Subadventures Digest #1 (Armic Edition)
Lots and lots of subadventures have passed. I'm going to gloss over many of them, since they're ones we've seen before, and nothing particularly amazing happened. And then I am going to detail one of the more interesting ones at the end :)
Escata Palace
We find Minister Hogg's secret savings. Norff gets Diplomacy L4, and Henri gets a martial arts panel for his top-right corner, which raised his Skill Level to 40.
Warmth of the Throne
We fight the Nergal or whatever in the throne room of Escata Palace. Vearst masters his magic tablet.
Monsters of the Ruined Castle
We fight the monsters loitering in Escata Palace. Pharr gets a Spear Arts L4 panel, which we put in the center of her Growth Panel, boosting her stats (both Strength and Skill are nearing 40 now) and freeing up the space on the right to put other panels. Henri gets Eavesdrop L3, making a combo of key panels to boost his Skill Level to 47. Vearst gets Adaptability to complete a line of map panels, making his Water level jump to 42. And in the shops, we find a Merman Mail for Norff. Overall, a very productive trip!
Hanging Garden
Always a fun wonder! We find Silent Sorceress Siren's magic table, which is a L4 Metal tablet. Perfect for Armic. Not only can he learn great stuff like Supersonic, but when he masters it, he'll also get a +4 to his Metal level, too!
Pharr gets Defuse L4, and Henri final gets a Bow Arts panel at L3.
Vearst finally gets Swimming L4, which I've been waiting for. Putting it in the bottom left corner makes his Magic level skyrocket from 9 to 37! Power up that Bubble Blow!
Tribal Chief's Trial
We touch some orbs, fight some aquans, and pass the trial. Armic gets a Road Guide L4 panel, which replaces his Architect L3 panel in the bottom left, boosting his Water level to 38 and his Metal level to 47. Sadly this build requires us to forfeit his Magic level, which is now only 15.
Norff finally gets Monger, though it's only L3. But it makes a nice joint bonus with Diplomacy, and hopefully will lead to even higher levels. Nuage also gets Staff Arts L4.
Dagul Bos's Castle
We go to challenge the Anubito that destroyed Escata, but instead just fight some minions. Henri glimmers Double Trickster, and we find another magic tablet.
This one is another L4! I have to choose between giving Armic another L4 tablet to create a joint combo, or Fortuneteller L4. In the end, I choose the tablet because it's much more rare. I have many more opportunities to get Fortuneteller again.
Starship Anchor
The wonder that was the final adventure for Kurt, we go to put the undead to rest at the end.
It's hard to get good screencaps of Double Trickster because the camera is always weird, but this is a great knife art when you're not using Dice or Stunner lines:
Henri tosses two knives at the enemy, and they kind of have like weird iridescent beams coming out of them.
They explode on impact with lots of colorful light and these little triangles everywhere.
Now that we're fighting it a second time, we learn the name of the enemy at the end of this adventure is Cosmic Sage.
We finally release enough abilities on Nuage's Ashen Staff to tell it's the correct weight class that I wanted. Next time in town, I make sure it's the only Ash item in my inventory, and trade with one of the Chapas for Diamond. Now we have a Diamond staff with weight class 1, an otherwise impossibility! Weight class 1 is the only way to have the Roundhouse line of arts on a staff, but anything that weighs low enough to get there typically has poor power. Now we have a Diamond Staff with twice the power as the Ashen Staff, and still have the Roundhouse art line!
Deities Table
Combining Armic's Supersonic with Henri's Parashots, we're able to take out Birds of Paradise like never before...
At the end of the adventure, Pharr got Magic Blender. I've now received 3 Magic Blender panels ever in my life, and two of them were on characters who could not use them. I really don't feel up to trying to build Pharr as a mage suddenly? Plus she is doing really well with her spear already.
Knights' Mausoleum
And now for our feature presentation!
This adventure takes place in Iskandar's Mausoleum in Vaftom. You know, the Temple that is guarded by Jeanne Maure and friends. We've been here a couple times before -- this is where Fae ran off to in Mythe's story and Marie helped us chase after her. Later, we went back so Fae could shout at Iskandar's coffin in the Hall of Hades and somehow actually summon him that way. Then in Kurt's scenario, this is where Maximilian Burgundy was visiting when the assassination attempt happened, and Kurt saved him in the Hall of Heaven.
But this time, none of the paths are blocked off, and we're able to travel around the entire place. our goal is to defeat the guardians and reach Iskandar's tomb.
But the biggest problem is that we only have 140 turns to do it. This is a ridiculously small number considering how big this place is. You pretty much have to memorize a good path to where you need to go. And we're going to be running all over the place. I know the general solution, but every time I get here, I have no idea where I'm going again.
I can't stress how big and mazelike this place is.
The first area we start in a sort of central spot, and we're able to go in four different directions. All of these wind around and lead to various dead ends and such, but sometimes we will find some staircases. There are multiple staircases, so it's not like our destination is very obvious.
When we take a staircase down, we reach a lower level where the map is green instead of yellow. This place is even more confusing than the first, and now we have to deal with finding both ascending and descending staircases as we explore.
Taking a random staircase up, we find we're in the yellow area again, but we can't tell if the room we're in connects to the hallways we were traversing before. We'll just have to wander around to find out.
Eventually we just find ourselves back where we started. By this point, we've wasted most of the turns. We fail the adventure and ate booted back to Vaftom. So we'll start the adventure over from the beginning...
Fortunately for us, the map that we've already uncovered remains uncovered, so we can more easily navigate the second time around. I was already expecting to take multiple attempts to get through this adventure, so I planned on spending the first one or two times solely trying to wrap my head around the layout here.
We get to another green area by taking some other stairs down, and this one actually never connects to the other green area we went to. Yeah, there are parts of each floor that are only accessible through staircases and don't connect to the other parts...
Eventually, we wind up in the Hall of Hades, where Mythe very first caught up to Fae. Just like then, there is rumbling in here and we keep getting the message that "something is moving around." This is one of the guardians, and it's our goal to find it, so we have to run around the Hall of Hades and look for it.
You'll also notice that there's a "Locked Door" here. Unlike others, there's no door object for us to try to lockpick or anything; we simply cannot move onto the space at all.
Eventually we wander into a dead end with another locked door. And we spend so much time running around looking for the guardian that we run out of turns once again, and have to start over from the beginning...
But now, almost the entire place is mapped out, and I have a good feel of where to go. I decide to make the third attempt to actual clear attempt, and head toward the only path I hadn't really explored yet, which must lead to the Hall of Heaven. And it indeed does. This is where we saved Lord Burgundy from assassination. But when Kurt was here, the guardians were quiet... today, they are moving around, and just like in the Hall of Hades, we continue to get tremors and messages of something moving around.
I try to go toward any space that shows to have monsters on it, because the guardians do act as normal monsters on the map. The main difference is that they roam randomly instead of chasing the party. I never thought to try Eavesdrop, but it probably would have worked... It works for all kinds of bosses and stuff, so that really would have made this whole thing much easier.
Instead I just wander around hoping to bump into them. Luckily, the guardian of the Hall of Heaven is on the very first space I jump to from the split path!
This guy is pretty tough, and has a lot of cool-looking moves. My favorite is Shield Rush, in which he flings his shield at a character on a chain, and it whirls like a yo-yo and flies back to him.
He also has Skullcrusher, which can deal a lot of damage and probably weakens the Spirit or Magic of the target it hits, too. You can't actually see stat-downs in this game so there's no way to really tell...
Even though it's a unique beast, I still tried putting it to sleep. It never worked, but I only really did it a couple times.
It wasn't too bad to take down, and afterward, a door seemed to open somewhere, adding a new room to the map. This was another room guarded by a "locked door" like in the Hall of Hades.
But we don't have time for treasure hunting, because our turn limit is way too tight. We rush back to the Hall of Hades using the shortest path I can think of from my understanding of the map.
These halls are huge -- checking the turn limit to see we're a bit over halfway out of turns, you can see all the uncovered map. This is maybe a third of the entire Hall of Hades.
After a lot of hopping around, we finally run into the guardian here. I'm starting to get worried that we're running low on turns, so hopefully the battle goes quickly.
Nuage glimmered Time and Tide, the L4 Staff Art on the Roundhouse line. It's hard to get a good cap of it, like Fuji View, because it has lots of flashy explosions.
This guardian has one of the highest glimmer rates in the game, so I spammed Pharr's spear a lot trying to glimmer Acupuncture or DHS or something. Especially Acupuncture would be nice...
We do defeat it, though it takes a while, and I'm really worried about turns at this point. And no, we didn't get any glimmers.
Another door opens like before, and then a new set of doors opens in the center of the basement where the Hall of Hades and Hall of Heaven meet, forming a kind of circular room divided in two to make a yin-yang pattern.
If you enter from the Hall of Heaven side, you just find a treasure. To clear the mission, you must enter the Hall of Hades side of the circular room. Simple stepping into the room tells you "mission complete" (?!) and you get to move on to the Growth Panel.
This is one of the most difficult adventures to clear in the game because you have an extremely tiny turn limit to navigate a wildly confusing multi-floor maze, and your goal is to defeat two powerful boss monsters and reach a specific room before your time runs out. I always plan on spending at least two failed attempts just remembering how to get around, and the first time through without guides can take you a dozen failed attempts...
But it's certainly one of the more iconic adventures.
While most of the panels were underwhelming this time, Vearst did get Magic Blender!! Finally my second usable Blender ever.
I was going to consider going to the final adventure after going through the Mausoleum, but now that I have this, I want to play around with it a bit, so I'll probably go clear some other subadventures.
Vearst doesn't have a huge variety of magic arts at this point, so the best I could really come up with is a superpowered Bubble Blow. His Purify is already nice enough that I don't feel like I need to boost it.
So let's go try it out in the Abandoned Fortress...
Um, pretty nice for Bubble Blow!
But what if we tried it without making a big combo out of it?
Still not complaining :)
So it looks like we may still be continuing Armic's scenario for some time to come, oops~
Escata Palace
We find Minister Hogg's secret savings. Norff gets Diplomacy L4, and Henri gets a martial arts panel for his top-right corner, which raised his Skill Level to 40.
Warmth of the Throne
We fight the Nergal or whatever in the throne room of Escata Palace. Vearst masters his magic tablet.
Monsters of the Ruined Castle
We fight the monsters loitering in Escata Palace. Pharr gets a Spear Arts L4 panel, which we put in the center of her Growth Panel, boosting her stats (both Strength and Skill are nearing 40 now) and freeing up the space on the right to put other panels. Henri gets Eavesdrop L3, making a combo of key panels to boost his Skill Level to 47. Vearst gets Adaptability to complete a line of map panels, making his Water level jump to 42. And in the shops, we find a Merman Mail for Norff. Overall, a very productive trip!
Hanging Garden
Always a fun wonder! We find Silent Sorceress Siren's magic table, which is a L4 Metal tablet. Perfect for Armic. Not only can he learn great stuff like Supersonic, but when he masters it, he'll also get a +4 to his Metal level, too!
Pharr gets Defuse L4, and Henri final gets a Bow Arts panel at L3.
Vearst finally gets Swimming L4, which I've been waiting for. Putting it in the bottom left corner makes his Magic level skyrocket from 9 to 37! Power up that Bubble Blow!
Tribal Chief's Trial
We touch some orbs, fight some aquans, and pass the trial. Armic gets a Road Guide L4 panel, which replaces his Architect L3 panel in the bottom left, boosting his Water level to 38 and his Metal level to 47. Sadly this build requires us to forfeit his Magic level, which is now only 15.
Norff finally gets Monger, though it's only L3. But it makes a nice joint bonus with Diplomacy, and hopefully will lead to even higher levels. Nuage also gets Staff Arts L4.
Dagul Bos's Castle
We go to challenge the Anubito that destroyed Escata, but instead just fight some minions. Henri glimmers Double Trickster, and we find another magic tablet.
This one is another L4! I have to choose between giving Armic another L4 tablet to create a joint combo, or Fortuneteller L4. In the end, I choose the tablet because it's much more rare. I have many more opportunities to get Fortuneteller again.
Starship Anchor
The wonder that was the final adventure for Kurt, we go to put the undead to rest at the end.
It's hard to get good screencaps of Double Trickster because the camera is always weird, but this is a great knife art when you're not using Dice or Stunner lines:
Henri tosses two knives at the enemy, and they kind of have like weird iridescent beams coming out of them.
They explode on impact with lots of colorful light and these little triangles everywhere.
Now that we're fighting it a second time, we learn the name of the enemy at the end of this adventure is Cosmic Sage.
We finally release enough abilities on Nuage's Ashen Staff to tell it's the correct weight class that I wanted. Next time in town, I make sure it's the only Ash item in my inventory, and trade with one of the Chapas for Diamond. Now we have a Diamond staff with weight class 1, an otherwise impossibility! Weight class 1 is the only way to have the Roundhouse line of arts on a staff, but anything that weighs low enough to get there typically has poor power. Now we have a Diamond Staff with twice the power as the Ashen Staff, and still have the Roundhouse art line!
Deities Table
Combining Armic's Supersonic with Henri's Parashots, we're able to take out Birds of Paradise like never before...
At the end of the adventure, Pharr got Magic Blender. I've now received 3 Magic Blender panels ever in my life, and two of them were on characters who could not use them. I really don't feel up to trying to build Pharr as a mage suddenly? Plus she is doing really well with her spear already.
Knights' Mausoleum
And now for our feature presentation!
This adventure takes place in Iskandar's Mausoleum in Vaftom. You know, the Temple that is guarded by Jeanne Maure and friends. We've been here a couple times before -- this is where Fae ran off to in Mythe's story and Marie helped us chase after her. Later, we went back so Fae could shout at Iskandar's coffin in the Hall of Hades and somehow actually summon him that way. Then in Kurt's scenario, this is where Maximilian Burgundy was visiting when the assassination attempt happened, and Kurt saved him in the Hall of Heaven.
But this time, none of the paths are blocked off, and we're able to travel around the entire place. our goal is to defeat the guardians and reach Iskandar's tomb.
But the biggest problem is that we only have 140 turns to do it. This is a ridiculously small number considering how big this place is. You pretty much have to memorize a good path to where you need to go. And we're going to be running all over the place. I know the general solution, but every time I get here, I have no idea where I'm going again.
I can't stress how big and mazelike this place is.
The first area we start in a sort of central spot, and we're able to go in four different directions. All of these wind around and lead to various dead ends and such, but sometimes we will find some staircases. There are multiple staircases, so it's not like our destination is very obvious.
When we take a staircase down, we reach a lower level where the map is green instead of yellow. This place is even more confusing than the first, and now we have to deal with finding both ascending and descending staircases as we explore.
Taking a random staircase up, we find we're in the yellow area again, but we can't tell if the room we're in connects to the hallways we were traversing before. We'll just have to wander around to find out.
Eventually we just find ourselves back where we started. By this point, we've wasted most of the turns. We fail the adventure and ate booted back to Vaftom. So we'll start the adventure over from the beginning...
Fortunately for us, the map that we've already uncovered remains uncovered, so we can more easily navigate the second time around. I was already expecting to take multiple attempts to get through this adventure, so I planned on spending the first one or two times solely trying to wrap my head around the layout here.
We get to another green area by taking some other stairs down, and this one actually never connects to the other green area we went to. Yeah, there are parts of each floor that are only accessible through staircases and don't connect to the other parts...
Eventually, we wind up in the Hall of Hades, where Mythe very first caught up to Fae. Just like then, there is rumbling in here and we keep getting the message that "something is moving around." This is one of the guardians, and it's our goal to find it, so we have to run around the Hall of Hades and look for it.
You'll also notice that there's a "Locked Door" here. Unlike others, there's no door object for us to try to lockpick or anything; we simply cannot move onto the space at all.
Eventually we wander into a dead end with another locked door. And we spend so much time running around looking for the guardian that we run out of turns once again, and have to start over from the beginning...
But now, almost the entire place is mapped out, and I have a good feel of where to go. I decide to make the third attempt to actual clear attempt, and head toward the only path I hadn't really explored yet, which must lead to the Hall of Heaven. And it indeed does. This is where we saved Lord Burgundy from assassination. But when Kurt was here, the guardians were quiet... today, they are moving around, and just like in the Hall of Hades, we continue to get tremors and messages of something moving around.
I try to go toward any space that shows to have monsters on it, because the guardians do act as normal monsters on the map. The main difference is that they roam randomly instead of chasing the party. I never thought to try Eavesdrop, but it probably would have worked... It works for all kinds of bosses and stuff, so that really would have made this whole thing much easier.
Instead I just wander around hoping to bump into them. Luckily, the guardian of the Hall of Heaven is on the very first space I jump to from the split path!
This guy is pretty tough, and has a lot of cool-looking moves. My favorite is Shield Rush, in which he flings his shield at a character on a chain, and it whirls like a yo-yo and flies back to him.
He also has Skullcrusher, which can deal a lot of damage and probably weakens the Spirit or Magic of the target it hits, too. You can't actually see stat-downs in this game so there's no way to really tell...
Even though it's a unique beast, I still tried putting it to sleep. It never worked, but I only really did it a couple times.
It wasn't too bad to take down, and afterward, a door seemed to open somewhere, adding a new room to the map. This was another room guarded by a "locked door" like in the Hall of Hades.
But we don't have time for treasure hunting, because our turn limit is way too tight. We rush back to the Hall of Hades using the shortest path I can think of from my understanding of the map.
These halls are huge -- checking the turn limit to see we're a bit over halfway out of turns, you can see all the uncovered map. This is maybe a third of the entire Hall of Hades.
After a lot of hopping around, we finally run into the guardian here. I'm starting to get worried that we're running low on turns, so hopefully the battle goes quickly.
Nuage glimmered Time and Tide, the L4 Staff Art on the Roundhouse line. It's hard to get a good cap of it, like Fuji View, because it has lots of flashy explosions.
This guardian has one of the highest glimmer rates in the game, so I spammed Pharr's spear a lot trying to glimmer Acupuncture or DHS or something. Especially Acupuncture would be nice...
We do defeat it, though it takes a while, and I'm really worried about turns at this point. And no, we didn't get any glimmers.
Another door opens like before, and then a new set of doors opens in the center of the basement where the Hall of Hades and Hall of Heaven meet, forming a kind of circular room divided in two to make a yin-yang pattern.
If you enter from the Hall of Heaven side, you just find a treasure. To clear the mission, you must enter the Hall of Hades side of the circular room. Simple stepping into the room tells you "mission complete" (?!) and you get to move on to the Growth Panel.
This is one of the most difficult adventures to clear in the game because you have an extremely tiny turn limit to navigate a wildly confusing multi-floor maze, and your goal is to defeat two powerful boss monsters and reach a specific room before your time runs out. I always plan on spending at least two failed attempts just remembering how to get around, and the first time through without guides can take you a dozen failed attempts...
But it's certainly one of the more iconic adventures.
While most of the panels were underwhelming this time, Vearst did get Magic Blender!! Finally my second usable Blender ever.
I was going to consider going to the final adventure after going through the Mausoleum, but now that I have this, I want to play around with it a bit, so I'll probably go clear some other subadventures.
Vearst doesn't have a huge variety of magic arts at this point, so the best I could really come up with is a superpowered Bubble Blow. His Purify is already nice enough that I don't feel like I need to boost it.
So let's go try it out in the Abandoned Fortress...
Um, pretty nice for Bubble Blow!
But what if we tried it without making a big combo out of it?
Still not complaining :)
So it looks like we may still be continuing Armic's scenario for some time to come, oops~