perfect-corroscience

[perfect-corroscience]

Chapter 38: Animata Tears - “No matter how far you traveled, you couldn't escape senseless death.“

And guess who’s got some free time in... fucking forever? Geez. Maybe it’s a bit odd to be doing updates/walkthru-esque posts for a mobage that EoS’d, but still. Completing it is just principle.

38-1 Even the Animata was crying.

This chapter begins with a history lesson, of sorts. Or a recap.

The events of these last two screenshots can be seen in chapter 33.

The king of Oxsecia continued to long for

revenge on the Animata, the cause of

calamities which befell his planet and people.

 To that end, he was willing to sacrifice

even his own daughter. This spurred him on

further and further until he was spinning out of control.

 Those with unquenchable thirst for revenge

against the Animata in their hearts joined

forces and spent a numbing amount of time

wandering the dark universe, hunting down

and destroying every last Animata.

 Which brings us to the current day.

 You were riding on an Animata. Palpa and

Pepropé held hands together as it carried

them safely through space.

 Humans, Beastfolk, Lizardfolk, Stonefolk,

Wild Beast, Machine, Celestials...

Every race had come together to travel through space.

 They went to each of their home planets,

minds full of uncertainty about their

continued existence... Their hopes and

expectations for a new world began to

flicker and fade.

 Then, out of nowhere, one day...

The pain of loss struck them, and they

began to cry.

“Why are we all crying...?”

“I don't know... I'm just so sad... It feels

like my heart's been ripped to shreds...”

“I know what this is. This is goodbye...

to our lives...”

So, there’ll be a few new enemies to fight in this chapter.

The Animata’s sorrow and grief, physically manifested.

The AOE effect of the Sorrow’s Demoralize skill is perhaps a bit noteworthy. If you can’t, for whatever reason, kill it in one hit, then that’s something to be aware of?

The last battle has the story’s first instance of a kinetic trap, though they are present against some bosses like Shin’en and the Primordial Dragon King. These move around the field in a set pattern, and coming into contact with them while moving causes damage.

38-2 The Animata took control once again.

Overtaking the Animata, as well as

all those inside it, the grief turned to

thought... and began to control the Animata.

 Palpa and Pepropé were overcome

with an unimaginable heartache so

intense that they passed out... and

the Animata took control once again.

 I don’t exactly remember why, but I decided to bring in Rikken and a majority-Sword team. Anyway, there are four battles against Animata Sorrows and Tears.

38-3 It felt like all of time had melded together.

 I immediately fall back on my usual team, partly because of these new enemies.

Recalling the enemies from chapter 7 or some of the Hunting Zone enemies, Resilience means these enemies are less vulnerable to physical attacks than magical ones. In effect, this usually means they miss.

38-4 The hyperspace engulfed the Animata.

The hyperspace engulfed the Animata,

extending its feelers to ensnare her.

Pictured: Sayu carrying the rest of the party through this with her magic, since the waves of this part are five battles against Wigglers and Squirmers, as well as a boss with similar mechanics. You can clear this with only one mage, sure, but regardless a majority-physical team isn’t the greatest, for this reason.

So, let’s tackle this with a proper team, AKA one that is magic-heavy. The odd links in these are Zafitte^, who again is my healer (and also gets Levitate on everyone), while Andelucia is my mover, though she is a spellsword (or given her weapon, spellspear?) and can still hurt the enemies.

 Really, any mage with great AOE spells is excellent.

The boss, Quiverer, follows the same Resilience gimmick as the enemies before, but pincering is strongly discouraged by its 6x multiplier Counterattack.

Indirect damage is the way to go here – pincer the adds and damage Quiverer through ways such as splash damage from AOE spells, or Magic Bombs. Quiverer resummons adds, so there’s no concern over killing off the initial adds and making the fight harder for yourself. Finally, it has a 20% chance of dropping any of the four Helixes, so there’s another way of getting those.

38-5 You were struck with déjà vu.

In a change of pace, we move away from physical-evasive enemies onto fiery mages. Half of my party are Ice-users; in a cool change of pace, I’m bringing A’merpact and Gigojago, since at the time I was still leveling up Piz’fer.

A rust-colored planet loomed before you.

The Animata was delighted, as if she had

reached her destination.

 There was no telling whether this planet

could sustain life, and yet the Animata

brought you there.

 There, you found a society of living,

sentient boulders. It was a Golem planet.

Naturally, they were hostile to you.

 Like all sentient creatures, they had tribal

instinct which predisposed them very

negatively towards outsiders.

 You were struck with deja vu.

 “Hey... Isn't this kinda similar?”

“It's almost exactly like our world...”

“Maybe this planet is... on its way out...?”

Golem magicians! They’re of the same race as Iskar, Kir’ue, and so forth. They’re not too tough to fight, especially when pincering them vertically more often than not means you can avoid their attacks.

 The other notable enemy are the Golem Warriors, who only have that one attack. Thinking about it now, it sure is a nice thing that these guys never got added to the Pact of Fellowship to “clutter” it up.

The final fight has a kinetic trap (you can see it over Gigojago) here that moves in a fixed diagonal pattern.

38-6 The King of the Golems arrived.

There’s only one battle here, but it has a gimmick that can make it otherwise impossible to beat. Bring an adventurer who can use Ice attacks, or, if you’re somehow lacking in those (which you shouldn’t, because Leviathan is farmable), an Ice otomo.

There are four different enemies here: the Golem Magicians and Warriors seen before are back, but there are some Golem Sentries, as well as the boss, Jag.

Jag himself isn’t too bad...

...But the Golem Sentries can be quite annoying with their buffing the defenses of adjacent allies.

You’ll get this little message whenever Jag is hit by ice magic. Anyway, he’ll always take 2 turns to act, so that gives you time to clear out the Golem adds. Leviathan, Piz’fer, and A’merpact (and their recodes, but that’s a given) come in handy for their AOE attacks.

Gigojago is useful for doing some more ice damage, but for also generating Anti-Fire Capsules alongside Piz’fer and A’merpact.

Jag will say this once you’ve depleted his health, but this is where things can be a bit of a rude surprise: when reduced to 1 HP, if you don’t have any way of doing ice damage, he’ll keep on remaining at 1HP, effectively softlocking the fight.

I don’t know of a lot of scenarios where you wouldn’t want to bring at least one Ice mage along here – I guess I could see it happening if you run a solid all-physical team, or you brought along Lunar attackers instead.

But, all that aside, the crew manages to get through to him.

38-7 You stood at the door.

We move away from the Fire enemies to regular ones, so I went back to my mostly-physical party.

“I knew it. There’s an Animata on this planet.”

“That’s why our Animata brought us here, isn’t it?”

“That would explain the tears, right?”

“She wants us to… help her friend?”

“Do machines even feel sympathy? Well… I guess there was the whole thing with Proto…”

 The silence was suffocating. That suffocation led to anxiety, which led to chatter.

 And then you arrived at your destination. It was nostalgic.

 You were overcome with a longing for home. You stood at the door separating you from the room in which the life breeder lay dormant.

 “Do we need a key?”

“Last time, when Peprope was with us, the key he had transformed into a fearsome monster…”

“Really? How’d he open the door, then?”

“It takes spirit and determination to prove one’s right of passage. Maybe that thought is the key we need to open the door.”

  That monster up there moved to around where Olber^ was and used Breath Attack.

 Neither are too odd out of the ordinary, though they don’t particularly have any weaknesses or resistances to be aware of.

 The last stage is mostly notable for there being a kinetic trap.

38-8 This is the Maker…?

There are four battles, three of which are against the Harriers and Devourers.

The last battle introduces the boss, Reaver. It actually has quite a set of nasty skills, partly because of the range on them.

First order of things is, of course, taking out the adds. Reaver will go down its skills in order – so it’ll use Life Drain, Row and Absorb Skill Rate, Row. Then it’ll use Breath Attack and move. Then it will use Life Drain/Absorb Skill Rate, Cross.

 At times, you’ll see Reaver begin to glow. What you want to do is move any of your mages out of the pincers and/or their chains, because it will absorb magic, which just isn’t fun for anyone.

 And here’s Life Drain in effect. Everyone was at full health, by the by: according to the wiki, Life Drain has a 4x damage multiplier, so there you have it.

The cycle repeats itself, so as long as you keep an eye out on pincer positions and don’t blast it with magic during its absorption phase, you’ll be fine.

 38-9 It hasn’t… eaten anyone…

The life breeder in the core of your planet had been full of corpses.

 But this one was different.

 It hadn’t sacrificed a single life. To maintain the planet, it had consumed only “faith” in the purest sense. As for why… it probably had something to do with Jag’s royal leadership, among other things.

 But now it had reached its limit…

  We get introduced to a new enemy.

Demoralize - That’s it. That’s all it does.

The rest of the battles are just against these Wisprats and Devourers. Were these things just lying within the Animata, or the room beyond the door?

38-10 They were all crying.

The Animata had created the ideal utopia.

She wanted not to steal, but to create lives.

But ironically, this meant going against her true nature.

 The Animata consume life and sentience,

and thereby maintain the planets.

 This one was surely the only one who had

fought against her instincts. Jag felt it was

quite similar to a king who sacrificed his own

interests to the people's benefit.

The old Animata awoke.

But it was too late.

“We'll look after your children, Your Highness.”

“I see... I suppose there was no other way...”

“I have received all of the memories recorded by your Animata.”

“Memories...?”

“Yes. This was a truly wonderful planet, wasn't it?”

“But even the most wonderful planets have to meet their end someday... so long as Animata exist.”

“...Perhaps we need a new world.”

“A new world, huh...”

Those were the last words.

 The Old Animata shed all her tears, and her

heartbeat stopped.

There are four battles to go through; the first three are against varying groups of Wisprats, Devourers, and Harriers.

Interestingly, the storyline pretty much says that the entire time the party was fighting, the old Animata was, in a sense, awakening much like her peers had. The difference was that she was using her own emotions as fuel to make the journey.

Synergy Wave: inflicts 2x non-elemental and 2x character-weapon damage; 2x power knockback.

Synergy Wave!: inflicts 6x non-elemental and 6x character-weapon damage; 3x power knockback.

 So… I didn’t take many notes on this boss. It’s literally one of the few that I didn’t get anything detailed on, and the Terra Battle wiki only lists its skill data, in terms of boss-details. But I don’t really recall the boss being too tough…?

First order of business is killing the two Wisprats to open up some breathing space. I had the fortune of being positioned in a way that I could get the ball rolling the first turn with a triple pincer. Barrier makes the Synergy Wave a non-issue.

The kinetic trap might’ve been a hassle, though. It definitely floated around the general field.

It also resummons adds after a while. The damage was from Synergy Wave!, I believe.

But a few taps and pincers take it out in due time.

And so the old Animata’s story draws to a tragic close.

[perfect-corroscience]

Chapter 37: In Devil’s Grip

“An abyss which in our language is called shin’en.”

37-1 Raining down like a hailstorm.

This chapter throws Graviton enemies at you. Luckily, I was able to roll Iskar, an A-class Photon unit, when the Wild Beast adventurers got introduced. I know people at the time were pissed that there were lower class units (which would dilute the pool) but… look, not everyone would whale for the higher units nor has the patience to max SB/Luck everyone.

In lieu of not having A’misandra nor Amina, I maxed out the Whitewyrm Wand and stuck it on Zafitte^ to make her something of a healer. The otomo casts Tera Heal, chain; so with that and Giga Regen, my party won’t be hurting for healing.

Someone asked me if I’ll tackle the two Animata bosses. I did fight them, but I dunno if I’ll post up any updates about them. Probably not.

It starts with a small number of these new enemies.

Pretty self-explanatory, I think.

I do like how you can see the two black Animatas in this stage’s background.

37-2 Scorching barrier stretched across the sky.

Nothing good, evidently. Anyway, in this stage twisters will spawn as you progress through it, starting with this one, adding one more as you move on,

and ending with four on the field.

37-3 A sharp gaze drilling into his back.

The whispering leader sensed a sharp gaze

drilling into his back. It was Pa'keppar.

 “Chief! How long do you plan to go on hiding here?!”

We’re introduced to some new enemies.

The Incapacitators, who only attack rows

...and Fragmentors, whose Powered Point Jammer skill will make the bar charge slower than normal for three turns.

37-4 Want us to stand back and do nothing?

A fallen Spirit with burned wings and

molten Negas lay in front of you.

 They sacrificed themselves to destroy

the barrier generator.

 “Why have you done this... for us?”

 No one could have known the answer.

All that remained was the path these

unexpected benefactors had given

their lives to clear for you.

 ---Audience room

 "While we're talking here, much blood may be

getting spilled, all for our sake! Chief, how can

you be so insensitive to their suffering?"

 "Thanks to their sacrifice, peace will be

brought to our lands, and we will be protected.

There is no better solution."

"You really think that?! You trust the word of

a devil who leaves death in her wake, and

want us to stand back and do nothing?"

 "Would you rather send our people to certain

death? I don't understand you, Pa'keppar!"

 "And these strangers who throw away their

lives for us, do they not matter to you?!"

Four of the five fights here are against the level 79 Incapacitators.

Finally, for the last floor, there is a stronger Incapacitator. Three rows! Golly!

37-5 Became tears that fell from his eyes.

It’s noble of them, but certainly foolhardy. Still, it’s good to know there are people who are behind the crew’s backs.

The fights here are against Incapacitators and Fragmentors.

37-6 Filled with the remnants of unconscious feelings…

And we meet, and get a name for, the second riftworlder.

There are only three battles, but there are a decent number of enemies. The twisters are more of an annoyance, but it’s still something to look out for.

Especially in cases like this.

Poor Bahl was on the verge of death when I cleared this part of the stage.

I guess if you’re not aware of the other floor positions or you like to clump your units together, the twisters could make moving them around a little annoying.

37-7 Come forth into this world!

“What did you create using the Animata?”

“Create?”

“Heheh... You don't know? I will show you.”

 The man cut off a cube of space and blew into it.

Smoke began to fill it, turning from grey

to purple, and then to green.

 “The life breeder hatched something interesting...”

 An awful sound, like scraping metal,

sounded. It echoed through the ground,

vibrating everything.

 “Come forth into this world!”

 The smoke-filled cube burst open, flesh

and mechanical parts combining into

some kind of bio-machine weapon.

Despite the story, we won’t see anything new in terms of enemies. Maybe it’s just to demonstrate that all the enemies the party’s been fighting were all Shin’en’s creations. Anyway, have a screenshot of Zafitte^’s Heigh-Ho attacks.

37-8 Horrified by how frozen solid she was.

Yeah, Mutoh is not a good person. This is of course meant to be tragic, but I feel it’d have a bit more of an oomph if we got to see what poor To’toa looked like.

The party, of course, has no idea that this is all happening. They’re still fighting off Incapacitators and Fragmentors.

37-9 I have a bad feeling about this.

---Battlefield

 "Now I must go. I want to get good

seats for the wonderful show!"

 The man disappeared. As if pulled by

a string, the remaining feathers flew

up and drifted back to the ground.

 "Where the hell did he go?"

 The battle ended suddenly.

“No! Don't do that!”

 The lizard chief never noticed that all his

actions played right into the demons' hands.

 Now, the planet's power which had long been

dormant would be unleashed.

 It came dancing down from the sky,

penetrated the ground and spread far and

wide, just as the demons wanted.

---Battlefield

 The ground shook with a rumble.

"What is it this time? This noise is horrific..."

 The ground split, and mystical light spilled

out from the chasm.

The light resonated with the two Animatas

sailing the skies in the distance.

 "I have a bad feeling about this."

So, 37-9 has only three battles, but the light mentioned in the pre-battle text isn’t just for fluff.

This line from, presumably, Mutoh, leads into a gimmick that this stage has. Every turn, the light mentioned earlier will blind the party and do 500 damage to them. It’s not too serious and can be healed off easily, but it’s something to be aware of, nonetheless.

Here’s a nice screenshot of what Graviton attacks look like, as well as the stage gimmick. Anyway, for the first two fights, it’s against the usual enemies.

And here is the boss of this part, Energos. Supergravity Breath is a 3x multiplier attack that also displaces your units, while Gravitonball is a 2x Graviton and weapon (staff) attack.

From my notes, Energos seems to consistently follow a pattern as such:

1. Supergravity Breath, Area (1) > Move

2. Supergravity Breath, Ring > summon reinforcements (2x Fragmentor lv 77) > Move

3. Supergravity Breath, Area 1 > Move

4. Repeat

Definitely make sure you clear out the adds as they come in, so you don’t get overwhelmed.

I believe that once you knock Energos’ health down to around 50ish%, it will start using Gravitonball, which will hit two of your units – for my run here, it started doing so at 99665/205790 HP. The wiki notes its skillset has stuff like Gravitonball (2), (3), etc. that seem to imply that as it gets weaker, Gravitonball will begin hitting more of your party until it’s attacking everyone.

Energos will continue to do its thing, by the way. But if you managed to wear it down to this point, you can finish it off. Of course, if you so wished (and had the units), you could use tap skills to one-shot it from full health.

37-10 Before you could answer, you were hit by an infernal heat wave.

So. Going into this, I have to admit I was a little worried because Iskar was my only Photon unit. But then RNGesus smiled upon me:

And I rolled her! So, not only is Sayu a great mage, but I think her character design is pretty great! (On the other hand, I don’t care for her recode’s art. It is obviously fanservice-y design, but I felt that it came at the cost of being creative.) When she was released, Sayu was actually one of my white whales for Terra Battle and I’m stoked that I managed to roll her.

I also managed to roll Kir’ue, an SS class unit who debuted same time as Iskar. The more the merrier, really! I won’t complain about having another person to cover Photon.

Some had wounds so grievous they were

unable to move at all.

 The harbinger of death shook the world,

settling down right in front of the you.

Its dark aura filled those who witnessed

it with fear.

 As you stopped to catch your breath,

you were just about to be assaulted by

yet another vicious heat wave when

someone called out...

 “Everyone, get back!”

 Hearing the voice, you jumped back and

dodged the heat beam by the smallest

of margins.

 “Pa'keppar, why are you here?!”

“I will explain later. For now, we must

stop that!”

For 37-10, you get a pretty interesting little mechanic here. This message pops up – in a display of unity for their fellows on this planet, any Lizardfolk units you have will have their attacking stats buffed by 1.3x, and their defensives buffed by 1.5x.

Compare S’naip^’s normal stats at level 90: 434 Attk, 245 MAttk, 291 Def, 254 MDef. It’s a pretty nifty buff, and it’s worth packing a Lizardfolk party, though as you can see I only brought S’naip along. This is partly because I didn’t really have a lot of good Lizardfolk units, and I felt Ma’curi might still be a bit fragile even with the buffs.

There are three battles; the first two are against the usual enemies. They aren’t too bad, but the twisters can be annoying if your units get knocked into them.

For the third battle, the boss is faced – Relic.

Relic follows a pattern, as well:

1. Supergravity Breath (SGB), 1 column > Move

2. Synergy Wave, 1 row > Move

3. Axionball > Move > Summons a Fragmentor

4. Repeat?

5. SGB, 1 column

6. Synergy Wave

While Relic won’t summon back the other adds, the Fragmentor’s Powered Point Jammer is annoying, so definitely kill them.

As you weaken Relic, it will add moves to its pattern.

7. SGB, Border - did this @ 205471/308420 HP

8. SGB, column

9. Synergy Wave

10. Energy Emission, All + Fragmentor summoned

Just keep at it and you’ll make it through.

  Their only consolation lay in the fact

that even after being toyed with by

malicious beings, Pa'keppar's group's

spirit wasn't broken.

 Although the two devils plaguing their

planet are not gone for good, for now

at least the Lizardfolk can enjoy a brief

respite from terror and strife.

 Pa'keppar spoke in a voice strong and

filled with resolve.

 “We will pull through. We will never

give in! And one day we will reclaim

our skies!”

 So what was the meaning of that encounter?

The lizard planet has a long and sordid history

of sacrificing lives and grudge-bearing, and

history likes to repeat itself.

 What was it all for?

 “If you find others in the same predicament

as ours, please help them like you helped us.”

 The only thing that can be said with any

certainty is that in this endless universe,

there are many other tribes and Animatas

that you have not yet come across.

So I had the feeling this is an in-story nod to the recoding mechanics. It’s just a little strange that it pops up now instead of earlier, given you get access to recoding as soon as you clear chapter 20. And prior to lambdas getting removed from the pool, you could roll them from the Pact of Truth... Oh well. With the threat to the Lizardfolk world beat back, so ends chapter 37. 

Next time: grief.

[perfect-corroscience]

Ch 36: Permeating Fear

“‘Trampling helpless creatures can hardly be called battle or strife. It is conquest, pure and simple – elegance without equal.’” 

(Okay. Time to update this.)

I wanted to start off by showing my roster of units 

and otomos, which I had at the time of this chapter. 

If a character has zero SB or perfectly even Luck, they were probably pulled using the free rolls. This is also why I’ve called this “casually playing terra battle”, because you can see that I haven’t done a lot to clear out the PoT.

It’s pretty funny to look back on this and see stuff like Puprope^, who I recoded because I’d rather not have her be a Z pull – now, there are no recodes in the Pact of Fate/Truth – or to not be able to pull the rest of the SS mages until recently. Removing recodes from the pool effectively killed my motivation to recode anyone nowadays; the recodes I do have all did a pretty good job at getting me through the story.

I didn’t have a lot of natural non-Pact of Fellowship Zs, but what I did have (Annu, mainly) were pretty useful! Still, I definitely had the feeling that I had better luck with the Companions of Truth at times...

 36-1 You never get a chance to complete the sentence.

Uh oh.

This time, the enemies are no longer the fair folk, but instead…

“Ciphers”, apparently. The Spear enemies are a little concerning, especially for Bahl^, but surprisingly I didn’t have an especially hard time handling them.

36-2 “Hm? Hey, To’toa’s gone!”

Another new foe.

Fun fact: the damage Olber^ and Bonna^ have? Turns out corner pincers proc Vertical Counter!

36-3 “We’ve just lost her signal. It’s gone.”

Are those pincers for hands? Someone thought, “Ah yes, I will create this strange creature and give it lobster claws for hands”…?

36-4 A desperate and bloody clash over To’toa is unfolding.

The turmoil outside the ship halts you in your tracks. The air rings with angry bellows, screams, the sound of something being crushed flat. Lizardfolk are dying all around you, struck down with faces frozen in terror and without time even for death throes. A desperate and bloody clash over To'toa is unfolding between the lizardfolk and the mysterious fiends. “They need backup! Let's move!" “Defend the lizardfolk! Get To'toa back!"

A new foe, who comes with another one of those new hazards: twisters (aka damage air)! Unless your unit has Twister Ward and/or Dispell Damage Air, moving over them inflicts physical damage. If your unit is levitating, then they take double damage.

wow look at this nerd

They pre-emptively spawn two twisters in the spaces adjacent to them. On the first turn, they’ll use Negate Circle > Shake Up > move, while summoning two new twisters. Next turn, they use Energy Emission. Shake Up is mainly the more irritating/possibly dangerous move as it can knock units into the twisters or another enemy’s range of attacks.

As mentioned, the damage from twisters is physical; it can make it a bit dangerous or unsafe to pincer the enemy depending on where its twisters are, but on the other hand, this can be mitigated with Olber^’s Physical Capsules. As a reference, without any capsules absorbed, Bonna was taking around 1500-1600 damage when moving over a twister, but ingesting some capsules brought the damage to a significantly more manageable 300-400.

36-5 “At least let us patch you up a little.”

              “I must… get home. If those invisible fiends attack, our land is…”

              “You’ll never make it that far in your condition!”

              “You expect me to stand silently by as our nation is attacked?” Pa’keppar demands, voice rising. “By the Maker, I’m begging you–”

              He breaks off as fresh blood gushes from his body.

                “…Let’s go. Take him along.”

              “But he’s in no condition to –”

              “His own life is the last thing on his mind right now. He wants to protect his home.”

              Pa’keppar smiles wordlessly, assent clear in his expression.

              A soft glow envelops him. The lizardman glances down in astonishment, finding several of his wounds healed.

              “What’s this?”

              “At least let us patch you up a little. We can’t have you slowing us down, after all.”

 I still maintain that it would’ve been nice to see Pa’keppar. Maybe even have him as an ally for this chapter. Something!

The battles include a mix of enemies. I guess just be aware of Negate Circle?

36-6 “Should you stray from my instructions…”

We’ll be seeing (in a manner of speaking) this mysterious woman. Suffice to say, she’s one unrepentant, sadistic bitch!

The battles have a nice mix of Ciphers to face.

36-7 “Wayfaring strangers, you will go, won’t you?”

           “Correct. An envoy from the black ships in the sky said they’ll leave us in peace if we turn the outsiders over. We will comply with that much.”

              “But they’ve fought alongside us to rescue Lady To’toa! They’re comrades!”

              “Then we must rely on their good offices once more and send them as arranged to ensure our continued security.”

              “Even if they go, we’ve no guarantee the enemy will really withdraw!”

              “If you know of a better way to save this country, do tell! Do you suggest we just keep fighting until one side or the other is wiped out!?”

                Turning, the lizardfolk chief addresses you in a ringing voice. His eyes betray something akin to fear in their depths.

              “Wayfaring strangers, you will go, won’t you? How you are connected to the black ships in the sky, I know not. But you’ve fought to save To’toa, and you’ve saved our countryman Pa’keppar. As a token of our esteem for your services, we will not drag you there by force. We ask instead that you go of your own volition, on your own two feet.”

                Your party sets off for the designated place.

It’s not really fair, of course – but the poor chief’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. Of course, our party isn’t malevolent. They wouldn’t doom a nation to save their own hides.

Seeing Alika there instead of Rikken as a bow user may raise some questions. The reason she’s there is solely for the chance of getting skill boosts.

36-8 Malevolence has alighted here.

So, technically a player could’ve seen Mutoh before – after chapter 34 is cleared, you’ll see one of two Animatas in the spacious overworld, one of which is hers – and you can battle/recruit her. 

Gameplay/story segregation aside, maybe it would’ve been better to introduce her and her partner after this chapter was done…?

3 battles here. The boss spawns, goes !!, and bumrushes the party to escape the field. Rude.

On the second floor, it spawns on the left side, does the same thing by rushing to the right.

It can be properly fought on the third floor, though it’s accompanied by quite a few twisters.

Its attack pattern is quite simple, and it never actually calls reinforcements: Thrust away + breath attack + move > repeat.

When at low HP, it’ll use its moves but also cast Buff Up repeatedly, which boosts its physical attack by 1.5x for 99 turns.

36-9 “Are you fighting out there? For our sake?”

              The lizardfolk capital...

From the windows, one can see light flashing over the outskirts of the city. Rumbling thunder follows, rolling across a landscape that seems frozen in place.

“Are you fighting out there? For our sake?”

Gazing out at the bleak landscape from an infirmary bed, Pa'keppar grinds his teeth in frustration.

Four battles, alternating between Negats and Negatons.

36-10 Struck by moonlight, they reflect it diffusely into a dazzling display.

              “So long as our home remains safe, so do brethren who can carry on even if we should fall. Pa'keppar will surely take up our legacy. Our spirit will live on.”

 Roused by this rallying cry, the lizardfolk erupt into a cheer.

Suddenly, particles of light begin drifting up from beneath the earth. Struck by moonlight, they reflect it diffusely into a dazzling display. And then...

 “Hey, I can see them. I can see them now!”

The elusive ciphers are now plainly visible to the naked eye.

This stage has 5 battles in it, and the first four are against the Ciphers.

And here’s the boss, who starts off right away by summoning twisters in the vertical pincer squares.

Its skillset pattern, as far as I was able to see:

1.      Thrust away, 2 outer columns > moves > spawn vertical twisters

2.      Shake up, All (doesn’t move)

3.      Thrust away, All > summon reinforcements (1 of each Cipher) > spawn horizontal twisters

4.      Thrust away, 2 outer columns

5.      Shake Up, All

It starts glowing at low HP, but hell if I know what it does. Beyond that, it wasn’t all that big a trouble, in all honesty.

Everyone is giddy at the prospect of impending victory. It lightens the swords they brandish and enhances the magic they wield. They fight nimbly, agilely, as though they've sprouted wings. Little do they know that this battle is but a prelude.

There are hundreds of them, thousands... No, perhaps even more than that. Monstrous fiends are appearing, their ranks growing every minute. Still, you must fight. The riftworlders, those demons from another dimension, will surely and utterly destroy this planet if left to their own devices. So fight you must. The fate of the lizardfolk home world depends on it.

Looks like the conflict is ramping up - and the crew has a name and face to one of the mysterious riftworlders...

[perfect-corroscience]

Hey, it’s that time of the year where I have some free time because classes are winding down and final exams are coming! Although... well... might actually have quite a bit of free time of my hands given current affairs....

Anyway.  There’s some final things to do.

This kid asks for a bunch of sweets; you’ll need to have at least one each of a Rare Candy, Soda Pop, Moomoo Milk, Lemonade, and Berry Juice. When you hand everything over to him, he’ll tell you this secret, which prompts the other E4 members to appear. This is one of those things, along with delivering Tea to that lady, that you’ll have to do in Alto Mare to prompt some changes.

I uh, had a lot of vitamins left over, and I was curious about stats, so I did a bit of EVing for STORM.

At level 100, Asphere attempts to learn its signature move. Icebolt Wave combines electricity and ice together; it also has an effect of either paralyzing, freezing, or burning the target at 10% odds. Supposedly the dev team didn’t remove the burn proc because they weren’t sure how to, but it still fits either way. Freezer burn and burns from being struck by lightning? That stuff’s no joke.

Incidentally, here are the other moves STORM learned. They’re not too bad.

Similarly to the trade of Hidden Island, someone will offer a shiny perfect IV Ditto in exchange for a Nostratos. Nifty.

Finally, a reason to shill my own playthroughs.

He’ll give this as a reward for doing so. I guess it has its uses?

The next step is chatting up Norman, Athena, and Phil. This and catching or beating Asphere will set a flag that lets you refight Gina, where she instead uses a souped up level 100 team.

And I’m going to flex this level 100 legendary doing so.

Gina has the moniker of “The Silver Witch”. It’s a pretty nice nickname.

The plan was Calm Minding with STORM, although Hantama hits quite hard. I decided it was better to attempt setting up on something else.

I had the chance to Calm Mind a couple more times against Snorlax, and from there it was off to the races.

Icebolt Wave’s animation uses Thunder and Sheer Cold together. It’s not overtly complex.

:D

Defeating Gina’s level 100 team and getting the Master Ball from Mosmero prompts the last major event. Bianca will be in the courtyard; talking to her prompts her to explain that she finished her painting, but she won’t show it to CELIA because it depicts her and it’s apparently “too embarrassing to show.” She’s working on another painting, but…

…she does have a letter!

Maybe a bit impromptu and sudden for an end, but hey. It’s short yet sweet, and to the point.

 Although, I have a planned title for this part, and it wouldn’t be fitting if this was all that’s in it. Fair warning, it’ll make for a bit of an abrupt conclusion.

I fiddled around with the encounter table at Sphere Ruins for this, both because I didn’t care much for grinding HOPE up and I wanted get a use out of Mosmero’s Master Ball.

So, Ordina, or Aldina as she’s known now. Her final learnset is… a bit grim. Though you could argue that was the intention, given her sprite.

That said, the astute reader would have noticed that in the Alto Mare update, I specifically did not show off her dex entry. Knowing it re-contextualizes a lot of little things that have been said throughout Altair/Sirius.

  …yup. Yup.

[perfect-corroscience]

Sphere Ruins pt 2

To visit the second half of Sphere Ruins, we drop by this hole. The house it’s in has a sign outside helpfully warning you that there’re open holes too. Bring a Pokemon with Rock Smash or Dig.

Follow the path through to get here; helpfully, you can also climb back up to leave the area.

You’ll wind up in a room with dark walls; if you interact in certain areas you’ll be prompted to use Dig.

But Rock Smash does the job just fine. Puzzles aside, I’m reminded of the fact that Rock Smash let you break walls in the PMD games, and I wonder if the devs had that in mind.

The gimmick of this room is that you basically go in totally random directions when interacting with any rock. Just keep at it and you’ll eventually get to the other side.

The braille reads “JEWELS”; this indicates the ruby/sapphire, which need to be set, otherwise reading the braille does nothing. Dr. Akimbo notes that the flag isn’t permanent and may reset upon saving/loading, so if that happens you can just read the braille here again.

The braille reads “DREAMS”. You need to have read the previous braille so a rock blocking the way to this wall will be removed.

Reading the previous braille opens up access to this ladder.

“PO”

Reading the last sign opens up a hole, and following the path after dropping down eventually leads here.

The ladder leads to an interesting room; at specific points in this room, you’ll get into a forced encounter with a specific Pokemon, all of whom are at level 100.

Catching or running from any of them will teleport you back to the start of the room. It’s not necessarily a bad place to nab some level 100 Pokemon if you really wanted, I guess. Still, to progress you do have to beat all the ‘mons you will run into.

Ouch. Speedy bastard.

While my team has EVs, the level disadvantage is a bit of a wrench in the works. Just a bit, though.

Magcargo is kind of an oddball out in that it and the next Pokemon aren’t fakemons. I wonder why?

As far as I’m aware, there’s no particular reasoning behind why each ‘mon was chosen. I dunno, maybe the devs all really like them!

At level 100, she’ll have Sheer Cold. That’s always fun!

I wish ASUKA could learn Dragon Claw :(

You’re in the home clear after beating Nostratos, and the doorway leads to the penultimate room of Sphere Ruins. The gimmick is that there’s only one correct direction, and going the wrong way just brings you back to the start of the room.

It’s really simple. Incidentally, that item ball below the ladder is the Hail TM.

And past that ladder… look who it is! Asphere, or Asufia (JP).

“…the way here.”

Something I noticed from checking Dr. Akimbo’s translation-walkthrough is that Asufia’s first few lines in Sirius comes off as slightly brusquer than in Altair (where its dialogue is, “…Oh, a human? Why have you come here?”).

It’s not too different, but it’s something interesting. It was probably also present in the original Japanese, too, wasn’t it?

The full power of Aquila in Altair.

And here’s the final challenge of Sphere Ruins: Asphere itself. In Sirius, Asphere is Electric/Dragon, has stats of 100/100/120/150/120/130, giving it a more defensive bent while still being speedy and capable of packing a punch. Those defenses are bolstered with it having Marvel Scale as an ability, too!

Its moveset comprises of Rain Dance/Thunder/Night Slash/Recover. Hypothetically, I suppose you could park a bulky Pokemon in front to stall out its attacks (Steelix, despite its godawful Special Defense, comes to mind for at least stalling out Thunder PP).

In lieu of that, LANZA did the job just fine.

What’s nifty is that Sacred Ash, which you may or may not be inclined to dump on your team.

While I would have preferred Calm or Bold, I don’t mind this as a nature. Not too shabby!

 Although, I wonder…

[perfect-corroscience]

Sphere Ruins pt 1

“WELCOME TO SPHERE CITY”… so, Sphere Ruins. It’s the last dungeon of the hack, and for anyone familiar with the Sphere Ruins of its sequel, they’d know that it can get quite complex. While there isn’t anything quite like the teleporting craters, there are still some interesting puzzles. To get the full experience, go look up an hour-long video of Deoxys’ battle theme while reading through these updates.

Mercifully you only need Rock Smash/Strength/Dig/Surf for this and you don’t need to bring Cut for a one-tile barricade. If you’re doing this all in one go, you’ll need the Acro Bike too. After pushing the boulder, you’ll be ‘stuck’ for a bit. Mash A until you can move again.

Lorenzo comes running after this, but since Bianca’s pals with CELIA and all, it’s totally fine.

Past these smashable rocks is a new area.

On the left, it reads “SAVE”; on the right, “LOAD”.

Let’s follow what it says.

You’ll notice that a staircase has appeared; in fact, if you look closely in the braille screenshots, you’d see there’d be no indication that they were there. This is because entering sets a flag; it’s temporary, so it resets when the game is reloaded, and the result: the staircase reappears. It’s one of the more interesting puzzles in A/S’s Sphere Ruins.

Pacing back and forth on this bridge is the most wholesome Machu you’ll ever see in your life. Also the most shonen hero-like.

That said, there’s a bit of a puzzle with this bridge. Certain spots will, if stepped on, teleport you back to the entrance of this area. You may need to wait for Machu to pass. Anyway, after crossing the bridge, head down to the ladder that’s there.

The next area features… moving boulders. God damn it. Rolling Stone, not just content with harassing Emiko, has transported itself into my other LPs :stare:

“UPPER LEFT DARK ROCK” is what the braille reads.

Past the rolling stones, you can see a dark rock just out of frame. It’s what the braille is referring to, but before heading over, we’ll be taking a brief detour – this just involves hopping the ledge and following the path to a ladder.

Who knows how Mosmero got here? Anyway, while the area is a dead end for now, we’ll be revisiting it shortly.

Heading back to the rolling stone room, the solution is to go to this rock here. There’s some braille past it reading “COUNTER CLOCKWISE SQUARE”; the solution is to go counter-clockwise around this rock, starting from the upper left (where Celia is facing).

A hole will open up just past the braille, dropping us back down the area with the braille Mosmero wrote over.

Despite its appearance, you can hop over the top here, letting you enter through the doorway. There’s a ladder, and this ruby just lying around.

Taking the ladder and following the path brings us here; if you hadn’t completed the counter-clockwise puzzle, there’d be a Strength boulder where Celia is standing. Solving the puzzle caused it to disappear into the ether, presumably to reappear in the sequel.

The ladder leads to a room with this alcove to slot our freshly obtained Macguffin into, though there are actually two indentations in the alcove.

Our next destination is past these rocks.

We find the Thief Sisters from Pokemon Heroes over here. See, that NPC’s dialogue was relevant!

They’re not happy that there’s some other explorer in the area, though.

The sisters fight one after the other. Seems I didn’t get a screencap of Oakley, but rest assured she has her own unique battle sprite too.

Annie’s team: Bakeko 75/Lapras 77/Persian 76/Grimdax 78/Scimitooth 80/Phenusc 79

Oakley: Cocrogue 75/Tyrannos 80/Pidgeot 79/Alakazam 76/Frozimono (A) 77/Gengar 78

Annie and Oakley leave, letting us continue on. Past the Strength boulder is a path that ends with the Sapphire being found, which, unsurprisingly, goes along with the Ruby.

Our next destination is through here.

The braille reads “FROM CRACK TO ROCK”, which is interesting.

This is a bit of an unintuitive puzzle. So the solution is as follows: Stand on the crack above CELIA in the leftmost screenshot, examine the rock,

…go step on the stairs, stand on the crack in the southern corner of the room, examine the rock, climb the stairs,

…stand on the third crack, then examine the rock twice.

The Strength boulder disappears, and past it is a new room where this is just sitting around. Yes you’ll need it.

I believe you can do this out of order, kinda? But it’s not a bad idea to backtrack to the alcove w/ the ruby in it and add the gems here.

The ladder in the room with the emerald leads here; right beside it is a braille wall that starts with this…

…and continues on, giving you directions to the puzzle. The full order of steps, from the start, is: Back-Left-Left-Forward-Right-Right-Right-Forward-Right-Right-Forward-Right-Forward-Right-Right.

Or, a bit more simplified: Back-Left2x-Forward-Right3x-Forward-Right2x-Forward-Right-Forward-Right2x.

The directions are from the PC’s perspective, with “back” meaning turn around.

The directions indicate the room that you need to go through; the first left is into this middle room (CELIA’s left, our right), and the second left is up, because from CELIA’s perspective, left is that room.

Forward is a bit weird, but I had no issues with just moving further in – then heading right for the next step.

Right, right,

forward, right,

right, forward,

right, forward

…and finally: right, right.

You’ll get this message when you’ve done the puzzle correctly. It’s a bit of a doozy because you have to go based on the character’s direction/perspective, and not the player’s. The braille doesn’t really tell you it’s from your character’s POV, so I can see people getting tripped up at first.

That said, you can’t continue onwards, so it’s time to head out.

Heading back to the entrance, there’ll now be a hole here that we can drop down.

Multiple holes, actually.

Along the way we can visit the part of the room that was blocked off by Strength boulders by crossing a bunch of Acro Scooter rocks. We’ll need this for something in Alto Mare.

You’ll eventually get here, after a brief surfing area. Doing this sets up the second part of Sphere Ruins, which is what’ll be in the next part.

[perfect-corroscience]

Top 5 main final fantasies?

full disclosure: played 12 but never beat it, never played 11/14/15 but know a little about them

1. final fantasy 6

2. final fantasy 9

3. final fantasy 5

4. final fantasy 8

5. final fantasy 7

[perfect-corroscience]

If you dont update with another 7SU update do we just assume rolling stone came into the real world and got you

[perfect-corroscience]

What started the monk belmont jokes ppl made in chats last summer?

i had a fjf team with monk and beastmaster, and i gave my monks equip whips so they could do some actual damage 

someone asked if this meant bartz was a belmont, i replied “oh yeah definitely, gonna draw a crappy doodle of him wearing a monk-stylized version of richter’s outfit” and that started a running joke 

it’s nothing new, but hey, the beastmaster/equip whips does lend itself towards castlevania jokes/refs

[perfect-corroscience]

so i found a touhou-based rom hack for ff5 and from what i’ve seen, the jobs all correlate to a certain character, but i am having trouble trying to pinpoint who the white mage role is meant to represent

i was thinking Byakuren? She’s the only one who would fit going by the colour scheme/the cape and i’m not sure who else fits.

[perfect-corroscience]

The Big Alto Mare Update

Alto Mare is an incredibly expansive place, with a lot of things to do. For reference, I finished playing Sirius back in August, and I have over 800 screenshots for it! Here’s a bit of BGM for the area.

The devs really like their Pokemon movies; much like Shamouti and New Island in the sequel, this entire area is a love letter to Pokemon Heroes. Anyway, Bianca asks us to head over to her house later as she has a favor to ask of us.

“…small, injured Pokemon here.” She tells us the Pokemon is at Bianca’s home.

The department store is pretty awesome as they have all these TMS on sale! It’s quite nice.

This kid is pretty important, so keep him in mind.

This guy entrusts you with delivering some tea to a lady elsewhere in the city. This is also important.

This guy functions simulator to the egg-hatching incubators in Touhoumon games. It comes late, but it’s still nifty.

Interestingly, Alto Mare has a gym, and May and Brendan are here! Gina – who will be familiar to people familiar with Pokemon Vega – is the leader.

The elaborate building here has a Mirage Field that lets you battle a small selection of level 60 Pokemon. It’s a way to grind, I guess, or catch some new Pokemon if you wanted.

While crossing here, you’ll catch a glimpse of the Latis. The guy over there will talk a bit about them.

I’m sure this won’t come up later!

Here’s the lady you give the tea too. Yes, it’s important!

A cool thing is that there’s a building where you can sit in and listen to all the gym leaders hold discussions over varying things. This discussion is about the status of Alto Mare’s gym, and whether it should be recognized as an official gym or not.

For 500P, you can eat a meal here to gain a Moomoo Milk. It’s an interesting way of getting one, and we’ll need it.

“…there used to be a house where a little girl lived, but… I wonder what happened to her?”

Hmm.

This guy will give you a Rare Candy for 10 Nuggets. If you’re really patient, you could grind Nuggets from in the area and exchange them for Rare Candies. If you don’t have any left, you’ll want at least one for the kid who wants sweets.

There are other uses for them, though: this guy can tutor these rather useful moves to your Pokemon in exchange for three Rare Candies.

A couple buildings in Alto Mare have non-visible side entrances. Anyway, a chat with Bianca has her inform us that there are some sparkling stones around Alto Mare, and she wants you to collect them.

There are 34 of them in total scattered all over the city.

The fetch quest will take you all over Alto Mare. For what it’s worth, though, you can start collecting them as soon as you enter Alto Mare.

The Pidgeotto runs as you get close, so it starts up a little mini-game of sneaking up and cornering it; it’ll give you a Nugget for your efforts, and you’ll get sent back to the Pokemon Centre afterwards.

In lieu of checking everything in every building, just look up a guide, I guess.

Self-explanatory. But what does Mosmero have to say?

…oh!

They’re generally all in these secret base accessories. Nice use of them though!

Also, the pretty stone is in that statue, but apparently the hack has a bug where interacting with it won’t actually give the “Found a pretty stone message!” However, if you collect the other stones, the story will progress without any issues.

Another movie cameo! Lorenzo warns you of the area here being unsafe due to there being holes.

They’re also outside, in some cases.

What a surprising reference!

The hole here drops you in Sphere Ruins! Lorewise, Alto Mare was built atop the ruins of the city. How does that correspond with the Sphere Ruins in Tohoak? Ah, that’s a story for another time.

Braille translations, from left to right:

“WELCOME TO SPHERE CITY. SPHERE CITY WILL COLLAPSE SOON. AT LEAST ASPHERE IS IN A SAFE PLACE.”

Following the path leads to a ladder that brings you back up here.

So, with a champion whose team ranges from 68-74, you get a fight with a team that’s 60 at best. Well, par the course for these hacks. (That KO’d mon was a Breloom)

And this should be the last pretty stone.

These are levels more similar to what you’d expect a post-champion team to have. Yeah, I’m underleveled!

If you’re playing as Gordon, then April will have a very similar team. She’ll have everything but the starter (obviously dependent on yours), Mismagius, and Politoed (depending on your starter). DrAkimbo’s translation/walkthrough (he chose the Grass starter) had her use Mismagius/Roserade/Fire starter; if you chose the Fire starter, then she’ll have Water starter/Dusclops/Bakeko; and if you chose the Water starter, then she’ll have Grass starter/Necroshia/Kapwondo.

Gordon’s team will be different too if you chose another starter; if you chose Grass, he’ll have the Fire starter/Dusclops/Breloom, and if you chose Fire, he’ll have the Water starter/Magcargo/Necroshia.

After the fight, your rival will tell you that there’s a legendary hidden somewhere in the city.

Bianca’s all happy to get the stones back, and this will open up another area in Alto Mare.

The gym opens up, and we can find Brendan and May inside. They’ll say Gina isn’t ready, and indeed, she isn’t. There’s a bit more we need to do.

This isn’t related to the Alto Mare quests, but this guy can be useful. Talking to him gives you the EV-raising vitamins.

This is the Secret Garden, described as “the sanctuary of Latias and Latios.”

Bianca will introduce you to the Latis and the Soul Dew, and helpfully informs you that you can battle them. The cute thing is that Bianca calls back to the events of her movie.

“…and candy. There are words inscribed on the base: to the brave Latios that saved Alto Mare.”

Speaking of callbacks, this is something I like a lot.

So whatever Lati you chose on the TV is honestly inferior to the ones you can catch here. In terms of fighting these two, they come with Recover but only know Psychic-type moves, so you can just park a Dark-type in front and lob balls.

The Gym is ready, so we’re able to fight through. Interestingly, Brendan and May are the gym trainers.

Hey, what happened to your shinies? Does he have a non-shiny version of his three ‘mons just sitting here for when he’s in Gina’s gym…?

Some trees here have switches that change their layout; there are three of them, and the goal is to pave the way to Gina’s room up there in the right.

May has a pretty varied team, too, as expected. I wonder if she has shinies of her own.

The puzzle isn’t too complex. You could easily trial-and-error it.

Wait no more!

It’s another retroactively familiar face! Gina, or Ginno in Japanese, serves as the leader of Alto Mare. Her team is different than what was seen in ornidl gets clubbed by moonrunes.

For starters, she’s specializing in a type. Having the Water starter is a bit of an oddball, but it’s not like the game has never thrown off-type wildcards at us before.

In lieu of a badge or TM, we instead get… Ordina?

‘Ordina: Wha…

Gina: Go with this kid! Go out and see the world more! Don’t you think it’s better than being cooped up in here?’

If you talk with Ordina beforehand, you’ll be told that “Ordina seems flustered.” I’m sure this didn’t help much. Gina makes a comment that Ordina is shy, and Celia is sent on her way.

Our next destination is the Secret Garden, where Ordina is hiding. Bring something with Surf as we’ll have to be doing some searching for her. (Yes, her.  I can finally stop conspicuously avoiding using pronouns for her! I’m planning to do a bit of a brief update regarding Ordina.)

This is a set spot, but when discovered, Ordina will teleport away to a different location. By the by, she’s also invisible, but you won’t be able to walk through her.

She can also hide in the same spot despite teleporting away, so that’s fun. There are eight other places where she can be hiding, roughly marked in black below:

You’re apparently supposed to find her a whopping twenty times before she’ll show up here (invisible, mind you), but I only had to find her about three times before she teleported here. I don’t know what happened – I did leave to get a mon with Surf, but I doubt that affected anything... unless it’s just you need to keep finding her until she decides to teleport up there?

So, Ordina.

This is a bit of a mean puzzle by the devs; she absolutely has to be caught to progress further in Alto Mare, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. Unless you knew what was coming up and have a ‘mon set up for this, you’re unlikely to have something that can weaken her as you’ll have a party of Pokemon vastly outleveling her. False Swipe won’t work normally as she’s a Ghost-type. She’s a legendary and has the typical legendary catch rate of 3! You could KO her or flee, but then you’d have to redo the hide-and-seek game.

So, what’s the answer to this?

Hope you didn’t use it earlier.

Ordina is much like Mew or Jirachi, etc. in that she’s a legendary with base 100 stats across the board.

Your rival will be here afterwards, and can be rematched. They’ll also let you know that Sphere Ruins is open, so that’s where we’ll be heading next.

[perfect-corroscience]

Chapter 35: Malevolence Alights

“…We just can’t get away from Animatas, can we.”

After I finished typing up everything for chapter 34, I took a look through the chapter 35 folder and either I really dropped the ball on getting screenshots, or I lost a lot of them in the timeframe between then, getting my laptop, and now. They only went up to 35-8 or so, and even then, there weren’t many screenshots. I took the liberty of replaying the chapter to get some proper screenshots, though I might add in what few I’d gotten before.

Still, without further ado, let’s get started.

35-1 “Let’s wager on their odds of surviving it.”

This chapter introduces some new music: A New Challenge. Terra Battle’s ost is great, and this is yet another good tune. I like it quite a bit.

Chapter 35 – and onwards – introduced some new mechanics in the game: floor traps! Chapter 35 will have these time traps; moving over one will reduce your movement time by a second; it’s not so bad if you’re speedy with your fingers and/or bring along someone with Control Time, but otherwise losing a second from the default move time (4s) can be a doozy if you need to make a lot of movements or if you like to be careful. 

Also, iirc a disabler won’t do anything about them. Kind of a bummer, but I get why.

The enemies are all these fey Spirits. I love the designs of this chapter’s enemies – not going to lie, they were a pretty good inspiration on how I picture a lot of fey charas in my works in terms of their garb – organic, plant/flower-y looking, that kind of stuff.

Unfortunately, the fey here are less the cute, happy, helpful kind and more of the beautiful-but-deadly fair folk as they are intent on murdering everyone. As you’ll see soon, they can be very good at doing that.

Boss music: The Dragon King’s Descent

Another good track, though of course is mainly “meant” for the three Dragon Kings. Alternatively, have one of the boss tracks from the dearly departed Terra Battle 2: Intimidation

The last battle includes some Leefas who’re a bit stronger than the other ones seen here, and also have more ranged attacks.

I guess now is a good time to say that physical attacks fare better here since the enemies have decent magic defense?

35-2 They were likewise linked, joining hands, heart, and soul.

            Palpa replies first.

           “I sense something like a pulse, a heartbeat, but…”

           Then Peprope interrupts, sensing approaching danger:

           “Something is surging up all around us. There’s nowhere to run!”

Welp.

There are Leefas, of course, but the second battle introduces a new faerie enemy.

She’s a bit annoying in that she can paralyze your party members! However, unlike some of the enemies pre-chapter 34 who could paralyze your units, this also does some damage. Luckily, it only lasts 3 turns, but… quite a few enemies will be able to induce the irritating status effects on your team. It’s a very good idea to bring someone who can cure it and/or otomos that can confer immunity/resistance.

35-3 You brace for impact as the ship hurtles towards a new planet…

We sure have a bad habit of crashing onto new planets.

The view of this new planet is quite pretty. Too bad we can’t admire it!

I guess this is something worth noting… I never actually got around to recoding anyone until after this chapter. That would definitely have made things easier, but except for one part of the chapter, I still did fairly well if you ask me. Suoh, Odin, and Bahl were definitely the heavy hitters of the team.  

35-4 Whoever or whatever it is, you’ll evidently be meeting soon.

I suppose the fey are unable to operate entrances. Doors?

This was a moment where I had a nice screenshot to nab of this new enemy using her skill.

Meet Falaan. She is terrible for this reason alone: she can petrify your units. Like with Naarfan, this also does damage, and it’s long-lasting. In tandem with Leefa, she can quickly become dangerous since the former’s Breath Attack can knock units in range of Falaan’s petrification– and bar some freak stroke of luck, nobody petrified is going to be surviving the twenty turns needed to break free.

I rarely bother with setting up for the next floor (I’d only do it for some bosses), but at times like this… it’s not a bad idea to.

35-5 “Why is this place so… familiar?”

           You reach the end of the path. A sprawling city stretches beyond.

Oh? Looks like that was convenient – we go searching for a homeworld and crash right onto one…

           A warning cry abruptly splits the air:

           “Enemy attack!!”

           The sonorous blast of a horn follows, rolling across the land in a resounding alarm and call to arms.

           From the city gates, armed lizardfolk spill out with weapons at the ready.

           And in the sky overhead, those all too familiar faeries are approaching…

  This is about the point in the chapter where not bringing a Remedy unit that can handle petrification is likely to end poorly.

It also doesn’t help when the first one to be petrified is your healer.

Petrified units can’t be displaced by movement or enemy attacks, so in a situation like this, it’s a tad awkward to navigate…

uh oh

Uh oh!

Uh oh!!

The last battle has a slightly stronger Falaan, but stats are whatever compared to the fact that she has another Petrifier skill with a larger range (she’ll alternate between the two). So, everything I said about Falaan earlier, about how she’s dangerous when with Leefa? Yeah.

I gave Suoh and Odin some otomos that give the chance of resisting Petrification and S/L’d to try and see if I could barely scrape by. They can generally take out a Leefa, but they’re still getting pelted with Breath Attacks and/or pincers. Without a healer, it’s tough going.

It’s a real bad time for everyone.

Let’s try this again, this time with someone who can nip the whole petrification thing in the bud.

Echo(^) is decent since she’s a free unit and gets Petrification Ward and Reanimation; she can also do some damage with her -moogle skills and can throw some regen onto the team. I took her in with a Healing Rod (Mega Heal, chain) for some additional healing and ran Petrification Ward/Reanimation/Mega Regen, all/Defense +10%, self as her four additional skills.

Bonna(^) and Zeera are also good choices to bring since they also get Reanimation and Petrification Ward. Bonna brings an area healing spell, her recode does that and becomes a decent Bow unit + mover, while Zeera had Heal, all and can chain Control Time onto other units. Zafitte^ is notable since she gets Ribbon as a skill and you can run Panacea on her.

Though, failing that, you could always bring someone with Panacea (re: Palpa, Gatz, non-recoded Zafitte) and stick a Golem’s Talisman/Buckler on them.

Rikken’s arrows sure are bright.

What’s that? Over half the team has turned to stone because Falaan just barely survived? It’s fine. We’ve got Echo.

35-6 “So the clan chief’s daughter is missing?”

Unlike most Remedy units (who generally can cure more than one status effect), Echo can only cure Petrification, so I swapped her out for Bonna.

           “So the clan’s chief’s daughter is missing?”

           “Aye,” Pa’keppar replies. “Lady To’toa is a real handful. No telling what trouble she’ll get into if we don’t bring her back soon.”

           As he speaks, Pa’keppar adjusts his arms and armor with a practiced hand, piece by piece.

           A scream shatters the air.

           “A girl’s voice! And it’s close!”

           “Lady To’toa!? Oh, no…”

           Looking grim, Pa’keppar sprints off in the direction of the voice.

Would be nice to see what Pa’keppar looked like.

35-7 “It’s the Maker’s heartbeat, I’m sure of it!”

“Everyone... Hurry back. Please...”

It's Pepropé. But his voice is strangely, terribly hoarse.

“Someone has...invaded...our conscious--”

His voice abruptly cuts out.

 “Sorry, Pa'keppar, we've got to run!”

“What? Where to?”

But your party has already raced off, leaving To'toa and Pa'keppar behind.

  I would have personally liked to see Pa’keppar and To’toa. I guess there isn’t much of a point in drawing them since they’re ultimately minor in the grand scheme of things, but still, it’d be nice, especially since this chapter and the next focus on the lizardfolk world. There was a missed opportunity, I think, to show things.

For instance, how about just now, where the lizardfolk in your party see those on the planet and see the similarities? Even if it’s just Ba’gunar, just draw some generic armed lizardfolk around him. Or put the C/D class recruitable lizardfolk guys there. Anything?

Another faerie, called Faeyu, is introduced.

I find she’s not so bad. Sure, she can nullify healing, but it’s only a problem if you let her and her brethren get a lot of attacks in.

35-8 “Beauty is often laced with poison.”

           The faeries have Animata surrounded.

“They're so cute on the outside, yet so bloody annoying...”

“Beauty is often laced with poison. Such is life.”

“Come on, move it! Take 'em down, every last one!”

A lot of time traps here in this stage.

The boss of 35-8 is Phaarz. She’s not too bad, actually, since she only has Breath Attack.

Each turn she’ll attack, summon a Faeyu, and move – she usually only goes towards the top left/bottom right spots and never actually touches the borders, so she’s not too difficult in that regard. Just be sure to mind the time traps and enemies.

She can drop a random Tear/Particle at 20% rates, but she can also drop a Pig Snout, also at 20% rates – needed to recode Suoh and Camellia – no such luck this time, though.

35-9 The faeries keep coming, wave after wave.

I’d bet money they’re swearing at everyone or yelling some variation of “DIE!”

Four battles against the faeries we’ve seen so far.

35-10 A new faerie descends, gaze burning with a cold and deadly wrath.

She’s kind of a leader/queen to the faeries, I suppose.

35-10 has three battles,

with the beautiful faerie leader/queen herself appearing on the last battle with some mooks.

Xaepha is immune to all magic, including non-elemental – with the sole exception of Graviton (irrelevant for me at the time since I didn’t have any Graviton units). She is, however, still vulnerable to physical attacks. That being said, she starts the battle immune to Graviton, and throughout the battle cycles through being immune to Graviton/weak to physical attacks, immune to physical attacks/weak to Graviton, weak to both, and so on.

She has quotes that telegraph it:

“The lizard’s tail is raised aloft” – weak to graviton, immune to physical

“The lizard’s tail drags along the ground” – weak to physical, immune to graviton

“Levitation and all resistances dispelled” – becomes weak to both

At around 70% HP, she’ll spawn Leefa and become weak to both.

At around 30% HP, she’ll again summon Leefa, and clue you in that she’s swapped phases with a quote: “Xaepha succumbs to her rage.”

The priority, of course, is getting rid of the faerie mobs, but especially Falaan. Mercifully, Xaepha will only summon reinforcements at certain points, and they’ll only be Leefas, but otherwise just uses Breath Attack/Knockback.

At this point, she’s not vulnerable to physical attacks – as shown by the 0s.

She starts glowing around the time she hits phase 3.

A good power point activated and double pincer is enough to take her out. Also, this is a good time to say that I really like Xaepha’s design. Really, this chapter’s enemy design was just great.

She can drop a Temporal Helix and/or a random Tear/Particle at 20% chance each. I’d say this was pretty lucky considering it wasn’t a 2x drop day nor did I have anyone with Treasure Hunter.

And on that concerning note, so ends chapter 35.

[perfect-corroscience]

Chapter 34: The Light of Devotion

“The seeds of that fate were sown here.”

Previously, a rebellion occurred. It was swiftly handled, but was a pyrrhic victory: Proto was damaged, the Oxsecians found selection was bias in favor of the royal family, despite (in some cases) their genes saying otherwise, and finally Oxsecia imploded. It was not a good day for anyone, really.

34-1 It had to live solely for its objective – as Proto had.

Whereas chapter 33 had Electric enemies, this chapter will have Ice enemies for most of it. This is a bad team to bring, for reasons that will become fairly clear.

Side note: this was done during a half-stamina event. It was originally 24 stamina, then a later update reduced it to 20.

           Though despairing, the Oxsecian king could not simply stand by while his people destroyed each other in a civil war.

           Animata was responsible for all of it. This tragedy started with her.

           It wasn’t the king alone. Rancor towards Animata was swelling among the people. The only way to cleanse it was to strike at the root.

           Options were few. They no longer even had a place to call home. He needed to take up the banner and lead the fight against her.

           The king’s hand rested on Proto’s remains.

           They needed a symbol. An unstoppable weapon that sought only bloodshed and destruction. It had to live solely for its objective – as Proto had.

           36AIS was sound asleep. Gazing at her peaceful face on a nearby monitor, the king declared his intentions aloud.

           “…We shall dispose of the unfit.”

           The hand gripping Proto’s remains trembled almost imperceptibly.

              That resolution went into effect almost immediately.

           Those branded unnecessary to the cause of the Oxsecian people frantically sought escape. Shunned and stigmatized by the public, they howled their resentment, raged, and desperately fought back.

           Ironically, they proved unfit in this, too. The royal forces crushed their resistance as easily as ants.

           The king saw their pain. But it only convinced him that these weak links were his people’s biggest obstacle to destroying Animata.

           Emotion often clouds judgement and vision, leading us off course.

           The Oxsecian ship, meanwhile, reached its destination. The unfit would be exiled here.

Welp.

Four battles, with ice enemies. Both are pretty annoying; the Ice Golem’s Blizzard attack hits everyone, and the Snow Spook’s Icy Counter hits fairly hard.

As shown.

The wiki claims the last battle has four of these guys at level 75, but my image order says they’re apparently level 78. I guess it’s not that big a difference either way.

Still, they can hurt, especially if you get multiple attacks hitting your team. I came into this last floor with everyone alive.

By the end, the team’s been halved. Amazora’s only alive because she has Anti-Ice Shield as a skill. Pretty sure this would’ve been a wipe if I didn’t have Gatz or Rikken on the team and instead went with frailer units.

34-2 You’ve been assigned to take them to the execution grounds.

Now this is a team that’s more suited for much of this chapter. It helped that I’d managed to yolo roll Koko and Lewto a while back. (This is not the first time I’ve gotten some useful units in this game from that…)

If I hadn’t rolled them, hard to say how I’d manage in all honesty. I never worked on getting Bahamut or his recode until chapter 40 because I just never had Piz’fer a lot of Ice units prepped and able to reliably clear Bahamut Ultra until recently, but he’s a fantastic free unit and really good for this chapter.

If I were diligent at the time in gathering the materials, I could have recoded Lewto and Koko, which would also make things easier. Still, even just having those two helped. Currently, you could probably field a team that’s either all-Fire or a mix of Fire and Solar units, something like  Bahamut^/Lewto^/flex/flex/flex/flex, and coast through much of this chapter.

They have execution grounds on the old hunting place… So what, does this entail leaving them to fend off wild animals? A nice place to sit and freeze to death?

Icebind is fun and familiar to anyone who has Leviathan^. It freezes anyone caught in the radius, preventing them from moving/acting, and works a lot like petrification in many JRPGs in that if they’re attacked (pincered, in this case), they shatter and die even if they would’ve normally survived the pincer.

The other, similar looking enemy is a Mini Frostshroom, which just has Glacier, Area (1).

Icebind can be cured with Panacea or blocked with a Dragon’s Badge/Amulet (Icebind Guard) or Dragon’s Talisman/Buckler (Icebind Ward), but those are CoT/F otomos. Easiest thing to do is just avoid being in range and pincer the mushroom horizontally.

34-3 “He needs someone who understands him.”

Another new stage, another new enemy. Are those little beady eyes? How cute!

Things sometimes got dicey for the team, but Sorman and Rikken are there to keep everyone’s health topped off.

34-4 A heavy thud shakes the area.

You can tell I covered this a long time ago since there’s no Solar/Lunar signs, stamina cost was 24, and co-op mode is still present. Anyway, I show this because there was a fatal error – namely, having units with odd levels for reasons you’ll see shortly.

You’d think, but even in real life, this is so rarely the case…

The boss of 34-4 is Layla. She’s not very nice and opens by confusing anyone who isn’t evenly leveled or lacks Confusion Guard/Ward (whether by skill or otomo equip) for nine turns. You really don’t want anyone confused, especially when the stage is packed full of enemies like this one.

Confused units do not take part in pincers, so that’s fun. I guess if you have to bring someone odd-leveled (tired of level grinding?), you could bring along someone with Clarity (Kana, R’zonzand, Palpa) or otherwise able to cure status effects.

I didn’t, so it’s just a real bad time for everyone.

Let’s try that again with better levels. Incidentally, for this stage, it plays The Shattered Land instead of the regular boss music.

It’s a vast improvement; I can actually get in some pincers and clear out the Ice mooks. Anything that helps kill them is another thing keeping the team from being overwhelmed.

Everyone can even get to work chipping Layla’s health down. From what I’ve seen, she’ll use Blizzard once she starts getting low on HP.

3 turns in, there’ll be a message that says, “Poised to strike back…” and Layla will start glowing. Avoid pincering her during this time; she has a hidden skill called Icy Retribution where she counters pincers with 8x physical and ice damage counterattacks. As a reference, the strongest attacks have a 3.5x multiplier – getting hit by this is generally a total party kill.

The game cheekily describes the skill with “Let sleeping dragons lie.” She can be hurt indirectly though; even if she’s hit by AoE skills, Magic Bombs, your own units’ counterattacks from pincering the mooks or vice-versa, she won’t retaliate against those.

If you don’t pincer her, you’ll get the message “Counterattack disrupted” and she’ll use Icefall instead.

The Treants aren’t as threatening, but they can do a lot of damage if they group up and gang up on a few of your units or move in ways where you can’t really make a good pincer or heal someone about to die.

Once the mooks are gone, it’s just a matter of slowly chipping her down, ideally with vertical pincers instead of this.  

34-5 All the years Proto spent with the king were wiped clean.

           Amongst those memories is a father's strangled cry of anguish at having to abandon his daughter.

It's a recording of the king's voice. An auxiliary battery was evidently running after Proto's main power supply shut down.

A scientist hits the delete command with a practiced movement.

“...Error?”

The command is rejected. Resistance from Proto, perhaps?

“Bah. We have enough data already. Just format it.”

And with that, all the years Proto spent with the king are wiped clean.

 Meanwhile, your party is still embroiled in battle with the alien beasts, never dreaming that such a thing is happening aboard the ship.

 Godspeed, Proto.

Another new face. These guys cast a spell that curses anyone in range so they die in three turns. Notably, they can drop a Demon’s Tear otomo, but do people even use Demon’s Chronicles to farm SB still…?

When killed, they lift the curse, though.

Everything else is just standard fare, though.

34-6 That’s no reason to give up on the lives of the people right in front of you.

The crystals from Crystal Road/Roundelay show up to be a gimmick for three-fourths of this stage’s floors. They don’t behave any differently, so chains aren’t blocked.

Here’s Rossi’s Hex in action.

And here’s the team just laughing off a Blizzard.

34-7 Turning around, you and the exiles begin the long trek back.

Word suggested “a close up of a logo” for this image’s alt text. Great.

           “The Oxsecian ship’s explosion triggered a curious phenomenon,” says another familiar voice.

           It’s Peprope.

           “The place you’re located in is someone’s memory.”

           “Memory…? What are you saying?”

           “The details can wait. But the gateway between there and here will undoubtedly open very soon.”

             How can anyone possibly know this?

           Many have reportedly come into contact with some sort of memory in similar fashion. Some have already awakened.

           “Memory, eh…”

           “Perfect. Let’s see the king’s fate through to the end.”

           And so you resolve to take on the Oxsecian king. Turning around, you and the exiles begin the long trek back.

So we’re ensuring the timeline is stable. Nifty. Anyway, there’re five battles, all against the icy mooks seen before.

34-8 You’ve declared open rebellion against the king.

By then, we’ve reached civilization (of a sort), so I can swap the team around again.

Now we are the rebels.

Face-to-face with the Oxsecians again. I kind of wish there was something on the pre-battle screen that’d indicate if there was a non-elemental or weaponless enemy.

34-9 “Turned traitor, have you?”

Memorable, I suppose, but not memorable to get a unique sprite or be a boss himself.

Word alt text says, “this is an image containing text.”

gee thanks

I can only imagine how annoying this might be if there were just a bunch of those wild mooks out there to snow on everyone. It’d be rather reminiscent of everything that happened in the first few chapters after crashing on Planet Beastbait, though.

Also, that recruitment was actually just a drop for a Pig’s Amulet. Why not, I guess.

Some of the party cut things close.

34-10 Its name is Prototype Zero.

This is the team I’ll be using. You’ll notice that except for Rikken, everyone is B or A rank. 34-10 can be beaten with a team like this, helped when everyone is pretty much at level 90, equipped with some good otomos (Pahrl, for instance, has the otomo that gives her Terabow). 

Of course there’s the fact that I’m bringing two-thirds of the Holy Trinity to this fight. Bahl and S’naip will be the main heavy hitters, and Rikken can dish out a good amount of damage too while acting as my mover.

Pahrl and Korin were brought to help bolster their respective weapon users’ stats, and their Defense +30% skills are one of the many things I used to make sure Bahl and S’naip survive enemy attacks. Sorman is there for healing (taken over Kuscah since he has slightly better defense), has a Regen Cane (A rank otomo, casts Mega Regen, chain) and Rikken has Heal, All to help a little.

34-10 is just a single battle, much like 30-10. It’s essentially the final boss of part 1.5; so let’s pull up the ol’ boss tunes, but the live version for a change.

Music: The World’s Awakening/Day of Reckoning (Live vers.)

Prototype Zero starts the fight with a huge lock-on; ideally you move everyone out the blast radius.

The turn after locking on, he’ll cast Ultima Assault, a non-elemental magical attack. Speaking of magic, he’s more resistant to it; not only is his magical defense stat higher, but he also has Magic Deflector (though I’ve never seen it be used). However, this isn’t a case where a team of mages or to a lesser extent non-crappy spellblades can’t win.

As you can see, I instead opted to do a triple pincer to damage Zero, but more importantly, clear out one of the Oxsecian machines and get some buffs up on the team. I would not recommend doing this normally – but hey, let’s see: how bad can Ultima Assault be?

Ow shit yeah that’s pretty bad

Prototype Zero will cycle through his skills (Breath Attack and Synergy Wave), while also summoning these mooks.

They will, on the turn they’re summoned, use their respective seal ability and severely neuter the physical attack stat of the corresponding weapon-users. It’s not a bad idea to bring a varied team for this reason, or, probably better, a strong mage. Just pincer with anyone who hasn’t been debuffed and work on clearing them out.

When Prototype Zero starts glowing, he’s rearing up to use System Repair. This is the chance to double pincer and get some damage in; hitting hard enough will disrupt him and prevent the healing.

Eventually, he cycles back to telegraphing Ultima Assault.

This was a good chance to kill him.

I missed getting a screencap of him fading away, so I went back and entered the stage again, killing Zero in around ~5 or so turns.

The nifty thing is that you’ll generally (re: 75% chance) get either a Mantle or Deepwater Helix and Metal Minion^ (guaranteed) for clearing this boss.

Also worth noting: 34-10 has a hard mode! To quote the Terra Battle wiki:

Start stage 34.10 during 00:00–00:59 or 12:00–12:59 UTC to access Hard Mode. Compared to the normal 34.10 stage, Hard Mode enemies have 50 more levels, 3 times the HP, and 1.2 times the ATK, DEF, MATK, MDEF. Hard Mode will also give x2 EXP and x4.5 coins. The boss Prototype Zero is guaranteed to drop the Avengers companion after being defeated in Hard Mode.

Avengers is an S class otomo that gives the unit Counterattack. Useful if you want to cover another skill phase to SBing...?

           “The loathsome Animata is threatening not only the lives of our kin but the existence of our entire race. We must weather this storm together, for we have only ourselves to rely on.

           “Look around you at the fellow countrymen who stand at your side. You are all comrades and equals, chosen to fulfill a common destiny. Social standing, origin, age are all irrelevant. We have all lost too much, and we must all fight to ensure those sacrifices were not suffered in vain.

           “We are a chosen elite, supreme specimens of our race, and we are tasked with a common cause:

           We must hunt Animata down and annihilate her. We shall have retribution.”

             Thus began the long war against Animata. The seeds of that fate were sown here.

            A dazzling light blooms in the heavens. Then it is gone, along with the Oxsecian ship.

             All those who were locked in combat around the Life Breeder stand stunned and breathless. Humans, lizardfolk, beastfolk, stonefolk, the Oxsecian children with identical faces, even the wild alien creatures – all stand transfixed, gazing up at the empty sky.

           “It’s… beautiful.”

           As glowing debris from the Oxsecian ship disperses, a warm glimmer illuminates the heavens. It is as bright and unfaltering as the devotion born of a lifelong friendship.

Finally, it’s worth noting that upon clearing this chapter, 54B2 and 36AIS are added to the Pact of Truth/Fate. 54B2 is a Z class sword unit and 36AIS is a SS class healer.

36AIS is unfortunately not that great of a healer compared to the SS class Amis or even Sorman and Kuscah. I really wish she’d been like Amimari/Amina/A’misandra in terms of skills, or that she’d gotten a recode that brought her skills in line with Amina/A’misandra’s recodes, since otherwise all she has going for her is having Heal All and pretty art.

54B2 is a bit better, but by this point he’s not as useful as he might have been upon his release. Sure you could use him, and he’s not the worst unit to have, but why not just use Bahl^ and/or Suoh^? Some might consider him a troll rainbow pull, and considering the rarity of Z class units and how gacha games operate, that’s kind of a concerning thought.

Well... to not end an update being a Debbie Downer like in the past, I’ll conclude this by saying that this brings part 1.5 to a close! Chapter 35 will mark part 2 - and afterwards I’ll have for the most part caught up to where I was when I took a hiatus. 

Fun fact: the word doc for this chapter is 73 pages and roughly 2600 words. That’s kind of a personal record, actually. I don’t think anything is going to be topping that besides a 7SU lp update or some of the shit I’ve got planned to play.

[perfect-corroscience]

Not gonna lie: I’ve been neglecting Take a Stand! to quite an extent. I’m doing this mainly because I’m close to finishing this and casually terra battling; I’ve decided to focus on those for that reason.

Let’s get right to the heart of it: there’s a door here that sticks out a bit among the six locked doors in this part of the ship.

When you go in and sit at the chair, you get this message.

Going through any of the wholes will take you to a near-identical room, with the only possible differences being the position of the chair and the message you get when you sit down.

There’s ten different messages that you have to see in order to get to the end of this little puzzle: 

you sense something strange

‘’ something unusual

‘’ something odd

‘’ something ominous

‘’ something suspicious

‘’ something cold

‘’ something weird

you hear something

you sense something… 

… … … … … …

If you go through a door and the message turns out to be either the same as the room you were just in, or one of the previous room’s messages, it means you’ve went the wrong way. You could keep going like this and eventually get there. Going back “resets” you to the beginning, by the way.

I’ll post the steps at the end of the part.

My solution to the puzzle: Right-Right-Middle-Right-Right-Left-Left-Middle-Left-Left. 

“… … … … … …” is the sign you’ve reached the end. Sadly this isn’t a case where, say, all the doors lead to the end.

You have to take the left door here.

And at the end is a certain legendary waiting for us.

What’s cool is that before the battle we get some constellations. As far as I can tell these are/were all accurate.

Lilapse comes from the mythological Laelaps – in Greek myth, she was a dog that always caught what she hunted, and is the basis of the Canis Major constellation. The Meteoric legendaries all show their respective constellations in the transition screen, though not all the stars are displayed.

Incidentally, they take the place of the Regis (in a sense), and even have their battle theme.

I’m not sure if it’s possible for you to just up and get them after Rayquaza is awakened. For Ganymede at least, you’ll need Waterfall, but it makes you wonder.

Lilapse has a bunch of Ground-type moves, so what one could do is weaken it and park a Flying type or something with Levitate in front and watch it miss constantly while you lob balls at it.

Which explains why it can use Water-type attacks. I’m not sure why it’s not part Water… no matter. “Why is it not clearly dual-typed with this other type” is a question that will be asked for the other two Meteoric legendaries. Maybe the devs wanted to avoid giving them a lot of additional weaknesses. Maybe it’s also meant to show just how otherworldly they are? 

Lilapse is pretty fast, which is reflected in its Altair dex entry and base 135 Speed.

Weird. Anyway, next spot on the list is the mountain that has a “large waterfall.”

Meteor Falls was changed a bit by the meteors as well, but it’s not too complex to navigate.

The thing about this place is that certain tiles push you in a certain direction to varying degrees.

Hitting these black holes brings you back to the start. Dr. Akimbo has a handy map of the area in his translation/playthrough on the nuzlocke forums, and it should also be in the translation patch threads.

Ganymede is based on the Greek mythological boy-turned-eagle that is also the basis of Aquila. Some cool stuff.

I apparently just forgot to take any screenshots of the catching attempt, but among other things it knows Disable.

Looking at it now, I just get more of an image of an otherworldly hummingbird. Ganymede is not a Psychic-type despite being able to play merry havoc with someone’s senses/body.

It, just like in ornidl gets clubbed by moonrunes, was a pain in the ass to catch. God damn!

48 Ultra Balls purchased, next up is the last location described in that book, “near a city that was partly underwater.” That can only be Sootopolis, though I think anyone curious would come back here at some point because of the conspicuous boulder that’d been here last time. Bring a mon with Strength.

The gimmick of this room is that, if you peer past the fog, you’ll see some parts of the ground are darker than the rest of it. The dark spots are basically where you want to stay, which is easier said than done. In fact, when you take steps, you move involuntarily. First you move up, then down, left, right, and you can move freely for the 5th step before this repeats.

If this sounds familiar, then yes, it’s been seen before – recall the final puzzle of Hidden Island’s Sphere Ruins which had a similar mechanic, only you were able to see where you had to go. Mercifully, there’s no wild Pokemon in this area.

The solution, from the entrance, is given by Dr. Akimbo as: 2U 3L 1U 1L 1D 2L 2U 2D 2U 1L 2U 1R 5U 1R 2U 1R 3U 1R 1U 1R 1U 1D 1L 1R 1U 2R 1D 2R 1U 1R 1D 1L 1U 1R 1L 1D 1R 1U 2R 1D 2R 5D 2L 2D 1U 4D 1U 2D 1R 1D 2R 2D 1L 1R 2L 1D 1R 4L 3U 3L 1R 1U 1L 1U

Doing everything successfully will lead you to this staircase.

Here, it’s a maze, but once you enter the void, it’s as though you’re shifted into a new place. The only sign the game’s still running is the fog and the bumping sounds of the protagonist hitting the walls. You could probably get through this just via trial and error, though a map was provided in the threads like the one for Ganymede’s room.

Hope you have something with Strength!

This puzzle involves finding nine spots where an “amazing power” enters you, each causing a Mareep to cry out. You’ll need to find and get them all to access the room where the last member of the trio is waiting.

It took a pathetically long time for me to figure out how to get past those boulders. I’m not sure if my senses really were frazzled or if it was because I was tired when playing through this section.

That rock can be hopped over.

I missed one spot in the upper area and had to go back for it.

Pictured: hopping over that rock.

If you’re missing all of the powers, you’ll get this message and can’t go further.

The power in the third image was the one I missed initially.

Nemea’s abode is rather dark.

In ornidl gets clubbed by moonrunes, I wasn’t quite sure what the inspiration for Nemea was. Turns out it’s based on Greek myth, as with the other two Meteor Pokemon – in this case, the Nemean lion that’s also the basis for Leo’s constellation.

Nemea’s base physical attack is higher, but it has Metal Sound to lower SpDef and Crunch as a special move.

Despite having Crunch and its appearance, it’s not a Dark-type Pokemon. Worth noting this even though it’s called, in its Altair dex entry, “the most evil of all Pokemon.”

In this case I’m guessing it’s just straight up mindfucking people and is able to take control of them that way.

With that done, time to finally move onto beginning the meat of post-game.

The boat to Lilycove lets us see ol’ Mosmero, who namedrops where post-game takes place. Between this, Shamouti, and New Island, the devs really do like their Pokemon movies!

A trip from Lilycove later, and we’re finally in Alto Mare! Next: cracking the surface of what this place has to offer.

[perfect-corroscience]

CELIA’s thoughts, probably: MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Beating the champion starts you off in your house and the same old things occur: you pick up the S.S Ticket, and get to choose one of the L@tis will be roaming around. Whichever is chosen, they’ll still be totally inferior level-wise to another one you can catch (spoilers), so whatevs.

Spoilers: not the Battle Frontier. Not sure what happened there, presumably it got destroyed by the meteors too.

But we’re not heading there, we’re gonna detour for a bit.

Recall my brief blurb during the Victory Road update that you can find Groudon’s and Kyogre’s abodes just here in Victory Road.

Groudon is pretty much the same as it was in vanilla Emerald.

The next part or two will be dedicated to Pokemon Altair/Sirius’ very own legendary fever! It’s actually not as intense as in its sequel, where it throws legendaries at you at such a rate to make ORAS proud.

The ladder leads to Kyogre’s old stomping swimming grounds. Of the weather trio, it’s the only one to get a new sprite. Procyon/Deneb do a bit of this too, but that’s moreso the spriters seem to gradually giving canon ‘mons new sprites as they get done – more notable since they’re getting evos.

Kyogre’s moveset is the same as in vanilla, so ThunderDance and Sheer Cold ahoy.

We see Steven just standing there, but he says nothing and just flies away, so I dunno if he’s supposed to be there.

Makes sense. It’s only been seen like, what, maybe three times in all of history?

Next stop is the library.

This guy, if you talk to him pre-Champion, bars you from entering…

But let’s you through once you’ve become the Champion.

…This is different.

SILPH CO, the largest company in the KANTO region, developed the artificial POKEMON PORYGON. And then, after major technological breakthroughs, PORYGON2 was completed.

But recently, someone created a corrupted version of PORYGON2, called PORYGON-Z. If PORYGON is not protected in some way, it will be subject to further deterioration. 

Alternatively, a new POKEMON that fills PORYGON's role could be created...

In certain areas, CELIA gets this above her head, as though she felt a strange presence.

Just what was being hidden here…?

My dude, how’d you get in here? Were you just stuck here the whole time?

Although meteors rained down on all of HOENN, there are speculated to have been three tremendously large meteors among them. Those three would account for most of the large-scale changes to the HOENN region. Out of the three meteors, one fell on a mountain and the other two fell into the sea.

There was a large waterfall on the mountain. The impact collapsed the big waterfall into a group of smaller waterfalls.

One of the two meteors that fell into the sea landed on an old ship midway between a town and a city. This caused the ship to collapse further.

The other meteor fell near a city that was partly underwater, and submerged it a bit further.

Something to keep in mind for the next part or two.

The main item of interest is this diary. Worth noting the music goes silent once you start reading this. To supplement this, I won’t be commentating until it’s done, just transcribing some parts of the diary.

We want to get out, but we might make him angry, and he gets unpleasant when he’s angry. I guess we’ll just put up with it.

We are still in the back room. Mommy opened the door and gave us some rice.

…spinning around.

My sister won’t move. Even if I hit her or pinch her, she won’t get up.

But I said I wouldn’t leave!

I took his hand.

No, I can’t leave her behind!

Strange people came up to me. I was given about ten different injections. The purple man was gone before I knew it.

The diary cuts off here.

It ends just like that. It was... rather unsettling. CELIA is kind of… tugged up into the air or something like that after reading the diary. It plays the animation you get when you step in a warp panel.

There’s nothing left to do in this room. As you try to leave, however…

A wild Grimdax appears! Coming in at level 35, she’s quite far below the level curve, unfortunately.

So why not just be on our merry way?

Unfortunately, as you’ll find out, once you flee, you actually cannot move. The music starts playing again and the fog is still there, but for roughly half a minute and some seconds, you can’t do anything (not even open up the menu). I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who ran from this encounter and thought it caused a softlock.

If you play with sound on, though, you’ll hear the music fade away just before the Grimdax starts speaking with you again. Incidentally, if you wanted I guess you could keep doing this if you wanted a specific nature, or even a specific gender since that’s not actually hard-coded into this encounter.

If you don’t want to bother catching the Grimdax, though, you can always just fight. Pretty cool that they added some dialogue for whether you try to run away or defeat them.

But we’re doing this properly and catching this one. No dialogue for choosing to catch Grimdax, for probably obvious reasons.

So uh, you’re just not gonna say anything about what’s been hidden back there? Nothing? At all? Ok.

Quiet is a pretty bad nature.

In the next part, we’ll see about those three sites the meteors hit, starting with the Abandoned Ship, the “old ship midway between a town and city.” I missed a screencap earlier that did have a bit of colored text. Tried to fiddle with HTML to get it to show, but who knows if it will.

[perfect-corroscience]

It’s Altair/Sirius’ champion! Wally’s all grown since Emerald and ready to

…wait what. Wally, are you wearing a two-toned shirt?

 Are you just going shirtless and wearing sleeves and pants??

Video version here, where ASUKA burns a lot of things. As you do.

Necroshia 68 @ bright powder - shadow ball/destiny bond/aerial ace/brick break

Wally’s team is mostly comprised of vanilla mons, and Necroshia’s the only new one he has. Still pretty useful considering the lack of weaknesses. To get around that, I set up the sun and used that to power up ASUKA’s Flamethrower.

Heracross 72 @ focus band - megahorn/brick Break/EQ/aerial ace

Heracross keels over to the flames.

Steelix 70 @ quick claw - rock slide/explosion/iron head/raze earth?

I’m not 100% sure what Steelix’s last move is but a bit of Japanese wiki cross-referencing seems to hint that it’s Raze Earth, but I get the feeling Grand Boulder would’ve been better or at least the one the hackers would’ve given to Steelix... It’s certainly Ground-type, but even while messing around I never got him to use it, oddly.

Raichu 73 @ petaya - fake out/brick break/thunder/volt tackle

Raichu’s a bit too frail to take advantage of the Petaya berry. Too bad Wally doesn’t have an Alolan Raichu.

Milotic 70 @ lefties - hydro pump/mirror coat/hypnosis/aqua jet

The sun faded by the point Milotic came out, so a turn was spent setting it up again to exploit SunnyBeam. It did a pretty good job at neutering Hydro Pump. Surprisingly, Milotic didn’t go for Mirror Coat or Hypnosis at any point.

Gardevoir 74 @ salac - calm mind/psychic/thunderbolt/energy ball

Finally, there’s Wally’s signature Pokemon – his trusty Gardevoir!

LOTTE handles him pretty well, but being LOTTE, she doesn’t quite manage a clean one-shot with Shadow Ball. Still no biggie, though I guess people playing at home should be wary of letting him set up too much.

And that’s that.

Obligatory post-battle stuff.

And here’s CELIA’s little motley crew!

LANZA seeds things and takes advantage of his Water/Grass STABs. He was also great at roadblocking pretty much every Milotic faced and will continue to do so provided we run into more of them. Serplant is an ASVPD fakemon that’s a great choice to use in any of them.

ASUKA sets crap on fire. Sadly lacks any amazing Dragon-type STAB, which might be for the best, otherwise she’d get some janky moveset like Koryu did…

TERRY is fast and an all-around pretty good physical attacker. Should probably just point out his species has base 130 Attack.

RUDO, the starter. He’s surprisingly versatile and well-rounded, but I guess that’s not a shocker for a Normal-type Pokemon.

RAYZA is fast and uses Electric-type moves. She gets Dark-type moves as mentioned before; you could argue she’s a lot like the Shinx family in being an honorary Dark-type, but Procyon/Deneb retconned the line to be Electric/Fairy, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LOTTE is adorable and has a lot of Special Attack, but she’s sloooooooooooooooooooow as hell. Kind of wished the ASVPD hackers had done something like give the species Hantama’s stats, but flipped to account for being a Special Attacker.

89 hours? Jeez.

The credits were edited accordingly, though left untranslated by Dr. Akimbo for two good reasons:

“1. who care 2. who the HELL care”

With this done, now we can finally tackle post-game! Exciting!

(Seriously, what’s with Wally’s sprite?)

[perfect-corroscience]

how come you dont like alika's j1 design?

her job 1 profile says she’s mourning her dead lover, i understand completely. but the art shows she’s not wearing the bottom half of her gown. so she’s walking around in her panties and also wearing this grand trailing ribbony bodice or whatever, socks, and boots. it’s pretty funny

i prefer j2/3 because her gown is actually quite elegant and pretty, and i’m a sucker for elegant, fancy designs.