Bee liveblogs Oath in Felghana

Bee · 2014-07-02 00:06:20

The thread title was too short for "Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana". Also probably don't read this at work, because while the game is completely SFW, it prompts a lot of swearing.

Especially if you do this:

God help me.

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part 1: Bee delays his cactusy fate by looking at lots of words.

We begin with Dogi, our wall-punching meathead buddy from Ys 1. He's gotten a bit of a shonen facelift, and decided it was about time to get some backstory other than "yeah bro I punch walls". Felghana is his home. It's also currently getting its face wrecked by monsters.

This is Elena. She's girl-bros with Dogi, gets in trouble a lot like this,

and spends the game filling out a bingo card of anime girl poses like this.

"That's why I'm still at level 1 :("

I guess we're counting both Ys games that happened before this, even though he was in all of five minutes of 1 and five seconds of 2's ending. Actually, Oath/Wanderers is where he stops being a wall-punching cardboard prop altogether.

Meanwhile, in Villainville, nefarious plots are made!

YOU WILL MOST DEFINITELY NOT HAVE TO GO TO THESE PLACES.

Fun fact: Felghana is stated later in the series to be in Northern Germany, probably near Denmark.

Meanwhile, back in town, Dogi waxes about his old master!

"Make a fist, then punch the wall until lunchtime."

...How do you climb trails?

So yeah, you go around town talking to people, and find out Count McGuire is, like, a complete jackass who jacks up taxes while simultaneously shutting down the town's main source of income and trade. Fun fact: the term "robber baron" actually originated in Germany.

"We don't make much money, but I also make it a rule to only pay bills to people I like, so it all evens out."

(he was playing on Very Easy where everything hits you for like 2 damage)

Dammit, it was a wide world and he needed bigger walls to punch!

So anyway, after talking to Elena and Nell, everyone in town goes to the front gate where trouble has happened in the mines! Monsters! The mayor is trapped! Are you a bad enough dude to save the mayor?

Gardner gets all pissy if you do this. But hey, we've got a game to start, so what the hell.

It only covers the Felghana overworld, which is like seven screens long. I guess I can use it for tinder or something.

Also we get, like just enough starting resources for a one-point upgrade.

Never stopped Dogi.

So anyway it's a brief jog to the east through some hell dogs and hell acid plants, and then you meet Fat Stereotype who screams like Elena, constantly talks about food, and lets you into the mine to save the mayor.

I'm still not entirely clear what the mayor was doing in the quarry in the first place.

Anyway. Next time: FIRST BLOOD

(the wolves and shit up till now don't count)

Miss Miko Mayonegg · 2014-07-02 00:31:51

I played Ys 1 and is combat still based on running into enemies at an angle?

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-02 01:55:36

No. This has an attack button.

> and spends the game filling out a bingo card of anime girl poses like this.
so I wasn't the only one who thought this.

> Meanwhile, back in town, Chester waxes about his old master!
I think you mean Dogi.

> ...How do you climb trails?
You know how badass those two are. Obviously, the trails are vertical drops.

Bee · 2014-07-02 02:06:53

^^ No, that was just 1 and 2.

Running into stuff at an angle was a REALLY bad idea in Ys 1 because characters could only face cardinal directions, so you'd get hit in the side a lot trying. It was really powerful in Ys 2 when they finally programmed in your own diagonals, because none of the enemies faced diagonally -- but on higher difficulties they started checking diagonal hits for directness and it would hurt you most of the time, so you were back to ramming cardinally at an offset and pinning them up against walls until they died. Also most of the Ys 2 bosses were only vulnerable to magic anyway.

Oh believe me, this game would be quite hilariously impossible if you had to clumsily crash into things to do any damage. The margin of error on most of these boss fights is terrifyingly low even on saner difficulties, and on at least one of them I have to actually use the sword's swing range to cheese my way around a screw-you mechanic.

glennmagusharvey said:
> Meanwhile, back in town, Chester waxes about his old master!
I think you mean Dogi.

WOW, post one.

Nightmare addled me, man. I'm not seeing words straight anymore.

glennmagusharvey said:
> ...How do you climb trails?
You know how badass those two are. Obviously, the trails are vertical drops.

Hold that thought for like ten more content posts.

Bunny · 2014-07-02 05:17:16

Ahahaha, you're going to have such a fun time....

Good luck with Chester 2. And may God have mercy on your soul.

Bee · 2014-07-02 21:46:16

Believe it or not, I'm actually not all that worried about Chester 2. I usually have more trouble with Chester 1 for lack of double jump and shield attack. The random bullshit ones like Gyalva and Zirduros are what really terrify me.

Actually, what terrifies me even more is stuff like Illburns or Abandoned Mine, where you have these long-ass stretches of dungeon full of dudes that can kill you in three hits.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-02 22:12:42

i dare you to try to kill even one of those bugs before you get the wind ability

Bee · 2014-07-03 02:26:50

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Bunny · 2014-07-03 10:20:39

Well maybe it's only because I did it on hard, but by far I found the most difficult parts to be Chester 2, the final boss, and that strange ice Dragon. Oh, and I guess the boss in the castle that changes elemental weakness.

Bee · 2014-07-03 16:27:07

Chester 2 has a few tricks that are very subtle but very easy to do, and they completely circumvent his most irritating mechanics. I'll be both using and explaining them, and the first is even applicable to the first fight.

Galbalan is hard as hell. I can usually flawless his first phase and the last isn't too bad. But I'm legit terrified of his second phase and you usually have to get through three cycles of it (it's possible to do in two, but it takes fortuitous boost timing that you can usually only get by deliberately manipulating your HP, and that's...inadvisable given what he's doing at the time).

The ice dragon, Gildias? He's mostly hard because he can kill you in three hits, but there's a trick to speeding up the latter half of the fight that I'll be talking about. The main threat is the wind attack, but he telegraphs it well enough to get away safely. Usually -- it's a bit buggy rendering all the icicles.

And the element change boss, Death Faleon. He's a bit random, but usually not all that bad once you know how to hit him hard and fast enough. I think he was one of the few I took down on the first try in Nightmare Boss Rush.

Bunny · 2014-07-03 16:38:46

For Chester 2, I figured out how to fight the first half without taking damage, but when he starts the rapid teleport bullshit, I take obscene amounts of damage.

And it's been a while, but I seem to remember the hardest part of Gildias to be the crazy timing you need to dodge the icicle breath attack.

And for Death Faleon, I just avoided him during the elements I couldn't do without taking ridiculous damage. Which meant gratuitous use of the Terra Bracelet.

The best Ys player I am not. But I beat it on hard, which is more than most can say.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-03 17:30:24

i dare you to take damage during the cutscene against the ice dragon and then beat it without taking a hit

Bee · 2014-07-04 01:11:19

I'll screenshot the Gildias bug for lulz if I can get it to work, but passing on the challenge. Half because I'm not nearly a good enough player to flawless many of these bosses at all, and half because I'd actually have to watch the damn cutscene several times to get it to happen.

Keep in mind you're not getting videos out of me because my poor Lappy 486 just isn't big enough to talk that jive, so a bug like that will kind of lose its amusement value in a still image I'll most likely take late.

Anyway. Onward!

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part 2: Starting out small.

So we left off at the entrance to Tigray Quarry. What horrors await us?

Bees! My brothers! Or I guess mostly sisters. And they have two butts, so that's like twice the fun, right? Wait, is it creepy if I call them sisters and then compliment their double butts?

OW FUCK NEVER MIND EVIL BEES

So yeah. This is Inferno and even random trash monsters will shred you in just a few hits.

Also, they pull a lot of shit like this that makes you get traversal upgrades and then come back to dungeons you don't really have any business dicking around in anymore. For as expensive as the last set of enhancements are, it's mildly irritating.

So there are two keys to a good high-difficulty run of a dungeon. One is finding safe and efficient ways to level up, because half the craziness of these difficulties is that they crank up penalties for level discrepancy to the point that a single level will often reduce the damage you take by a significant fraction.

The other is getting used to boosting frequently on anything that's both threatening and numerous. Your boost bar recharges when you land hits, take damage, and has an over-time component that speeds up as your health gets lower. So on Nightmare or Inferno, when you're taking huge hits, running around at half health half the time, and random mooks are taking full combos to kill, you'll have boost ready surprisingly often. I recommend binding it to left shift for easy and frequent reference.

These goblins have an assload of HP, take about 2-3 damage at a time, and can eat well over half of my own health bar in a single hit.

But when I tap my pinkie to hulk out, the extra splash damage and quicker recovery time on swings keeps them all harmlessly stunlocked, and they just kind of fall apart and give me almost an entire XP bar on the spot.

I immediately run screaming back to Redmont to use it to max out my gear. Any edge you can get on Inferno is welcome.

Oh fuck you, game.

We'll actually have to come back to this one much later. At least this one has the dignity of being immediately near the thing you need it for.

So this helpful beardface tells you they found strange artifacts in the quarry a while back, and instead of unleashing ancient unspeakable evils like usually happens, they just put it in a storehouse in case they needed to unleash ancient unspeakable evil later.

So we're supposed to backtrack all the way to the first vertical shaft to the storehouse to get our ancient powers on. But actually, there's nothing really stopping you from going through the entire second half of Tigray Quarry without that. You can get to the very bottom, talk to the mayor, loot some gold from random pots, save, and then get trapped in a room to indefinitely dodge the attacks of a boss you have no way of damaging until you screw up and get your head taken off by a buzzsaw.

Also this thing, which is supposed to be a far enough jump that you have to come back with later skills, but you can jump-slash across BECAUSE ADOL CHRISTIN TAKES ORDERS FROM NOBODY.

It's like 8 ore :V

Okay, so, to the storehouse!

Hammertime?

So yeah, this is the first boss who is totally not someone we know and might have been a shocking revelation later on if she actually got any significant dialogue or anything beyond "SO MYSTERIOUS VERY NUN WOW".

Boss 1: Sister Nell Dularn

I noticed during this that every screenshot I take will probably mean throwing the fight until I can rebind F12 to something that isn't across the goddamn keyboard. But despite what my HP bars might indicate, she's stupidly easy and I flawless'd her when I stopped touristing.

She kind of suffers from Early Boss Syndrome where they can't really do much interesting with her because you don't have any of your evasive or offensive options yet. The only difference in this fight between Inferno and Very Easy is that the swords are very slightly faster and do ten times the damage.

She spends half the fight shielded in the middle of the room throwing swords, all three formations of which can be dodged by running to the side and jumping (even if the crazy homing ones that spin around don't look like it at first). Every three salvos, her shield drops and you hit her in the face.

Halfway, she realizes that's not working so well for her, so when her shield goes down she teleports to one of six spots on the periphery of the room and throws either a wave of fireballs or a bigass silver shockwave. Both are easily jumped over (do your air combo to clear the shockwave a bit more safely) and then you hit her in the face some more. If you can get to her quickly, it staggers her out of the attack altogether.

Because I'm not equipped to record videos, watch this guy's.

Just be glad I didn't link the PSP version with its fuckawful voice acting. SWORDS. SWORDS. SPIN. BURN. SWORDS.

For reference, here's what Dularn looked like in the original Ys 3. It...might actually have been a more complex fight.

Anyway she goes down without trouble, likely due to her choice of combat attire affording very poor depth perception. And instead of taking her licks with dignity she pulls the "I wasn't really playing at full strength" bullshit, but she's crying on the inside.

...she says while not dispatching you immediately like she tries to imply she can do.

Actually unless her performance near the end of the game is due to getting hooked on meth or something to try and get the upper hand, she probably can. But doesn't. Dumbass.

Our reward for that warm-up fight is the ability to set things on fire!

Next time: I set things on fire and a statue buzzsaws my head off a lot!

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-04 02:27:17

I have to try binding boost to left shift. I haven't ever thought of that before. And I rarely ever use boost.

Also, nice image editing.

Miss Miko Mayonegg · 2014-07-04 02:37:20

This seems to be a literal 3D remake of Ys III. Interesting.

Bee · 2014-07-04 03:31:52

^^ Boost is your lifeline in Nightmare and Inferno, for the damage mitigation and stunlocking if nothing else. But being able to tear anything that doesn't have a visible health bar to shreds helps too. Either way, it's not something you want to reach across keys for.

^ Yeah, it's a remake of Wanderers of Ys. Which has been remade like a zillion times.

No, really.

Speaking of music, I forgot to link that too. Pretty much the entire OST is badass.

Tigray Quarry theme -- the most badass first level you'll ever hear:

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-04 10:41:57

Seriously, for some reason, I played through basically all of Oath and Origin without using Boost at all. Nor burst. Because I just couldn't be bothered to figure out how to use them.

I guess I'm like that. I prefer one attack button, one jump button with double-jump, maybe an alternative attack button, and dodging the fuck out of enemy attacks. But more attack choices confuse me.

Fossilmaiden · 2014-07-04 13:34:25

Personally I like the achievement in Origin that requires you to not use Burst as [SECRET CHARACTER].

Bee · 2014-07-04 16:49:28

It's not difficult on Normal, but on Nightmare you really, really want to be able to Burst on just about every other monster pack in Demonic Core. Largely because [SECRET CHARACTER]'s Burst is really, really good for clearing trash that covers the entire floor in death.

I've got the next installment screenshotted. I've got a road trip today, but I'll try to put it up tonight.

Bee · 2014-07-06 01:14:29

Hey, sorry for the late. My weekend trip home turned out to be full of work because my parents' house is a mess. But here it is.

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part 3: I take saws to the face.

So I just got a cool bracelet that lets me shoot fire WITH MY MIND (and with the bracelet).

I head back to where Helpful Beardface has been standing his ground with absolutely no physical barrier save a screen transition between him and the invincible monsters that want to eat his beardface.

I love how the last part is added almost as an afterthought. It's almost like he's afraid I'll go Ys II and start torching random villagers for shiggles (spoiler: I totally would).

Pretty much right on the other side of the staircase I find a pot full of gold. And because I really, really don't want to fuck around with the next boss, I again run screaming back to Redmont to visit the nice shopkeeper.

Every time I come here, I think of that thing I read a long time ago about how you might lose your pants if your belt buckle isn't pointing up. I can't help but think she could benefit from similar, more boobular advice.

Also in Redmont, this guy has tragically fallen under the crosshairs of the Raval Ore Mafia, who go a step beyond the humble necktie and concrete overshoes.

Dead. Truly, the worst way to be killed. He asks for ore -- I think 5, then 50, then 200, or something. But there's not really much worthwhile payoff until the end, so I'm just going to hoard the ore for myself and let him sleep with one eye open until numbers start scaling big enough that it doesn't matter so much anymore.

So, killing the armadillos in the mine on this difficulty is basically kiting olympics. They have shit tons of HP, your ability to kill them dead is linked to an MP bar that takes several seconds to recharge, and they try to eat you while it happens. So there's a lot of running around screaming, or cowering atop a ledge while they jump up and down impatiently, slavering for your flesh. Artist's rendition:

There is, however, a helpful non-corporeal chest a bit further down that reattaches itself to this plane of existence when you light a nearby torch and interrupt its Azathothian dream-quest.

It lets me charge the fireballs so they explode and hit multiple times.

WHAT NOW BITCH

A couple more rooms down, and we find Mayor Edgar. Again, I was never entirely clear on just why Redmont's mayor decided to hike down this far into the mine, even before monsters started appearing.

Uh...I'm more worried about that gaping head wound. And that you appear to be bleeding from the mouth, which is usually Video Game for either impending death or tuberculosis.

"It's not like there's anything particularly dangerous in there, right?"

Inside the strange ruins that most definitely don't have anything particularly dangerous in them.

Boss 2: Ellefale

Remember when I said I was going to go back and get the new sword because I didn't want to screw around with this boss?

OW FUCK YOU CAN KILL ME IN TWO HITS

So yeah, this is a fight you want to end as quickly as possible. While I'm not going to grind a ton and trivialize things, I'm totally willing to play dirty to get an advantage or two I'm not supposed to, such as a sword that you're supposed to buy the moment you leave the dungeon instead of right before completing it.

Ellefale starts out with just two attacks, telegraphed by which of her arms moves. Her right arm will sweep out a horizontal buzzsaw as above that flies at you terrifyingly quickly and that you jump over.

Her left throws a vertical one that you sidestep.

Both have limited homing capacity that falls off as they get closer. It's not a huge deal for the vertical ones, but the horizontal ones will curve upward and nail you if you jump even a few frames too early, which is the main risk throughout the fight -- you should be jumping when they're about a third of the way toward you.

Ellefale has several impact points across her body, with her head being the least armored, and all of them are out of sword range -- not that it'd be a good idea to get close even if they weren't. Firing a charged shot while jumping will hit all of them twice, so the idea is to pop off a couple shots while jumping a horizontal saw. And with that new sword, it hits almost three times harder than in Boss Rush. As a bonus, you take half damage from all sources while casting fireball (or later, whirlwind), so firing while jumping them insulates you a bit in case that happens, and lets you survive a bit longer.

Halfway through the fight, Ellefale steps up her game. These whirlwinds, like everything else, home in on you. They're also timed to the same rhythm as all her other attacks. I don't remember the timing on previous difficulties, but on Nightmare and Inferno they try to trap you by being timed to pass the very back right as you would have been dodging the second attack after it spawns. So you want to juke it to one side, dodge one disk while running to the other, and then actually advance forward to step past the whirlwind while dodging the next disk. If she launches a long string of whirlwinds, the same rhythm applies, though you may run out of forward space to pass them safely and the first disk might catch you off guard. Also, she braces her arms out of the way and leans forward while firing off the whirlwind, so you can sneak in a few hits while it starts up.

Her last attack is a big fuck-off blast of lightning, which isn't really a huge deal. She does a big obvious windup that lets you get some free hits, and the attack itself just hits a horizontal row of floor, and can be dodged by jumping forward or back. It's best to juke it further up so you jump back into your safe dodging space, as pictured, rather than getting pushed toward her. The most dangerous thing isn't really the attack itself, so much as the dispersing graphic effects hiding the animation telegraphing her next attack and catching you off guard.

Anyway, she takes one too many to the face and explodes.

The full fight, performed by this guy. Pay special attention to how he moves up for the whirlwinds.

It takes about three times longer because he's using the sword you're supposed to use. Also, near the end he dodges a saw by jumping very early and letting it curve up over his head. This is possible to do on purpose, but considerably harder than just jumping it properly.

The same fight back in Ys III, before we knew how to localize names:

We get a Most Definitely Not A MacGuffin.

As we leave, we see Smug Doucheface from the previous Ominous Villain Dialogue. He smugly and douchefacedly bitches out the delirious-from-blood-loss mayor for being in the closed mine, which in all honesty might be something he needed to hear. Then he smugly and douchefacedly introduces himself as Elena's long-lost brother.

He then smugly and douchefacedly insults said sister and threatens to kill us if we don't butt out of the Count's business.

Swell guy.

Next time: Words are exchanged and Elena has anime girl angst.

Fossilmaiden · 2014-07-06 05:50:12

The first time I played Oath, I actually fought Ellefale without the ruby. It... took a while.

Bee · 2014-07-06 13:47:44

I fought Gyalva the first time without the first emerald, so I guess we're even.

Also, I had to kill Ellefale in Nightmare Boss Rush twice. The first time, I died to a whirlwind during her death animation because there were so many explosions I couldn't see it.

Bunny · 2014-07-08 00:58:39

So I want you to know that you have inspired me to do the same thing

My life is pain

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-08 10:58:00

Fossilmaiden said:
The first time I played Oath, I actually fought Ellefale without the ruby. It... took a while.

I did this too.

I actually tried fighting her without the first ruby, and also slightly underleveled.

Then I was surprised to find that buying a new sword and gaining a new level vastly improved the experience.

Bee · 2014-07-08 15:19:18

^^ Come! Join the orgy of suffering!

^ I was rather puzzled that Oath didn't give you the boss's level in the bestiary like literally every other Ys game on Steam does. I prefer to fight them at level so I don't get surprised in Boss Rush, but when there's no easy way to really tell. There were a couple times I saved the game, then checked in Boss Rush to see how much damage I was taking.

Also, Boss Rush appears to presume you don't find any HP permabuffs.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-08 15:20:08

It was the first Ys game on Steam, that's probably why.

That said, I'm still surprised that weapon attack power factors into magic attack power.

Bee · 2014-07-08 15:22:14

Two of your magic attacks are physical strikes with superpowers, and there isn't really any need for another stat just for fireballs.

Bunny · 2014-07-08 15:31:55

Not that the Katol Elixirs actually help on Inferno: 1 HP per elixir means that by the end of the game, they might buy you an extra 1/6th of a hit during a boss. Maybe,

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-08 15:34:49

Fair enough.

Bee · 2014-07-09 15:57:51

Misclicked while editing earlier. Real one below.

Bee · 2014-07-09 23:28:10

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part 4: I put off doing anything of substance so I can play Spacechem

So when last we left off, we killed a magic chainsaw elf and got threatened by Elena's raging asshole of a brother.

Man, I don't want to try to decode what he's thinking. I expect his douchiness is contagious enough to catch just by trying. And if there's one thing you never want to deal with, it's a contagious douche -- isn't that right, Elena?

She runs off crying, hitting Anime Girl Poses B-12 and G-51 along the way.

I don't know how impartial you expect me to be about a guy who threatened to stab me over politics I'm not even a party to.

Sweet Reah. You're like the fucking Keystone Kops of Redmont.

I'll go ahead and put this int the Foreshadowing file.

You were going to hide in a well?! Young lady, I need to have a stern talk with your parents about playground safety!

See? You could've fallen on this sharp thing. Okay, as you were.

So yeah, there's a depressing backstory.

Ore++

Normally I'd be charmed by this kind of entreaty, but unfortunately I really, REALLY need this ore for myself. The next couple upgrades are pretty critical.

O-67!

Well, yeah. Because he's a violent jackass.

So what's up at the church these days?

This is Bishop Nikolas. He's charming, reasonable, and most definitely not an evil cult leader. He also makes a joke about old habits that I can't help but think should have come from Sister Nell.

They tell us that Father Pierre thought it would be a good idea to go chasing after the hyperviolent Smug Doucheface, followed him into Illburns Ruins, and promptly disappeared. Illburns is an ancient pagan cult site that nobody knows anything useful about anymore except for Nell and Nikolas for reasons that are totally not indicative of anything.

Ancient pagan face-munchers and active volcano. This is definitely what I had in mind when Dogi said we could have a vacation at his old digs.

Nikolas gives us the key to the ancient pagan ritual site that he has for reasons wholly coincidental andplease stop asking questions and go there and kill things.

As usual, the game gives us a rather pointless choice of whether or not to open the door. Actually it's not completely pointless because I'm going to use it now to cut off here -- I have Space to Chem and wish me luck in the tournament :P

Next time: Fucking demon birds and shit.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-10 12:37:14

Good luck!

I don't know how impartial you expect me to be about a guy who threatened to stab me over politics I'm not even a party to.

You don't know the beginning of that epic feud that began with the proposal to gerrymander the easternmost guest room in the inn in with pikkard farm in the northern part of town, and which ended up in a town brawl along with fifty amendments regarding the colors of the bricks forming the town wall.

Sweet Reah. You're like the fucking Keystone Kops of Redmont.

Does she even have jurisdiction here? I mean, I love Reah and all, but...

Bee · 2014-07-10 20:30:18

I think you're allowed to swear by a goddess at any time after you pass the point of detached interplanar formality. I've personally met this goddess, aided her in a time of need, and fondled her sister in a dark prison for achievements. QED.

Fossilmaiden · 2014-07-12 05:10:01

So, inspired by this, I started playing Origin again. God I love the Jenocres fight.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-07-12 10:43:58

I don't think I've ever learned to do that fight properly. All I did (as Yunica) was run in a circle and fire charged phoenix blasts.

Bee · 2014-07-12 18:31:42

You can jump into Jenocres's fire/bullets while Bolt Crashing to guard it, then jump out before it taps you again. Between that and Whirlwind when you get the chance (usually when the statues ring around the middle), he goes down about twice as fast and the fight is WAY more fun.

Bee · 2014-07-29 01:09:06

So the first round of the Spacechem tournament went well. I'm firmly in the middle of the pack. Yay mediocrity! In the meantime, this thing.

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part 5: Things escalate rather quickly.

We last left off at the gates of Illburns Ruins.

It starts off with a thrilling reenactment of Birdemic.

These assholes swoop with no warning and knock off about half your health, and their divebomb is even stronger. If there's more than one, divebombs can hit simultaneously and kill you instantly. Stay inside their turning radius, as they usually only attack if you're in front of them. Also fireballs.

Worse, though, are these Evil Fucking Bastards.

They too can initiate a way too powerful attack with too little warning to react. They're also on fire and hurt on contact, immune to fire, hover at awkward heights, and aren't staggered when damaged -- so it's very likely possible to be killed in the space of a single second. And you need XP too badly to run past them.

Preferably, get inside their turning radius while they're at either ground level or max height. If they start their attack, wait for them to close, then combo while not holding any direction keys. Steering your attacks shoves you forward enough that you get munched dead while attacking, but holding no keys at all slows your advance as you push them back. In both cases, use your full swing arc to avoid contact damage. This is the part of the game where you either know your range very well, or Evil Fucking Bastards kill you repeatedly until you learn it.

These guys look scary, but they're not that bad. You don't fight many, so you can usually blitz them with boost. If not, jump the whipcrack (air slash to stay airborne long enough), then push them into a corner.

And then you have demonic army ants, who sound like an oxymoron.

That damage is all from one hit. Thankfully they're stunnable.

Fuck you too, game. On the plus side, right above this room has flaming frog thingies that are super easy and give a shitload of XP. They're good for a free level the first time you see them, and you should stop in and say hi every time you pass by. Remember, leveling up is a free health refill.

Anyway, eventually you find this thing. It's your cue to run screaming back to Redmont.

(not pictured: dying to Evil Fucking Bastards two screens later, and taking 20 more tries to get this far and back successfully)

Also this while you're there. Max them both out. Make a second trip back before the boss if you don't have enough ore. I can't stress enough how important every point you can get out of this set is. Also you get a new sprite for wearing the whole set!

Enemies immediately go from doing like 40-60 damage to this:

BALANCE.

These wizards turned the floor into bullet hell immediately after closing the dialog. I'd have snapped a picture but I was too busy shitting myself in terror.

Behind this wall is the most useful item in the game, guarded by endgame monsters that can hit you for well over 500+ when you're first able to open it. But that's a story for another month at this rate.

The wizards in this room didn't quite cotton on to Oath being a 3D game. Their bullets hit the stairs right in front of them and disappear.

Ruby #2 is right behind him.

So anyway, the save point is shortly past this. Illburns is long, grueling, and things can go pear-shaped very quickly. Personally, I think it's the hardest in the game. Every other dungeon I can think of has less distance between save points, enemies that don't twoshot you, both, or you have Spirit Cloak. I can't recall anything like Evil Fucking Bastards anywhere else.

So then Raging Asshole shows up and threatens to murder a priest.

Then he decides it'd be more fun to murder us instead.

So apparently Chester is infamously hard or something. He kind of is, at least this early on when you don't really have any defensive options, but compared to the dungeon you find him in it's not so bad.

His first phase follows a strict pattern. He'll throw two pairs of knives. If you're up close after that, he stabs you in the face. If not, he closes to mid-range and uses this charged lance that hurts like hell but is easily jumpable.

Then he's open. Attack from the sides or the back. If you go from the front, he'll feint backward while throwing a knife point-blank into your face. You'll get a good 3-4 hits before he puts up a shield that explodes if you keep hitting. Rinse and repeat until he hits 50%.

Phase two, he starts huffing his Axe and teleporting all over the place, throwing knives each time.

It can get pretty hectic if he teleports 4-5 times in a row, or teleports right into your face and stabs you. Unfortunately, there's not really any reliable pattern here that I've found.

He'll occasionally interrupt the teleporting to do his lance again, which is still your opening. If you get slashed in the face and are still alive afterward, he pauses long enough to do some respectable damage then as well.

It's mainly an attrition fight, with a certain amount of luck in the second phase unless I'm missing a pattern to his teleports. His opening seems to be a mix of time and damage, but boosting makes the attacks come out fast enough that several extra hits slip past the shield while it's coming up, and you wind up doing about twice as much in one go. It helps end the second phase quickly.

Suck it, asshole.

The full fight, by this guy:

I'd link the Ys 3 version, but there isn't one. Chester just kind of douchebagged his way into a boss fight for Oath.

Like Sister Dularn, Chester laughs it off while crying inside. Then his employer and retinue show up.

And despite these doofs most likely having an "eldritch gods of destruction killed" count of precisely zero, and probably being the sort we can carve up without feeling guilty because they're following a guy who's explicitly talking about worshipping ancient death gods, we just kind of go along with it for some reason and get arrested instead.

"Several actually, but this is the one I've been fantasizing about murdering a guy in the most."

He had to take a few tries at the spinning back kick. He kept getting dizzy and falling down in a puddle of cologne.

Dude, I think he's stopped giving a damn. He just said he was switching to evil Illburns god.

Oh wait. I can't sass you right now because I'm too busy falling down some fucking Tomb Raider sacrificial pit.

Welp, I'm dead.

Next time: I'm dead.

Bee · 2014-08-01 00:42:52

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part 6: I'm dead.

Oh wait, no I'm not.

Well. Good thing there's no fall damage in this game. Let's just head back to Redmont --

Dammit.

So yeah, this is why you max out the tier 2 gear before fighting Chester. You're stuck using it for a while, and monsters don't screw around anymore.

There's a bunch of octopus things and more demonic birds, but they're not really notable (stay inside the birds' turning radius, and stun when possible). Your objective is to jump down a hole and jump across some platforms, because it turns out the only critical chest in here is the single least convenient one to reach. Remember, your air combo can extend your jump and make stuff a little safer.

This shiny gold Bling of Power lets me wade unharmed through waist-deep lava. I must assume that there is something spectacularly difficult about magically lava-proofing belly buttons, because the moment you go deeper you die exactly as quickly as if you had no Bling of Power at all.

With no place left to go, you jump off the cliff again...

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

Silliness aside, I recall accepting one (1) challenge from one (1) Glenn Magus Harvey to kill one (1) of these things before getting the next upgrade. It involved a good 45 seconds of carefully edging toward the group to peel one off, followed by a whole lot of stunlocking and slashing away for like 2 damage at a time.

Shazam, motherfuckers.

I celebrate my victory by running screaming back to the save point before I get pecked to pieces.

This is a huge deathtrap, because birds knock you off the little raised bits into the slightly deeper bits so you fatally incinerate your unprotected belly button. But your prize is totally worth it.

Funny story -- the first time I played this game I hadn't found the amulet yet because I kept fucking up the platforming, but I somehow managed to get that without it.

Just past the other side and down a cliff is a conspicuous save point.

The room beyond is curiously empty and most definitely not a boss room.

But we do get a sweet prize in the next room:

As long as it doesn't angst in my pocket, sure, whatever.

...she says while allowing me to pass uncontested.

She'd probably try to take credit for the following bout of getting chased by ambulatory fire, but we all know she's really just going for the ice cream because she's wearing dark robes in a fucking volcano.

We're chased into the boss room in a vaguely buggy sequence that sometimes makes you take damage right as you enter the boss room, which carries over to all retries because it's right before the event flag.

We're now up against Most Definitely Not Volvagia!

He's the Nygtilger of this game. Not only because he's the Token Segmented Boss, but also because he's hard to get used to but laughably easy once you do. I spent three hours beating my head against him on Normal the first time I played, but learned him so well that now he's pretty easy on the hardest difficulty. I almost got him on the first attempt while gathering screenshots.

He has three attacks that basically never change. He'll start out bursting from one of the lava pools, on fire, and charging your ass for 5-6 seconds. Simply position yourself so that you're standing in a cardinal direction to the pool he's emerging from, then jump diagonally toward him so you end up inside his turning radius. While he's spinning in circles like an idiot, unload your shiny new whirlwind into all of his segments at once.

Every once in a while he'll almost catch on to this and break his circle to get some distance and come back with better aim, but you can just kinda do it again.

After the fire calms down, he'll start flying around like a squirrel on crack but notably not on fire. He'll occasionally do an attack. If he's at high altitude, it's an aimed fireball and you shouldn't be up close at all.

If he's at low altitude, he breathes fire forward, and this is your chief opportunity to land some damage. Jump forward over his head and down-stab the exposed tail as he passes.

The timing is pretty tricky. If you're having trouble, try to stay inside his turning radius while he's flying about, and jump diagonally so you only have to clear half the fire spray. Also I just now noticed he bleeds purple.

The fight is pretty long because he spends most of it offscreen, on fire, or running away, and you'll get plenty of boosts. Use them right as the fire dies off, blitz in a few hits before he starts playing keep-away, and squeeze in a couple right after a fireball before backing off in case he fires another. The main difficulty is getting a feel for your safe window between fireballs, because that's usually when he nails you.

When his tail is gone, the head still goes on by itself for a good 350 HP or so like a crazy Russian laboratory experiment. While charging he leaves lingering flames but it doesn't really make a difference because it's still just a harmless circle around you. The main difference is that he's too small a target to safely down-stab while he's breathing fire, so unless you have HP to spare it's best to sneak in hits at other times. If you're comfortable with your sword range by now (and you'd better be after Evil Fucking Bastards), the best time is ironically when he's on fire -- tap the direction leading him by a bit, and slash once at a time without pressing into him.

It's long and tedious, but eventually he treats you to a complete lack of a death animation and just falls apart like any other monster.

The full fight, by this guy:

In hindsight, I think I was actually under level. Guilen is unusually high compared to the trash monsters around him, so don't be surprised if he's considerably easier in Time Attack than you remembered in game.

Also, the original Wanderers from Ys version. He was just as much of a keep-away pussy then too.

Next time: Escaping from the lava zone!

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-11 17:26:50

> We're chased into the boss room in a vaguely buggy sequence that
sometimes makes you take damage right as you enter the boss room, which
carries over to all retries because it's right before the event flag.

so the ice dragon ain't the only one?

Bee · 2014-08-24 18:32:36

Yup. Thankfully didn't happen that time, and doesn't chunk off almost half your health like Gildias, but still kind of a pain that I had to muscle through on Nightmare.

I've had the next part done for a while and just put off writing it up while work exploded and I got distracted by the Spacechem tournament and Professor Layton. I'll put it up today.

Bee · 2014-08-24 23:12:48

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part 7: Please fellate the RNG gods to continue.

We last left off after wrestling a huge snake in a giant tub of hot, viscous substance. Lots of spinning was involved.

And now we can spin more! Right outside the boss room is the first Emerald, which lets us charge the whirlwind attack so it can do ludicrous amounts of damage.

Pictured: ludicrous amounts of damage.

The birds outside were so turned on by the manly fight with Guilen that they all spontaneously hit puberty. Ironically, this makes them easier to kill because they don't flit about and divebomb really fast anymore.

You know what else is easier to kill now? These assholes:

AHAHAHA SCREW YOU GUYS. They were guarding some ore and gold, and are also worth a fair bit of XP.

Oh look. Backtrack bait.

So the idea is to go back to where you landed form Illburns, then go right and whirlwind around the crag. Onward!

After a few precariously thin stone bridges over blank abysses (abyssi?) that of course have no guardrails, we hit a save point and find an unidentified liquid in a strange vial lying around in a blistering hellscape. And because we're Adol Motherfucking Christin...

The good news is that it was too hot to catch hepatitis from. The bad news is that your newfound ability to run faster is a desperate attempt to bleed off thermal energy before your chest cavity is reduced to thin ooze.

So why do we need a dash? Because just on the other side of the room is what will probably be the most difficult part of this game.

Fuck this guy. Fuck him so much.

So Gyalva is actually really easy on every difficulty up to Nightmare. His long HP bar, high defenses, and spending most of the fight out of reach make him take forever to kill, but his attacks are slow and telegraphed well. On Hard, he just drags it out by never coming down to ground level. But on Nightmare and Inferno, he starts flipping floor panels into spikes, which turns the whole fight into a prolonged RNG-fest that can sodomize you at any moment.

While he hovers over the main track he'll fireball one of the two rows of ground segments, and the shockwave shoots the whole thing up into the air. Run under the fireball, ride the wave up, then jump and whirlwind him in the face. This is where nearly all your damage comes from.

Which row of tiles goes up is completely random, and there's not really enough time to tell which one is coming up until the shockwave is past you. You just kind of have to jump when you would be at the apex and hope for the best. It's possible but very difficult to stand between the rows so either of them will lift you.

The torches shoot arches of flame over the track. These are only a threat if you jump into them, so like, don't. If he's near one, attack from the other side.

He'll fly into the background sometimes, where he'll launch one of two attacks. If he rears his head back, he'll breathe a volley of fireballs that you run to the side to dodge. If he pauses a bit, he'll do a targeting laser, then blast the ground so that it ripples up into a shockwave that a) hurts you, forcing you to run to the safe spots on the far edges, and b) flips some of the squares into spikes.

He'll also line himself up diagonally from the background, foreground, or on either side of the track. Immediately run to the opposite safe spot -- he'll charge, uprooting the track and hitting you for over half your HP.

Now, it's the combination of these things that make him an asshole. See, the track is divided into six sections -- for each row, the two squares nearest either edge, and the stretch in the middle. Which sections get flipped when he does a charge or a laser fireball is completely random.

So you'll occasionally find yourself in a position like this.

Actually, you'll find yourself in this position about two or three times a fight. And while you can jump his regular fireballs from here and try to wait him out until he does moves that flip tiles again (which is not guaranteed to actually flip any near you), you're basically fucked if he does this:

Fuck you Gyalva. While cornered like this, it's impossible to dodge fireball barrages from the background or a charge from your side. You can jump the entire spike pit with three whirlwinds, but you move too slowly to clear either attack. All you can do is reduce the damage to 1/4 by boosting and throwing fireballs.

You'll notice in one of the previous pictures I had him almost dead while still at half health myself. That was my first attempt. Then he trapped and fireball barraged me twice in a row, and it took me over an hour to get him below half again. The fight is complete bullshit.

YES

NO

Fuck you again. And so on for about two and a half hours.

The key is sneaking in extra damage wherever you can to end it quickly. If the wrong row of tiles comes up, you can still tap him a few times with the whirlwind at the top of a normal jump. Charged fireballs will hit him in the background or while he's hovering over the track -- this way you can keep chipping away at him if you're trapped on the edge. When he charges, turn around once you're safe and throw fireballs backwards. And if you're really good, you can get a couple sword hits off before your whirlwind, which do considerably more damage.

The fight is long and grueling with plenty of opportunity to get randomly fucked over, but eventually this happens:

I beat him without taking a single hit. I didn't really do anything different either. Fuck this boss, and don't be shy about grinding out another level against the birds just outside the save point.

Creepy statue #2 get.

The full fight, by this person:

A more representative attempt, by this other person. Note that other than taking a minor fire arc to the face, he did not actually make a single mistake:

And the original Ys III, which frankly we all would have preferred:

The stairs just beyond take you out to Illburns. Before jumping down the hole, go across it to get some ore.

So now all that's left is to make our escape and --

Dammit.

Dogi and Elena show up to plead with him...

"...though seeing how he's economically strangled his kingdom, kidnapped clergy, and tried to murder random adventurers while chasing the power of dark gods, I probably should..."

Chester responds as only Chester could:

Dogi decides to be the audience insert.

Eventually Chester just lets you go, which I can only assume is because he knows you and Dogi would hand him his ass.

Next time: business in town!

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-25 02:35:06

Interesting that you can actually hit Gyalva's toenails.

Bee · 2014-09-06 02:56:56

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part H: Preparation

We last left off after extreme unpleasantness that will never be mentioned again. Ever. Seriously, I will cut you for bringing it up.

My best guess would be "Blargablarg indiscriminate murder blarg be an asshole blarg".

"Please please bring me more of them without asking questions."

Dewey points us to our next destination: the abandoned depths of the Tigray Quarry.

Meanwhile, Dogi decides to dick around some more at Berhardt's, despite having spent the entire game thus far there.

Man, if you don't want to be useful in this game just say so. I've still got like three more games before I really work well with groups. Also the mayor gives you some ore if you bug him before leaving.

Elena flags us down just out of town, hits pose I-24, and tries to bribe us into forgetting her brother's homicidal rage with a warp-to-save-points thingy that would have been infinitely more useful one dungeon ago.

Oh, so that's why it's all sticky.

Over toward Castle of Evil, the only castle guard with a distinct face and thus value as a human being is getting his ass chewed in half by a French maid.

To be fair, those are both things this guard would do.

These fine people have misplaced the count's son, and Chester will spin-kick them into a lava pit if he doesn't come back. And for some reason he went to Illburns, probably because the Count told him there was a sweet-ass waterslide there.

D'aww, you're like the most adorable loin-spawn of an irredeemable monster ever.

This is the first escort quest! People bitch about it on the Steam forums because they try to race it like dumbasses. The kid probably has more HP than you, and you spend half the escort doing this:

"But I wanted to keep one of the doggies! Slavering hellbeasts are great for show and tell."

We get a quick tour for our efforts! By which I mean we get to stare at the foyer and talk to faceless guards who shoved us toward the lava pit while praising McGuire's new pagan gods of ultimate evil.

Sweet Reah, no wonder the kid ran away. You put so many spear traps in here that he was probably safer in Illburns with the Evil Fucking Bastards.

I forget if this is the one that extends boost or makes items appear. They're both really minor so I don't remember/care much.

Adol's universal aura of studliness hits a bit lower than he was hoping for.

What do you want to hear about first, kid? The dark god I killed, or the other dark god I killed? Or how about the time I beat up a raging asshole?

Yeah, looked a lot like -- wait, dammit.

Okay, so I don't quite have everything I want before heading into the next dungeon. We need some gold -- and there are plenty of places to look.

Ooh, this looks important. Let's give it to the beleaguered old lady.

"It SMELLS like him."

This thing is a lamp. And the first time I did the next dungeon, I totally forgot that I had to equip it and did it all in the dark.

"Today we're playing Tax Day! Do pikkards count as dependents? Honey, quit watching football and help me with this."

Dude, that's like, a really great way to fuck up your kid's life. Seriously, don't do that.

We just need a bit more gold, and we're desperate enough for it to humor Antonio for his first trade.

It's enough to afford the rest of the Tier 3 gear.

I max out the sword while I'm at it.

Okay! Time to head into that mine and start kicking ass!

I swear to God I didn't photoshop this line. He actually says it.

Dewey gives us a last-minute warning of something they found at the bottom of the mine.

And that explains why the mining team very suddenly ran like hell and locked the place up. This most definitely won't be a boss.

Next time: casual violations of Newton's 2nd Law!

Bee · 2014-09-08 02:48:49

Bee gets completely fucked sideways with a cactus by Oath in Felghana

Part 9: GRAAAAHHHH CRYSTAAAALSSSS

We last left off after a mediocre performance in the Spacechem tournament. Also a mine or something.

The Abandoned Mine is pseudo-2D as a love letter to Ys III. It's got your generic gelatinous ooze, your demon frog-dogs with magic lances, your carnivorous tentacle plants...

You pick up a level pretty fast and they stop doing much damage. Abuse stun. Stun the plants before they open up, jump over the red frogs when they lance and down-slash them in the back, etc.

A few screens in is a mural, and Adol has a minor psychotic episode from all that Raval ore he's been huffing and starts hearing voices.

The usual. Ancient hero sealed evil away instead of killing it, the probably less powerful new hero has to finish the job, all wrapped in a cutscene so interminably long that those two screenshots were actually on different days.

When Adol snaps out of his hallucinations, we vandalize a chunk of the mural that somehow lets us double-jump. I like to think you throw it down really hard to propel further up. It makes your stun more reliable, and that's critical everywhere on Inferno, so hey.

Fittingly, the mine is loaded with ore.

It's smooth sailing until you start seeing black frog things that chunk off almost half your health with magic lances that reach across the whole screen. Boost liberally.

Inside that whirlwind is something that can kill me in less than one second if I let it move at all.

This sucker with a giant-ass hammer could too, but he's weak to fire and big enough that you can fireball him from waist-high crags. If you have to take one head-on, use their turning radius -- down-slash, angle a charged whirlwind to swing around behind, and finish him before he can swing (or worse, berserk).

Make sure you're full before jumping across. To the right and down the stairs is a pot full of herbs.

This is why. Boost and good luck. (Not pictured: dying instantly when all three of them berserked at once, and replaying the whole place.)

It's worth the risk at least. Whirlwind is important for everything.

Like this cheerful party immediately below that. Have fun :D

The game is a dick and misaligns the depth between the platform and the nook on the right.

There's plenty more loot if you can handle the staircase full of black frogs, five sledgehammer guys at the bottom, and gauntlet of sledgehammers in the next room.

Eventually, this slog of a dungeon opens up into a Conspicuously Well-Lit Room With Adorable Pomeranians And Totally Not Ominous Save Point.

I save here, then use the Wing Pendant to run screaming back to Redmont. Sadly I can't afford any Tier 4 gear, but I can at least max out what I have.

I even have enough ore left over to appease Antonio's ruthless superiors again.

Why of course good sir.

what the fuck are you shitting me

So what's all this preparation for?

Because in the next room you get cockslapped right off the ground.

Istersiva's first phase is a giant hentai beast. He has two attacks: a ground pound and a spin attack, both of which can kill you in three hits.

The spin attack has huge reach, little telegraphing, and is very difficult to clear vertically. He only does it if you approach from the sides or back; stay in front and he (probably) won't.

The ground pound is tricky, as its hitbox lingers longer than it appears to. Whirlwind to stay up if you have to, and don't walk into it afterward thinking it's dissipated because it probably hasn't. If it catches you in a whirlwind on the ground, it will fail to knock you down and instead hit multiple times (usually instant death).

The main gimmick is that he barfs up little walking crystals. The giant crystal in the back will randomly laser the smaller ones, and the lasers split and bounce around between them.

It can shred you fast enough that they take priority. Attack normally until he starts vomiting, then unload whirlwind to kill them as they come out. Chase them when Istersiva burrows -- they shoot you a bit but it's very weak.

The last complication is that he bleeds slippery crap. Your attacks occasionally propel you away before hitting him much, and you won't be able to run away reliably if he attacks. It's annoying.

You can get RNG-screwed. The lasers from the back fire randomly, sometimes as crystals spawn. It's not bad if he only barfs one and it dies immediately (though the laser will still hurt you), but sometimes he'll spawn several, the laser goes off instantly, the slippery floor shoots you backward before they die, and then this happens.

That's from just two. If there's 3-4 it never stops and you just die.

When he hits half health, the remaining crystals explode (stay back) and the tentacle disappears.

The crystal in the back pops out of the wall (as there appears to be no place for the tentacle thing to visibly connect, I must assume it was his dick), and phase 2 is a bullet hell while he spends most of it invincible -- well not quite, but too dangerous to try anything.

Your opening is when he glows purple, his crystals fly off into a shield, he shits out lots of poison bombs, and then starts lasering the floor outside the shield. Run under the shield as it expands, between the bombs, and then jump up and whirlwind three times. Delay the jump a bit, because if you go too early you drift down far enough to die when the bombs explode.

The attacks are easy, but easy to botch. His openings are shorter and farther between as he takes damage. The first one comes early and lasts long enough for three whirlwinds, but I had a good 45 seconds or so before the last one where you're lucky to get a second attack off at all.

Poison bombs bounce around, home in, and the blast is bigger than it looks, but mostly it just hems you in.

Lightning balls burst into popcorn as they approach. He fires more at once as the fight goes on, but whirlwinding over as they pop is enough.

This is your breather. Just jump diagonally toward him.

If he glows blue, run like hell. He'll charge you, then orbit the room. This is instant death if it connects.

In hindsight I forgot to screencap the blue spray, which is the hardest pattern. Basically, you want to jump back and forth across the middle as the pattern pulses -- between the middle and outer lines as it expands, then past the outer line on the other side as it contracts. Stay calm and it's not that bad.

Eventually he dies, and hopefully you don't land on a bomb and die as well.

The full fight, by this guy:

The original Ys 3:

I also forgot to screencap your reward WAIT I TOTALLY DIDN'T LOL

Next time: more things in town!

Bee · 2014-10-03 23:35:24

Bee etc etc.

Part 10: Filler

We last left off after playing bullet hell with a giant penis monster. YAY JAPAN!

After a successful mission, we teleport back to Redmont.

We quickly change the subject to something less awkward: evil statues, ancient genocide, and Adol's tendency to hear voices in creepy dungeons.

"He just started cackling for some reason. Weirdest thing."

"It was so severe it left battleaxe wounds on all the sick people. Also the first letter of each line of the press release spelled out D-E-V-I-L-W-O-R-S-H-I-P. Then again, the last letter of each line spelled F-L-U-F-F-Y-K-I-T-T-E-N. So I guess we're looking for demonic cat fever."

Edgar sends me to talk to Dogi's ascetic martial arts master about Felghana's demonic cat fever epidemic. But first, let's dick around town.

I swear to God I stopped editing this guy's lines.

New quest get! Even though I'm pretty sure he's just fishing for random treasure you find.

...she says with a big smile.

Because you forgot to feed them, dumbass. Sidequest #2.

This is why it took so long to put up a filler part by the way. My mind instinctively read this in the voice of Sweetie Belle for maximum adorableness and it put me in the hospital most of the month.

None of it's particularly hard to find, just a good 80 ore or so (that she stole from her dad).

Okay, this is usually about the point where Elena bugs us and tells us her asshole brother is secretly a good person or something. Where is she?

Dammit she's like a fucking toddler. You'd think the guard would have stopped her or something. How'd she get out this time?

Oh right. Not pictured: slavering wolves and carnivorous plants scaling the city walls while the worst guard ever wanks off in here.

She's way the fuck on the opposite side of Felghana trying to get a mulligan on her contemplative seaside pose.

I swear to Reah you're more prone to mortal peril than Lilia. And she started the game dying.

What is it today with people smiling when they say really depressing things?

(for the record.)

So yeah this is the other escort. Like Christof, Elena probably has more HP than you. I was tempted to have her tank just so she could do something useful, but she'd probably forget to put Sunder Armor and Taunt on her bar. So basically you just shoot fire at everything from a safe distance. People bitch about it on forums a lot, but compared to the shit we've already gone through it's pretty trivial.

See, even Worst Guard Ever is tired of your shit.

Next time: climbing a mountain!

Bee · 2014-10-04 21:51:42

Part 11: ♪ Ain't no mountain high enough ♪

We last left off right before some eXtreme mountain climbing. We're substituting casual defiance of physics for safety gear.

The Elderm Mountains are probably the hardest stretch of the game after Illburns. There's nothing quite as ridiculous as Evil Fucking Bastards (at least that you're expected to kill on the first sighting), but it is long with more than its share of dick moves and enemies with way too much HP. Expect to boost pretty much any time there are more than two melee guys on the screen.

These graboid things are almost as bad as EFBs, mainly because they hurt you on contact and there's not really much way to avoid contact. Fireball them while they're still buried when possible, but if they're below you, you basically have to go for stun + whirlwind and hope it goes off before you take damage.

Other than that it's pretty straightforward, if brutal. Watch out for little cutaways in the path border to reach secret ledges with free gold and ore.

Also, keep your eye out for Berm Leaves. Pikkard Kid wants four, but only three happen before the midpoint.

It's pretty smooth sailing until you run across this shit.

This is the first big Fuck You in the dungeon. These rock guys can be killed before you get the last ability (reapply stun after every few hits), but I really don't recommend it. They don't stagger when hit, and their ice attack is environmental so you can still be hit while landing your stun. Immediately after this picture was taken, he shot a jet of ice that hit me twice for 115 damage and I died instantly.

If you decide for whatever reason that you really like these assholes, go right from here and you'll find an ice skating rink with like six of them in it.

Fun fact: your first air slash gives you momentum, and it only goes away if you continue the combo or land -- but if you land on ice, you don't slow down at all. You can air slash once per jump and gain unlimited speed while on ice. That's usually enough to stay safe in this room long enough to get the chest and haul arse out.

This one, however, is terrifying. I'm...not entirely certain how I got out of there alive with the low ceiling and all.

Anyway, there are a couple more kinds of dudes that are more novel than they are notable. It doesn't take too long to get to the midway checkpoint.

Now that I have a nice warp point, I'd really like to buy some of the super-expensive Tier 4 gear in Redmont first. The double jump opens up a couple new places in previous areas.

Unfortunately, it leaves me about 4,000 short of the sword. And as killing power is rather more important than armor in this game, I decide to just take on the next boss undergeared instead of blowing my money on armor I don't need yet. It's not too hard, thankfully.

And as usual, she summons monsters of your approximate level instead of doing it herself.

The harpies are a weird and chaotic fight -- enough so that I wasn't able to get any good shots of iconic attacks (they don't really have many) and you'll have to watch a video. The basic idea is that red is vulnerable to fire, green to whirlwind, and blue to getting stabbed in the face. They'll use different movesets depending on how many of them are left.

Most guides will tell you they get harder as you pick them off, so you should spread damage evenly and kill them in as rapid succession as possible. I've...actually found the opposite. Red's fire dash is the fastest and most powerful attack by far, and because of fireball knockback and the cluttered nature of the fight it's very difficult to hit her once there are two or fewer left. A couple of the moves they do when there are only one or two left leave you huge openings, and I've found it beneficial to push them there as quickly as possible.

My strategy is to play kiting olympics while popping a few token whirlwinds on green. When they spread out for their trinity attack, I move to red and unload all my fire while she's unable to move or be knocked back. The trinity attack causes cascading rings of Deadly Musical Notes -- while they're too close together to down-stab her between them, you can pull it off using the down-slash + fireball trick.

Once red dies, the other two act a bit more aggressive, but it's easier to keep control just because there are only two things trying to kill you now. My focus here is primarily on green, but there's a really nice opening for blue. Every once in a while they'll do four explosive divebombs in tandem. Immediately after the fourth, they both stand still for a few seconds -- I boost if possible and unload on blue until green starts moving again.

Green will probably die next. The last harpy divebombs the middle and starts berserking musical notes. Next, she'll reposition and spam an attack (green is the only one whose spam is at all hard to dodge), and then she slows down again. As the last one should be blue, I wait for the attacks to calm down, then boost and unload into her face. She goes down pretty quickly when your attacks stagger her out of anything else.

The full fight, by this guy:

Upon watching it, I realized I probably could've sold Antonio the last load of ore to get enough gold for better gear. They were hitting me about five times harder than that. Whoops.

Still, it's a fight that's pretty easy to play safe, and a disadvantage on this one is well worth saving up for a weapon to end the next one as quickly as possible.

The original from Ys 3:

They die without much flash or fanfare and Totally Not A Nun Dularn sulks some more.

Fun fact: if you complete the Abandoned Mine, then go up Elderm without specifically talking to the mayor in Redmont, Dularn never shows up. You just get invisible walled at this plateau.

Next time: un-climbing a mountain!

glennmagusharvey · 2014-10-04 22:56:20

Oh gosh, the ice turret enemies are ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. And I've only played on normal difficulty...

Bee · 2014-10-05 00:57:28

Yeah, they twoshot you on Inferno.

As does the next boss. I've already taken him down, but the second "half" of Elderm is long and it'll probably be a multi-part update.

Bee · 2014-10-19 20:53:51

Part 12: ♪ Ain't no ice cave low enough ♪

We last left off after three pissed-off bird girls gave Adol some Brown-Note-themed comeuppance for his womanizing. We head back to Redmont to take care of certain matters of urgent disposal.

Of course I meant raval ore. What were YOU thinking? He gives 10,000 gold and this thing.

Predictably, he insists he came by it via entirely legitimate means. As the victim of theft was Randolph, I'm gonna let that slide.

The gold is used for something I probably should've done before the last boss fight.

It's tempting because Randolph is an arseface. But as it turns out, Cynthia is also an arseface and rips you off if you sell it to her. At least Drunk Arseface gives you something for your trouble.

It's almost as useless as the pocket change Cynthia would have given. It's increases boost duration, but it's very minor and you usually spend most of your boost running away after getting your attack spam in anyway.

Anyway, just past the mountain checkpoint you find the house of Berhardt: eccentric mountain hermit, martial arts master, exposition guy, and ridiculous bonus boss who could probably have done the whole game for you if he ever got off his ass.

"Red hair, and...actually, that's all he said. Turns out that does indeed uniquely identify you."

Commence plot dump of stuff we already knew!

This was a really stupid idea, because they also happened to all be nests of demons who wanted to resurrect the bad guy. Now, Genos is stated to be more powerful than me, yet unable to destroy Galbalan -- so I'm holding out hope that Genos was just a complete dumbass and I've still got a shot.

On the bright side, Berhardt isn't taking any of Chester's bullshit.

On the not-bright side, spoilers: he never actually does it.

Onward!

These guys are kinda BS. They damage on contact, and are invincible until you stun them from above. So in addition to having to down-stab a moving target, you still take damage if the stun just doesn't go off.

Last of these.

As far as I can tell, the only way to get this chest is to jump off to the right and whirlwind all the way around it to the left.

Eventually it goes into a cave and starts going down the inside of the mountain. The door greeters are ice turrets that can still kill you by looking at you funny, but they're easily run past and we're close to a safe spot.

It's a quick spin across.

Wait it's okay I can just jump back acro--

GOD DAMMIT DOGI

Our new creepy and only slightly possessed severed head bling lets us break through walls and stuff. Run straight past everything until you can demonstrate this.

That gem lets us charge out new shield dash right out of the gate, and that save/warp point is our base of operations for the rest of the dungeon. Which is good, because I immediately died to the douchebags outside.

On a related note, do not attack those antlions from behind. The bubbles they spit travel slower than your attacks push it forward, and then you die horribly. Always attack them from the side.

Oh, and stop off at Redmont to drop off the herbs. Hugo can hook you up with some great shit.

So turns out that shield dash can kill the ice turrets of doom pretty easily...sorta. Actually, they just break the shell, and then you get chased around by floating eyeballs that barf homing lightning and it's almost as bad as the turret was.

The eyeballs will take two hits to a charged fireball and die instantly, but the depth is tricky to hit them midair. It's usually not worth the trouble in any case -- XP scales to your level so you never fall too far behind, and this dungeon has safer and more useful XP fodder anyway.

There's also these clowns, who die to shield charge. They're a pain to chase down at times, but generally worth making sure they don't roll back in from offscreen at a bad time.

So your first order of business is to backtrack for loot. Jump down the pit next to Dogi and clean it out. It's enough to upgrade armor and not die as fast.

Next, warp to Illburns and get more stuff. Some ore here...

...but more important is this.

Break through and jump over everything -- do NOT stop to fight.

This is your best friend on Inferno. Just find a quiet place when low on health, and it'll top you off.

Also warp out immediately or this happens.

(cont.)

glennmagusharvey · 2014-10-19 22:19:28

487 damage when your max health is 226?

...well I always knew that those were overpowered assholes, but still.

Bee · 2014-10-19 23:11:57

Part 12.5

So just past our save point base is a big pile of icy, oddly-sloped fuck you. When you fall off, it drops you into a frozen pit full of ice turrets.

The only way out of said pit is to scale a long slope of ice and jump a whole bunch of steep icy ramps.

Hilariously, this is really easy if you use the air-slash glitch from a couple posts ago. Just on the other side is a bit safer way to cross ice.

At this point the place is pretty uneventful. Monsters hit hard, but now you can find a safe spot, equip the Spirit Cape, and just hang out until you're at full health.

This is another really bad fuck you. Just below here is a spike pit that kills you almost instantly. Fall down to the left and whirlwind further to clear it.

Anyway, eventually you hit the end.

Head back to Redmont one more time to buy the last piece of equipment and max out as much of it as you can.

Just past that save point is some fine modern art.

Actually, it just wants to eat your face.

Gildias was right up there with Gyalva as one of the three boss fights that scare me shitless, and he didn't disappoint. On Inferno, he kills you in two hits, which is unusually punishing even for a boss. He also has the dubious honor of being able to kill you with his entrance animation, which is technically an attack and will hit you if your cutscene invulnerability switches off too early.

Gildias's gimmick is that you can trip him so you can hack away at his head -- but the only thing that works is a charged shield slam. And on Inferno, you actually need two.

Boost and lay into him when he goes down.

For the first third or so of his health bar, he doesn't move or really do much of anything other than bite you, which he can't do if you're standing directly between his legs. It's kind of funny, but it's the only breather you'll get.

For the second phase, he'll start stomping out streams of icicles. They only hurt when they first come out, but they still block movement and generally crowd the place. What you want to do is jump up right as his foot connects, dodging the shockwave, the icicles, and bringing you high enough to slash him in the face. Then unload your shield slam as you fall to block his bite, land on his foot, and start trying to knock him down.

He'll also fly offscreen. While he's in the air, hang out in the back and be ready to jump and shield charge, because icicles fall across the back 3/4 of the arena and shatter all over the place. He'll come down in his usual spot with a big shockwave and random icicles on the floor. It's possible but not entirely recommended to block his landing by spamming your shield slam so you can try and trip him sooner, but it'll sometimes slip the hit in between your shields.

This is his most dangerous attack by far. He roars and flaps his wings, blowing you to the back, and causing all icicles to launch forward while several more fall from the ceiling behind him and shatter toward you. This will shred you pretty much instantly if you don't jump and shield charge off to the side very quickly. What's even worse is that it's a little buggy -- you'll often get over half your health ripped off by a fucking invisible icicle because they don't always render properly.

Once he's down to about 1/3 health, his aerial excursions start going at you instead and tries to scoop you up and throw you into the air.

Don't try to dodge it. It's possible, but he just keeps coming at you until he succeeds, icicles keep falling the whole time, and there's not really any opening to attack him in return. Also, you can shield slam into his face as he grabs you.

He throws you up into the air, and you fall down through a shaft of protruding rocks that you have to shield slam through. Conveniently, the screen transition to this sequence also refills your magic.

The best strategy is to pick one side. It's unlikely but possible for all of them to be on your side, in which case you don't quite have enough magic for the last one -- so you double-jump away from it

The hard part of this fight is that like Istersiva, the openings he presents you get sparser. He usually trades the icicle stomp for either the wing flap or just taking off again immediately. At this point, your attack opportunities pretty much dry up and you have to take some big risks to sneak hits in -- usually at his face, since you won't get many chances to knock him down. Jump attack him as he lands, pop off fireballs from a distance, and shield slam into him as he grabs you.

The last phase is long and grueling with almost no room to attack and less room for error, but with some luck he eventually goes down.

The full fight, by this guy who wipes the floor with him so badly I feel embarrassed.

The original Ys 3 version, which seems determined to be even more of a pain in the ass.

Your reward is the last statue!

Your other reward is a cave-in, and you can't teleport out because fuck you.

OH GOD MY FACE

...how did you get over that pit you were stuck at earlier? You know what, never mind. Let's just --

Dammit.

Chester expounds at length about the Genos Island massacre, telling us approximately nothing we couldn't already have inferred via "McGuire is concentrated evil".

And he wants the statues to unleash the same dark god he was charged to keep sealed in his island and kill McGuire. Because only extreme cosmic-scale overkill is sufficient.

And...apparently everyone in the castle without exception, up to and including random staff and civilians. also Galbalan will still be running around killing people. This is all justifiable BECAUSE AAAANGST.

Dogi is ever the optimist.

Yeah, that went about how I expected.

Next time: ramifications!

Bee liveblogs Oath in Felghana

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