tempt them with treasure.
The Staff of Healing is like the Shield of Strength, except you can use it to cast Healmore on anyone, not just yourself. So, basically, one of those Shields of Strength was a waste of money. Oops!
It's got the same basic problem as the Shield of Strength, though; the AI doesn't use it aggressively enough and then Nara dies.
With a little more doubling back we find that previously-inaccessible ladder...
Which leads us onto higher, thicker branches...
And then another ladder...
And then the heart of the world tree, with a winged woman at the apex. And what is the nature of her emergency?
: But was attacked by monsters.
: They broke my wings.
: Would you take me back to Zenithian Castle?
We get a Yes/No prompt. In theory we could answer No:
But of course we want to go there anyhow, so:
: To enter Zenithian Tower, you must be equipped with all the Zenithian weapons and armor.
: I feel it. The Zenithian Sword is hidden somewhere in this tree.
: Called it!
And so...
Meet Lucia.
Lucia's another Uncontrolled Character, like Hector or Healie. Not a Chosen One, in other words, just some random Zenithian (!?!). Basically she's a defensive caster type like Nara or Cristo; her Staff of Force gives her decent attack power, but each swing costs 3 MP so on balance I wish she'd left it at home. The huge quantities of MP ease the sting a bit, but you'd still rather have Alena, Mara, or even Cristo.
: So, what's Zenithia like?
: It's amazing...but.
: Amazing, but?
:
Don't say "it sure is", don't say "it sure is", don't say "it sure is"... : You'll see.
So the party sets out to search the Tree for the Zenithian Sword, and finds a chest literally 10 steps away. Could it be...
It is!
Pictured: the worst thing about having 3 party members. Lucia's too
lazy respectful of the Hero's perogatives to carry the sword for us, so I throw away an Antidote Herb.
Now, the Zenithian Sword is super-cool; forged by an ancient and semi-lost civilization, powered by heavenly magic, one of the keys necessary for a mere mortal to ascend to Zenithia, &c &c &c. However:
Here's the Sword of Miracles, which Jessica has been using for approximately ever.
Here's the Zenithian Sword, forged by an ancient etcetera. Notice how much lower its attack power is. You can have Taloon Appraise it, and:
...yeah.
And yeah.
Jessica has everything she came for, but at Taloon's prodding the party explores the rest of the World Tree. It refuses to give up any of its delicious auto-resurrect leaves, but eventually condescends to give us the dew
on one of those leaves.
: Which sounds terrible, but it's still the best healing item in the game! Thanks, World Tree!
(and no, Lucia's not that effective a fighter. Whatever, Healall, amirite?)
So: next stop, Zenithia. We have all the Zenithian equipment so in theory we should be able to walk right in, but first we have to get there. Lucia's directions are useless ("just keep flying up, far above the clouds, where your Balloon could never possibly function! What?"), but we can still get there easily. Why?
Because there's only one place in the entire world that we haven't already been.
Unprepossessing, I'll admit, but this ugly little scrap of land holds a secret. If you try to land on it:
...it swells to enormous size, and you're deposited on one corner of a folded-space land mass; like the TARDIS, but continent-sized, basically.
The Treasure Map has no idea what's going on. As far as it can tell, we've left the world altogether.
: Are we at least on the right track?
: Maybe? It took Zenithian magic to make this place, anyway.
: Good enough. Let's go.
Hello difficulty spike! The Hidden Continent has a whole new batch of monsters, all hellaciously dangerous. Wilymages hit the whole party for Ruler-of-Evil-level damage, Infernus Sentinel is an upgraded Beleth (fucking Beleths!), and Ferocials just do lots and lots of damage.
Infernus Sentinels absolutely will attack in groups. This pair was joined by an Ogre, which does crazy amounts of damage and is crazy hard to kill but at least isn't a third Infernus Sentinel.
Despite lots and lots of screens that looked like this, things never
quite degenerated to the point where we needed the TPK Recovery Mechanism. Oh well, it'll come up sooner or later.
At least they give good XP. Here's Jessica learning the game's best healing spell ("Healusall" is every bit as good as it sounds), Mara learning the game's best fire attack, Alena clocking another stupefying STrength increase, and Brey embarassing himself with a complete waste of MP. If you cast X-Ray while standing on a treasure chest, you'll find out whether or not it's a Mimic. Do not ever cast X-Ray.
The party travels east, upstream against a ridiculous tide of monsters, and finally finds a feature. Specifically, a cave that's completely walled off by mountains. K. More eastward progress ensues...
:
They're everywhere!
South past the mountains, we reach actual civilization!
: Though how they survive that withering gauntlet is beyond me.
Yeah. Considering that, you might expect this to be a monster town or a superhero town or something like that, but in fact it looks pretty ordinary. But looks can be deceiving:
: Woohoo!
Indeed, that's great for us, but:
: There's a formidably perilous cave on the west side of this island.
: On the west side of...
damn it we were just there!
: I like how you assume that "formidably perilous" means "we have to go there at once".
: She's not wrong.
Alas, the armor shop has nothing to offer us. Swordedge Armor has great defense, and injures monsters who attack you, but it's so heavy that only Ragnar and Jessica can use it. Ragnar is chilling in the wagon, and Jessica has the Zenithian Armor (which unlike the Zenithian Sword is really good).
: It's said only those who possess all of the Zenithian weapons and armor can enter....
The DW4 designers are vicious bastards of monster design, but when it comes to plot sequencing they're pretty merciful. There's a long obnoxious dungeon ahead, and not all of the Zenithian Things are on the critical quest path, so a careless player might wind up having to redo the whole thing.
: ...Necrosaro, right?
: That's really the best-case scenario.
Shit. This is new information; Necrosaro got the Secret of Evolution from Balzack (who stole it from Edgar, M/Nara's dad), but to
perfect it he needed the power of the Golden Bracelet.
: ...which he got as a ransom in exchange for someone
pretending to be the Princess of Santeem, way back in Chapter 2.
: We didn't know! We thought it was just shiny!
Well, be that as it may, if Necrosaro has it now then he'll use it on himself. Even the ordinary Secret of Evolution was strong enough to turn a wimp like Balzack into a formidable boss - what will it do to someone who's already dangerous?
...or he might test it on his numberless minions first, like a smart guy. In other words, the withering hell-gauntlet of monsters swarming around Gottside is new.
So what do we do? The Priest-King of Gottside looks like he might know...
: Fantastic. We're all prophecy girls here, except Taloon I guess, so lay it on us. What's the next step?
Shit.
It's tricky, telling a story about a Legendary Hero and her Companions Chosen By Prophecy, especially when, as here, the prophecy decrees that you're going to win. There are lots of ways around that, of course: you can just Prophecy a
fight without specifying a winner (e.g. Harry Potter), you can have really bad prophecies that the heroes have to figure out how to subvert somehow (Buffy did that a lot), you can have the conflict center on the hero's resistance to the prophecy itself (Doctor Strange)...there are lots of ways.
DW4 takes an unusual path: there's a Legendary Hero, sure, and there's a Prophecy too, but the prophecied conflict is only tangentially important to the story. Necrosaro spends 5 Chapters and ten years doing surprisingly well-motivated evil throughout the world; Esturk shows up midway through chapter 5 and dies without ever having had a single line of dialogue. And now, the Jessica/Necrosaro conflict doesn't have any prophetic mojo behind it. Jessica could lose, and the Chosen Ones can die.
Or, ok, not really, this is a video game after all and in a sense you know how it's going to end. But video game stories obey the same rules as normal stories; it's hard to engage your audience when there's no conflict.
Today's game of Talk To Everyone went to an unfortunate place, but we're not done yetl the round can still redeem itself.
Locked doors and old men; always a good start.
: More to the point, who's that in the cage?
: Great. Why is he in a cage?
: That's no cage, that's my bedroom!
: Why is your bedroom a...
: Ancient merchant ninja wisdom says:
never ask that question
: Or the world will be obliterated!
My favorite thing? He calls Jessica 'Jess', the affectionate diminuitive, like they know each other, even though in fact they totally do not. Why on Earth would he do that?
Well, that's what
I'm thinking, but Jessica's focused on the really great advice she's just received. We've heard a little about Master Dragon before - among other things, it's one of the names of God - and he's said to dwell "in the highest reaches of the sky". So, Zenithia. Do we just wander around until we find a giant ladder or what?
...huh, my giant ladder guess was actually pretty close. And since we didn't get any directions more precise than "somewhere", the wandering part was also spot-on. Super.
: So that "formidably perilous cave"
isn't the path to Zenithia!
:
WeirdGuess we'll start on the East side of the island.
But first, a well-deserved nap.
Next time on Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4: the Master Dragon
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