Update Time!

Finished the Water Gear scenario with Armic. It only seems fitting these story quests would be bookend with the nastiest of the bunch. Armic's quest is a bit weird. You're given an orb that changes color based on the temperature. It begins green which is neutral, will turn blue if you dip it in a cold spring, and will turn red if you hold it for too long or find a hot spring to dip it in. When it's red, it starts emitting an annoying noise that attracts monsters to you, and the cave has certain enemies just standing around that you have the option of avoiding by staying hidden and letting them leave on their own,. but of course the orbs makes that hard. You have to find three statues to place the orbs in and they all require it to be one of the colors. The rob will making a ding noise if you're close to one of the statues and the correct color, so the game does at least try to help you out. There are also some fake statues that placing the orb in will summons a boss like anemone type monster that gets a ridiculous amount of turns, hits hard, and is ranked too low to spark anything useful. With the exception of him, the mission doesn't actually have a real boss which is nice. What made this mission tough was that the place was crawling with the whale shark enemies I faced off with in an earlier mission. I've been a bit too battle happy so my Monster Lv. is pretty high and nastier boss like enemies are more common. These guys are just a pain because their Big Bite attack has a high chance to do multiple LP damage to a character and when they get multiple turns, well even poor Anzan will bleed through his hefty LP rather quickly. I did find a Dragonscale Dagger which has stats comparable to Damascus, which was really nice.

From here, the party realizes they need to go after the Metal Gear held by the big bad, but in a rare moment of foresight, Henri doesn't want to bring the gears and the blade with them to do it, cause that is just silly to take the very thing the bad guys want to their home base. Unfortunately, Francis convinces Henri to take them to his master for safe keeping and Laura and I both don't trust this guy. I mean he seems to be the only retainer of the Escata royal line that is still around, just seems fishy to me. So I'm suppose to head to his castle to drop of all this loot I've been gathering, but instead I'm using this time to actually do all of the side missions to build up my team while scouring all of the shops between missions for rare items for crafting. I'm still on the lookout for Demonite because I really don;t want prioritizing all these Forbidden spells to be for nothing. The first mission I completed was a silly one where I collected herbs for the Chapa tribe. Pretty easy quest overall. The second quest had me protecting the fields from an invasive monster, and even though I finished it, I got such a lackluster panel selection for my team I decided to reset and do it over again.

Francis and Michelle have both been added back into the playable roster, and I'm dropping plant girl and dog boy for the moment because they are in pretty decent shape with a few Lv. 4 panels under their wings. Dog boy is starting to work on melee skills, and plant girl is finishing up catching up to Laura and Henri with sword and spear weapons. Francis is goign to be working on raising his axe skills and getting Reverse Delta, while I am happy I was able to outfit Michelle with a dagger for parry skills whi;e still maintaing her light weight status for the martial arts boost.

Laura - Hit the jackpot during the herb quest, and managed to spark Reverse Delta, one of the strongest skills in the game. I also got her a Fire Familiar to utilize her Fire magic for the moment. As usual, I'm really just trying to get her panel setup where I want it.

Henri - Has honestly not being much action unless I wish to give Anzan a break. He needs to start sparking higher tier arts for her dagger and spears, but he's always had trouble sparking moves it seems. He is fortunately not far from the ideal panel set-up I want for him, and I gave him Fortuneteller since Judy refuses to get it.

Judy - Finally mastered her Lv. 2 Forbidden Magic tablet, I now have her working on a Lv. 4 one that may be associated with one of her relatives since it was named after a person. The real boon for me it that it appears to be a water themed tablet so I may finally get Purify and Ice Needles. Familiars are nice, but I really need to get her panel setup a little better and start weaning her off of using them since they won;t be able to access all the spells available.

Anzan - Has been doing what I need. I got him a super useful panel that allows him to take less damage in battle which improves his tanking even more. He's sparked a few moves but sadly he's just not built for melee combat, instead I've turned him into a tank mage using his Earth spells and Metal spell Familiar to deal with the various mobs of the game by either debuffing them or buffing the team. I really wish I could get him access to the Weapon/Armor buff spells from the Metal class. Giving him guns didn't work out as well as I had hoped because much like Shields, guns are a weapon that is only useful if you have a gun proficiency panel and a high level one at that. That's what actually determines what appear son the slots for it. So unless I manage to draw one during his level up period, that idea is on the back burner.

Armic is the new kid on the block and sadly he doesn't start with a whole lot. He uses bows and swords for combat and has a surprisingly high LP for a character about the same build as Judy the mage at 14 LP. I imagine he's light enough to use Light Martial Arts but for now I'm building him into an archer since Judy became a full-time mage. Most of his other skills are ones for getign around a map like obstacle climbing and swimming, so I may have to drop them. I'll likely drop his sword for a dagger instead since both the dagger and bow are skilled based weapons, he looks like someone I'm going to have to specialize in a specific field to make him useful. Right now his big issue is playing catch up with the rest of the team due to having only starting lv. panels and ridiculously low HP. So he may be staying on the roster for a bit.

For now, I'll be focusing on side missions of which there is a healthy chunk of them. I hope to start seeing Lv. 5 panels for people soon, and I hve my fingers crossed that Magic Blender may pop up eventually, preferably for Judy. Also, just for fun, I started a new game of Final Fantasy Legend 1, using the same team build (2 humans, 1 espers, and 1 monster) but this game will likely be me screwing around a bit. I've already leveled my monster to a tier 13 beast, and I'm using the King's gear to amass money for stat potions. My Esper is ding the same nonsense as last time, even has the same spell list, but I may ignore their abilities and just see where it goes from there.