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All right we've made some progress since last time and cleared more hurdles but the late game has more in store for our intrepid wizard. Dark Force still has plenty of tricks up its metaphorical sleeves and we have a side quest to deal with.
That means it's Silver Soldier time. Technically I could wait until after the Soldier's Temple to do this job but I like to have a breather between fighting incarnations of death and destruction. As for the bots who appeared at Zema they're never a problem but even less so when you're playing a character who has a spell designed to destroy bots.
As much as Wren claims he was the only one targeted that's rather impossible when the killbots were blown up seconds after appearing. Besides which if they could target him while he's in the interdimensional box I'd be impressed. Oh well. While those in the box chatter away Rune has work to do.
As for the trip through Vahal Fort it was quick and largely uneventful.
That didn't mean Rune got through it unscathed. He had several deaths due to Stasis Ball. Although Rune was carrying the Swift Helm I opted not to use it after this initial loss and just hoped his first attempts at running away would work.
All in all Rune's chances of escaping weren't all that bad. He even managed to get some pre-emptive strikes - not that he did any striking. Those just meant running away before the killbots spotted him.
At the end of the job there's a mandatory fight against three Dominators. It's the best Daughter could come up with on such short notice...
Anyway Tandle was without question the go-to skill for this fight.
I knew going in that Rune was in trouble if Double Slashes came into play and was proven right in the first round. He survived that round with 94 hit points and I decided to keep nuking and hope he didn't get too many more Double Slashes. That's how Rune entered the third round with only 8 hit points. Fortunately a third Tandle junked the Dominators. Rune sat through the dialogue, HINASed out, then RYUKAed back to Aeido to collect his 80,000 meseta reward.
Collecting that reward meant Rune couldn't put off the trip to the Soldier's Temple any longer. He filled the remaining slots of his inventory with trimates (which was overkill since he'd have to pick things up) and RYUKAed to Krup.
It's actually rather nice having a character who can teleport around. It saves the tedium of having to drive everywhere.
Hydrofoil in action... for all of two seconds! It's so fast moving it can be tricky getting it to stop on that little island.
Oh hey there's a sol dew in a chest. Goodbye trimate! You were a waste of money, unfortunately, but money isn't a concern and rapidly becoming less so because of Rune's slow hit point growth. He didn't gain a level from Dark Force 2 so he was still level 56 and had 258 max health. Using a sol dew on him was thus overkill but he had them just in case.
Once he reached the temple Rune reach into the interdimensional box and pulled out that creepy archeologist guy. Our resident wizard pushed the mustache forward so that said mustache could turn into an evil monster which Rune would then fight and hopefully destroy.
All so that Seth would return to the interdimensional box. (I would worry about the rest of the cast plotting against Rune if they weren't all level one with the exception of Wren and Demi. One Hewn would wipe out the lot of 'em.) Hey if we're breaking the laws of space/time we might as well go whole hog and break ALL of them!
Let's waste more money and have to throw away another trimate for the Aero Prism. It was necessary to continue though.
As soon as the fight against Dark Force 3 began Rune launched into his Efess barrage. I considered using the Swift Helm to lock in the turn order but Rune had managed to win most of his initiative rolls against Dark Force 2 and the latest incarnation has Shadowbind which has a high chance of success and reduces Agility.
Corrosion did hurt and a bit more than Light Shower had so Rune couldn't ignore it but seeing the numbers I wasn't too worried.
Then Dark Force cranked out a 158 damage critical with that sword arm and flatlined Rune. It is a bit of a surprise but not completely unexpected. Dark Force 3 does pack quite a strong punch with that arm. That was Rune's first death to this incarnation.
Efess alone wasn't going to get the job done but this time Nawat didn't enter the equation. Rune needed this Dark Force dead as quickly as possible since not only does it have 1,000 more hit points than its spider crab cousin but it was more lethal for him.
How lethal? Well let this screenshot of Rune being killed by a 177 damage critical hit testify. The damage he was receiving made it impossible to maintain anything approaching a useful rate of attack while staying out of the upper threat range. He would have to make a lot of attacks and hope that when big damage rolls like this came in he was at or near full health.
On the fifth attempt he had two alive-by-the-skin-of-his-teeth moments. I was adamant about running repeat attempts at level 56 to stick with the other runs that cleared DF2 and 3 without grinding in between. It was stubborn and impractical after several attempts where Rune barely made any progress against Dark Force's health bar but I stuck with it.
And hey that fifth attempt got lucky enough to actually win.
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWe-9oBDOgo
With the last of the Dark Forces dead Rune was free to fly to Rykros. I just wanted to get through the two towers there and move on to the grind for the Profound Darkness. First though he had to return to Dezolis to restock his trimates. Dark Force 3 ate up a good portion of his stock and I had no illusion that De Vars or Sa Lews would be any gentler.
I had no preference for which guardian to tackle first and didn't remember which tower as which. Rune was facing south when he left Silence Temple so that's the direction he started walking. That took him to Courage Tower. (Courage is the tower that has the purple interior palette for those who get the two as confused as I do.)
My coinflip proved fortuitous because the Courage Tower has the one Guard Robe in the game (and in the shop hack I'm using I purposefully didn't add any Guard gear for sale) which added another 14 defense for our resident wizard.
Courage Tower means Sa Lews is up first. I expected this battle to be the easier of the two. Rune shares Raja's high magic defense without the critical weakness to Flaeli. He will also do a lot more damage per attack than Raja thus enabling him to end the fight sooner.
On the first round I started to scroll through Rune's inventory for the Swift Helm but decided I'd try the fight without it first.
Sa Lews's Tandle is usually their heavier hitter but this time around Rune's high magic defense kept it more in line with the other spells. That didn't mean it couldn't and wouldn't hurt. It just meant it tended towards the lower end of its damage range.
As for Rune he was well equipped for this battle. Sa Lews is immune to most of Rune's arsenal. Nawat was an option but Legeon would deal more damage. Besides Hahn had to use Nawat so much I wanted to show off other spells in the game.
The two traded spells back and forth. Flaeli hurt almost as bad as Tandle and Hewn wasn't any better. Most of the fight was just a cycle of Cast - Heal - Cast - Heal. When Rune ran out of Legeon charges he went to his own Tandle spell.
And that was how he won the wizard's duel. It was actually rather amusing watching the spells fly all over the place.
With the defeat of Sa Lews that meant De Vars was left. Rune flew back to Dezolis to restock trimates before he tackled the Strength Tower. He looted the Guard Rod, the only other item on Rykros I was interested in, but the new staff just went right into his inventory. I only planned to use it to heal Rune during the final grind after De Vars.
Rune did take some damage on the way up the tower but not enough to worry me. He was steadily approaching the 2 million experience points mark and despite being level 57 was well away from breaking 300 max hit points. On the skill side he had 10 charges of Legeon and 12 charges of Tandle which together were more than enough for either tower guardian.
If you wanted to sum up what little personality De Vars has in game this line right here is about as succinct as one can get. De Vars is spoiling for a fight. I'll be happy to give them one!
Since De Vars counters magical attacks with Disrupt Arm Rune got to see a whole lot of this animation throughout the fight. I didn't mind though. Disrupt Arm is preferable when you've only got one person on your team. I've never shown this off but the animation looks like De Vars is firing off a line of mini-fists to punch zir enemies.
And here's why that Guard Rod would never see use in battle. Rune could avoid triggering Disrupt Arm by attacking but then he'd lose valuable defense and De Vars's regular attacks are more damaging (against a single target). Spells were the way to go and as a wizard that's what Rune's good at!
I showed off Legeon's damage against Sa Lews. It did the same to De Vars so here's Tandle to show the other side of Rune's offense.
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW1sZdduVtM
And there's the video of Sa Lews and De Vars. It's not terribly exciting I will admit but once you understand how these two work the only reason they shouldn't be well under control is if one or both manage to hit a critical weakness. Or you somehow get here with a seriously underleveled character. I suppose that is possible with enough luck.
Total death count by this point: 82
Adding the 76 Rune had accumulated at the end of our last update were 2 deaths trying to make it through Vahal Fort for the Silver Soldier job and 4 losses to Dark Force 3.
