Crystalgate's DW III logs and whatever

[Crystalgate]

Dragon Warrior III

Part 1: I've previously given up on the NES version, but I figured I'd give the GBC version a chance.

Anyway, backstory. Once upon a time there was a hero who went out to fight a demonlord. Like the player controlled heroes, he believed in wandering around randomly a lot before engaging the target. At some point he had a talk with his wife. She brought up the subject of their child. In response the hero starts talking about how defeating the demonlord requires sacrifices. I take it he wasn't to pleased about having a child. Eventually he makes it to his destination.

The battle against the demonlord takes place on the top of a volcano. He does a lot of jumping around, dodging fireballs and sometimes even fires some fireballs himself. Several times he manages to jump from one side of the hole to another which is impressive since the hole is at least 50m wide. Finally, the demonlord hovers above the hole and the hero decides to jump at him. The maneuver succeeds, but has the side effect of transferring a lot of momentum to the demonlord, momentum which was needed to get him to the other side. Down he goes for a hot bath.

Some years later and the hero's child reaches not quite adulthood yet, but run around with swordhood. The child hears a disembodied voice calling.

I decide to try a female and name her Lia. Let's see if the GBC version will refrain from calling her a son.

The disembodied voice tells her he will ask some questions and that she should answer honestly. This is the personality generator. I have another idea, I just pick the personality I want and consult el-FAQo. Valiant sounds good. The disembodied voice agrees, in fact so much he twice tells her that she's basically shitting rainbows. After that the heroine awakens.

Lia's mother is standing at the bed telling her to get up. It's time for her to talk with the king. Yay! Even more yay, Lia's mother does unlike the NES version not call her daughter a son.

The king does call her the late hero's son though, but retracts that statement with "I mean daughter". I don't believe that was a honest mistake. In any case, the king tells Lia the demonking is still alive and she's all "I wanna follow my father's footstep" while the king is all "no, skip the falling into a volcano part". The king suggests that she gets some companions, with added firepower she may actually kill the demonlord instead of getting killed. A good idea since Lia is a girl and therefore can't just impregnate someone before committing suicide. The king also tells her not to mention the fact that the demonking is alive to anyone in order to avoid panic and finally gives her 50 gold to get some equipment. That's almost enough for two clubs!

Lia sets of to get her companions. She skips the preset clowns and registers her own companions. Turns out every companion gets five seeds to distribute among the stats and I can choose to distribute them manually or have them randomly distributed which is probably gonna include a lot of fighters with intelligence seeds fun. I choose to skip that fun.

I make one fighter named Harl who I may change into a soldier later. I distribute two of the seeds to strength, and the rest to vitality and agility. That makes him a macho which I can buy. Next I make a cleric named Mye who I may or may not change into a fighter later. She gets two strength seeds and three intelligence seeds. Apparently she's a romanticist. The third character is a dealer named Kara. I don't care to much about her seed distribution, but puts them on strength and vitality. For that she becomes a silly person. To bad she wasn't a man and had one of the seeds on agility instead, then she wouldn't have to be silly and could instead have been a macho. Anyway, last I make a wizard named Seth, who may change into a cleric or a thief later. He gets intelligence and vitality seeds, in other words, he's a coward. Yeah, that's what you get for being bright and healthy!

I pick the fighter, the cleric and the dealer. My experience is that wizards aren't to strong early on and I thought the dealer will make money grinding faster.

Anyway, I get a club, grind ten gold and get another club. I also talk with the townspeople. Turns out that not telling about the demonlord is in vain, everyone and their grandma seems to know about it.

After five battles the dealer manages to once find 20% extra gold. That's makes 4% extra gold if that keeps up. I admit the dealer may have been unlucky and that that the 20% may have been the game rounding a bigger number down. Still, I decide the extra gold isn't worth a party slot and exchange her for the wizard. The wizard doesn't disappoint, he quickly gets enough MP to cast offensive spells in any battle with anything that resembles resistance.

After playing a bit more, the GBC version appears to be much less of a pain than the NES version. Getting the heroes ready to go anywhere without dying doesn't take as long as I remember. The spellcasters are getting much more MP when leveling up and I seem to need much less expensive equipment. That or I'm simple making a more liberal use of the frame-skip button.

Part 2: The Heroine Lia begins her journey for real. The first goal seems to be to get out of her country. This turns out to be more complicated than expected since there's neither a ship in the whole kingdom nor a way via land to go to another country. By talking to her fellow countrymen, she eventually figures out what she has to do.

There's an underground path leading out of the country, but it's blocked by a wall. Since the wall was most likely erected by the king to prevent people from fleeing to greener pastures, asking him to send a few miners is out of the question. There's a magic bomb which could blow the wall to rubble, but the man who owns it has his door locked both daily and nightly. Fortunately, the door is red and there's a key which can open red doors on the top of a tower. Unfortunately, the tower is on an island and the lack of ships has already been mentioned. The solution lies in a secondary underground path, one that leads to the island.

While gathering the necessary information Lia also builds some levels and acquires better equipment. The fighter starts to disappoint, he has both less strength than the heroine and cannot use any weapon properly. He is actually doing the least amount of damage of all party members. I nevertheless decide to stick with him since sooner or later a fighter friendly weapon has to show up.

Anyway, travel underground to the tower. Climb the tower to get the thieves key (if you have problem with burglary, make sure your door isn't painted red) and then get the magic bomb. Use the bomb to blow up the wall and get the heck outa the country.

Lia emerges on another country far away. The first town she spots happens to be the capital (there seems to be about a 50% chance that a randomly selected town is a capital though) and she decides to speak to the king. The king recognizes her as a heroine and has a request. The request has to wait though, because it's time for a rest so Lia quits after the king records her journey.

Eventually she resumes her adventure, but the king isn't programmed to make his request doing his opening dialog. Lia has to talk to him again to hear his request. Turns out that a thief named Kandary or something has stolen the kings crown and the king wants Lia to get it back.

Just like with Lia's home country, this kingdom has one castle town and one village. Since nobody in the castle town knows where the thief is, it's time to go to the village. Sure enough, the villagers manages to both tell her that the thief is holed up in something tower and that something tower is to the west. Other than that, a villager stands on a grave which he claims belongs to a fighter who defeated a bear with his bare hands. Chance is the fighter was using one of the few fighter friendly weapons so Lia decides to return nighttime for some grave robbing in case the fighter toke the weapon with him to the grave.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. The fanboy is still one the grave, sleeping however. The ghost of the fighter is also there, probably to watch so that the creepy fanboy doesn't do anything horrible to his corpse while everyone is asleep. The ghost confirms that he indeed used a weapon, an iron claw. The iron claw is sold in the village weapon shop meaning Lia has to buy it. Oh well, buying is not as good as finding, but still not too bad. She does buy the claw and a fighter armor as well. The new equipment coupled with the fact that Harl the fighter is lately getting better stat gains upon level ups means he stopped sucking. His strength is even starting to catch up with Lia's, although he's not quite there yet.

First some exploring. Other than something tower, there's some sort of gambling installation where you pay a token to walk some gauntlet. You roll a dice and walk the corresponding number of squares and depending on where you stop something will happen. Lia only gets gold and a herb which is good enough since there's still plenty of equipment upgrades left to get. For clearing the course she also gets even more gold and a sword stronger than the currently strongest available weapon in stores. Score!

Eventually she tackles the tower. That takes her two retreats before she makes it trough, one retreat because Lia suddenly needs anti paralysis herbs and has few of them and one retreat because the enemies decided to gang up on the wizard. After that and a quick equipment upgrade (it's actually now that Harl gets his fighter friendly armor) she makes it to Kandary.

Kandary is standing close to two treasure chests and Lia intends to get them as well as the crown. However, Kandary pulls a lever or something and Lia and her party is sent a floor down via a pitfall. They quickly climb back up, but Kandary is gone and so is the content of the two treasure chests! Well, there's only one way he could have gone and the party quickly catches up with him. Battle time.

The wizard stacks Increase and Kandary and his goons becomes less and less efficient for every turn. Speaking of increase, I realize that if I'm going to class change the wizard it should be to a thief so that I can get an Increase of before the enemies attack instead of after. Surely if the thief has a decent attack he won't need as much MP since he can save some by attacking instead of casting offensive spells. Anyway, Kandary loses and yields.

He offers to return the crown if Lia lets him go. She says no since she wants whatever was in the chests too, but Kandary pulls a "but thou must". Grudgingly she allows the content of the treasure chests walk away and settles for the crown. She returns it to the king.

The king offers her the throne as a reward. At this point it should be clear that's not a reward at all, but the king insists. So, Lia becomes a queen despite there already being one.

The first thing Lia does as a queen is to chat with queen 2. She thinks it's a good idea to put a woman on the throne. If she wants a female ruler and the king doesn't want to rule, why don't they just have her do the ruling? Anyway, Lia doesn't want to find out and seeks out the king. He's busy gambling away the royal treasury which he apparently didn't see fit to leave behind. Fortunately he complies when Lia demands he resumes his duties as a king and the madness ends. It's pointed out that at her short time as a queen she already built a reputation of being a good ruler which doesn't bode well since she did absolutely nothing.

Quest complete and I have no idea why I had to do any of it. Next time, I head east? Going there wasn't a good idea earlier, but now the party is stronger. The game is definitely an improvement over the NES version. This version is less "spellcasters should use their spells wisely" and more "spellcasters will want to cast spells every battle."

[Crystalgate]

Part 3: After having been crowned queen and then abdicated in less than five minutes, it's time for Lia to go do something useful. Or at least it's supposedly useful. Anyway, it turns out there is a second village in this kingdom, one I forgot about while recovering the crown. Up north is a village where everyone is asleep due to supernatural means. The party heads there.

One villager is awake for some reason. He mumbles something about an elf queen and a Dream Ruby. Basically, Lia have to get the latter and give it to the former. She heads of towards the elven village.

Now, this could mean there's a third village in this kingdom, but there's not a chance the elves are in any way or shape actually part of it other than merely being in it's geographical location. In fact, having elves in you kingdom just makes part of it less "your's". Now there's a large forest from which you cannot chop down a single tree without them going apeshit. Also, Elves-Tolkien=assholes, so you also have some bad neighbors in them.

The elf queen informs Lia that her daughter ran off with the dream ruby and a human man and also adds that the human must have tricked her or something. Since the whole affair has "forbidden love" over it, there's no chance the lovers are still alive. Lia therefore doesn't have to persuade them to give the ruby back, finding where they died is enough. Her adventurer instincts tells her that they died in a cave located nearby.

The cave turns out to be the hardest dungeon for a long time forward. The enemies hits rather hard and there's fast enemies spamming Stopspell as well as other enemies exhaling sleeping gas (or "a sweet breath"). Still, the party makes it trough soon enough. The actual corpses cannot be found, but the Dream Ruby can as well as a letter explaining what's going on. Basically, since the elf queen didn't approve of their relationship they went and drowned themselves so they can be together in heaven.

1) Doesn't religions in general disapprove of suicide (unless you take a lot of enemies with you) and doesn't religions also in general claim that earthly bonds are broken upon death? 2) Why not just keep running away and live together in life instead of going trough with the whole drowning business? 3) Where does stealing the Dream Ruby enter the picture?

Lia however quickly asks herself "I have the Dream Ruby now, so why care?" and brings the Dream Ruby to the queen. The queen decides that the humans in the sleeping village may awake now, but she won't stop being an asshole. She hands over Wake Dust which will get the awakening job done.

The party heads back to the sleeping village and wakes everyone up. A few things are then revealed. It was the son of the man who escaped the sleep spell who stole the Dram Ruby together with the elven princess. Also, Lia's father stayed in the inn just a day before the village went to sleep. Had the lovers made their move just one day earlier things would have been much different. It's not revealed why waking up the villagers was necessary though, assuming it even is. The arms shop does sell Cloaks of Evasion though and I get one for the wizard.

Now it's finally time to leave the kingdom. The party heads easts, an action that wouldn't have been a good idea prior to getting some levels in the dungeon. They locate a new village.

The theme of the village is dishonest merchants. Lia gets the advice that she shouldn't show she's interested in a ware, else she will be ripped off. She follows the advice, but despite that the merchants won't ever sell for less than twice the actual price and therefore ends up not selling at all. Worse, there's some honest merchants too who sells several of the wares the dishonest merchants sells. This makes one wonder what they are thinking. It's probably something in line of "shit, I'm not selling anything, I better jack up the prices to 16x so that I only have to sell a single armor in order to live in comfort for years!"

To the east is a cave which you can't get trough without a letter from a king who you can't reach without the magic key. To the south is the desert kingdom Isis in which the magic key is located. Time to get there.

Isis is annoying to get to. There's an oasis in the world map and entering the various tree tiles takes you to a magnified map of the oasis where a town and a castle is visible. The town and the castle are however blocked off by trees. It's not until Lia casts return and selects Isis, which has now been flagged as available, that the game allows the party to enter a tile which takes them to a place where the town and the castle is accessible.

The theme of this town is that everyone fawns over how beautiful the queen is. The queen herself is more sensible and realizes that her beauty is not something to get to carried away for. Other than that, the magic key is in a pyramid to the north of the oasis. There's a place where magic doesn't work in the pyramid, so the party gets a crapload of herbs.

The pyramid has pitfalls that can be avoided by not stepping in the middle of rooms and a puzzle that can be solved by trial and error or by memorizing a children's song in Isis. All things considered, the Magic Key is easy to get. There's however another treasure available with the magic key. You can find a Golden Claw for fighters in the basement. It's also in the basement that magic doesn't work and getting the golden claw ups the random encounter rate to about one for every two steps. Fun times.

With the magic key in hand Lia goes on a heroic castle treasury raiding spree. She locates some nice loot including an accessory which doubles agility, although it turns out she didn't need the magic key for that one. Oh well. The accessory goes to Seth the Wizard so that he can get his spells of before the enemies already pounded on the party.

Next destination is Portega, the kingdom who's king Lia has to talk to get trough a cave which she assumes she has to get trough. As the name implies, the theme of Portega is being a big port. In Portega a lot of townspeople talk about how much the king likes a certain spice. Lia suspects getting the cave opening letter will take some errand running. This turns out not the be the case. The king just gives her a letter. The spice will get Lia a ship, something far more worthy of an errand quest than the passage trough a cave.

Anyway, go trough the cave. Give letter to a hobbit who in turn lets the party trough. Locate a new town.

This town doesn't have much of a theme other than possessing the needed spice. Only one man sells the spice, but his daughter got herself kidnapped by bandits. Who would have guessed? Anyway, her fiancé/husband decides to go off rescuing her. Hopefully they will both be kept nearby so that Lia can fetch them both in one go. That will have to wait a bit though. There's resting and exploring some other locations to be done first.

Part 4: It's almost time for Lia the heroine to rescue the daughter of a spice dealer as well as said daughter's fiancé/husband. With almost it means she wants to explore a bit first. That or she simple missed the tower where the kidnappers are holed up and happened to find something else first.

Anyway, she enters the shrine of Dharma, the shrine of making broken characters. Unfortunately, that doesn't include her since the cleric there forbids her from changing her class. She wonders if she should bother changing her companions' classes at all, there's a danger that they become more powerful than she is. Maybe she can compensate by hogging all stat seeds and making sure they give the maximum benefit, but that will probably not be enough. Fortunately, her current party setup works just fine.

Nearby is a tower, not the one where kidnappers are. Talking to people who for some reason seems to live there reveals that the book of Zen, which allows you to change class to Sage, is there. Sounds good, but Lia never felt that the cleric needs to be able to cast mage spells or that the mage needs to cast cleric spells. The book could make the mage less fragile though, but again she fears she may end up with a companion more powerful than she is and instead stresses the importance of quickly rescuing the victims from the kidnappers.

Back to town and this time the party locates the tower of kidnappers. The tower is easy to get trough and so are the kidnappers. It turns out to be Kandar who this time has more hitpoints, but doesn't seem to do much more damage since last time. Once he's throughoutly beaten, he again asks for mercy and pulls a "but thou must" to ensure he gets the answer he wants. One day Lia will find a way to outsmart the system!

She free the what's-their-faces and returns to town. There she gets the spice as reward. She gives the spice the spice addicted king who sniffs eats it and then grants her the possession of a ship. Score!

A large part of the world now opened up to her, so it's time to travel to random locations and see if she finds something useful. Unfortunately, the first place she encounters is the castle of snobs. The guard there won't even let her in and calls the party "bumpkins". Maybe she could get the kings she already visited to get her a fancy sounding title. Even better, she could take advantage of the fact that she can temporarily become a queen and prepare all the royal documents she will ever need. Or maybe there’s a specific “get past the guard” item.

Well, she locates the needed item very quickly. The next village she hits has it. It's an invisible herb and the villagers even tells her to go to snob castle after purchasing some. Other than that, the village also has a temple which requires her to get the Final Key to access.

West of the village is a mountain pass. The village is however blocking said pass and there's no way to enter the pass without first entering the village. Lia does so and then exits the village westwards. This is in vain as every exit lands her south of the village. There's apparently no way to enter the pass right now. To the snob castle then.

The party becomes invisible right in front of the guard and then enters the castle. Other than useless snobs, there's also a block puzzle, or boulder puzzle to be precise, in the castle basement. Solving it yields the vase of drought. Lia doesn't know where to use it yet, but figures she will when she see it.

Next the party locates a village in a very poor shape. The villagers are concerned that they are to close to the demonking and that something bad may happen to them. Sleeping in the run down inn reveals that their concerns were perfectly justified, at morning there's no villagers, there's only bones. At nighttime the villagers will be back again. Anyway, Lia decides to explore the currently desolate village and locates it's puzzle. A pile of bones has a letter stating that the owner of the bones wants to give a certain item to someone while still alive. The item is not with the bones, so it indeed has to be obtained while the owner is alive, or at least sort of alive. The owner happens to be a prisoner and while there's a one tile big hole in the prison, a guard is blocking it during nighttime. The jail can be opened with the Final Key, an item Lia doesn't have.

Lia also finds the Dark Lamp while exploring the village. This lets her change from day to night which coupled with the inn means she has full control over whether the villagers will be dead or alive. Awesome! Unfortunately, using it teleports the party to the village entrance, so the Final Key is still needed.

Next time she maybe finds the Key.

[Crystalgate]

Part 5: Lia tries to find the final key. She does eventually find it but first finds just about everything else first.

The first noteworthy discovery is an empty spot where a man wants to start a new town. He wants Lia to get him a dealer to help with the town building. Fortunately, she just happened to know someone who she definitely can spare. Kara the dealer joins the party for the second, and probably last, time. The ambitious town founding man seems happy with the assistance. Hopefully the +4% income a dealer grants will be more useful for him than for Lia.

The next noteworthy discovery is a town harassed by a monster named Orochi who demands sacrifices, female sacrifices to be specific. Apparently it was the leader of the town who figured out the sacrifice to pacify monster method. Lia figures out a quicker solution which has the additional benefits of not being temporary and not requiring loss of women. Some townspeople also seem rather enthusiastic about this idea. Their leader is not however. She's in fact downright hostile and wants Lia to leave. Not suspicious at all.

Very close to the town is a cave. The party ventures there in search of Orochi even though chance is the monster's actually in town. They are lucky though and Orochi decided to venture down. Boss battle time.

This one turns out to be a lot of trouble. Orochi usually uses a flame breath attack which hits every party member for about half what Healmore heals. With four party members it means the total damage is about twice of what Healmore heals. This wouldn't have been such a problem had Lia also known Healmore, but she doesn't. Heal and medical herbs aren't really cutting it, so the fight becomes a race against time where the party tries to whittle down Orochi's hitpoints before they wipe. They pull a narrow victory. In another reality they could just have put the boss to sleep and it would have stayed asleep until it died.

The boss retreats trough a warp and what's left of the party follows. The warp takes them to the town hall of the village of sacrificing women. There the leader lies, wounded. The party is however in even worse shape and makes a quick retreat hoping that the monster will stay nicely wounded while they have a rest in Lia's house. It does that.

When they confront the leader the next day, she again tells them to leave, this time adding more threat. Lia refuses and the party has to fight Orochi a second time. Despite the monster being wounded, the fight is no easier. This time Orochi uses the flame breath much less, but it now gets two turns every round, so the damage output is about the same. Again the party pulls a narrow victory.

The monster is killed and the villagers hail Lia as a hero. While this is the kind of stuff she really wanted to do when signing up as a hero, these events still leaves a bad taste in her mouth. During both fights against the monster she was one of the unfortunate to fall. Harl the fighter had at this point gained much more strength than she had. When the fights started to lock desperate, the party had to focus on keeping him alive so that he can finish Orochi off. While sacrifice is seen as heroic, sacrificing oneself so that someone else may finish off the big bad monster is the job of a sidekick. Had she only known Healmore things would have been different. A quick consult with el-FAQo tells her that it takes way to long for her to learn it. Once she does it won't be long until she learn Healall however.

From Orochi she gained the Orochi sword and an Orb. She is the only one in the party who can equip the Orochi sword, but she has a flail which hits multiple enemies, so no deal. When it comes to the Orb, she scans her memory and recalls someone saying something about six orbs being needed to awake something. Someone else also said doing so will make a ship unnecessary. Lia adds the orbs to her list of items to get.

More exploring reveals the third noteworthy discovery. She runs into the village where her father Ortega was born. The villagers mistake her for her father, apparently not seeing that she's a girl. Thinking of it, this isn't the first time people have gone "what, you're a girl?" Sure, her heavy armor makes it impossible to see that she has breasts, her muscular build is very unfeminine and her mannerism is nothing like what you expect from a girl, but still...

Anyway, after talking to a lot of old friends of her father she gets his helmet. The helmet provides 5 points of defense over her current head wear meaning she takes one less point of damage from enemy attacks now with a 25% chance of having a second point of damage subtracted. Lia can just feel how she's getting invincible!

Finally, Lia finds what she's looking for. Some shoals laying on the south of her magic map turns into an island when she uses her vase. The island has a shrine and inside it is the Final Key.

First she returns to the passage blocking town and unlocks the temple there. A cleric who apparently spends his whole life there greets her and offers her a challenge she has to complete alone. Lia accepts and is granted passage to the previously inaccessible pass. Going west reveals a cave.

Fighting alone turns out to be easy since the enemies are weak and her weapon hits a whole group. Or at least it turns out to be easy until she encounters a mimic who hits her with an instant death spell. Did her father have to put up with this sort of crap? Fortunately, Lia awakens next to the cleric who's all "oh you died, try again?" and she has a second go. This time she makes it to the end of the cave without any further incidents and finds her second orb.

After that she revisits the dead village. She enters the jail and talks to the man there. He recognizes her as a heroine and gives her a third orb.

More searching gets Lia to a pirate's hideout. They seem to know that she is the heroine and apparently figures not getting in the way of saving the world is more important than looting. The leader turns out to be a female who asks Lia if she finds a female pirate captain strange. Since Lia herself is a girl and leading a band of warriors, she says no. The captain however assumes Lia's just sucking up. Chance is she just enjoys the "OMG, it's a girl!" attention and got cranky when Lia didn't give her that. Anyway, some searching outside the hideout reveals the fourth orb.

Two orbs are left now. Lia also has to pay another visit at the various castles in case the Final Key reveals something more that's not nailed down.

Part 6: First on the to do list is revisiting various castles and see what the Final Key can get her. The most noteworthy find is the Expel Shield. It turns out that the fighter can equip it and suddenly he has the highest defense of the party. The situation is now getting out of hand. He now has higher attack, defense, hitpoints and agility than Lia does and she does not yet have any noteworthy spells. Fortunately she has a group hitting weapon which he can't use, but it still doesn't seem right. Isn't it supposed to be sidekicks who has one skill that exceeds that of the hero while the hero is better at everything else?

While hoping the situation will somehow resolve itself, Lia visits the town under construction. It looks like Kara got a small shop going and a few people has been suckered into immigrating. The town is not yet really useful though.

Next Lia goes to a shrine which warps her to a kingdom surrounded by mountains. This one suffers from quite a serious problem, other than the big one threatening the whole world that is. The king has suddenly started to act suspiciously and is now execution happy. Also, people are taking about the Change Staff that allows you to change appearance. Obviously there's no relation between the two. People are also talking about a mirror that allows you to see how things really are.

The first course of action is to go shopping. Then it's time to take a look at the king. The guards won't let the party in, but there's a convenient side entrance. The guard there asks if Lia is there on business. Of course she is, that's why she's taking the side entrance instead of the front entrance! Thus she makes her way to the king which in turns orders the guards to throw her and her followers into prison. The guards does so, but doesn't confiscate any of her equipment. Lia doesn't know if it's because they are dumb or because they are smart.

She uses the Final Key to get out of her cell. A guard is blocking the straightforward exit. Taking to him just yields a "Zzz, I'm talking in my sleep. The king is behaving really suspiciously!" and no getting out of the way. Oh well, there's always the less straightforward exit. While getting out the long way, Lia finds a man locked up deeper down than the others. He identifies himself as the real king. Lia is really starting to suspect that the fake king isn't very good at the whole villain business.

Since the guards are already very suspicious of the impostor king and Lia just opened the cell to the real king, he could easily have walked out and rallied the guards. However, he refuses to move. Lia gets the feeling that she is supposed to fetch the magic mirror she heard about earlier. While much more complicated than needed, this method will get her much more glory than if the real king reclaimed his kingdom, so she doesn't complain.

The mirror lies in a nearby cave, another sign that the impostor king isn't very good at his job. Anyway, the layout of the cave isn't very complicated, but still manages to frustrate the party a bit by negating the "hug the left/right wall" method. Monsters there also like to drain the party of magic. Still, getting the mirror doesn't prove to be to hard.

The first plan is to reveal the fake king right in front of his guards. Unfortunately, cutscene fiat gets in the way and the party is thrown into jail a second time. Not surprisingly, the party still doesn't have their equipment confiscated, so out they go. This time Lia waits until night and enters the king's bedroom and produces the mirror while he's asleep. The king turns out to be a troll who looks about as intelligent as you'd expect considering his actions. Boss battle time.

This fight seems easier than the Orochi fight. Things does get a bit more problematic though when the troll takes out the healer via a critical hit and Lia still hasn't learned Healmore. Nevertheless, her party wins and this time Lia remains standing.

Other than glory and fame, she also picks up the change staff. Time to have some fun.

First she goes to the elven village. Her first plan is to change to an elf or a hobbit and see what she can do. However, the staff transform the party to slimes. To her surprise, the elf shopkeeper is willing to sell to them in that condition. Are humans the only creature elves discriminate against? In any case, the rest of the elves manages to see trough the disguise so no fun can be had here.

Next Lia goes home to see if she can scare her mom a little. It works. It also works on a lot of other villagers. Eventually she gets tired of that game and trades the change staff to a hermit for a pirate bone which allows her to find a ghost ship.

Before tracking down the ghost ship, Lia pays the town under construction another visit. Things have changed. The town is now called Karaburg, has a weapon shop with quite expensive equipment, a theatre, a cell and a mansion for Kara herself. Despite the serious lack of housing, there’s actually quite a number of people there.

After some shopping, the party visit’s the theatre. There’s male dancers, a bar and some loot. Lia claims the loot and then leaves. As she’s about to leave, she’s presented a tab of 50,000 gold. While she’s not the type who regularly visits theatres, Lia still got the impression that you’re supposed to pay for entering, not exiting. She refuses to pay and the tab is waived upon the account of her being a friend of Kara. Alternatively, even 50,000 gold isn’t worth getting impaled by a flail for.

Taking to the villagers reveals that they aren’t to happy about how the town is running either. One of them however reveals that Kara recently purchased an Orb, so she’s doing something right at least. Lia therefore pays Kara a visit, but she won’t just fork over the Orb. Maybe returning at night will be more fruitful?

Unfortunately, Kara was sensible enough to hire a guard. The guard however also bars the man, who had the idea of building a town here in the first place, from entering Kara‘s mansion. The man wants to warn Kara about an upcoming rebellion, but is now unable to.

Lia looks around and sure enough, she overhears some townspeople plotting rebellion. They seem to be worried when they realize she overheard them. One of them defiantly states she can’t stop it. While Lia is sure she could stop them from much more including breathing, she has no intention to stop anything. Things has to change for her to get the Orb.

Seth casts passtime and it’s day again. Now things are different. The town greeter reveals that Kara is no longer the mayor. The weapon shop has even better equipment to sale. The theatre has turned into a children singing contest hall. In this case Lia suspects that the townspeople just wanted to spite on Kara and made the theatre as much the opposite of what it previously was as they could. Thinking of it, was there even any children in this town yesterday?

Kara is chilling out in the cell. She wonders what she did wrong, but also reveals she hid the orb behind the throne in her mansion. Lia goes and gets it and decides this earns Kara a get out of jail free card. Kara however decides to stay and hopes the townspeople will forgive her at some point. She may not be to far off, at least one of the townspeople is already starting to wonder if things weren’t better with Kara running the show. Well, making the theatre into a children singing contest hall is a good sign that whoever’s now making decisions isn’t to competent either.

Five orbs of six gained. Next time Lia tracks down a ghost ship and maybe even the last orb.

[Crystalgate]

Part 7: Time to track down a ghost ship. It's done by using the pirate bone and then you're told how far north/south and east/west you need to travel. The ghost ship floats around randomly, but not fast enough to make tracking it down harder. I don't know if it can spawn in an inaccessible position though.

The ghost ship has a lot of dead who aren't quite dead. Ghosts who look like flames, ghosts who looks like humans and ghost who looks like skeletons, or is it skeletons who look like skeletons? Talking to them reveals that the ship wasn't a very nice place even before becoming a ghost ship. After searching a bit, the party eventually discovers Luvmemory in a chest. Lia assumes that the teenage poetry book is important and takes it with her. Once she's confident she got all easy to find loot, the party leaves the ghost ship.

Next destination is a lake which one can reach from the seas via rivers. Unfortunately, a ghost is there and said ghost kicks the party out of the lake. Nearby is a shrine with a man who explains that a woman drowned herself in the lake after she heard (and confirmed?) that her lover died while sailing. He also suggests that if she's reminded of the love between her and her husband she may find peace. The party sails as close as they can without getting kicked out and Lia holds up the teenage poetry book. She even goes as far as to read from it after making sure her companions knows she will be very angry if they tell anyone about it. It's of no use though.

Desperate, Lia orders her companions to sail into the getting kicked out point and after being kicked out yet again, she tries waving and reading the teenage poetry book a second time. This works. Both the woman in the lake and her lover appears and have a talk in a globe of light. Then they disappear. The party can now enter the lake which has an island with a shrine on top of it. Inside the shrine is the Gaia Sword.

Then they travel to a volcano and casts the Gaia Sword into it. The volcano causes a lot of earthquakes and reveals a new path by clearing the mountains who happens to be in the way. The new path leads to a cave. Inside the cave Lia finds both an armor and a weapon only she can use. The weapon is stronger than what she currently has, but lacks the ability to hit multiple enemies, so no deal. However, it can also be used to cast quite a powerful spell and since Mye is lacking in damage department, she gets it. Unfortunately, it appears that if you can't equip it, you can't use it either.

After making a good job of exhausting both Mye's and Seth's MP pools, the party makes it to the other exit. There they find a shrine. This one has a man who's impressed they made it there and gives Lia the last orb. Time to go to shrine #138 and use the orbs.

Like all other shrine, #138 has people who apparently has lived there since the dawn of time and does absolutely nothing else. In this case it's two women who likes repeating each other. Lia uses the orbs to awaken the Lamia bird who takes off and lands somewhere outside the shrine. The women explain that the bird can fly them wherever, but that it will only obey someone pure.

Fortunately, the latter turns out to be just talk and Lia is saved from the trouble of having to find someone who's both pure and that will obey her. It's time for a rest for now though. Next up is getting to whichever places she couldn't reach before.

Part 8: Now with a flying mount, the first stop is the dragon queen's castle. The castle has a lot of talking horses, hobbits and elves. Apparently, they aren't very happy at the moment. The dragon queen is dying and laying an egg, something she apparently didn't do before, will kill her. Lia makes her way to the dragon queen for a talk who in turn gives Lia the Light Orb, lays an egg and then dies.

Next destination is the castle of the demonlord. Since Lia is very close to learning Healmore, she makes sure she learns it before challenging the demonlord. The demonlord is found in a red glowing room and it's name is apparently Baramos. There was probably someone who mentioned his name somewhere and somehow Lia forgot, but now she knows it.

Reality 1 and 2: Baramos has attacks that hits everyone in the party about as hard as Healmore heals. He also gets two actions. It simple isn't possible to keep up the healing with only Healmore. Unlike the Orochi fight, keeping the fighter alive and hope he strikes the killing blow in time doesn't work. Baramos has in addition to his multi target attacks also strong single target moves which will concentrate on a single survivor. So, keeping the whole party alive means it takes more damage per round than it can possible heal and letting people die means the survivors will eat concentrated fire. This doesn't work out at all for anyone except Baramos who reigns supreme.

Reality 3: Lia figures out that she should go one step further than Healmore and also learns Healall (seriously, when the hero learns Healmore, she/he is 4 levels away from Healall and the cleric probably only has one level to go) while at the same time making her party overall stronger. This time the party fares better, that is until Mye becomes confused. Mye who previously kept the party alive proceeded to hit the same party with Infermore. Again Baramos wins and reigns supreme.

Reality 4: This time it's Harl who gets confused. While he has Twinhits on, Twinhits seems to double damage, not attack. At this rate Seth has stacked five or so Increase spells on the party and even Harl can't punch trough all that defense. Since he's no longer useful, Lia lets him die and the remaining party members proceeds to beat Baramos. Harl loses the exp lead he had due to surviving both Orochi fights. Actually, he had even more exp lead than that. Mye and Seth were weak enough to occasionally snuff it against randoms and Lia once got hit by a Beat spell right before the party finished a battle which included a Metalbabble and therefore missed a huge exp reward. Now the exp lead has come to an end however.

Harl is revived and the party returns to the king of their home-country. A celebration, which includes six soldiers blasting away with trumpets, is held in Lia's honor. Something goes wrong though. A new demonlord shows up and introduces itself as Zoma. It proceeds to zap the soldiers with lightning. Lia has to admire their dedication, they keep blowing into the trumpets as their comrades are killed and even as the fifth soldier is killed, the sixth one is still going at it. After the soldiers are killed, Zoma holds a speech which boils down to "I'm evil because I'm evil" and then disappears. The king is distraught, but decides that Zoma must be kept a secret, just like Baramos was a secret. Lia wonders what the king is going to tell the friends and family of the dead soldiers, but "I'm deeply saddened to bring you these unfortunate news, but while on duty your father/husband/friend got ambushed and devoured by a flock of wild hens" would be her suggestion though.

Well, somehow it works. While everyone and their mother knew there was a demonlord Lia has to defeat, nobody seems to know that anything is wrong now. However, it's time to rest before going after then new threat. Lia goes to her mother to sleep. There she makes a new discovery, her mother doesn't let her stay anymore. Oh well, there's always the inn.

[Crystalgate]

Part 9: Before going after Zoma, Lia pays a visit to Karaburg to see if there's anything new that happened. Well, the prison no longer exists and Kara is in charge again. It's night however and her manor is closed. Seth casts Passtime and it's day. But just as the party make it to the mansion, Kara hands over the command to someone else. Hopefully it's someone competent. She then greets Lia and announces that she will return home. Now she can be added to the party again. Hurray!

The theater now serve as a children's singing contest during the day and has male dancers at night. That's probably a representative of how this town wants to achieve a balanced rule, take half from one incompetent ruler and the other half from a second incompetent ruler and hope it translates to a competent rule. Give it a year or two and the town will probably be in the same state as the party originally found it in.

With that lose end tied up, it's time to pursue Zoma. The only place left to search is a cave in a swamp. The cave leads to a pit which eventually drops the party into a building. Talking to people there reveals they are in another world. More towns and more dungeons awaits!

Lia soon locates the first town. First step is to gather information. Apparently it's always night in this world. This is reflected by the priests and innkeepers always wondering what she is doing up so late. Everyone lives in fear of Zoma and Baramos was only one of his disciples. So, Zoma is threatening the worlds, ruined a celebration held in Lia's honor and now her victory over Baramos has been marginalized. Lia now has all the reasons to go after him.

Also, Ortega has been seen here. Finally, Lia knows that her father wasn't boiled in a volcano, he was trapped in another world! Then a chill goes down her spine as she realizes that the return spell or a Warpwing bought from a local store was all that he'd need to get back to his wife and daughter. When she finds him he better have a really good explanation!

Last, but definitely not least, Zoma hit the castle and swiped it's treasure before she got here. From the description of what was lost, it's equipment for her that's superior to what she currently posses. One of the residents gives her a map that works in this world, so it's always something.

The world turns out to be as big as Lia's homeworld, but has about 1/3 the content. As a result, it's rather empty which combined with the constant night brings an atmosphere of dullness. Anyway, somewhat close to the town is a cave, one where just like in the pyramid basement, magic doesn't work. Inside the cave are enemies who can breath fire, something you apparently can do just fine without magic. Lia finds herself the sole survivor after a nasty battle and makes a hasty retreat. 99 bought herbs later, the party makes a second attempt. This time they have better luck. They make their way to the bottom and finds a couple of chests, one containing the Hero shield. That seems to be one of the stolen treasure and Lia gladly attaches it to her arm.

Her defense is now considerable higher than that of her companions. This coupled with her somewhat recently gained ability to cast Healall means she's finally becoming the hero she has waited way to long to become.

Most of the world seems to be accessible right away, so Lia decides to do some scouting and add as many towns as she can to her Return list. One town is a desert town. It's local problem is drought, no doubt caused by the endless night. Another town is known for it's walls and the townspeople there a busy moping about how the walls are useless against a demonlord. The last town she finds has even more useless inhabitants, the majority have just laid down to sleep out of angst. Lia reminds herself that saving this world will be a necessary side effect of saving her own world.

During her travels she hears more news about her father. Naturally, he decided to go after Zoma. Some believes he will succeed. Other knows that he lacks any form of preparation that makes success possible. Most are of course just moping around.

Speaking about preparation, Lia picks up an oral list of needed items, the Sun Stone, the Rain Staff and the Crest. Even better, she actually picks up one of the items in a shrine between angsty town #2 and angsty town #3.

In that shrine is a woman who introduces herself as the fairy queen. She explains that she contacted Lia in her sleep. So, she was the disembodied voice that spoke to her in the beginning? The no longer disembodied voice then apologizes for any bad thing she may have said. She didn't say any bad thing though since Lia picked a personality she approved of, but it's still a nice gesture to apologize for what she may have said had the reality been different. The not disembodied voice proceeds to give Lia the Rain Staff.

Next time Lia goes trough the towns again and pays careful attention to the clues the townspeople give her. Then she has to follow the clues will lead her to the needed McGuffins and some nice extra loot. That or she prays to el-FAQo for guidance, whatever she feels like.

Part 10: Time to sweep trough all towns in world 2 and get everything useful.

While not exactly useful, Lia does find Kandar. He's in a cell nonetheless, so someone figured out a way to bypass his "but thou must" defense. Lia reminds herself to find whoever arrested him and ask how he did that.

The Sun Stone, one of the needed items to reach Zoma, is actually in the very first town of world 2 and a more throughout search allows the party to locate it. Two down and one to go. Lia also finds a flute next to a tree in another town. The flute isn't one of the big three items, but it's still needed for something. That should take care of the necessary items in towns. There's still the not needed, but nevertheless good items though.

Lia gets the tip that she can find the Oricon and take it to a certain trader to be able to buy a Sword of Kings. She does that, but realizes that the Sword of Kings is near useless. It just happens to be so that in the very same town, she can also locate a Whip that's almost as strong as the sword and which hits a whole group of enemies.

The party also finds a good armor for Mye.

At this point Lia realizes she has a decision to make. She can let her companions change classes now that they have learned every useful spell they will ever learn with their current classes. However, as has been mentioned before, there's the danger that doing so will jeopardize her position as the most powerful member of her own party. Mye in particular is dangerous as she can end up with the same ability to heal as Lia has and the offensive power of a fighter. It was not to long ago Lia got the position as the most powerful one and she doesn't already want to give it up, so no deal. Her companions will have to do without class change.

Time to get the Crest, the last of the big three items. It's located in a tower.

The quirk of this tower is diamond shaped tiles which messes of Lia's orientation. When she tries to go north she will instead walk east or west and so on. Those tiles are usually placed above pits. While it sounds like the recipe for a lot of frustrating drops, this isn't the case. The brain numbing tiles will always change Lia's sense of orientation 90 degrees, so it's easy to control whether she will walk east/west or north/south and there's never a pit to both the longitude and the latitude. So, the party makes it up to the top without to much hassle.

At the top is a statue and using the flute causes the statue to change to a woman. She introduces herself as Rubiss, an elemental who created the world and thanks Lia for unsealing her. She also says that she will be even more grateful if Lia saves the world and then she forks over the Crest. That's all items down.

Lia takes the three items to a shrine. A cleric there announces that sun and rain will become one and with a lot of music, the rainbow drop is created. With that in hand, Lia makes it to the spot where she's supposed to use it. She wonder what the rainbow drop will do, create a rainbow bridge maybe? Well, almost. It is a bridge alright, but instead of being made out of various colored and strangely solid lights, it's made out of wood. Lia can feel how someone's laughing at her, but she's unsure of whether it's Zoma or the various hint dropping townspeople.

In any case, the path to Zoma's castle is open and the party heads there. The first thing Lia does is to test if the outside spell works and it does. Confident that she can retreat whenever, Lia marches the party forward towards glory. The glory is unfortunately cut short when a boss troll casts a spell which flings Mye all the way back to Lia's hometown.

Well, nothing to do but to retreat and fetch Mye again. Next time the party kills all boss trolls first.

Part 11: Time to beat Zoma. Well, on their way to his castle, the party has another incident where Mye is blown away and they have to go back and get her. Fortunately, this is the last time it happens.

The first floor tries to waste time. It has a lot of stair which leads to a corridor which in turn just goes in a circle. Fortunately, Lia soon discovers that there doesn't seem to be anything down those stairs worth her time. She instead proceeds to the middle of the castle. There are a lot of statues. With foreboding voices, they announce that they guard Zoma's castle and comes to life. Lia and her party is thrust into a battle with monsters they have only encountered about fifty-eleven times already! Somehow they prevail over their foes.

Killing all statues opens a wall which leads to the throne room. The throne room is full of damaging terrain and somewhere in it are some stairs hidden. This could be painful, but a simple spell neutralizes terrain damage, so all it serves is to waste time.

Next big floor has those orientation turning diamond tiles. Again, it's not hard to navigate them. The floor after that is rather straightforward.

Down below that however is where things start to happen. Lia spots her father, who somehow made it to this castle without the rainbow drop. Maybe he built a raft or just swam? Whatever it was, it must have been complicated since he needed more than fifteen years to get here. Well, he happened to be fighting the King Hydra just now, so the questions will have to wait.

Ortega's performance leaves other things to be desired. It starts well enough, the hydra attacks and Ortega dodges while counterattacking. However, after missing twice the hydra decides it doesn't have to put up with the whole having it's attacks dodged crap and instead spews out flames. Judging from the damage he takes, Ortega has no flame resist equipment on whatsoever. Despite now taking a lot of damage, he blows a lot of valuable MP on attack spells. He does manage to cast one Healall, but the second times he tries it he has emptied his MP pool and the hydra takes the opportunity to finish him off.

When Lia makes it to him, the hydra is gone. Ortega is to wounded to even see Lia and can just tell her his final words. He asks Lia to find Lia and tell her that her wretched father failed to achieve peace. Lia still would have preferred if he told her why he didn't take a warp wing back home even once, but at least he admitted he didn't do  a very good job of being a father.

In the same floor Lia also finds a Sagerock, the most powerful treasure she ever seen.

Down another floor, the battles begins. The party encounters Zoma who reveals that they are standing on the sacrificial altar. He then summons the King Hydra who's apparently supposed to sacrifice them. Unfortunately for the hydra, he's now up against four guys who doesn't use a dumb strategy.

Next in the path are two monsters who calls themselves Bara-something. While there are two of them, they attack one at a time which doesn't work out to well for them. Only Zoma left.

Zoma wonder why Lia is so persistent in pursuing him. Lia wonder what reason she doesn't have. The final battle starts. The first thing Lia does is to use the Light Orb, which changes the music and apparently weakens him.

Lia who after acquiring the Ultimate Whip has the highest attack power serves as the main physical attacker with a few Thordains thrown in. Harl with his high speed is put on Sagerock duty. Mye has healing duty as well and also cast Speedup whenever Zoma dispels all buffs and she doesn't need to heal. Seth was originally supposed to buff Lia and Harl, but Zoma likes to dispel far to often so instead he just spammed Blazemost. He actually ended up being the best damage dealer that way.

Between double acting, having powerful attacks and being able to dispel, Zoma could put up quite a resistance. However, the Sagerock and the fact that he lacks the ability to hose the party with a lucky confusion spell means he isn't even half the threat Baramos was. Down he goes.

Most big bad evils would now have said something in line of "as long as humans have evil in their hearts I will return". Zoma instead says "as long as there is light there will also be darkness" which seems a bit unfair. It's already bad enough when the big bad evil demands that all humans have to become 100% good, but if the only way to prevent world threatening demons from emerging is for everyone to become cruel and heartless, you can't even hypothetically win.

The castle collapses and the party find themselves in the cave of no magic. There are no enemies now though, so it's just to walk out. Daylight has returned and Lia decides to report that the threat is over to the only king in this world.

He proclaims Lia a hero, but then drops the bombshell. He says that he's saddened that the connection between the worlds are now broken. Wait a minute! Being trapped in this dull world was not what Lia signed up for! The king awards her the title of Loto and the guards blows into trumpets. Lia wonders if another demonking will show up and kill those guards, but apparently not. Everyone rejoices except for Lia who disappears. A lot of legends are spawned regarding where she went. The answer is easy however, although it doesn't make any sense.

Lia went to rest, probably while cursing her bad luck. When she woke up, she was back home for no explained reason. To make sure this wasn't just a dream, she goes to the dragon queen's castle. There is a pillar of light or something which will take a hero to the sky world. She couldn't enter before, but now she can which proves that her victory over Zoma wasn't just a dream. How this happened she doesn't know, but who cares?

Maybe she will explore the sky world and maybe she will find it within herself to allow her companions to class change.