Part 16: Black and White
This update is dedicated to Neko-chan, the best alt on the Kodex. Evar.
This is an outrage! I'm, like, totally not an alt!
And so White Cat (a.k.a. Volly) and Lilibelle set out for Arbor. Yep, we're basically travelling solo, since Lilibelle, being a fairy, doesn't engage in combat at all.
This may come as a disappointment, but the way of a combat cat isn't at all different from the way combat is usually done in this game.
We are a strong cat apparently, able to one-hit kill some (but not all) of the enemies:
Even equipment matters the usual way:
So that, being equipped with an Ice Shield, Volly resists Slime's attacks. How does a cat carry a shield, I wonder?
With ease, nya!
Slimes are tough when we're solo, and it takes us 3-4 turns to finish even one monster off. Our weapon (a sword enchanted with the power of Light) - and true cats can handle those, it seems - gives us a chance to paralyze the enemy, however, which can be pretty useful:
Following the hint received at the end of the last update, we finally get to the wood at the foot of the western hills:
We venture into the small wood and find ourselves in...
...the Animal Burrow! Volly is an animal now, after all.
It's a totally linear, or rather zigzaggish, small path:
After dealing with a nasty Goblin...
... we face what looks to be a like a (mid-)boss or at least a particularly tough monster:
It is in fact the Bear guardian of this path.
Scary!
Let's approach it:
Oh-oh, something goes terribly wrong...
Lilibelle tries to save the situation:
But you can't fool the Ruskie Bear!
And so the fight begins!
Ogre Bear
Volly is psyched up!
She's fully determined, despite being kinda smallish, to kick the guardian bear's ass!
So we choose "Attack"...
...
... and get attacked!
9086 points of damage FFS! Volly dies.
Quite naturally, Lilibelle is deeply concerned:
Unnngh...
The fairy's got a couple of tricks up her sleeve after all, it seems. She shoos the Ogre Bear away with a fire attack:
Yet Volly is already beyond saving...
And so Lilibelle the grateful fairy sacrifices her own life to bring Volly back:
Volly comes to her senses:
And suddenly notices that Lilibelle is, you know, dying:
Lilibelle? LILIBELLE!?
Lilibelle musters her last strength:
Volly... You'll... you'll be all right... now.
But why...? Why did you do this for me?
The Arbor folk... never forget a debt.
Volly's still shouting the fairy's name like silly:
Lilibelle!
The fairy utters her last words. They are, as you may guess, those of encouragement and of help:
We receive the wings:
Now Volly becomes truly desperate and cries at the top of her voice:
But the little fairy's already dead.
I'm, like, totally on lightbane's side!
Next-gen lighting kicks in again:
Even a cat knows you can't make out shit when there's too much bloom.
And our old pal the talking crystal appears:
"Beauty beyond reckoning fills this wondrous world. Yet that same beauty warps souls and incites war."
With this, we are presented with two new crowns!
"Now go forth with courage, Hero of Light, go forth!"
Bandit basically equals Thief, being able to steal items from enemies.
Bard is, well, bard; one of my favourite classes ever.
We've got no musical instruments for now, so the Bard class is not yet useful. Let's equip the Bandit crown on Volly, then!
Switching to Bandit considerably raises our HP and Strength, yet reduces our Intellect and Spirit. We also gain a new class ability, Steal:
(By the way, it doesn't matter in this case, because Volly's AP was already zero-ish after she had died, BUT switching to a new class involves a penalty: AP is reduced to zero.)
Now we're all set to continue our journey. From now on, without Lilibelle.
:foreveralone:
Let's try out our new Steal ability on a Goblin unfortunate enough to get in our way:
Nice, yay!
Not a particularly powerful weapon, but we can sell it for some gold later, which is always good.
There's an important penalty for being able to steal items I already mentioned in the last update: the limited inventory capacity makes the 'hoard-items-as-you-go' approach impossible in this game. Three or at most four stolen items are all you can really carry.
We finally exit the Animal Burrow...
... and find ourselves in the all-too-familiar desert.
The Quicksand Castle is to the north, apparently, which means Guera is to the left. Let's go there!
Upon entering Guera, the first thing we do is talk to our animal friend the Fox:
But that's not all we're here for. Remember Part 12 of this LP? (I bet you do!) That was the last time we saw our dear Codexer; a mysterious white cat, cute as hell, approached him in his moment of despair and then joined the party.
Guess what? We are that cat. Or rather, Volly is.
First things first, however. It's :blah: time!
An NPC gives us a hint implying that now, being a cat, we can access some previously inaccessible areas in Guera:
Being a little one has its benefits, apparently.
Yep, that's also a plus!
NPCs continue to adore us. But of course.
Cats are cool. Cool cats, however, are odd around these parts.
I wonder why?
Another NPC complains that we look too grimdark and dirty. Pretty kitties shouldn't look like that!
Yet another wants to play daddy with us:
Run awaaay!
Time to access a new area:
There's another magic shop here, it seems.
It is, however, closed; we can't enter it now. We'll be back to check it during the nighttime though. Many things tend to be different at night, you know.
One thing we find in this area, by the way, is a p. decent hidden weapon:
A petrifying dagger infused with earth magic! Nice.
As you may remember, we're supposed to meet Codexer here at night. Time to go out onto the world map, then, and wait for the night to come down!
No sooner than we enter the desert do we stumble upon a random encounter:
A tough one! Yet thankfully Basilisk doesn't poison us, and we survive:
An emerald, yay! We could always use more emeralds.
It's finally nighttime. We enter the town of Guera:
Ha, it looks like our plan worked: the magic shop is open now!
It has a very nice selection of spells.
First, there are powerful black magic spells, each requiring 3 AP per use:
Next, there are Cura and Raise tomes for sale here:
And some buffs, to boot:
Sadly, buying them all would be way beyond our humble means. Even if we sell a couple of gems, we can afford just two of the spells.
Which two spells should it be, pray tell? I mean, we need something really useful.
...
All right, let's play a guessing game.
I don't think we need a more powerful cure spell, Cura, right now; given the overall amount of HP we currently have, a simple Cure should be more than enough. Neither have we any real need of powerful offensive spells at the moment; they cost more AP, and basic spells have served us rather well so far. In the worst case scenario, killing bosses will take more time, but hopefully we'll manage. I really hope we'll be able to return to this shop, or buy these powerful spells at another shop, later along the road, even when not anymore in our cat form. Otherwise, we're definitely gonna be screwed. :/
Meh, whatever. After a bit of hesitation, I decide to buy a Raise Tome, since that will allow us not to carry too many Phoenix Downs around, and a Shell tome which hopefully will protect us from bosses' more powerful magic attacks.
Will I regret this decision later? Who knows.
...
I totally forgot to mention that, now that Volly is an animal, other animals in Guera share some useful combat advice with us, both at night and during the day. (And there's a fat pig who appears only during the night. There's always some bonus night stuff in this game.)
(Spell Focus is Black Mage's class ability, but we are unable to use it until we've upgraded that class.)
All these "little secrets" are pretty useful, by the way. Knowing them, we finally get to know a bit more about this game's class and combat system. We're being spoonfed, it seems.
Okay, this done, let's approach our Codexer now! I mean, he must be getting quite lonely, standing out there all on his own, and at night to boot!
An already familiar scene ensues:
Cool! So Guera is here... and Arbor is here... Wait! Didn't Krinjh say something about Arbor?
You're totally right, o insightful Codexer, he did. Meaning that the two plot lines - Volly's and Codexer's - finally meet now, yay!
I know! I should go to Arbor. They'll be able to help lift the curse from Horne. I'm going there right now!
But what about your tranny friend, Codexer?
Sorry to ditch you, SMA, but it's time I struck out on my own... Huh? Are you coming, too, little one?
Yep, it's your job to escort your princess to Arbor.
Codexer and Volly reunite at last!
Okay, now we have two heroes in our party. As usual, Volly's gonna be our White Mage. Let's make Codexer into a Bandit:
Swell. Time to be moving out, I presume.
The path to Arbor lies through a cave to the north, as we were told. And thus north we go.
See that dark little cave beckoning us? I believe that's our destination. Shall we brave it, then?
A guard is standing right near the entrance to the Fairy Path. There is some nice attention to detail in this gamey: the guard ignores us if we approach him with Volly the cat as our main character, yet is perfectly willing to share a passing word with Codexer as a fellow human:
The bloody little guard has no luv for cute white cats, apparently.
As to the reason why this pathetic faggit was "never" able to make it through to the other end of this path, well, truth be told I have no idea what it could be. He sucks, that's for sure. This dungeon is pretty straightforward in my humble opinion, especially if your only goal is get to the other side as quickly as possible. ... Which is not our goal, of course. Does that surprise you, reader? Well, fuck you then. That means you haven't really been following this awesomely awesome LP. Had you been doing that, by this point you would know that we never "breeze" through any dungeon; we explore every one of them thoroughly. Quite thoroughly, so as not to miss out on some phat lewt.
By the way. It seems we have finally reached a point where regular enemies become much stronger. Not only do their attacks deal at the very least 10 points of damage each, but they also tend to cast Confuse, Poison, or some such. And that's just your regular enemies, like these Batter Flies, for example:
Their attacks hurt, and they cast Confuse. Codexer, being a Bandit, is able to steal a Hi-Potion from one of them:
So far, so good. After reaching a T...
... we turn to the left and stumble upon a treasure chest:
This Spirit Ring may surely come in handy for our white mage Volly. Equipping it on her...
...raises her spirit by one point, making her white spells more powerful. Sweet.
Even the goddamn Jack Lanterns (as you may remember, we first encountered them on our very first quest of slaying the witch) are much stronger around here:
25 points of damage FFS! I predict a lot of RAPE when we confront the next boss.
Is this pretty little LP of mine heading to its sure demise? :/
Only time will tell.
...
Still, finishing the vile Jacks off
oops grants us two beautiful gems, a Lapis and a Sapphire:
Gems are a princess's best friends, you know!
Out of a treasure chest next door we grab a pair of magic gauntlets:
Codexer equips them, even though it's most probably of no use, since different elemental effects do not seem to stack in this game. :/ Er, uhm, I mean
Slaying another couple of Batter Flies allows Codexer to level up:
Codexer: level 12 -> level 13: HP +4, SPT +2
After that, we exit the Fairy Path:
I assume that the big fancy tree in the top left corner of the last screenshot is our destination, Arbor, the land of fat-bottomed fairies. Shall we get there at last?
...
Not until we slay a couple of nasty Imps!
Even Imps are much tougher now, being able to "perform" Sleep which impacts both our heroes at once:
The fuckers have the Bard crown equipped, apparently.
Even their regular attack does 22 damage!
I think I'm gonna faint...
...
We're left at half our HP after this battle:
Let's hurry and enter Arbor lest we die right here!
Things don't go smoothly, however. Once Codexer and Volly the Cute White Cat enter Arbor, Codexer gets enveloped by some greenish tentacles suddenly arising from the ground. It happened so sudden that I wasn't quick enough to take a screenshot -- some events in this game happen too fast for this bee to handle :/ -- so you gotta take my word for it. From the looks of it, it was no less of a surprise to our Codexer, too:
Everything goes next-gen. AGAIN...
... and the Codexer gets frozen in one place! Oh noez!
Why the greenish looks, Codexer?
Volly, in a way typical of whenever she gets distressed by something, does a little bit of frantically running around:
And the screen fades to black...
We are once again violently carried over to the next part of the plot...
Looks like we are about to see BRO again, yay!
BLACK CAT APPEARS!
Apparently, our dear Blackity Cat takes BRO by surprise:
I always do!
It looks like Black Cat is, uhm, attacking BRO's leg!
BRO doesn't seem to appreciate that, however:
Yeah, who else could be that stubborn?
(WE know it's not Volly, however. Black Cat isn't Volly's alt, White Cat is).
He gets more and more hesitant though:
His soft-hearted nature starts gradually revealing itself:
Finally he gives up:
And...
...
Tell you what, bros?
...
We'll be travelling with none other than Black Cat from now on!
So you're actually trying to tell me you chose this cute oldskool gamie for a, like, BLIND LP and stuffies totally NOT knowing it'd feature not only witches and curses, nya!, but also Black Cat (me self), Lucifer and Beelzebub, and other kawaii thingies?
Do I LOOK like I'm pulling your leg?
Pulling my leg? You, like, totally aren't!
Er, anyway. Just one question remains. Whose alt are you, Black Cat?
Will the next updates make it clear? Who knows. For now, :it is a mystery:.
This update is dedicated to Neko-chan, the best alt on the Kodex. Evar.
And so White Cat (a.k.a. Volly) and Lilibelle set out for Arbor. Yep, we're basically travelling solo, since Lilibelle, being a fairy, doesn't engage in combat at all.
This may come as a disappointment, but the way of a combat cat isn't at all different from the way combat is usually done in this game.
We are a strong cat apparently, able to one-hit kill some (but not all) of the enemies:
Even equipment matters the usual way:
So that, being equipped with an Ice Shield, Volly resists Slime's attacks. How does a cat carry a shield, I wonder?
Slimes are tough when we're solo, and it takes us 3-4 turns to finish even one monster off. Our weapon (a sword enchanted with the power of Light) - and true cats can handle those, it seems - gives us a chance to paralyze the enemy, however, which can be pretty useful:
Following the hint received at the end of the last update, we finally get to the wood at the foot of the western hills:
Not true.spekkio said:
We venture into the small wood and find ourselves in...
...the Animal Burrow! Volly is an animal now, after all.
It's a totally linear, or rather zigzaggish, small path:
After dealing with a nasty Goblin...
... we face what looks to be a like a (mid-)boss or at least a particularly tough monster:
It is in fact the Bear guardian of this path.
Scary!
Let's approach it:
Oh-oh, something goes terribly wrong...
Lilibelle tries to save the situation:
But you can't fool the Ruskie Bear!
And so the fight begins!
Ogre Bear
Volly is psyched up!
She's fully determined, despite being kinda smallish, to kick the guardian bear's ass!
So we choose "Attack"...
...
... and get attacked!
9086 points of damage FFS! Volly dies.
Quite naturally, Lilibelle is deeply concerned:
Unnngh...The fairy's got a couple of tricks up her sleeve after all, it seems. She shoos the Ogre Bear away with a fire attack:
Yet Volly is already beyond saving...
And so Lilibelle the grateful fairy sacrifices her own life to bring Volly back:
Volly comes to her senses:
And suddenly notices that Lilibelle is, you know, dying:
Lilibelle? LILIBELLE!?Lilibelle musters her last strength:
Volly... You'll... you'll be all right... now. But why...? Why did you do this for me? The Arbor folk... never forget a debt.
Volly's still shouting the fairy's name like silly:
Lilibelle!The fairy utters her last words. They are, as you may guess, those of encouragement and of help:
We receive the wings:
Now Volly becomes truly desperate and cries at the top of her voice:
But the little fairy's already dead.
Here's your sacrifice, o evil one. Feels good to have a pretty innocent fairy killed, doesn't it?lightbane said:
Next-gen lighting kicks in again:
Even a cat knows you can't make out shit when there's too much bloom.
And our old pal the talking crystal appears:
"Beauty beyond reckoning fills this wondrous world. Yet that same beauty warps souls and incites war."
With this, we are presented with two new crowns!
"Now go forth with courage, Hero of Light, go forth!"
Bandit basically equals Thief, being able to steal items from enemies.
Bard is, well, bard; one of my favourite classes ever.
We've got no musical instruments for now, so the Bard class is not yet useful. Let's equip the Bandit crown on Volly, then!
Switching to Bandit considerably raises our HP and Strength, yet reduces our Intellect and Spirit. We also gain a new class ability, Steal:
(By the way, it doesn't matter in this case, because Volly's AP was already zero-ish after she had died, BUT switching to a new class involves a penalty: AP is reduced to zero.)
Now we're all set to continue our journey. From now on, without Lilibelle.
:foreveralone:
Let's try out our new Steal ability on a Goblin unfortunate enough to get in our way:
Nice, yay!
Not a particularly powerful weapon, but we can sell it for some gold later, which is always good.
There's an important penalty for being able to steal items I already mentioned in the last update: the limited inventory capacity makes the 'hoard-items-as-you-go' approach impossible in this game. Three or at most four stolen items are all you can really carry.
We finally exit the Animal Burrow...
... and find ourselves in the all-too-familiar desert.
The Quicksand Castle is to the north, apparently, which means Guera is to the left. Let's go there!
Upon entering Guera, the first thing we do is talk to our animal friend the Fox:
But that's not all we're here for. Remember Part 12 of this LP? (I bet you do!) That was the last time we saw our dear Codexer; a mysterious white cat, cute as hell, approached him in his moment of despair and then joined the party.
Guess what? We are that cat. Or rather, Volly is.
First things first, however. It's :blah: time!
An NPC gives us a hint implying that now, being a cat, we can access some previously inaccessible areas in Guera:
Being a little one has its benefits, apparently.
Yep, that's also a plus!
NPCs continue to adore us. But of course.
Cats are cool. Cool cats, however, are odd around these parts.
I wonder why?
Another NPC complains that we look too grimdark and dirty. Pretty kitties shouldn't look like that!
Yet another wants to play daddy with us:
Run awaaay!
Time to access a new area:
There's another magic shop here, it seems.
It is, however, closed; we can't enter it now. We'll be back to check it during the nighttime though. Many things tend to be different at night, you know.
One thing we find in this area, by the way, is a p. decent hidden weapon:
A petrifying dagger infused with earth magic! Nice.
As you may remember, we're supposed to meet Codexer here at night. Time to go out onto the world map, then, and wait for the night to come down!
No sooner than we enter the desert do we stumble upon a random encounter:
A tough one! Yet thankfully Basilisk doesn't poison us, and we survive:
An emerald, yay! We could always use more emeralds.
It's finally nighttime. We enter the town of Guera:
Ha, it looks like our plan worked: the magic shop is open now!
It has a very nice selection of spells.
First, there are powerful black magic spells, each requiring 3 AP per use:
Next, there are Cura and Raise tomes for sale here:
And some buffs, to boot:
Sadly, buying them all would be way beyond our humble means. Even if we sell a couple of gems, we can afford just two of the spells.
Which two spells should it be, pray tell? I mean, we need something really useful.
...
All right, let's play a guessing game.
I don't think we need a more powerful cure spell, Cura, right now; given the overall amount of HP we currently have, a simple Cure should be more than enough. Neither have we any real need of powerful offensive spells at the moment; they cost more AP, and basic spells have served us rather well so far. In the worst case scenario, killing bosses will take more time, but hopefully we'll manage. I really hope we'll be able to return to this shop, or buy these powerful spells at another shop, later along the road, even when not anymore in our cat form. Otherwise, we're definitely gonna be screwed. :/
Meh, whatever. After a bit of hesitation, I decide to buy a Raise Tome, since that will allow us not to carry too many Phoenix Downs around, and a Shell tome which hopefully will protect us from bosses' more powerful magic attacks.
Will I regret this decision later? Who knows.
...
I totally forgot to mention that, now that Volly is an animal, other animals in Guera share some useful combat advice with us, both at night and during the day. (And there's a fat pig who appears only during the night. There's always some bonus night stuff in this game.)
(Spell Focus is Black Mage's class ability, but we are unable to use it until we've upgraded that class.)
All these "little secrets" are pretty useful, by the way. Knowing them, we finally get to know a bit more about this game's class and combat system. We're being spoonfed, it seems.
Okay, this done, let's approach our Codexer now! I mean, he must be getting quite lonely, standing out there all on his own, and at night to boot!
An already familiar scene ensues:
Cool! So Guera is here... and Arbor is here... Wait! Didn't Krinjh say something about Arbor?You're totally right, o insightful Codexer, he did. Meaning that the two plot lines - Volly's and Codexer's - finally meet now, yay!
I know! I should go to Arbor. They'll be able to help lift the curse from Horne. I'm going there right now!But what about your tranny friend, Codexer?
Sorry to ditch you, SMA, but it's time I struck out on my own... Huh? Are you coming, too, little one?Yep, it's your job to escort your princess to Arbor.
Codexer and Volly reunite at last!
Okay, now we have two heroes in our party. As usual, Volly's gonna be our White Mage. Let's make Codexer into a Bandit:
Swell. Time to be moving out, I presume.
The path to Arbor lies through a cave to the north, as we were told. And thus north we go.
See that dark little cave beckoning us? I believe that's our destination. Shall we brave it, then?
A guard is standing right near the entrance to the Fairy Path. There is some nice attention to detail in this gamey: the guard ignores us if we approach him with Volly the cat as our main character, yet is perfectly willing to share a passing word with Codexer as a fellow human:
The bloody little guard has no luv for cute white cats, apparently.
As to the reason why this pathetic faggit was "never" able to make it through to the other end of this path, well, truth be told I have no idea what it could be. He sucks, that's for sure. This dungeon is pretty straightforward in my humble opinion, especially if your only goal is get to the other side as quickly as possible. ... Which is not our goal, of course. Does that surprise you, reader? Well, fuck you then. That means you haven't really been following this awesomely awesome LP. Had you been doing that, by this point you would know that we never "breeze" through any dungeon; we explore every one of them thoroughly. Quite thoroughly, so as not to miss out on some phat lewt.
By the way. It seems we have finally reached a point where regular enemies become much stronger.
Not only do their attacks deal at the very least 10 points of damage each, but they also tend to cast Confuse, Poison, or some such. And that's just your regular enemies, like these Batter Flies, for example:
Their attacks hurt, and they cast Confuse. Codexer, being a Bandit, is able to steal a Hi-Potion from one of them:
So far, so good. After reaching a T...
... we turn to the left and stumble upon a treasure chest:
This Spirit Ring may surely come in handy for our white mage Volly. Equipping it on her...
...raises her spirit by one point, making her white spells more powerful. Sweet.
Even the goddamn Jack Lanterns (as you may remember, we first encountered them on our very first quest of slaying the witch) are much stronger around here:
25 points of damage FFS! I predict a lot of RAPE when we confront the next boss.
Is this pretty little LP of mine heading to its sure demise? :/
Only time will tell.
...
Still, finishing the vile Jacks off
oops grants us two beautiful gems, a Lapis and a Sapphire:
Gems are a princess's best friends, you know!
Out of a treasure chest next door we grab a pair of magic gauntlets:
Codexer equips them, even though it's most probably of no use, since different elemental effects do not seem to stack in this game. :/ Er, uhm, I mean
Slaying another couple of Batter Flies allows Codexer to level up:
Codexer: level 12 -> level 13: HP +4, SPT +2
After that, we exit the Fairy Path:
I assume that the big fancy tree in the top left corner of the last screenshot is our destination, Arbor, the land of fat-bottomed fairies. Shall we get there at last?
...
Not until we slay a couple of nasty Imps!
Even Imps are much tougher now, being able to "perform" Sleep which impacts both our heroes at once:
The fuckers have the Bard crown equipped, apparently.
Even their regular attack does 22 damage!
I think I'm gonna faint...
...
We're left at half our HP after this battle:
Let's hurry and enter Arbor lest we die right here!
Things don't go smoothly, however. Once Codexer and Volly the Cute White Cat enter Arbor, Codexer gets enveloped by some greenish tentacles suddenly arising from the ground. It happened so sudden that I wasn't quick enough to take a screenshot -- some events in this game happen too fast for this bee to handle :/ -- so you gotta take my word for it. From the looks of it, it was no less of a surprise to our Codexer, too:
Everything goes next-gen. AGAIN...
... and the Codexer gets frozen in one place! Oh noez!
Why the greenish looks, Codexer?
Volly, in a way typical of whenever she gets distressed by something, does a little bit of frantically running around:
And the screen fades to black...
We are once again violently carried over to the next part of the plot...
Looks like we are about to see BRO again, yay!
I told you he's still a true bro at heart.Cenobyte said:
BLACK CAT APPEARS!
Apparently, our dear Blackity Cat takes BRO by surprise:
It looks like Black Cat is, uhm, attacking BRO's leg!
BRO doesn't seem to appreciate that, however:
Yeah, who else could be that stubborn?
(WE know it's not Volly, however.
Black Cat isn't Volly's alt, White Cat is).
He gets more and more hesitant though:
His soft-hearted nature starts gradually revealing itself:
Finally he gives up:
And...
...
Tell you what, bros?
...
We'll be travelling with none other than Black Cat from now on!
You, like, totally aren't!
Er, anyway. Just one question remains. Whose alt are you, Black Cat?
Will the next updates make it clear? Who knows. For now, :it is a mystery:.
