Run to the minecart instead!

Thanks. I actually figured that out myself earlier, but then got buried in the game for a while and forgot about the post. Thanks anyway.

Gayo, I looked around earlier, but I couldn't find any other posts about this in particular. It was pretty frustrating, since I found about four FAQs that talk about the puzzles, then don't say anything else until after you leave the caves. Arg!

Really cruel of the writer to give an instadeath puzzle right after a 'boss' fight. Hadn't figured out what BOUND meant before then. Eww. No special moves at all, right when it'd be nice to be able to heal and do lots of damage. Plus if you use a special move and the char gets bound before they do it, they don't do anything at all!

The cave was really frustrating me, especially since I discovered that sometimes when you pick something up with full inventory, it crashes.

I'm finding my way through the sandstorm now, with the masks. Wraiths are nasty. I've only got one of the cures on me, I think, and two cursed members. Pretty stupid, really, wandering into that area without plenty. 20/20 hindsight, I suppose.

-FunnyMan

Well, I've had enough for tonight. I spent most of the time since the last post trying to level up my characters. Jea got Stone and the main char got a boring level. Stone's a nice spell... when it works. It worked flawlessly about three times, and hasn't worked well since, on the same enemies (~200 dmg vs ~6 dmg). :/

-FM

It's really getting to annoy me that the FAQ says 'And remember, running usually succeeds :).' when about 80% of the battles that I try to run from, I'll attempt 5-7 times before they kill me, with no luck. I've been killed by one of those SnagTrees because I couldn't run from it... I couldn't run from a TREE!

Stone annoys me too... When a spell costs 11 spirit, even if it fails to do leathal damage it should at least do a decent amount of damage.

Bah. Well, if you haven't guessed yet, I'm still stuck here. Jea and the archer gained boring levels. I went off and did the cave treasure quest, got the artifact on the main char now. I've got 5-6K, and nothing good to spend it on. 'It's too hard to get money!' HAH! That's the one thing I CAN get in large amounts. Now if I could just transmute money into experience, I'd give everyone a couple levels, and the desert path would be easier.

By the way, the mask lady also sells blankets. Are they useful?

-FM

Bah, discovered this just now, it's been sitting around for hours. Thought I sent it a long time ago.
-FM

Somehow, it seems a tad unfair to make it just about impossible to run from a group of five enemies when you won't NEED to run from smaller groups. I can face up to about a triple of any enemy without a problem, but four and five of wraiths, especially, knock me loopy.

I'm still stuck before the sandstorm. Yes, I am telling you that everyone in the party has the best I can buy for them, including Life charms (though I may swap Jea's out for one of the others, I think one boosts spirit...). I've looked. The trading outpost doesn't HAVE any better equipment than what they have on. It's possible that I've missed one or two items in the entire group, but I doubt it. I could swap out the main char's longsword for a mace, but that exchanges DEF for ATK, so there's not much (if any) real gain there. Want the savefile?

No, there are snagtrees inside the sandstorm, I've run into them. I'll keep an eye out for them now that I know to look at the map for them. I think I've seen the trees on the map before, now that I've thought about it.

Casino, huh? So that's what that is. Well, at least I can ditch the blanket that's taking up inventory space.

I don't seem to get stuck where anyone else does... The biggest problem I had with the sliding-block puzzle was figuring out the objective.

-FM

Arrrg! Nonononono! That wasn't it crashing, that was a BATTLE, and I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING! The screen flickers like it's changing resolution, then it just goes black and stays there! Arrgh! It's definitely a battle, if I go through the motions blind, it makes all the right noises. It even comes out at the end.

Waah! What's going wrong???

-FM

Well, after the first battle, the rest were all fine. I've come to the top of the red tower now, and I'm fighting the warlock-guy. Wow... What's with this set of enemies? First one that takes forever to kill but isn't a real threat, then one that takes less time but is immediately followed by a huge guy who can kill with a single blow, with no time to heal!

I came up here with three sun potions, and I've already gone through one battle where I used all of them before being wiped out. With the armor I have, nothing else has been able to HIT me lately, so what's with the uberboss blindsiding me out of nowhere? First the king just dies in a cutscene and now an impossible battle?

I'm really getting tired of games where there's a boss who can kill a party member in one stroke and also uses spells that hit EVERYONE for massive amounts of damage. At least it seems to do actual damage here instead of a freaky spell that just instantly reduces you to 1 health or kills you outright.

I have to assume that I can't use energy drain on this guy, since the description says that it drains weak enemies, and this guy definitely isn't weak. I did try to use it in the end that time, when it was getting desperate, but he decided to just kill her off before she could attack. Feh.

Why is it that a single sparrow arrow kills Kraken now, anyway? He took 2-3 of them in the cutscene and was only then in trouble. But now one hit and BAM, lying on the ground.

Okay, to be fair, the arrow won't take out Drek or Garret with one hit, but it works on anyone else!

And the health of this guy! Only Drek and Kraken deal any meaningful damage to him in a single blow, and it takes two turns of charging before Kraken can deliver his!

I keep wondering if I should back out of the tower and go visit the village from Act 1. The weapon seller did mention that he might 'forge new weapons' later, so maybe he's got some useful weapons for my companions. They certainly need them if he does.

*sigh*
-FM

heh heh it's funny how much some people level up to pass areas in the game. I think I beat the game with drek at level 5 or something. maybe 6 at most. But I guess knowing how everything works helps.

Either way, people level up the characters far past what I had intended. Maybe I shoulda stuck some bonus skills in there as a reward.

It must, gren, since I'm at 8/7/4/4/3 and just got my rear end beaten right off. I think I'll wander off and see if I can't find some good stuff elsewhere.

arias, Emil's really easy once you figure out to use Defend to charge up spirit for Bandage, then just attack the rest of the time. I still spend a really long time in some battles because I'll just Defend against the last enemy to build my spirit back. I have to agree with someone I read, either earlier here or in some other thread, who said that there should really be a 'Stand around and wait' command that builds up spirit on the map, cuz it's really wierd to fight because you want to heal. o_O

-FM

Haha. Gren DID fix that bug about restarting scene 4, but I guess the one uploaded here isn't the fix.