Dear Readers,
We went back to Colony 6 to see if we could make any upgrades. We were able to level up Nature to LV2, which brought about a flower garden.
The flower garden was nice enough, but didn't seem to do anything particularly special. It was the only one we were able to upgrade for now.
We left Colony 6 again. Will be back later.
Dear Readers,
We took the Giants' Mirror and left the big spider behind without defeating it. We returned to the Exile Fortress in Satori Marsh.
We had to go all the way round to the entrance and through the actual fortress again. It was a slog like most of the game is and we fell off the ledge once, which was even more annoying, but it was very amusing to go through the throne room and see the lizard men Ignas again, only this time without their leader. They were all gathered around an empty throne and paid no attention to us now. It was a funny sight alright.
We got to the altar and used the mirror. This gave us the Daring of the Giants.
It also made another bunch of big spiders appear! Defied Queens this time. We ignored them just like the other big spider and jumped off the fortress roof. It looks like they won't appear again but I don't care anymore.
We went back to Kacha who thanked us for the quest. She said there was something else to this item we got but didn't say what it was. I guess we'll find out later.
Dear Readers,
We warped to a point on the Bionis Leg where we could return to the Daksha Shrine. Nearest point was Kamos Guidepost which was still some ways away.
We got the Giant's Mirror but the Clifftop Bayern still killed us, even though it was five levels lower than we were. We whittled its health down by half at least.
We decided to skip the spider fight and just get on with the quest.
Dear Readers,
Kacha had another quest for us. She wanted us to collect the Giant's Mirror from Daksha Shrine and place it on the altar of the Exile Fortress.
This wasn't all part of the last quest, which ended with us not knowing what the heck to do with the altar. We had to find that first so we could come back here and get this new quest.
We'll have to go to the previous area now. I think it might be that area where the big creature came out from nowhere and beat us up. We might be able for it this time. Will explore next time.
We got a nice bit of lore about giants from Kacha though. The altars were for offerings and the giants were big but they liked order and rules and stuff like that. Next thing is to continue the tradition.
Dear Readers,
We hung around in Satori Marsh. I decided to do the quest about the Giant's Key. We went to the Dark Swamp to defeat 5 Deluded Ignas.
Finding them wasn't that fun, but fighting them was. They had their own chain attacks and everything. We were at a much higher level than them now so we clobbered them handily.
When they were done we found the Giants' Key nearby. This area was to the east of the Dark Swamp on a higher platform. We had to come in through a little cave/arch along the way on a path that ran alongside the Exile Fortress.
After that, we went into the fortress itself and beat up every single lizard dude thingy in there, including the Reckless Godwin. It took a small while but we beat them all handily enough. I aimed for the biggest one straight away, which may not have been the best idea but we were able to manage it with a couple of chain attacks.
Afterwards we found the Wall of Sin, that opened up to reveal a path to the altar we were looking for on the roof. We examined it and it seemed we needed an offering. We headed back to Kacha who rewarded us.
Dear Readers,
Zazadan was sad again. He wanted to give the Highmore Caviar to a Nopon named Dedeba but he didn't have a way to deliver it. We agreed to deliver it for him.
Interestingly, this was a timed quest. Doesn't that make earlier quests timed as well even though they're not labelled as such? In that case, I must spend more time doing older quests without progressing too much. Another thing to stress about with this game.
I warped clunkily to Nopon Village and went looking for Dedeba. Luckily I already blogged about where the heck he was in the village, which was on 2F at night. I looked that up in my own archive and found him there right away.
If I hadn't blogged about this before, I just wouldn't have been able to find him for ages. I would've had to look it up online out of boredom.
When I got to Dedeba, he was grumpy as well, complaining about how long he was waiting. He was surprised to see us delivering it. He was happy with the delivery, though he still shooed us away quickly.
A link appeared between him and Zazadan on the affinity chart labelled with "A Regular".
We warped back to Zazadan and he didn't have any more quests for us. Might just never come back. It's annoying having to warp and climb his hill each time when visiting him. Depends on quests to come I suppose.
Dear Readers,
Zazadan gave us an orb to drop into a specific pond. Before we went there I suspected it would summon a horrible creature to fight.
We warped there as thankfully we already had the area explored. We must do that with the jungly area ahead too.
We dropped the thing into the shiny water and got some food called Highmore Caviar. No horrible creature, which was a relief. We took it and brought it back to Zazadan, which made him happy. It also levelled up the other two in my party. Woo!
After this, Zazadan had yet another quest!
Dear Readers,
Zazadan wanted us to beat up a flying monster that wanted to eat him. He used the same roundabout way of asking us to do this job as well. We asked him what it was and he said it was the Sunlight Schvaik on Barren Moor. We agreed to defeat it for him.
Like the Ogre Bunnies from before, this creature only came out at daytime. Good, because the nighttime ones were still too strong for us!
We warped to the place and immediately the flying creature found us. The battle we won handily enough. The creature was LV30 so a bit weaker than us.
Zazadan was delighted and felt much safer but he still didn't feel well...
Dear Readers,
We warped to the Glowing Obelisk in Satori Marsh to look for the Ogre Bunnies that were putting Zazadan in danger.
We found some and fought them.
We got a drop that gave me a vision of Dunban saying we could trade four pieces of Bunnia Scent Wood for something that some lady told us about, whatever it is. Some future quest.
We beat up the 8 Ogre Bunnies and went back to Zazadan. He was really really happy. He had another quest for us however.
Dear Readers,
We returned to Satori Marsh for quests since we were getting nowhere with the Telethia.
I felt good about helping Zazadan, who needed us as he wasn't able by himself. We found his two Twin Flamii eggs as a drop from the regular local Flamii birds. Up until now I thought they were elusive special Flamii but it was just the local ones.
After delivering the quest to him, Zazadan was grateful and told us it was our job to help him with another quest. Reyn found him kinda weird but he was funny at the same time. He wanted us to defeat 8 Ogre Bunnies that attacked him before when he tried to go out. We agreed.
Dear Readers,
We're still losing against the Telethia. There was one time where we built up the chain gauge by fighting a couple of smaller dinos, but it still wasn't enough. We lost again even with access to chain attacks. Those bigger dinos got in the way another couple of times too.
More time needed to get past this thing.
Dear Readers,
We took on the Telethia again and lost. It wasn't a complete waste of time because we gathered something we needed along the way for a quest.
What I gathered from the fight was that none of my hits were landing, so I sought to deal with that.
Whenever it did its "Soul Read" move, I used the Purge Monado Art to get rid of it. This meant that I needed to have it available, so I spared on using the other Monado Arts.
The battle was still very hard though and it felt like we weren't making much damage to it.
A cutscene set off at one point where we were stuck with not knowing what to do as it was regenerating. Melia suggested cutting our losses but I insisted on fighting on, making an impassioned speech with anime music about avenging those dearest to you. I said I'd distract it while everyone else attacked with all they had.
The fight continued and I wasn't exactly sure what to do. We lost again.
It's some progress but there's a bit more sussing this fight out to do if we're gonna win.
We also got stomped a couple of times by the LV90+ Deinos whenever we had to trek back here. One of those annoyances we had to deal with! We had to make sure they were facing different directions.
Dear Readers,
We went out into the forest from Frontier Village. We found that the Nopon had built a lovely network of bridges and shelters around the surrounding area! It was really nice.
We headed toward the story point about facing the Telethia and soon the bridges ended with regular ground. We crossed a shallow part of a stream and snuck past a huge Deinos Sauros that was LV98. Yikes.
In the direction of the story flag we began to see a massive ether deposit, where the Telethia was supposed to go to heal. We headed straight there.
A cutscene triggered where we saw that the environment had changed. We learned that the Telethia absorbs ether and changes the environment. Melia advised me about the Telethia, how it can read my mind so I should attack its antennae or something like that. Then she had some thoughts about the Monado and its abilities for this fight. Then, when the Telethia showed up and attacked she leaped into battle with her own ether abilities, which got the rest of the party chatting about her abilities. There was lots of expository dialogue here but I could only learn so much at once.
The battle started and it said Melia learned Mind Blast as a new art.
There was no way I was winning this straight away. I scouted details out first. The Telethia was LV36, same as us and I was there with Dunban and Reyn. Things got slow and laggy and lots of damage came and eventually wore us down to nothing. I'm gonna make a fresh start and scout this out a bit more next time.
Dear Readers,
I decided to go back to Colony 9 to make that thing the Nopon wanted for mixing sweets. On the way out, We met Nopon we hadn't met before. One of them wanted to lick a male Hom because she thought we would taste sweet. She said we were mean for not letting her. Haha.
Warping back to Colony 9 was a bit of an ordeal because I have to warp to the beginning of preceding areas and we've travelled quite a bit by this point. We eventually got to the weapon lab. We met a Nopon who was jealous we got to see Frontier Village.
We checked out the Heart-to-hearts as well. Riki featured in one of them back in Tephra Cave, but there were still many that were inaccessible. This means there are even more characters to meet and add to the party.
A Nopon merchant in Makna forest wanted us to defeat the Shimmering Forte near the Eks Watering Hole on a hot day. We agreed to do it.
We went back to the Nopon village and looked for Rono. I had to refer to the map for his location at the pollen works, his mission that told us he was there, and his affinity chart entry for the time he was available there. Whew. Exhausting.
We gave Rono his sweet mixer and he was delighted. He wanted to get started right away making sweets for Pepa.
Dear Readers,
We went around the Nopon Village, fixing the Time Mushrooms. I decided to put Riki in the team to see what it was like.
Rono had a quest for us. He wanted a mixer for sweets and I said it would be no problem if we got the materials so we agreed to it. We already had the materials, so now we just had to go make it in Colony 9. In due course!
We went around fixing the other Time Mushrooms before returning to the bottom to speak with Migaga. She was delighted and thankful to know when it was 3pm and when it was 3am, very important snack times for Nopon. It's all very very cute.
Dear Readers,
Migaga was at the fountain and she had a quest for us.
She wanted us to help her with the mushroom clocks as they weren't telling the correct time and she felt too old to climb up all the steps to do it herself. Nopon wanted to know when snack time was. Reyn suggested eating when they felt hungry and she said no one would stop eating then and get really fat. Aw. We agreed to help.
She said Time Mushrooms were on the 1st, 4th and 7th floors. She gave us fertiliser which would fix them instantly, 3 compost. Migaga came up as being "in charge of sacred object."
We went upstairs to fix the first Time Mushroom. I put compost on it and it stopped shooting spores constantly. It'll only do it twice a day now.
We also got Riki's equipment from the armour and weapon shops. We asked him about how he became heropon and he said something about the chief's instincts in choosing him. Then he confessed he had a lot of debts in the village and he didn't mind being heropon. That explains it after all.
Riki then joined the party! His Arts had funny names like Happy Happy, Bitey Bitey and Play Dead. I read the new tutorial that came up about his one that's called Yoink! It's about stealing stuff. His other Arts were explained as character dialogue, some of them poison oriented that do damage over time.
Dear Readers,
We caught up with Melia on 7F of Nopon Village. She said she was on a mission to fight an escaped Telethia. I told her about encountering the spawn of them on the beach and offered our help. I told her about the Monado, my visions and her appearance in them as she fought the Telethia and Mechon.
The village chief told us the Nopon Hero would be helping as well and was waiting for us below. We all joined up again and jumped off the diving board looking thing jutting out from the balcony all the way down to the reservoir. We then went to the Central Plaza through the underground storage.
Rasha had a quest here for us. She wanted us to defeat 5 Makna Elucas in Yellow Flower Grove and we accepted. Her niecypon Cherri didn't like bugs and she wasn't able to defeat them for her now because of an old injury and allergies too. She wanted us to tell Cherri once we were done.
I wonder what triggered this quest to appear? We were all over the village already.
We went to the Chief and he made a grand introduction to this year's Nopon hero, Riki.
Riki dropped from above and landed right on Reyn's head! He bounced around between us like a volleyball. The other Nopon threw stuff at him, telling him to fight back. It was the first bit of comic relief this game had! It had music to match, with a cute tune accompanied by a bit of sweet guitar riffing.
Riki snapped out of it and asked us to collect some equipment that was made especially for him and then catch up to him.
Dear Readers,
On 7F of Nopon Village during the day, there was the story marker. We tried mingling as much as we could before going to it.
There was a part that led outside to the next story point and further upstairs was the Mysterious Sanctuary.
A Nopon said we were the first Homs in the village and suggested buying souvenirs. Some funny sounding ones he listed off.
Miko said she helped with prayers and she was the Village Auditor. The little hut here was pretty cute. This was where the village chief received prophecies and some Nopon didn't even know what to have for dinner until they got their prophecy. Wow...
There was another inaccessible Heart-to-heart point here.
There was another path that reached further beyond the hut and out to another balcony. Here there were two Nopon guarding the path to the lake in the sky. I was able to walk past, but I didn't bother for now.
Dear Readers,
Now to chat to the different Nopon that come out at night on 6F of their village.
One had a quest for us. He gets lonely at night so he asked us for 4 Ash Foxes to give to him as pets to take care of and cuddle. Aw... We accepted the quest of course.
This same Nopon was giving advice to another Nopon about hugging yourself. The other Nopon didn't like the advice and said a wifeypon or girlfriend should do that. His own advice was to hurry up and find a wifeypon to make you happy. Aw... He then added that the cuddliness the other Nopon was so proud of will fade away.
That's food for thought. You can cuddle at any age though. It sounds like maybe he was talking about youth?
A Nopon said one of their secrets was that they could talk to animals, or at least on an emotional level. Is it different to how humans or Homs can communicate with animals?
Some of the other chatty Nopons praised us for making it up this far, praised us for even making it to the village at all, and got us looking forward to reaching Eryth Sea way above in the sky. All in due course!
Dear Readers,
6F of Nopon Village was pretty big and it had the Chief's Residence. We mingled during the day.
A littlepon was scared of getting chomped by baddies and there was a Nopon trying to put their fear at ease.
Behind them was the Shiny Ball that another Nopon lost. That quest is done! Yay!
Lalapa came up as "Village chief's aide" and took pride in this place being a peaceful place on the Bionis.
Pepa loved flowers and came up as "Loves cute things". She chirped about loving to smile at flowers and have them smile back. She also loved hugging flowers but they didn't hug back... Wow... very poetic!
Hoko came up as "Enthusiastic Nopon chef" and wanted to open his own restaurant. However, he didn't have enough room in the village. Maybe he could go to Colony 6! He then admitted that the other Nopon didn't like his cooking. Aw...
Two balconies to access here, one of them leading to 5F and the other leading to an even higher level. Whew...
Dear Readers,
Now for chatting with the Nopon on 5f of their village at night.
Modamo was a "Village warrior trainer" and was full of alarm about dinobeasts possibly attacking the village. He wanted everyone to prepare to fight the mechon too.
No one out on the balcony here as they were stepping in from pterix pooing all over the place. They asked if Colony 9 got pooed on by the Bionis since it was so low down. Haha.
A Nopon had a quest for us. He lost his Deinos Hook while trying to catch Laeklit and asked us to find it for him in the village. We said we would.
Another Nopon had a quest. He asked us to bash the Lazy Bluco at Yellow Flower Grove in Makna Forest at night. We said we would.
Lupa was Satata's grandchild and gave her his house while he was away. She was in love with her own research. She was wondering about him since Colony 6 got attacked.
There were two Nopon nearby who were gazing at her. They called themselves the Lupa Fan Club.
There was also another Nopon on another platform I couldn't reach. I wonder if they have any written dialogue.
Dear Readers,
More mingling with the Nopon in their village, this time on 5F during the day.
Gowago was a "Top-class butler" and he worked for Miss Sweetness. He was on 4F but I somehow missed him last time.
We looked around 5F and found the Archaeology Level and Archaeology Centre.
A Nopon was out on the balcony doing breathing exercises but was interrupted by pterix droppings. Yuck!
Leku was "Protective big brotherpon" and he was always uneasy about dinobeasts.
An adult Nopon was planning a picnic at Sparkling Pool with excited littlepons and they were giddy about what to have, all ingredients found in this area.
Pachipa asked us if we knew her dadapon Gerugu as she was worried about him. She came up as "Head-strong boing-lover".
There was another Nopon that was on a platform out of reach. His house was there too. What a weird place to live. We couldn't reach out to talk to him.
Dear Readers,
Okay, I redid all the stuff I did today before the power failure happened and saved. Whew. Nopon Village 4F nighttime mingling!
Nopon at the mushroom looked in envy at Riki's house and wished his house was that big.
The Nopon on the wheel was still running on it, unless it was a different Nopon. They liked having strong legs but wished someone would take over now and again.
Rono came up as "Sweet treat maker" and was busy looking for pollen to make sweets with.
Another Nopon advised buying Arts manuas in shops. Maybe I should buy something in shops like this...
Dear Readers,
Nighttime mingling with the Nopon on 3F now.
Out on the balcony, only the boyfriend was here now. He said to look up and observe Eryth Sea. Lots of water, but it doesn't come flowing down at all for some reason. That's where we're going eventually.
One Nopon said this was his first time seeing Homs.
Another Nopon was refreshing the lamps and said this job made his legs strong.
Another Nopon told us to be careful around the mushroom as there was no guardrail. Will do.
Actually, we leaped off the platform for fun into the pool below. Good fun indeed!
I'm also looking forward to going really high into the sky at the end of this tree and check out the Eryth Sea more closely.
Dear Readers,
Level 3F of Nopon Village during daytime now. This was made up of two sides and a path leading outside. Time for more mingling.
This was the Middle Housing Level.
A Nopon was jumping on a mushroom clock here to break it so their mom could make them snacks. I don't know if that's such a good idea.
A littlepon and their mother were here. The little one didn't want to be a heropon like their friends and that made their mother angry and look like an Orluga. Must be like an unpaid internship or something.
One Nopon was supervising the orb lifts coming and going, busy at work.
We went out through the passage, which led to a balcony. A boyfriend and girlfriend were there. The boyfriend made a present for the girlfriend, but a Pterix ate it. It would've been pooped out by now so he asked us to find it for him. We agreed to find the Flower Bracelet he made. He's hoping it'll still smell of flowers. Wishful thinking...
We happened to have it, so we gave it to him. He was happy it only smelled a little bad. Hooray!
