Earthbound – Day 55

–Day 55–

When we last left our group, they were standing outside a mysterious cave at the edge of the Deep Darkness. And, well, I guess that’s where they still are now. So let’s get inside this cave and see what’s in store for us. As always, we instantly expect to find monsters inside caves, but thankfully that’s not the case this time. Instead we find the Tenda Tribe living here. They are a small green…Frog like people? Or possibly some kind of Slime Race?… Either way they are all incredibly shy.

The Tenda are so shy in fact that hardly anyone in the village will even talk to us other than to say how shy they are. One Tenda near the center of the cave mentions that a book might exist that would fix their shyness. Let’s hope we can find that book for them. Poor little guys can barely function the way they are now.

Out of the entire village, there seems to be only one Tenda that is not cripplingly shy. This Tenda informs us that there are scary dinosaurs underground and they sealed the entrance with the large rock next to him. He senses that we want to explore this area, despite the danger. Alas he is not strong enough to move the stone himself. The Tenda standing over there next to the rock is unfortunately the only one strong enough to move it, but like the rest of the Tenda he is too cripplingly shy to help us. It’s just one more reason to find this book for them.

Well, if everyone is too shy to even talk to us, there really isn’t anything left for us to do here, so we leave. To our surprise, we get another call from Apple Kid as soon as we set foot outside the cave. It sounds like he made it to Dr. Andonuts lab safely, though Dr. Andonuts doesn’t seem to be around at the moment. While waiting for his return, Apple Kid has been working on one of his own inventions, The Eraser Eraser Machine. No doubt this will remove the Eraser Stature found in the tunnel under Stonehenge.

However, something terrible seems to happen to Apple Kid as he’s talking to us. Someone unexpected seems to have shown up. From the sound of it there was a bit of a struggle before the phone suddenly disconnects. This doesn’t sound good for Apple Kid, we should probably go see what happened to him.

Once again, not to be outdone, we also get a call from Orange Kid. Apparently his research on how to turn boiled eggs back in to raw eggs is nearly completion. Once again, I really don’t care. I don’t think anyone cares. Of all the useless inventions that have ever been invented, that has to be among the top 10. Don’t get me wrong, on a technical level that is a very impressive accomplishment. But on a practical level, I still can’t think of any instance where that would become useful.

Useless inventions aside, he does however pass on some very useful information. After commenting on Apple Kid’s absence, he casually remarks that Apple Kid was in possession of the book “Overcoming Shyness” which Orange Kid was hoping to borrow for himself. We already were motivated to check up on Apple Kid, but now it seems almost imperative that we see what happened to him as soon as possible.

Or we can do the exact opposite and let him wait a while. After all, there is one thing I’ve been meaning check out before we go see Apple Kid. Now that the whole party is back together, I think we should make one more trip to Dalaam. I was thinking about the Rabbits’ Carrot item we got back in Magnet Hill and how it’s probably related to the Rabbit Statues blocking the cave in Dalaam. Of course, my assumption was right, and the rabbit statues disappear.

Sometimes however I wish we could just leave well enough alone, as the cave the rabbits were guarding is full of some powerful monsters. The most common of which seem to be the Thunder Mite and the Tengu. The Tengu actually isn’t very bad, he can put a party member to sleep, but he is ease enough to defeat. The Thunder Mite however can cause some serious damage if it isn’t defeated right away.

Another interesting, though very rare monster I encountered here was the Kiss of Death. This monster is quite literally just a floating mouth. The whole day, I only encountered one of these monsters, so I can’t really say much about them, but their interesting design left an impression on me that I felt I should share. Really we should be more concerned with the Conducting Menace. Those guys can actually be quite the pain in the ass.

Anyway, the cave itself is your usual mini maze dungeon. Normally, this wouldn’t be so bad, but after having just gone through Dungeon Man, this dungeon just lacks the personality we’ve been shown is possible in dungeon design. There aren’t any signs telling me anything, there are few branching paths and dead ends, and there aren’t very many treasures to find. There was one item though that really made my day. Far out of the way in the bottom left corner we find the “Bracer of Kings.” It’s a cool enough name for an item, but what makes it worthwhile is that this is actually one of the very few pieces of equipment that Poo is meant to wear. FINALLY he has a piece of equipment just like everyone else. It’s about time.

We continue exploring the dungeon, though explore might be too broad of a word here. There is basically just a single path to follow which leads to hole in the ground. Jumping down this hole brings you to another smaller area with a magical butterfly as well as three more holes to drop down.

Two of the holes are quite boring, leading you back to early parts of the dungeon and forcing you to hike all the way back to where you just were with nothing to show for yourself. The final hole, the one on the left, does actually lead to a new area. Unfortunately, we’re out of time to play for today. So we’ll just have to wait here at the bottom of the hole for now.

Join us again next time when we finish exploring this cave. What other treasures do you think we’ll find here? You’ll just have to wait and find out!