Let's Play Atelier Rorona! Update 10, Part 3
Continued from Part 2...
With Team Girl-Pile together again, I headed off to Ster Highlands to fight the Griffonian.
That really looks painful. Divebombing you with all it's body weight coming down on it's beak, right in your face...
It really does do quite a bit of damage, and it's claw attacks are pretty strong too. If it had more HP it could be tough... but it doesn't.
High quality Beast Skin with no traits would have been quite a prize at one point. Now? Not sure, it might still come in handy for something.
There's also a super dangerous monster in the Snow Stone Area here.
Fresberg doesn't look too tough.
Until it does this.
The damage is pretty serious too, though I'm not sure why Rorona took so much less than the others. Her defense stat might be a bit better than theirs now, but I don't think it's that much better.
It's single-target attack is pretty strong too. Cory got KOed during this fight, and it was kind of a pain, since I'd opened the fight with a Dragon Statue that failed to kill it. That made it hard building the water element level up enough that Lionela could revive her. Those things didn't really hold their value as long as I was expecting them to... well, it did still do a huge chunk of damage, so that's not nothing, but still.
Later, back at the workshop...
Now for the last ingredient...
I don't have enough, again?
And when I don't have enough ingredients...
Yup, Homhom isn't here, either...
Must be with Little Meow again.
I guess we've really gotten used to having Hom around, to miss her so quickly.
Yep, there's Hom. But something looks a little different...
I knew you were...
Whoa!
Is that... a smile?
Aaah! So cute I'm gonna faint!!
Do you need something, Master?
Y-yeah, but...
What are all those kitties doing here? Are they Little Meow's kittens?
No, Little Meow is not here anymore.
o.O
What!? Did...?
Little Meow has grown up and is no longer Little Meow. It is called Meow now.
Hom, someone really needs to teach you colloquialisms. Like what "not here anymore" often means.
(Or would that be euphemisms?)
So they are not Little Meow's kittens. They are Meow's kittens.
What? Oh, I see...
But, it sounds really complicated...
So do they all have names?
Yes. This one is Little Mya, this one is Little Myu, and this one is...
Mmyarr.
Little Mmyarr, right?
No, it is Little Nar.
It has a sore throat today.
. o O (Do cats get sore throats?)
Okay, so...this one is Little Mya, that one is Little Mer, and that one is Little Ner...
No. Little Mya, Little Myu, and Little Nar.
Huh? Little Mer, Myar, Nar, Little Myu...?
Myarr.
Myurr.
Mmyarr.
Each of those lines is a different kitten, but I'm not making new icons for them.
Anyway, what did you need?
Oh, right...um...
What did I need?
Sorry...I'll come back when I remember.
Yes, Master. I will be out here with Little Mya, Little Myu, and Little Nar.
Aghh! You're confusing me by saying all their names at once!
Seems like nice things are happening all over lately.
More filling in the blanks. I couldn't even remember what "Avoid Danger" did and had to look it up. "Decreases the chance of being inflicted with status ailments"... it doesn't seem to happen that much to begin with.
I also hit up the strong monsters in the ruins and forest for some grinding. Fang is still a mean bastard. I might be able to win without using a big attack item, but I'd rather not try it.
Quadra Punis, on the other hand, continue to not be super-difficult. I had some fun crushing them with Psionic Doll.
In theory, this is about the ideal use case for that skill - multiple enemies that are tough enough that you won't have wiped them out by the time water element gets up to 5, who will be mostly wiped out once you use the skill, so you aren't shooting yourself in the foot by dropping the element back to 0.
Too bad situations like that don't come up too often. It really is Awesome but Impractical.
At the beginning of month 3...
Master? Umm, she's...
Right behind you?
(Seriously, she just appears without warning.)
You're lucky. I'm not here that often. What do you want?
I'm here to let you know that you've been given approval for that permit you requested.
Hmmm...did I ask you for something?
To explore Orthogalaxen.
Did you forget about that?
Oh, I remember now. It's been four years since I requested that. Why would I remember after so long?
I know it's been a while, but believe me, I turned in your request form every week!
o.O;;;
How does this work anyway? If he had to turn it in again and again, it must not take long to make a decision... did something change to get it approved now? Or is it just weird and arbitrary? Maybe a lottery system? What the hell is going on here?
Well, you're a hardworking man. However, my sense of appreciation has faded after so many years.
Grh...I shouldn't have expected any gratitude from you. Forget it!
Sterk leaves.
I don't know, I've kinda got to go with Astrid on this one. Four years is just crazy. That's plenty of time to not need to/want to/be able to do something.
And then there's the question of his motivation. For about half that time he could have been keeping at it for Rorona's sake, but the rest is still a good chunk of time to spend on someone he doesn't seem to like very much.
Boy, he's as short-tempered as always.
That was...I mean, it's your fault every time he gets mad.
I don't have the motivation to research that place anymore. Rorona?
Okay, okay, I'll go instead.
Well, you seem to be on top of things.
What do you expect? I've been working under you for so long...
I probably don't need to explain this, but that place is still undeveloped, so there's a lot of mysterious items.
There will also be many unidentified monsters, so be careful.
Okay...
You can now go to Orthogalaxen.
Though I won't be just yet.
Hom, however, is a different matter.
Orthogalaxen has a truly bizarre selection of items available, but in general there's going to be a lot of great stuff. And this isn't even the full list! That supposedly opens up at level 45.
(Why isn't there a FAQ with Hom gathering information anyway? Am I the only one who uses Hom to gather? o.O )
We didn't go immediately because I was making this - using, in part, stuff Hom had gotten before I called her back.
Winner's Instinct is weird. "Reverses chance of obtaining items." The hell does that mean? I'm not sure anyone knows, but the general agreement is that things which would normally be rare become not so rare with this effect. "Drop Trait Up" is simple enough - it increases the level of traits on dropped items. Or makes higher ones more likely, or something like that. ... Okay, maybe it's not that simple. I haven't tried to test it. But whatever exactly it does, it's something that's likely to benefit us. And it's much better than the other effect these can have, "Drop Quality Up", since quality usually doesn't matter much.
I'm not sure if it's actually necessary to have everyone equip one of these, or if just one would be okay, but it was easier just to make three with good traits and equip them to the whole team. And Convert Damage +3 turns out to be surprisingly useful.
Orthogalaxen turns out to be in the middle of the Ortoga Ruins (should have guessed, they both start with 'Ort'), and is only one day away. That last part turns out to be a pretty big deal.
I'm just going to put this here for future reference.
The first thing you see as you enter Orthogalaxen is something shiny in the distance.
The second thing you see is that the shiny thing is headed for your face at approximately a hundred miles an hour.
Okay, that's an exaggeration. But if you look at every time I've complained about the speed of something in the game before, Bunny Punis are faster. They don't try to do any fakeouts either, they just go at you. On top of that, they'll chase you much further from their starting point than anything else I've seen even if you manage to slip past them. There's a lot of them for the first few floors of this place too.
What I'm saying is, you'll probably be mighty sick of fighting Bunny Punis when all is said and done.
They are kind of cute though.
Even if they're suddenly growing huge and smashing the whole party. This is really quite a lot of damage considering that it's from a non-boss enemy, and there's multiples in a group.
If you're too low level, you'll get Rorona making this panic face, and a comment from one of your party members.
Ahhh! They look tough.
They look tough! Oh no...
Hm. This is gonna be fun!
(One of these things is not like the others...)
This is a great place to grind if you're low level, since these fights give almost 400 xp each, and there's a lot of them. Of course, if you're seeing Rorona make that face, winning the fight might be the hard thing. It shouldn't be hard to make wholesaleable combat items that can wipe out a group at this point though.
On the other hand, if you've already been grinding like I have, this place can take you to even greater heights. We're actually strong enough to one-shot Bunny Punis with our regular attacks now. Convert Damage is usually enough to keep up with the attacks that get through. And pretty much all the enemy groups here mix some strong enemies with a couple weaker ones of the same type, so that gives you a relatively safe time to heal up if you need it.
I probably didn't need to grind as much as I did to be able to handle this place, but it does make it easier.
And the loot... is this Winner's Instinct in action? That's a preposterous amount of stuff. And what's with the feathers?
(Answer to the first question: Yes. Yes it is. This is over twice as much stuff as I get fighting without that accessory.)
I usually don't even bother looking at the stuff these drop. I don't need to be drowning in Puniballs again, and I'm already fighting the limits of the container. But if you need a level 3 trait, there's a good chance of finding one here.
Further up, there's a bunch of men in black. Hmmm.
Look at that display-like thing there too - just like the one Cory stands by in town.
Remember how the opening talked about machines discovered in the ruins? I'm thinking we're in those ruins right now.
But anyway, back to the men in black. Did this lot wait four years to get permission to come in here, or are they just looters and defacers of priceless historical relics!?
I'm thinking the latter, but these "Bodyguards" are oddly formally dressed for the role. Either way, they're in our way and want a fight, so hey.
As usual with humanoid enemies, the drops are unimpressive equipment, though the stronger ones probably drop slightly better stuff, but not to the point where I care enough to look.
I'm still highly amused by "The Tweeche" though.
After fighting through more Punis and looters, we come to a Puni guard group. For some reason, the guard enemies look bigger than the regular ones (though it's not obvious unless you've got one on screen at the same time), but they're not really any tougher.
Well, the Black Punis are new I think, but they're not nearly as strong as the Bunny Punis. (Or as cute.)
Also, seriously, why would a Puni have one of these?
On to floor 2. There's still a lot of those Punis running around.
But there's also these guys. "Grow Plantze"? Seriously?
Don't like me insulting your name, huh?
And with a rather constipated look, they launch a ball of lava or something at us, damaging the entire party. WTF. Don't plants usually not like fire?
Whatever their peculiarities, they drop Dunkelheit. Frequently, with victory charms. So they're pretty lucrative, even if we don't want to save the stuff for synthesis.
Time to talk about chests. Orthogalaxen doesn't have gathering points, just these. This first one on floor two, and one much later in the area, give recipe books. The rest...
Well, they pretty much give a bunch of random crap. There's a huge list of stuff that can show up here, always with high quality and traits, but the odds of it lining up to be something you actually want are pretty low.
After a ton of fights that I'm eliding, we get to this fancy looking elevator to the next area.
More spinning crystals in the background, except these are spinning along a horizontal axis instead of a vertical one. And much closer to the path. But we still can't break any off.
Oh, and there's these big bastards blocking the path.
Storm Beasts are tough, but not tough enough to matter when there's just one.
Floor four has ghosts, along with some other random crap mixed in.
Incidentally, if you're getting the impression that Orthogalaxen is boring, you're pretty much right. There's an enormous amount of stuff to fight, some of which has some good loot, but it really does get pretty repetitive if you're strong enough to beat the Puni groups.
Floor 5 has Tiger Fish. They're pretty much the most chill thing around here - you've got to get really close before they'll attack.
Seems like a damn weird place to find them though. At least the Isle Fish in the first part of Nabel Lake were *near* water...
This might be the only example of me getting an actually useful material out of a chest here.
Floor 6 has Gargoyles and Bodyguards, neither of which are any more interesting than the last time we saw them.
Here's a current look at the area map. What struck me around this time is that unlike some areas, the picture doesn't look like even an inaccurate overview of the whole area - it looks like an overview of a single floor. Kind of interesting.
Floor 6 is pretty much all Bunny Punis. I'm not impressed. Thankfully, this is the last we'll see of them for a while.
There was also a chest with a Pebble. How inspring.
(Spoiler: It might actually be a good idea to save some pebbles...)
This is actually one of the only times there's two exits to an area in Orthogalaxen though, so I ended up going through the area twice. That ended up being as far as I could get before the assignment end, though I did drop into the first area again so I could use a Windrider to go home and save a day.
The amount of experience you can get from Orthogalaxen is incredible, between the enemies giving a lot individually and the large number of enemy groups. Our party members were level 38 or 39 when we came out. When we left? 45. And that's actually slower than it could be, since we were going straight through to open up more floors. If you're just grinding or farming materials (and some floors are very good for materials, but we're not quite at the best one), you can use a Windrider to go back after clearing a floor, meaning it'll only cost one day no mattter how long the area ordinarily takes. I've used this before of course, to grind the strong enemies in the early areas, but Orthogalaxen takes it to a whole new level.
Here's what was in that recipe book we found. With it being so close to the end of the assignment, I've only made one of these things so far.
I'd always wondered what kind of a name "Shibyure" was. Then I checked the encylopedia.
"A collection of poems that praise the Goddess Shibyure's beauty. Read this and use it to help you get the girl you want."
That's... interesting. And doesn't sound like a recipe book at all.
Hom was back from her trip to Orthogalaxen too. The most interesting thing was probably the Marinelite, which had some pretty good traits on it. (Though this particular one is not so good.) It can't make ultimate weapons on it's own... but it's very close, and that'll help eventually.
Esty also had this peculiar request. It is literally impossible to make this item at this point. I'm pretty sure I could meet this deadline, but it's not worth it, and still pretty weird. This makes only two or three requests I can recall that you couldn't possibly be capable of doing when you receive them.
I usually go around talking to people at the beginning of the assignment, but this time it was the beginning. I suppose Rorona wasn't really in the mood for socializing with the way things went.
Lionela! <3
I'm pretty sure her greeting us like that is new.
Pamela, you could just take a couple of the ones you're wholesaling for me out of stock. They're not that expensive.
Here. This is a souvenir from our last trip.
Received Uni x3,
Beast Skin x1, and
Forgotten Bone x2.
That's... really not very impressive.
I really wonder what controls which parent shows up, since I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be possible for either parent to be here with souvenirs. Or for both to be gone, with just a note with some stuff, for that matter.
It's nice seeing people have confidence in us.
Hmm...well, I guess your sister wants you to trust her more...
Another episode of this slow-motion drama. Seriously, it's been a couple years now, that's just weird.
I guess it doesn't matter as long as some smart people know how...
Uh, if no one really knows, wouldn't that mean no smart people know?
I think this is the only time anyone's expressed any concern about them.
;.;
Huh... is this another ongoing drama I didn't realize was happening?
^.^
Last thing before the evaluation, I made an Absorb Gourd. Attack Absorb reduces the enemy's attack and increases your own. The effect doesn't seem to be very large though. When I was testing it I tried a Spirit's Breath with Attack Down too, and that seemed to be stronger, but the effect didn't last very long. Maybe with the right traits they'd work better, it could make an easier way to deal with bosses with strong attacks. Even with all the levels we got in Orthogalaxen, some of the stronger enemies can still do quite a bit of damage.
Where by "one more year" you mean "nine more months", right?
...
Is everything alright? It looks like you're starting to space out.
What? Oh, no!
It's nothing.
(I'm sure he wouldn't understand,
even if I told him that Master
was acting a little weird...)
Weirder than usual?
Alright, then...let's see the results of this assignment.
Another victory for money! But it won't help us next time...
Looks like you're doing a great job.
I'm glad.
...
Are you listening?
Oh, I'm sorry! What did you say?
I wasn't listening at all!
...I wish you would come to me about things other than work, too.
Huh?
Nothing. Let's talk about your next assignment...
Coral is a plant?
Well, I did some searching, and there actually is something called a "coral plant", and some pictures I found of it looked a bit like the picture for Prism Coral. Huh. But the description in the encyclopedia makes it clear that it's coral-coral, not plant-coral, so I just don't know.
Have you been to the Night's Domain?
Nope. I've never even heard of it.
Basically, it's the name of an area to the North of here.
(Why is North capitalized?)
It's a place where the sun doesn't shine. Hence, the name.
...Sterk, are you sure you should be talking to a girl about places the sun doesn't shine?
It's still an unexplored area to us. We hear that there are a ton of dangerous monsters. Be careful if you go there.
...You never know what'll happen, especially when you're unfocused, like you are right now.
Okay...I'll be careful.
You can now go to Night's Domain.
And with a pretty picture of Tiffany, the first part of year three comes to a close.
Next time on Atelier Rorona:Why is it so dark in here?