LP Beach

This isn't exactly where we left off last time, but before we head out on our mission, let's take a quick stop at Shades'. It might be a while before we get back to town, and we have enough Crystal Berries to afford something.

I thought about this for a while, all of the medals remaining are good but I think Defence Exchange is the one I'm most likely to make use of in the LP. Front Support's just too expensive for what it does, MP-wise, and while Electric Needles is great, it fights against my desire to let the bosses show what they can do.

As you might expect, this is exactly the same as Power Exchange, just in reverse. Kabbu tends to like this one, but I'm not going to have him equip it just yet. Onto the pile it goes.

All right, let's head out.

06 - Outskirts

It's been a while since we've come this way; we need to head south through the Outskirts, toward the caves.

As we pass by here, let's notice the digging spot up on that ledge again. We still can't reach it, even now, but it's something to keep in the back of our minds.

Into the cave we go.

025 - Caves

Immediately, we can see the Queen is waiting for us with one of her soldiers. Let's not waste our time with the enemies here, let's just head straight to the rendezvous.

As soon as we get close, the conversation will start automatically.

If there was any other way, I assure you I would take it.

The Forsaken Lands... Do the rumours hold true?

Many dangerous beasts roam in the Forsaken Lands. Some even disguise themselves in various forms.

But heed me! Nothing in this land compares to the horror we will live if the Wasps get the sapling.

I've heard that Termites dislike Ants heavily. Would they open their doors?

We can only hope they realize this matter concerns them as well.

Having a Queen with us is not the worst insurance.

Let's proceed at once. You are to keep me safe, but I will support you where I can.

Leave it to us!

Be careful out there, my Queen. The real horror would be a kingdom without you...

My loyal subject, I thank you. Please wait faithfully for our return.

Well, that's interesting! Elizant will finally be joining our party for this mission. She won't actually fight with us, unfortunately, but having her along does give us the ability to use a new skill. Let's check that out.

Royal Decree is a skill any of our characters can use, and it appears in all their skill menus. For 5 TP, this gives both Attack Up and Defence Up to the entire party, with a duration of two turns. That's a bargain in terms of both action economy and TP economy, and it's definitely worth keeping in mind; I can't say I use it all that much, honestly, as I usually find it to be overkill, but it's definitely powerful.

This skill can only be used while Elizant II is physically following the party. If Team Snakemouth get separated from her for any reason, it will disappear from their skill menus.

The soldier also has a bit of new dialogue if we talk to her now.

Anyway, let's move forward! We can finally smash this boulder and see where that leads.

Well, for starters, the enemies on this side are much stronger!

04 - FIGHT!

These guys look familiar! We fought Belostoss before in Stream Mountain, but if we hadn't explored that optional dungeon, this would be our first encounter with them. Their stats seem a lot less outrageous now than they did then.

(Interestingly, this fight is still using the early-game battle music, rather than "Team, It's Getting Serious!". I think they've probably tied the music to the area, and this is technically the same room as the other side we explored in Chapter 2.)

Why not try out Royal Decree?

It's a really straightforward skill. Elizant comes in from offscreen to give us some encouragement and boost our stats, simple as that. (I do think it'd have been nice if we'd see her hanging around in the background like some of the other characters we've escorted, but oh well.)

With the stat boosts, Kabbu can do an Under Strike and inflict pretty heavy damage on both of them.

And with a relay from Leif, Vi can inflict quite a bit more.

Chompy contributes the best she can. (Unfortunately, even a party-wide attack boost doesn't work on her.) It's not quite enough to kill the Belostoss.

Kabbu shrugs off a couple of giant boulders to the face. Between the defence boosts and Super Blocks, they could be a lot more harmful.

Let's clean this up. I'm not going to show the rest of this fight, it's pretty straightforward to finish both of them (all we have to do is get Vi in front and have Leif relay to her).

These guys are still worth lots of EXP, somehow.

Also, Belostoss are one of those enemies that, peculiarly, can drop cooked food. Sure, we can take a Leaf Salad, I guess.

This looks like a new enemy! What's this odd snail?

It's shockingly nimble for a snail, it actually leaps up and tries to dive-bomb us!

Definitely a new enemy. Let's do some spying, then.

Beware its sedatives. I shall drag it out of its shell when it retreats!

This is the Ironnail. It's more or less an upgraded Numbnail, but it has some new tricks.

Here is me forgetting that Leif can't get through this thing's defence. A lot of the enemies around here are very difficult to damage with base attack; the game gives you plenty of tools to deal with defencive enemies, but it definitely expects you to use them.

After Vi attacks it, the Ironnail retreats inside its shell. This is a defencive stance, increasing its base defence to 5. Ironnails will always do this after being damaged by a non-flipping attack (it didn't hide after Leif's attack because he did zero damage).

Kabbu's horn attacks can flip it out of the shell, and also deal damage.

This way, Vi can attack again and get some more damage in.

Unfortunately, that leaves Chompy trying to get through the shell, and that's not going to work.

Ironnails have very similar eye lasers to Numbnails, but they get to fire twice. Each hit of this does 4 base damage, and can inflict sleep if not blocked.

This battle's over now. Let's just switch Vi in front and finish it off.

There we go.

These things don't give us quite as much EXP as the Belostoss, for some reason, but they're still pretty lucrative. Seems like the game's back to thinking we're at a reasonable level for the content.

Let's move along.

Those two enemies are all we can find in here for now. If you look up, you might notice there are some platforms above us; there's more to this cave still, but we can't get to it from here. Let's take the path to the south.

63 - Forsaken Lands (Recommended listening!)

The path takes us outside, and we immediately get a discovery for the new area! (We'll check that in a moment.) Take a moment to listen to the music here. This song is quite memorable, and quite different in style to a lot of the rest of the game; it has a soothing and mysterious quality.

There seems to be a character waiting for us here, and we walk straight into a conversation.

Patton! So this is where you crawled to after your exile...

Who's this guy?

Oh, just a little scientist.

Oi, oi, my stuff never hurt nobody... too badly.

...I do not have time for a trip down memory lane.

You all seem pretty, uh, buzzed out. Must be real serious.

Boy, that sounds rough. It wouldn't help my research at all, either.

If you've got any tips, it'd help. This is some thick fog...

Nothing to be done about that, but...

So long as there's not a forked road, if you keep your eyes open you should be fine.

Patton... Thank you for your assistance.

Now, about that there exile...

We will discuss that when the kingdom is safe. Please keep your... trinkets... here for now.

Hehehehe. Alright. Drop by if you ever want a peek at 'em!

And with that, he heads inside his house.

And we regain control. The fog in this area makes itself immediately apparent; honestly, it looks quite nice, and gives this area a bit of a dreamlike quality. Let's check the banter here.

So these are the Forsaken Lands...

I can't see anything! Where are we even going?!

There should be some clues to the way forward. Let's keep our eyes on our surroundings.

This echoes the hint Patton just gave us: there are clues in the landmarks that might help us figure out which way we need to go. This will make more sense momentarily.

Also, the discovery we just received also reiterates this hint. Sounds important!

Before we get to exploring, let's check out Patton's little hut.

He's definitely operating some kind of lab out here.

Just keep your eyes open! It is that simple.

And, uh, come visit later? Without the Queen?

Well, that's suspicious, isn't it? (We'll have to do this.)

There's also a banter, of course.

That mask's all weird.

Think he's wearing it just for show?

Dunno. I kinda wanna try it on!

This place seems to hold a few dangerous substances...

I would wager it is for his safety.

Wearing a mask protects you and the people around you. It's a good idea.

Looking around, there's not a whole lot we can do here, but we can inspect this shelf...

Elias - Dr. Patton's Patent Pending... Anti-Obfuscation Ocular Lens.

"Speccy" - Aphid Feed a.k.a. Apheed.

John - Dr. Patton's Patent Pending... Snakemouth Oil.

Jerry - 1 (one) "genuine" Spuder Spy Card.

Heh. Snakemouth Oil. And it appears Patton was responsible for Jerry's totally legitimate cards. On the other hand, we know Elias' telescope works, so maybe not everything he does is a con?

For better or worse, we can't do anything else here for now, so let's head back outside.

Out of curiosity, though... let's test something. Patton wants us to come back without the Queen, but what would happen if we sequence broke and came here before she joined us?

Well, if you come here too early (which you can do any time after getting the Horn Dash to break the boulder), you'll find his hut is just boarded up.

Anyway, let's look around. There's a label on the side of his hut, but I can't really make any sense of it; I think maybe he's living inside half a bottle? This doesn't seem to convey any useful information for us.

Also, there's a path east.

There are boulders here, but most of them don't hide or block anything. We'll still smash them to be sure.

There's also a path to the south, and another to the west. We have a lot of choices here!

Let's start off by heading east.

...Wha?! It loops around?

So, yeah. If you hadn't quite realised yet, this is the gimmick of the Forsaken Lands: it's something of a Lost Woods type area. The paths connect in strange ways and can basically warp you around, backtracking doesn't always take you to the place you came from, it can get pretty confusing (and I'm tempted to say non-Euclidean). The hints Patton was talking about do exist, but some of them are subtle, and not every area has them, so a bit of trial and error is going to be inevitable (especially since there are secrets on some of the 'wrong' paths). Honestly, the calming music helps a lot here; this could easily get frustrating, but I often find exploring here gives a bit of a Zen feeling instead.

There are some boulders in this corner we can smash, too, but once again they don't really conceal anything.

Let's head west. Back "the way we came".

This is actually a new area! Let's have a look around.

Why are there pipes all the way out here?

I assume they were built by the Termites, for some reason.

...Uh, yeah. But why?

I-I don't know...

These pipes are definitely worth noticing, they'll be important in a bit.

We'll get started cutting some weeds and smashing some rocks. They're still not hiding much of anything.

Well, let's get this snail out of the way, I guess. We'll spend the first turn hitting it, let's just speed past that for a moment...

It does something new on its turn! Ironnails, in addition to their eye beams, can charge up.

This gives it +2 charge-up and one turn of Defence Up, as well as readying a specific move for its next action. There's one further subtlety here: while it's in this charging stance, it won't retreat inside its shell after being hit, so despite boosting its defence there's a sense in which it's more vulnerable now.

We could kill it, but let's see what it'll do instead.

The turn after charging, it does this speedy charge and barrels into someone. This deals 5 base damage, though it's effectively 7 after accounting for the charge-ups; it hurts, but I think on balance this is less threatening than the eye beams.

We can finish things easily from here.

But before we do, let's have Vi heal herself a bit (and see that equipping two Heal Plus medals definitely stacks: Secret Stash is still a perfectly effective move!). Victory Buzz will give us back the TP after the battle ends, so it's worth doing this.

And from there it's easy to finish the battle.

Back to exploration.

In one of the weeds over here, we can find a Squash. This area is where they're actually from; we could get a few of them early by stealing them from the bandits, but they're very plentiful and easy to get here. If you like using stat-boosting items, it's pretty easy now to stock up on these and turn them into Squash Tart and Plumpling Pie.

More Squash here. Unlike many items that can be found inside weeds, these Squash respawn and can be collected again and again.

We can smash some boulders to reveal these stairs, and climb up to get closer to the pipe (which is blowing out air), but there doesn't seem to be any way for us to interact with this right now.

Let's head further west?

This is definitely different! Is that a CD?

Remember, there must be some hint as to the proper path!

It's just hard to see with all this fog.

Ugh, can't we just try all three ways?

With a few seconds of patience, you'll save hours of circling around!

Sorry, Kabbu, but we're going to be checking all the paths regardless...

Uh, hello?

Whoa! What is this thing, and why was it pretending to be a friendly ant?

Well, it's certainly some new enemies!

Huff... Huff...

Heck this. You're going DOWN! As if you could put us to sleep after that scare!

These are Mimic Spiders. They pretend to be ants in the field until we get close, which is pretty creepy, but once they reveal themselves they're pretty straightforward.

Kabbu's probably the best one for this job. Hope we don't waste too many skills...

And Plumplings are the Seedling variant for the area; in fact, they're the final Seedling variant we'll encounter! These have the most defence of anything we've seen yet, at 3, but they have low HP, so any piercing attack rips right through them.

Let's get started.

This isn't quite enough damage to take out the spider, but it's pretty close.

The Mimic Spider runs up to Leif and bites him; I miss the block and he gets sent to sleep. That's a bit annoying.

And here's the Plumpling's attack: just a straightforward pounce for 5 base damage. Plumplings are a very simple enemy, and this is literally the only thing they can do. The challenge with Plumplings isn't their attacks, but getting through their defences.

Let's clean this up.

Kabbu can finish off the Mimic Spider.

And Vi's needle skills are perfect for taking out Plumplings. I like Needle Toss in particular here: it's slightly cheaper, and if there are multiple enemies around, you can spread out the damage if you don't need all the hits to kill it. Kabbu's Under Strike is also a good choice.

These enemies aren't worth quite as much EXP as the snails or Belostoss, but they're still interesting to fight.

Anyway, that was spooky! Let's move along.

Shall we head west?

Uh. Well. Oops.

What's this way?

Heading south from Patton's brings us back to this hub-ish area. This place is confusing!

If we head under the bridge, there's another new enemy!

What are these things?

If we had more time, we'd consider domesticating it, but... Vi, you know what to do.

Mothflies are a real insect, though they're not at all closely related to moths. They're flies, or gnats.

Anyway, they're a flying enemy, so we're going to need Vi to get them down.

With a bit of careful planning, we can optimise our damage distribution and have Chompy finish off the one in front.

Mothflies' attack is pretty basic, they just ram into us. They're not particularly scary, especially not in small numbers. (Although we haven't seen everything they can do yet.)

Let's just finish this.

They're also not worth much EXP. They're a bit underwhelming for an enemy this late in the game, aren't they?

Let's head further south?

Um. Nope. That path apparently loops us back to this side.

Before we head onward, let's go back?

Here's proof that going back the way you came doesn't always take you to the place you just left! Let's try another path we didn't take before.

Going south from here...

Also brings us back here!

The "hint" in this room is that the CD on the east side has a chunk gouged out of it. We need to go this way.

Aha! This is somewhere new, at least.

A dead end...?

Too early to say. Let us inspect.

(She does participate in banters sometimes! I was beginning to wonder.)

We quickly find ourselves facing a broken bridge, and our team stop to have a conversation.

Let's look around. We've always found a way.

Uh, yeah...

These lands are disorienting as is. Would there be a path we missed?

Not in this direction, from what we've seen...

Are you, uh, 100% sure?

Vi.

My Queen?

You shall carry us one by one across the ravine.

We've tried this approach, and...

If it was a vast canyon I would reconsider, but there is no time.

Vi, this is an order. You must try.

We'll support, Vi. Come on, try it out.

You... can do that?

Been practicing.

Then there is no longer an excuse! Vi, fly with haste!

...Yeah. This is how flying is unlocked. It's not a new ability, Vi just refused to do it until explicitly ordered (and when there was absolutely no alternative). We did know she could fly before, she just only ever did it in cutscenes, but we can now force her to do it any time we want. As you might imagine, this opens up some new possibilities for exploration. Vi's flying is, in fact, the last field ability for us to get.

We also get Fly Drop, the final team skill! This is Vi's team-up with Kabbu, and she'll literally pick him up and drop him on the enemy. It's a single-target blow, dealing (Vi's attack + Kabbu's attack + 3) damage and piercing all defence. It has its uses, but it's a bit inefficient to spend two actions on that compared to her needle skills or Kabbu's Under Strike. Still, it's a neat skill and I'll definitely show it off soon.

Fly Drop used to be more powerful; it was nerfed a bit in v1.1, and used to do (Vi's attack + Kabbu's attack + 5) damage. I'm not entirely sure why they felt this nerf was necessary; it was strong, and fairly popular among first-time players for its ability to deal with defencive enemies, but ultimately it was still an attack that does one big hit and nowhere near the most broken thing you could do.

Well, Vi, you finally have no choice.

I'm just doing it 'cuz the Queen asked me to!

Well, let's get on with this!

(I apologise for the low quality of this GIF, it was really difficult to compress this animation under 2 MB.)

Anyway, this is how Vi's flying works. She'll pick up Kabbu and we can travel horizontally with free control (though she certainly doesn't look like she's enjoying it much). We don't gain much by way of vertical height, more or less staying at whatever altitude we launched from. And there's a distance limit, which isn't much longer than the gaps here. So it doesn't obviate all platforming, it just allows the devs to design different sorts of challenges instead.

Also, look at Leif, just magically levitating himself on ice and bringing Elizant along, he's not even using his wings! I think he's just making Vi carry Kabbu because he thinks it's funny.

Second gap, same as the first.

And we've reached the far side. There's a path to the south, but also some enemies we should probably take care of. (Also, do note the pencil pointing south, that's the hint here.)

The Ironnail is alone, so we can take it out pretty effortlessly.

Let's not dwell on this.

Interestingly, Ironnails can also drop Numbnail Darts. That said, I don't have room for it and it's not particularly useful.

And it turns out the big pumpkin was actually a Plumpling in disguise! They do that.

It's also hiding a Mimic Spider behind it. Sneaky.

This seems like another job for Needle Toss! Sadly, I missed the third shot (it can be easy to mess up aiming this skill), but it's still pretty effective: it makes quick work of the Plumpling and lets us get some damage in on the enemy behind it.

We'll just quickly finish off the spider after that and move along.

There's another Squash in the weed up here. These things are everywhere.

If we head north (the 'wrong' path), it brings us back here.

Backtracking! Let's take the south exit now.

What's this area, then?

Lots of chasms here...

Well, Vi, you know what to do.

Ugh. These gaps are too far apart! I can't carry Kabbu that long!

Hmm... It seems these rocks are blocking the wind's flow...

We could use that to push us forward.

Where is all that steam coming from, anyway?

The banter (in addition to ragging on Vi) gives us a pretty good hint.

If we smash this boulder, it opens up airflow from the pipe.

And we can use this airflow to help us cross! If we're aligned with it, we practically rocket off to the west, where there's another platform.

Well, that enemy looked like just a normal Mothfly, but it has friends! What is this thing?

We should be able to freeze them all at once, anyhow.

Did you think Mothflies were an easy and uninteresting enemy, and wonder what they were doing in this area? Well, here's at least part of the explanation.

Let's get started on this.

This isn't enough damage to destroy the cluster, but it's pretty close.

The Mothflies still attack us like normal.

And Mothfly Clusters can attack us the same way, they just do a bit more damage.

That could have been much worse.

Vi can knock down this one, it'd be a waste to have her kill the cluster when it's on 1 HP.

Kabbu can do that with Under Strike instead, and get some extra damage on the other Mothfly while he's at it.

This isn't quite enough to kill both, but we'll do what we can.

One more attack from the last remaining Mothfly, and we're home free.

Let's move along.

It leaves behind a Honey Drop. We don't have room for this.

There's nothing in this boulder either, but we may as well smash it.

The bridge south is also broken, but we can naturally fly across.

There's a lot going on here. There's another pipe blocked by a boulder, and an arrow on the ground pointing to the east. We should probably go that way.

(Also, shh, this arrow was added in v1.1, it wasn't always here.)

But what if we don't?

This path doesn't warp us back, there's a new area here! (Although, do note, Elizant II has mysteriously disappeared. That's an indication that we're not on the critical path... but it also means that we've temporarily lost access to Royal Decree. No need to worry, she'll be back as soon as we go east again.)

Hey... that scrap has the Ant Kingdom stuff on it!

Huh. Were those the tanks Elizant used while searching for where to settle?

They seem damaged. She probably abandoned them here.

So we are walking in historic ground! What a grand honor!

You should let that Neo guy know, right?

Indeed!

The banter here is cute. And also offers us a bit of insight into history.

Here's a better view with the Ant Kingdom insignia visible.

This battle has three Mothflies, but they're still not particularly threatening.

Let's just move past them.

Also, this is here.

This battle has two clusters! That's a bit more intimidating, potentially.

We can do enough damage to get rid of the first one immediately, at least.

And, so far, they're still just attacking us normally.

Hmm. Let's just keep attacking, I suppose?

We couldn't quite take this one out, but at least we got rid of the small one?

Here's a new thing Mothfly Clusters can do! When they're the only enemy remaining, they can spawn two Mothflies.

They also get to attack immediately, which is bad news for Vi this time around...

Well, that's annoying, isn't it? (Though, do note, the spawned Mothflies have only 4 maximum HP, instead of 9. Other than that, though, they're identical to the others.)

Let's get Vi back up, we're going to need her.

With such low HP, it's trivial to have Vi swat them.

I seem to have made an error, though! Leaving the main cluster alive means it can just spawn more of them.

Am I having deja vu?

This time, let's finish off the cluster so we don't have that problem again.

Much better.

Now we can finish the fight easily. Mothfly Clusters aren't the most difficult enemy necessarily, but they're definitely annoying! (And we haven't seen everything they can do yet either.)

With the enemies out of the way, let's get our bearings.

There's a path to the south...

But it loops us back to here. Oops. Let's get back there and try another way.

We can bounce our way up here. What's to the north?

Another warp back.

There must be another path here.

What about this mushroom?

There we go! Uh, what's this place?

This place has seen much better days.

Why'd all these bugs wanna live here?

Their choice of home is not the only strange thing about them...

They do give off a peculiar feeling... Let's be on guard.

Well, that's nicely mysterious.

We can definitely see some strange bugs milling about in the distance, amidst the ruins. But there's a save crystal here, and we've been ~~getting lost~~exploring long enough for one session, I think. We'll pick up here and investigate this place next time, before we go back and get lost in fog again. See you then!

Posted: **Sun Mar 20, 2022 9:52 am**

58: Lord of the Flies

Last time, we started exploring the Forsaken Lands, got lost in fog and warping paths, eventually finding our way to this strange little village. Let's have a look around.

Before that, though... let's move some medals around.

Let's try something a little different today. I was thinking it's about time to show off all the poison medals, since we have them all, but stacking them all on a single bug feels a bit overplayed. So, instead, let's separate them into offensive and defensive piles, and give those to Vi and Kabbu respectively. There's only one Weak Stomach, but there are other ways to get poisoned (we do have a Poison Cake on us), and Eternal Venom means we should only need to poison Kabbu once per fight. Kabbu's also temporarily taking all of the HP Plus medals for himself, to help him tank better.

(Kabbu doesn't have quite as much defence with this setup as you might think, since he's getting -1 from both Favorite One and Reverse Toxin. But Back Support and Defence Exchange will cancel those out, and then double Poison Defender will bring him to +2.)

This ought to be fun.

With our medals accounted for, let's start exploring this place. There are some bugs we can talk to here...

But we can't understand them. What language is this? (This looks even more unsettling ingame, these scribbly symbols all rotate and shake.)

Uh...

Something about these bugs rubs us the wrong way.

Indeed. They seem intelligent, but avoid conversation.

They can be all weird if they want. Let's keep looking around!

There's a banter for these bugs but it's not particularly enlightening, Team Snakemouth are as confused as we probably are.

So let's keep exploring.

One of Venus' buds is hanging out in this ruined house.

Let's see what she has to say.

...But now it's full of these weird mask-wearing bugs. What's their deal?

It seems like she doesn't know what they are either. Also, it's good to get some history of this location.

Let's also take the opportunity to get some healing, especially since we've been moving HP Plus medals around (remember, those only increase your maximum HP, putting one on will not increase your current HP).

Please come by again, I'm always up for a chat.

Thanks, Venus.

Let's look around some more.

On the east side, there's this fallen pillar.

If we dig underneath it, there's a buried item we can find. (This one can be pretty tricky, you can't really see it's there before you get close.)

It's a Lore Book. How did this get here...? Anyway, we'll have to go check this out at the next opportunity.

Back we go.

And up the steps, we have more of these odd bugs.

Okay, I guess? Sure.

Not much to see on this side, just more rubble. Although there's a weed growing up on the ledge there, we should try to get to that.

Uh, sure.

There are some weeds on this side in and around the ruined building, but there's nothing of note in them. Also, you can drop down from here to get to the Lore Book if you want, though you'll still need to dig your way out afterward.

Up here, there's a big tent we can go inside. Let's explore the rest first, though.

This building looked suspicious, but there's nothing inside.

Thanks. You too?

We can fly across to the ledge now.

The weed up here has a Magic Seed in it! Those are always useful.

All right, let's go in.

Uh. Who or what is this?

...! T-Team, I feel a great threat. Be on guard!

If we check the banter, Kabbu seems pretty alarmed.

If we get close, it starts trying to talk to us...

35 - Reckless for Glory! (Bonus Boss)

Oh.

Well, whoever or whatever this is, they definitely want to fight us. Let's rearrange our party a bit, and do some spying.

It's charging up! Leif, we've gotta block it!

Meet the False Monarch, another one of the Bounty bosses. This thing's pretty interesting: as Vi's spy dialogue told us, it's literally a swarm of Mothflies under a trenchcoat. (When I first saw the bounty board and that one of them was called False Monarch, I was expecting something a bit different, but this works too.)

I also find its design reminiscent of the Beanbean residents from the Mario & Luigi RPG series (hey, it's not precisely Paper Mario this time!), especially Cackletta and Fawful. That's fun.

I've got a bit of a weird plan.

We're going to use Sharing Stash despite being at full health, just to set up regeneration.

And let's have Kabbu taunt.

Now we'll use the Poison Cake on him. He's got Eternal Venom equipped, so this will suffice to keep him poisoned for the entire fight, and make sure his defences are active. (I used Sharing Stash earlier to waste less of the TP restoration from the cake, and because we can't really set up that regeneration later without healing the poison.)

This leaves Chompy free to draw first blood for once! Good for her.

On its turn, False Monarch makes a very aggressive start. This attack is nasty! It opens its cloak and sends forth a swarm of Mothflies to dive-bomb us. These deal 5 base damage per hit, it can launch 3-5 of them, and they inflict poison if not blocked. That's quite the barrage! If you aren't prepared for this, it can be devastating: that's a lot of damage to spread across the party! If it weren't for Kabbu's Taunt, we'd be much worse off.

At the end of the turn, Kabbu recovers 2 HP from Sharing Stash and 2 HP from Reverse Toxin. That's quite substantial! (Though, truthfully, I'm a bit disappointed. The rounding for Reverse Toxin is kind of weird, and I'd hoped to get 3 HP per turn from it if Kabbu had more than 20 maximum HP. It heals 2 HP if your maximum is 10-29, and 3 at 30+.)

Another perk of this strategy is that we're guaranteed to trigger Favorite One every turn.

Getting a bit fiddly here: Leif and Vi swap positions again, then Leif attacks twice so that Vi can save up her charges.

Kabbu's going to keep doing this.

As is Chompy.

This is new. At the start of its turn, it summons two Mothflies. It doesn't always do this, but it doesn't cost it an action to do.

The first Mothfly immediately attacks (though it's not terribly intimidating, and they're easy to block). Taunt works on freshly spawned enemies too, even if they weren't on the battlefield when Kabbu used it.

Then the False Monarch does its actual attack. It walks up and unleashes a swarm right in Kabbu's face! This deals 7 damage at base, and inflicts Attack Down for two turns. (Good thing we don't plan on having Kabbu attack anyone.)

Then the other Mothfly attacks. It wasn't any more effective than the first one.

We get healing again! This will be our last turn getting 4 HP, so let's enjoy it while it lasts.

Here, we can see what's different between these Mothflies and other ones we've seen. Like the ones Mothfly Clusters can spit out, these have only 4 maximum HP but are otherwise identical to regular Mothflies; here, though, they also get a permanent Attack Up and Defence Up.

Leif's just going to keep attacking, while Vi saves her charges. If I wanted to eliminate the Mothflies, Icefall does that quite nicely, but let's see what they're going to do.

And we have another round of taunting and biting.

Here's something new! The small Mothflies can rejoin the main gestalt, healing it for their current HP. If you leave them alive, they can undo a lot of the damage you're dealing (though here, Spiky Bod on Kabbu rendered that pretty ineffective).

And here's another new attack. Throwing the crown is very similar to the previous attack, it's also 7 base damage and can inflict Attack Down (though unlike the swarm attack, this one doesn't inflict it if you block).

And the other Mothfly rejoins the group too.

We only get the healing from Reverse Toxin now. Still, that's not nothing. (Honestly, though, looking at the numbers in this fight makes it apparent what a questionable proposition it is: especially with the multi-hit attacks, we'd probably prefer to have another point of defence, even if that'd mean taking some poison damage.)

We've got three charges built up now, so let's use them.

We swap Vi in front again.

And use Hurricane Toss.

Vi can attack again, letting Leif save his charge (and doing more damage anyway).

Taunt is working well, let's not stop now!

And Chompy does what she does.

More Mothflies! Yay?

We can definitely handle two Mothfly attacks and a crown hurl.

After the usual end of turn effects, here we are. We're making progress, though we still have a ways to go.

Leif has two charges and we've got multiple enemies, so, hmm. Icefall would be enough to eliminate the Mothflies here, but we have the TP and Ice Rain gets more value out of the charges.

We can inflict a lot more damage on the boss this way.

This also seems like a good opportunity to use one of Jayde's Stews! We'll recover some TP and get Kabbu right back to full.

The taunting and biting continues.

This time, it uses the dive-bombing swarm attack, but only hits 3 times.

We're getting closer. We could almost certainly finish things now, but I'm going to play it on the safe side.

So we'll go through a familiar pattern once more.

And take one more crown attack. That could definitely have been worse.

Now Vi's at maximum charge. We don't really need it, but as proof of concept, let's do the poison things we set her up for.

We'll use these Spicy Fries to give her Attack Up and also trigger Weak Stomach.

Yeah, that's definitely enough damage! We're finished here.

The False Monarch is done for.

It does have one other attack we didn't see, the charge-up that the spy conversations allude to.

It spends a turn charging, gaining +2 charge-up and Defence Up for a turn.

The turn after charging, it unleashes this massive swarm attack that hits the entire party, and has a mashing action command. This can be quite painful: it has a base damage of 7! Of course, considering it's telegraphed, Leif's Bubble Shield solves the problem if you can afford the TP cost.

The False Monarch is an interesting fight, especially if you don't know what it's doing. Its main weakness is that all of its attacks (except the charged swarm, which Bubble Shield blocks) are single-target and therefore subject to Taunt. If you stack Kabbu's defences high enough (which is even easier to do with, say, the Do Nothing medals), you can render this boss almost completely harmless. If you don't do that, though, you can definitely end up fighting an uphill battle here, and the dive-bombing Mothfly barrage can easily take down your more vulnerable bugs if it's being spread across the party. And the Attack Down debuffs combined with the summoned Mothflies healing it can really impede your progress.

I almost want to call this a puzzle boss, given it's more or less solveable, but of course you can still just power through it with conventional tactics if you want to. That's pretty solid design.

Anyway, let's get back to the game.

The swarm of flies dissipates, leaving behind the crown for us to claim.

And we're back in control. Um. That happened.

What was UP with that thing!?

I struggle to comprehend how a mass of flies could behave that way...

This tent was here before them, right?

We wonder if... Elizant stayed here at some point.

This ain't fancy enough for a queen, right?

If they were traveling, there'd be no place for too much luxury.

Sadly, there's no real way to be sure. But it's fun to speculate.

Yeah.

Our team seem more interested in speculating about the history of this place than the entity we just fought.

There's nothing else to interact with in here, so let's head back outside.

The strange bugs we saw before are gone now. If we look around, we can see the masks they were wearing lying on the ground.

Everyone's gone...

Was everyone a bunch of Mothflies in hoods too?

A mystery... Just what in blazes was going on here...?

We will probably never know.

There's another mask.

Venus notices they're gone too, but doesn't elaborate further...

For better or worse, we're done here. That was an interesting little excursion! (Before we leave, I'm going to revert our medals to the build we were using before, this experiment was just for the False Monarch.)

Let's take a shortcut back; we should probably go claim our reward for the Bounty, and turn in that Lore Book while we're at it.

Oh, hi there Elizant.

Oh, right! Before we head back, there's a short detour we should probably take while we're here.

So let's head west instead of into the cave.

Remember this area?

Now that we have Vi's flight ability, we can make use of the airstream here...

And fly over to this cave entrance.

In we go!

025 - Caves

What's this area?

Whatever they were gonna build here... They gave up, right?

Most likely. It has this chaotic messiness only an abandoned area can possess...

It seems there's something high up. We may need some sort of special ability to make it through, though...

Duly noted. Let's explore a bit and see if we can get a handle on what the puzzle is here.

First things first, though, let's clear this enemy out.

It's a lone Ironnail. I'm not really in the mood for this; one Needle Pincer from Vi is enough to get rid of it.

Let's just move along.

We need to get up to that ledge, somehow. There's a boulder up there blocking off airflow from that pipe, and we probably need that... but how do we get up?

Well, if we have Leif freeze an icicle in this tiny puddle, it'll get us just enough elevation to make the jump. (If you have difficulty getting up, you can also try having Vi fly from atop the icicle.)

Breaking the boulder frees up the airflow.

Which allows us to fly all the way to the west ledge.

Though there's a Belostoss waiting there, and it comes with a Mimic Spider. In the interest of time, I'm going to gloss over most of this fight too; with the first strike, we have enough damage to kill off the Mimic Spider with just our normal attacks, but I'm going to leave it alive so we can maybe see more of its attacks and hit the Belostoss with one of them instead.

And here we go. This is their other main attack, spitting bubbles that can poison us (though not if we block, of course).

From here, it's easy to finish them both off. (Once again, Vi can make quick work of defensive enemies with Needle Pincer; I'm feeling impatient.)

We're getting close to ranking up again. Not bad!

With the enemy gone, we have a better view of what's here. There's a lever we can flip... let's do that.

What did that do?

From this vantage, we can just begin to see it: it turned on that chimney at the centre of the room. What can we do with that?

Well, if we get back up here...

We can fly over and into the vertical airstream.

Which enables us to get quite a bit of altitude! Once we've flown up high, we need to land on the pipe up here.

There's not much to see on the west side...

But to the east, we can barely see a passage on a ledge below us! Let's fly over and drop down.

There we go. Let's see what's over here.

What's this?

Life Cast is a really interesting medal! It costs 2 MP to equip, and causes the equipped bug to spend HP instead of TP to use skills (but also gives them a 1 point discount on all skill costs). At face value, this might not seem particularly great, but you can do a lot of tricky things with it, ranging from "kind of neat" to "pretty broken". For instance, it's a great way to enable medals like Last Attack that trigger on low HP; alternatively, the cost reduction combined with a source of HP regeneration (or Vi's healing skills) can make it easy to spam something like Taunt or Bubble Shield Lite indefinitely. If you want to get clever, this will absolutely reward you.

It is worth noting that there's a hidden effect: if you combine it with

Life Stealer, the amount of HP you recover from that medal's effect will be halved. I guess they anticipated that being an overpowered combo (e.g. equip Last Attack, use Hurricane Toss or Ice Rain at an HP value that would enable Last Attack, then heal to full from the damage and do it again next turn); it's still pretty effective even with that nerf.

I can't say I've personally used this medal a whole lot, but it's a good one.

After grabbing the medal, there's nothing else up here, so we can drop down and discover where we are! It's all the same cave.

Let's get out of here.

Wait a second... we can reach that digging spot now, can't we?

It has a Crystal Berry inside! We can finally knock this one off the list.

Anyway, let's go see Doppel for our reward.

Ah... I see you defeated that nasty False Monarch...

May I have that crystal it dropped?

...Yes, this is a genuine deal. Here is your reward.

Nice doing business with you. Please find the other bounties and your reward will be waiting.

(Only one more to go!)

Our reward this time around is

Last Stand. This costs 4 MP to equip, and (similar to Last Attack) increases the equipped bug's defence by 2 when they have 4 or fewer HP remaining.

2 defence is enormous, and this can contribute quite a lot of survivability (especially when combined with other defence boosts). You can use this proactively by keeping a tanky character low on HP (it doesn't matter how low your HP is if nothing can deal damage to you), or as an emergency measure for a more fragile character.

The worst thing I can say about this medal is that you may not need it, and that keeping a tank low on HP can be slightly risky if you're bad at blocking (and there are some attacks, like for instance Golden Seedlings, that are too strong to be completely negated). Still, this medal is very, very good if you know what you're doing.

Anyway, we're done here for now, let's go turn in our Lore Book.

On the way back, passing through the square we can notice that Utter has new sidequests to inform us about. Let's take a look.

We should definitely look into this.

Let's go to the library first, though.

Let's see what this one is.

The Era of Deceit. After the Day of Awakening, not all bugs stood equal in society. Many ants, bees, wasps and others failed to evolve with the rest. Many long disputes and frustration occurred because of this. Thankfully, with the passing of time, all bugs experienced the Awakening.

Just what happened to give the bugs sapience, anyway? We don't know much of anything about the Awakening. Maybe we'll learn more later?

We're not far from the mines, so we may as well go see Isau.

Back to Defiant Root.

Before we go see Isau, there's actually something new we can find here now!

If we climb up here, we can just about see a roof to the west...

And now that we can fly, we can get over to it!

There's a very sneaky medal hiding behind the pot here!

Fortify finally completes the set of Leif's status spells. Like the others, it costs 2 MP to equip. Fortify costs 2 TP, and grants Defence Up for 2 turns.

I can't say I've personally made much use of this skill (especially in comparison to, say, Empower and Break), but it will reliably do what it says on the tin. If you frequently find yourself wanting a defence boost, this will get the job done.

Okay, let's actually go see Isau. (This seems to be the "ooh, shiny! a distraction!" update, doesn't it? This trend will, unfortunately, probably continue for a bit.)

In case you've forgotten, Isau's clinic is at the far east side of town.

Let's talk to her.

Why, yes! that permit... You saw my request?

Yep. We'd like to hear more about your miracle cure.

You see, I've been studying Bugaria's flora and their properties for many moons now.

I've found a combination that should heal any illness!

Woah, that's a berry maker right there!

You are a noble soul! I will gladly lend you my strength!

Heheheh. Thanks.

We're assuming the missing ingredient's not going to be easy to get.

Have you all heard of Snakemouth Den?

Excellent! Although the white Sophie Petal I seek actually grows over the den itself, I hear.

I haven't found a way to reach that high place.

So we should try to get really high up?

Leave it to us!

I'll be counting on you! Don't get hurt!

So, yeah. This quest wants us to try to reach a higher level in Snakemouth Den, which we might be able to actually do now that we have Vi's flying. It becomes available on the quest board once we see the cutscene unlocking the ability. (I hadn't planned to interrupt the Forsaken Lands and do this immediately, until I realised it made sense to go back for Doppel and the Lore Book anyway... anyway.)

If we talk to Isau again, she'll request a key item. Let's see if she reacts to the Bug Ranger Plushie.

Sadly, no. It's been a while since we've gotten anything special for this; I wonder if we've already seen them all?

There's no rush. Please take your time looking for it.

If we back out of the menu without choosing an item, Isau says this. She's pretty patient, but this quest is fairly short, so we may as well solve it now.

So let's use our Ant Compass and go back to the mines. This is also a convenient opportunity to show something else off:

In addition to the usual tunnels, this person is also here, and now has Snakemouth Den as an available warp location also! I'm not sure exactly when it gets added to the list.

Regardless, it will conveniently bring us right to the entrance! Not bad.

12 - Snakemouth Den

Snakemouth Den is the same as we left it.

Although that doesn't mean there aren't new things we can do! We were supposed to look up high, right?

We can fly east across these pillars, where we found a Mushroom very early in the game. It doesn't look like this will lead us to Isau's medicine, but there is a Crystal Berry trapped in that vine!

It's a simple matter to knock it free with the Beemerang.

Let's just take this and go.

This room seems like the next natural place to investigate... behind those vines was a bouncy mushroom, where we were able to go up and find a block to use in an early puzzle. Is anything else up there?

Hmm.

This is very easy to overlook, if you don't know the trick to it...

We can actually land on top of the open door here!

And then, landing on the door gets us close enough that we can fly the rest of the way to this ledge! (Vi can't carry Kabbu quite that far in a single trip.) What's through the passage here?

Oh! Well, that looks promising, doesn't it? (There's no music out here, just silence and a few minor sound effects.)

What's this discovery, anyway?

Looks like we're in the right place! (And we also get a history lesson.)

So serene...

To think so much suffering goes on under this paradise...

Don't let it stop you from relaxing!

There's a banter here too, of course. It's not surprising Leif would be unsettled by this, really.

And the Sophie Petal we need is right here for the taking.

If we wanted to, we could actually warp out of here with the Ant Compass (strange as it is given where we are, the soil around the tree counts as diggable, and that's enough to be able to use it). But let's not; I want to take a bit more of a look around Snakemouth Den still.

There's a bit of new content we can see inside the lab area.

73 - Lab Over Snakemouth

To start with, there are a handful of new banters (which can be seen any time after completing Leif's Request), including one in this room.

Must we truly come back here?

It'll be quick, ok? It's just to make sure we didn't miss anything.

You can wait for us here, Leif. Do not force yourself.

It's not that big of an issue. Let's not stay too long, though...

I promise I have a reason for being here, it's not just to torture Leif.

Let's head in a bit farther, until we reach this room. There's another new banter here.

Sorry, Leif.

This enemy's in the way, let's just plow through it and keep moving.

Into the containment room.

Zommoth... We... I...

...

I don't think we're going to be learning anything else here, and Leif is suffering, so let's not stay.

The actual reason we returned here, is that there's a secret we can find here now that we have Vi's flying. To start with, let's climb up this makeshift staircase.

Once we get up high enough, we can fly over to this ledge. It's hard to see, but there's a place we can land. (I've been told you can get up here early, without flying, if you freeze the enemy that was here and use it as a platform, but I've never tried to do it.)

Is that a crack in the wall, right in the corner?

If we're very precise, we can dig into the ground here, and slip behind the wall further east.

Uhh... where are we? (The music goes completely silent as we enter this room, also.)

There are some computer screens with plantlike entities displayed on them... if we get closer, we can inspect them.

Um. Did the Roaches create Venus, somehow? What? Is that what this means?

Also, who or what are Mars and Pluto? Are there two other godlike plant beings out there in the world somewhere? (Also, wow, Pluto is fairly young, which might give us a rough timeframe of how recent the Roaches' disappearance was...)

Are Venus and her possible siblings related to the Healing Sophie we now know grows here? That would make a certain amount of sense, I suppose...

For better or worse, there's nothing else here. This room is something of an easter egg, it's just here for lore purposes and there's nothing tangible to find, but I wanted to make sure I gave you all a chance to see it, since it's very easy to miss.

Let's use our Ant Compass and get out of here. Yes, it works in this room too.

From the mines, it's a quick trip back to Defiant Root and Isau's. Let's deliver the petal.

Easy peasy!

We can feel magic within it. It's sure to be what you need.

Oh, how can I ever repay you!?

Your help was priceless! I hope this humble reward is enough.

...I mean, it's cool. But is it enough?

Don't be like that, Vi!

N-No, she's right. Your help really was priceless!

She's always like that. Don't worry.

Nonsense. Here, have just a little extra!

Heheheh.

T-Thank you, Isau. We hope your research goes well.

Me too. For the sake of all bugs out there... Huh? What's this?

Is there an issue?

I think this petal's got some seeds in it! They're super tiny, see?

I'll try planting a Sophie here, too. That should save explorers a lot of trouble!

It's gonna grow great, you're super kind!

Heheheh. Well, let's toast to that!

And with that, the quest is complete. Isau's pretty generous (and Vi gets rewarded for being a pest again!).

HP Core is our reward. For 2 MP, it will allow the equipped bug to recover 2 HP at the end of every second turn. (It behaves very similarly to TP Core, which we're already familiar with.)

I find this medal a bit underwhelming, personally (and prefer other methods of regaining HP), but it has its uses and may well serve your purposes, depending on your build. It can pair reasonably well with Life Cast, too, if you're using that.

And if we leave the area and return, we can see that Isau's managed to get a Sophie plant to grow!

Let's end the update here for now. This was a bit of a disjointed one, out of necessity, but we accomplished a lot and acquired quite a few interesting new medals! (And uncovered more mysteries than we solved. That seems to be a pattern here too...) Next time, we'll get back on track and continue exploring the Forsaken Lands. I'll see you then!

Posted: **Tue Apr 05, 2022 4:03 am**

59: Primal Screaming

Last time, we defeated the False Monarch, and got a bit distracted from exploring the Forsaken Lands to do sidequests and find some secrets in Upper Snakemouth. We left off here in Defiant Root, after delivering the Sophie Petal to Isau.

We're almost ready to return to the mission, but before that, one last minor detour on the way back.

36 - Lost Sands

Now that we can fly, we often don't need to bother rotating these bridges. There isn't anything new we can discover this way, but it's often convenient.

Here's our stop, the room where we were ambushed by bandits all the way back in Chapter 3. There's a secret here that flight allows us to finally grab.

Specifically, we want to fly over this sinkhole here.

When we reach the other side, the camera rotates to show us what's behind; there's a staircase of rocks we can climb here.

There's a digging spot up here on top of the cliff.

And it has a Crystal Berry inside!

This brings us back up to 4 of them. It's not enough for us to buy something useful immediately, but it's easy to forget this is here (honestly, I often do) and I wanted to grab it while I remembered. We're in the home stretch where these things are concerned, there honestly aren't too many left to find.

Anyway, that's the detour. Let's use the Ant Compass now.

And let's make our way back to the Forsaken Lands. I'll skip most of the journey, we know the way by now.

Oh, right, Elizant's with us! We can see her again once we reenter the cave.

Okay. We're back. We know the correct path now (or at least up to where we stopped, anyway), so it shouldn't take long to get back there.

And we're back to the room with the pipes and chasms. We've explored past here in one direction, but there's still quite a bit we've yet to see here.

To start with, we need to head back west. The enemies are back, but they're the same as before, so we'll just beat them and move on.

Let's actually pay attention to the arrow this time!

To start with, we need to smash this rock and expose the pipe.

Now we can actually get further east!

This platform is just a staging area. We need to land and recharge our flying distance anyway, and it gives us another airstream to change directions.

That lets us reach this platform to the south. There's a Mothfly Cluster waiting for us, so let's get it out of the way.

It's two of them at once. This isn't a particularly difficult or interesting fight, so I'm just going to move past it - we've boosted Vi's attack enough now that with some clever use of Turn Relay, we can take out one of these on the first turn, and from there it's pretty simple to clean up the second.

Though not before it gets to spawn Mothflies (which prolongs things a bit, but honestly not much else). I didn't manage to get it to happen while recording (one downside of killing these too quickly), but it's worth noting that just like in the fight with False Monarch, the small mothflies can merge back into a Mothfly Cluster to heal it by their current HP.

We're getting close to another rank up, though!

With the battle out of the way, let's take a look around where we landed...

There's a path south, and another pipe blowing air east, but if we head to the western edge of the platform, we can just barely spot another off in the distance! (I think the weed is here to help you spot it, if you walk over to cut it the platform will be in view, but it's still not hard to overlook.)

As soon as we start flying west, we can see there's a Lore Book on the platform! (How did it get there?)

Anyway, we'll grab it. We can take this back to read later, but for now let's keep moving along.

From here, we have two paths. Let's check the south first, I guess?

Well, that's certainly not right! It warps us back to the start of this room. Could be worse; let's just retrace our steps.

So, clearly, we need to fly east.

This is actually a bit tricky to line up. We have to start flying just south of the pipe, then swerve into the airstream so it catches us.

Still, we make it across.

We can figure out where to go in a moment; first, a snail.

It has a Mothfly with it, but this is still a pretty trivial fight.

A single Needle Pincer is usually enough for these guys. If you can afford the TP, it's a really efficient way to deal with them.

And with a bit of relaying, Vi can swat the Mothfly too.

Arguably, it's a downside of the Turn Relay system that once you start stacking attack on a single character, it's usually more efficient to just give them as many turns as you can. On the other hand, it creates a possible "level-up" moment for the player when they figure out they can do it, and giving players opportunities to feel clever is good game design.

Regardless, we finish the fight and get just enough EXP to reach Rank 23!

You know the drill.

We don't get any other bonus at this rank, just the one we choose.

Ironnails drop these pretty often, but they're not particularly useful. I'll no doubt throw it away soon enough to make room for something else.

There's only one way to go from here, north. Once again, we need to swerve into the air current to be able to get enough distance.

As we fly north, we can intersect this second airstream, but trying to follow it is a trap right now...

Instead, we want to land here and let Vi rest first. If we'd tried to go east immediately, we'd end up running out of energy and falling into the chasm.

Landing first makes it an easy trip, though. There's a Mimic Spider waiting for us.

Two Mimic Spiders, and a Mothfly. Hmm.

It might not be very threatening, but the Mothfly's easy to eliminate right away, so may as well?

Everyone else will get some damage in on the first spider.

Their bite's still nothing special.

This, however, is worth revisiting. I completely forgot to cover an aspect of this attack last time we saw it, and it's noteworthy.

What's this weird status effect on Vi?

The Mimic Spiders' spit attack has two sizes of bubble. The small ones inflict poison, but the large ones inflict this. It's called "Sticky", and it's another very rare status effect. Only one other enemy can inflict it, and that's a postgame superboss. It's kind of like an alternate take on Ink: it prevents the afflicted character from using items (and can't be cured with items). Also like Ink, this was a new addition in version 1.1, and in earlier versions of the game Mimic Spiders only inflicted poison.

Unless the entire party gets hit with it at once, the effect is honestly negligible, since you can just use Turn Relay and have another bug use an item instead. (This circumstance here is one of the rare times it does matter, since Vi's wearing Heal Plus but the other bugs aren't.)

I'd genuinely forgotten this status effect existed.

Anyway, back to the fight. Kabbu and Leif will start bashing the first spider.

And we'll have Vi heal everyone with Sharing Stash. Despite the theming, Vi's healing skills aren't actually items and she can still use them (just like in the fight with Astotheles).

Chompy finishes off the first spider.

We endure another round of spitting. (Only poison bubbles this time, those tend to be more common.)

And from here, the rest of the fight is a known quantity, so let's keep moving.

Now that we've ranked up, we're back to getting just pity EXP.

Now that we've gotten rid of the enemy, let's look around the area.

There's a boulder we can smash up here, blocking another pipe.

Removing the boulder frees the air current, but we don't want to follow this one. It's a shortcut back to where we entered the room. That's useful if we want to go back (since the path we took here is one-way), but we don't need to right now.

Instead, we'll take this path east.

Finally, a new area!

Impressive. Pumpkins have managed to grow in these barren lands!

Time for lunch!

Well, I do enjoy Plumpling Pie. It has been some time...

They grow in the Golden Settlement too, yeah?

Then this must be an act of mercy from Venus!

It's just pumpkins, Kabbu...

The banter here is pretty cute (and, also, a rare one in which Elizant II participates! She's been pretty quiet before now).

Before we can look around too much, this Ironnail insists on being in the way.

It has a Mothfly Cluster with it, but we can still just power through this (especially with the bonus turn from first strike).

We'll get Vi in front and just stab.

Then relay to her for two more hits on the Mothfly Cluster.

That brings it low enough that Kabbu, Leif, and Chompy can do the rest. We might've made Vi a bit too powerful?

Ironnails are still giving actual EXP, unlike the other enemies here.

Now, back to exploring.

There's a path to the south, but it's blocked by a giant mushroom!

If you played Bug Fables long enough ago, this might look weird to you: the mushroom is a new addition as of v1.1, and wasn't here before. You used to be able to try going further south, but couldn't do anything there other than waste time (it's a puzzle that can't be solved without something we don't have). I'm not sure what I think of this change; I kind of liked getting an early look at something mysterious, but if enough people found it frustrating I can't really fault the devs for solving it like this.

We're obviously going to need this block for something. There might've been a bridge here once, but there isn't one now!

Can we climb up this pile of pumpkins, perhaps?

...Well, we probably could have, but this one's alive!

All that means is that we have to freeze it first, though. (As is the case with other enemies designed to be part of a puzzle, this fight is only a single Plumpling, and it will respawn immediately if killed.)

With the Plumpling frozen, the staircase actually works.

And this gap is narrow enough that we can fly across.

Let's take a look around here.

This path north is probably wrong, but we may as well try it out now?

...What.

Okay, so this is the downside of them adding the mushroom. They seem to have forgotten to change where this false path lets out when they put it there, so you get stuck in the mushroom if you go this way. Oops.

That said, if you just try to walk north for long enough, the party will eventually clip through it and escape. No harm done, really, it just looks awkward for a while.

Pardon me while I get back up there.

Here we are. Where we need to go certainly isn't obvious yet. Before that, though, a snail.

It has a Mimic Spider with it, but that's not really enough to make this threatening.

Let's move on.

Well, there's our hint. That's definitely an arrow pointing upward. How can we get up there, though? (We can't get any closer to the arrow from here; it's hard to see from this angle because the game makes it transparent, but that dark shadow just south of Kabbu is a cliff face.)

Up here is another weed with a squash in it; we'll take it, I guess. I can get rid of the Numbnail Dart for this.

Here's a better view. It sort of looks like we might be able to dig under that log, but we can't. Just past that, though, there are some breakable rocks.

So let's smash them.

There's not much of note in the alcove behind them, except this block we can move. We're going to need that. Maybe we should move it over toward the pile of pumpkins?

Just like before, though, when we get close one of them reveals itself to be a Plumpling. Let's freeze it and build some stairs again.

There we go.

And now we can get up. (If the geometry starts causing problems getting up, sometimes flying can work a bit better than jumping. You gain a similar amount of altitude that way, but have a bit more control.)

Anyway, we can reach the top of this pillar. It seems a bit like a dead end?

But if we remember where the arrow was, and fly south, we can get across to the other ledge.

And from here, finally, there's a path further east.

This area looks a bit different; I think we're getting closer!

That rocky formation stands quite tall!

It's just inviting us to climb it, isn't it?

The banter here suggests we should go up. We'll definitely add that to the list.

Before we get too far, though, another snail.

This time, it's joined by a Plumpling. (I know I've said this before, but I do enjoy how varied the formations manage to be in this game, even with relatively small numbers of unique enemies.)

Let's do something a bit different.

With careful aim, Needle Toss can be pretty effective here! (In general, I really like it against Plumplings, since with Vi's current level of attack she can one-shot them.) I wouldn't recommend this unless you're confident in aiming it, but it's fun if you are.

And then Kabbu can flip the Ironnail out of its shell, leaving Vi to finish it off. The numbers just worked out perfectly here.

On we go.

There are more mushrooms here, but they're just cosmetic this time. (Also, we can see a Mimic Spider in the distance.)

From this side, we can see there are two paths here, in addition to the one leading north we saw earlier. Lots of ways to go!

First, though, let's deal with these guys.

This isn't very intimidating. Let's just beat them and move on.

Only pity EXP from that formation.

Behind where the spider was is a bouncy mushroom.

So let's go up.

Now we can wrap around to this side; we could see this mushroom earlier from where we entered this area.

If we stand in the centre up here, we get a prompt to inspect the area. Let's see what happens.

...It's just a big rock?

Think of that big rock as their Hive, Vi.

It's more than close enough. We've just got to go north.

In addition to a pretty strong hint to the correct path, that conversation gives us a Discovery!

Here's hoping we can do something about that.

If we check the location again after getting the discovery, we get this line.

There's nothing else up here, so let's go back down.

We know we need to go north, but I've been showing where all the false paths lead so far, so why stop now? Let's just check these two right quick.

That one brings us out here, for some reason. We could just turn right back and go north toward progress...

But I wouldn't do that to you.

...sigh. This one's a bit irritating. I'll go solve the puzzles again, be right back.

All right, we're back. Only one path remains.

So north it is.

There's a yellow save crystal here. You can probably guess what that means, with how scarce these have generally been.

Is that glass? How weird...

What's weird about glass? We've seen heaps of it.

It's where it's placed, and the area we're in. Dunno, it just feels like it's not natural.

These lands turned out to be full of strange trinkets. I'll have to bring Neo sometime...

This is a cute one, although with the wistful tone I wonder if it was meant to be seen on a return visit here, instead of this first one?

Let's heal up and save before going any further; that seems prudent.

Also, I've just remembered I never made use of the MP we gained from that rank up. Let's try giving Vi First Plating; this goes very well with Power Exchange, or any similar type of glass cannon strategy. I'm not doing anything very sophisticated here, we'll just stick with what we've been using otherwise.

We won't get very far east before hearing a roar from offscreen.

With a good ol' beatdown!

Now, everyon-

CRUSH this insolent creature that dares defy our most sacred mission! Have no mercy!

...That works, too. To battle!

29 - Team, This One's Stronger! (Miniboss)

Whatever this is, it's pretty big. Let's spy on it, but first, let's rearrange things to get Kabbu in the back of the party.

We must keep an eye on when to block, and stop it from calling reinforcements!

This is the Primal Weevil: a bigger, angrier version of the Weevils we fought quite a while ago. Honestly, it's less intimidating than it looks, it's just a miniboss and we've been fighting much scarier things (like, for instance, the False Monarch last update). I'm going to give it a chance to show what it can do, but in normal gameplay it's often barely a speedbump.

We'll start off by having Kabbu taunt it.

And we'll have Leif use Royal Decree to buff everyone. It's a bit unnecessary, but this is one of the few significant fights where we'll have access to this, and it's a cool skill.

Vi can just attack normally. With the boost to her attack, this hits pretty hard.

Chompy gets to contribute too.

On its turn, the Primal Weevil attacks Kabbu with a tail swipe. This does 6 damage at base, but Kabbu can nearly nullify it between the defence boost and his Super Block bonuses.

One turn in. Let's keep going.

Vi and Leif will just attack. We could save up the charge bonuses, but we're not really going to need to; it's not that kind of fight.

Kabbu keeps up the taunting.

And Chompy keeps chomping.

Here's the call for reinforcements Kabbu mentioned in the spy. Primal Weevil can whistle to call Weevils to join the fight. I think it will only do this while alone, I've never seen this fight end up with multiple Weevils at once.

As usual for summoned enemies, it gets to attack right away. I'm not sure if I've pointed this out explicitly before, but Kabbu's Taunt even works on enemies that weren't present when he actually used it. Despite looking like a status effect on the enemies, it's actually global.

Here's where things stand now. We could kill the Weevil, but honestly it's not all that threatening...

So instead we'll just keep attacking the boss.

Also, let's refresh Royal Decree, since it's worn off already. (Whoops. I messed up the sequencing here, I should have had Leif use this before Vi attacked to not waste a point of damage. Oh well.)

Kabbu will keep taunting.

Chompy does her thing.

Ouch! This attack is pretty interesting, and one I wanted to make sure we got to see (especially since it's a cool animation, and it's easy to miss out on).

The first hit deals 5 damage at base. If you block it, the attack ends there, but if you don't, Primal Weevil will grab the bug, charge through and then launch them for an additional 3 base damage when they land.

The normal Weevils still have the ability to boost their attack before striking, they'll sometimes do that.

Still, we're not doing too badly.

Let's just get rid of the Weevil now, since we can do it with one hit.

In retrospect, I should have done those in reverse order. This isn't exactly optimal gameplay, but then, I'm certainly not trying to do that.

Kabbu will keep taunting.

And Chompy will keep chomping.

This is new! Just like the small Weevils, Primal Weevil can boost its attack at the start of its turn. This doesn't cost an action, so it will attack immediately afterward.

Another tail swipe. This hurts a lot more when we only do a normal block, especially with the attack boost! Things aren't looking great for Kabbu here, all that taunting is starting to add up.

We can work with this.

Vi keeps doing what she does.

Though we'll have Leif relay to her, so she can heal Kabbu. Even if we're going to use an item rather than her skills, it's better to have her do it since she's the one with the Heal Plus medals.

There we go.

And now he's healthy enough to taunt again. (Unfortunately, our Royal Decree has run out again, and I didn't refresh it this turn... between that and the attack boost, the next hit might hurt.)

Chompy keeps going.

Ow. I missed the block entirely this time, which pretty much undoes the work we put in healing Kabbu.

Once again, though, this is not exactly catastrophic.

Two uses of Secret Stash gets Kabbu right back to full. We could probably have just finished things, but there's nothing wrong with playing it safe (and there's still a bit more to see).

Now he's healthy enough to taunt again.

On we go.

There we go! This is definitely one of the nastier things it can do (and I'm terrible at the block timing for it, which definitely does not help). This shriek attack is just like the one Madesphy used, hitting the entire party for 3 base damage and inflicting Numb for 1 turn (if not blocked). The animation looks a lot like the attack boost at first, the only difference in animation is the gleam in its eye during the wind-up.

If you're on low health when you get hit by this (or you get unlucky and it chains it), the fight can turn against you pretty quickly out of nowhere. If you know it's coming, you can equip Numb Resistance in advance; otherwise, the best countermeasure is just staying on top of healing.

Although in our case, First Plating kept Vi from getting numbed, so it's not quite as bad as it could have been!

We'll just keep attacking for now.

And there's its final attack! This looks a lot worse because it's hitting Vi's -2 defence, the base damage is 4 per hit. Still, this can hurt!

Now that we've seen everything the Primal Weevil can do, I see no further point in keeping it around. Let's just end this.

Simple enough.

That wasn't too bad. As I said earlier, in my experience the Primal Weevil is usually a pretty underwhelming miniboss: it doesn't have enough durability to stand up to the kind of damage output most builds can manage by this point, so it's easy to kind of just roll over it without seeing anything it can do. But if you let your guard down, it can actually be threatening, since several of its attacks do decent damage and the party-wide Numb can catch you off guard.

No problem!

You there! You defeated this beast? You have our thanks.

As said before, no problem.

You must be soldiers from the Termite Kingdom, or am I wrong?

...!!! Cross, she's...

Indeed. I bear grave news. Bugaria - and your kingdom - are at risk of a great calamity.

...What do we do, Poi? No one would cross these lands for a cruel joke.

Come on! What if it's really serious!

I-It is! I beg of you, you must let us talk to your rulers!

...Alright. At the very least, you saved us the trouble of capturing this beast.

We'll meet you back at the gate after delivering the Weevil and informing the Royal Guard.

Please wait for us there.

You're taking it with you?

Right...

Thank you for your concession. We'll meet you at the entrance.

I do warn you though, the King will not be happy to see you.

Nor the Queen. So best of luck.

We fade out briefly, as the Termite soldiers collect the Weevil and take it away. (Not at all suspicious...) When it fades back in, they're gone.

As expected, Ants are still not welcome in their land. Such is our history.

It will be okay! This matter concerns every Bugarian!

Just do your magic Queen diplomacy!

...Let's go.

We regain control, and the music finally resumes. (The entire scene after defeating the Weevil plays out without background music.)

There are actually two exits from this area; let's head west first.

Does this look familiar? We're on the upper level of a room we visited earlier.

We can knock down this ruler.

Which creates a shortcut we can use to backtrack, if we want. (It's a bit hard to tell from this angle, but this is the room with the broken bridges where we unlocked Vi's ability to fly.)

We'll launch ourselves up and head back.

That was fast! The crystal's already turned blue.

This seems like a decent stopping point for now. Next time, we'll head east, and finally arrive at the Termite Kingdom. It remains to be seen how warm a welcome we'll get there...

Posted: **Wed Apr 06, 2022 11:06 pm**

I posted this comment over on SA and realised I should mirror it on this side.

So, um, I should probably apologise for having gone MIA, and for the general pace of updates having slowed down recently. I've been going through a lot offline (including a move and a new job, which are proving difficult to adjust to, and a family health emergency) and it's been cutting into the time and energy I'd normally have to work on the LP. I'm hoping the pressure is going to ease up a bit from here out, but I have a feeling we're going to be looking at more of a ~2 week update schedule from now on. Thanks for bearing with me and I hope you're still enjoying the LP despite my haphazard updating.

Posted: **Tue Apr 19, 2022 5:40 am**

60: Termite Territory (Part 1)

Last time, we finished ~~getting lost in~~ exploring the Forsaken Lands, fought a Primal Weevil and had a brief encounter with the Termite Kingdom's border guards. Let's head onward!

It's a pretty impressive view from up close. I don't know what, if anything, the glowing green crystals mean, but they're certainly something new.

Let's check the banter.

The Termites live here? Really?

Not the most inviting of entrances, that's for sure.

Do not judge, my friends. Some of the most astounding technology lays beneath this dome!

You can be smart and look ugly, you know...

This is another rare banter that gets a reaction from Elizant, which is nice to see.

Let's cross the bridge and get closer.

As soon as we reach the far side of the bridge, we walk right into a cutscene.

You're free to go in. But, Ant Queen... I'd suggest you go directly to the castle.

It's straight ahead from the plaza. The less people see you, the less fuss there will be.

I understand. We thank you once more.

We've had many years of peace. Don't make us regret letting you in.

(To treat a Queen in that manner...)

Things are definitely going to be a bit tense for a while.

After that conversation ends, the screen immediately fades out while they let us inside.

64 - Termite Capitol (Recommended listening!)

(Check out the new music. The Termite Kingdom's theme is very calming with a distinct techno element. It's quite fitting.)

I hope you'll meet me at the table for the negotiations.

...Yes, see you there.

Did you really just call the Ant Queen "Lisa"?

It's too informal!

You two gotta learn to relax! Let's look around and catch up!

That certainly happened.

This always gives me pause, a bit, and wonder whether I've been pronouncing "Elizant" wrong because I can't quite see where Vi gets "Lisa" out of it. (Unless she's pronouncing that more like "Liza"?) It's just a bit odd.

And, honestly, while this scene inevitably makes me laugh, it comes out of nowhere and I think they could have gotten the same effect by just having Vi call her by name instead of "Queen" or "Your Majesty" as she always did before.

Anyway, the game gives us back control after that conversation. Let's check the banter before anything else.

The Bee Kingdom's also inside a structure, but it feels way more oppressive in here.

Well, duh. My Kingdom's full of paint and happy stuff. This city's all dull!

Some bugs are born in such a place, and don't get to see the lush Bugarian Outskirts...

Most Termites don't like sunlight, we hear. So they probably don't mind this.

Some bugs are really weird. It's that culture thing, I guess.

We get a thoughtful one here. The Termite Kingdom has a very distinct atmosphere, and our protagonists aren't sure if they like it yet.

We've got a lot of exploring to do, this is a pretty huge town and there's a lot to see (even before we get into the negotiations). Before that, though...

If you want to leave, just go through this gate here.

This guard kindly informs us that, despite how it may look, the gate isn't locked and we can leave whenever we want to.

So let's take a quick detour back outside. (The screen fades out for a moment while we hear the door opening noisily.)

There's not that much to see out here, but there is a bit (and we couldn't see it before thanks to the cutscene trigger stopping us), so let's get it out of the way before we go out on the town.

We can talk to Poi and Cross again. In addition to the dialogue, they also each have a banter.

The guards in this kingdom are varied, huh. In shape and all.

I've heard this kind of Termite holds a potent cannon in its head!

They're BORN with a cannon? Why do Bees get, like, one tiny stinger!?

(I... I like my horn...)

This is a real thing that some types of soldier termites have! They're called fontanellar guns and can launch sticky chemicals a distance of several centimetres. (Though the comparison to bees' stingers is apt in another way, too: in some species of termite, using this tears off their mandibles, though they can often survive without them.)

Cross doesn't have much to say either.

The guards in this kingdom are varied, huh. In shape and all.

This one seems super bulky! Like Kabbu!

I'm going to take this compliment.

They seem well versed in the use of long-range weapons, too.

Even if they've had peace, they're not eager to see it threatened.

This one's cute too.

(These banters will be repeated if we check any of the identical termite guards throughout the town; there are two distinct types. All the other guards use the same sprites as Cross and Poi, so I'll be using the same portraits throughout.)

Just to the west are some rocks we can smash.

Eventually, we find a cave entrance.

Let's go in.

There are some familiar faces inside! Elizant must have arranged for them to follow us and build the tunnel as backup.

So the Ants just managed to tunnel all the way here?

So it seems. They are dangerously close to the Termites, though...

Eh, if they stay clear of the dome it'll be fine!

That's very optimistic, but let's hope she's right I guess!

Amber's here, ready to help us with storage as usual.

Bringing miners, and even Ms. Amber to such a dangerous place...

Sometimes I wonder if the Queen considers the dangers of her requests!

We're sure she does. But it's still something that needs to get done...

This banter acknowledges that this might be quite risky.

I suppose this is the farthest we can build this tunnel to.

I guess they got as close as they dared.

Also, Diana is here, and we know what that means. New shortcuts!

Those berries don't even taste good...

We don't think her taste would be the only weird thing here...

Oi, I'm doing you a favor, okay? Just sit and watch!

We're in your debt once again, Diana. Thank you.

Well, I'm off! See you some other time, folks!

As usual, once we feed her, Diana connects this area to the Ant Mines for us. That will definitely come in handy later, so we don't have to trek through the foggy maze again.

Anyway, unlocking the shortcut was the main reason we came out here; let's head back inside.

Back to exploring! As befits a new town, there are lots of things to see and people to meet.

O. M. G.! Can't wait to tell my friends on the Termanet about the incoming war!

...I have many questions.

...Termanet?

No clue.

Seems to be a technology unique to this land. For communication.

We should tell H.B. about it!

(I... I don't get how it works.)

Our team seem pretty confused too.

This guy's too busy, he doesn't have much of anything to say to us.

S-Sir! Please, sit down for a bit!

He's super ignoring you.

Overworking's global, huh.

You can't work if you collapse! Sir, please listen to meeeee!

Kabbu's nagging's global too...

This workaholic character is actually a reference to the fact that worker termites don't sleep. They literally work constantly until they die.

This person seems a lot calmer.

She is really shy, and hides herself beyond the dense fog.

I should visit sometime soon.

Make note of this, maybe we can meet her friend later? (We still haven't explored all of the Forsaken Lands, there's that section that's blocked off by the mushrooms...)

We wonder if those scarves are the fashion around here.

Most likely. I don't like them much, though.

If you want, Leif, we could look around and buy you one.

No, thank you. We were just wondering.

Heh, Leif still gets fixated on fashion sometimes, but still can't be bothered to participate.

Let's see what's inside this building?

It's an item shop! Let's have a look around.

You know how to use the self checkout, right? Just press (A) near an item.

...Aww...

We can sell her items if we want, though the game hangs a lampshade on it. It sounds like she'd be using her personal funds.

Alright then.

There's also a banter here, of course.

Malbee would stomp her if she read on the job at the factory!

This store seems mostly automated, so she mustn't have much to do.

That's worrying... Will there be a shop with no one running it at some point?

Silly Leif. Gadgets could never replace our fellow bug!

Leif has some thoughts about automation eliminating retail jobs, apparently.

If we talk to the other customer in here, we'll learn there's something called DineMite. I wonder what that is?

The Termite Kingdom's quite impressive, but all this store food makes me miss Fry's cooking.

Machines can't really match Kut's expertise.

Or Crisbee's baking! Um, guess we know where to go after the mission.

This is cute. (And, actually, not just flavour text, this is hinting at something we'll learn later this update.)

Let's check out the inventory, finally. There are some neat new toys here.

Squash (9 berries)

Shell Ointment (20 berries)

Aphid Shake (15 berries)

Mega-Rush(tm) (15 berries)

We can buy Squash here, if we're too lazy to go cut down weeds in the Forsaken Lands; that can definitely be convenient. Also, we can finally buy Shell Ointment in unlimited quantities (there were only two available prior to this point). Aphid Shake is a bit underwhelming now, though it can still do the job if you want to use it. And then there's the new item, which is pretty interesting.

Mega-Rush(tm)
"This power-packed, 90% sugar drink boosts attack for 3 turns and grants a charge-up! But you'll need to rest after..."
Sell: 7 berries

What this does might not be immediately obvious from the description. When you use it, it grants Attack Up for 3 turns and +1 charge immediately, but when the Attack Up buff expires, it inflicts Attack Down for 2 turns. (It's not a hard-coded 3 turn delay, so if you stack the buff further with items or skills, you can put off the downside.) It also triggers Weak Stomach.

This can be a really effective way to boost if your strategy wants burst damage, and the downside isn't hard to play around (though I like that it comes with a tradeoff). On the other hand, Squash Tart comes without the downside, so you have alternatives available. Squash Tart is a bit better if you're using Hard Charge, since the charge-up from Mega-Rush(tm) would be wasted in that case.

(Also, this item's name is, of course, a blatant reference to the infamousPaper Mario badge.)

I'm not going to buy any right now, but these are pretty great. I honestly never used them that much, because I'd got in the habit of using Spicy Fries or Squash Tarts already, but they're fun.

Let's head back outside; there's nothing else to see in this shop. (Also, there's a convenient save crystal right here.)

What's this giant slab thing?

Apparently it's some kind of display, though it's not working right now.

So this rectangular gadget provides swift news to the populace?

Or, uh, it did. Guess it's not working right now...

I'm sure this will be important later. Let's move on.

Is that Samira over there?

O-Ok. I'm always here if you want to hear me play.

As usual, she lets us listen to music if we want.

Samira's doing well enough to afford an escort here, huh.

Hard work always pays off!

It's good to see her, even if we're still putting off buying songs. (I promise we will eventually.) Let's move along.

Over here is the way to the palace.

You have come with the Ant Queen, so you're an exception.

Still, behave yourselves in front of the Queen and King!

The guards have a bit of dialogue.

We won't hesitate in throwing you out the door.

I'm seeing a general theme here.

We could head to the palace now, but let's finish exploring the city first. What's this place over here?

There's unique music in here; what is this place?

They are harvested from the Plumplings that roam around the wilds.

What if one mixed a Squash with some defense boosting ingredient?

My appetite flares up just thinking about it...

Dan's here, and has recipe hints on offer as usual.

This guy is even here...

Where there is food, there he is.

You have to admire his dedication to his culinary quest.

This is clearly some kind of eating establishment, anyway. Let's look around more.

This person certainly has opinions.

Is it, uh, healthy to just eat one food?

Delicious as it may be, we reckon it's not.

We don't even know what's in it...!

What do they sell here?

Also, who is this and what are they wearing?

...Okay then.

Hm. I quite dig this fellow's style.

He looks lame. You've got bad taste.

Oof...

Respectfully, Vi? You don't know the first thing about fashion.

Hey!

Fashionista Leif returns with a vengeance!

Let's talk to the clerk.

What's a Mite Burger? Let's buy one and find out.

ONE MITEBURGER COMING UP!

Come again for an explosive dining!

I have no idea what "fatty termite stuff" is, but this is a decent item. It's nothing spectacular (especially compared to Sharing Stash), but there aren't many items that grant HP regeneration so it does have a niche.

Our team aren't kidding about not knowing what's in this: it's not a recipe we can recreate, and the only way to get these is to buy them here. You'd think they might be made of wood or something.

ONE ORDER OF FRIES COMING UP!

Come again for an explosive dining!

We can also buy Spicy Fries here. This is pretty convenient, and they're cheap (actually cheaper than buying ingredients and cooking them!). Though considering you can go next door and buy Mega-Rush, it's a bit superfluous.

If you have a full inventory when trying to buy something here, he'll say this:

You wanted takeaway with no space? Come DineMite later?

So, yeah, the Termite Kingdom apparently has fast food joints. (No bars? A termite walks into a bar and asks "where's the bar tender?"

)

DineMite's the cheapest place around! And yum!

We cannot help but pity this poor worker.

The conditions don't seem too bad?

It's the music! We'd go insane after a few hours!

When you put it that way... At least I know how to annoy you now!

Don't. We'll freeze your mouth.

This place makes you cranky... Let's order and get out!

Also, the banter for the clerk here is fun. Leif has the right of it, I have to say. (I don't actually mind this music track, but I spent just long enough working retail in the past to know that that often doesn't matter...)

Let's get out of here.

There are a lot of moving pipes and gears around, it definitely gives this place an industrial feeling. Also, take a look at the posters on the building, we can see Mothiva among them. Apparently she does shows here too?

The guard here helpfully tells us what we can find further east.

Let's check it out.

There's a lot going on here too.

Awesome! They've got conveyors on the floor!

Very convenient. A lot of Termites must move about daily here.

The air is thicker here... Is it fog or smoke?

There's a lot of pipes and stuff. Probably smoke.

We hope their researchers aren't taking air for granted...

With how enclosed this space is, the air quality seems like a real concern.

Also, it doesn't come through in the screenshots, but the conveyor belts here are running, and we can ride on them if we want to. It can make it a bit faster to get through this area (though it's honestly superfluous, it's a fun little thing). Walking on conveyor belts always makes me think of airports...

There's another familiar face! We met Layna the firefly at the Golden Festival, which feels like ages ago.

Coming of age rites be darned, what will I do if something happens to you?

It seems like her pet's gone missing. Maybe we'll be able to help with that later?

Let's see what this building is.

Well, whatever it is, it's fancy!

Okay. Come back if you feel sleepy!

Oh, it's the inn. It's a bit pricey, but it's good to know this is here if we need it I guess.

15 berries!? Why is it so expensive!?

Maybe there's higher demand?

At least we've made good savings during our journeys, so...

Just 'cuz we're richer doesn't mean we should be spending more!!!

Vi's not exactly wrong here.

Let's look around a bit. There's not much to see on this side...

But the elevator is functional! We're on 1F, but let's check out the others.

2F first.

This looks like some kind of communal room, there are a bunch of guests staying here.

Even the Termites get tourists? Wasn't this, uh, iso... isole...

Isolationist.

It's a rough trip, but only Ants were truly banned from this kingdom.

Good thing our team's not banned anywhere!

There's one banter in here, which we'll see both for the area and the individual guests. Let's talk to some people.

It wasn't fun getting lost in the Forsaken Lands, but it was worth it to see everything the city has to offer!

That's definitely a long journey.

This ladybug doesn't like the look of things here much.

It doesn't taste as good as something prepared by a chef, but it gets the job done.

While the butterfly here has a useful tip for us.

...they have a microwave.

And just like she hinted, we can actually use it to cook items.

Just to demonstrate how it works, let's throw in this Squash.

It works just fine and gives us the item we expect! So, when various characters say the microwave "isn't as good as a chef", what they mean is that it can't be used to make any of the chefs' specialities (Crisbee Donut, Tangy Carpaccio, Queen's Dinner); otherwise, you can prepare any recipes you like here. It's pretty convenient.

That's all for this room; let's head up to the roof.

Let's head outside, I guess?

There's another familiar face!

Well, what's a journey without some risk?

I don't regret it. The Termite Kingdom has a very different vibe.

It's technological and convenient, but it feels a bit lonely...

Have you found what you were looking for, Kenny?

...Yeah. I'm satisfied at having seen this beautiful world.

Where will you stay, in the end?

Let's say the end's at the beginning.

Uh, we'll see you there, then?

Yeah. I'll head there after I visit the Coliseum. I hope we'll meet again.

It sounds like Kenny's figured some things out, and might be done travelling at last. We'll have to go find him again once he settles down.

If we go to the edge of the balcony here, we can see another building with an open window in the distance.

And we can fly over to it!

This house is empty, but I guess we can burglarise it?

This wasn't theirs to keep anyway. (These are starting to pile up, we'll have to drop by the library soon.)

Uh. Did whoever lived here fall prey to the False Monarch, perhaps? (Maybe that's how another Lore Book ended up there?)

That's all there is to see here.

If we drop down between the buildings, we can see there are some people hanging out in the alley.

This person will ask us for a berry. Let's see what happens if we decline first.

Sorry, maybe in the future...

Right...

Yeah, we can do better than this.

T-Thank you...

...May the blessings of our ancestors be with you.

When he asked for a berry, he meant it; a single one is all he'll take from us.

There's also a banter, of course.

...

What, you don't take kindly to beggars?

If I want berries, I go and earn them!

...But he looks like he can't, it must be rough...

Vi... Let's share what we can!

Yeah!

Is this... character growth? (We've had a few scenes to this effect now, so it's not exactly new, but it's still nice to see.)

This person is also here.

Though he has nothing to say to us.

Careful, everyone. We may be cut just by standing near this dude.

He does seem very, uh, sharp and volatile.

You're scared of a random guy after all the stuff we've beat up!?

Let us please stay away, alright? I'm tired of random fights...

There's no way he's going to be important for anything.

Let's move along, we can't do anything else here for now.

The guards don't have a whole lot to say.

Here's the Colosseum entrance. Do the termites have neon signs?

There are more buildings to the east. Let's talk to this guard first.

Interesting. I wonder if Vi will see a kindred spirit here?

If he doesn't wanna fight, he shouldn't!

Thought you were all about smackdowns.

But I LIKE smackdowns! I do them 'cuz I want to!

I, too, believe we should all choose our fate.

It's easier now than it was back then, let us tell you that.

Sometimes she's more understanding than we give her credit for. Also, for all that there are predefined social dynamics for a lot of these species, Leif's recollections seem to suggest it's more social construct than biological inevitability in Bugaria.

Let's see what this building is.

Another shop! Are they selling bombs here?

Yes, yes they are.

This shop doesn't have the most welcoming staff, does it?

They're quite reserved despite selling such explosive items...

Eh, it's whatever. A deal's a deal!

This is the bomb shop. They sell every type of bomb here (except Cherry Bombs, those you still have to make yourself). I've seen a few players not learn bombs exist until getting here; the recipes are just obscure enough that they're not hard to overlook without realising. (If you wait to use a Spicy Bomb from here to complete Crisbee's quest, the reward looks a lot more underwhelming...) Anyway, here's the full inventory:

Clear Bomb (20 berries)

Sleep Bomb (30 berries)

Numb Bomb (30 berries)

Frost Bomb (30 berries)

Spicy Bomb (20 berries)

Burly Bomb (21 berries)

Poison Bomb (28 berries)

They're a bit more expensive than the ingredients would be, but you're paying for convenience. It's perfectly reasonable to buy them here if you want them.

The "bomb master" is very curt and barely has anything to say if we interact.

There's an elevator here, though. Let's check out the other floors.

Guess we'll go to 5F first. (What's in 2 through 4? We'll never know.)

There are a couple of rooms up here.

Let's talk to this person.

They exist all over Bugaria and beyond, and they adapt easily to their surroundings, so many subspecies of them exist!

I'd love to catalogue them all, but I am so busy here I cannot leave...

This sounds like it'll be a sidequest later.

Who'd ever wanna research dumb Seedlings?

First of all, they're adorable.

Don't forget, what we take for granted is most exotic to them!

Heh.

Anyway, let's check the other side. This seems to be some kind of gym?

Uh, okay. Let's not bother her.

What determination! She won't stop!

Heh, this is an entertaining one. (I can't tell if Kabbu or the person exercising here is the butt of the joke...)

Let's head up to the roof.

There's someone up here, so let's start with that.

To see what the sky really looks like...

Seems like not all the termites are satisfied with their lives here.

What's he looking at? It's just the dome ceiling.

Some call it day-dreaming, Vi.

Oh, it's like when I think of being super rich and famous!

Err, yes. Let's go with that.

I hope his dreams come true. Mine sure are!

(You're not half-bad sometimes.)

Another cute one.

If we head over to the west side of this roof, we can get a nice view of the Colosseum from above.

Also, if we get right up to the ledge, we can inspect it.

Such a large building, just to celebrate fighting...

What's wrong with that? Showing off your cool moves is great!

I guess it'd depend on how willing the fighters were...

As you may have guessed, it's a discovery!

Though I'm not sure how much this really tells us, it's a nice bit of colour.

If we check again, this is the message we get.

This is one of the easier discoveries to overlook, I think; I've definitely had playthroughs where this was the last one I got.

Let's head back down.

That's all for this area; let's head further east. We'll come back to the Colosseum later.

(Also, unfortunately, character limit issues mean I need to split the update here. Back shortly.)

Posted: **Tue Apr 19, 2022 5:40 am**

60: Termite Territory (Part 2)

We've reached the docks.

They have a pier too! We should've just ferried in.

I don't think their pier is very inviting...

There's some catapults and everything. We would've gotten sunk.

What's the point of a pier if there's no boats!?

I'm sure they've got plenty use out of this area without opening it up for tourism.

Don't explain it! I just want to feel mad about it!

Let's have a look around.

There are some people to talk to here also.

Couldn't they make an anti-smoke gadget?

Some of the residents here do seem to have issues with the air quality.

So they're exchanging their air for many commodities...

The Bee Kingdom just throws all the smoke into the sky!

...Why not just live in the open like the Golden Settlers?

I don't think you're going to get an answer to that, Leif.

Here we can get a better view of the catapults...

Any unknown ships coming in? KERPLOW! Fire the catapults!

Well, that's hostile.

Anyway, if we come to the far edge past the catapult here, we can just barely see a platform off in the distance.

If we fly over, there's a Crystal Berry for the taking! These are always nice to find.

And back we go.

Let's check out the end of the pier.

But I really want to swim...

That's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it.

You can do it. Just... dip your arms in the water.

You hate water, stop telling him to swim.

But he doesn't. You know, it'd be nice to see him triumph over his fear...

We... we should take a swim too! To inspire him!

...No.

That went... places.

The last thing to check out here is the building.

Apparently it's the water treatment plant. So the termites do care about sanitation, just not about air pollution...

I hope that someday I get to go outside and visit Bugaria.

Some of the Termites definitely want to see the rest of the world. Maybe if we play our cards right with the royals, we can help them do it?

Nice glasses.

This must be a Termite in charge of this big machine.

He mentioned water, right? So this pumps water everywhere?

With so many tall places, it must be helpful to not have to come down.

They've got nothing on our super honey network!

That does raise some interesting questions about the technology levels of the various kingdoms, actually. Everyone's very surprised by how advanced the Termites are (and they do apparently have the internet, so there's definitely a difference there), but the Bees also have industry and robotics, and there's ancient Roach magitech everywhere; it's a bit odd that our team react more to it here than they did elsewhere.

This worker doesn't have as much to say. (And, also, shares the same banter as the previous one.)

There's not much else to see in here, just some machinery and display screens.

Let's head back and check out the Colosseum.

There are a lot of people we can talk to by the entrance here.

Hmph. Worry not, this time I won't forget!

Uh huh.

I'm sure this is just an offhand exchange that won't mean anything later. Also, there are some banters:

I can't believe someone can forget to eat!

Mhm.

Yup.

...Anyways, let's go.

And for Yatanta (the one in pink):

There's already guards here. What's his job supposed to be?

Probably a cleaner, after all the fighting.

He could help carry in supplies, too!

Boooooring.

Fascinating.

There's a sneakily-hidden Lore Book behind one of the crates on this side. It's very difficult to see it without just walking into it.

The guards by the entrance don't have a whole lot to say.

...Fuzzo's here?

We'll have to study more to make a profit here...

If he's here with the snail, I wonder where the rest of the caravan are.

You've gotta respect their commitment to trade.

Well, making a profit's hard work!

I'm just glad the snail made it here safely...

Just past Fuzzo, there are a few others.

I wonder if we can do anything about this?

Their society is advanced, but it seems some bugs do struggle.

Is it just part of industrialization?

Or they're super competitive!

...Rather than discuss their situation, let's try to improve it!

...Sometimes you have to talk to them to learn how, you know. But sure, let's try.

You seem to be upset. I was wondering if I could help you?

No. You can't. Scram.

W-Wait, I...

Don't mind her. She's been so cranky!

You'd have to be some sort of Colosseum hero just to make her look at you.

A bit cranky, eh Vi.

What, you tryin' to say something?

...A hero...

It doesn't look like we're going to be able to do anything about this just yet.

That child looks so... disheartened.

Go, Kabbu. Don't let us stop you.

Don't take toooooo long!

The banter for her suggests we should keep trying, but we don't have any way to get her to open up right now. Let's move on.

Let's see what's inside here.

This is it. Their hall of blazing glory!

It looks a little... normal, you know?

They must've chosen to keep it outdated. In the name of culture.

That just sounds lazy!

Don't let historians hear you...

Whatever.

Kabbu seems more enthusiastic about the place from this vantage than he did from above. Perspective changes matter, I guess?

Let's talk to the attendant.

Right now we don't have any fights happening... Come back later when we do!

Well, that's disappointing.

Aww...

Getting paid to run this place could be chill. We may consider it if we quit exploring.

Is that so? I've always thought of being a gardener.

I don't wanna ever quit exploring! ...But, y'know, I'd run a shop.

It's nice to know they think about this sort of thing, I guess.

We might not be able to watch or participate in any fights here yet, but we can look around at least. We know these people!

Bub and Rob have made it here. (Good to know they're not still imprisoned!)

these two have pretty much seen the whole continent.

Except the Ant Kingdom...

...Maybe if we find the Everlasting Sapling, we could revoke that ban?

Definitely something to think about.

The merchant caravan are here, offering their usual services. They've got a larger stock than usual, but it's just more basics. Here's the full list:

Spicy Berry (12 berries)

Burly Berry (12 berries)

Magic Seed (18 berries)

Crunchy Leaf (3 berries)

Honey Drop (4 berries)

Nothing new to see here, it's all offered at the standard prices. Still, it's convenient that they're here.

The guards won't let us past, so we can't see the actual arena.

There are a few more people to talk to on the other side.

He suddenly disappeared though. I wonder if new challengers will take that picture now.

That's mysterious.

I-Is it okay for children to witness such battles?

Weren't you inspired by plays and books?

That is completely different to a Colosseum!

Kabbu, make up your mind. Do you like gladiatorial combat or don't you?

There's also this person.

You go, super regular normal dude!

Vi's found a hero, eh?

Wha- No! I'm my own hero! I should be HIS hero!

*Sigh*.

This one always amuses me.

The guards won't let us through on this side either.

Well, we've seen the Colosseum. We're clearly going to have to come back here later; we can't actually engage with the place now, so let's head back.

We've now explored all of the Termite Capital except for the palace itself. This update's already getting quite long, so we'll pick up there next time. I'll see you then!

Posted: **Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:02 pm**

So, uh, I may have screwed up earlier and used a few of the wrong screenshots when I first posted update 60 (which ended up showing talk icons instead of the actual dialogue I wanted). I've found the correct ones and spliced them in, we should be all good now. If you don't want to read through the entire update again, these are the lines that I accidentally left out:

Posted: **Thu May 05, 2022 5:46 am**

061: Colosseum Clash (Part 1)

When we left off last time, we were exploring the Termite Capital. We've seen most of it now; all that's left is the palace, so we can't put off our meeting with the royals much longer. Let's head in.

If nothing else, it's much easier to see in here!

Now this is a better mood.

My eyes appreciate the light! But I do wonder... did their throne have to be in the last floor?

Well, duh. It's the throne. Come on, Kabbu!

Our team seem to agree. Let's have a look around.

The guards are still pretty suspicious of us.

Is that some kind of wire sculpture? We'll get to that in a moment; let's talk to the attendant here first.

It's... a heavy task.

What could she mean by that?

How adorable. The Queen's got lovely servants.

I've seen the things they can carry! It betrays their small body!

Woah. I've GOT to see that!

I do find it a bit odd they're this impressed with the termites, when this kind of strength is also something ants are known for.

Anyway, let's check out this thing.

Whatever this sculpture is supposed to be, it counts as yet another discovery!

Arguably, I'd have said it looked modern rather than postmodern, but I'm not going to pick nits over something like that. (How could I? There aren't any lice in this game.)

There's one other attendant we can talk to here.

...Wait, you're with the Ants?

...Oh, look at the time! I must go...

Isn't that friendly.

There's also a stained glass image of the Termite royals at the back, though we can't interact with it.

At the far side of the room, we can see Elizant waiting for us.

Um, Queen?

You gonna go in?

......

I'm a bit nervous.

It's not often a Queen's the one requesting an audience.

If only it was just that. I cannot help but think that if I fail, we are all doomed.

Whatever Kabbu was going to say, he doesn't manage to get it out because the guards interupt.

Our royals will now grace you. Don't pull anything funny.

...Let's go.

Is that so? What is it, dear?

They said a visitor that will surprise us has arrived! They should be here soon!

......

Your eminences...

That is KING Hector IV and Queen Layra II to you, Ant!

My apologies, King Hector. Queen Layra.

Dear, watch yourself. You'll faint from disgust.

...What is your business!?

My people have been hurt, and the artifacts of old have been taken...

The artifacts? So you did find them, after so much struggle...

And then you incompetently lost them!

...Indeed. The Wasp King holds power I had never witnessed.

Nice to meet you!

I-It is my honor.

Sup.

He was injured in the attack. It would not have been prudent for him to come.

Such a varied team... It seems just about anyone can get into Bugaria nowadays.

What's it to us, then? You ruled poorly, and got your trinkets stolen.

You presume we should worry? As if our great defenses would be felled by some Wasps.

This dome of ours has survived storms without a single scratch.

And will soon obtain the full power of the Everlasting Sapling, shall be of no threat to you?

F-Flame, you say?

That sapling is a darn myth that drove your mother insane!

Oh, how many more moons we could have had with her, if she hadn't been so obsessed!

Watch your tone, Ant!

We found the mask, the tablet, and the key. Or were those myths as well?!

The Wasp King is heading towards the Giant's Lair, an area none dare to tread!

You think I would travel the wasteland personally, and bear brunt to your crass tone...

If all of Bugaria weren't facing great peril? You think of me so pathetically?!

I accepted and respected our treaty, after our negotiations turned sour.

I am not asking you to change your mind in that regard...

But if you care for your people, you won't turn a blind eye to the danger heading our way!

Dear, calm yourself. You're being blinded by the past.

Ants are unrefined in many ways... They cannot match our intellect either.

But they do not yield under pressure, and work very hard. It is nature's way.

Layra, you were always too soft!

And you too stubborn. That is why I am by your side.

Although it would be for the best for our nations to try and reconcile...

Right now, what we need is a way to head towards the Giant's Lair.

A way to cross the sea.

Dear, weren't the scientists...

Will you help us, then, in protecting Bugaria?

You say your knights lost to that puny Wasp? You think our soldiers wouldn't match up?

I wish for proof of the enemy's strength.

We do not think you'd wish for their visit upon your kingdom...

Before then, I would have you participate in our ancient tradition.

Ah... The Colosseum!

If your people best our brave warriors, then we might be in a real pickle.

Your knights will face off in glorious combat, and then I shall decide!

I would like for you and me to discuss some other matters as the fight goes on... if you don't mind.

Leave it to us, my Queen! We'll do well!

Mhm. They'll see we're not joking around.

You will find the Colosseum around the residential district of our kingdom.

Do not dally. Your kingdom is against the clock, after all.

We'll start the ceremony shortly after you arrive.

I hope you can provide a good show!

Do not fail!

You can count on us, Your Majesty!

Let's go to the Colosseum!

Well, that was certainly... something. One gets the impression the prior conflict might not have been entirely Elizant II's fault, whatever she seems to think. King Hector (excuse me, Hector IV) is very irascible and seemed to be looking for excuses to get mad.

That could have gone worse, but they're still not taking us very seriously. We're going to have to change that. Of course, the mere fact there's a Colosseum here meant we'd no doubt have ended up fighting there at some point...

Anyway, that was a very long discussion, but we're back in control now. Let's have a quick look around the throne room before we head back to the Colosseum.

First up, we can talk to Elizant again, though she doesn't have that much to say. There is a banter, though, that's a bit more interesting.

She really shut that king up!

Her words had me nervous... I'm glad we've been given a chance.

She's no Elizant, but... we're warming up to Lisa a bit.

Looks like Leif's adopting the nickname too? (He has more excuse than Vi does, since he knew her mother and might want to differentiate them.)

The guards here are even more hostile than most of the earlier ones. How pleasant.

There's not much to see on this side.

Of course, we can talk to the royals again, and there are also banters for them.

The Queen is, um... big.

That is not a matter we should discuss here. It's very sensitive!

They both seem to have met the previous Queen. So they must be very old as well.

Or Termites just live longer, who knows...

That's the beauty of our people. We're the same, but so unique!

Honestly, to me it seems less that Layra is unusually big, but that the other races' queens are surprisingly small. (If you use the workers for scale, even she is on the small side compared to real termite queens.)

Meanwhile, King Hector offers us typos. Oops. (Normally I'd just correct the typo if I were trascribing it, but it's his only line here...)

He's sure packing a lot of anger for a short guy!

Really? YOU'D make short jokes? At a KING?

I never get to! I've gotta take the chance!

Just, uh, make sure he doesn't sic the guards on you...

Vi, he's got enough of a Napoleon complex as it is, let's not exacerbate things.

We can explore a bit back here, but there's nothing to find.

On the other hand, this is sneakily hiding out of view behind the step! We'll just take that, so long as the royals don't mind.

Anyway, we can't do anything else in here for now, so let's be on our way.

We'll head to the Colosseum shortly, but there are a few minor things I want to do first.

First off, this termite has new dialogue.

Ha! Tough luck! Our soldiers will destroy you, and we will record it and share all over the Termanet!

Can't wait to text my friends about this!

How charming. Someone really believes in us.

Anyway, let's take a minor detour.

And pay a quick visit to Amber.

I've got a very silly plan. I've been dithering for a while over what to do with our stockpile of Dark Cherries; I think this is going to be fun. We're going to need all five of these for it, so let's take them out.

Here you go! As if it was new.

We're also going to need an equal quantity of Spicy Berries.

And a microwave.

Making explosives in a microwave seems like it couldn't possibly go wrong in any way, surely! Let's keep doing this.

There we go. Five generous servings of Cherry Bombs.

Also, make note of the Hustle Candies. I took a quick detour via the Ant Mines to make two of those, which are the other part of this plan. Since it's been a while: if you don't remember, Hustle Berries are only available in the shop in Defiant Root, then combining them with flour makes these.

If you are playing along: this plan is incredibly silly and wasteful, do not copy me. Save your cherries for a better occasion.

All right, preparations are done so let's be on our way.

I think I skipped talking to one of these guards last time, but their dialogue hasn't changed. It's a bit weird this one recommends using the conveyors to reach the Colosseum, since there aren't any more of them between us and the entrance... I think I know what he's trying to say, but this line is a bit awkward.

Onward.

We've already spoken to everyone here too, so we can just head in.

Before that, though, let's just remember these two. Terrie is upset, but she won't talk to us because we aren't fighting champions. That seems like something we'll be able to fix shortly.

In we go.

Once again, we've been here before. Nobody here has new dialogue, except at the counter, so let's get things started.

Excuse me?

It's whatever. Everyone's looking forward to a new challenger.

Let's see what he says if we decline first.

Don't take too long. The king gets grumpy.

All right, fine.

Alright. Please cross through the left door.

I placed a bet on you for kicks and giggles, so good luck.

If I give you some berries, can you bet higher and pay me later?

...No.

Aww...

(Despite saying we should head to the left door, we don't actually have to. The screen fades out and the Colosseum sequence starts automatically.)

Click me for video!

(For the video portion, I've left the entire Colosseum sequence in one video rather than splitting out the fights.)

(Oh, that's what they meant by "a heavy task". Can Queen Layra get around on her own, or does she need to be carried everywhere?)

The honor of our kingdom is on the line!

Throughout this sequence, we'll periodically cut to the crowd to see what they're yelling about. I'm forced to present these in GIFs because there's no good way to capture them in screenshots with the way the dialogue bubbles overlap.

Than with the ancient tradition of our ancestors!

Without further ado, let's begin!

It fits us perfectly. Focus on the battle.

We'll do awesome like always!

They shall face fierce beasts from the Forbidden Lands!

Well, round one at least doesn't seem too bad.

29 - Team, This One's Stronger! (Miniboss)

Well, he wasn't lying when he said this would be a warm-up. We can finish this in a single turn, and I see no reason not to.

A quick Needle Toss from Vi can eliminate the Plumpling and deal heavy damage to the Mimic Spider behind it. (I love doing this, it's so satisfying.)

Kabbu and Leif get their attacks in, then Leif relays to Vi for the final hit. It's exactly enough damage to finish it off.

Nothing to it.

(Leif agrees!)

You will now face Cross and Poi! The bravest of our border guards!

We won't go easy on you. Give it your all.

It was your trust that got us this far. We will honor you with a good fight!

Yeah, yeah. Let's go!

29 - Team, This One's Stronger! (Miniboss)

Well, this is something new at least! Let's see what we're dealing with here. (After getting Kabbu in front, I don't think I want Vi leading this one.)

Everyone, watch out for his sword and cannon! We must fight with honor!

Termites handle the cold well. Guess it's up to us if we want to gamble on it.

These two have some interesting moves, but they don't quite have enough HP to be a proper threat at this point. We'll take things slowly and give them a chance to show what they can do. (And also conserve our resources; you may notice we don't recover between rounds, so pacing ourselves isn't a terrible idea here since we know a third fight is coming.)

We'll have Kabbu hit Cross, to pierce his defence, while Vi goes after Poi instead.

Chompy doesn't have a choice, she has to attack Cross since he's in front.

As his name might suggest, Cross has a crossbow. This deals 4 damage at base.

While Poi has the fontanellar cannon; we've heard plenty about this, but now we get to see it in action! It launches two poison globs, each of which hits for 3 base damage (and inflicts poison if you fail to block it).

That wasn't too bad, though with both of them focusing on Kabbu he's low enough to be in danger.

For now, we'll keep spreading the damage around.

Vi will heal Kabbu, though, that's probably a good idea.

And Chompy keeps doing her thing.

This turn, we see some new attacks again. Cross has this bite attack, which is 5 base damage (and makes contact, so Kabbu can do counter damage with Spiky Bod).

Poi has a close-range attack too, a straightforward sword slash for 4 base damage.

Let's just keep doing what we're doing.

After Vi attacks, we'll have Leif relay to her to use Sharing Stash. We should keep ourselves topped up here.

Chompy makes with the chomping.

This turn, it's just a repeat of the same attacks as last time (though they made worse choices of targets; Cross isn't getting through First Plating on Vi, and Poi takes counter damage from Kabbu).

We're nearly finished here. I like these guys, but they're not particularly difficult.

Rather than finish them, I decided to have Vi and Chompy skip their turns, and give Cross and Poi a chance to maybe show us their last remaining moves.

No such luck, though; it's just the ranged attacks again. Oh well.

There's not really a point delaying this further.

And that's that! Will the third round be much tougher?

Before that, let's take a quick look at what else Cross and Poi can do. They each have a melee attack and a ranged attack (all of which we saw), and a few items they can use (which we didn't).

First off, they have Succulent Platters. These work a bit differently to the ones we can use, though: they're single target, and give them 4 turns of HP regeneration (the duration ticks down at the end of their turn before we see it displayed). They can both use these, though they'll only ever target themselves.

And then they have Spicy and Burly Berries to boost their stats. Again, with the way the duration works, they'll only ever effectively benefit from either for a single turn.

It's a fun little fight, though it's usually over too quickly for them to do anything interesting.

I-Incredible...

Please forgive us for having to beat you up.

Eh, it's all in good sport.

Oh my... Dear, Poi and Cross are not easily beat.

W-Whatever! You're not claiming victory so easily!

Now, you will face a captured creature that instills fear in the most hardened veteran!

Oh!? You'll... Are you sure!?

We've gotta beat it AGAIN!?

My dear public deserves better, so much better!

66 - Mothiva's Grand Stand! (Recommended listening!)

Ohohoho! Her voice is as smooth as ever!

W-What are you doing here!?

No way we'd let you steal any Queen's graces.

When I heard you were coming... I just had to crash this party!

What do you gain from making this harder for us?

Yeah! We're on the same team!

If we defeat you, we'll show we're superior to you.

And then the Queen's gonna HAVE to tag us along!

This is ridiculous! You realize you could be dooming us all!?

What if the Termite King loses trust in the Queen!?

What if you lose to the Wasp King without our help!?

Have you gone completely, utterly insane!? Have you lost all intelligence?

(God damn, Kabbu.)

The Ant Kingdom's way better in our hands than with you LOSERS.

I said we'd NEVER speak of that again!

...Zasp. You've helped us many times. Can't you talk some sense into her?

Don't misunderstand. I'm not doing this only for Mothiva.

Ugh, I want the Primal Weevil back.

How serendipitous. I'm looking forward to this.

The fight starts... NOW!

(Sorry about this, but the character limit rears its ugly head, and we'll be splitting the update here. Back momentarily.)

Posted: **Thu May 05, 2022 5:48 am**

61: Colosseum Clash (Part 2)

66 - Mothiva's Grand Stand!

Unlike before, "Mothiva's Grand Stand" keeps playing, and will serve as our battle music as well. It's a pretty unique battle theme, and I quite like it. We heard it before, briefly, when they confronted us in the Golden Hills, but I'm pretty sure this is the moment the song was written for.

Also, you may notice we can already see their health bars. Zasp and Mothiva don't get new bestiary entries or spy dialogue in this fight, but they do have increased stats. They each get +15 maximum HP and +2 damage to all their attacks, but otherwise this fight is exactly the same as back in Chapter 2, their movesets and behaviours are exactly the same.

So. Instead of fighting them normally, let's give Mothiva the experience of being pelted with fruit in front of a huge crowd (we have to do it ourselves, the crowd don't seem inclined to).

It ought to work as long as nobody brought a gun.

Not quite yet, though, we're going to use this first turn for setup. Vi starts things off by hitting Zasp with a Needle Pincer.

And a neat little trick here. Normally we wouldn't be able to rotate the party after acting, but Leif has an extra action thanks to Strong Start, and if he relays that to Vi, everyone will have actions and we can change the formation.

We'll do another Needle Pincer, this time from the back. (I'm not actually sure if these shenanigans get us any more damage in this specific scenario, it's a bit marginal, but it's enough and I thought it was neat to show off.)

Now. Time for some candy.

After two Hustle Berries, we'll end up with five actions total next turn. Convenient, since we have 5 sets of Cherry Bombs.

Chompy does her thing, of course.

...Oh. No. I'd forgotten Zasp could do this. That's going to complicate things.

Aside from taunting, he has access to the same ninja combos he used last time we fought him.

Mothiva has her usual music-based attacks, including this giant note that hits everyone.

The best laid plans (of mice, and men, and bugs). Zasp's taunt renders Kabbu unable to use items (and, even more irritatingly, Kabbu is one of the ones I used a Hustle Candy on). We're still going to go ahead with things, but it does mean this turn won't go quite as cleanly as I planned.

Leif starts with the fruit. This one's chosen the Burly Bomb effect.

Just like before, Zasp reacts and charges up when he sees Mothiva injured.

Since he's taunted, Kabbu isn't able to do anything other than attack. May as well. If we KO Zasp this turn, he'll lose the charge-ups anyway.

Bombs away! This time, it's a Poison Bomb.

Zasp reacts again, but that's not going to be a problem.

Since he's literally on 1 HP, and we still have more fruit.

Boom. (Also, oops, I clicked too fast and aimed at Zasp instead of Mothiva, which wasted a bit of damage. That won't end up mattering, though.)

Chompy, go bite her for us.

Mothiva usually prioritises reviving Zasp, though it isn't a guarantee. He recovers 8 HP now, instead of 5.

Also, the poison does its work.

So, the taunt prevented us ending the fight that turn, but we can certainly do it now. (The original plan was to reduce Zasp to 20 HP or lower on the setup turn, then hit Mothiva with five bombs, which if the numbers cooperated would be enough to KO both of them on turn two. This take went awry in an interesting way, which I thought was more fun than one where everything went perfectly.)

Boom.

Just go to sleep already.

Well, that was completely ridiculous.

Huff... Huff... is this... enough for you!?

C-Come on. Just drop it.

Fine. Fine! Whatever! ...I give up. You win. Are you HAPPY now!?

I concede. Team Snakemouth. Today you're better than us.

Hehehe. Oh my dear...

Make sure to come to my next show! You'll get even closer to me!

What the... I can't believe they're cheering for YOU!

Justice is quite popular with the crowd!

Maybe Termites just have awful taste! Ugh!

C-Come on, everybody! Say my name one more time!

Theatrics aside, there are serious things to discuss. You fought well. We shall see you there.

And there ends the Termite Colosseum sequence. That was fun! I knew we'd be fighting Mothiva and Zasp again at some point, but I didn't really expect it to be here on the first time through. (Also, there's a certain irony in a miniboss rematch being replaced with a different miniboss rematch, even if being our rivals this one's definitely more fun.)

Or, well, it's almost over. We have another conversation with them in the lobby.

We'll go on ahead.

No weird tricks.

Just shut up. I don't want to hear you ever again. Ugh. BYE.

No time for the inn! Let's get going to the palace!

With that, we regain control. We'll head back to the palace shortly, but there's a decent amount of new dialogue to see now that we're the champions.

Bub and Rob are impressed with us now.

Come back later if you want to fight again. If you keep it up I'll keep betting on you!

The receptionist, meanwhile, seems to have found a new money-making scheme.

Incidentally, he's not lying. We will eventually be able to return here and replay the Colosseum whenever we want, though it'll be slightly different. The first two fights are the same, but the third actually will be a rematch with the Primal Weevil.

Interestingly, neither Cross and Poi nor the Primal Weevil can be refought in B.O.S.S. (either in rush mode or individually); if you want to fight them again, you have to do it here instead. And, speaking of B.O.S.S., once you finish the Colosseum, fighting Mothiva and Zasp there will use their upgraded stats instead.

Anyway. This termite is a fan of ours now.

Unfortunately, Super Regular Normal Dude back there doesn't have any new dialogue.

Let's get out of here.

There's a bit more new content to see on our way back to the palace.

The guards here are impressed with us now.

One of the pair here is gone...

Finding him will be a pain...

This sounds like it's going to be a sidequest, doesn't it.

And, speaking of sidequests. We're champions now, so can we do anything to help Terrie?

C-Champions? Woah...

Guess we've met her standards.

Wha? Termites know the Bug Rangers?

Not many... Mostly some old timers, back before things got really strict.

There was this one show, everyone really talked about it for a while.

I didn't know you were real!

Heheheh.

Sorry, but it's just a coincidence.

...Bleh.

Could you let us know what troubles you, at least?

Y-You'll laugh at me.

Look, I've been saving berries for a whole moon.

But the day I saved up enough, someone snatched it! I'm so angry!

That sucks.

Dunno if we can help...

Easy to say...

Heh. Um. So, can we do something about this? (Somehow, I don't think this is really just about a plushie...)

Yes, very hard to find. We wouldn't possibly know where to get one.

Well, we can't exactly test the Bug Ranger Plushie as the wrong answer this time! But what if we give her something else?

Is this a consolation prize? Cuz I don't want it.

It hurts, but, well, we do have it...

Kabbu, are you sure? For a kid you just met?

Team, don't worry.

The Rangers inspired me to explore, yes.

But... I don't need them any more. Think of all we've been through.

The Spider, the machines and bandits... the Beast.

We did that all together, and they were real adventures.

So it's time to hand this down, so that a new child may dream of exploring!

...

...Kabbu...

Y'all okay there?

Oh dear! You found one!?

IS IT REALLY FOR ME!?

Indeed! Someday, you can be as strong as him!

H-How much was it?

I'm gonna go get my savings!

It's free, don't worry.

Use those berries to buy some good food!

Really...?

Y-Yeah! On the house!

But you've got to take good care of it.

I will! It's gonna look like new every day!

T-Thank you. We don't meet kind bugs every day!

It was nothing. We do need to get going, however.

And they say money can't buy happiness.

Tch. How dare Kabbu be this cool...

Heheh. Onward to our next good deed!

We don't get any tangible reward for this (and, honestly, it'd kind of ruin it if we did), but it's a really cute scene, and there is an achievement.

In a way, this is Kabbu's personal quest, a rough counterpart to Vi's Request and Leif's Request (each of which also had associated achievements). This doesn't count as a sidequest for purposes of the quest log, though.

They each have a new line of dialogue now that we've completed this. And there's also a new banter for them:

You're strong, Kabbu. We would've kept our toy.

Yeah... you have, like, a being nice superpower!

Look at how happy she is! You can't tell me it wasn't worth it?

...Yeah, it was.

Yup.

Aww.

Incidentally, I don't think there are any further reactions you can get by using the Bug Ranger Plushie in incorrect locations from here on out, so giving it to Terrie right away doesn't cause us to miss out on any content. (I'll hang onto it on one of the parallel files I'm running, so if this turns out to not be the case, we'll still get to see them.)

Let's head back toward the palace.

Oh, looks like they fixed the display screen! Let's have a look.

With this, we can finally see all those who are in need...

That sounds interesting. Is this the sidequest board here? Also, let's check, there's a new banter.

So this rectangular gadget provides swift news to the populace?

No need to wait for the guards to change the leaves!

This bug seems addicted to the flux of information.

Let's hope the screen doesn't get broken again anytime soon...

Wait, how exactly does this work? All the other quest boards are manual bulletins, how is this reading the information from them? (Then again, we should probably be asking why the others are all interconnected as it is... eh, it's game mechanics, let's not think too hard about it.)

Anyway, let's check it.

It is, indeed, the sidequest board, and there are five new quests for us.

We'll ignore these for right now, but we'll be back before too long.

I was always rooting for you! Please, sign me an autograph so I can brag to all my friends on the Termanet!

This lady has a very selective memory! I certainly don't remember it like that.

Let's head back to the palace and see if we managed to accomplish any of our diplomatic goals.

Oh yes. That's what we're here for.

Oh sweetie. You've got to get over it.

I'll start, then.

We acknowledge your plight. The Termite Kingdom stands much to lose over this issue.

Our finest engineers have been working on a prototype vehicle.

It is able to operate and travel under the water. It should be just what you need.

Ehm, I like to call it Submarine for short.

I thank both of you from the bottom of my heart. Our people will be able to fight back now.

Um, so it goes under the water? W-What if it breaks?

It is impossible for it to sink! It is our most advanced machine!

...Err, yes. But what if it does?

Alright then. Very reassuring.

Sigh. It's stationed at the pier, in the rightmost part of the city.

Our head of research should be there to explain how it functions.

Excellent. We shall draw it to the Outskirt Pier, to make sure everything is in order.

...And, Queen Elizant.

Yes?

If you'll have them, please let some of our people travel with you. They are eager to see your land.

...! You will cease the separation?

You better repay it when the time comes! Or else!

She will. Our Queen is honest and honorable.

Thank you, Leif. To have earned your backing is most pleasing.

Please, go and make haste.

...And protect Bugaria. Don't make me regret any of this.

We're counting on you, after all.

I think we'll have to count this one as a success. Guess we're getting a submarine now?

Anyway, we're back in control.

But I doubt some Wasps can even scratch it!

The royals each have a bit more dialogue, though nothing too spectacular.

Anyway, let's head back outside.

Wait a minute, there are six quests here now! Another one got posted while we were talking to the royals, I guess. Let's take a look at all of these now.

(This one shouldn't be a surprise!)

(We had a hint about this one too.)

Anyway, we'll accept all of these.

But we've been going for a while and it's getting late, plus there's a save crystal right here. This seems like a good place to wrap up the update for now; we'll start with these sidequests next time, then get us a submarine and see what we can do with it! I'll see you then.

Posted: **Tue May 17, 2022 5:05 am**

62: Sidequest Smorgasbord (Part 1)

When we left off last time, we negotiated with the Termite royalty, narrowly avoided causing an international incident when Mothiva and Zasp crashed our Colosseum challenge, and convinced the Termites to let us use their experimental submarine to travel to Rubber Prison, where we hope to confront the Wasp King and get back the artifacts he stole.

We also tripped some flags that activated the sidequest board and filled it up with quests. We'll be tackling those today.

Here's a quick glance into our quest log, as a reminder.

Incidentally, this is actually the last batch of new sidequests before the postgame. It's not the last of the side content in this game by any means (we still have another Bounty and some battle gauntlets to get to, and there are some new quests in the postgame), but this is probably going to be the last enormous sidequest roundup update.

Let's crack on with it.

I've barely taken two steps and we've already found one! We'll start here, then. If they're all lined up like this, this should be easy!

Indeed. What seems to be troubling you?

I haven't been able to sleep well for a while... And it is starting to affect my work performance!

But I cannot stop! I-I must work, or else...!!

Geez, you gotta learn to take it slow, dude!

I can't! I must...

Look, maybe we can deal with your sleep issues first. Any clue on what it can be?

I love sweets, so maybe you can get one of those for me?

It is worth a try. We will come back if we find anything.

As someone who frequently suffers from insomnia (this might not be a surprise if you pay attention to the times I post updates), he has my sympathies.

Luckily for us, this quest is pretty simple. Tarar wants a

Drowsy Cake. You can make this by mixing a Numbnail Dart with a Bag of Flour, like he suggests, or you can also just buy one from the merchant in the Golden Settlement. Be right back.

I knew this was coming, so I prepared in advance and have one in Amber's storage. It's not actually much further to just go buy one, though.

Back to Tarar. If we back out or give him the wrong thing, he does have an amusing line:

G-Geez... Did you forget what it was? It was some sleeping thing with flour...

Enough of that, let's give him the cake.

What if I eat one of those and oversleep...?!

But I cannot miss work! Wait, I know!

Uh, are you sure that's safe to consume?

If I eat both this cake and the shocking thing, maybe...

I'll be able to sleep for one second and be shocked awake right after!

That doesn't make any sense!

Sleep deprivation isn't good for your thinking skills. (In humans, anyway. This quest line is a nod to the fact that termite workers don't sleep, and spend their whole lives working nonstop until they die.)

Welp. The quest isn't complete yet! Now he wants a

Shock Candy. The quickest way to get this is to go to Defiant Root: you can buy an Agaric Shroom from the merchant just outside Crisbee's, then buy flour from him and make it there. (Or, if you already know you're going to need it, you can prepare it in advance and save yourself the trip. It's a lot less annoying that way.)

Before we give this to him, he has a couple of new lines again! If we back out:

Come on... I need to sleep or I will go crazy! But I can't just sleep like this!

And if we offer him the wrong thing:

That doesn't look too appetizing... It needs to be some shocking candy!

Well, he knows what he wants. This plan seems utterly mad, but he won't take anything else so let's give him what he asked for.

So... Will you give us the reward or not?

Yes, thanks! It's not much, but it might help you!

I hope my work efficiency improves after this. Maybe I will finally get that promotion!

Heavens, we hope they don't promote you into more work...

Poor guy. We did all that so he could get a single second of sleep? (I'm not sure if this plan will work out the way he wants, either. We can use both of these items on the same bug in battle, and they'll just end up simultaneously asleep and numb... I don't think sleep paralysis is very restful.)

Anyway, this was a pretty easy quest. Normally I'd expect a quest that tutorialises recipes like this to be earlier in the game, but I guess theming wins out here (or maybe it's meant to be a reminder to keep experimenting with the cooking system, and encourage players to try status builds?).

The reward is our fourth copy of

TP Plus. These are always nice to have; it's good to have more options! I personally tend to prefer going for regeneration with things like TP Core or Meditation most of the time, but there are times when a higher maximum is what you need to get the job done.

We can talk to Tarar again, but this is all he'll have to say. Best of luck to him, I guess.

Let's be on our way. One quest down, lots still to go.

We'll head into the eastern part of town.

There's Layna! She's another one on our list. We'll walk past her for now, though; there's another easy one we can knock out right away first.

We'll also pass the Colosseum entrance for now. Don't worry, we'll be back.

Let's go into the bomb shop building.

Specifically, to the apartments on 5F.

This fellow in the room on the left is next up. Let's talk to him.

And you're the Seedling guy, right? You're in SUPER LUCK!

We've been fighting Seedlings for ages!

Mhm! Seedlings have so many variations, too many for me to research on my busy schedule!

So I want you to gather some data on their behaviors for me! Don't worry though, it's easy!

Just defeat them in battle and your experiences should write themselves!

Once you have that, talk to me and I will give you your reward!

Sounds simple enough. Let's go trample them.

(50... So much violence!)

So, this quest is a gimme. We need to rack up 50 kills across all the various Seedling types.

I've literally never reached this point in the game without having it already complete. We're far past the mark even when just looking at the basic ones! (This does, unfortunately, mean I've never seen the dialogue if you talk to him without completing it, and won't be able to show it for the LP. I do want to do a minimum kills challenge run at some point, but not enough to put the LP on hold.)

Anyway, let's talk to him again and get our prize!

Take this as a token of my appreciation, I made it during my spare time. I'm sure it will be helpful on your quest.

Heheheh. I knew those Seedlings would be good for something someday!

Let's take a look at this medal!

Well, that's a mysterious description.

Seedling Affinity costs 1 MP to equip, and what it does is increase the odds of Golden Seedlings appearing. Specifically, it increases them by a factor of 2.5, so in normal encounters the odds go from 1% to 2.5%... but in Seedling Haven, they go from 7.5% to a whopping 18.75% chance of a Golden Seedling spawning.

This makes it nearly trivial to find Golden Seedlings! If you want to grind (either for EXP, berries, or Tangy Berries), the fastest way is to take this thing to Seedling Haven and beat up a couple of them. They're not much of a challenge at this point, especially if you have Ice Rain (which is the only multi-hit skill that can actually hit them multiple times).

Also, I don't think I've discussed it before, but there's an oddity to the mechanics of how Golden Seedlings spawn, which this medal makes it easy to exploit. Golden Seedlings replace other Seedling-type enemies, and the game rolls the odds when you touch the enemy and the battle starts. But if you run away, they don't turn back (a sensible design decision, to let the player regroup if they're in a bad position to deal with it). If you run away and then reenter the battle, the game will roll again for all the non-golden Seedlings and attempt to turn them golden. The normal odds are too low for it to be practical, but with this medal they're high enough that you can realistically keep running away and reentering a battle until it's composed entirely of Golden Seedlings (if, for some reason, you feel like fighting three or four of them at once). It's silly and ridiculous (and also an interesting challenge, they're scary in numbers!); try it out if you think it sounds like fun.

Anyway, that's that quest done. We're really churning through them today!

I hope that Medal's been more than worth it!

Takkun has new dialogue once the quest is complete. He really has no idea.

With that, we're done here, let's head back for our other quests.

There's Yatanta, and his brother is nowhere to be seen.

Heheh, yes! We saw your request. Your brother left without lunch?

Mhm. He's always rushing! And then faints from exhaustion in the wilderness.

I can't deliver today, it's too busy. I'll pay a pretty berry if you take this to him.

Alrighty! Where's his post?

Hm... Today he was supposed to patrol around the broken bridges in the Forsaken Lands.

Just walk west from where the Weevils hang around. He should've made it before fainting.

He's strong, but... please hurry.

This smells pretty good, wow.

He's annoying, but I do love him! It's my super nutritious survival box!

Leave it to us!

This one's pretty straightforward. We have the lunch, and we know pretty much where to go (the only weevil we saw was the Primal Weevil miniboss, so these directions are very concrete).

If we talk to him again, he'll repeat the hint about the location. We can do that.

We're done here for now.

On our way out, we'll stop and talk to Layna now.

Huh? Who are you?

We're Team Snakemouth. We've come to aid your request.

Really? I didn't expect anyone to take notice of it so quickly! Thank you!

You lost your pet, right? Hits close to home. We'll get it back to you.

Nero doesn't trust others. If you find him, he will flee quite quickly.

...So I'll go with you. Without making sure he's safe, I can't go home in good conscience.

Are you sure of this? The Forsaken Lands are quite dangerous!

It's the only way. I know I'm asking a lot, but...

Thank you, once again.

Is there any place Nero likes to run off to?

Do you know where that is?

Yeah, we went across it while coming here. Shall we depart?

Mhm. Let's go.

Layna joins us and will be coming along for this one. She can come with us for the lunch delivery too, it's fine. (It's pretty much on the way, it's in our best interest to do both of these at once.)

Let's head out and get on with the search.

Here we are at the Primal Weevil room. It's really not a long walk.

We'll just head west.

Oops, Layna disappeared, since this room isn't on the critical path of her quest. Oh well. She'll be back soon enough; now, where's Yatanta's brother?

All we have to do is drop off the ledge to where the ruler bridge is, and there he is. (I think part of the purpose this quest serves is to help make sure players find this shortcut?)

This must be Yatanta's brother. Let's give him the lunch!

Kabbu tells us the obvious in a banter. Let's do it, there's no reason not to.

Uh... that's not it...

Kabbu will scold us if we try to give the wrong thing, or back out.

So let's give him the lunch.

So my brother sent you here, huh? When I get to work, I get so pumped out and forget to eat.

Here, take this as thanks for saving me!

Well, time to finish my patrol and head back home! See you out there!

And he heads off. That was pretty simple! (I think the theme of today's quests is "please don't neglect basic self-care".)

Our reward is a second copy of

HP Core. You can stack both copies on the same bug for a 4 HP boost every two turns, or spread them out so multiple characters get recovery. It definitely opens up some possibilities. These also go pretty well with Life Cast, if you want to do things with that.

We're really knocking these quests out today! Let's keep going.

And there's Layna back.

There are some enemies here, but we'll just hurry past them. Layna is strictly a noncombatant, she won't appear in combat with us and doesn't have any animations to see.

Also, while we're in this screen, there's a minor novelty here; let's take a quick look on another file.

If we didn't get the discovery earlier while Elizant was with us, we could come up here and get it now, and see a slightly different conversation.

The Termite Kingdom's just a big rock, huh.

Think of that big rock as their hive, Vi.

Heh. Thanks for making us feel bad about missing it the first time, game?

Anyway, back to adventure.

Layna will immediately call out when we enter this screen. (It's more obvious it's her who's speaking ingame, screenshots don't capture the gestures and lip flaps and leave the speech bubble arrows looking ambiguous. This has been a persistent issue throughout this LP and I wish I had a better solution.)

So let's jump down.

Then we'll fly across this gap. It's much easier to backtrack through this room than it was to get through it forwards!

And when we land here, the mushrooms blocking the way south are gone. That's clearly where we have to go. (Or they were never here; as I mentioned before, the mushrooms were added in v1.1)

Let's see what this new area is!

Don't worry, everyone. Do you see those shrooms?

They're shrooms alright.

Magic!?

Seems it wasn't a waste to bring you with us.

Bring me to the shrooms, and they'll light up the way with hints.

After that brief conversation and demonstration, we regain control. Before we try to solve this puzzle, let's check the banter quickly:

This area is much foggier than the others.

Careful, team! We must watch closely where we walk!

Not a place we should wander around without a guide...

This feels a bit awkward when, in the current version of the game, we have the guide with us the first time we come here. It made more sense when you could just stumble in here while exploring.

If we ignore the glowing spores and just go haring off in whatever direction, the screen will white out on us and we'll be warped back to the start. So let's try not to do that, shall we? There's a specific path we're going to have to feel out to get through here.

We'll start here with the mushroom Layna showed us. These spores are heading vaguely west, maybe slightly southwest?

If we head in that direction, we eventually reach another mushroom with glowing spores. These are a bit hard to see, but they're going south-southeast, toward the screen.

Here, we have to go west again.

Now the spores point north, slightly northwest.

We'll have to dig under this stick.

And this mushroom wants us to go west/southwest.

Finally, we've reached the exit!

I have to admit, I don't care much for this puzzle, and find it a bit frustrating. The spores are hard to read and not quite indicative enough (I think they should probably have blown a bit farther than they do, to make the direction more obvious), so it feels a bit cryptic and trial-and-error even when you know the solution. I've cut out all the failures, but I probably wasted 10-15 minutes faffing around here while recording.

Anyway, regardless, we got through it; let's move on.

There's Nero!

I-It's so cute...

Hm? What's that?

It seems to be holding some sort of glowshroom! Although not like the ones that guided us.

Oh, Nero. You wandered off for this?

Is that, like, a super rare shroom?

Nibu! Nibu!

So helpful. It truly is the perfect pet.

More than a pet, he's a real friend!

Although I wouldn't mind staying in the Termite Kingdom a little longer.

Really? I can't wait to be outta there...

Right, Nero?

Nibu!

...You're right. Just saying thanks isn't enough, so would you take this?

I found it while looking around, and its contents are most incredible!

Of course it's enough! We wish you luck on your journey!

We should be fine going back, so don't let us hold you back any longer.

Make sure to say hi if you're back in the city!

Goodbye, Nero...

And they leave.

Books are priceless, Vi. I'll have you know that.

Agreed. You could use a little bit more culture.

If no one wants to buy it, it's worthless! Why do you think libraries rent 'em!?

Heh.

Anyway, with that, the quest is complete! That was a cute one.

Before we leave, though, what's this little area we find ourselves in?

Looks like we reached a dead end.

Drat... Should we investigate or turn back?

The banter makes it obvious there's something here, at least.

Looking around, there's not much to see, though. There are a bunch of weeds (none of which have anything in them), a sign, and a hole in the cliff?

Uh, what's this? ...Should we?

If we come over to the hole, we do indeed get a prompt to leave items.

I'm not going to miss this Mite Burger we bought, so, sure. Let's try that.

...Is that spider wearing flowers? Anyway, it seems like she liked it, she even paid us!

...She gave us 20 berries (plus the Crystal Berry). Mite Burgers usually sell for 10!

So... We can give our items to that spider?

She gives a LOT more berries than shops do! We're gonna get rich!

If we check for a banter by the hole after doing this, our team will comment on it. This is a whole thing. Pinky the friendly spider lives here, and she'll "buy" items from us for double the price they would fetch in shops. (And give us a Crystal Berry the first time.) That's nice of her!

...Let's try something. Does she like spider capsules, do you think?

That's a LOT of cash!

Technically speaking these are handled just like any other item, but Longleg Summoners have a very high sell price relative to what it costs to buy them (you pay 10-19 berries at the gacha in the Wizard's Tower, their sell price is 18 berries), so they end up being the most profitable thing to give her.

One other wrinkle: unlike every other item, Pinky won't pay extra for Dark Cherries, she'll only give the same 50 berries as shops do. I guess she doesn't like those?

Anyway, having met Pinky (and gotten her crystal berry), let's head back.

Leaving that screen warps us right back here, we don't need to navigate the mushroom maze again. I appreciate that.

Let's head back to the Termite Kingdom. (We'll skip the backtracking; the bridge makes it a bit less tedious than it would be otherwise, or we could just use the Ant Compass and head back via the mines.)

Here we are.

There's a bit of new stuff to see, again, including checking in with the people we helped. But first...

Do you remember Rose here telling us that she had a very shy friend who lives in the Forsaken Lands? Apparently, she meant the spider. If we want to go see Pinky again (and sell her stuff), we don't need to navigate the mushrooms again, we can just talk to her and warp there.

(No) Oh, sorry for asking then.

(Yes) Ok. Let's depart right away.

She'll bring us right to Pinky's area.

(No) Oh, alright.

(Yes) Let's go, then.

And we can talk to her again to warp right back. With this option for fast travel, this becomes an effortless money-making trick as long as you don't mind some walking (you can fill up an entire inventory with Longleg Summoners, sell them to Pinky, and repeat until you have all the berries you want, making occasional stops at the bank to offload if necessary). We didn't really need any more money-making tricks by this point, most players should be flush with cash, but this is a thing you can do if you feel the need.

Let's see if Layna has anything new to say.

It may be a bit too violent for Nero, though...

She's contemplating going to the Colosseum, that's all. Guess she missed seeing us fight.

Nero only has the usual to say, really.

Speaking of the Colosseum...

Let's check in with the siblings here.

Forgetting to eat isn't usually a good idea, but I've absolutely been there.

I can't believe someone can forget to eat!

Mhm.

Yup.

...Anyways, let's go.

I can't really say anything to add on to this banter.

Yatanta is grateful, also.

Let's take a quick detour in here.

If we revisit the Colosseum after beating it, we can see they took down the painting of the previous champion and put up one of us! That's nice. (Vi looks very smug there, doesn't she. When did we pose for this?)

We will be able to battle here again (though it's just for fun, you don't get anything notable for it), but right now the receptionist just repeats his previous dialogue congratulating us. I don't remember exactly when this becomes available.

And... my nemesis, the character limit, has returned. I have to split the update and this seems like a good place; back momentarily.

Posted: **Tue May 17, 2022 5:06 am**

62: Sidequest Smorgasbord (Part 2)

The next quest I want to tackle starts elsewhere. We had a request from Artia, all the way back in the Bee Kingdom Hive.

40 - High Above, Bee Kingdom

There she is, just on the west side from the entrance.

Yup. Don't make a big deal out of it, ok?

...Alright. I'm looking for the blackest, darkest of all paints.

I need it to complete my masterpiece. To challenge Jaune's reign as the best artist of the Hive.

You sure you can handle that?

...A job's a job. Where can I find it?

Your soul is a dark grey... But anyways... I've heard it's with someone in the Termite City.

He hates being around in the open, a lover of the darkness. So cool...

Sounds like you two would get along pretty well.

Don't speak nonsense... I simply admire him. I would meet him myself, were it not so far.

Get it done, Vi. The pay's good.

Well, this is interesting. Is this really a good idea? Vi doesn't seem to mind, despite Artia professing to be Jaune's rival... well, regardless, I guess we're going to do it.

If you don't know where to start, search the darkest parts of the city...

If we talk to her again, this is all she'll say.

Okay, let's trek back to the Termite Capital.

Remember these people in the alley?

Is this our guy?

Uh... excuse us...

......

We heard you have the blackest paint. We're interested in that.

......I have no business with you. Scram, if you know what's better for you.

Eep! B-but we need the paint!

......

Uh, let's leave him alone, team...

We need the paint, Kabbu.

I know, but it doesn't seem like we can get it now...

Let's ask Artia what to do and come back later...

Ugh, this is going to be a whole thing, isn't it? Looks like we need to trek back to the Bee Kingdom again.

Let's ask Artia what to do and come back later...

If we try to talk to him again, still no luck, just a repeat of the hint to talk to Artia. Guess we have no choice.

40 - High Above, Bee Kingdom

Yeah. He won't budge, though. Sorry...

...Drat. I feared this would happen. Listen up...

Boyfriend's a pretty vague description...

We have... similar tastes. You will know when you see him. Now go, your pay's waiting...

...Okay, let's go to the Ant Kingdom. Sigh. (What is it with artist bees and fetch quests?)

For now, we're just going to pass through the castle. We've got a stack of Lore Books piling up, so we do need to stop in at the library soon, but we'll get to that. For now, let's just press on with this errand.

Naturally, the first place we'll check is the Underground Tavern. Let's talk to Reed first, maybe he'll know something?

Vi... What do you want?

A-are you Artia's boyfriend?

(Or he could cut out the middleman. That works too.)

We are doing a request for her. She asked us to get the blackest paint.

But the guy that has it doesn't want anything to do with us.

I see. I know she wants the paint, but...

I really didn't want her to get involved with that guy.

I may be a tough guy, but she is my soft spot. wouldn't want to get her into trouble.

But since you're going in her place... I suppose I could assist you.

I used to know the guy but we have had a... falling out. So I couldn't get the paint from him anyway.

He'd probably do something horrible to me if I went myself. But he still owes me a favor from long ago...

So here, give this to him.

Don't you dare open that, it contains sensitive info. Info for his eyes only.

Just give that to him and don't ask questions. He will give you the paint.

You know, just saying that makes us even more curious.

Uh, Leif, don't. Alright? Wouldn't want to never be able to sleep again knowing something could happen to us.

Listen, just do this and everything will end without issues.

I can trust you with that, can't I, Vi?

Yeah, yeah. I know, Reed. Just leave it to me.

Good.

(This is sooo shady...)

What kind of mafia business have we gotten ourselves involved with, anyway? (Or is that note just a legal declaration that we are not Anish Kapoor?)

We know, we know.

If we talk to Reed again, he'll just reiterate the situation. Let's be getting on with it, then.

Well, in a moment. We've got enough Crystal Berries, we may as well pick something up from Shades while we're here. Electric Needles is really good.

Kehehe! Here you go my lovelies...

Come back if you still have any berries left to spend! Kehehe!

I don't necessarily plan to use Electric Needles any time soon, but it's a really nice medal to have, and it can definitely come in handy. (On my first playthrough, it's what I used to beat the Devourer, I was terrified of it after getting destroyed early and didn't want to even risk it getting turns. It's slightly less busted post the nerf in v1.1, but it's still a very good medal.)

Anyway, let's go see if this note changes anything.

He still doesn't say anything to us, but we get the option to give him something.

......You'd better leave if you want to see tomorrow...

Offering the wrong thing gets us death threats. How lovely.

Huh, we got a response!

......Fine. Here is the paint. But I do this favor for Reed, not for you.

...We no longer have any business between us. Leave.

Gee, what a moody fellow.

Well, we got the paint, let's deliver it.

...All's well that ends well? I hope?

If we try to talk to Tennent again, he'll just repeat this and tell us to get lost.

Let's just take the paint to Artia and forget all of this happened.

40 - High Above, Bee Kingdom

...Don't waste my time.

That's all the reaction we'll get from the wrong item or backing out. Let's give her the paint.

Yes... I can feel it. It's like I'm staring at a deep abyss!

Jewelry is for denizens of the light. I have no need of it, after having seen such darkness...

Seems like a fair trade, the brightest object for the darkest one...

Hehehe... soon, Jaune's art reign will be over and Artia's will begin...

Yeah, I doubt that!

And with that, this quest is complete! It's a bit tedious doing all that backtracking, but at least the reward is decent, and the dialogue is fun.

(As I alluded earlier, this quest is almost certainly a reference to the incredible pettiness and controversy surrounding Vantablack, the blackest known substance. VANTA is for "vertically aligned nanotube array", it's extremely expensive and difficult to manufacture, and the artist Anish Kapoor somehow acquired exclusive rights to its use as paint. This, very naturally, pissed off the greater community of artists, which led to Stuart Semple creating the pinkest pink; he offered this for sale to anyone except Anish Kapoor, provided they legally attest that they are not Kapoor and will not give it to him. It keeps going. There's a whole rabbit hole of hilarious petty feuding here, and it's well worth a look if you want to waste a couple hours.)

Anyway, that was a fun digression.

...Are you sure this was alright, Vi?

Huh... Guess you were helping out Jaune too, then.

If we talk to Artia again after completing the quest, we can see this conversation, which is pretty cute. It's nice to see Vi's confidence in her sister, after everything. (Apparently there wasn't any need to worry, at least on that front.)

We're done here for now.

If we check in with Reed, he has some new dialogue we can see now too. (Actually, we can see this conversation any time after getting the paint, we don't have to have delivered it.)

Well, he may not have forgiven her completely, but this seems like a good start. (And, no, we never will know what Vi did to piss him off.)

We still have one more sidequest in our log (Alex's request), but let's not get to that just yet; it's one we'll want to wait a bit for. There are a few unmarked sidequests we can complete now, so while we're trekking all over, let's address those as well.

The first of these is in the Golden Settlement.

26 - Golden Lands

Once again, we need to head to the east side of town.

Kenny's here now. Let's talk to him.

The Golden Settlement does have a very serene mood.

I think after seeing the world, this is the place I enjoy the most.

You just needed to make sure, huh.

Yup. It made me happy to see you around, too.

It was nice seeing you too!

I know this comes out of nowhere, but I want you to have this.

I just feel... grateful for having met you.

Haha! Don't worry. You've given me plenty.

You're a cool one. Ask us if you need anything.

I will. I wish you the best in your own journeys!

Well, it's nice to make friends! (And get another Lore Book for the pile!) We get this for talking to Kenny at each of the different points of his journey (we saw him first in the Golden Settlement, then the Bee Hive, Defiant Root, the Ant Kingdom, and finally the Termite Capital, before he returned here).

Keeping up with Kenny's journey is kind of a game-spanning sidequest, except that you don't know there's any reward for it until after you've finished. Kenny doesn't move locations until you talk to him in the previous one (which can make it a bit of a pain to figure out, if you forget where you left off with him). He won't leave the Termite Kingdom until after the Colosseum sequence, so this is pretty close to the earliest we could get this Lore Book.

If we talk to Kenny again, this is all he'll have to say.

That's all there was for here.

Now, let's head back to the Termite Kingdom again...

If we go into the inn, there's someone in the lobby we haven't seen before!

Uh, maybe? I dunno...

Hmm... HMM...

This banter certainly makes things look suspicious. Let's talk to her.

You seem... familiar. Have we met before?

Never seen a Termite before coming here, so...

...Oh, you're from that sign at the inn.

Pardon me? The inn? Could you mean the inn in Defiant Root?

Right! You do bear a heavy resemblance!

He didn't take the sign down? That guy...

Why'd you come here? Doesn't seem much cooler.

I wanted to offer a genuine, warm inn experience in this kingdom.

But a lot of tourists want something different, like an apartment.

Ironically, many come to enjoy our grey skies... So business struggles.

I've set a colleague to run it for me, and it's like I'm not even needed.

Why not go back?

...

Doesn't seem like you're happy here, and you're missed there.

......You're right. I really was a fool...

I had everything I ever wanted, and I left it for this whim of mine.

I heard the Ant Kingdom's doing escorts. I think I'll take the first trip back!

We'll see you back at Defiant Root, maybe.

(He's going to be jolly!)

Well.

So, remember ages ago, when we first visited Defiant Root and I mentioned an unmarked sidequest involving the innkeeper? Yeah, this is it. If you talk to the innkeeper there and ask what he's upset about, it will start this sequence where we can find his erstwhile partner and encourage her to move back.

If we talk to her again, she'll say this.

(Let's drop by Defiant Root soon...!)

And if we check the banter after this conversation, Kabbu suggests we check on them in Defiant Root. Let's do that. (Conveniently, however we travel, she'll get there before us.)

There's the sign! And we can see them both standing behind the counter now. Let's go see what's going on with them.

If we say we're just passing by, we'll only get this reaction.

This is a bit more interesting, though.

Heheh. I'm so grateful we met! We're doing great!

I really missed my room... I left something nice for you!

Keep on trucking, you two.

(We'll see what she's talking about in a moment.)

And if we talk to Wayde, we'll see he's very pleased with this result.

This inn's got its smile back.

...I'm not gonna ask for a reward this time. I guess it's fine.

I'm happy for them... Some do get their friends back.

It'll be okay. Let's rest up.

The banter's interesting too, even if Kabbu brings a bit of a somber note.

If we head outside and climb the stairs next to the inn building, the door up here is open now! (This door can be incredibly aggravating, because you can see it early and see there's something on the other side of it, but there's no hint about how to open it. The Detector medal will constantly go off here, too.)

All that's inside is this Lore Book on the table. Still, we'll take that! This is definitely one of the more cryptic ones to find, in my opinion, because it's easy to just not stumble into the trigger condition for this "quest".

Well. We have a LOT of books now. Let's go to the library.

18 - In th Court of the Ant Queen

Let's check in with Libren, too. We should have enough Discoveries for a reward.

...

Looks like you have enough for the next reward tier! Here you go!

That seems to be all for now! Come back once you have found more Discoveries!

Nice, I'll always take more of these.

Now for Brooke.

Did we find any books, you ask.

Look how much that shelf filled up! We're getting pretty close now.

Let's read some books!

Youngling Care. Since the Day of Awakening we mature faster, but our infant stage is still critical. There can be events where the caterpillar or grub stages get interrupted, causing unforeseen consequences. If one is not careful, the youngling can turn into a dangerous lesser bug! Nurseries must be protected and treasured at all costs, so that our future generations don't suffer such a fate.

This is concerning, and explains why Maki might be so worried about Yin...

A Study of Magic. Magic is uncommon, and few bugs are able to use it. Some bees theorize that crystal exposure can grant magic powers, but testing yields no fruit. A legendary wizard that lived in these lands used to experiment with crystals to learn their magic properties. But he suddenly disappeared, and all knowledge of how crystals relate to magic disappeared with him. Rumors have said that he might be living in the Far Grasslands, but no traces of him have been located.

We've met this guy! (Unfortunately we can't talk to him about his research, but it's still interesting to hear about. And how old is he, anyway, if he was doing early research into magic?)

The Mother Crystal. Deep underground, below the Forsaken Lands, it is said a massive crystal resides. Said crystal might be linked to why Bugaria is such a haven in this area. Ancient Roach texts suggest it fell from the heavens during the Day of Awakening, piercing the earth. They said the crystal's aura protects Bugaria from the outside world's great perils. Some say that it is tied to Goddess Venus, the local deity of the Golden Settlement. Although personally, I would prefer not to speculate using local folklore. Further study is necessary, but the Termites prohibit anyone from digging in the Forsaken Lands. Until relations between the kingdoms improve, reaching the crystal is currently impossible.

There are a lot of interesting tidbits in this one, including that the "Day of Awakening" may have been caused in part by the impact of a magical meteorite. Is that why there don't seem to be any humans left?

The Dead Lands. The gigantic feral beasts that surround Bugaria... it's uncanny how we've gotten used to them. Elizant I braved the Dead Lands, riddled with those creatures, to ensure our peace. Although Bugaria is protected by the Mother Crystal... I struggle to write when I think of what could happen should that crystal lose its power.

Gigantic feral beasts don't sound good (is that what we saw moving around in the fog from the telescope?). I also wonder if the large crystal we can see in the Ant Mines is connected to the Mother Crystal somehow. Is it the same one, a fragment that broke off, another similar one, or something else entirely?

The Northern Kingdoms. Far beyond the swamplands lay the Northern Kingdom, home to many kind of beetles. They are very traditionalist and hold honor above all else, however many travel to Bugaria to escape the Dead Landers' attacks. The trip to Bugaria is hard enough. But the north houses the swamps, filled with more dangerous creatures. To avoid the Wasps' hostility, most take the long route around their Kingdom. It's the most insane of trips. Truly, the lives of the northerners aren't easy...

Some intriguing tidbits about Kabbu's homeland. Also, uh, what are "Dead Landers"...?

The Eastern Lands. To the far east of Bugaria lay the Dead Lands we fear so much. Monsters everywhere, and a feeling of utter dread. Who knows how, but I braved the odds. Eventually, I reached the Eastern Kingdom. It is so different compared to Bugaria... It has many exotic fruits and materials that cannot be found in our kingdom. Many of its denizens live in a very closed community that shuns outsiders. The only exception to this seems to be a rare species of bugs that resemble fruits. Although friendly, other Eastern bugs appear to stay clear of them. Is their smell too sweet? If I don't make it back to Bugaria, I'm glad I got to meet them...

And, to wrap things up, some information about the Eastern Lands (where the "fruity bugs" like Tanjerin, Cerise, and Skirby hail from). It sounds very peculiar, to say the least.

Whew. That was a lot of books! We're done here for now; let's head outside, and go meet up with Alex finally.

17 - Ant Kingdom

He lives in this house with the fish designs (was it a sardine can or something?).

Well, I suppose you know what to do then. Striders. The scourge of the seas!

You see, I used to love the sea...

Now I just want revenge! But I have no way of fighting them. So please, go in my place! Give them my anger!

A-are you sure we need to beat them?

Yes! Beat 10 of them, that should teach them!

They're all over Metal Lake, so you will need a way to go through the water.

Your reward is here waiting with me for when the task is done. Go now!

Sounds like an easy job! Let's do it!

So, this is pretty simple. Alex wants us to murder 10 Water Striders. We already fought a few of them in Stream Mountain, so we could head there to grind if we wanted, but once we pick up the submarine we'll presumably be able to fight them at sea. (I did say before that the enemies in Stream Mountain were from this chapter.) This quest can wait for now.

Argh! My revenge isn't yet sated! You need to beat 10 of them! Go go!

I suppose we will need to see how many we have so far in our Library.

If we talk to him again, Kabbu will hint that we can use the bestiary to track how many we've killed, just like other quests of this nature.

Anyway, for now we're done here.

Let's pay a visit to Artis! He should owe us a few medals, since I've been dawdling on picking them up.

...

Hmm! Good job, folks! You defeated that hardened Mothiva!

Was it too challenging for ya? You deserve a reward. Here, take this!

Oh ho! You've been on a roll! Beat Primal Weevil too, eh? Here, take this as well!

Come back later when you've bonked some extra hard heads with that Medal, will ya?

We get rewards for beating Mothiva again, as well as for the Primal Weevil. (Also, we get to see how Artis' dialogue works when we have multiple rewards queued up, I can't remember if I've let that happen before in the LP.)

With this fifth one, we now have the full complement of

TP Plus medals. You know what these do by now, and you know when you want more of them.

For beating Primal Weevil, we get

Resist All. For 3 MP, this is actually kind of a bargain: it gives 50% resistance to each of Poison, Sleep, Numb, and Freeze, so you save 1 MP over using one each of the respective resistance medals. It also stacks with other resistance medals (just like they do with each other), so you can equip another resistance medal with this to become immune to that status. It has some utility on defensive builds, if you're worried a missed block will ruin your strategy.

(Also, this now enables you to have Sleep Resistance on every member of the party at once, if you want to use Drowsy Cake as your primary healing item or something. But I wouldn't really recommend that at this point in the game.)

Resist All isn't the most interesting medal, but there are times when it can come in handy. I'm certainly not sorry to have it.

Before we finish this update, I have one final loose end to wrap up. Let's take a jaunt over to the Forsaken Lands once more.

Specifically, let's pay a visit to Patton. Remember, he hinted before that he'd like us to come back without the Queen... though do we want to?

Indeed. Thanks for your help.

Hehe. I see the Ant Queen is no longer with you... So I suppose you could be interested in my services, then?

We are unsure. This seems really shady.

My friend, you are wrong there. All I do is honest work!

Picked a wrong bonus during Ranking Up? I can fix that for you.

For a price, of course. Hehehe...

With Stat Conversion, I can extract all your level up and stat bonuses and convert them into potions!

What you do with the potions then is up to you. But that's where my second service comes in, the Potion Conversion.

With that, I can change one potion type into another. That way, you can change the bonus you would receive.

Uh, what do you mean by "extract"?

Give it some thought, alright? You know where to find me.

As I've hinted a few times before, Bug Fables does have a full respec option available, if you decide you don't like the decisions you made on level-ups. Patton here is in charge of it. Technically, you can come here as soon as you've reached the Termite Capital and Elizant leaves the party, but regardless, it becomes available roughly halfway through Chapter 6. I think this is a hint that the game really wants us to be thoughtful about our builds now (though, admittedly, from a game design standpoint I kind of think it should have been earlier, to make mistakes less punishing while the player is still learning?).

For the sake of the LP, I'll be sticking with the build the thread voted for (at least until the postgame, where I will probably use this to demonstrate some alternative strategies). But let's do a demonstration of how it works, because the system's kind of interesting.

Hehe... A wise choice. But do come back if you change your mind!

If we back out at any stage, Patton will say this.

Let's try the Stat Conversion.

Ok... Let's start!

Come back later if you need any more of my services! Hehehe...

Um, that was pretty unpleasant... let's have a look.

The first thing we can notice is the status bar: we're definitely back to our starting stats!

And our Key Items page is full of potions! Even though we've been picking MP every level, we won't see just MP potions here, the other potions correspond to permanent stat boosts we've gotten (both from extra level-up bonuses, and the rare stat-up berries). Everything can be redistributed. Here are the various potions you could see here:

Super HP Potion
"A.K.A. the 'Spud Buds'! A double portion of potato potion! Increases the party's HP by 1."

Super TP Potion
"A.K.A. the 'Fat-Tea'! If you're not opposed to adipose... Increases the party's TP by 3."

MP Potion
"A.K.A. the 'Nano-Narcolepsy'! A power nap between turns can do wonders. Increases the party's MP by 3."

Those three correspond to level-up choices (I do think the third should probably have been named 'Super MP Potion' for symmetry, the fact it's not makes things unnecessarily confusing). Then there are four for each of the permanent stat boost berries (I know we haven't seen the defence one yet, but it does exist, shh, what a spoiler):

HP Potion
"A.K.A. the 'Aphid A-Fib'! Extracting aphid cuteness has never looked so humane. Increases an ally's Max HP by 1."

TP Potion
"A.K.A. the 'Berry Brew'! The Economical Alternative to exploration! Permanently increases the party's TP by 1."

ATK Potion
"A.K.A. the 'Not-so-funny Honey'! Leave your enemies in stitches! Increases an ally's attack by 1."

DEF Potion
"A.K.A. the 'Shell Queller'! Numbnail ministrations dull painful sensations. Increases an ally's defense by 1."

The descriptions on all of these are amusingly silly, too. Anyhow... you can use the potions to get the stat boosts back, or you can have Patton convert them between types to swap the bonuses. Let's demonstrate that.

Patton can only convert the potions that correspond to level-up choices, not berries or the occasional extra bonuses. No converting Heart Berries into MP for us. (This is why I think the MP Potion should have had Super in the name, it would be more intuitive for him to explain this.)

Ok... Let's start!

Come back later if you need any more of my services! Hehehe...

If you try to give him the wrong item (either a non-potion, or a potion he can't convert), you get this message instead:

I can't convert that. Come back with something I can actually work with!

Anyway, that's how Patton's services work! Once you've turned everything into potions (and swapped the potions you don't like for ones that you do), you go use the potions again and get your stats back. Or you could leave things as potions, if you want to do a low-level challenge (maybe in B.O.S.S.?) without starting the game over. The more drastic the changes you want to make, the more you have to pay Patton, since he charges 15 berries per potion conversion (on top of the 75 berry fee to make the potions in the first place). And, of course, it can be a lot of menuing to go through.

Just don't forget to re-equip Hard Mode when you're putting your medals back on, if you're using it. When he says he's going to automatically unequip your medals, he means it, it even removes the ones that cost 0 MP.

Also, there is an interesting quirk here: we got a bonus of 1 HP to each party member on reaching Rank 21. This is, internally, treated the same as a Heart Berry each, rather than a HP level-up... so Patton turns it into three HP Potions, not one Super HP Potion. That means that, if you want to, you can take those bonuses and stack them all on one bug, or otherwise distribute them unevenly once Patton's done his thing. (I personally prefer not to do this, because it doesn't feel quite fair to get extra advantage from the respec service that isn't possible by playing naturally, but it's in the game if you want to do it.)

Whew. That was a lot to cover (I think this might be the largest single update I've done?); we'll leave the update here for now, and pick up next time with the submarine. I'll see you then!

Posted: **Wed May 18, 2022 8:16 pm**

Just a quick heads-up: I've realised I've made a mistake. We should have had one more Lore Book than we did; I apparently literally walked past it and forgot to pick it up. So, next update we'll have to rectify that...

Posted: **Wed May 25, 2022 10:28 pm**

So, uh, this isn't an update. I'm running behind schedule; I was hoping to get the next one out sometime this week but I am absolutely not on track to make that happen. With the upcoming long weekend in the States I should have some more time to work on the LP soon, hopefully, so it shouldn't be too much longer.

I do have some other Bug Fables news, however. I have just been made aware (thanks to the Bug Fables discord) that Moonsprout Games are partnering with a company called Makeship to make Team Snakemouth plushies. There's no information on pricing there yet; from what I can gather ordering will open June 3 (Friday week) and stay open for 21 days (and it's a sort of crowdfunding thing where they'll only get made if enough people are interested, I don't know the threshold).

To be honest, I'm not a fan of this kind of FOMO-based sales model, but it's often the only way indie companies can afford to have their products manufactured, so it is what it is. I have a feeling I'm going to end up buying these. (I already have the Collector's Edition, which came with a Vi plushie, but this is the first time they've done ones for Kabbu and Leif, and this Vi looks like it's going to be a different design.)

Just thought that might be worth a heads-up, if anyone else might be keen on these.

Posted: **Mon May 30, 2022 1:22 am**

63: Subbing Out (Part 1)

Content warning: This update covers a minigame which is an homage to another indie game with a sordid and unpleasant history, and I feel obligated to discuss that context. I'll give a more specific warning as we get closer and clearly mark the boundaries of that discussion, so you can avoid it if you need to. (The discussion in question is in Part 2.)

We left off here last time, after investigating Patton's respec options (though I've made no changes to our stats).

We're still here, because I need to pick up something I forgot about; there's a collectible near here that I literally walked right past without noticing. (I knew it had to happen at least once during this LP, I'm only surprised it took this long!)

Specifically, it's in this area, just west of Patton's.

Do you see anything?

There it is! There's a Lore Book here, hidden among the grass; it can be pretty hard to spot (though the Detector medal will at least tell you it's here, if you're using that). I could have grabbed this one several updates ago, when we first came to this area. Regardless, we have it now.

Now let's head back to the Termite Kingdom.

I'll cut out the journey. It's not terribly long now, thanks to our myriad shortcuts.

Let's head to the docks and check out this submarine.

The conveyor belts do help make this journey a bit quicker.

And here we are.

This isn't particularly noteworthy, but if we check inside here, all the workers are no longer here.

Also, these people weren't here before, and seem to be waiting for us.

Let's talk to them.

Oh, you're the winners of the Colosseum, right? So you will take us to Bugaria, yes?

Let's get going, time is money!

This dapper fellow seems like some kind of tycoon? The Termite Queen did say they'd be sending some people over to start businesses...

What fancy clothing.

This Termite seems to be rich... I wonder what he deals with.

I guess we might find out soon!

These two with him don't have a whole lot to say, though the banter about them is slightly more interesting:

These girls... They look exactly the same! They're twins!

The Termite Gen and Eri!

One of them's missing a blue ribbon, eh...

This is amusing, although I do find it strange for them to find identical twins so remarkable. We've already seen lots of identical workers and soldiers from the various races.

At the actual pier, we can see the submarine, and Elizant is waiting for us with the termite technicians. Let's talk to everyone.

Wedge only has this to say.

Oh, I'm so excited!

To ride the sub?

N-No. That's terrifying, actually...

...

Scientists are coming with us! There will be a technological exchange!

Oh, right. That's pretty exciting, actually.

It is?

The banter is a bit more interesting.

Elizant is over here with Biggs. Let's talk to them.

It can truly travel under the tides?

Give it a whirl. You'll have the time of your life.

Bugs have never been able to travel this way!

Wew... okay. I'm gonna trust it.

We can finally go get the Everlasting Sapling!

And beat up the King, too!

This long journey's nearing its end.

But we must not rest until we're victorious!

It's a bit too early to rally.

Let's head to the Outskirts Pier. We must pick up our reinforcements.

Just dive with (B) when there's danger. Just in case!

Let's 'give it a whirl', then. Time's running out.

Okay then! We can now interact with the submarine. There are a few more lines of dialogue we can see before getting in, though nothing too noteworthy:

Biggs reminds us how to control the sub.

And Elizant reminds us where to go.

Let's get in!

And we're in control of the sub! Every RPG has to give you a ship at some point, right?

This doesn't open up the world as much as you might expect, because it's confined to Metal Lake, but Metal Lake itself is a new area to explore and there are several locations we can reach now by sea (some places we've been before, and some completely new places). For now, though, we're just doing a test voyage and need to go to Outskirts Pier; we can fully explore the sea later.

Interacting with our starting location would let us disembark and go back to the Termites' pier, but let's not do that. (It's kind of interesting that their dome extends out over part of the sea...)

W-We're really underwater...

Y-Yep...

At least we're, um, safe as long as we are in the submarine. Let's keep going.

We can also check for a banter here, though it's hard to tell who's speaking since we can't see inside the sub. I could make guesses (e.g. I'm pretty sure the first two lines are Kabbu and Vi), but nothing concrete enough to attach portraits to it.

All right. Let's get a feel for this area. We can move the sub around just like normal movement, and if we press (B)...

We can submerge.

This is more of a novelty than anything else: while submerged, the enemies around won't notice or react to us, but touching them will still start battles as usual. All of the things we can interact with here behave the same whether or not we're submerged.

Speaking of battles, there are enemies here, so let's fight some. We need to kill some water striders to complete Alex's quest.

There's a new leaf animation with lily pads for battles at sea, which is pretty cute.

And when we get into battle, we'll see that we got out of the sub and are doing battle on top of the lily pads.

Otherwise, battles here are no different than battles on land. The only difference is that, in the sub, we don't have any way to initiate first strikes (I thought at first that maybe being submerged would let you surprise enemies, but it doesn't).

There are a lot of Water Striders and Diving Spiders around here, which we haven't seen since Stream Mountain. They're much easier to deal with now, between our ability to boost Vi's attack, or Leif's Ice Rain giving us the ability to do massive damage to everything at once, so I'm going to skip past the combat.

At our current level, the spiders still give us a bit of EXP, but the striders aren't worth any.

Defeating enemies at sea still yields berry drops, they'll just float on the water's surface and we can collect them by touching them with the sub. Don't ask me how that works.

After that battle, I decided to check the bestiary to see how many more kills we needed, and we're a lot closer than I expected. Usually I don't have this many kills when I get here, I must have done some extra fighting offscreen back in Stream Mountain. We're close enough that I definitely want to finish this up now.

So let's look around a bit more. What's that off in the distance?

That looks like Metal Island!

If we try to get off here (or any other location), though, the game won't let us. We need to finish the test voyage before we can really explore.

Just to the south is another strider, though, so let's fight that while we're here.

There we go! This is easy enough, and will get us over the threshold for the quest.

Striders aren't worth any EXP to us now, as I said.

While we're at it, may as well fight this one too?

This one's mostly Diving Spiders. If you haven't been to Stream Mountain yet and are trying to get 10 strider kills just here, you'll probably need to make multiple visits so the encounters respawn. There are fewer of them than you'd imagine given they're the main overworld sprite you see.

Let's just move along.

There's another strider to the north...

We can see landfall just to the west, but we may as well fight the strider first.

More spiders.

Easy enough.

There's Bugaria Pier! We could explore Metal Lake a bit more, but we wouldn't be able to accomplish very much, so let's disembark for now and return here later.

23 - The Sailors' Pier

Indeed. That was an experience like no other...

I-I'm glad we've all made it.

S-Same...

It was surprisingly sturdy.

So this is Bugaria. It's greener than I'd heard of.

And the breeze so heavenly!

It is my pleasure to welcome you to our land.

What's our next step, then?

I will escort our allies to the city, as part of our deal.

Wedge, was it?

Yes, Queen?

I trust the royals have briefed you on your task.

Team Snakemouth!

Ready to go!

You are to take the Subaquatic Maritime Neotransport, and head towards Rubber Prison immediately.

By ourselves?

When the ship is fixed, we'll send reinforcements. But we're at risk of being sunk again. We have no time, anyway.

Please, wreak as much havoc as you can. Clear a path for us.

Err, yes. Deliver as much justice as possible.

I have a small gift for you.

It's more than enough. Thanks.

We're at the crux of this long chapter of history. Spare no dime in your preparations.

Leave it to us! Together we'll triumph!

I'm all fired up too! I'll start work right away!

We're all counting on you.

...Good luck, my friends.

Elizant leaves, taking most of the Termites with her.

And with the cutscene over, we regain control. Let's have a look around the pier before anything else, there's some new dialogue here now.

Go on ahead, and soften them up before we get there!

First up is Wedge, who's going to be working on repairing the sunken ship.

How fortunate that Wedge's so efficient!

And enamored with Bugaria.

And super fired up!

Oh, he's blushing. He must have heard us...

Heh, this is cute. (Though it does make me wonder if we're always having these conversations right in earshot...)

Guess this means you can get to Metal Island for free, eh?

Remember this ant from way back when Eetl gave us a delivery for her? She has an interesting little tip here.

If we never paid the fare to go there (either the initial 300 berries, or the cheaper 90 berries after beating the Card Masters) before the ship was destroyed, this would be the first time we could go to Metal Island. You can be stingy if you want to, but this is a huge delay (remember, we went there early in Chapter 4, and you could go as early as Chapter 2!).

Looks a bit weird but pretty sturdy, it should be able to survive the Wasps!

And this diver ant comments on our shiny new submarine.

We could get right back in the sub and ship out again, but let's not just yet.

There's a bit of new dialogue and content we can see in the Ant Kingdom, and we have to go turn in Alex's quest, so let's take care of that first.

First up, let's head to the throne room. Elizant's back, after all.

The guard at the entrance has this to say now.

It looks like a lot of the rubble has been cleaned up, but they haven't gotten around to replacing the stained glass window yet, they just boarded it over for now.

Zaryant has some new dialogue too.

As does Elizant II, but this is all she has to say now.

Elizant II...

Team, we've got to finish this!

The banter for her has changed again, though there's not a whole lot to it. I do like how they show our team's changing attitude toward her in these.

For now, there's not much else to see in the palace. Let's head out.

17 - Ant Kingdom

Let's go see Alex.

Yeah, now for the reward!

Sure, sure, here you go.

Phew, I already feel much better. Maybe I will sleep well tonight at last.

Thank you. I won't forget what you did.

That was easy. And it's always nice to find more Lore Books; we'll turn those in soon.

Don't have much, but it's something.

If we talk to Alex again, he seems much more pleasant. I'm glad this seems to have helped him.

While we're here, let's just check our bank balance real quick... that's a lot of berries! Interest tends to get out of control pretty quickly once you establish a balance here (and it was even more absurd in prior versions, before the nerf).

Anyway, we're done here.

Uh? This building is new! What's going on here...?

Come play fun games to earn tokens, which you can use to trade for unique prizes! Only here, at the Termacade!

The Termites really work quickly, don't they? (This is the plot of land where the Ant workers were doing construction for most of the game; seems they finally finished this building and then sold it to the Termites.)

We can also talk to the attendant waiting outside.

You are new players, aren't you? Since this is our grand opening, here is something to get you started.

You can check how many tokens you have in the Key Items Menu.

This also gets us a discovery! Let's check that out.

Well, this certainly seems interesting!

If we check the Key Items menu, like the attendant suggested, we can now see there's a counter for arcade tokens over in the top right corner.

There's also a banter for the attendant:

They sure hired the, uh, peppiest Ant for this job.

You can't sell games with a frown!

M-Maybe she's really happy! Just... on the inside?

Heh.

Let's head inside and have a look around. The Termacade uses the same music as the DineMite restaurant did earlier.

I hope you have a great time here at the Termacade!

So this is where the "Termite Gen and Eri" ended up, they're the staff for the arcade. It looks like there are two different games we can play here; we'll ask for the details about them in a bit.

The Termacade is incredible! This is the power of science!

Eh, it's no Honey Factory.

Does the Factory have GAMES, Vi?

W-Well...

Termacade wins. Time to go for a high score.

If we check the banter here, we can see this place definitely brings out Leif's competitive side.

The other Termite twin is behind the counter here. Let's check this out.

She has a bunch of options available, but let's just chat first.

Ah! Sorry! I can't talk during work hours... Come back after getting a high score?

I hope you have a great time here at the Termacade!

Looks like we're going to need to impress her before we can learn much here... let's have a look at the other options.

We can buy tokens for 3 berries each. Good to know, because the free sample of 15 tokens isn't going to go very far.

I hope you have a great time here at the Termacade!

And the Exchange option lets us trade in tokens for prizes! There are some really intriguing things here... let's take a closer look.

Bag of Flour (10 tokens)

Magic Seed (25 tokens)

Spicy Fries (35 tokens)

Tangy Berry (50 tokens)

First up, we have some consumables. Clearly, termites really like Spicy Fries. These are overpriced if you convert it to berries, but if you're winning the tokens from the games and have nothing else to spend them on, at least there's some decent stuff here. Also, this is the only place other than Skirby's that you can buy Tangy Berries.

Empower+ (120 tokens)

Enfeeble+ (120 tokens)

Fortify+ (120 tokens)

Break+ (120 tokens)

Charge Up+ (120 tokens)

Five new medals! These are upgraded versions of all of Leif's status spells; instead of being single-target, these versions hit all allies or all enemies respectively, and last 3 turns instead of 2. Each is 3 MP to equip. Empower+ and Enfeeble+ cost 6 TP to cast; Fortify+, Break+ and Charge Up+ cost 5 TP to cast.

This is the only place to get these, so we've certainly got some work cut out for us.

Venom Ribbon (90 tokens)

Shocking Ribbon (90 tokens)

Drowsy Ribbon (90 tokens)

And, lastly, we have three new ribbons for Chompy! We've had the Pretty Ribbon for a while, but here we finally get access to some alternatives. We'll definitely need to get these and see what they can do for us.

Let's have a look at these arcade machines.

This first one is just the high score listing; the other two are the actual games. (Also, look at that CRT scanline effect on these monitors! It's a really cute touch.)

We'll need to beat 9500 points in Mite Knight, and 4500 in Flower Journey. (In older versions of the game, the high score for Flower Journey was 5000; the devs lowered it a bit because too many players were struggling with it. I think they changed that in v1.0.5?)

These other two machines let us play the games. Flower Journey costs 10 tokens per go (so you can try it right away with the sample), while Mite Knight is more expensive at 25. For now, we'll decline.

That's alright! Please check out our other games!

We'll be back here momentarily. Let's get a few last errands out of the way, then we can spend the rest of this update playing video games (inside a video game, as you do).

Let's go drop off our Lore Books at the library first.

We've picked up two more since last time.

Woah. You've gone and returned all of them!

We can read in peace now.

That took way too long! Can't you give us something for it?

...Alright, alright. You did go through quite a bit.

I've got this on me, I hope it helps you out.

Eh, it'll do.

Thank you for letting us still use the premises.

Looks like those were the last two! There are 26 Lore Books in total, and those two were the last ones we needed! We get a Crystal Berry for turning in the last one, and also sidequest completion credit, but of course the real reward is getting to read them.

Incidentally, look at that! Our quest log shows no active sidequests, we've completed every last one we accepted! There's still one Bounty remaining, but otherwise we are rapidly running out of side content (until the postgame, anyway).

Let's read some books!

The Giants. Every day, more ancient artifacts pop up. Given their size and unknown purpose, scholars believe "Giants" roamed these lands. They could have existed all over the known world, in giant kingdoms to protect them from the Dead Lands. When the "Day of Awakening" happened, the Giants must have vanished. Only their artifacts remain. There's no way to know, is there? Maybe they caused the awakening themselves. Perhaps they fell to the Dead Lands, or created them themselves? Maybe someday they will return to reclaim their old home? Maybe they have left for another world? I am a bug of facts, but even I am reduced to daydreaming about their fate. At least we have their monuments, showing us glimpses of days past.

The bugs don't seem to have much more than speculation to go on where humanity is concerned. Though if we judge by the Termacade, there are at least some functional artifacts around if the termites can reverse engineer things from them.

The Day of Reckoning. The following cannot be confirmed, having been retrieved from a book in a Roach Village's ruins. According to this book written by Rodrick the Roach Scholar... What we call the "Day of Awakening", the Roaches called the "Day of Reckoning". It was an event where they "woke up to the world". They share our belief that before that day, we were not that different from the lesser bugs amongst us. A cataclysm happened suddenly, which banished the once fabled Giants to another world. Only bugs and some other creatures were left in this world. After said cataclysm, the roaches became sentient, giving birth to civilization. Other books by Rodrick mention fires raining down from the sky and destroying the earth. Expeditions have not found craters or traces of such a disaster. Its constant mention in Roach texts suggests it was a big part of their culture. Or could it be a religious creation myth? Rodrick... were you lying? How are we supposed to find out!? Curses... I'll keep this book hidden away until I can find the truth. I'll head into the Eastern Lands once more, if I have to.

This one is even more speculative, and reads more like the researcher's journal than an actual published text!

I really do enjoy how these Lore Books flesh out the world, and give us hints about the backstory in an in-universe voice that allows some things to remain mysterious. (Sometimes it's better to avoid giving too much detail; that can make the constructedness of a game world feel a bit too palpable.)

For better or worse, we'll be done with the library for a while! (Though we still do have a few discoveries left to collect, at least.)

Let's go play some games! (After a brief intermission, the character limit once again is forcing me to split the post.)

Posted: **Mon May 30, 2022 1:23 am**

63: Subbing Out (Part 2)

Content warning: This update covers a minigame which is an homage to another indie game with a sordid and unpleasant history, and I feel obligated to discuss that context. I'll give a more specific warning as we get closer and clearly mark the boundaries of that discussion, so you can avoid it if you need to.

Welcome back to the Termacade. I can't put this off any further.

150 tokens will cost 450 berries. Shall we do the transaction?

There you go! Your token total is now 165!

I hope you have a great time here at the Termacade!

I'll buy 150 tokens to start. I'm going to need loads of them in the end to buy all the prizes anyway, so may as well start off by giving myself a nice buffer.

Let's start off with Flower Journey. Before we play, we should probably ask about the rules...

In Flower Journey, you control a little Bee looking for pollen!

You've gotta avoid Wasps and logs by flying with (A)!

You'll slowly earn score as you play, or you can collect flowers!

The more you get in a row, the better your score gets!

This sounds pretty simple.

Let's play!

Have fun!

68 - Flower Journey

Here's the title screen. Once again, these games have a really cute old-school CRT styling to them, I think it's a nice touch.

And here's the game itself! Flower Journey is basically Flappy Bird, though there are a few other things going on.

The game controls with a single button. You press (A) to flap and gain a bit of altitude, while you're constantly falling otherwise. Every gap you pass through earns 15 points; colliding with an obstacle is game over.

These orange flowers are a collectible. They're worth 10 points initially, but there's a chain multiplier, so these are where you can rack up the big points as long as you don't miss any of them. The second is worth 20, then 30, and so on until you break the chain by missing a flower and have to start over again. Losing your chain hurts, but sometimes you don't have a choice; it's better to break the chain than die and end the game.

There are also wasps as a new kind of obstacle. They can spawn in all kinds of locations, move around a little (they don't move at the same speed as you or the posts), and will kill you if you hit them.

Lastly, these honeycombs are an invincibility power-up. After collecting one, you will flicker briefly, and can pass safely through posts and wasps that would otherwise be fatal.

Eventually, something will go wrong, and you'll collide with an obstacle and die.

Upon which the attendant will tally up our score, and convert it into tokens. That first run wasn't very good... can we do better?

There we go! I think this might honestly be the best run I've ever had for Flower Journey. I expected it to take longer to get a good one, quite frankly, but I actually got it on my third try this time around! I don't know the exact formula for how many tokens you get; I had thought it was a straightforward 1% of your score, but as we can see here, it's not quite that.

I've seen a lot of people get frustrated with this minigame. There is, unfortunately, a strong RNG element to it: placement of the flowers, wasps, and honeycombs is completely random, so if you get unlucky it can just ruin your run (a bad flower placement makes it impossible to keep up your streak, and a bad wasp placement can just end the game immediately). On the whole, though, I really enjoy it when I'm in the right kind of mood, there's a kind of zen feeling you can get from zoning out while playing it.

Flappy Bird is one of those games that I always think is older than it actually is; it's such a simple game that I keep thinking it has to date to the Atari 2600 era or something like that, but it actually came out in 2013. (Also, no discussion of Flappy Bird would be complete without linking to SethBling using code injection and ACE to execute it inside Super Mario World.)

Let's move on to Mite Knight next. What's this one about?

In Mite Knight, you'll help the Termite Knight reach the top of the tower!

Use (Up), (Down), (Left), and (Right) to move around!

If you hold down (A), you can raise your shield to block enemy attacks and move without turning!

To attack enemies, just press (Up) when in front of them! You'll earn points for beating them!

You can drink potions to heal up when it gets rough! But most importantly...

Find the Gold Key in every floor to unlock the way upwards!

If you get lost, just wait a bit. A compass will show up to help!

Try to clear the game fast, and without taking damage. That's the recipe for a HIGH high score!

I hope you have a great time here at the Termacade!

Okay, this one definitely sounds a lot more complicated than a Flappy Bird variant! Let's have a look; I'll explain how this works as we go along.

Have fun!

69 - Mite Knight Game Start

Once again, we get a cute title screen.

70 - Mite Knight

Mite Knight is a kind of 3D dungeon crawler. On starting the game, we'll find ourselves in control of the Termite Knight in a 3D maze. We have a health meter that goes up to 6 hearts, and we can already see some of the elements we'll be dealing with: lots of walls and narrow passages, green potions that are health pickups, and hostile red ants to fight.

I'm not sure why the timer wasn't in that initial screenshot, but we can see it now! This game has a 5 minute timer, and we need to complete the dungeon crawl before it runs out.

Holding (A) raises the knight's shield, as you can see here. With the shield up, you can strafe left and right instead of turning, so it's useful both for moving and protecting yourself. You can't be harmed from the front while the shield is raised, but you also can't harm enemies.

All enemies take two hits to kill. You damage enemies by bashing into them while moving forward, as long as your shield isn't up (though if you let them walk into you, they'll hit you instead). You get 10 points for the first hit, and 110 points for the second, so each enemy you kill is worth 120 points.

Each floor has a gold key hidden somewhere. Picking up the key earns you 500 points, and also lets you open the exit to the next floor.

Here we can see there's an icon in the corner showing we've collected the key.

Somewhere on each floor is one of these caged enclosures. The goal is inside, and this lock is what the key is required to open.

(Also, in this screenshot, you can see we've taken damage. Getting hit costs one heart, and collecting a green potion restores one. Collecting potions doesn't give you any points, and it won't let you pick them up if you aren't injured.)

You get 400 points for opening the door, too.

There's a new enemy type inside here. These wizard guys look like on our friend in the Far Grasslands; they have a projectile attack, but still take the same two hits to kill.

Once you beat all the enemies in the enclosure, you can take the stairs up to the next level. (You do have to kill them first, the stairs won't work if you try to sneak by.)

Starting from floor 2, the wizard guys can appear as regular enemies in addition to inside the enclosure.

And on floor 3, there are always two of them inside the enclosure. This can get tricky!

When you exit the third floor, the game is complete and it computes your final score. You get bonus points for all your remaining time and health. (I don't know the exact formula here, but health counts for a lot more than time.)

Once again, the formula for how many tokens you get isn't completely obvious to me, but it's roughly 2/3 of a percent of your score.

If you die before finishing floor three, things are... a bit worse.

71 - Mite Knight Game Over

Mite Knight has its own game over jingle, which is a nice detail.

And our score doesn't count for anything! You just get a measly 2 tokens as a consolation prize and told to try again. If you aren't confident in your ability to finish the dungeon, it's a bit riskier trying to earn tokens here than in Flower Journey.

So how do we do well at this and beat the high score?

The advice the attendant gave is a bit misleading; it's technically correct, but thanks to misplaced emphasis, a lot of people get the wrong idea when playing this game. The vast majority of your score comes from killing enemies and finishing with full health. Finishing quickly is a nice bonus, but time remaining doesn't contribute as much to your score as it seems, and you will generally end up with a better score if you explore and kill all the enemies than if you rush straight to the exit after finding the key. (Also, you don't need to worry about getting hit, so long as you grab potions afterward to stay healthy.)

Let's do this.

Click me for video!

(This game will probably make a lot more sense to you if you watch it in motion, I don't think screenshots are the best format to show it off.)

There we go. That took me a couple of tries; I actually was a bit surprised this run ended up being good enough, because I only had 5 health remaining and less than a minute on the clock, but I guess I got lucky with enemy spawns and there were enough to kill to make up for it.

Beating both high scores gets us an achievement!

Here's the new high score table.

And once we've gotten that, if we come over to the counter and talk to the attendant...

Woah! You've crushed all records! I crown you the ULTIMATE GAMER!

They said it was to input in a menu, or something...

Anyways! I hope it was fun, it'd make our job really worth it!

Beating the high scores in the Termacade gets us another Menu Code! HARDEST is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, if you want to play through the game on a higher difficulty. The way it works is actually kind of interesting, in that it's a "we gave the enemies bigger numbers" type of mode, but applies them at interesting times.

All enemies get 15% more HP and do 1 more damage (on top of their Hard Mode stats), right from the start. Then, after you defeat Venus' Guardian, all enemies' damage is increased by 1, and once you start Chapter 4, all enemies' defence is increased by 1; both of these bonuses are global, and apply to enemy types you'd have encountered previously (so, e.g., Seedlings' stats change over the course of the game as these bonuses get applied). I do quite like that the defence bonus comes along right as you start to get access to defence-piercing abilities; this mode does a better job of trying to keep up with the player's capabilities than baseline Hard does. If you look at enemies' stats in the Bestiary in this mode, it will show their stats as if you were to fight them now (including the bonuses if they're active), which has tripped me up when trying to look up the stats of early bosses, so that may be worth remembering.

So what happens if you equip the Hard Mode medal while playing this mode?

Team Snakemouth's sprites get replaced by Pibu. This is just a weird cosmetic thing and I'm not sure why they did it, but that's what happens. You can play through the whole game as pillbugs if you want, though the animations often look quite strange. (For purposes of getting reward medals from Artis, HARDEST considers Hard Mode to be active regardless of whether you equip the medal.)

Another weird quirk to HARDEST mode is that Chompy gets +1 to her attack (so she'll do 3 damage normally, and 4 with the Pretty Ribbon). I'm not sure why (maybe she's treated internally as a monster?), but it goes a long way toward letting her still be useful in this mode, considering literally everything has defence for most of the game.

With the unlock of HARDEST, we've covered most of the content here at the Termacade. We still need to buy and demonstrate all the prizes (either by winning tokens or just buying them), which I'll get to shortly, but there's something we need to talk about first.

The inspiration behind Flower Journey was obvious, but was Mite Knight based on anything? A lot of it seems too detailed and specific to have been invented for a single minigame. And, as it turns out, there was indeed a specific source of inspiration.

Mite Knight is a reference to "FIGHT KNIGHT", an indie game that was seen as something of a "sister project" to Bug Fables because they were successfully crowdfunded around the same time, and both contracted Dangen Entertainment as their publisher. It was supposed to be some kind of first person beat-em-up dungeon crawler with retro aesthetics, in which the eponymous knight fistfought enemies while climbing a tower. The Bug Fables team made this minigame as a reference to a fellow indie project. So far, so good. But.

Fight Knight had a troubled development cycle, went dark for a long time, and many presumed it had been cancelled. I wish I could stop there and just say "this is a reference to a game that never existed", as I had been originally planning.

Content warning for discussion of industry abuses, sexual abuse, rape, gaslighting, mental illness, among other things

However, it resurfaced in late 2021 with a prospective release date. At around the same time, one of the writers on the game, who goes by "Wren" and "rivalerose", published this harrowing account of her abuse by the lead developer (including sexual abuse and rape, physical assault, unpaid labour and financial abuse, and gaslighting), abetted by the rest of the team. Many other unsavoury details shortly emerged. Two other members of the team came forward with corroborating accounts.

In addition, I want to link to these two posts by someone who spoke out in support of her, then documented the coordinated abuse and harassment they received in response, and the sort of hate speech frequently used by supporters of this game.

Many of the worst elements of the internet gleefully rallied to support Fight Knight in typical ignominious fashion, especially as the game neared release. Fight Knight did eventually release in late November 2021.

I'm not going to mince words about this. I believe Wren, and therefore I feel an obligation to discourage people from purchasing and/or playing Fight Knight (as she has requested). If you support this game, you are supporting an abusive rapist and his enablers, and no video game can be worth that. We cannot ignore this sort of behaviour, or we allow misogyny and other forms of bigotry to fester in our communities, and the games industry to become even more of a foetid cesspit than it already is. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

I am sorry to digress into such heavy and unpleasant topics from an otherwise positive LP of a game that has very little to do with this, but I thought it was important not to leave this unaddressed. The only reason I know about any of this is because seeing Mite Knight in Bug Fables piqued my curiosity about the inspiration behind it, and I suspect I'm not alone in that. I don't blame the Bug Fables team for what appears to be an innocent nod to a fellow indie project, but to fail to discuss this now would be to let that inclusion advertise it. (Even now I'm second-guessing myself, because part of me fears drawing more attention to a game that should rightly fade into obscurity.)

Do with that knowledge what you will.

Content warning ends here

Right. Uh. Where were we?

So as not to end this post on such an unpleasant note (hello mood whiplash, I'm sorry but there's no easy way to do this), let's buy some tokens and get all the prizes.

I just made a big withdrawal from the bank and bought the remaining tokens. (This took a couple trips, but the screenshot above shows the final balance after the last one.) If you want to earn them by playing the games instead, I prefer Flower Journey to Mite Knight: you're risking less up front, you're pretty much guaranteed profit after a bit of practice, and the game takes less time to play. But it can still take quite a while.

870 tokens is the amount we need to buy all of the things we care about.

We have enough now, so let's start buying.

Alright! Here you go!

Let's just repeat this process and get everything else now.

And there we go! That's everything.

The medals and ribbons can each only be bought once, after which they'll be marked sold out; the consumables can be bought as many times as you want, so once you have all the medals etc, those are your only outlet for any further tokens.

As I mentioned earlier, these medals all cost 3 MP, and give Leif access to these upgraded skills. Empower+ and Enfeeble+ cost 6 TP to cast, while the others cost 5 TP; the buffs also last for 3 turns instead of 2.

These really make Royal Decree look like a bargain in retrospect, don't they? (Although Royal Decree does only last 2 turns.) If you're playing this more like a traditional RPG with a balanced party, and have a big TP pool to work with, these can be pretty useful. Although I will say, I personally often prefer the small versions, because they cost less TP and you often only really need to hit one target.

Your mileage may vary with these, but it's always good to have options. You know exactly what you're getting with them, and you should know whether or not it will be good for your strategy.

These, of course, are for Chompy. But what do they do? Let's go test them and find out!

Let's go to our house. Remember the pet bed here? We can use this to change Chompy's ribbons. If we hadn't bought the house, we could also take her to Professor Honeycomb's lab in the Hive and use the jar there.

First, we leave Chompy in the bed.

Now we can take off the ribbon she's currently wearing.

And once she's not wearing a ribbon, we can give her any of them.

Here's the Venom Ribbon.

The Shocking Ribbon.

And the Drowsy Ribbon.

For now, we'll put the Pretty Ribbon back on, but we'll see what they all do shortly.

This Seedling must be getting really sick of me testing everything on it...

04 - FIGHT!

The first new thing we'll quickly see is that, once we have multiple ribbons, Chompy gets a new flower added to her menu! Change Ribbons is new.

We can choose a ribbon and she'll switch to it. Do note that doing this takes Chompy's full turn, so if you want to take an action with a different ribbon you'll need to set it up the turn before using it.

With the Venom Ribbon equipped, she gets yet another action added to her menu! In addition to her usual attack (which would do 2 damage, without the Pretty Ribbon's boost), she can spend 2 TP to do Poison Bite. Let's try it out.

This does exactly what you'd probably expect. It's the same damage as her normal attack, but also tries to inflict poison (with a 2 turn duration, but it'll tick down immediately).

With the Shocking Ribbon, she gets Numbing Bite instead. This one also costs 2 TP.

As you might imagine, this is a bite that inflicts Numb. Though Numb duration is capped at 1 turn on enemies, so it will wear off immediately; effectively, this is just a bite that can make the enemy skip their turn. That's still pretty good!

Last up, the Drowsy Ribbon gives us Drowzy Bite (sic). Once again, it's 2 TP.

And, as you may expect, it sends the enemy to sleep for 2 turns.

There is definitely some possible utility in these, though considering you need to either spend a turn setting up, or forego the Pretty Ribbon's damage bonus, they end up being pretty situational. I can definitely see being able to disable an enemy using Chompy's turn instead of one of Team Snakemouth's actions being quite useful, though!

The ability to swap ribbons mid-battle was added in v1.1, and in prior versions you could only swap out ribbons at home or at the lab (in which case you really needed to be planning ahead). I think it's a bit unfortunate how much these end up paling in comparison to the Pretty Ribbon, especially given how much earlier we were able to get that; they end up feeling more like a novelty than a legitimate alternative, to me, but I also can't think of a way to rebalance them that would avoid that.

Regardless, Chompy is certainly a lot more capable now than she used to be! That's great.

Let's leave things here for now. Next time, we'll head out to sea for real.

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2022 6:34 am**

64: Dancing With Danger (Part 1)

23 - The Sailors' Pier

We're starting off today back at the docks. Last time, we took a brief voyage in our shiny new submarine, before being distracted by sidequests and video games. For real this time, let's head out to sea.

(Before that, though, here are some fun articles that seemed apropos. A study was recently published showing termites have made oceanic voyages; I genuinely wonder if the Bug Fables team were knowingly referencing this. Oh, and the state of California now officially classifies bees as fish, apparently.)

Let's ship out.

We have full freedom to explore Metal Lake now; the game will no longer prevent us from making landfall at any of the points of interest.

For better or worse, though, most of the landmarks around are literal floating rubbish. We can't interact with it in any meaningful way, it's just obstacles.

Here more or less in the middle, east of Bugaria Pier, is Metal Island.

Let's get off here.

72 - Summer Holiday at the Metal Island (TM)

It's Metal Island! We've been here before, and seen almost everything. There is a bit of new content, but mostly, this is the same Metal Island we know. We can go play cards or buy tea and Tangy Berries, you know what's here.

If you never pay the boat captain's fee (either before or after defeating the Card Masters), this would be the first time you see Metal Island at all; it would also have been completely inaccessible during the period between the ship being destroyed and us getting the sub.

Let's go for a walk.

Oh, right, Stratos and Delilah are here! They were hinting there's a dangerous monster somewhere in Metal Lake that can't be reached without a boat... and we have a boat now. We've got to look into that.

And this fellow looks unfamiliar! Who's he?

Someone's happy.

Who wouldn't be after eating Master Slice's food!

It's pretty good!

It's only natural, having taught 5-star chefs such as Kut...

Now I can blog his recipes for the common folk!

...Err, won't he get upset?

And he's probably not wrong.

I've collected many recipes while blogging.

If you want any, I can share them with you! ...For a price.

Heh. Let's check the banter too.

Figures a food blogger would visit Metal Island.

A food what?

Yel's a critic who judges others' food, choosing to recommend or warn against establishments.

WOAH! That sounds like Leif's dream job!

We're probably too picky for that...

(Whatever happened to Leif's insatiable appetite? Or was he just suffering through it the entire time, because the alternative of not eating is worse?)

Anyway. This is Yel, the food critic (yes, he's named after Yelp.com). He's a new NPC who was added in version 1.1, so you may not recognise him if you played an earlier version.

If we talk to him again after meeting him the first time, we'll get this menu. He's basically a quality-of-life feature, offering a shortcut to completing the recipe log without needing to experiment or look up the formulae. But let's see what he says if we decline first.

Oh! Um... hi.

Blogging seems really fun.

It really is! You need a strong stomach, though...

Heh. He seems a bit timid.

Let's try buying one.

Simple as that, he'll tell us a random recipe we don't know yet, and it gets added to our log.

There it is.

This is really cheap, at only 5 berries per recipe (usually cheaper than buying the ingredients and cooking the thing would be, even). I do think cooking them as I go along is fun, but if you don't happen to enjoy that, Yel's here for you.

Let's buy another.

That's what I like to hear! Today's recipe is... Sleep Bomb!

By mixing Spicy Bomb with a Numbnail Dart, the results are incredible!

Interesting...

The dialogue seems to always be the same, no matter the recipe (but I had to find out for sure). Now that we know that...

Let's just buy everything at once.

I knew blogging would make me rich someday! Here we GO!

You, uh, didn't have to explain all of them in one go...

Nonsense... How else would you cook them properly!?

We'll make you proud!

We'd better do. We're so hungry now...

After that, checking our log shows us at... 69/70 recipes completed? What's up with that?

Well, there are a small handful of recipes that Yel is unable to teach. Specifically, the three chefs' specialities (Crisbee Donut, Tangy Carpaccio, and Queen's Dinner), for obvious reasons since you unlock those via sidequests. And Mistake and Big Mistake, the latter of which happens to be the one we're missing here. We can remedy that lack easily enough next time we visit a chef (honestly, I was surprised I didn't have it already, but I did a lot of reloading saves during the first cooking update to show different versions of the cutscene).

Once there are no new recipes he can teach us, Yel gets new dialogue:

Oh, it's you. I don't really have anything to teach you anymore...

W-We just wanted to say hi...

Y-you... you did? *sniff*

You were supposed to feel happy!

That's cute. He seems so surprised to encounter basic courtesy...

While we're here, let's talk about something. Remember this Ant Mines shortcut? It's still here, and we can still use it (and, conveniently, the game doesn't track the location of our sub, it'll always be waiting for us at whatever dock we go to so we can't misplace it). But... it isn't always here.

If this had been our first visit to Metal Island (via the submarine rather than buying passage earlier), we'd find the path not yet completed and Diana waiting for us instead.

Ouch! It's expensive, too. You don't actually save berries by putting off the Metal Island visit (or, well, I guess you can just keep coming here via sub and never open the shortcut if you want?). The secret hidden bonus you get for coming via ship earlier is that this shortcut opens for free.

We know Diana's deal by now, and her dialogue is always the same, but I like her animation so let's see it one last time.

Those berries don't even taste good...

We don't think her taste would be the only weird thing here...

Oi, I'm doing you a favor, okay? Just sit and watch!

We're in your debt once again, Diana. Thank you.

Well, I'm off! See you some other time, folks!

Once we pay Diana for it, the shortcut is there as usual and we can use it. I'm not sure if this one ever gets completed automatically if you don't pay her.

Anyway, let's get back to the canon timeline.

We're done on Metal Island, so let's head back out to sea. (Yes, Yel really is the only new content here in Chapter 6.)

Let's head southeast now.

What's that island trying to hide in the corner? (Let's fight the strider first, though.)

It's only a single strider, which is pretty trivial to deal with for us.

Let's move on.

We can land at this island! What could be here?

This place is a bit mysterious, isn't it? There's no music, only the sounds of rushing water.

What's that?

What's what?

A... beat? Music? How alluring...

Let's see if we can find its source.

I really can't hear anything...

Or at least no music we can hear! If we check the banter, it seems at least some of our team are hearing... something... (What's the bug equivalent of a siren, anyway? Is this a trap?)

There's also a save crystal right here, and we can see Venus off in the distance. (If we do save here, our file will just list our location as "Metal Lake", no clues there!)

Let's explore.

This river splits the entire island and the only way to cross over is by flying.

We don't need healing, but let's see if Venus has anything interesting to say?

Climbing the water, you say? Interesting. That's definitely a hint.

That's all Venus has to say, though.

There's clearly a back side to this island, too, but how do we get there? Those rocks seem to be blocking the path pretty thoroughly... well, that's a puzzle we can solve eventually.

I want to try something different with our medals here. We just got the upgraded status spells last update, so why not try them out? They're expensive TP-wise, though, and we don't have a big enough pool to support using them long-term... so let's try Life Cast! It gives us a bit of a discount, and HP is easier to restore than TP, so that should let us spam them more easily. Leif's getting both HP Cores to help with that too.

I had to take off Strong Start to fit in everything I wanted here; I usually don't like taking that off once I've gotten it, but it's not a huge loss here. We'll see how well this ends up working.

Despite Venus' hint, we don't actually need to climb the waterfall here. We just need to get behind it, where we can find this cave entrance. What could be inside here?

25 - Caves

The beat comes from here! We must climb to the top!

We might need a special ice move for this...

(Bleh... Why can't I hear it!?)

Apparently the waterfall we need to climb is in here!

The "special ice move" we need is Leif's icicles. We've had it for so long now that it's easy to forget, but technically speaking this skill is optional, and we don't necessarily have to have it! (Remember, he learns this on entering Upper Snakemouth, where the Lab is. That entire area is part of Leif's Request, which is not mandatory content even if most people tend to have completed it by now. So the hinting is for those people who haven't to know they might not have what they need to progress here.)

Without the ability to make icicle platforms, we would be unable to proceed here. Vi's flying can be a substitute in most other places it's needed, but not here.

Making our way up the waterfall is painstaking and, frankly, tedious. We need to go one platform at a time, winding our way up the river, and falling in the water forces you to start over from the beginning.

It's not exactly difficult, but it can be a bit tricky, especially when the water is something of a staircase: you can only jump onto an icicle one level up, not two, so you do need to pay some attention to where you're placing them or you might set yourself up badly.

Eventually, we reach this top level, and can see an enormous spider web. Should we really be here?

Well, whether we should be or not, we're here now. Nothing else for it.

Do not touch this mushroom! It launches you right back to the entrance! That's a handy shortcut for when it comes time to leave, but right now having to climb that waterfall again would be incredibly frustrating (which absolutely did not happen to me on my first playthrough, why are you looking at me that way).

What's over here...?

35 - Reckless for Glory! (Bonus Boss)

As you may have expected, this island is home to the fifth and final Bounty! Say hello to the Peacock Spider. What's this fight going to be about?

It has constant reinforcements that it powers up... Our priority should be this spider!

Peacock spiders are a real organism, and they really are very colourful (or at least the males are, in parallel to their namesake). They use vibrations and dances in mating rituals, though I don't know if this makes any audible sound.

This is a neat little fight: the core gimmick, as Kabbu's tattle dialogue suggested, is that it primarily plays a support role to the minions that it summons. (And at 95 HP and 1 defence, it can stand up to a bit of punishment too, though we've fought more durable bosses.)

We can play support too. Let's boost our defences. (You can see the effects of Life Cast here, it discounts every skill's cost by 1 but makes them cost HP.)

Vi will play support too for now, restoring Leif's lost HP and setting up regeneration for everyone.

Also, Chompy's going to spend her first turn changing into the Drowsy Ribbon. A disabling ability seems like it could be useful here?

The first thing the Peacock Spider does is a dance that calls an ally. On Hard Mode, it's always a Diving Spider that shows up; on Normal, it could be a Jumping Spider instead (which is rather less dangerous).

Then it immediately pulls out this combo attack on Kabbu! This is pretty nasty: it has a base damage of 3, and hits the same bug three times in a row. (Of course, this does let you rack up a lot of counter damage with Spiky Bod if you're good at the timing; two out of three isn't bad, but I rarely find myself hitting all three, it's tricky.)

This is actually the Peacock Spider's only damaging attack, and it prefers to spend its turns doing other things (as we'll soon see). But that doesn't mean it's weak.

The newly summoned spider gets to attack immediately too. Diving Spiders' spit attack, if you recall, hits 2-3 times across the party (Kabbu got unlucky this time!), so these can rack up a lot of damage quickly.

What shall we do now?

For now, I want to keep boosting. Charge Up+ synergises really well with Favorite One, actually, you can get to +2 or +3 across the party very quickly.

We'll cast Empower too. That's a lot of stacked attack power.

But let's not use it this turn, because our HP is starting to get low again; Vi's turn is better spent healing.

Can Chompy's Drowzy Bite keep this spider off us?

Well, not this turn, but we'll let her keep trying.

This is a much more common sight from the Peacock Spider than smacking us in the face. It has a variety of boosting dances which it can use to power up its friends, and a lot of these do scary things. This yellow one grants its ally a permanent +1 action for the rest of the battle.

Though, thankfully, it doesn't take effect this turn, so we only take one combo attack.

Here we can see the x2 status icon on the spider. Also, thanks to Favorite One, Vi and Leif are at maximum charge! (And have Attack Up on top of it.) Let's take advantage of that.

I thought about doing this, but 9 HP is a lot... that could be risky.

10 TP is a lot too, we don't quite have it.

Doughnuts can fix that problem, at least.

Now let's try a Frost Relay! How damaging will this be with Leif and Vi both at +4?

(Sorry about the GIF quality here, trying to fit this animation into 2MB was quite difficult.)

Well, it was a lot of damage, but honestly less than I expected. Before this, I hadn't realised that Frost Relay only incorporates charge-up boosts on each character's first hit (unlike other multi-hit attacks, like Hurricane Toss, Ice Rain, or even Frozen Drill). We could have done a lot more damage had I chosen a different skill. Still, that was fun.

We'll have Kabbu relay to Leif to make up for the action deficit (he's one over since I had him use the doughnut first), and end our turn.

Chompy's still not having any luck with Drowzy Bite, sadly.

The Diving Spider goes first this time, using its first action to spit two bubbles and then shield itself.

Then it immediately goes again, this time with a 3-hit combo; I don't do nearly as well blocking this time.

The Peacock Spider uses a different dance this turn. The red dance, naturally, boosts attack.

The attack boost is permanent, too. We can't use Leif's Cleanse skill to cheese this fight, since most of the boosts are things he can't remove. (He can remove the bubble shields, at least. If you're really desperate, you can at least remove the permanent boost by killing the spider.)

Let's boost ourselves up again. The whole party's back to +2 charge!

Also, this seems like a great time for a Jayde's Stew! We could use some more TP, and also get Leif out of danger (or set him up to spend more HP on buffs again, either way works).

Chompy can't do anything this turn. Poor Chompy.

This first combo could have been much nastier if aimed at someone other than Kabbu; between his Super Block+ medals (and some good luck with timing on my part), and the buff from Fortify+, it takes a lot of the sting off. This spider is scarier than it looks, it's taking double turns with boosted attack.

After the second combo, it bubbles itself up again. We won't be killing this spider any time soon, it seems...

Ouch! Apparently the Peacock Spider is getting sick of dancing and would rather beat us up. It doesn't usually use this attack so frequently. (I'll take whatever counter damage I can get, but it still hurts.)

At least we have a full complement (or nearly) of charges here. How should we use these?

There are better ways to take advantage of them, but I remembered I still need to show off Fly Drop. We haven't seen this yet, so let's use it!

Fly Drop does one really big hit, piercing defence. It's not the best choice here, but sometimes you want one big hit and it can generate satisfyingly big numbers (well, for this game) if that's a thing you're into.

The animation is also quite fun, there's nothing like dropping Kabbu horn-first on the enemy.

Leif, meanwhile, tries out Frigid Coffin; it does decent damage, but doesn't manage to freeze. (The odds weren't in our favour here, since we'd frozen it once already during the Frost Relay. It starts with 75% freeze resistance, so it's at 93% resistance here, or a 37% chance of success with Frigid Coffin.)

Chompy still can't do anything productive, sadly.

We got a bit lucky there: both combos went for only two hits.

Not there, though. There's no way Vi would be surviving that, even with perfect blocking.

What to do?

Well, we have plenty of TP, so Kabbu's Pep Talk can get Vi right back into the action.

I think it's probably best to spend the rest of this turn regrouping rather than going on offense again, though.

There we go! Finally, Drowzy Bite actually sends the spider to sleep. Have we earned a bit of respite?

What's this? Did the Peacock Spider just smack its ally?!

I call this move the wake-up slap. It will always do this if its ally is suffering a disabling status effect (sleep, freeze, numb); it deals 1 damage, but cures the status so it can attack. This attack also can't kill, it would leave the spider on 1 HP instead.

Then goes right into its turn, which is another dance. This is the healing dance, a slightly different colour red than the Attack Up dance we saw before. (Honestly, it's underwhelming, 2 HP barely matters... this is the closest it can come to outright skipping its turn.)

The Diving Spider goes immediately into its turn after that, hitting us with a combo and then shielding itself. It only took one turn, though (I'm not sure if it's intended behaviour that it didn't get its extra turn).

Well. Status effects definitely aren't the answer...

I've had enough of this spider. Let's just get the shield off and kill it?

That spider is definitely dead.

Let's have Chompy switch back to the Pretty Ribbon. Now that we've seen how status effects work (or don't) in this fight, it's silly to keep trying them.

Killing the spiders only goes so far, though! If it's ever alone, the Peacock Spider immediately calls for more.

And immediately boosts it.

Then the spider immediately focuses down Vi. That could have gone better.

So, killing the spiders really isn't worth it most of the time either, since it basically just resets the buffs on it. That can be worth doing if it's accumulated enough of them, but it's not really a viable strategy in this fight, and most of the time you're far better off just focusing damage on the boss.

Let's get Vi up again, to start.

Defence and healing seems prudent.

Chompy will do what she can, though unfortunately it only matters so much. The spiders almost always block her access to the boss.

This is a lot less painful than taking two combos a turn, at least, so killing the spider did get us a minor benefit?

Here's another new dance! This is, as you may have guessed, a charge-up dance.

The charge-up dance gives +2 charge-up for the next attack. This is one of the more dangerous boosts, especially when it also has Attack Up; when the two of those combine, it's often a good idea to kill the spider before it attacks if you can.

Here, though, I'd rather kill the boss instead; scary as it is, we're healthy enough to weather the hits. Leif will boost us first.

We've had our fun with the fancy team attacks, let's just use good old Hurricane Toss.

It's not quite enough for the kill by itself, but it definitely brought it within killing range.

Leif, do the honours!

Chompy's doing her best to help.

Ow.

That said, the fight is over.

Get out of here.

Peacock Spider is worth a lot of EXP, more than enough to get us another Rank Up!

As usual, let's get ourselves more MP.

For reaching Rank 24, we get a free bonus of +2 maximum TP. That's pretty nice! You certainly won't catch me complaining about it.

25 - Caves

Like Spuder before it, the Peacock Spider looks very silly once it's been defeated.

And, like the other Bounties, we get a trophy to take back as proof for Doppel.

Now that the boss is dead, there's a new banter here:

If...if we weren't explorers, we might have met our end to that spider.

We were completely baited by it...

Not me. I couldn't hear it at all!

What matters is, no other unfortunate soul will meet its end here.

The Peacock Spider is very clearly meant to be a take on the legends of sirens luring sailors to their death with irresistible music.

As a boss, it's a bit gimmicky, but I quite like it overall. (We saw pretty much everything it can do; the only thing we didn't see is the Defence Up dance, which behaves just like the Attack Up one, but has blue sparks and boosts defence instead.) It's pretty rare to see a boss take a primarily support role like this (especially when it's supporting disposable minions, rather than another character). That said, it's a bit more interesting in theory than practice, because the fight is structured to make it almost entirely futile to do anything other than focus damage on the boss. It's still a good change of pace from the other bosses we've been fighting, and a way to remind us that normal enemies can still be intimidating with the right context.

On some level, though, I wonder if the Hard Mode changes might be for the worse in this fight. On Normal, you have the additional consideration of "what type of spider do I prefer to be fighting", which might affect whether or not you want to kill the one in front of you and roll the dice on what will replace it. By making it only Diving Spiders, they've made the difficulty more consistent, but removed some of the variance that makes it interesting...

Now that the boss is dead, there's nothing else we can do in here, so we have no reason not to launch ourselves back out via this mushroom.

Let's get out of here.

We need to fly back through the waterfall to get out of here.

Venus doesn't have anything new to say, but we still need to investigate the back half of the island.

We can't get over the rocks, but if we build a path far enough out in the water, we can find there's a gap between them.

So all we have to do is make a path around, and we can reach the far side.

There isn't anything of note to be found in the weeds here.

It looks like there's some kind of campsite up on the cliff there, we'll definitely need to investigate that...

If we walk all the way around, we can eventually find some rocks we can climb up to get back to the front of the island. It's a bit quicker than building our way around with ice again, but we're not quite done here yet, so let's not.

Let's climb up.

There's not a whole lot to see up here, except this message we can read. What is this?

There's such a soothing beat... How could I leave this place behind?

This person definitely didn't survive. We do get a discovery, though...

This doesn't tell us much of anything we didn't already know, but all right. (This island is, creatively, known as "Peacock Island".)

Let's not drop down just yet, we should check out the upper ledges here.

It might not be immediately obvious, but we can fly around here and find another ledge to land on.

Then fly across again to reach this cliff.

There's not a lot here, but there is a diggable spot!

It has Dark Cherries inside. I certainly won't complain about these.

From there, we can just jump down.

That's all there is to see here! That's Peacock Island. Let's head back to our sub.

Let's head back to the Ant Kingdom; we should probably make a quick detour to turn in the bounty, while we're at it...

Let's talk to Doppel.

May I have that crystal it dropped?

...Yes, this is a genuine deal. Here is your reward.

There's our second copy of Last Stand, to parallel the two copies of Last Attack we got earlier. This can be a bit tricky to use, but with two of these you can do some serious tanking.

Well, would you look at that. You actually did it.

You weren't kidding, Doppel. They were quite troublesome to deal with.

Knowing Bugaria is safe from those monsters is a great relief!

...Ain't that the truth. I'll give you something extra, for all the trouble you've gone through.

Neat! Thanks, Doppel!

Take care, you brave bunch.

For defeating all five Bounties (and reporting them in), we get yet another achievement. And also a Bond Berry, which is a nice bonus as rewards go, especially since we've been getting plenty of useful medals along the way.

If we talk to Doppel again afterward, this is what he'll have to say. Did he actually have altruistic motives all along? We'll never know.

While we're here, let's buy this from Shades finally.

Kehehe! Here you go my lovelies...

Come back if you still have any berries left to spend! Kehehe!

Well, we don't have any berries left to spend. But this is all he has left now, which means there are only two Crystal Berries left to find in the rest of the game. We're definitely in the home stretch here.

For now, let's head back outside.

17 - Ant Kingdom

Fry's right here, so let's make that final recipe we're missing, shall we?

For completing the recipe log, there's another achievement. These are coming along rapidly now, aren't they? (Though, clearly, judging by that gap there are still quite a few left.)

Amber can have those Dark Cherries for now (and the Big Mistake too, why not).

Let's head back out to sea again. (And split the post, sigh, the character limit is a thing. Back shortly.)

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2022 6:36 am**

64: Dancing With Danger (Part 2)

Let's head north this time.

What are those docks?

Oh?

Yep, it's the Fishing Village. There's nothing new we can do here, but it's nice to see everyone again.

But what if...

If we'd never visited the Fishing Village, we would see this message instead on trying to land there, and things would be a bit different. What happens if we discover the village from this side instead?

Well, we can land here, at least, and we still get the discovery...

To think we missed this settlement during our mission! It's a nice place.

That's why exploring's fun! There's secrets everywhere!

They seem a bit wary... Have we intruded?

The banter is a bit less cheerful, Leif at least notices something seems off.

Talking to the inhabitants is also a bit odd, they mostly seem confused.

It seems this is actually a small village!

They seem a bit wary... Have we intruded?

Checking the banter for either of them gets us this similar banter. They're not going to open up to us, are they.

We can still grab the collectibles here easily enough.

What if we leave this way?

My village... What did you do to it?!

We didn't do any-

SILENCE! YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY WITH THIS!

From there, it goes straight into the Riz fight. He has much better reason to be alarmed this time around, so it makes a bit more sense we're fighting him, but the fight is ultimately the same.

The conversation after beating him is the same regardless of how we got here, so I won't show it in full again.

And once he heads back into the village, everything will be the same as last time we were here (and we can now get the quest to bring Rizza a Nutty Cake).

After that, the location name here will update to Fishing Village.

Okay, let's get back to the main timeline again...

Southeast of the Fishing Village, we can start to encounter Wasp soldiers flying around here...

We can fight them, though they're no different to the last several times we've seen them.

Though I'm not sure if I've shown this before - the Wasp Scouts' needle attacks can inflict poison. (We haven't seen very much of Leif's poisoned sprites either, I don't think.)

Anyway, let's move along. We're not getting any EXP from these.

Hm, another one?

It's another one.

We know what these fights are like by now.

Are we close to our destination?

Yes, we have. We can get off here, at any rate...

We get a new discovery as the camera pans down over Rubber Prison. It looks like there are several levels here; this place is big! (Also, the music here is new, and has a nicely ominous militaristic feel.)

Your fears aside, could you tell us a bit more about Rubber Prison? It's new to us.

(Why was Vi raised knowing this, anyway? The way she phrases this, it sounds like something she was taught as a young child, but she's from the Bee Kingdom and Rubber Prison is the ants' facility... or was she such a miscreant as a child that Queen Bianca or whoever raised her felt the need to threaten her with it? This line's always seemed just a little weird to me, but there's some interesting potential depth in thinking about it.)

Things got that bad after Elizant went to sleep?

So it seems. It's quite the secure facility, yes? The Wasps taking over is quite troublesome.

Meh. We'll just snoop around and beat 'em up. It's what we do!

Heh, that's a good plan.

Let's go, team! We must clear the way for the others!

After that conversation, we regain control. Let's check out the discovery first.

Well. This place should be interesting to explore. (Also, we have all but one of the Discoveries now!)

There's also a banter, of course.

So many bridges! This prison is huge!

Are there truly so many wicked in Bugaria?

Well... if they're all here, we wouldn't notice.

Leif isn't exactly wrong...

It took me until now to remember I hadn't actually used the Bond Berry we got from Doppel. Oops. Well, it brings us to 21 maximum TP now. (6 of that is from TP Plus medals, but still.)

The only path we can take right now is along these sunken pillars. They're not quite close enough together that we can jump easily between them, so we need to use either Leif's icicles or Vi's flying.

Flying is a bit less tedious, but either works just fine.

Over here, hitting this switch makes the fences recede.

Which lets us get up to where this Wasp soldier is.

This is new! The leaves are grey here...

There's not a lot I can say about these battles to make them interesting right now. There will be other enemies around this area later. Wasp Troopers fold pretty quickly to Needle Pincer.

(The battle background is intriguing, though - are those jacks being used as caltrops or barricades?)

That said, while the Wasp soldiers have the same stats as they did before, the ones here get boosted EXP yield again (as we've seen happen with them a few times before), unlike the ones we fought in Metal Lake.

Across the bridge, we can reach the save crystal we saw earlier...

And also this switch, which turns on an elevator that makes a shortcut back to the entrance.

This door is locked, so this is functionally a dead end for now.

This seems like a good place to wrap up the update...

Before we go, though, I wanted to revisit the view from the Bee Kingdom's telescope. From this vantage, we can see the layout of Metal Lake (which isn't as big as it might have seemed at first; the only major points of interest are Peacock Island, Metal Island, and Rubber Prison), and also Rubber Prison itself, which is built into a tyre! (Hence why it's rubber.)

Next time, we'll break into the prison and see what awaits us inside. It's looking like our dungeon for this chapter is a pretty enormous actual dungeon, so that should be interesting. I'll see you then!

Posted: **Mon Jun 20, 2022 1:26 am**

65: Team Snakemouth Goes to Prison (Part 1)

When we left off last time, we'd just arrived at Rubber Prison and explored a bit of the entry area. It's time we actually broke in.

The door to the right is locked, but we passed by this boulder on the other side.

Smashing it reveals an entrance we can use. Let's head inside.

Well, this isn't promising. This could be a dead end, if we can't get past that portcullis somehow. What does the team think?

Not one. Not two. THREE gates.

It's a prison, what'd ya expect!?

Being an upstanding citizen has its perks... I'd loathe to be imprisoned here.

The banter points out the gate problem, but doesn't offer much of a hint as to what we can do about it. There is a sign, though.

Please ask management for access to prevent getting trapped inside.

That sounds a bit ominous. We have to get in somehow, though.

If we get closer to the gate, we can see a switch on the far side, but we don't have any way to hit it from here. (Also, this is not the sort of gate we can dig under. Trying that proves futile.)

Maybe we should try going back outside?

The sign told us all the grey switches are connected. We're going to have to use the one out here. It's a bit of a puzzle, though, because we can't just hit it or the gates here will come back up and stop us progressing.

It's not a very hard puzzle, though, as long as you remember Vi's Beemerang Halt. (And don't get tripped up by the controls: this is the first time we're required to use Halt since getting Bee Fly, and that can be awkward because pressing and holding (B) now makes Vi fly instead. You need to press and release (B) to throw the Beemerang, then press it again and hold to make it halt. If you weren't in the habit of releasing the button before, this can be a confusing moment until you figure it out, but it's not a problem once you readjust.)

Throw it here...

Hold it in place while we climb up...

Then release to toggle the positions.

Now, when we go back inside, the gate is down and we can get further into this room. This is a good introduction to the kind of puzzles we're going to be seeing here: this is far from the last time we'll see this switch mechanic.

Past the gate is... another gate. Yay?

The switch to toggle it is right here, but it does cut off the way back. We don't have a choice, though.

At least there don't seem to be any more gates here. And there's a switch on this side too, meaning we can't actually trap ourselves inside. (Does this actually work as a security system, or is it just so much theatre? I guess at bare minimum it does slow the rate anyone can get through this corridor...)

Of course, there's also a Wasp soldier over here. We're going to have to fight.

Remember these guys? The Wasp Driller isn't technically a new enemy, but the only time we've seen one before this was in the miniboss fight with General Ultimax. They're in normal battles now; it looks like the Wasps' elite troops are here.

We'll start off by attacking with Vi.

After being hit, they go into a guard stance, which increases their defence to 3.

Vi's got enough attack now to just power through it, but that's less than ideal...

Kabbu's flipping attacks, on the other hand, can break their guard. (This was a bit sloppy of me, it would've been much better to attack with him first.)

Leif's unboosted attacks have a hard time here.

And Chompy can't get through at all when they're guarding.

On its turn, it burrows underground rather than attacking.

This is annoying, but not much of a problem.

Leif's attacks can get it back aboveground.

Of course, it then immediately goes into guard stance, which might be more of an issue.

(Here I am again, forgetting to break the guard before having Vi attack. Oops.)

It doesn't matter, because Kabbu and Chompy together do exactly enough damage to finish things. One Wasp Driller by itself doesn't pose enough of a threat for these kind of sequencing mistakes to be a major problem, but when you're fighting multiples or they're with other enemies, it can be more important.

They're worth a lot of EXP to us right now! Somehow I don't think it's going to be long before we rank up again.

Let's move on. We'll take this Crunchy Leaf it dropped, I guess.

All that, to reach another dead end? Let's hope not...

Otherwise, we must assume you are a prisoner. Have a good day.

Well, here's the actual security.

Interacting with this terminal gets us the prompt to show an item. If we do as the sign suggested, and show our Explorer Permit...

The door opens. (There aren't any interesting messages for trying other items, it will just say "AUTHORIZATION FAILED".)

In we go!

Well, this room looks more complicated!

H-Hovering cages!? Even for criminals, isn't that a bit excessive?

We don't want to think about what one must do to earn such a cell.

Good thing I can fly...

While Vi reminding us she can fly is a good hint for what to do here, it does raise the question of how the ants usually traverse this room... although the wire bridge looks broken, maybe it normally extends all the way to the platform we're on.

If you don't want to fly, there are ramps down into the thorns, so Leif's Bubble Shield is an option too.

Flying is a much more efficient way to get around, though.

At the far side of this bridge, a Wasp Bomber is waiting! These guys react quickly, and start chucking Spicy Bombs from pretty far away; you do not want to get hit with these if you don't have Crazy Prepared equipped.

Like the Driller before it, we fought a Wasp Bomber before alongside Ultimax, but they've become normal foes now.

Wasp Bombers are one of the rare enemies in this game that require two hits to flip.

So we'll just relay to Kabbu and take care of that.

Once flipped, they go down pretty quickly. Especially when they're alone or in front, you can take the bombers down quickly (which is good, because they have access to all the bomb types and most of them aren't much fun to get hit with). Needle Pincer also makes quick work of them.

It's not quite as much EXP as the Drillers, but they're still giving us plenty. Not bad.

With the enemy out of the way, let's figure out this room. There's probably a key hidden somewhere, because the door north is locked.

From the bridge, we can see some platforms among the spikes, and there's a switch on the far one.

These platforms are only reachable by flying, you can't get onto them from the spikes if you try the Bubble Shield method.

Now let's get to the switch.

What did that do? There was a sound like something moved, but we can't see anything different from here...

If we make our way over to the west side of the room, we can see the brown cage is gone now. The switch caused it to lift away, revealing this smaller cage with a key inside.

We'll just take that.

The mushroom here doesn't send us anywhere in particular, but we can use it to gain some altitude and fly into the air current. I'm not entirely sure what the intended way to get around this room is (or why the current is here, since you can get anywhere without it), but this works to get back.

Now that we have a key, we should be able to open this door.

Let's move on.

There's a lot going on in this room: we can already see there are multiple levels, and there's a save crystal here too. Let's check the banter before we start exploring.

Being here makes me so uneasy...

Why? It's not like someone like you would ever end up behind bars.

Just from the idea of it...!

That's not much help, though I do appreciate the character insights we get. (I'm not sure whether Kabbu is trying to say he's personally afraid of imprisonment or morally opposed to the concept for anyone; I could see it being either, really.)

Let's have a look around. We'll start out with the east side.

It's barely a few steps before we encounter an enemy. There are a lot of Wasp soldiers here!

This is different! There's a lot of enemy variety here, but it's not just the wasp soldiers, it seems like they've freed some bandits that were locked up here and teamed up with them!

It's also a good way to get a sense of how much our team has grown, because the bandits' stats haven't changed since we last fought them.

That was an easy fight, we'll just keep moving.

Is that Venus locked up in a cell?

Well, we can't get inside yet, and we also can't go any further east, there's some kind of portcullis blocking the exit too. Also, look on top of the cage Venus is in: there's a lever up there, we'll have to get up somehow. Let's explore some more.

As we head back west, there's this sign on the wall that gives some direction (though it's not all that helpful yet). The Giant's Lair is our ultimate goal, but I doubt it'll be as simple as just crossing a bridge.

Further west, we find more wasps.

Wasp Scouts are here too. Alone, it's not much of a threat, but once we start seeing these mixed in with other enemy types, it's usually a good idea to prioritise them so they don't call reinforcements.

The Scouts have had their EXP yield adjusted too.

More Crunchy Leaves? All right then.

We can't progress to the west either, we'll need a key for that. (Also, once again, note the lever on the upper level.)

There's a moveable block in this cell, though. We must be able to do something with that...

After a bit of manoeuvering, we can use it to complete a staircase with these boxes and cages along the wall.

And that enables us to reach the upper level. What can we do here, though? There's an exit to the north, but this one's also blocked with impassable spikes, so we can't go that way for now.

It might seem like the corner platforms are too far to reach with flying. That's the puzzle here...

The trick is realising we can land inside this cage to rest.

That gets us close enough to fly the rest of the way over.

Now we can flip the lever here. What did that do, though? Nothing is immediately apparent...

But if we check back east, it's caused a cage to descend on this side. Now we can reach the other lever!

The same procedure lets us cross again.

This time there's no mystery about what hitting the lever does, the game shows us immediately! The way east is open now.

Before we leave, though, there's a bit more in this room.

There's some kind of enemy in this cell (hard to see behind the bars), and one of the grey switches. Some of the bars are broken...

The gap is big enough that Kabbu's digging can get us through.

New enemies! (Also, there's a quirk here with the battle music. The wasps' battle theme takes precedence if any of their soldiers are in the fight, regardless of other enemies, but we can still hear the other theme here if none of them are present.)

Let's see what we're dealing with here.

He's flailing that chain like it's a leaf! Watch out for those kicks!

These are Ruffians, some of the more dangerous prisoners the Wasps seem to have released. (But they left the shackles on them?) They're actually the only completely new enemy type here, the rest is just different arrangements of Wasp soldiers.

They have 16 HP and 1 defence; they're not quite as tough as the Wasp Drillers, but they're decently sturdy.

We'll start this off with just normal attacks, for now.

The first attack we see from them is this kick. It's a straightforward attack that deals 4 damage at base.

They also have this overhead smash, also 4 base damage.

That wasn't so bad. Let's keep going.

Kabbu finishes off the first one.

While Vi and Chompy get started on the second.

Kabbu gets kicked again, but he can handle it.

And from here, we can easily finish this.

That wasn't too bad. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of them before long.

Now. There's a grey switch in here; let's flip that.

With the switch flipped, let's look around again.

Toggling the gates lets us get in to see Venus!

This is all she has to say, though. We're in decent shape so I'm not going to bother paying for healing, but it's definitely worth remembering she's here.

Also worth noting is that toggling the grey switch raises the gate on this side, which could have been a problem if we'd flipped it before getting the block out.

Now, let's head east.

Interesting. Looks like someone's been taking inspiration from the Honey Factory...

There's another sign with directions here. Some of these locations sound interesting, but how do we get to them?

This security is impressive! Yet it couldn't stop the Wasps at all...

Well, duh. They fly.

We've got magic shields, too.

S-So I am the only one stopped by it, huh...

Heh. Poor Kabbu. (Of course, this conversation also serves as a reminder to the player of how to deal with these floors, it's been a while since we've seen them.)

For now, let's head east and look around.

In addition to the stationary platforms we're crossing, there are two more electrified platforms acting as elevators on the north side. And there's a whole wall of cells: there's a lot going on in this room!

Hm. That's interesting, maybe we'll be able to exploit that somehow.

We'll be back to explore this room fully soon enough, but for now let's head outside.

We're on the bridge one level up from the entrance.

We can weave our way through the barriers made of jacks, and quickly find there are soldiers here too.

Here we have a Scout and a Driller. That could be annoying.

We'll use our first turn to take out the Scout, to prevent it calling reinforcements. We can deal with the Driller after that...

Ow! This drill combo can be nasty (though that's exacerbated a bit here by Kabbu having Favorite One on, its base damage is 2 per hit). Also, it's not treated as a melee attack, so we can't get counter damage on it.

Now that we've reduced the fight to just one Driller, we can deal with it as usual.

A bit of back and forth later, we finish the fight. That's a lot of EXP.

That's a lot of berries, too. And also a free Mushroom. Sure, why not.

Further along, we quickly find another battle. Here we've got a Ruffian and a Burglar.

A full round of basic attacks isn't quite enough to take out the Ruffian, so we'll be taking attacks from both of them.

Vi's First Plating makes this kick harmless, though it wouldn't have been that bad anyway.

And the Burglar reminds us not to underestimate him: their full-party dash attack can still be pretty annoying.

Now we can start to clean up.

One attack from Leif does for the Ruffian.

Here, I miscalculated slightly and ended up leaving the Burglar alive. It would probably have been better to just spend a few TP to get the kill now...

Because he decided to go for the dash attack again. I managed to Super Block this time, which made it much less painful, but it's still irritating.

So let's just heal up a bit before we finish the fight. (This can be a good habit to get into, sometimes, especially if you're using Victory Buzz and/or TP Core medals. When your TP regenerates, it's wasteful to stay at maximum anyway. Of course, this kind of micromanagement is a bit pointless here when you can just buy healing from Venus, but I tend to forget to go to her...)

Now we finish things.

Note that we only get the boosted EXP yield from the wasp soldiers, the various bandits around here won't give us any.

Let's keep moving.

Is this just a dead end? Well, let's do the fight, at least.

Here we have a Driller and a Bomber. At least they don't have Ultimax supporting them? I'd really rather not get hit with bombs...

This is a bit unorthodox, but it should work. Leif starts out by boosting everyone with Empower+ (I left that on, though he's no longer using Life Cast).

We haven't used Under Strike in a while, but it's a decent choice here! (Thinking about it, this might've been a good place to use Fly Drop, too.)

Regardless, that's brought it low enough for Vi to finish off.

Now we can use our remaining actions to start hitting the Driller.

...If he wants to skip his turn, I guess that's fine. It's easy cleanup from here, especially since we still have the attack boosts.

Wow, we're already quite close to ranking up. That's going quickly.

That particular battle drops a key. We'll just take that, thanks. (This can be easy to overlook, if you're not the sort of player to habitually fight every enemy. This bridge is otherwise a dead end, though, which should probably be a kind of hint...)

Once we have the key, though, there's nothing else to do here, so let's head back inside.

Now, let's explore this mess.

First up, there's a Ruffian loose over here.

It's another pair of them.

After a few hits, I realised basic attacks would come just slightly short of eliminating the first one. We can fix that, though.

Even after the penalty from Strong Start, Leif can squeeze out a bit of damage with Frigid Coffin.

And the freeze boosts Chompy's damage just enough to finish it.

Leif gets kicked in the face, but otherwise things are looking pretty good.

Let's just keep going. We've got this.

Basic attacks aren't quite enough to get the kill, but I don't want to spend any more TP this turn.

Here we go! This is more interesting. In addition to the kick and bash attacks, Ruffians have this attack with their ball and chain. Not only is this more threatening at 6 base damage, it also inflicts Defence Down for 2 turns.

We've seen all of the Ruffians' attacks now. They're pretty straightforward as far as enemies go.

Let's just clean this up now.

That's a bit awkward, we're a single point short. Oh well.

Well, let's keep looking around. There's something inside the cell there, but we have to get the gate open to reach it...

So let's check out the rest of the area.

Let's start from this side. Those are some familiar faces!

Apparently this is where Cenn and Pisci were taken after we helped get them arrested.

We've got to respect these two for not taking the chance to run.

Perhaps they've truly taken our words to heart!

Wonder if Maki'll give 'em a second chance...

Maybe these two will get the chance to turn over a new leaf. (Assuming they want to.) For now, though, we'd best leave them be.

On the central platform, we have another grey switch inside a cell.

And like before, we can dig under to reach it and flip it.

We can now investigate what was in the rightmost cell.

Well, that's not particularly exciting. This must be what the prisoners are typically fed here.

We'll head back and flip the switch again.

Then ride the platform up to the top level. Let's have a look around: we can immediately see there's a locked door here, for one thing.

This cell on the left just has barrels inside. (This is another one controlled by the grey switches.)

On the right side is another cell, which has a grey switch inside. The markings on the wall are a nice touch, but also raise some questions. Between the switch and the fact there aren't any bars here, this isn't a practical cell to imprison anyone in... maybe it used to be, and they converted it?

From the elevator platform, we can also fly to the mid-level cells, so let's check those out too.

This one just has a switch inside. Let's hit it.

While in the centre, we can find a Burglar, and some kind of book?

This Burglar isn't an enemy, and will talk to us instead of fighting. Some of the prisoners seem to have decided staying put is the better option.

It's kinda weird to not have to fight.

Some people do regret their actions. We must allow them to make amends.

...At least while their crimes are small enough to forgive.

The banter highlights our party do have some disagreements on the subject of rehabilitation.

We can also pick up the book. What could this be for? (The item description contains part of the text from the game's opening narration...)

From there, we can fly to the third cell on this level. This one would have been blocked by a portcullis before we flipped the switch in the left cell.

All that's in here is another one of these keys.

Proof of concept, the switch in here controls the gate also. Let's not lock ourselves in? (I have some questions about the design of this place...)

From there, we'll just drop down.

Before we open the door at the top, let's head back and check out the cafeteria. We do have two keys, after all.

(Back momentarily, once again I'm forced to split the post thanks to the character limit.)

Posted: **Mon Jun 20, 2022 1:26 am**

65: Team Snakemouth Goes to Prison (Part 2)

Those keys work here too. Let's head in.

You don't have to wait long after entering before boulders start being launched across the lower level. What kind of cafeteria is this?

This is the most hardcore cafeteria we've ever seen.

The food fights in here have to be awesome!

With those cannons, I don't think anyone would dare...

Um. Yeah.

So, there are cannons all across the lower level, rapid-firing boulders across the room that then crash into the ledge we entered on.

There isn't an obvious pattern to them, and they come very quickly. If we get hit, we'll be squashed and sent back to the beginning of the room, so there's very little margin for error.

That said, if you're careful (and get lucky with the pattern), you can absolutely make your way through to the bouncy mushroom.

That mushroom launches us up to this crawlspace above the ceiling.

And from there, we can drop down to this ledge on the other side of the cannons. There's a Wasp Bomber waiting to ambush us, though.

For now, though, let's just run from this fight.

And head back...

Oops. Squish.

Right. So. What on earth am I doing?

Short version is, getting through here right now is a mild sequence break. This room is part of a puzzle that's meant to be solved another way, so we should leave and return later (and that's why I'm not actually finishing the room). But if you are stubborn (or lucky) enough, you can just get through now by brute force.

Also, the puzzle itself is just obscure enough that some people don't realise they can solve it, so a fair number of players just do end up breaking the sequence here. So I wanted to make sure we got to see both ways.

Right. Let's get back to the cellblock.

Let's use our other key here.

What's to the north, then?

Another room with quite a few exits! This place can be convoluted to get around. Let's check the banter first?

Working in a prison isn't glamorous at all.

You think the Queen sends the lazy guards here?

Maintaining this prison is not a game! She must send her best!

(Why not both?)

Heh.

First off, we have a grey switch to our left.

Although we can't flip this one from up close, or we'll get stuck in here! Let's just put that back.

There's a sign on the wall here, drawing our attention to the weak bridge once again. There's no way that won't end up being important.

Let's head outside first.

Before anything else, there's a Wasp Scout waiting here.

It has a Ruffian with it. Still, this fight is pretty straightforward, and there's nothing interesting to show.

It gets us enough EXP to rank up, though!

We'll continue getting more MP, of course. There's no special bonus this level.

Hm, that's a Honey Drop. The enemies around here seem really fond of dropping basic items today.

As we cross the bridge, we can see some pretty obvious cracks. That must be what the signs have been warning us about...

For now, let's see what's over on this side.

What do we have here?

Sometimes, it's easy to forget even a prison needs a normal office.

Bleh.

Sitting here processing paperwork... this is just as much of a prison as the cells.

Leif's comments can be really incisive, sometimes.

There's a hole which needs an item over here, but we don't have anything that fits. Looks like we're going to need to search for a crank again...

There are also some falling water droplets in here, and a fountain we can freeze. We'll no doubt need to make use of those.

But first, let's get this Driller out of the way.

There's only the one, so this isn't anything special.

Let's just move along. (The EXP yield is still pretty good, though it's decreased a bit since we ranked up recently.)

(Yet another Crunchy Leaf. I'm ecstatic here.)

Let's solve the puzzle here. We can freeze this droplet, to start.

And use the ice block to complete the staircase along the right-hand wall.

Before we climb up, though, we need to freeze the geyser.

Now, we can climb up and fly across.

With the geyser frozen, we can land on it to recharge our flight distance, then make our way over to the bookshelf.

We get another book for our troubles (with another snippet of the introductory text). That's two of these now, but we still don't know what they're for.

Regardless, collecting that book is all we can do here for now, so let's head back.

Back across the bridge.

Now, to explore this room further.

We need Leif's Bubble Shield to cross the thorns here.

Hm. These gates being raised could be a problem...

For now, though, we'll climb up here and see what's waiting.

First off, this Burglar's right in our face.

This fight's not entirely trivial! Two Burglars and a Ruffian could be a bit dicey.

Even without any attack boosts, Leif's Ice Rain can be very potent! I like using it in situations like this, sometimes, to soften everything up and keep them off us for a turn. (Mostly, I'm not in the mood to deal with the Burglars' dash attacks.)

We'll finish off the first enemy.

And, for that matter, let's have Chompy go ahead and bite the Ruffian. Their attacks aren't so deadly it's worth foregoing damage to avoid them.

Well, especially if they go after Vi while she has First Plating on. That worked out nicely!

And there goes the Ruffian. Simple enough.

Unfortunately, normal attacks aren't quite enough to take out the Burglar, and I'd rather not spend more TP here.

Figures, there's the dash attack again. (I've always liked the balance this game strikes with power growth, in that these returning earlier enemies are still capable of presenting some threat, but do feel significantly less intimidating than they used to be.)

Now, let's finish things.

Moving on.

With the enemy out of the way, it becomes more apparent that we can't get any further here so long as these gates are raised...

So we need to head back and flip a grey switch. It's easy enough to do, we just need to use the Beemerang to trip it so we don't get stuck on the wrong side of the gate here.

Now let's head back.

Now the gate here is down, and we can get further in.

Let's head south first...

We come out down here!

There's a lever we can flip on the wall here, which lowers the spikes.

From here it's more obvious this is the central area from earlier and that we've opened up a shortcut. If we need it, we could say hello to Venus and get some healing, but I don't feel the need.

Let's get back to exploring.

Here's another of those signs. We'll no doubt need to go to both of these places...

First up, though, more Ruffians!

This one has a Wasp Scout with it. Once again, there's nothing particularly novel to show in this fight...

So let's just keep moving.

The way to the Gym is blocked by a gate, so we'll come back to that later.

Since the gates that way are down, let's head toward the Security Room first. There's a Wasp Bomber at the top of these stairs, though...

The bombs can be pretty tricky to dodge here.

This Bomber comes with a Thief, which is a novel combination. Unfortunately for them, they're both a bit of a pushover: one Needle Pincer from Vi is enough to take out the Bomber, and still leave us with enough attacks remaining to take down the Thief before it can do anything.

So we'll keep moving.

There are a lot of paintings of Elizant I along this wall... We know this place was built early in Elizant II's reign, but there aren't any images of her to be seen. Knowing what we do about her insecurities, it's not a huge surprise she might have tried to compensate.

Conveniently, there's no railing on the far side here, and we could drop down if we wanted to. (I suspect this is mainly to prevent getting trapped up here if the gates are raised.)

Let's go in here.

Why's this the security room? It doesn't seem special at all...

There must be something hidden around here.

This room definitely warrants further investigation: there's a lot to look at.

For now, though, there's a save crystal here, so let's use the opportunity to take a break and end the update.

Next time, we'll pick up exploring Rubber Prison from here. I'll see you then!

Posted: **Thu Jun 23, 2022 3:44 am**

Honestly amused at the prisoners going “What? No I don’t want to make a break for it. Shoo, before you ruin everything!”

Posted: **Fri Jun 24, 2022 12:13 am**

Whilimbird wrote: ↑
Thu Jun 23, 2022 3:44 am
Honestly amused at the prisoners going “What? No I don’t want to make a break for it. Shoo, before you ruin everything!”

I've always appreciated that too, it's a good way to play with our expectations. (Though it certainly isn't all the prisoners, we've been fighting the various ones who did choose to leave and join up with the wasps.)

Posted: **Fri Jul 01, 2022 2:03 am**

66: Security By the Books

Right. Where did we leave off? We explored quite a bit of Rubber Prison last time, and eventually reached the Security Room. Let's see what we can do here.

Before anything else, there's a Wasp Trooper here who wants to get in the way.

She's fighting alongside a Ruffian, but this still isn't a particularly difficult fight. (Mostly because Needle Pincer or Fly Drop make it trivial to take out the Trooper, after which this is just a straightforward fight with one Ruffian.)

Let's move along.

Right. Back to our exploration.

There's a switch here by the machinery. Let's flip it.

...That didn't do anything?

It doesn't matter which position we put it in, nothing changes. Clearly, we'll need to investigate further.

If we inspect the terminal here, it will tell us the power's offline and we need to enable the backup generator somehow. That's an explanation, at least. Guess we'll need to look around some more.

From here, we can see there's a door leading west, but it's blocked. There is a crack near it...

We'll come back to that momentarily, though, because there's an open path here on the east leading outside. Let's check that first.

Apparently this path leads to the library. There's a library here?

We can't actually get there, though. This platform, despite the obvious mechanisms suggesting it can move, is stuck firmly in place right now, and that gap is too wide to fly across.

Back in we go.

Right. That door is pretty thoroughly blocked, whether that's just a stone in the way or it's actually embedded in the doors. Either way, we're not moving it, and Kabbu isn't able to smash it.

Of course, we can dig and get through the crack here, so let's do that.

...Oh dear. Are these ants trapped?

This room's pretty small, there's just a crank and the ant personnel.

Oof. Must suck to work here and be trapped in a tiny room.

Let's beat the Wasps so we can save these Ants!

It doesn't look like we'll be able to get them out, at least not for now... let's see what they have to say.

I am sensing a theme here.

The Wasps damaged the computer, but the only way to turn the backup power on is to spin that crank.

Do you have any way to do it?

This guard, meanwhile, knows what we need to do. Let's not waste any time, then.

There we go.

Now that we've fixed the power, let's talk to the guards again?

It's an old piece of junk, though. If it doesn't turn on even with the power, just smash it until it works.

The other two don't have new dialogue, but this one does (and it's yet another hint). Good old percussive maintenance.

That's all we can do in here for now, so let's head back out. We need to leave via the crack again; even with the power fixed, that door won't be budging.

Right. The main computer.

Does it do anything if we flip the switch now?

Eh. Just kick it.

This is valuable government property! We can't just-

...Just kick it!

Welp. Well, the guard told us we should do this too...

...Whatever. Let us see what we can do with this terminal...

I've seen this trip quite a few people up, because the hitbox on it is a bit weird, so you can easily second-guess yourself even knowing what to do. Kabbu's horn strike isn't strong enough, we need to hit it with a dash (and get a decently long run-up). Once you manage to hit it hard enough, the screen comes on.

Well. That seems promising, if oddly specific.

Apparently, the tables retract into the floor, and this lets us raise them up again.

If we want to, we can always put them back, too. But we probably shouldn't.

Right. The tables have been raised. Now, what to do...

Before we head back to the cafeteria, let's head back outside.

Restoring the power has also set these platforms moving, which means we should be able to get to the library now. Let's head over there.

Now that the platforms are moving, it's a simple matter to get across.

In we go.

Well, this certainly is a library.

This is quite the collection. It rivals the palace's.

Having to read all of these is such a mean punishment!

They're... most likely not meant to be a punishment...

This always gets a chuckle out of me, I'll admit.

Before we can do much here, we should probably get rid of the enemies.

The Trooper has a Driller with it. They do a good job of mixing up the formations here, at least, we're still encountering new combinations.

We'll defeat them and move along.

Past the wasp, there are steps along the eastern wall leading to the upper level.

There's an enemy up here too.

This Ruffian is accompanied by a Wasp Trooper. This is a bit more annoying than if they were in the other order, in that Vi can't delete the Trooper with Needle Pincer right away, but not very (among other things, Fly Drop can take out the Trooper in one hit still).

Ultimately, this is still a very straightforward fight.

There's nothing else to see up here.

Except, of course, this obvious break in the railing.

Which allows us to grab yet another History Book from on top of this bookshelf. We still don't know what these are for...

But this shelf is suspiciously empty, isn't it?

Well, it's asking us to put items in...

Let's try putting the books?

Even after those three, though, it's still apparently not enough. Let's try some random item for the last thing?

What should we have expected?

It was just a bunch of books, so...

Nonsense! There must be some sort of order we're missing!

Ugh. Are we gonna have to read them!?

When we fail the puzzle, we also see this conversation. Clearly, there's more going on here, and we're going to have to put the books back in a certain order. Right now, though, we're a book short regardless.

So we'll need to return later, once we've found more books.

For now, we'll cross back over this bridge...

And head back into the prison proper.

Let's drop down here as a shortcut.

This is probably the quickest way back, though we're going to have to drop down through this cellblock area.

Which can go badly. It's not really possible to look before you leap (or fly), so there's a decent chance of landing on the platforms while they're electrified, getting zapped and having to try again.

It's much safer if you bubble up before falling.

Right. We're back here.

Let's head back up this way, we still need to check out the gym.

The gates are up now, because we flipped a grey switch earlier. (When I was hitting it, I think I thought it was the power switch for the computer? I'm literally only realising now when writing this up that that was a standard grey switch and had nothing to do with that puzzle. Um, oops?)

With the gates in this position, we can't get to the security room, but the gym is no longer blocked off, so let's head in there.

Let's see what this is about.

A training facility?

A gym, Kabbu.

They allow prisoners to stay fit and healthy!?

It's not like that'll help them break out...

Sometimes Kabbu's moralism seems to wrap around to endorsing inhumane (or the bug equivalent) prison conditions. I don't know. Then again, for all we know, the gym could be for the guards to use...

Anyway, let's have a look around. There's a lot to interact with, but we should probably get the wasp soldiers out of the way first.

Here's yet another new combination of enemies that ultimately isn't very difficult to deal with. (Though the Bandit could get annoying if you don't take him out quickly, let's not forget they can steal our items.)

For better or worse, nothing worth showing happened in that battle, so we'll keep moving.

Are those bouncy mushrooms? On top of the mechanisms?

...Yes, yes they are.

And at this side, there's a ledge up high that we can't reach via normal means.

Right. So. We're going to need to use those implausibly-placed mushrooms somehow. With their positioning, though, we can't just platform across...

Which is where this crank comes in. What happens if we spin it?

It starts all the cranks rotating! Yes, with the mushrooms on top. To get to the ledge at the upper left, we're going to need to get through some kind of bouncing platforming gauntlet.

Click me for video because there's no way I can reasonably GIF this, and it's hard to convey it in still shots.

We use the grounded mushroom to get up to the first rotating one, then follow it around the circle.

Bounce through the gap when they get close enough, timing it so we can land on the next mushroom...

Repeat the process through the second gap...

Then ride the final mushroom around until...

We're finally able to launch ourselves over to the ledge.

I wouldn't say this is particularly difficult as platforming challenges go, but it's definitely trickier than Bug Fables typically asks. It's easy to mess up (or not quite figure out the process), you need to start over from the beginning if you fall, and you also need to be holding down the button to keep the Beemerang spinning while you're doing this.

Of course, there's also an enemy waiting at the top.

Here we have a Wasp Driller accompanied by a Bandit. They continue giving us new formations even now!

Of course, this is still ultimately a speedbump more than anything else.

There's also a Prison Key up here. That will probably come in handy.

That key is the only thing we can find in here, though, so let's head back out.

Right. We have one last lead to follow up on.

If you'll recall, the cafeteria was this way.

Just like we saw on the computer surveillance, the tables are raised now!

With the tables here, it's now much easier to avoid the cannonfire. We can get up on this one and then fly between them.

The tables are sturdy enough to stop the boulders, apparently.

So we fly to this one, and we're right next to the mushroom.

That was much easier than last time!

From there, we drop down and land behind the cannons.

This is the intended way to get through the cafeteria. A lot of people end up doing this the hard way, though: either they get here first and just brute force it, or don't quite figure out how to turn on the computer (thanks to the finicky hitbox) and never find another solution.

Regardless of how you get up here, you do have to, because this is where the fourth book is.

There's also a Wasp Bomber harassing us here, so let's put an end to that.

This isn't particularly difficult. (These fights are a lot easier when the Bombers are in front and easy to take out quickly.)

Let's move along. (These fights are great for EXP, too.)

Before we climb up these stairs and jump back over, there's one more thing here.

Flipping this switch turns the cannons off! That should make it much easier to get out of here safely.

Much better. (It will never be explained why the cafeteria is full of cannons. "The food is to die for", I guess, as one commenter put it after last update.)

Before we leave the room, let's take a quick look at our spoils. (Also, uh, one moment...)

That's better, that was going to bother me. I don't remember if I've covered this feature before, but you can rearrange key items (and regular items): you hold (Y) and then the item you've selected will move along with the cursor. This feature was actually added in the 1.1 update (and was quite the relief to me).

Here's a quick look at the descriptions for each of the other books, too. Make a note of this for later.

Let's head back to the library now.

...Oh, right. We need to lower these gates again.

This is the most convenient switch we can get to.

That's better.

Right, almost there.

Okay, we're back. Now we should have everything we need to do this properly.

Right.

We have four books, but what's the order? Let's reexamine the text.

The Ant Queen and her daughters came searching for...

The Everlasting Sapling! A relic that granted eternal life!

Although it hasn't been found, many explore looking for it, in the name of the Ant Queen.

Ahh, the kingdom of Bugaria. Many explorers gather there.

The text is four sentences from an abridged version of the game's opening. The puzzle, such as it is, is to deduce that and put the books in an order that makes sense (which you don't need to have memorised the opening to do, just make the ideas follow each other). The order we want is Blue, Green, Yellow, Red:

"Ahh, the kingdom of Bugaria. Many explorers gather there.
The Ant Queen and her daughters came searching for...
The Everlasting Sapling! A relic that granted eternal life!
Although it hasn't been found, many explore looking for it, in the name of the Ant Queen."

Let's put the books in in that order.

Ah. So that's where that was hiding! We suspected we'd be needing one of these...

Now that we've exchanged four books for a crank (I suspect Vi at least thinks we made out well there), we're done here in the library.

Where to now?

Well, let's jump down here! You don't have to do this, but it's a very convenient shortcut.

Because we were right above the room where the crank fits!

Let's put this in.

Now, what is this going to do?

You know the drill. It's a crank, we turn it with the Beemerang.

Welp. I don't think that's how drawbridges are supposed to work, but it worked out for us! Pulling on the cracked bridge broke it, and the falling bridge smashed open the barricaded door below us.

Well then. Let's go outside and assess the damage.

Good thing there's nothing else we need from that office, because it'd be tricky to get back to! (Though not impossible, I think? We might be able to get back with some creative flying from above, though I've never actually tried.)

Whee! Once again, jumping down is the way forward.

What's through the path we've opened?

Okay then. Venus and a save crystal is probably a warning sign...

Venus has the same dialogue as the last time we saw her.

I think I'll take her up on that offer of healing. It seems prudent right now.

Right then.

What's through this locked door? We have a key...

It's actually an elevator leading us back to the entrance! That's convenient.

(Effectively, the third key in this dungeon is largely superfluous, since its only purpose is to open this shortcut. It's still worth doing, though, this shortcut will be worth having later, but if you really don't want to deal with the platforming in the gym you can technically skip it and be fine.)

For now, we'll head back up.

And make use of this save crystal. This has been a shorter update (I could probably have divided this dungeon more evenly), but this seems like a good place to end things; next time, we'll head east and almost certainly end up in a boss fight.

Before we go, though, let's take a quick look at some of the enemy attacks we didn't end up seeing here. I know I've been breezing past the battles a bit; both the Wasp Drillers and Wasp Bombers have a few more attacks that didn't come up naturally.

First up, the Drillers.

In addition to the multi-hit combo, they also have this piercing drill attack that does a single hit (5 damage at base).

They can drill the ground to launch a spray of pebbles, doing 2-4 hits that are base 3 damage each.

And if you let them attack while underground, they'll do this odd attack from below (base 4 damage). They don't emerge from the ground after attacking, you need to force them up with an appropriate attack.

By contrast, the Bombers are very straightforward.

They have various status bombs, which are all base 3 damage across the party and inflict the appropriate status if you fail to block. (They can use Numb Bombs and Burly Bombs also, but I didn't manage to catch either of those on camera.)

More frequently, though, they'll use Spicy Bombs, which deal 5 damage across the party instead. These hurt!

That's it. That's all they do. They have no other moves: they're bombers, and they bomb.

These enemies can both do some pretty nasty things, but by this point in the game, we have so many powerful tools that it isn't very hard to deal with them.

We'll pick up from here next time with the finale of Chapter 6. See you then!

Posted: **Fri Jul 01, 2022 5:51 am**

Never a good sign when the game gives you a heal and a save point in the same spot. Definitely a boss fight coming up.

Posted: **Wed Jul 13, 2022 4:55 am**

67: Chekhov's Howitzer

Last time, we left off here at the upper exit of Rubber Prison. It feels odd starting an update with no music link, but there's no music right now, just silence with occasional blowing wind.

Let's take a quick look at our medals before we move forward. I don't have any special plans here, I'm just going to proceed with the same setup I've been walking around with, but I think it's worth reminding us what exactly that is.

Most of this should be pretty familiar. I've kept on a few of Leif's party buffs with the MP I didn't otherwise have plans for; this playthrough has definitely given me a better appreciation for them.

Anyway, let's head east and see what's waiting for us!

How many times must I knock you down before you learn?

Third time's the charm, eh?

I don't have time to deal with vermin.

(Oh dear.)

What in the sideways Bee's stinger is that!?

Make it quick, and painful.

Do not let anyone cross this door!

(The Wasp King and his cadre just casually walk away.)

Tch. Let's follow his advice. Quick and painful.

76 - Battle Against Ultimax, Who Has a Tank

Well. That is certainly General Ultimax driving a tank. Remember how back when we infiltrated the Wasp Kingdom, we saw a hangar with three bays and only two tanks in them? The third tank isn't missing any more! This is also probably what they attacked the Ant Palace with. (And let's not forget Vi called him "General Guy" earlier... there are lots of reasons we should have seen this coming.)

The name of the battle music here is very on the nose: the wiki theorises it's a reference to the final boss theme of Super Mario RPG, "Fight Against Smithy, Who Likes Transforming". It's militaristic and intense, as you might expect; I like it, but it's probably my least favourite of this game's boss themes, there's just a certain je ne sais quoi to the others I don't get here.

Let's see what we're up against here.

My horn can still pierce through... For Bugaria, I'll take this thing down!

It seemed only fitting to let Kabbu do the spying here.

1 defence seems a bit low for a tank, honestly (you'd think it'd be harder to damage), but this thing is no doubt packing a lot of firepower.

We'll give Kabbu a quick relay so he can hit first. (Several of the spy dialogues suggest using Kabbu's horn attacks against its defence, which isn't a bad suggestion, but unless you've gone out of your way to avoid damage increases you shouldn't struggle to damage this thing.)

It seems only prudent to have Leif boost our defences, so let's start off with that.

Vi can attack normally for now as well.

As can Chompy. She'll stick with the Pretty Ribbon for this fight; the tank is nearly immune to status effects (it's immune to everything except Numb, which it has 85% resistance to, disabling strategies are a bad idea).

The tank starts off by launching a barrage of cannon fire at us! This attack launches 2-3 balls, each of which deals 4 base damage. Like many attacks we've seen, each shot chooses its target randomly.

And after that, it launches two missiles into the air! These are a delayed attack, hitting two turns later.

(The tank's attacks on this first turn do not appear to be random. As far as I know, the tank always opens with a 3-shot cannon barrage followed by two missiles. Later turns use the usual weighted-random enemy AI.)

In this case, both missiles are targeting the centre position, where Leif currently is. They sometimes target different positions, though.

For now, we'll just keep doing normal attacks.

And have Leif relay to Vi for some healing. We hadn't taken that much damage yet, but staying on top of our HP isn't a bad idea, and we can set up some regeneration this way.

Chompy attacks too, of course.

Ultimax likes to summon allies, sometimes, instead of attacking.

The allies get to attack immediately, so it's not like he's taking the turn off. These Wasp Troopers have the same attacks as they usually do.

They have reduced maximum HP, though (only 5), as we've come to expect for enemies summoned during boss fights.

This is a great opportunity to use Kabbu's Under Strike! These Troopers stand very close to the tank, so we can kill them with piercing damage and get damage in on the boss while we do it. Vi's Needle Toss is also a good choice for this.

Let's take advantage of the fact both missiles are targeting Leif, and have him shield himself.

And since we've been blowing through TP, let's have Vi use a Crisbee Donut.

Chompy does her thing.

Are you feeling lazy, General? He decides to call allies again instead of doing something else. This time, it's a Wasp Scout.

He also launches more missiles. He does this every second turn (with one exception we'll get into later), so there's almost never a moment during this fight when missiles aren't present in some fashion.

The Scout gets to attack us immediately. (Mercifully, the scouts summoned here don't get to call allies themselves.)

And after the enemies are done taking their turn, the missiles fall. That could've been nasty if we didn't shield! (The missiles hit for 4 base damage each, which can add up if you're not careful.)

Once again, the missiles are both aiming at Leif.

The summoned Wasp Scouts have 7 maximum HP, rather than the usual 15.

It's a waste of her charge-ups, but Vi can swat the scout in one hit, so let's do that.

The others will just keep hitting the tank.

...Are you going to do anything else? (Let's note that Wasp Troopers and Wasp Scouts are the only enemies that can be summoned here, the other kinds of soldiers don't show up.)

The Scouts have their needle attack also, and can still inflict poison with it if you don't block.

We're making progress, I guess? Let's keep on the way we've been doing.

Vi takes down the scout.

Then attacks the tank.

And we'll have Leif block the missiles again. (Even better, we have Kabbu in the middle this time, so we'll get Favorite One activations out of this!)

Chompy makes with the chomping.

This is different! Like many other bosses we've fought, the tank has a charge-up sequence. It gains +2 charge-up, as well as Defence Up for a turn, and queues up a specific attack for next turn.

Missiles blocked.

Wait, it didn't fire more missiles?

This is the exception I mentioned earlier: if it charges up, it skips launching missiles that turn.

Well, let's deal with this. Vi can attack as usual...

But we'll use Kabbu's turn to relay to Leif, then use Bubble Shield on everyone. (I'd rather spend the action now, since I have it, than be down one next turn.)

With the defence buff from charging, Chompy has a harder time getting through.

At the start of its turn... the cannon shakes and explodes? That doesn't look like a charged attack!

Once you reduce the tank's HP below half, the cannon explodes at the start of its next turn. This means it can no longer use the cannon fire attack, and will start using a different attack instead (which we'll see soon enough).

This is the charged attack. It just tried to run us over! That looks like it would have hurt if we hadn't blocked! (This attack is 5 base damage, but usually has +2 from the charge-ups.)

We're doing well so far, so let's keep going.

Let's keep it simple, and just stick to standard attacks.

(Chompy doesn't have a choice about this.)

Here's a new attack! With the cannon busted, General Ultimax starts popping out to chuck bombs at us instead. He has access to all the status bombs you'd normally expect (which do 3 base damage), and also Spicy Bombs (which hit a bit harder, 5 base damage), just like the Wasp Bombers we've been fighting.

The missiles are also back, of course.

Here we go, they're targeting different positions this time! When they're spread out like this, I usually prefer not to shield against them.

For now, we'll just keep attacking. We're getting close to the end here...

Ouch! Run over again, and this time we couldn't prepare for it!

The animation's different when it doesn't charge up beforehand (spinning out instead of blasting off with blue flames), but this is the same attack, dealing 5 base damage. It hurts.

The tank's definitely on its last legs now, though. Can we finish this?

Not quite! We've dealt with the tank, but we still have to contend with the general! (And the missiles are still incoming, let's not forget about that.)

This can actually be a nasty surprise, depending on how you've paced this fight. If you've had a close fight and are low on HP and/or have a downed party member when you finish off the tank (perhaps assuming the fight will end so you don't need to heal), you can end up in a pretty bad position here. Especially if you used your last action of the turn for the finishing blow, and Ultimax gets to hit you before you can respond in any way.

The one silver lining here is that the tank's explosion will kill the summoned wasp soldiers, if any of them are still around.

Kabbu relays to Vi so she can heal him with one of the many Crunchy Leaves we've been picking up. (Obviously, he could have healed himself, but Vi has the Heal Plus medals on.)

Meanwhile, Leif and Chompy start in on the general.

Um, oops? General Ultimax's flailing attack is usually something of a joke, each hit's only 1 damage... but Vi has -2 defence thanks to her Power Exchange medals, and I'd forgotten to heal her (I noticed Kabbu was low, but not Vi!), so this is easily enough to KO her.

And here come the missiles! (Vi's already unconscious, so I guess in a sense she gets to dodge hers? It's a strategy, I swear!)

We've been in worse positions than this, though. All the general can do now is flail at us (not quite helplessly, as we've seen, but it's still not nearly as intimidating as the tank was).

A quick Pep Talk and Vi's back in action again...

And one Hurricane Toss should be enough to end things from here.

There you have it!

That's the Chapter 6 boss, Ultimax Tank. We saw pretty much everything it can do there, aside from variety in the bombs; it can be a bit more dangerous if it spends more time firing the cannon than calling allies, but this wasn't too atypical. I like the concept of this fight a lot, but in practice it tends to be something of a paper tiger (ironic given it's the only thing we fight that isn't paper-style sprites), hence why I chose to fight it this way instead of using more sophisticated strategies. I really think it should at least have had more defence; 80 HP and 1 defence really isn't enough to stand up to the kind of power we can typically output at this point in the game, and definitely doesn't feel tankish enough to me.

Knock it off! You already lost!

T-This isn't normal!

That Wasp in the kingdom said everyone'd gone nuts...

Could this one be controlled too?

...I guess that's one way to deal with this problem.

That king employs such distasteful tactics.

Let's leave this poor guy to the Ant Kingdom.

Indeed. Let's secure the area so reinforcements can come in.

Then, we'll have to give swift chase!

I will send the signal!

We fade out briefly...

39 - Drums of War

(The cavalry are here! That's a lot of people. It's especially tricky to tell who's saying what in this cutscene, even ingame when the sprites move. The first speaker while it was dark was obviously Mothiva; this is Gen talking here.)

Yeah. It's gonna be smooth sailing from here!

We cannot celebrate yet. The Wasp King is brutally powerful.

He's gonna pay for bruising you!

Muh muh!

Are we sure it's alright with everyone having come?

Queen Bianca has gracefully offered to protect the Ant Kingdom while we fulfill this mission.

Woah, I thought she was a super pacifist!

Can't reason with a mad bug.

None have returned from it. We have no legends, no way to know what's inside.

But if we do not face this challenge, we do not deserve tomorrow's freedom! Let us pray to Venus and charge!

What a magnificent rally! I'm pumped up!

Hmm. She's come far, hasn't she?

Even you were moved, eh Leif?

Time to kick some butt!

It's time... Bugaria will be saved today, but I too will reclaim my people. Let's go!

Idols first!

After another brief fade-out, we regain control. All our explorer friends from the Ant Kingdom are here now! ("Drums of War" keeps playing here now; the name is a lot more apropos here than when we last heard it in the Bee Kingdom security check.)

There's a new general banter here:

Giant's Lair is up ahead. Is there really no info at all?

None. It had been sealed even before Elizant arrived, they say.

No wonder it fell with one swing.

Ancient doors are super high quality. We think the king's just a brute.

Also, before we go talk to everyone, there's a shared banter for everyone who's shown up:

Everybody's here!

Yeah! We're good enough, but this is great!

It's very reassuring. Heh. We've made good friends.

We cannot afford to lose, for all of their sakes!

I've always enjoyed this moment, it's nice seeing everyone again and definitely helps set the mood as we move into the unknown.

Also, before we forget, let's take a look at those achievements we just earned.

As expected, we get one for completing the chapter, and one for defeating the boss on Hard Mode. One chapter to go!

Let's head all the way west and then work our way back across.

The soldier here doesn't have much to say. She does get a different banter, though:

It's gotta be rough working so close to the Giant's Lair.

We can only hope no monsters ever come out...

Let's head back east now.

First up, we have Team Maki here with Elizant.

Yin is eloquent as always.

That jerk messed with the wrong family!

Kina is aggressive as usual, though at least this seems a productive direction for it.

Even before the Wasp King struck... I'm glad I gave you a permit.

S-Sir Maki...!

I told ya I was worth like 4 Bees!

We missed that whole thing. You'll have to share the tale over some food when we're done.

Heh, that's right, Leif wouldn't have seen that conversation.

...But thank you, for escorting me through the Forsaken Lands.

Thank you, our Queen, for making the journey. It's thanks to you we got the submarine.

It was my duty and honor. I hope you will escort me once more.

Aw. That's nice to see.

Next up, Team Mothiva.

You're too decent to tag along with Mothiva.

That's for me to decide.

Look. Whatever. Just beat a bunch of baddies up!

Hah! That's the plan. Break a leg.

B-Break a leg?

...It, uh, it means good luck.

Heh. (I never have quite gotten that expression, honestly, so it's fun to see the game poke fun at it.)

Have you chosen to laugh just because?

I'm just delighted. We're going to be famous!

The books will speak of the great Mothiva's valiant role of saving Bugaria!

Yah. In a little corner next to our portrait!

We'll see indeed. But today, we are comrades.

Mothiva is still Mothiva. She's never going to change.

Up here, we have... a new shortcut?

Very well. Please talk to me if you ever decide to go.

This is the final Ant Mines shortcut, and it's unlocked for us automatically. Also, there's a different banter for this soldier:

T-They should install a fence here! What a terrifying post!

Or ask a Hive soldier! At least they can fly!

Haha.

Next up, Gen and Eri.

Chin up, Gen! Remember when we set up that bomb trap?

Heheh, yeah. That was pretty cool.

We'll be counting on you.

Oh gosh. No pressure, right?

Well, just a bit of pressure.

Let's do this, Sis!

It's always nice to see them. (I've been told Gen and Eri won't appear here if you haven't completed their sidequest yet, though I've never verified this for myself.)

And here we have Levi and Celia.

We'll pull our weight this time, and repay the debt!

It was nothing! You helped us protect Neo, after all...

Hey.

I'm a bit nervous...

We're a bit nervous too.

But Levi's super pumped up, so I won't let any fear show!

That's what true courage is, facing our fears!

Let's bravely face that tyrant and save the kingdom!

I do enjoy their camaraderie. (Like Gen and Eri, I'm told Levi and Celia won't appear here if you haven't completed their quest.)

Finally, we have Queen Vanessa.

This is all she has to say, though.

And there's one last guard by the now-open entrance.

The game's very clearly telling us to head inside, and we really should... but, awkward as it is, I'm going to break the momentum a bit here because there's some new stuff we can catch up on first and I'd rather do it here than later.

Let's make use of the shortcut here and go see Artis, for one thing.

Above us here is the emblem for Rubber Prison. We've finally completed all the paths here.

Let's get out of here.

As expected, Artis has a reward for us.

...

Was it too challenging for ya? You deserve a reward. Here, take this!

Come back later when you've bonked some extra hard heads with that Medal, will ya?

For defeating Ultimax in his tank, we get a second copy of Antlion Jaws. While these only affect normal attacks, they can still be pretty useful, and with two of them there are some shenanigans you can get up to by stacking them. The same glitch in the combat system that gives us extra damage when combining skills that "ignore 1 defence" and Defence Down works with these: if the enemy has at least 1 defence (before debuffs), these medals trigger independently (so, for example, if you put both of them on Kabbu and attack an enemy with 1 defence, he'll do 2 more damage than expected, or 3 more if it has Defence Down).

You can also play fair and just use them against enemies with defence, of course. But you're likely to see unusual numbers now and then when using them even if you're not deliberately trying to take advantage of it.

Right. Back to Rubber Prison now.

Rather than head back in this way, we're going to take the elevator down and head in the main entrance.

We must now retake the Queen's trust.

Because now that the Ants have regained control of the facility, there's lots of new dialogue to see! We'll make a quick sweep through and see what's going on here now.

It's back to normal for the guards.

I must commend them! I'd need a vacation, at least!

Paid vacation!

They've earned their hard-worker fame, for sure.

We'll see this banter for most of the guards.

There's not a lot to see in the first few rooms, though this area's different now. For one, the Venus bud that was in the cell is no longer here. And also, the Ruffian inside the cell here can still be fought, but it's the only active enemy in the entire prison now (and therefore the only way to fight Ruffians after finishing the dungeon).

Also, there's a guard about now, telling us they've managed to get the prisoners back into the cells.

There's another guard in the cafeteria.

She's not alone, though! If we go through the room again, there's another one back here behind the cannons.

I don't think I buy this explanation, but, well, at least there theoretically is one?

East of that room, the cellblock is all closed up now!

We can flip the switch and open them all, though...

Cenn and Pisci are still here.

Like before, they still aren't particularly inclined to leave.

Neither is this Burglar, though he's a bit more upset about it. (I'm not sure I understand how this works, though... why would they extend his sentence?)

On the next level up, there's now a guard checking out the broken bridge.

How are we supposed to reach the office now!? I can't fly!

Yeah, that could be a problem until they get the bridge fixed.

Incidentally, we can absolutely reach the office, if we drop down from above and then start flying in midair. (There's a short lag between when Vi's upward momentum and Leif's, weirdly, you can see how much further he fell than her before levelling out.) There's nothing interesting to see or do in there, though.

By the entrance to the gym, we can see a guard having a conversation with a Burglar.

Are you serious!? Community service doesn't pay well at all!

Heh.

So prisoners can earn berries, huh.

Cheap labor for the good of those they've wronged.

Well, something good's come out of villainy...

Our party is surprisingly positive on the subject of prison labour...

We can open this gate and head into the gym, too.

There are a bunch of people to talk to in here, actually.

The guard here isn't very enthusiastic.

Huh, what? You're explorers? Uhh... I said nothing. I'm innocent. I swear!

This guy has a unique banter, too.

Didn't we see this one in the Bandits' Hideout?

Hm? We didn't turn any of them in, though...

Wonder what he did to end up here...

This is actually a good question. I guess the ants have been independently arresting a lot of the bandits?

And you know what? This is much better than I imagined. I wish I was arrested sooner.

This guy, meanwhile, is very positive about his situation. He gets a banter too:

S-Someone who enjoys prison!?

Well, there's free food!

How could that possibly be a good enough reason!?

Uh oh. Kabbu's having a crisis...

Wouldn't be the first person to view prison as an improvement over their prior circumstances; guaranteed regular meals is unfortunately not something everyone can take for granted.

Also, if we go through the rigmarole to get up here again, we can be rewarded with even more dialogue!

Poor fellow. What should we make of this?

Prison's rough for the weak villains, huh.

Sadly, not many think about that before ending up here...

I guess there's something to that, but also, it's important to keep pointing out that the expectation of mistreatment by other prisoners shouldn't be part of the punishment.

Also, what's this?

Um.

So love can bloom between chaos and order.

...Let's go.

Honestly, I'd rather not get into the power dynamics that would be involved in a relationship between a guard and a prisoner (and I suspect the game doesn't really want us to think about that either). Kabbu has the right idea; let's just go.

There's a guard we can talk to here on the way to the security room, but she doesn't have much to say.

There are lots of people here now.

The situation here still doesn't seem great, does it. The ants are still going to have their work cut out for them.

At least if we dig back into the control room here, we can see everyone who was trapped did manage to get out safely. (That was them we just talked to.) Also, there's a new banter here and in the main security room:

A machine that can show what occurs in another location! Incredible!

It's impressive, but kinda creepy. Imagine a room where you can see everywhere at once.

That's just Venus with eyes, right?

...Well, yes.

Were you expecting to get musings on the subject of a panopticon? This one's a bit weird, though: you'd think you could see it any time after activating the computer, but I'm pretty sure I checked before and didn't see it.

Anyway, that's the last of it. There's a lot of neat dialogue in here, and I think it tends to be pretty obscure (since a lot of players don't bother looking for it) so I wanted to make sure I showed it off. Now, let's get back to the bridge...

39 - Drums of War

Let's go in.

When we try to go into the Giant's Lair, Queen Vanessa interrupts us. She didn't have much to say before...

I think the Wasp King is hiding something. The source of his strength...

It probably lies in his crown.

Huh? How's a crown gonna pump you up?

Before I explain, I want you to have this.

16 - Lost Treasure

What is this amulet? It feels so... warm.

This is the Wasp Kingdom's royal heirloom. My mother gave it to me, and told me to protect it no matter what.

Queen! Is it really alright for us to have this?

Of course. See, this emblem's been protecting me all this time...

I don't get how this is gonna help.

This amulet's magical. I don't know how, but it always protected me against the Wasp King's flames.

I am not a fighter, but you will most likely need this more than I do now.

We will safeguard it. It is an honor to be trusted with a royal treasure!

Be safe. And beat the heck out of that usurper!

Well. That was a nice surprise! Maybe with this, we'll stand a chance after all.

She returns to her previous position and the game gives us back control.

Now, let's actually go in.

77 - Chapter 7: The Everlasting Sapling

...See you next time, in Chapter 7.

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2022 5:21 am**

An opportunity to talk to everyone, a shortcut back to the rest of the map, and a Mysterious Amulet? They hit all the “this is a Last Dungeon” beats with this.

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2022 8:47 pm**

Whilimbird wrote: ↑
Thu Jul 14, 2022 5:21 am
An opportunity to talk to everyone, a shortcut back to the rest of the map, and a Mysterious Amulet? They hit all the “this is a Last Dungeon” beats with this.

They really, really did.

Posted: **Mon Jul 25, 2022 6:18 pm**

So, um, this is not an update. It was supposed to be: I have the footage recorded, but I've come down with something Covid-adjacent (tested negative but I feel pretty lousy) and just don't have the energy to work on capturing/editing screenshots and writing the update right now. I will get to it when I can but it might take me as much as another week; I feel guilty for the delay, especially given where I left things last time. Thanks in advance for understanding.

In other things, I recently have become aware of this tool (thanks, Bug Fables Discord!) which might be of interest to people messing around with the randomiser mode. It attempts to deduce your seed and the likely locations of medals based on information you give it about what you've already found. What I don't know is the mapping between its order and the actual ingame locations, so I suspect there's going to inevitably be some guesswork involved still, but it's pretty neat regardless.

I'll edit a link to this into the post about randomiser mode so it'll be available to anyone who reads this in the archives later.

Posted: **Mon Aug 08, 2022 4:52 am**

68: What Can Eternal Lie (Part 1)

Right. It's been a while; my apologies for the delay. Covid utterly destroyed my energy levels and it's been difficult getting back into the mindset to work on this.

Entering the Giant's Lair marks the beginning of Chapter 7, and with that comes a new title screen! It's not a big change, but Jayde has now joined us (she's right behind Kabbu).

78 - The Giant's Lair (Recommended listening!)

...What's this? As soon as we enter, we immediately get both a discovery and an achievement. (Thanks for the interruption, game.) Let's see what those are.

Very mysterious. This is more or less just a summary of what we already knew.

Also, this is the achievement we got. It's for finding all 50 Discoveries. We'll have to check in at the library at some point for our final reward, too.

Let's also take a moment to appreciate the music in here. It's very different from anything we've heard so far in the game; between the general gloominess and all those discordant sounds woven through, it is very good at setting the mood. What is this place?

What is this feeling? It's as if I was carrying many boulders...

Yeah. It's some sort of violent aura.

I'm fine. Aren't you guys overthinking it?

B-But it IS kinda creepy in here...

If we check the banter, our team are definitely picking up on it too.

Let's head in and look around.

So far, it just looks like there's rubbish everywhere...

Get too far in, though, and a voice stops us.

Oh, it's Venus.

...Listen, this is very important.

I've been keeping track of your travels through my buds...

But this is my limit. I can't help you past here. You'll be on your own!

We can feel some strong bloodlust coming from the area ahead...

Disgusting, heinous creatures roam that area where giants lived...

They are stronger than anything you will find in Bugaria. I can't fathom why they've never tried crossing over.

The Roaches braved such horrors just to hide the Everlasting Sapling!?

Makes sense, right? It's the ultimate challenge!

This isn't a game. I'm serious!

The Wasp King seems determined to go on ahead, beyond reason.

Even though it's dangerous, we can't risk him succeeding in his quest.

Yeah. We can't let him roam around. For everyone's sake.

Oh, please be careful. I've grown so fond of you all...

If you need any healing, just ask me. I really won't be able to help later.

That's one hell of a warning from Venus. We should definitely take this seriously (though obviously it's not going to stop us going in!). Also, I have to admit, it always amuses me when characters say things like "this is not a game".

Once she's done talking to us, Venus poofs away over to a spot near the northern wall, where she'll stay.

She gives us the usual options of healing and chat. Let's see if she has anything else to say first.

I wish I could help you more, but my roots can only reach this far.

The Dead Landers are extremely powerful! Please flee if you must!

Another version of the same warning. Also, it's good to have a reminder that we can flee battles, that can be an important tactical option sometimes and it's easy to forget you have it. (Putting on the Quick Flea medal here might not be the worst idea, either.)

We're still injured from the boss fight, so we may as well take her up on the healing too.

Here you go, some Venus special healing!

Please come by again, I'm always up for a chat.

All right. We're as prepared as we're going to be (thanks, Venus!). Let's head deeper in.

We're also presented with a save crystal here. And that purple fog looks pretty ominous...

Nothing for it, though. In we go.

Uh... what is that?

E-Eeep! What the HECK is THAT!?

It's monitoring the area. Looking for things to... devour?

I would prefer if we never learn what will happen if it sees us...

Um. So. This big eye is here. It sweeps back and forth, with the area it can see represented by the bright area. (Is the eye actually emitting light? It looks like it...)

Let's just check out where it isn't looking?

There's a spot we can dig here.

It's our penultimate Crystal Berry! We have only one more to find. Let's just take that.

Right...

I wonder if the Crystal Berry is here in part to remind us that we can dig? You can avoid being seen with good timing without it, but burrowing underground is even safer (it can't see us even while we're moving, despite the dust cloud).

Um. What is this thing? Is it some kind of lamp?

...No. It's alive.

This thing is an enemy! That doesn't narrow down what it is very much at all. (Also, the music doesn't change, the area music continues to play when battling enemies here.) Let's try to find out what on earth this is.

When we pressure it, it burrows to hide. It won't expect our ice magic underground!

This is called Dead Lander Alpha. It looks like some kind of cross between a stick insect, a lamprey, and a desk lamp? (If you look closely, it seems to have some kind of mouth at the end of each limb.) I don't even know. Even without seeing it do anything, the stats make it more than obvious that the enemies here are a big step up from everything we've been fighting so far.

For now, we'll just start off attacking.

When Leif attacks, we can find out it's weak to ice! That's interesting. (Aside from the fact it's useful to exploit, the only enemies weak to ice are plants, fungi, and the Roaches' constructs in sand mode... I don't know if that tells us anything or not.)

Vi and Chompy finish hitting it. Let's see what this thing does.

Ouch. This is its most straightforward attack, some kind of headbutt or bite thing that deals 6 base damage. Whatever they are, these guys hurt!

We didn't make that big a dent in it, either. We could use some of our stronger attacks, but good TP management is quite important here (unless you've been investing a lot of levels in it, you can't really afford to go all-out in every fight).

For now, I'll have Vi heal Kabbu back to full; pacing ourselves isn't a bad idea, and we'll get the TP back this turn from TP Core.

Chompy, at least, doesn't seem intimidated at all.

Ouch. Missed the block this time. (These things definitely have other attacks, which we'll see soon enough.)

This time, it stays underground after attacking. Their moveset doesn't change while burrowed, and there's always a chance they'll go underground after attacking regardless of the move they choose. We know how to deal with this, of course.

Leif can get them out quite easily. (Of course, if Leif's out of commission, it's much more of a pain. Vi and Kabbu can only hit underground enemies by spending TP.)

I have an action to spare, so we'll have Vi heal Kabbu again. We'll get the TP back after the battle from Victory Buzz, and we can still finish this enemy this turn.

There we go.

Whatever the hell they are, Dead Landers are worth a lot of EXP!

Right. That's that dealt with, at least.

(Also, uh, why is there a huge chasm in the floor with a knife hanging over the edge? What on earth happened here?)

I should probably have just flown out over the chasm, but I decided to double back instead...

79 - ??? (Recommended listening!)

And, uh, this happened.

This is what happens when you get spotted. Scary music starts playing, and some kind of hand (?) comes from above and tries to drop one of these things on us. If you manage not to have it land on you, it'll give chase, and they're pretty fast too. (The only mercy you get is that the eye beam goes away while it's here, so you don't have to deal with multiples.)

I have a lot of questions.

So, uh. What's this one? It's got a spiky metallic-looking shell, and some kind of enormous crab claw? What kind of organism has five limbs? (As before, the ambient music continues playing through the battle, but this time it's "???" which is substantially more stressful. That song is basically this enemy's theme.)

We must block those spore missiles, but that claw cannot be ignored either!

Say hello to Dead Lander Gamma. These things are pretty terrifying, those are outright miniboss-level stats and some of their moves are seriously nasty. The game comes right out and suggests running from them (and it's worth considering). We're not going to, though.

Let's start out by having Leif cast Break. We've got to deal with that 2 defence somehow.

For now, we'll just start off with normal attacks. We want to see what this thing can do, after all.

This claw strike is the least dangerous attack they have, at 6 base damage with no added effect. As much as it hurts, I'm usually pleased to see it rather than something else.

We could play it safe, or we could get more aggressive here. That last turn didn't make much of an impact on it...

For now, I'm inclined to caution. We'll have Vi heal Kabbu back up and otherwise conserve our TP.

Chompy does the usual.

Thanks to First Plating, this attack doesn't do anything to Vi. But this one's a bit scarier. The beam deals the same 6 base damage as the claw, but it inflicts sleep and can be tricky to block with how fast it comes out.

Okay, enough messing about, let's get more aggressive.

Vi's Needle Pincer is a solid choice against these, since it goes right through their defence. Depending on how the numbers work out, Hurricane Toss is also a good option, or even Fly Drop (which was a popular way to fight them before it got nerfed).

Unfortunately, I miscalculated here and didn't end up doing quite enough damage to kill it...

Which means Vi ends up eating a claw to the face. Ouch. That definitely could have been worse, though.

It only has 2 HP left! I could easily have finished it last turn with something like Heavy Strike or Frigid Coffin.

Regardless, we can finish it now.

At least these are worth a lot of EXP! That's enough to bring us to Rank 26, too.

We'll keep on with our MP plan, of course. (We get no other bonus this time.)

We don't even get any berries? These things are stingy! (There are a few things they can drop, rarely, including Dark Cherries - in fact the only renewable source of those outside the shop - but they don't give us cash.)

As soon as the Dead Lander is gone, the eye comes back. Did you think it'd be as easy as just killing them? No reprieve for us!

With our new MP, I decided it might not be a bad idea to slap Resist All on Kabbu for now, as a bit of insurance against bad blocks. A lot of the enemies here can inflict disabling statuses, and their attacks are scary enough you really don't want to be a sitting duck.

Let's get out of here!

Uh. Is that the same eye or a different one? How many eyes does this thing even have? (No escape for us, of course it wouldn't be that simple!)

...Sigh.

79 - ???

Um, can we hide from it underground? We don't have a lot of room to manoeuver here...

Nope. Touching enemies while underground forces us out.

Right. Another one.

Break still seems like a good idea to me.

But this time, we'll get Vi in front afterward and use Hurricane Toss. It has enough defence that we're not getting any extra glitched damage here, but that's still 15 damage right off.

We'll just keep swinging after that.

Not bad! First Plating takes the claw attack for us.

It might be unwise of me, but I think I'd rather conserve TP than try to finish it this turn...

Sometimes the numbers just work out that having Vi attack three times is better. (When you stack enough attack boosts on someone, the exhaustion penalty is more of a suggestion.)

Chompy does her bit too.

And Vi gets shot with a sleep laser. (We still haven't seen these things' most dangerous attack, but don't worry, we will.)

And now we can end this.

They're still worth loads of EXP, even after that Rank Up.

Still nothing to show for it.

And, of course, the eye's back right away. Maybe we should try a different route...

Maybe these platforms to the south will be better?

Conveniently, most of this platform is out of sight even when the eye faces it, the beam angles downward into the void. I don't know if that makes sense, but I'll take it. (Sense-making is the last thing I'm concerned with right now.)

That safe platform makes it much easier to avoid being seen, we can let the eye pass us and then book it.

Guess I wasn't fast enough.

79 - ???

...And we're caught. The hand moves faster than we can fly.

I don't feel like fighting this. Let's try to flee.

Out of here!

This is a neat trick. We fled from battle while flying over the void, and once we get out the Dead Lander plummets right into the void. That actually gets rid of it. (You can't knock most enemies into pits in Bug Fables, but mercifully it does work on these.)

Well, we've made it across, at least.

There's nothing to the south but more rubble.

...Of course there are more eyes.

Also, what's this weird thing?

Whatever it is, it's an enemy!

These ones are pretty easy to first strike with Kabbu's horn when they approach you. But, uh, what is it? It has a tongue sticking out the centre of its... face?... and it's spiked all over and floating on balloons?

No matter how much I hit it, it's not coming down... guess it's up to me!

This weird thing is Dead Lander Beta, the third type. I have no idea what it's supposed to be. Vi highlights a very important detail, though: uniquely for a flying enemy in Bug Fables, these things are always airborne and can't be knocked to the ground no matter what you do. Vi's the only one who can hit them without spending TP. (Like the other Dead Landers, they're weak to ice, so Leif's Ice Rain can absolutely shred them.)

Well, let's give her a relay, get her in front and have her do what she can.

Not bad. As you can see, though, it's still airborne, and we can't relay any further turns to Vi.

Kabbu's Under Strike can hit them, but it's pretty underwhelming when he's not in front and has no attack boosts. Probably wasn't worth it.

For now, we'll have Leif and Chompy just do nothing. (Chompy can't do anything to these at all.)

...Ow. These things have some nasty attacks. Dropping on us deals 6 base damage to the entire party.

And now we've brought it low enough on HP that Vi can just swat it, so let's have her do that.

Like the other Dead Landers, these things give us loads of EXP.

A smattering of berries this time; it's only the Gammas that refuse to drop them.

Uh. What do we do now? The eye seems really fixated on that bouncy mushroom; we're not going to get on top of that book without being seen...

(It's hard to tell from screenshots, but once we get here the beam stops sweeping over the area, and just moves slightly back and forth over that mushroom by the exit.)

Let's try heading south. First off, there's another Alpha here...

We didn't see this before, but they have projectile attacks! They launch these blobs out of the, uh, appendages that are vaguely handlike?

At least we have Crazy Prepared, so we don't take a first strike from it. Let's fight this thing, I guess.

We'll just do our normal attacks for now.

And here's what the projectile attack looks like in combat. This is actually quite nasty: it's 5 base damage per hit, always fires three times, and can inflict Numb if not blocked. Supposedly it can also shoot purple blobs that inflict poison instead, but I rarely see them. Numb Resistance medals aren't a bad idea here, though these feel pretty easy to block to me.

Also, it burrowed after attacking.

We'll just keep attacking for now, though it won't be quite enough to get the kill.

Ouch. I missed the block on this, and that made it enough to KO Kabbu.

That said, thankfully, we don't need him to finish this.

Leif has enough power to just take it out right away.

These are still worth good EXP too.

Well then. (Amusingly, the berries spawn at its location, not ours, since it hit us from a distance.)

There's another mushroom here.

Before we head up, though, I'd really prefer not to leave Kabbu on 1 HP. These Crunchy Leaves we picked up in Rubber Prison should do nicely.

Much better.

Now we'll head up.

There isn't much up here, except this stone we can move with Kabbu's horn. What are we supposed to do with this?

May as well knock it down for now, I guess.

Oh. It seems to have caught the eye's attention! Once you knock the block down, the eye fixates on it instead, meaning the path forward should be open now.

...Uh. Is that its hand? Let's stay away from that, shall we?

Our path is clear, let's just go!

We can get a clean view of the eye from here, though no real clues to what kind of being this might be...

Let's go. Further up and further in.

(Splitting the update here thanks to the character limit. This is going to be a long one.)

Posted: **Mon Aug 08, 2022 4:53 am**

68: What Can Eternal Lie (Part 2)

After an area transition, we find ourselves still on top of the book. Um. Let's check in with the party.

We're just gonna keep ignoring those giant eyes, right?

It's not just the eye! They're super massive!

It's a good plan, Leif. We're ignoring them... preferably forever.

We can't do anything about it, so I guess that's one approach?

Regardless, it is certainly not gone. We're going to be dealing with it in this area too.

Much like the last area, this one is also full of rubbish, and we'll be contending with the eye beams again.

There's a flower dripping water in the corner here. Let's make note of that, we'll probably need it for something shortly.

The path east is mostly blocked; it looks like the only way forward is via the stacks of coins.

We'll need an ice block to get up high enough, so let's go back and make one to start off.

There we go.

Um, oops? (The timing here can be a bit tricky, and I got careless.)

79 - ???

Foolishly, I tried to keep going, and it caught me anyway.

We know what to expect now, but it doesn't make these things any easier.

Let's try something a bit different this time. We'll use Break first, but we'll follow it up with Empower+.

Then Vi can Hurricane Toss for 20 damage.

And attack again.

Chompy, of course, does her thing too.

And we get lucky: it goes for the claw attack, and runs into Vi's First Plating.

With the boosts still in place, we can finish it off this turn.

There we go! That was a bit easier. Though, of course, we burned through a lot of TP with that strategy, we can't do that every time. (Hard Charge is another really good option, and if you use it well you can delete them in a single turn, but that also has some sustainability issues.)

Still nothing. Right, let's try that again and do better this time.

79 - ???

Why'd I have to say that? Damn it.

Let's try something different this time, again. I'm a bit low on TP, so maybe I shouldn't spend them on status moves?

Here we can see the Gammas have the same ice weakness as the other Dead Landers. Once again... just what are these things?

Chompy does her part too, though she has a hard time getting through. (Without the Pretty Ribbon, she wouldn't be damaging this at all.)

Oof, this is nasty. This spore attack is the last thing they've been hiding, and it's seriously terrifying. This launches 4 spores across the party, dealing 4 base damage each and inflicting sleep if not blocked. If you get unlucky, this can send the entire party to sleep (and then they can stunlock you to death; this can easily become a TPK if you're not careful).

I'm not entirely sure how the sleep duration from that attack works. I think it's 2 turns from the initial hit (which immediately reduces by 1 in end-of-turn cleanup), and subsequent hits the same turn only add 1 turn?

Well, we don't have a lot of options here. Queen's Dinners can come in very handy here (as the only full-party status cure), but I'm reluctant to waste one right now. Let's just do as much damage as we can.

Needle Pincer seems like the way to go here.

Chompy does what she can; every bit helps, I suppose.

Okay. That hurts, but I think we're good now.

Leif's still asleep, but the others should be able to handle this.

Needle Pincer gets us there.

Whew. That one was a bit rough. Do not underestimate these enemies, the battle can turn against you very quickly even when you think you're doing well.

Right. Can we get through now?

Okay, we're in the clear this time.

Of course, once we get to the other side, we're immediately confronted by another eye.

This one isn't too difficult to avoid, so far.

Of course, there's an Alpha here, which we're going to need to deal with.

In the interest of trying to keep this update a reasonable length (ha ha ha, good one), I'm going to skip this battle. We've seen everything the Alphas do, though they're still by no means trivial.

Anyway, let's move on.

Um. That's new.

It's a completely new item! All the Dead Landers have a chance of dropping these, though they're a bit uncommon. (Admittedly, not as rare as they may appear from this LP, I usually find more of them than I did this run.) That description is certainly suspicious.

These are pretty risky to use. They can either heal you 8 HP, or deal 8 damage (though like other items that do damage, at least they can't kill you).

Here's a demonstration. (It took me a surprising number of takes to get this to happen. I don't know the exact odds but I think they're more likely to heal than harm.)

So, we don't really want to eat them if we can avoid it. Things become more interesting if you cook with them, though: these are a bit of a Paper Mario reference too, and like the "Mystery?" item can produce multiple outcomes. There are two different recipes, with different outcome tables.

Recipe 1:

Mystery Berry alone, or

Mystery Berry + another item

Mistake (4/11)

Big Mistake (2/11)

Roasted Berries (2/11)

Berry Juice (1/11)

Succulent Platter (1/11)

Berry Smoothie (1/11)

Recipe 2: Combine two

Mystery Berries

Mistake (1/13)

Big Mistake (2/13)

Succulent Platter (3/13)

Berry Smoothie (2/13)

Roasted Berries (1/13)

Berry Juice (1/13)

Tangy Jam (1/13)

Spicy Bomb (1/13)

Burly Bomb (1/13)

By the time you have access to Mystery Berries, most of these outcomes (other than Berry Smoothies) aren't particularly interesting. If you have a bit of time on your hands and some tolerance for savescumming, though, you can turn every one you get into a Berry Smoothie. Of course, you can also just buy Dark Cherries and/or Tangy Berries to make them yourself; these are more of a novelty than anything else, really.

I got the listed odds from the wiki, though in my personal experience it feels like I receive Berry Smoothies more frequently than this. Maybe I've just been lucky?

Anyway, we have room, so let's take that with us. (I wouldn't throw away useful items for Mystery Berries, but as long as I have room I'll definitely keep them.) For now, let's head onward.

And of course, there's another eye again. Will we ever escape this thing?

There's more rubbish here, and another book. This might be tricky to navigate.

Along the northern edge of the book, we can eventually spot a lever up on a ledge. We'll probably have to get to that somehow...

Let's check out the rest of the area.

There's nothing in this corner, just some gears blocking us in.

Let's be careful here, we don't want to be spotted again...

And here we can see that the book is on the edge of yet another chasm.

Getting through here without being spotted is mostly a matter of timing... of course, this is mostly a dead end, but it looks like there's something we can collect over there.

It's a new medal, though! Those are always interesting.

Status Mirror is a really weird one. For 3 MP, when an enemy attack inflicts a status effect on the equipped bug, this medal will attempt to inflict that same status on the enemy. (This doesn't work with Attack Down or Defence Down; it applies to any status effect that can be cured by items, i.e., Freeze, Poison, Numb, Sleep.)

It's a strange and niche effect, and honestly doesn't seem worth the MP to me. Because of how late in the game it comes, I've never made much use of it; I've always kind of hoped to get it early enough in a randomiser run to play around with, but that hasn't happened for me yet.

That said... I always thought it worked differently, until I did some testing with it in anticipation of this update, and it's not quite what I thought it was. I had previously thought it also worked with buffs like Attack Up and Charge Up, and worked if your party members inflicted the status. So, for example, you could get more mileage out of Leif's single-target buff spells, or get more value out of poison items/Weak Stomach, etc, by having the target equip Status Mirror. It doesn't actually work like this, though (and never has, I tested in earlier versions of the game also), which makes it a lot less interesting. Status Mirror is nearly impossible to use in a proactively strategic way.

Incidentally, now that we've found Status Mirror, we've seen every type of medal in the game! We still have a few medals left to find, but we know all the medal effects now.

Anyway, let's head back, there's nothing else we can do here.

Right. Now, how do we progress?

There's another Dead Lander Beta up here, I guess we'd best deal with that first.

Once again, in the interest of trying to keep this concise, I'm going to skip this battle. We didn't see any new attacks from it, just the same flying slam. As long as we relay a lot of turns to Vi, these go down pretty quickly (though their attacks still hurt!).

Let's move on.

Before that, though, let's have a look at their other attack, since I didn't manage to get any of them to do it. In addition to the slam, they have this poison jet attack, which deals two hits (4 base damage each) and can inflict poison if not blocked. The slam is probably scarier, though this attack can put out a lot of single-target damage and is devastating against anyone with negative defence.

Right, where were we?

We can get on this paddle, but it doesn't really lead to anywhere...

Although if we walk along the shaft (carefully, it's thin), we can get to the switch we saw earlier. What happens if we hit it?

The switch causes the paddle arm to extend, giving us a way to get across!

As an added bonus, the eye doesn't seem to be able to spot us up here!

And we get across.

This area's pretty scary, especially with all the giant spider webs...

Of course there are still eyes. (How many damn eyes does this thing have? Is it following us, or is it just everywhere?)

That said, it's not all that difficult to avoid here, it's just sweeping the area.

Another Beta?

Oof. This is a bit nastier, it actually has an Alpha with it!

I don't think I want to let both of these get a turn, and the Beta has less health, so we'll start off with a Hurricane Toss from Vi.

With two more hits, she can kill it. That took almost our entire turn, but it's worth it to reduce the number of attacks we're going to take. (All of these enemies are very resistant to status effects, so disabling them isn't a great option. All three types of Dead Lander are immune to Freeze and Sleep, and have 75% resistance to Numb.)

Leif and Chompy can get a start on the last one.

Thankfully, I manage to block all of the numbing shots.

From here, it's a normal fight against a Dead Lander Alpha. We're a bit low on TP, so it might take a few turns of back and forth, but it's not terribly interesting to watch so I'm going to skip ahead to the end.

Though, unfortunately, it does get quite a few licks in. I wouldn't say I was in danger of losing the fight, but I wouldn't want to fight another Dead Lander in this state...

We're close to ranking up again, but not close enough I'd want to get my healing that way...

Right. What is this area, exactly?

Uh. That's a... red crystal? We've never seen one of those before. Is it a good idea to hit that, do you think?

For better or worse, it's up high enough that we'll need an ice block to reach it, so let's make one.

Right. What is this going to do?

It fully healed us! That's pretty nice. Didn't give us the option to save, though...

Also, the ringing sound of the crystal immediately gets the attention of the eye thing! The beam moves very quickly toward us once we hit it and is basically impossible to avoid.

79 - ???

So we get our healing, but it comes with one of these guys. Lovely.

I've shown enough fights against these that you should have a general idea of what this is like, so I'm going to skip this one. (We've already had plenty of combat in this update...) That said, I got pretty lucky, and managed to end the fight in a position where, after Triumph Buzz and Victory Buzz, I ended up with the party on full HP and TP. That was pretty convenient.

Getting close to that level-up now!

(If you want to ensure being on full health for the next area, another thing you can do is just run away and book it after you get out of the fight. You might need to run from battle a few times if it keeps catching you, but we're close enough to the area transition that you can make it there, and the Dead Lander won't follow us between screens.)

Right. Where are we headed, exactly?

There's light here, at least. And a save crystal, which we should probably make use of ASAP.

Look, there's light over there!

Civilization? We must check it out!

Our team remark on it too.

Once we approach the light source, we walk into the beginning of a cutscene.

And our allies catch up with us!

Those Dead Landers aren't anything to mess with, either.

(Is that a refrigerator? How on earth is that thing still running?)

It seems to be a machine. The giants handled power at such a large scale...

It reminds us of the Lost Sands' Castle.

Well, whatever. It can be as tall and as cold as it wants. We're gonna climb it!

What is it?

Everyone, we've been surrounded!

79 - ???

...This doesn't look good.

We should fall back!

There's no way out. They've completely pincered us!

Everyone, there is no choice! We fight as one!

Well spoken, my knight. I shall assist thee as well!

This is a pretty unique fight, to the point I'd probably consider it the miniboss for this area, so I thought it deserved a video. (If nothing else, all three Dead Landers count as minibosses for purposes of Spy Cards.) We've got one of each, and we also have the assistance of both Maki and Elizant.

And yes, Elizant being here means we have access to Royal Decree. That seems like a good idea, let's use it!

Much better. Now let's do some damage!

Like before, the Beta tends to be the weakest link since it has the fewest HP, so I'm going to take it out first. A Hurricane Toss from Vi gets us most of the way there.

Now, let's take care of the rest.

Kabbu's Under Strike seems like a good choice here! He's in front and has an attack boost this time, so he can do solid damage with it. That's done for the Beta, at least, which should make our lives a bit easier.

(Similarly, if you've boosted Leif's attack a lot, maybe with Hard Charge and/or Last Attack, you can nuke the shit out of this with Ice Rain and maybe even take out two of them on turn one... but I'm not doing that this run.)

For now, we'll make what attacks we can on the Alpha.

Don't leave Maki out, either! He can still output some solid damage, and he pierces their defence too. (Maki will always attack the enemy in front, which is worth keeping in mind when planning.)

That could have been much, much worse. We definitely got lucky there.

Right. The Alpha's seriously damaged, so we should be able to get rid of it this turn. Let's try to clear the way for Maki to hit the Gamma.

There we go, that wasn't too hard.

Chompy can't do much, but damage is damage.

And there goes Maki. God, it's satisfying getting to fight with him again.

Okay, we're in the clear now I think. Blocking the beam means we don't get sent to sleep, and the worst of this fight is definitely behind us. (It's much, much scarier if the Gamma uses the spore attack, especially if the others are still alive when it does.)

Right. Can we finish things this turn, perhaps?

Let's get Vi in front, then have Leif cast Break.

We can do serious damage with Hurricane Toss after that!

A few more attacks...

And with the 6 damage from Maki, we've managed to get precisely enough!

It's enough for us to Rank Up, too!

08 - Getting Stronger!

(Heh, neat, Maki's still here on the level-up screen!)

We'll pick MP again, of course.

Oh, wow, this is nice. At Rank 27, we get a bonus of 3 MP, which is basically a free extra level.

(Um, that's awkward, the achievement notification showed up during the cutscene. We'll talk about that in a moment. Also, this cutscene plays out without music.)

Everyone, you did splendidly! The coast is clear!

Well, duh. You were with us!

Let's press forward. We need to find a way to get the others to come over.

We were fortunate to have help...

The Dead Landers must be slowing the Wasp King down as well. Let's catch up!

We regain control. Before we have a look around, what was that achievement, anyway?

It's for having reached the level cap. Which is Rank 27. That might seem like a peculiar number; I can't think of any reason for it other than a Paper Mario reference, because 27 was also the maximum level in Paper Mario 64. The thing is, there was a sensible reason for it in that game (it's a consequence of Mario's maximum stats being 50 HP, 50 FP, and 30 BP), and there isn't anything like that here. Regardless, it's a sensible number from a game balance perspective at least.

With the way experience gains work, it's fairly normal to hit the cap around this point (or perhaps earlier, if you've been grinding). One thing worth pointing out is that the Dead Landers (and some other enemies up ahead) are exempt from Bug Me Not!, so you can't get out of fighting them by being overlevelled the way you can with a lot of other enemies.

(Here's a look at our status screen, since it's been a while.)

Of course, there's also a new banter here.

By Venus, if we'd been ambushed alone...

We woulda been fine!

It's fine to admit we needed help, Vi.

...I know, but I don't wanna think we woulda lost!

Heh. It's definitely winnable, but even with our party at max power, it could be a bit iffy and RNG-dependent (unless, of course, you go all in on Ice Rain, that takes most of the edge off).

Let's have a look around here now.

Elizant and Team Maki are hanging out over here. Let's talk to them.

(Climbing that thing will be a monumental task, however...)

Elizant is, of course, determined to press on.

Handling such great power, how could they have vanished?

And with the state of this place, how could it happen in such a terrible way?

Maki is asking the questions a lot of us have probably been thinking.

Kina is very impressed with the refrigerator.

And Yin isn't any more talkative than usual.

There's also a banter we can see.

At least with everyone here, this place feels less oppressive.

It's only getting more dangerous as we go.

We can't stop! If the Wasp King can, we totally can too!

Nice to see everyone's still determined.

To the south, we can find Zasp and Mothiva.

They stayed behind. The Dead Landers were too tough for them.

Maybe we can open a path for them to come over?

Maybe. But this place is... something else. For once, I fear for our safety.

It's gonna be fine! We've all gotten super strong!

...Thanks.

Heh. Who'd have ever thought Vi would be giving Zasp a pep talk?

Are you, uh, nervous?

N-No! It's gonna be fine! It's gonna be fine...

...It will. I promise. We will protect you!

We... we don't need it! Seriously!

Heheh. We're gonna do it anyways!

Let alone Kabbu trying to reassure Mothiva? It just goes to show how serious this situation is. (Protecting someone out of spite is such a Vi thing to do, too.)

If we explore a bit past where Mothiva and Zasp are, we can find this interesting sight. That looks like the plug for the refrigerator... apparently it's drawing power from one of the magic crystals? I guess that explains how it's still running (and we don't need to think about the state of the power grid).

And this is where we're going to be stopping for today, since there's a save crystal here. Next time, we'll attempt to climb a refrigerator.

So, was anyone expecting outright eldritch abominations? Your guess is as good as mine as to what the Dead Landers actually are. The giant thing with the eyes and hands, by the way, is known as Dead Lander Omega, and there is very little information to go on about it. There is speculation that the large shadow we saw moving around from the telescope was it, but as far as I know that hasn't been confirmed.

Gameplay and atmosphere-wise, this section is absolutely fantastic. There's just enough of a horror aesthetic to be unsettling, and the enemies here are hard enough to really sell that (especially when you don't know what's coming or how long you need your resources to last), and make you think through your actions. And while the Dead Landers are a bit out of left field, I feel like the game's been dropping enough hints that this area is strange and fearsome to justify something like this. Whatever else it is, it's certainly memorable.

Posted: **Sun Aug 14, 2022 12:36 am**

Look who finally stopped by for a visit!

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:50 pm**

Aww, those plushies are cute!

Also what on Earth happened in the dead lands? Where did all the humans go? I hope we find out, but I suspect it's going to be one of those eternal mystery dealies.

Posted: **Thu Aug 25, 2022 4:52 am**

69: A Chilly Reception

Last time, after fighting our way through the Dead Lands and surviving the final Dead Lander ambush, we found ourselves faced with an enormous (well, from a bug's-eye view, anyway) refrigerator. And it appears to be the only way forward, so we're going to have to climb it.

Before we go in, though, let's put on some more medals. We also reached the level cap last time, which means we now have the maximum possible 86 MP.

For now I'm not going to do anything too fancy. Vi gets Leaf Cloak to keep some enemy attention off her, Leif gets Hard Charge and Status Relay (which I've always liked as a source of emergency burst damage), and we'll put on a few more TP Pluses. I've removed the status resistance medals from Kabbu to make room.

I promise I will show off some crazy builds in the postgame (there are several boss rushes and enemy gauntlets that are perfect for that), but for now I want to keep things straightforward.

With that taken care of, let's head into the fridge.

It's a fridge. Complete with incredibly rotten food (just how long has all this been here?), I don't want to think about how it must smell. Though I guess it's possible bugs could find it pleasant.

I-I-It's c-c-coold...!

Jump and stretch, Vi! You must keep your body warm!

You seem fine, Kabbu. The chub must be helping.

It's muscle!

The banter in here is cute. Though it does raise some questions for me - what would stretching even mean to bugs, given they have exoskeletons?

Also, we have yet another joke about Kabbu being fat, which according to the artbook is actually poking fun at the devs. (I may have mentioned this before, but Kabbu underwent a visual redesign early on because they found the first version tricky to animate. I've never thought the new version looked all that pudgy either, honestly, but for better or worse that's the joke.)

Taking a few steps in, we can get a better view of the area. We've got geysers, water droplets, ice blocks... clearly, we've got some puzzling ahead of us.

Also, there are enemies here.

We get these cool frozen-looking leaves in here. (Just like in the Dead Lands, the area music continues playing over the battles.)

And some very familiar looking enemies (in ice mode, naturally). Finding Roach-built constructs here is certainly interesting... also, the battle background's pretty fun, with all the food containers.

That said, they're exactly the same as they were in Chapter 4, and we're a lot more powerful. This is an effortless fight, so I won't be showing it.

Also, here's what the battle-end screen looks like now that we're at the level cap. The metre stays filled at 140/140 EXP and we will gain zero from now on.

Thanks, I guess?

Right, now for the puzzle. There's a bouncy mushroom we can just barely see on top of the box, and we need to get up there somehow.

Interestingly, most of the puzzles in here are pretty open-ended, and have multiple possible solutions. I don't know if the solutions I'll be showing are the intended ones; I always kind of end up feeling like I'm janking my way through.

To start with, we'll make an ice block.

Then we'll move the big one around. The big ice blocks pass right through unfrozen geysers, but if you need them to stop instead, you can freeze the geyser to enable collision. (I don't think I've ever found that necessary though.)

We'll put it in the corner.

Now we'll wait for this geyser to reach a reasonable height (somewhere between the small ice block and the large one), then freeze it.

We'll move this a bit closer, then get on top of it.

Now we fly over to the frozen geyser. (Remember that we gain about a jump's worth of height when we start flying.)

From there, we can fly up on top of the big ice block. It doesn't quite look like we can make it here (I should've made the geyser a bit taller honestly), but it's pretty forgiving, and the edges of the ice cube have a bit of slope to them that let us get up.

Now, of course, our goal is in sight.

We just fly over to the tin of tomatoes, and we can get on top of the box from there.

That was easy! Up we go.

Right. Another floor, which no doubt means another puzzle. (Incidentally, there's no new banter here, the fridge is actually one giant interconnected room.)

Before we head in, there's a sneaky gap between the wall and the bottom of that milk carton! And if you look carefully, you might see something hiding there.

It's Crystal Berry #50!

We get an achievement for having finally collected them all.

Right. With that out of the way, let's fly back over to the main part of this shelf and see what we're dealing with here.

More ice blocks, of course.

Let's also note the icicles hanging down. Those might get in the way...

And on top of that soda can, yet another bouncy mushroom. There's our goal.

We'll start off by making an ice block with the droplet here.

Then move it over here, to make stairs we can use to get up. One thing worth noting (that might get a bit annoying here) is that the edges of that icy floor are a barrier we can't move ice blocks past. In other parts of the game, we've been able to give them altitude and knock them up ledges, etc, but that doesn't work in here for some reason.

From there, we get the big ice block down.

Right. What do we want to do with it, though?

Here we can observe that the small ice block works as a barrier to stop the big one's movement...

So let's make a new one (it's faster than moving the other) and put it... here looks good.

This way, we can line it up to go further east.

There we go.

Now we just put the stairs together again...

And we can make our way up here. Great?

Actually, it's where we need to be. We can get just enough flying distance to make it over to the second (immovable) big ice pillar.

And from there, we can fly around the icicles, and make it to the block we moved earlier! (The trick to this puzzle, such as it is, being noticing that the block is absolutely needed to cross this side, while we don't need it to reach the first pillar.)

Then we fly over to this cup.

And up we go.

Right. Another level.

First, let's deal with this enemy? It's another very easy fight...

But we get nothing for defeating it, and it pops back into existence shortly afterward. We're probably going to need to freeze it for the puzzle. Let's get our bearings first, though.

We've got lots of geysers, two big ice blocks, and some kind of wooden platform up high? We should try to get up there.

Right. First, we'll freeze the respawning enemy.

To start with, we'll put both of the large ice blocks near the platform.

Then send the larger one west. Once again, we're more or less building staircases here (once we account for our flight).

Then we freeze some geysers at variable heights, like before.

Now, we'll just do our flying in stages.

This always feels a bit janky to me, but it works well enough to get us up here.

The fight here has a Haunted Cloth as well, but it's still not much of a challenge.

Moving on.

More Magic Ice, hooray. This enemy does stay defeated, though.

From here, we can fly over to the ice block.

Then get on top of the can.

And from there, we can fly over to this bottle. It may look a bit precarious, but the cork at least is a sturdy platform.

What's this?

Why is there a lift in here? Well, nothing else for it, let's ride it.

It brings us... somewhere? We've reached an upper level, at least, but what will we find here?

We can drop down and find solid ground, at least.

This place...

Is this...?

The banter isn't particularly helpful, is it.

Our allies file in behind us...

No way!

So some didn't vanish after all.

Please, allow us to explain the situation. We're short on time.

...S-Sorry, Elder.

No! Please, in the name of my people, allow me to explain...

Everything fades out and the music goes silent briefly while they explain.

To think that after uneventful generations guarding the sapling...

So many would come for it in just one day.

Disgusting. How can he treat his loyal followers like that!?

Huh. You do have a heart!

Please, allow us to go after him!

And what will you do when you get the sapling from him?

I had a dream. To use its power to fulfill my wishes...

But the lust for that power has only brought turmoil to Bugaria.

I will destroy it!

She entrusted her dream to me. And I've fulfilled it.

The land teemed with explorers searching for the ultimate treasure.

She... would be proud of me. She deserves to rest.

Elder! If they destroy it... what will be of us? Our life's purpose?

That crook may be mad, but he wouldn't desecrate our treasure like you! Humph!

The elder storms off.

No, Vi! This is not the way to solve this!

They are blinded by their devotion... understandable.

Elizant, our Queen... We will support you. We must plead our case once more.

Well, that didn't go well, did it?

We've certainly learned some things, though. The Roaches aren't completely gone, for one thing: at least some of them survived in this village, and have been guarding the sapling the entire time. Also, they've confirmed for us that the sapling does exist, at least.

So some Roaches were alive after all...

It's surreal. They're just like the ones from our time.

...How long have they had to deal with Dead Landers?

There's a new banter now, too. Vi's question is a pretty good one...

Anyway, let's have a look around.

We'll start with this house.

This Roach picks up on Leif's magic immediately and gets suspicious. It would probably take too long to explain, wouldn't it...

There are a fair number of people we can talk to outside.

Wherever they are, what purpose did they find without the sapling...?

Their lives revolve around the Sapling, but they don't seem very thrilled about it. Let's check the banter.

It's super dangerous, but they're all pretty calm...

When you live surrounded by danger, it seems you get used to it?

No way! I could never get used to the Dead Landers!

And yet, they've had no choice...

We'll see this one for most of the Roaches. Despite everything we went through to get here, the Roaches' attitudes go a long way toward establishing a mood of ennui at best.

Also, a lot of the Roaches here are injured; they do seem to have tried to fight the Wasp King, though not to much success.

The Roaches fight the Dead Landers frequently, yet they're this hurt...

The Wasp King will answer for this!

There's a different banter for the injured ones. Let's hope we'll be able to do better?

Gen and Eri are here. Let's see what they have to say.

We... We somehow made it through! But it's too much!

We believe in you! You can do it!

They seem a bit overwhelmed, but at least they have some words of encouragement for us.

Our comrades are hurt...

Without them, we'd be even more hurt, as well...

Grr... That dumb Wasp King's the reason everyone got hurt! I'll show him!

There's another banter for our various allies.

What's this?

It's my duty to watch over this lift. Ask me anytime.

If we talk to the roach here, he'll let us ride this lift if we want. This is a very convenient shortcut, and means we don't have to slog through the Dead Landers again if we want to get back here; we won't be taking it just yet, but I'll show where this goes later this update.

Right, let's find everyone else.

Levi and Celia have made it here as well.

I will entrust the Ant Kingdom's future to you, Team Snakemouth.

We've got to get through this!

They seem a bit demoralised, but at least they still believe in us?

Over here, we have a save crystal, and a couple of roaches guarding a pen full of scorpions. Let's see what they have to say.

I'm sensing a theme here.

Scorpions as PETS!? That's nuts!

Their cuteness could stand to be a bit higher...

Bleh. After the desert we hoped we'd never see one again.

By the Queen! I never did ask!

D-Does your back still hurt?

O-Oh yeah...

We're fine. Thanks for worrying, though.

The scorpion handlers do get a unique banter, if we check. This one's cute.

There are more familiar faces over this way, too.

Zasp is a bit worried.

Maybe I should tour here sometime to liven things up!

And Mothiva's feeling altruistic for once. (Signs of the world ending, perhaps?)

...What's Amber doing here?

When in blazes did Ms. Amber follow us here!?

H-Hey, that's right! How did she cross!?

This commitment to her job has turned absurd!

E-Even though she's acting strong, she's shaking...

Our team wonder much the same thing in the banter.

If we talk to her, she won't comment on it, just offer the usual storage services. It's convenient, at least; I'm not sorry to see her.

She's not just offering storage, though! She's actually running a shop too, so we can refill on items if we need them. Let's take a look at the inventory.

Leaf Salad (6 berries)

Magic Seed (17 berries)

Glazed Honey (8 berries)

Burly Berry (11 berries)

She has something of an odd mix of items: nothing too spectacular, but they're all serviceable enough, and will get the job done if you don't have anything better. Also, everything's very slightly discounted, she does seem to be trying to help us out.

Let's buy a Magic Seed to see what she says.

Y-You can do it!

Even Amber's rooting for us. If we back out of buying an item, she'll say this instead:

P-Please! Make sure y-you're prepared!

It's nice of her to be thinking of us.

At the west end of the area, a few roaches are guarding the exit.

But we won't let you pass through.

(He's not lying, if we try to walk past him we'll see this same dialogue and be sent back.)

...Constructs, you say? That's not ominous at all.

Inside the house by Amber, we can find someone else to talk to.

She's running an inn of sorts, and will let us sleep for free if we need to. Sure, why not?

I'm hoping you don't snore...

20 - Night at the Inn

It's still good for healing.

If we talk to her and decline the offer, she'll just say this:

Don't push yourselves.

Right. That's everything here on this level...

So let's head up via this mushroom.

Right.

Continuing the theme of the Wasp King overpowering everyone...

Also, here are Kina and Yin.

Neither is particularly talkative right now, though.

And, finally, we have this larger building.

Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the Elder's residence.

Is the Elder, like... the Roach Queen?

Doesn't seem that way. Everyone just seems to respect her very much.

A Queen chosen by the people... In the north, we also had such a system.

If we check the banter, we can also learn a (very little) bit more about Kabbu's homeland.

Talking to anyone in here starts another cutscene.

Please, you must listen!

Team Snakemouth, you're here. Perhaps you have some words of persuasion?

A few, if you'll allow us.

...Please.

Leif hesitates for a few moments, before beginning to speak.

15 - The One Left Behind (Leif's Theme)

We served under the first Queen Elizant.

W-What!?

Is this true, Kabbu!?

Y-Yes. It was not our secret to tell.

When we were found, we discovered they'd all disappeared... And no one knew why.

But during our travels, we found a laboratory...

Roaches had experimented on others, creating vile monsters!

All in the hope of replicating a fraction of the sapling's power!

What good has the Sapling done anybody all these moons?

All it's done is plunge explorers into danger. And now that mad King's gone crazy for power...

Even our late queen was tempted by the promise of eternal life. The sapling's only hurt others by existing! Even you!

Leif... Thank you for your words.

Won't you reconsider, Elder?

"Good, evil... it all comes from this sapling. It is sacred."

"So sacred that we endure to protect it."

And so we have, for so long...

Every time a child strays too far, never to be seen again...

It's the sapling's fault! Sacred, my husk!

T-Then, you'll reconsider!?

We will find a new purpose!

One that doesn't doom us to live on the edge of violence.

One that lets us enjoy the plains of legend again!

Elder, thank you...

You are welcome in our Kingdom, to explore that possibility.

We'll let you pass to the Sapling Plains.

Go destroy that sapling. Our new future depends on it.

We coulda done it sooner! Let's run!

(bug-fables.png)

That's why she's our Vi. Let's finish this.

And with that, we regain control. I'm never quite sure how to feel about this scene, honestly: these are all the developments we've been building to, and nothing happening is unreasonable, but everything still feels a bit too abrupt. Elizant's newfound conviction that the sapling should be destroyed is a conclusion she came to offscreen, away from us, so while she has no doubt been thinking about it for a while, that doesn't come through explicitly in the text... and then it only takes us one conversation to convince the Roach Elder.

There is actually another version of this scene, where Leif's speech is a bit different. You see this one if you don't explore the Snakemouth lab, in which case Leif doesn't know about it to reference:

This is something only Vi and Kabbu knew, but... We are not of this time.

We served under the first Queen Elizant.

W-What!?

Is this true, Kabbu!?

Y-Yes. It was not our secret to tell.

The Roaches used to roam Bugaria, even if they secluded themselves a bit.

When we were found, we discovered they'd all disappeared... And no one knew why.

But it's not just the Roaches. Many teams have vanished since then.

What's your point?

What good has the Sapling done anybody all these moons?

All it's done is plunge explorers into danger. And now that mad King's gone crazy for power...

Even our late queen was tempted by the promise of eternal life. The sapling's only hurt others by existing! Even you!

So instead of talking about the atrocities it drove the Snakemouth roaches to, his argument instead rests on the explorers going missing searching for it. (There's only one line that's new in this version, but it does make the texture of the scene a bit different, so I wanted to show it in context.)

Either way, Leif's argument does eventually get through to the Elder, and she gives us permission to go after the Sapling.

Its power is too strong for any bug to handle... Because of it, we are the last Roaches in these lands.

Please destroy it once and for all. We cannot do that ourselves.

If we talk to her again, she certainly seems to have taken our new goal to heart.

But we will have time for sight-seeing later. Let's go after the Wasp King.

Elizant and Maki have a bit of new dialogue for us too.

Right. Before we chase after the Wasp King and the Sapling, let's take a quick detour via this lift, there are a few last-minute errands we can do.

The lift takes us down...

And we come out here. Where is here, exactly?

Oh. We're right at the entrance to the Giant's Lair, as you can tell by Venus' presence. That's certainly convenient.

And from there, we have easy access to the Ant Mines.

Our first stop is the Library, since we've now found all the Discoveries.

This time you have 50 Discoveries, last time you had found 47...

Looks like you have enough for the next reward tier! Here you go!

Heheheh. Get ready for the next reward!

Well, not really. That's kinda all we had.

Huh?

The Queen's budget covered 10 rewards. The program's complete!

It feels like forever, but we did it!

Welp, without rewards Vi ain't gonna donate anything else.

That's fine. You've all helped so much! Thank you!

Well, it was pretty good while it lasted!

And there we go. The final reward for collecting Discoveries is a Heart Berry, which is pretty nice. We got quite a few nice goodies along the way, too (the most valuable one was definitely the Victory Buzz medal, though). I usually think of this Heart Berry as being postgame, but we can technically get it as soon as we've entered the Giant's Lair. We'll have to decide who to give it to.

If we talk to Libren again, this is all she'll have to say.

Right, where to next?

We have all the Crystal Berries, so let's finally go clean Shades out! Before that, though... we didn't see Stratos and Delilah here before, did we?

My only regret is that I didn't get to see it. Heh.

Bugaria's way safer now, thanks to you clearing those bounties!

They both have some new dialogue congratulating us on defeating the bounties. There's also a new banter for them:

That's a wrap for the bounties. Thankfully, we had their tips to find them.

It's kinda weird to take all the credit...

They're satisfied having found the monsters and sent us to them...

I'm grateful, but you're right. It's not enough! Bea! Some juice for them!

This is another cute one. (For better or worse, the game doesn't charge us for buying them a round.)

Now let's buy Shades' last medal.

Kehehe! Here you go my lovelies...

Come back if you still have any berries left to spend! Kehehe!

But we don't have any berries left to spend, do we? Let's talk to him again...

Your fault for selling super good stuff!

We can already get in, though...

Kehehe... There's a "menu" you can input that on.

Menu? I do not understand...

Keh. Sorry. That's all I know.

Thanks for all the business! Kehehe!!!

So, our reward for cleaning Shades out is yet another Menu Code. I can't say this is one of my favourites... what "FRAMEONE" does is disable normal blocking, so only Super Blocks work (which doesn't precisely require frame-perfect timing, so the name is slightly misleading, but the general idea comes through). This obviously exists for challenge run purposes.

It's not to my personal taste (I tend to find making the game more dexterity-dependent frustrating, and prefer ramping up the difficulty in other ways), but you might like it as a way to spice up a replay.

Right, we're done here. Where to next?

Our last stop for now is in Defiant Root, to check in with Sun the berry salesman.

Ooh. That sounds very nice, but let's see what he says if we decline first.

No problem, travelers. I hope you're back soon, before this chance slips away.

Going for the hard sell, there, but he doesn't really need to convince me.

I absolutely want this thing.

Use it well, travelers.

I do not have any more berries with me at the moment, but I might find some more in the future. Please come back some other time.

Heh, this is actually a lie, at least where the game mechanics are concerned. The Iron Seed we just bought is the last item he'll get in stock (it became available when we started Chapter 7).

If we talk to him again, he'll actually admit being sold out.

We now have to decide who gets to eat both of these berries! Honestly, in one sense it's a bit of a no-brainer, there's only one Uncle Iron Seed after all... and even if it weren't for that, he tends to be the best able to make use of it.

But as always, I will put myself at the mercy of the thread. Please vote for who gets each of the berries! I will also accept "nobody" as an answer: because most players tend to get these in the postgame, finishing Chapter 7 without using them is a more representative experience.

Right, detour's over, let's head back.

Getting back is very simple, we just walk into the gap and the lift picks us up automatically.

We'll stop here for now. Next time... will we finally catch up with the Wasp King? I'll see you then!

Posted: **Fri Aug 26, 2022 2:38 am**

I vote for Kabbu, because it'll help counteract the malus from Favorite One.

Posted: **Wed Sep 07, 2022 3:30 am**

70: Through the Fire and Flames

Last time, we climbed a refrigerator and discovered a hidden village of Roaches, who stayed here to guard the Sapling. After some fraught negotiations, Elizant and Leif were able to convince the Roach Elder that the Sapling would be better off destroyed and got her permission to chase after the Wasp King.

Before we get on with that, we have a bit of minor administrivia.

We have to allocate these two stat-boosting berries. There was a pretty firm majority opinion in favour of (trying to) slake Leif's appetite: he's getting both.

Like so. He's going to be very difficult to kill (which would be nice if he weren't sort of already dead, but, you know).

Strategy-wise, the correct decision is usually to give the Iron Seed to Kabbu because defence boosts synergise with his taunting, but this will work just fine. (And there are potentially valid reasons to put them elsewhere. For instance, if you're going to use Taunt + Bubble Shield Lite + Favorite One consistently on Kabbu, he doesn't need the defence, and it'll help the others against party-wide attacks.) Regardless, this is what we've chosen and we can definitely work with it.

Also, medals.

Quick Flea and Break can come off for now, we're not getting a whole lot of benefit from them.

With the 3 MP that frees up, I'll finally put on the fifth TP Plus. 30 TP is the most we're going to get on an all-MP build (and it's more than enough). A bit more of a buffer is convenient here, and I don't need the MP for any more sophisticated plans yet.

Here's Leif's status screen, showing his newly increased stats.

Also, before we head out, let's make a quick stop at Amber.

Let's drop off some of the junk we picked up in the previous areas.

And while I'm at it, I'll grab some nice things out of storage; we may as well. I don't know if I'll end up using these, but they could be convenient.

Right. Now that that's done, let's press onward and see what's waiting for us!

52 - Ant Kingdom, Under Attack!

We can barely take a few steps in before encountering a crisis situation. (We've heard this music before, when the Wasps invaded the Ant Kingdom, but it tends to feel very different in this context for some reason. A lot of people, myself included, were genuinely surprised to learn it's the same song.)

That monster... he put the place on fire and rushed through the flames...!

(Yes, that's a stove. Though I've never seen one that makes tall cyclones of fire... maybe the Wasp King's magic is influencing it?)

Through the flames!? That's...

Even our Bubble Shield couldn't pull that off...

Save your strength. Everything's fine now!

Ugh. You just had to say that, didn't you.

Everyone, protect this Roach!

I was just waiting for you to say it!

(Just like in the previous chapter 7 areas, the area music continues to play through the battles.)

Welp. More new enemies! Though these look kind of familiar... and we can already see their HP?

Indeed, if we try to spy, we'll discover that the game considers us to already have done. These are fire variants of Krawler, Warden, and Haunted Cloth; previously we've only seen sand and ice variants. This form does have increased maximum HP relative to the others.

Also, Maki's fighting alongside us again. (And so is Elizant, we have access to Royal Decree in this battle. I never feel the need to use it in this fight, so I always forget it's an option.)

We'll start off with some normal attacks.

Interestingly, the fire forms are all weak to ice.

A few more attacks from Vi and Chompy, and we can take out the Krawler right away.

Leaving Maki free to start in on the Warden. He doesn't have any problems hitting airborne enemies.

The Warden's laser attack is familiar, though of course it's a fiery variant. This deals 4 base damage, and if we hadn't blocked, we'd be seeing a new status effect: fire attacks, naturally, can burn us. (We'll talk about burning soon enough, once we actually see it happen.)

The Haunted Cloths still have their HP-draining attack, though at base 2 damage it's more dangerous than it was last time! The healing can start to add up now, if you don't take them out in a single turn. (It's dealing 3 damage here because Kabbu has Favorite One on.)

You may already be picking up on a trend: the fire variants' attacks are all stronger versions of attacks the other forms had. (And any status-inflicting attacks inflict burning instead of what they used to.)

Right. Let's press the attack, then.

Vi and Leif make quick work of the Warden.

Then we get started on the Haunted Cloth.

Maki does his part too, of course.

The fire Cloths also have the spin attack, though it's a more threatening 4 base damage now. (Between Back Support, the Iron Seed, and guarding, Leif only took 1 damage from it!)

We've now seen all the attacks from the fiery variant of Haunted Cloth: they don't have a counterpart to the ice form's freezing breath.

That wasn't so bad. Let's finish this.

First, though, let's heal Kabbu. He took a lot of damage, and we'll get the TP back after the fight.

And down it goes.

It's theoretically possible to get EXP from these enemies, but I have no idea how lucrative they actually are, I don't think I've ever not been at max level here. (One of these days I do want to attempt some low-level runs...)

They were like those in the Sand Castle...

They're usually harmless, but that monster's appearance riled them up...

As if that wall of flames wasn't enough trouble.

We'll have to find a way to cross, or shut them off.

(I think Mothiva speaks for everyone here.)

W-What did we even do to them...

Team Snakemouth. My Queen. Leave these to Kina and me.

Trying to hog all the glory, eh?

Stop being annoying. We need you to turn off that fire!

Team Mothiva. Team Snakemouth. I will remain to assist Maki in defending the village.

A-Are you sure? We could stay as well!

Time is of the essence. I need your teams to quell those flames!

Make haste! Bugaria is counting on you!

We'll be back before you know it.

Yeah! Let's go!

Try not to slow us down. Ohohohoho!

The cutscene ends there, and we regain control. Before we head out, there's a new banter here, and we can talk to everyone again.

A machine that can produce flames... the giants could create such dangerous things.

It could burn down all of our kingdoms in no time...

O-Oi! Focus on what we've gotta do!

Our team do not seem particularly thrilled by the concept of machines that shoot fire. Right, let's talk to people. First up, Elizant:

Don't worry. It's nothing we can't handle.

She seems to feel a bit guilty about sending us in, but we don't really have a choice in the matter.

Everyone's counting on us. We must turn down those flames!

Easier said than done...

If we check the banter for any of our allies, we can see this one.

The roach sentry is appreciative, at least. He also gets his own banter:

He picked the wrong scouting shift, huh.

It's not every day a mad king blitzes through an ancient fiery land.

Yet he scouts knowing it was possible! Commendable!

He does seem to have gotten the short end a bit, doesn't he.

Kina and Maki don't have too much to say; we can count on them.

Keep Mothiva in check. We won't take long.

Zasp seems a bit overwhelmed, honestly.

Yeah, yeah. Just do your job until we're back!

And Mothiva's still Mothiva. (I do find this a little weird... not too long ago, she was definitely talking like she and Zasp were planning to come with us, but now they're definitely staying behind to help guard. Oh well. They won't get in our way, at least.)

Right, on we go. We've barely taken a few steps before encountering more of these flaming constructs... we're probably going to have to fight a lot of them. (In case you're wondering, these are immune to Bug Me Not, just like the Dead Landers were.)

First off, let's use the rubble to gain a bit of height and fly over to this buried item spot.

Of course, we'll have to deal with this enemy group before we can dig it up.

I'm not going to be showing these battles in depth, because quite frankly they're not very interesting. For the most part, these are toughened versions of enemies we've already fought plenty of, and while they're not completely trivial, they're not a huge challenge as long as you pace your resource usage.

(One thing that's good to keep in mind right now is that with Vi's attack as high as it is, if we put her in front, she can very easily take out Haunted Cloths with a Tornado Toss followed up by a normal attack. We'll do that here.)

We do get to see another attack from the Warden this time. They still have their dash, which is 4 base damage.

Right, let's move on.

...What's this?

It's a new item! All of the fire constructs can drop these, and it's the only way to get them.

Flame Rocks are a little weird. They're another attacking item, and in fact the only way we can attack with fire. They deal 2 damage (modified by defence), and attempt to inflict burning status. The damage increases to 4 against any enemy weak to fire. (In fact, any enemy that is weak to ice is also weak to fire, and vice versa, so you could say it's actually an "extreme temperature" weakness. You can fight fire with fire if you want.)

Another neat thing about Flame Rocks is that they can substitute for a Spicy Berry or Spicy Bomb in many recipes.

Anyway, we'll take this with us for now.

The dig spot, meanwhile, has a Magic Seed in it. That's not bad either.

Let's head back south now. First up, of course, are more enemies.

Here we have a Krawler and a Warden. Let's spread out our damage a bit, so we can see what the fire Krawlers do.

They have the beam attack, as you might suspect, though of course fire elemental this time (and able to inflict burning). And the base damage has increased to 4.

They can also charge us. This attack deals 5 base damage (though of course here First Plating is blocking it) and can inflict burning.

Moving on.

The fights here are worth a lot of berries.

...Of course there are more. Let's get this one out of the way too, I guess.

Three Wardens. That could be a bit tedious...

So let's just blast through them. Hard Charge + Ice Rain is pretty brutal even without attack boosts.

That's the vast majority of their HP gone already. (And this is with Strong Start on him, so he's actually only getting a net +1 attack after the exhaustion penalty, the rest is just weakness damage and the positioning bonus. I should probably have moved Strong Start elsewhere in anticipation of doing this.) From here, it's just cleanup.

We do get to see they still have their charge-up move, giving +2 charge-up and Defence Up for 1 turn. The turn after, of course, they'll do a massive self-destruct explosion, though it's usually easy to take them down before that happens (so I don't have a GIF of it this time). The explosion is base 3 damage (+2 from the charge-ups) and can inflict burning.

Anyway, we finish the battle from there. Let's keep moving.

This may look like a dead end at first.

But this gap can be crossed, whether by flying or by walking across the narrow pipe here.

This doesn't feel particularly safe, does it? We're very close to the flames, but do we really want to be standing on the inactive burners when they could come alive any moment? We don't have much choice...

Regardless, we have more Krawlers to fight.

In the course of this fight, I miss blocking one of the charge attacks, and Kabbu gets burned!

So let's talk about burning. It's the last new status effect we'll be seeing, and behaves very similar to poison, dealing damage at the end of the turn. Of course, it's more damaging than poison: as is evident here, the minimum damage it can do is 2 (the damage increases to 3 if you have 30 or more maximum HP). Burning can be cured by items, though only items that cure "any status effect" will work.

Interestingly, burning uses the same resistance stat as poison. So you can use Poison Resistance medals to prevent it, and when throwing Flame Rocks it checks against the enemy's poison resistance. That said, despite these similarities, it isn't poison and won't enable any of the medals that benefit from poison. (Of course, you can be poisoned too if you want, though the damage will really start adding up then.)

When a character is burning, you'll also see flames flickering all over them; it doesn't look pleasant.

We finish the fight after that.

Another Flame Rock!

We're out of space, but this Dry Bread is pretty expendable, so we'll just use it and take the rock with us.

Right. How are we going to turn off this oven...

We can drop down here and get to what looks like a control panel. Could it be that simple?

Well, for starters, gouts of flame shoot out of the gauge periodically, and we need to watch out for those! What kind of oven is this?

As long as we time the crossing well, we can get across safely. Let's flip the switch?

There must be something else we missed...

Let's look around, then.

Of course it couldn't be that easy. Let's explore some more and see what else we can find.

Back we go.

There isn't anything we can interact with on the stovetop...

There does seem to be another path here, though!

We have to fly from on top of the flat rock if we want to get high enough to land on the book.

Then we can have Kabbu smash this boulder.

Of course there are yet more fire constructs waiting for us.

Two Haunted Cloths and a Krawler. A bit annoying, but it's not all that difficult.

Nothing noteworthy happened in the fight, so let's just move on.

Another one of these! These aren't particularly rare as drops go, though I've definitely had runs that were stingier with them. Let's leave this one behind, we don't have the room.

There's another boulder to smash here.

Breaking it exposes a pipe. Though do note, it's quite easy to fall off the edge while smashing this one, and if you do you might have to backtrack a bit (the respawn point is on the other side of the area).

Once the boulder's gone, the pipe starts blowing a current upward.

(If we hadn't flipped the switch earlier, there wouldn't be any gas blowing here, and we'd get the "have we missed something? let's look around more" conversation on breaking the boulder here instead. Is this some kind of gas leak from the oven? It really doesn't seem safe...)

Regardless, we can use that to gain some altitude and land up here!

Of course, there are more enemies.

Two Wardens. (I know I'm treating the enemies here a bit lightly; if you aren't careful, the damage output absolutely can add up and wear you down by attrition. Balancing your TP usage against TP Core/Victory Buzz and knowing when to have Vi heal instead of ending a battle immediately goes a long way.)

Moving along.

Now, what's up here...

Not much on this side, just a different viewpoint of the flames...

But we can climb up the pile of gears, and from there get to the bouncy mushroom.

It launches us all the way up to another level! It looks like we're inside some kind of cupboard now?

This room is pure chaos!

It reminds us of Snakemouth, in a weird way...

We've grown really strong since then, huh? This room's no match for us!

Heh. Let's have a look around and see what we're dealing with.

Before we get too far in, of course, there are more enemies. These things are everywhere!

Three Krawlers. This might not be a bad place to use Ice Rain again, if we want to end things quickly.

Let's move along.

We have water droplets and moving platforms...

Lots of moving platforms.

Let's get this last enemy out of the way before trying to figure out the puzzle.

Two Haunted Cloths and a Krawler.

This was interesting. Leif is under the effects of Back Support here, and also has the Iron Seed, so you'd think he'd take zero damage from this. Apparently this draining attack can't be completely negated.

That aside, we finish the battle.

Right. There's a sealed door blocking the way forward, and if we look carefully, a pressure plate on the ledge above us.

To the south here, we have enough items of different heights that we can make our way up.

From the blue lid, we need to fly over to the fallen pillar.

This mushroom just launches us into the air. What are we supposed to do here?

We need to aim the launch from the mushroom to land on the moving platform.

From there, we can get over to this pillar and freeze the ice droplet.

Then knock the ice block onto the platform.

From here, it gets a bit tricky. We need to use these moving platforms to get the block all the way to the pressure plate at the other side; this can be frustrating, especially because you need to start over from the beginning if you miss and the block falls down.

First up, we ride this platform west and then get the block onto the pillar.

Then launch it diagonally onto the next block.

Then we get onto the platform ourselves. (The block's positioning here was awkward enough I actually had to fly around it. Oops? Better than it falling off.)

Onto the next platform. The timing here can be tricky, since both platforms are moving.

Then we just need to get on here ourselves, and get it onto the ledge.

Ugh, it's not quite on the switch...

After waiting for the platform to get back in position, we can hit it one last time and get it onto the switch.

The door opens!

Right. What's on this side?

Unlike the previous room, the platforms here are all stationary. We might have to change that. Also, the ground is covered with thorns.

Of course, we have Leif's Bubble Shield for that. Let's check out the rest of the room.

There's a switch on the side of that pillar...

More pillars in this corner...

And another switch on this one.

Well, let's start here, since there's a ramp we can use to get up.

Of course, we have to fight more Wardens first.

Right, where were we.

We hit the switch with Vi's Beemerang.

That starts one of the platforms moving! Though right now that's not much help to us, it's still too high to reach.

We can't get onto these platforms from the thorns...

But we can fly over from the ground on this side, so let's do that.

Another fight, of course.

It ends like all the others.

Wow, that's a lot of berries.

Also, another Flame Rock. I don't have the room to keep this.

We fly over to this little platform.

And from there, we can hit this switch also.

That causes the other platform to start moving up and down. That should help.

Right. Let's get on the elevator.

Then wait for the other platform...

We'll ride it over and get off on this pillar. What now?

We can fly from there to the last pillar. And from here, we can see into another room.

All we have to do is fly over this pipe and drop down.

Not much to see here, except a Dead Lander Alpha. (Remember those? Apparently there are some on this side too...)

It has a Beta with it too. This is a bit tougher than the flame constructs, but still, nothing we can't deal with by now, we've dealt with this exact formation before. (The easiest way to deal with this, I think, is to get Vi in front and take out the Beta immediately with Hurricane Toss and a normal hit or two, then slug it out with the Alpha over the next few turns.)

We've dealt with worse.

Oh, nice, another Mystery Berry! I don't really have room, but I do have four Magic Seeds, I can afford to toss one of those to keep this. (Honestly, the Magic Seed is a better item, but these are kind of rare and might be fun to mess with later.)

The only way to go is down.

We drop back down onto the stovetop again, but this time on the far side of the flames!

Of course, there are more constructs here.

This one's two Krawlers with a Haunted Cloth. There's still not much interesting to say about these; unfortunately, I do have to say the fights in this section get a bit repetitive.

Let's keep going.

There's not much here, but a mushroom which can launch us down to find more gauges.

Let's hope these ones are more effective?

There we go! That's one burner down.

And that does for the other!

Alright! Let's go meet up with the others!

(We have a brief fade-out here.)

Whatever. Queen Elizant, how is the Roach?

We sent him home when the flames were doused.

There were many "constructs", but we defeated all of them.

Nice job!

The Wasp King's gotta be up ahead for real now.

Hearing he crossed those flames by himself... I'm still quite shocked.

Muh!

Everyone, we must not falter. With our combined might, we are Bugaria's hope!

Heheh. He's got no chance if we're all together!

Yeah. Even Mothiva should be able to help out a little.

Don't doubt it. We'll pull our weight.

Everyone. Let's go!

After that conversation, we regain control. Where did it place us?

Ah. We're on the far side of the oven, we've seen that knife before.

Also, it's worth noting, if we check our stats we'll find were given a full heal after that cutscene.

On we go!

...This doesn't look good. There are a bunch of dead scorpions; normally, we probably wouldn't mind that, but these look like the Roaches' domesticated ones...

Leif! Are you ok?!

There is... some strong magic here.

We don't know what it is. We have never felt anything like that before...

It's gotta be the sapling!

Let's finish this!

If we check the banter here, we can get a bit of insight; Leif's picking up on some very strong magic, and our team definitely know we're close!

For now, though, we'll stop at this save crystal. Next time, we finally confront the Wasp King! I'll see you then.

Posted: **Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:37 am**

FYI: I had been hoping to be able to get the next update out this week, but I'm running quite behind and I don't know if I'll be able to manage it. The next couple of weeks are going to be quite busy for me for a variety of reasons and I can't predict when I'll have time (or, frankly, energy) to work on the LP. I hate leaving things at a cliffhanger like this, but I also don't want to rush things.

In other things, I ended up doing some research on the poison and burn damage formulae. I found a post on discord that claimed to have the exact formulae, but a quick bit of testing showed those weren't correct either, and I ended up having to investigate further. In the end it's both simpler and more complicated than I had thought.

I don't know how it works internally, but empirically I found the following breakpoints depending on maximum HP:

POISON
1-20: 1 damage
21-30: 2 damage
31+: 3 damage (player characters only, caps at 2 for enemies)

BURN
1-29: 2 damage
30+: 3 damage

I couldn't get poison to deal 4 damage even when raising a character's HP to the highest value legitimately possible. And, yes, the breakpoint for 3 damage does differ by 1 HP between poison and burn. (I didn't thoroughly test damage breakpoints on enemies, but I did verify the maximum burning will do is 3.)

Most of this is of only academic interest, regardless, since in my experience it's unusual for players to increase HP this much. But I thought it was interesting.

Posted: **Mon Sep 26, 2022 4:45 pm**

This is another "the update isn't here yet" apology post. Unfortunately, I ended up encountering some technical difficulties that ruined my first recording (over an hour of footage) and, while I have since managed to get a successful take, I haven't had time to do any work on the update beyond that.

My grandmother finally passed away yesterday after a long struggle with cancer and several other illnesses. This isn't entirely unanticipated or unwelcome (she's been suffering for the last several years, and especially the last 3-4 months have been very unpleasant, and it's honestly a relief to see that come to an end at least), but I'm frankly not in a mental state conducive to working on LP, and there's a lot to deal with right now; at bare minimum this coming week is going to be an absolute mess.

Thank you for understanding and I'm sorry about the delays.

Posted: **Tue Oct 18, 2022 11:46 pm**

Explopyro wrote: ↑
Mon Sep 26, 2022 4:45 pm
This is another "the update isn't here yet" apology post. Unfortunately, I ended up encountering some technical difficulties that ruined my first recording (over an hour of footage) and, while I have since managed to get a successful take, I haven't had time to do any work on the update beyond that.

My grandmother finally passed away yesterday after a long struggle with cancer and several other illnesses. This isn't entirely unanticipated or unwelcome (she's been suffering for the last several years, and especially the last 3-4 months have been very unpleasant, and it's honestly a relief to see that come to an end at least), but I'm frankly not in a mental state conducive to working on LP, and there's a lot to deal with right now; at bare minimum this coming week is going to be an absolute mess.

Thank you for understanding and I'm sorry about the delays.

I'm sorry about your grandmother. Take all the time you need; your health is more important than an LP.

Posted: **Thu Nov 10, 2022 7:02 am**

71: Long Live the King (Part 1)

It's quiet here. Too quiet.

Let's take some precautions and make sure our medals are in order. Triumph Buzz and Victory Buzz have served us well, but they do nothing in boss fights like the one we're almost certainly walking into...

I've elected to replace them with Fortify+ and Mightier Pebble. I've been liking Fortify+ for longer fights (and because playing defensively gives the bosses more of a chance to show off everything they can do), and we haven't made much use of Boulder Toss.

Right, let's get going. The only path available to us leads south.

Let's cross this big spoon.

As soon as we step off the spoon, a cutscene starts.

53 - The Usurper

Not far ahead of us, the Wasp King is here, facing some kind of magical barrier.

He takes out the artifacts...

Puts on the Ancient Mask...

And uses the Ancient Tablet to break the barrier.

Our team rushes to confront him. Hopefully we're not too late.

Yeah! Our trail of beating you up comes next!

For when I consume this sapling...

You will have no choice but to squirm in fear and surrender to your King!

You think you'll rule with fear!? That you'll be happy that way!?

Or that the people will so quickly submit?

No one cared about me until I put it on.

Through power and magic, I became feared and respected!

From weakling to ruler... I have never been happier!

You're pathetic. You could never hope to be a true King!

You will all perish today. Your opinion holds no significance to me.

Parry this, you crook!

...What?

W-Woah, we're kinda alright!

C-Could it be?

Kabbu takes out the Flame Brooch. Apparently, that's what saved us, and it's the reason we weren't hurt as badly as the others. (...How does this work? Does the brooch somehow know to protect everyone who's registered under the name Team Snakemouth? Uh, let's not think about it too hard.)

Hmph. I should have finished off Vanessa. To think she'd give you that...

We hope you're ready for our counterattack, tyrant!

I've been waiting all day!

80 - The Usurper, Grasping for Power (Recommended listening!)

Looks like it's finally time to fight the Wasp King for real! Take a moment to appreciate the music here, too. This is one of my favourite tracks in the game, reprising and elaborating on the Wasp King's prior theme. It's regal, dramatic, intimidating, and more than anything else, catchy.

Let's spy and see what we're dealing with.

We must not waste this opportunity the Flame Brooch has given us! Give it your all, everyone!

He has 105 HP and 0 defence. That will take some time to burn through, but we've fought sturdier foes, so how hard this is is all going to depend on what kind of damage he can put out.

For now, we'll be careful, and take things a bit cautiously. We'll start with a normal attack from Kabbu...

Fortify+ from Leif...

And some more attacks from Vi and Chompy.

On his turn, the Wasp King casts another fire tornado at us! It's not just for cutscenes any more. This attack deals base 5 damage to the entire party, and will inflict burning if not blocked. It's a lot more survivable than the last time we saw it, certainly (no more 99s!), but the damage will definitely add up fast if you don't stay on top of dealing with it.

Right. That's not a terrible start; what shall we do now?

For now, let's just attack normally and conserve our TP.

The tornado isn't his only fire attack, either. This barrage of fireballs deals 3 base damage per hit, attacks 1-3 times, and will also set us on fire if we fail to block. Between our defensive bonuses and some good timing, we can avoid all harm from this one.

This doesn't seem too bad so far. Is this really the best he can do?

Kabbu will just keep attacking.

I think it's finally time to have Vi break out some healing, though.

Leif and Chompy can keep the damage coming.

That's interesting to see! He doesn't usually break the items out quite this early. He has access to both Spicy Fries and Burly Chips, for stat boosts and some minor healing (in both cases, the items work the same way for him as they would for us).

This could get a bit scary, depending on what attack he uses. At least we healed last turn, so we should hopefully be ready for whatever he decides to send our way.

Um, oops. I moved Vi in front and had Leif relay to her, thinking I could combine the charge-ups from Favorite One with Status Relay for a bigger attack. But I forgot that Leif didn't have any charges left to pass her, so all this did was transfer his last turn of regeneration. Oops.

This is still probably worth it, so let's go for it. Since he has 0 defence, we may as well go for Tornado Toss instead of Hurricane to save some TP.

Even at only +1, this is still a lot of damage!

Let's have Leif refresh our defence buff again.

Kabbu and Chompy can keep attacking.

The Wasp King also still has his axe attacks, including this melee strike for 6 base damage. Going after Kabbu might not be the best idea, though, because this one makes him vulnerable to Spiky Bod damage. I certainly won't complain about that!

We're certainly making progress.

There we go. This time, it actually worked the way I wanted it to. (Though do let's note that Status Relay is all or nothing, so Leif's also passed Vi the defence boost from Fortify+. I'm not particularly worried about that, but it's something to keep in mind when using this strategy, it can mess you up if you're not careful.)

Now, let's do another Tornado Toss.

The one possible issue when using Tornado Toss instead of Hurricane Toss is that it's easier to mess up the action command...

Still, ultimately that mistake cost us 3 damage, which isn't the end of the world.

We'll just keep the attacks coming, then.

Once he gets low enough on HP (I don't know the precise threshold, but it's around 35-40%), the Wasp King powers up and gains an extra action each turn. He will then immediately use both those turns.

This axe throw is his most damaging single-target attack, dealing 7 damage at base. Vi takes a bit extra here due to her Power Exchange medals (and my failure to block), but it'd hurt pretty badly regardless.

And there's also this fireball volley. Instead of throwing it, he can also bat it into us with his axe. This deals 6 base damage and can inflict burn if not blocked, but unlike the other fireball barrage, only hits a single time. It's enough to KO Vi here, though; leaving her in front can be risky sometimes.

Right. With Vi down, we should probably take this turn to regroup a bit...

First things first, we'll get her out of the front and revive her with Kabbu's Pep Talk.

May as well have her attack, she'll do the most damage of anyone...

Before having Leif relay to her so she can heal herself. That should get us out of the woods for now.

Then Chompy can attack as normal.

The fire tornado hurts, but we can survive it.

He follows it up with an axe swipe, but it's not going to make much difference (especially since he targeted Kabbu again and got punished for it).

All right. Let's finish this?

This battle is certainly over... right? The screen just fades out here, we don't get a battle end screen with EXP...

Not that tough without that fire, huh?

I... I didn't come THIS far...

...Did he just chuck a Cherry Bomb at us?

79 - ???

While we're incapacitated, he rushes over to this capsule thing.

He fuses the two parts of the Ancient Key together...

Inserts the key...

(the music goes silent here)

...opening the capsule to reveal...

...the Everlasting Sapling?

It's... It's wilted!

A-After all this...!

It wasn't that everlasting, huh.

(In hindsight, hermetically sealing the magical McGuffin away might not have been the best idea when it was literally a plant and they cut it off from sunlight...)

79 - ???

I REFUSE TO ACCEPT IT!

(He leaps up to grab the one remaining leaf, and scarfs it down.)

Stop being pathetic. You've lost!

Come here, and atone for your crimes!

Everything beings to rumble and shake. What is happening? This certainly can't be good.

N-No way! That actually worked!?

Everything goes white...

81 - Transcending, Overpowering, Everlasting (Recommended listening!)

This power will suit me just fine!

I will deliver you to your DOOM!

He incinerates what remains of the Sapling.

(Leif has a way with understatements, doesn't he.)

We've got to stop him here! He must not grow more powerful!

Well, duh! We can't run away now!

...Together, everyone! Let's finish this!