Earthbound – Day 62

–Day 62–

Thanks in part to the number of large dinosaurs roaming the area, exploration of the Lost Underworld is initially quite slow. However, we do quickly come across a small village of Tenda living inside a small fenced in area. Or rather, we have landed inside their dinosaur cage, if we are to see things from their perspective. After smelling the Tendakraut, which incidentally was given to us by the Tenda Chief in exchange for the Overcoming shyness book, this group of Tenda immediately let us out of the dinosaur cage and into their village.

While things in the village are still hard to make out thanks to the tiny size of all the sprites, there is one thing that stands out in town, another talking rock. Surely this is the talkative rock the first rock we encountered must have been referring to. In an unsurprising twist, this rock reveals that Ness is “The Chosen One” and that it is his destiny to become one with every part of the universe.

After listing off all seven My Sanctuary locations we’ve been to already, the talking stone indicates the whereabouts of the final My Sanctuary, The Fire Spring. It is apparently located southwest of our current location. With that information, and one final push of encouragement, we set off to reclaim the final My Sanctuary.

As we leave the village, we decide to circle around to the north side of the village to check in on a random Tenda walking around outside the village. This ends up bringing our spirits down a little as it confirms Porky to be alive and well. Apparently he remains one step ahead of us and has already said some mean things to this poor Tenda. So mean in fact that it needs to heal itself in one of the hot springs.

Anyway, start to make our way southwest when we come across a cave, and with it two mysteries. First, there is an enemy outside that appears to be the moon. We didn’t fight it, and the whole time we were down here we never saw another one, but I can’t help but wonder what we missed out on. The other mystery is what we find inside the small cave. It leads to a small platform with nowhere to go. However, we can see other platforms nearby which have some weird metal hair growing out of the ground as well as what looks like a destroyed sky walker. What does it all mean? I hope we find out soon!

In any event, it isn’t the cave we’re looking for, so we continue heading south. That’s when we noticed a present on the ground. It was a bit out of the way, but for some reason I felt it was worth it to take the detour. As luck would have it, inside this present we found the Cloak of Kings, the final piece of armor for Poo. I’m glad we made the little detour required to find this present, I could have just as easily walked past it and never thought twice about it. Because really, who would expect to find such a rare item just randomly waiting in a present box in the overworld?

With Poo now fully equipped, we make the final trek to the Fire Springs. From the outside, it doesn’t appear to be anything special, just another cave set into the side of the mountains. Inside however is another story entirely. The whole area appears to be overflowing with lava and of course all of the enemies seem to be some form of living fire. I guess I can’t say I was expecting anything different from the “Fire Spring”.

It’s feeling a bit redundant to keep saying it at this point, but initial progress was slow as we learned about all the new enemies we’d be facing. However, we’ve learned a lot from the last couple caves we’ve been in, and we quickly get a good feel for the various enemies we’ll find. For example, the Soul Consuming Flame isn’t a huge threat and can be dealt with quickly with a couple of PK Freeze γ attacks. The Psychic Psycho (red) and Major Psychic Psycho (purple) however can quickly become a real pain in the ass.

We only make it about half way through the cave today before finding a small room to rest in. We’ll finish exploring tomorrow, so join us then as we reclaim our final My Sanctuary Location. Don’t miss it!