Earthbound – Week 13

–Day 61–

We return to the Tenda Village and once again try to make our way through the cave system of the Lost Underground. Learning from our previous mistakes, we proceeded through the cave with a much higher level of caution, trying to avoid another run in with the Conducting Spirit. We do however run into a couple more talking rocks, though none of them give us any useful information.

We also managed to find a very useful item in one of the presents, The Diadem of Kings. This is the second piece of exclusive equipment for Poo we’ve managed to find, and we of course equip it right away. Every little bit of armor helps and we’re looking forward to getting Poo a complete set of equipment eventually.

After many twists and turns, we eventually come upon the guardian of the seventh My Sanctuary location, the Electro Specter. After the last battle, we may have gone into this one with a bit of undeserved confidence, and that definitely got us into trouble.

For starters, The Electro Specter has a PK Shield up at the start of the battle. This is something we didn’t account for, and something that caused us a fair amount of trouble the first round as everyone launched their PK Attacks just to have them rebound. That’s of course on top of the Electro Specter’s own Electrical Shock attacks which caused significant damage when they hit.

It took a few rounds for everyone to recover, but we eventually all got back on our feet. It helps that all those PK Attacks ended up destroying its shield, and we’re free to go all out once again. Thanks to a well appreciated SMASH attack from Ness, we come back to make short work of the Electro Specter and claim another My Sanctuary.

The cave system that makes up the My Sanctuary location, named Lumine Hall, is quite different from the cave that came before it. In fact, it quite resembles a large LED message screen. To drive that point home further, it actually does scroll a message across its wall as we get near to it. “I’m Ness… It’s been a long road getting here… Soon, I’ll be… Soon, I’ll be… Soon, I’ll be… what will happen to us? W… what’s happening? My thoughts are being written out on the wall… or are they?”

After this message, Ness sees a vision of his father holding him. Then the Sound Stone again recorded the melody of the area. With that, there is only one location left for us to discover before we have recorded the melody from all eight locations.

We continue through the cave and eventually fall down through a hole in the floor. This immediately feels like it was a terrible mistake as we find ourselves in a large overworld full of what looks like giant dinosaurs. You may have also noticed that we have become tiny in comparison. We can barely even see ourselves on the screen anymore.

There are quite a few dinosaurs roaming around, but they seem to mostly fall into two types, Wetnosaurs and Chomposaurs. The Wetnosaurs actually aren’t that bad. They have a good amount of health, but aren’t that big of a threat. The Chomposaurs however are a bit more dangerous. They will regularly cast PK Fire α on the party, causing decent damage to everyone. They also have a Shield up causing physical attacks to deflect back.

With all these dinosaurs roaming around, we’re relieved to find an evacuation site set up. It appears to have a couple of Tenda inside already, but that’s hard to truly confirm with the tiny sprites. Either way, the one gives us some advice for exploring the area. There are frequent earthquakes around here which cause the hot springs to erupt. The blue springs are apparently good for recovering health, while the red springs are good for recovering from status effects. We’ll have to keep that in mind as we explore.

However, we’re going to have to spend the night here at the evacuation site. Join us next time as we properly explore this land of giant monsters! See you then!

–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!

–Day 63–

Today we continue our push through the Fire Spring as we attempt to claim the final My Sanctuary location. Using what we’ve learned from the previous areas, we’re actually trying to avoid combat as much as possible at the moment. We can finish exploring after we defeat the boss. That way all the monsters will be avoiding us and we can explore at our leisure.

With that mindset, it isn’t long before we make our way through to the boss. This final My Sanctuary boss is the Carbon Dog, and thankfully we made it here with a good amount of HP and PP. We’re going to need every bit of it as this ends up becoming a rather long battle.

At first, it doesn’t really feel like a difficult boss. The only attack it seemed to do was spitting fireballs at single party members. Sure it did a decent amount of damage, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle. After a couple of rounds though, something unexpected happened. All of a sudden the Carbon Dog gave off a rainbow of colors!

Just like that, the Carbon Dog transformed into the Diamond Dog! With its new form, it also has some new attacks. The main attack it seems to use is a regular biting attack, which does rather significant damage to whoever it bites. Since it’s only a single target attack, this also isn’t anything we can’t handle. It also helps that for some reason it will regularly waste its turn by making a loud piercing howl. The Diamond Dog does have quite a bit of health, so the battle takes a long time, and we end up using most of our healing items. But we eventually defeat the Diamond Dog and get to claim the final My Sanctuary location.

We continue through the opening and make our way to the actual Fire Spring, which looks like a very tiny volcano. Here, Ness has a feeling that he was being watched by himself as a baby. He then uses the Sound Stone to record the melody of the Fire Spring, completing the collection.

As soon as we are done recording the melody, the Sound Stone starts reacting all on its own. It starts playing all the collected melodies one at a time before finally blending them all together into a single song. Ness then finds himself in a dream-like state, walking down a path, alone, towards his house. Upon reaching the house Ness seems to fade from existence.

Now seemingly invisible, we follow Ness as he makes his way through his house and ultimately up to his own room. There we find baby Ness in his crib as his parents, also invisible, talk to and about him. We have apparently traveled back to when Ness was first named, and the happy reaction he had to hearing his own name. We also learn that Ness was given his signature red hat as a newborn and has apparently cherished it his entire life.

We watch the scene unfold a short while longer, after which we wake up in a rather strange environment. Not only that, but for some reason Ness is completely naked. Talking to the wise man near us, we discover we are inside Ness’ mind in a place called Magicant. Apparently this place is the end result of collecting all eight of the Sanctuary melodies.

While this place does contain all the good that is inside Ness, it also contains all his evil thoughts. At the center of it all is The Sea of Eden, which is where we must go next. I’m not sure what we’ll find there, but it doesn’t look like we have much choice in the matter.

If Magicant wasn’t weird enough already, I do want to point out that the whole color pallet seems to fluctuate wildly as we explore. It seems like it changes every time I talk to someone, but that might just be a coincidence. And for no reason, I want to point out these flowers. I’m not sure what it is, but they remind me of evil for some reason…

Anyway, there isn’t a whole lot to do here in Magicant. At the Northeast corner of town, we find Ness’ mother and sister, still performing their normal duties of healing and storage respectively. There is also a small store in town with only two items to buy, Magic Pudding which restores PP, and the Earth Pendant which gives a decent protection against all of the PK Elements.

I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to be doing here, but we’re going to have to figure that out another time. Join us next time as we explore Magicant and see how twisted Ness’ mind really is!

–Day 64–

The environment might be a little weird, but our goal is still the same, make it to the end of the area in one piece. So we stock up on as many Magic Puddings as we can carry, don’t ask where we’re storing them in our current naked state, and head out on our adventure. It would seem the town has quite a few residents. Some aren’t so happy to see us in our current state, while others seem to have had a change of heart.

But we can’t get caught up with our memories of people we’ve met, we need to press on farther into Magicant and eventually leave the safety of the town. There is one last stop however, right on the edge of town is a house full of Flying Men. These Flying Men will join Ness in his adventure and help battle the enemies to come. Unfortunately only one will follow you at a time.

The enemies in this area are rather tricky, disguising themselves as presents and tricking us into walking right into them. The most frequent enemy early on seemed to be the Loaded Dice. On its own, it’s not a difficult enemy to defeat. However, it is capable of calling other enemies to join the battle. In one particularly unlucky encounter, Ness’ attacks kept missing round after round until the Loaded Dice had summoned several enemies to the battle, forcing us to run rather than continue fighting.

There aren’t many branching paths to explore here, so it doesn’t take long before we’re at a dead end. Curiously, there seems to be some kind of large silver hair growing out of the ground at the end of our path. Closer examination of the hair ends up teleporting us to some strange lake area.

If it weren’t bad enough that Ness is now swimming around naked in this weird color changing water, the whole area seems to be full of Kraken. Back when we first encountered the Kraken, it took the full party’s combined effort as well as a good amount of luck for us to defeat it. Now it would seem Ness alone has become strong enough to accomplish this on his own.

Ness keeps swimming until eventually coming upon the Mani Mani Statue, once again here to cause trouble. This time, it would seem it is here to represent the evil within Ness’ own heart. In order to save the world from Giygas, Ness must first defeat his own evil thoughts.

Despite being alone in this battle, the Mani Mani statue, now named “Ness’s Nightmare”, is not all that powerful. It seems to use PK Gaming α nearly every attack, which only does about 75 damage each turn. When not casting PK Gaming α, it will emit a glorious light, which rarely has any effect on Ness thanks to his equipment.

Before long, Ness’s Nightmare is defeated. Upon victory, Ness hears a familiar voice talking to him from the Sea of Eden. It tells him that Giygas threatens to destroy the entire universe. But Giygas and his followers are scared, because the Apple of Enlightenment has already foretold that Giygas will fail, all because of Ness. It is his destiny to stop Giygas.

As Magicant fades away, the voice gives one last piece of advice. Go to Saturn Valley. What we need is waiting for us there. After this, the powers from all eight of the My Sanctuary locations come together to fill Ness with power beyond anything before possible. All of his stats are drastically increase to a point that he is as strong as the other three party members combined.

With that, Magicant is no more, as Ness has taken the whole of its powers into himself. With no further purpose, the Sound Stone disappears, and Ness finally wakes up to his friends. Together, they all teleport off to Saturn Valley to see what new power is waiting for them there.

It would seem the combined power of Mr. Saturn, Apple Kid, and Dr. Andonuts has made short work out of creating the Phase Distorter. In fact, this is actually the second prototype of the device. Apparently the first one has already been stolen, no doubt by Porky. On top of stealing the device, he also took a Mr. Saturn hostage.

Unfortunately, the second prototype isn’t quite ready for use. Apparently we’re missing a key element which is very rare on Earth. This element can however be found in meteorites. Dr. Andonuts apparently discovered it back when he was very young, but he hasn’t been able to find any more since. Lucky for us, we happen to know the exact location of a recently crashed meteorite. In fact, it’s how this whole adventure began.

With just a small piece of the meteorite, Dr. Andonuts will be able to make Zexonyte to power the Phase Distorter. However, it doesn’t seem like it will be an easy task to recover it. Giygas is sure to already be aware of our need of the meteorite and has sent his followers to guard it. We’ll have to prepare accordingly before we head out.

For now, we’re going to rest here in Saturn Village. Join us next time as we head back to where it all began and try to collect a piece of the meteorite. See you there!

–Day 65–

We’re so close now to defeating Giygas and saving the world. All that stands in our way now is retrieving a piece of the meteorite to power the Phase Distorter. So we head back to Onett without delay. Unfortunately, we arrive to find things have changed quite a bit in our absence. The whole town seems to be shrouded in an unnatural darkness, and Giygas’s followers seem to have taken over the town.

I know we need to hurry, but I can’t help but check in with Ness’s Mother and make sure she’s doing ok. Obviously everyone in town is scared of the monsters, and have barricaded themselves inside their homes. But she’s being strong about the whole situation.

We leave Ness’s home and his mother and make our way to the meteorite crash site just as we did at the beginning of our adventure. We are of course much stronger now, but so are the enemies. The one to look out for though is The Ghost of Starman. Any encounter with one of them is in itself a brush with death, as they open every battle with a devastating PK Starstorm α. Thankfully, they don’t attack again for a couple of turns, giving us time to recover.

Even with all these strong enemies around, the path up to the Meteorite isn’t a long one, and we quickly make the journey. Looking down at the meteorite, we notice a particularly shiny piece which we pick up for ourselves. Now that we have what we came for, we waste no time and quickly teleport back to Saturn Valley.

We hand over the meteorite piece to Dr. Andonuts who admits to have never actually seen such a rare element before. However, with the combined knowledge of Dr. Andonuts, Apple Kid, and the highly intelligent Mr. Saturns, they are confident they can make use of it. We just need to rest for now and give them time to work.

After resting, we awake to find the Phase Distorter version two has been completed. Before we hop aboard though, Dr. Andonuts strongly warns us that once we use it, we may never be able to come back. So before heading off to fight Giygas, we need to make any last preparations now.

So with that in mind, we go on one last shopping spree to make sure we have everything we need. This may take a while, so we’re going to end the post here. Join us next time as we make our final approach towards our destiny. See you there!