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freshfeelingFinally, we're going to claim the Earth Crystal! This was played today, on October 22, 2024.
Although I had saved at Doga's Manor, I recalled that we had the fangs that we needed to pass the giant statues and approach the game's final areas, and that was where we would find the Earth Crystal. I went straight for it.
We entered the Ancients' Maze. Right away, there's a big square room and I knew this was where the Earth Crystal was, and given some of the success I've had against bosses lately (?) I decided to give this a few shots. When you approach the crystal, you're attacked by a fellow named Titan who is a palette swap of the Hecatoncheir boss from, like, moments ago.
Titan acts a fair bit like Hecatoncheir, although he's probably all-around stronger in general, and every so often he'll throw a Flare spell in among his Quake spells and regular attacks. I had mentioned that Quake looked awesome in Pixel Remaster and got a nice capture of it this time.
Flare was very powerful and the Quakes were probably a little better, so we didn't hold up super well here.
Once again unsure whether I might be close, I tried three times (since you can save right outside) and none were very successful. Since the game doesn't actually stop you from proceeding, I decided to explore a bit more of the Ancients' Maze. Many of the treasures were consumables or unusable weapons, but we definitely benefitted from a Crystal Shield (good for an onion knight!), Crystal Helmet, Crystal Mail and Crystal Gloves. Besides our Protect Rings, these were the first armor upgrades for the warrior and onion knight since the Floating Continent! A huge difference.
I was surprised to find an Omnirod. I remembered that being a Eureka weapon that I'd find later on, but I guess I had confused it with the Elder Staff. This will be useful for our magus very soon.
We also happened to gain a few levels in the course of this exploration that would leave us in slightly better shape for Titan.
Besides being better prepared in general, with new equips, a couple of levels, and a bit more mindfulness of magic resistance in general (i.e. equipped Reflective Mail on the vikings) we didn't change much in our next battle with Titan. But we won!
With that, we unlocked our last useable job. I had decided early on that Borlon would eventually be the team's magus, so I assigned him every single black magic spell from levels 1-7.
What now? Well, we needed to return to Doga and Unei. However, there were also three optional dungeons available right now that I had been sort of saving until our final job was unlocked just so the team would cruise through them more easily and also gain Borlon some magus job levels before we tried endgame areas.
Saronia Catacombs were pretty easy. No noteworthy prizes - nothing that would even have offered a substantial boost earlier.
We fought Odin and - unlike when I did this in the 3D version - we were more than prepared.
Next, I went back to Doga's Manor. The enemies were a bit more of a step up but nothing particularly challenging. It felt like we gained levels pretty quickly here.
Fighting Doga and Unei was quite easy. I mean, their spells are fairly strong but we've got a magus now! Bio, Firaga and Drain are quite potent and these battles ended much, much faster than most recent bosses. Firaga was doing over 3000 damage. This kind of damage had been unheard of from my team.
Although we just opened up Eureka, I wanted to do the other optional areas, so Lake Dohr was next. It took me a while to figure out that I needed to take the Invincible to access the extra areas on the Floating Continent. The Sea Lion enemies made me giggle with how cute they are.
You'll see Borlon is using Thunder in auto-battle there. He has a fair number of charges of lower level spells like this and with an appropriate, corresponding elemental rod they still do reasonable damage. As well, Borlon the magus seems to be gaining job levels at quite a pace! This is partly because the "job experience" earned is loosely based on how appropriate that action is for that job (except for onion knight who gets bad job experience from everything).
Borlon switched to Thundaga against Leviathan. 4000+ damage per cast.
Leviathan has some cool moves. The animation for Tsunami was awesome. But, of course, Leviathan didn't last long against us.
On the whole, Lake Dohr didn't do a whole lot for us, but I'm glad to have done it regardless.
Next, Bahamut's Lair. It's quite a short-feeling area.
Unlike Leviathan, Bahamut's most noteworthy attack of Mega Flare is actually about as dangerous as one might expect.
After a few of these it's fair to say Bahamut had us on the ropes, but we still won on this first try. You can see Borlon was mostly casting Bio.
Again, there were some useful consumables in the cave but on the whole we didn't gain a whole lot we could use from Bahamut's Lair.
Okay, let's get back on track. We need to push through the Ancients' Maze to the Syrcus Tower.
I decided to raid the first floor which had tons of treasure before heading into Eureka. Unfortunately, the Bluck and Qumqum enemy groups were about as bad as I remember. Actually, they were probably way worse; an enemy based around summoning allies isn't that bad when the game caps at 3 enemies. Some of these fights got desperate.
We won against them, but it took effort and, more importantly, Hi-Potions! By the time I did the first floor and dropped into Eureka I only had about 20 Hi-Potions remaining. We are really feeling the lack of healing in this gauntlet-like endgame.
Maybe this will help: early on in Eureka, we got a Ribbon!
Everyone can use it! Until we have more Crystal Helmets we will be passing this around among melee characters.
Although our resources were nearly tapped, I wanted to fight the first boss guarding a weapon here, which ended up being Amon guarding the Moonring Blade. We won't be able to use that, but what are we going to do? Not fight all the bosses? C'mon.
Borlon used Bio a lot here since that would be unaffected by Amon's changing elemental profile. Archibald and Captain chipped in with physical damage although it was a pittance compared to what Borlon was bringing.
Like Hein before him, Amon didn't last long and certainly wasn't overwhelming on the offense, either.
Very shortly after Amon, I was almost entirely out of Hi-Potions. I used an Ottershroom to teleport out of the dungeon and backtracked through the Ancients' Maze. I saved my last few Hi-Potions for any trouble I'd face in this area and ended up literally using my last one on the way out - sort of a just-in-time scenario.
When I got back to the Invincible, I healed up and completely restocked my supplies.
I was going to stop playing at this point but I had a break and jumped back in fairly quickly. I really wanted to at least get Eureka done. We got in with a much better stock of supplies.
We fought Kunoichi to get the Masamune. She was tough enough to take down our onion knight but it really wasn't a bad fight.
We continued on - where the random battles, by the way, seem way easier than in Syrcus Tower - and fought General for Excalibur. It was a straightforward - maybe even easy - fight.
I was sort of holding out hope that the equipment lists might line up at least partly with the 3D version instead of strictly matching the Famicom version, so as I got each piece of equipment I was checking whether my warrior could use it or not. Sadly, it was not meant to be.
Just a couple of floors later, we got to point where the path split, with what was clearly the Elder Staff on the left, Ragnarok (the sword) on the right, and a door ahead. Recalling what this area was like last I played (again, on the 3D version) I thought... maybe I should just walk through that door first. What an excellent decision that was!
This final room of Eureka includes a revival spring, an HP/MP recovery spring, two folks who sell the best spells in the game, and a hidden merchant who sells crystal equipment.
The heals are nice, but maybe more importantly this means Borlon gets some very nice new spells.
I was able to afford all of the crystal gear I thought I might need: I even grabbed four Crystal Shields, thinking there were two for the onion knight and two more if I wanted to do a super-defensive Draw Attacks build with my viking. The onion knight is actually equipped quite well now!
Although the onion knight is pictured and obviously the crystal gear was a major upgrade for him, this was amazing for my warrior and still somewhat noteworthy for the viking. It's great all around.
With this... let's backtrack a bit and look at that Elder Staff. Scylla's here.
Wow. Flare does ~5000 damage to a boss, and Borlon doesn't even have an exceptional job level yet. This is a big change.
I guess similar is going to happen when we check out Ragnarok, right?
Yup. I am so glad I went to the end of Eureka first.
Sadly, I have no use for Ragnarok.
Although I'm happy I got some new abilities and items, those Blucks and Qumqums in the Syrcus Tower were tough! And they may not even be the toughest parts. I decided to do some pre-emptive levelling here. A big part of the impetus is actually that there's free healing here at the end of Eureka, and there isn't in Ancients' Maze or Syrcus Tower (I think?). Any time I want to gain levels in Syrcus Tower, I would have to run all the way back through Ancients' Maze just to nap and buy some potions.
I'm not sure if this is the best place to gain levels in this game, but it's certainly the most convenient that I know of. I had a personal time constraint but I did two or three cycles of recovering Borlon's MP and then blowing through battles using Meteor. After I left with another Ottershroom and saved, the team looked like this:
I was still mostly micro-managing HP gains, although Borlon is just staying as the team's magus, and you can kind of see that this decision is already making a difference. I am not sure whether I'll keep doing that or not, although it's gotten quite a bit easier with the new crystal outfits.
So, what's next? Syrcus Tower, I suppose. Either grinding and seeing if I can get some onion equipment, or just rushing the endgame. I'll have to see how I fare against the enemies before making the call on that.
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Although I had saved at Doga's Manor, I recalled that we had the fangs that we needed to pass the giant statues and approach the game's final areas, and that was where we would find the Earth Crystal. I went straight for it.
We entered the Ancients' Maze. Right away, there's a big square room and I knew this was where the Earth Crystal was, and given some of the success I've had against bosses lately (?) I decided to give this a few shots. When you approach the crystal, you're attacked by a fellow named Titan who is a palette swap of the Hecatoncheir boss from, like, moments ago.
Titan acts a fair bit like Hecatoncheir, although he's probably all-around stronger in general, and every so often he'll throw a Flare spell in among his Quake spells and regular attacks. I had mentioned that Quake looked awesome in Pixel Remaster and got a nice capture of it this time.
Flare was very powerful and the Quakes were probably a little better, so we didn't hold up super well here.
Once again unsure whether I might be close, I tried three times (since you can save right outside) and none were very successful. Since the game doesn't actually stop you from proceeding, I decided to explore a bit more of the Ancients' Maze. Many of the treasures were consumables or unusable weapons, but we definitely benefitted from a Crystal Shield (good for an onion knight!), Crystal Helmet, Crystal Mail and Crystal Gloves. Besides our Protect Rings, these were the first armor upgrades for the warrior and onion knight since the Floating Continent! A huge difference.
I was surprised to find an Omnirod. I remembered that being a Eureka weapon that I'd find later on, but I guess I had confused it with the Elder Staff. This will be useful for our magus very soon.
We also happened to gain a few levels in the course of this exploration that would leave us in slightly better shape for Titan.
Besides being better prepared in general, with new equips, a couple of levels, and a bit more mindfulness of magic resistance in general (i.e. equipped Reflective Mail on the vikings) we didn't change much in our next battle with Titan. But we won!
With that, we unlocked our last useable job. I had decided early on that Borlon would eventually be the team's magus, so I assigned him every single black magic spell from levels 1-7.
What now? Well, we needed to return to Doga and Unei. However, there were also three optional dungeons available right now that I had been sort of saving until our final job was unlocked just so the team would cruise through them more easily and also gain Borlon some magus job levels before we tried endgame areas.
Saronia Catacombs were pretty easy. No noteworthy prizes - nothing that would even have offered a substantial boost earlier.
We fought Odin and - unlike when I did this in the 3D version - we were more than prepared.
Next, I went back to Doga's Manor. The enemies were a bit more of a step up but nothing particularly challenging. It felt like we gained levels pretty quickly here.
Fighting Doga and Unei was quite easy. I mean, their spells are fairly strong but we've got a magus now! Bio, Firaga and Drain are quite potent and these battles ended much, much faster than most recent bosses. Firaga was doing over 3000 damage. This kind of damage had been unheard of from my team.
Although we just opened up Eureka, I wanted to do the other optional areas, so Lake Dohr was next. It took me a while to figure out that I needed to take the Invincible to access the extra areas on the Floating Continent. The Sea Lion enemies made me giggle with how cute they are.
You'll see Borlon is using Thunder in auto-battle there. He has a fair number of charges of lower level spells like this and with an appropriate, corresponding elemental rod they still do reasonable damage. As well, Borlon the magus seems to be gaining job levels at quite a pace! This is partly because the "job experience" earned is loosely based on how appropriate that action is for that job (except for onion knight who gets bad job experience from everything).
Borlon switched to Thundaga against Leviathan. 4000+ damage per cast.
Leviathan has some cool moves. The animation for Tsunami was awesome. But, of course, Leviathan didn't last long against us.
On the whole, Lake Dohr didn't do a whole lot for us, but I'm glad to have done it regardless.
Next, Bahamut's Lair. It's quite a short-feeling area.
Unlike Leviathan, Bahamut's most noteworthy attack of Mega Flare is actually about as dangerous as one might expect.
After a few of these it's fair to say Bahamut had us on the ropes, but we still won on this first try. You can see Borlon was mostly casting Bio.
Again, there were some useful consumables in the cave but on the whole we didn't gain a whole lot we could use from Bahamut's Lair.
Okay, let's get back on track. We need to push through the Ancients' Maze to the Syrcus Tower.
I decided to raid the first floor which had tons of treasure before heading into Eureka. Unfortunately, the Bluck and Qumqum enemy groups were about as bad as I remember. Actually, they were probably way worse; an enemy based around summoning allies isn't that bad when the game caps at 3 enemies. Some of these fights got desperate.
We won against them, but it took effort and, more importantly, Hi-Potions! By the time I did the first floor and dropped into Eureka I only had about 20 Hi-Potions remaining. We are really feeling the lack of healing in this gauntlet-like endgame.
Maybe this will help: early on in Eureka, we got a Ribbon!
Everyone can use it! Until we have more Crystal Helmets we will be passing this around among melee characters.
Although our resources were nearly tapped, I wanted to fight the first boss guarding a weapon here, which ended up being Amon guarding the Moonring Blade. We won't be able to use that, but what are we going to do? Not fight all the bosses? C'mon.
Borlon used Bio a lot here since that would be unaffected by Amon's changing elemental profile. Archibald and Captain chipped in with physical damage although it was a pittance compared to what Borlon was bringing.
Like Hein before him, Amon didn't last long and certainly wasn't overwhelming on the offense, either.
Very shortly after Amon, I was almost entirely out of Hi-Potions. I used an Ottershroom to teleport out of the dungeon and backtracked through the Ancients' Maze. I saved my last few Hi-Potions for any trouble I'd face in this area and ended up literally using my last one on the way out - sort of a just-in-time scenario.
When I got back to the Invincible, I healed up and completely restocked my supplies.
I was going to stop playing at this point but I had a break and jumped back in fairly quickly. I really wanted to at least get Eureka done. We got in with a much better stock of supplies.
We fought Kunoichi to get the Masamune. She was tough enough to take down our onion knight but it really wasn't a bad fight.
We continued on - where the random battles, by the way, seem way easier than in Syrcus Tower - and fought General for Excalibur. It was a straightforward - maybe even easy - fight.
I was sort of holding out hope that the equipment lists might line up at least partly with the 3D version instead of strictly matching the Famicom version, so as I got each piece of equipment I was checking whether my warrior could use it or not. Sadly, it was not meant to be.
Just a couple of floors later, we got to point where the path split, with what was clearly the Elder Staff on the left, Ragnarok (the sword) on the right, and a door ahead. Recalling what this area was like last I played (again, on the 3D version) I thought... maybe I should just walk through that door first. What an excellent decision that was!
This final room of Eureka includes a revival spring, an HP/MP recovery spring, two folks who sell the best spells in the game, and a hidden merchant who sells crystal equipment.
The heals are nice, but maybe more importantly this means Borlon gets some very nice new spells.
I was able to afford all of the crystal gear I thought I might need: I even grabbed four Crystal Shields, thinking there were two for the onion knight and two more if I wanted to do a super-defensive Draw Attacks build with my viking. The onion knight is actually equipped quite well now!
Although the onion knight is pictured and obviously the crystal gear was a major upgrade for him, this was amazing for my warrior and still somewhat noteworthy for the viking. It's great all around.
With this... let's backtrack a bit and look at that Elder Staff. Scylla's here.
Wow. Flare does ~5000 damage to a boss, and Borlon doesn't even have an exceptional job level yet. This is a big change.
I guess similar is going to happen when we check out Ragnarok, right?
Yup. I am so glad I went to the end of Eureka first.
Sadly, I have no use for Ragnarok.
Although I'm happy I got some new abilities and items, those Blucks and Qumqums in the Syrcus Tower were tough! And they may not even be the toughest parts. I decided to do some pre-emptive levelling here. A big part of the impetus is actually that there's free healing here at the end of Eureka, and there isn't in Ancients' Maze or Syrcus Tower (I think?). Any time I want to gain levels in Syrcus Tower, I would have to run all the way back through Ancients' Maze just to nap and buy some potions.
I'm not sure if this is the best place to gain levels in this game, but it's certainly the most convenient that I know of. I had a personal time constraint but I did two or three cycles of recovering Borlon's MP and then blowing through battles using Meteor. After I left with another Ottershroom and saved, the team looked like this:
I was still mostly micro-managing HP gains, although Borlon is just staying as the team's magus, and you can kind of see that this decision is already making a difference. I am not sure whether I'll keep doing that or not, although it's gotten quite a bit easier with the new crystal outfits.
So, what's next? Syrcus Tower, I suppose. Either grinding and seeing if I can get some onion equipment, or just rushing the endgame. I'll have to see how I fare against the enemies before making the call on that.
<< Start | < Previous | Index | Next >
