Figured I should upload at least the last playthrough I did. The party checks up on the Wind Drake and discovers it is sick. Lamenting the fact the Wind Drakes are going extinct, the party opts to travel to the treacherous Drakenvale, but on the way they'll stop off at the Werewolf village of Quelb to meet one of the other Dawn Warriors that Galuf knows. Upon leaving the castle, the party is attacked by an Abductor like the one on the island Bartz faced alone. This is a really easy fight with a whole party. The regular enemies on the world map are not much to write home about. If you plan on using Chemist a lot, the Cursed Beings have a rare drop of Hero's Cocktails which raises a character's level for the battle. The other noteworthy enemy is the Kornago Toad enemy. They are not terribly impressive for items, XP, or Gil, but you should catch one before reaching Quelb if you're a completionist. Though the toad won't make it easy because they flee when they are low health, so timing is everything. Once the party reaches Quelb, something feels amiss. No one is around. Galuf suggests they visit the main manor where his friend Kelger is said to live. When the party enters, they are surprised attack by Kelger and the rest of the village who mistake them for monsters disguised as humans. Though Galuf is able to calm them down, Kelger doesn't trust Bartz and the other and challenges him to a duel. Bartz uses a technique taught by his father to defeat and kind of badly injure poor Kelger. Galuf and Kelger recognize the technique and we discover Bartz's dad is from Galuf's world and was one of the Four Dawn Warriors. Galuf and Kelger reveal the truth about their battle with ExDeath in the past, and reveal why Dorgann stayed behind and raised a family in the world. With that out of the way, the party is given permission to leave the village to reach Drakenvale as well as use the shops in town. Most of the items in shops are the same as what was available in Bal Castle, but there are few noteworthy items like Elemental Ninja Scrolls, and a new katana. The two real treasures of this town are the Kornago Gourd and the Requiem Song. You can get the Kornago Gourd by trading a Kornago Toad and 10,000 Gil to an old man by the well. The Gourd is an accessory for the Beastmaster class that allows them to capture monsters at 50% less health instead of the normal 12.5%. This makes them significantly easier to use. The Requiem Song can be obtained by talking to the Dancing Werewolves near the gate. This song allows Bard's to inflict massive damage to undead and is easily their most useful song in terms of utility. One funny thing I like to point out is that their are three sheep in the village near the end. When you stay at the end, you can use their meal service to have your whole party restored, plus you get 8 potions for dessert and its all free. Course, if you step back outside you'll notice that a sheep is missing... So yeah, you can use this service only free times and witness the circle of life. I always thought it was a funny detail. Drakenvale is a mountain region where the Dragon Flower needed to heal the Wind Drake resides. It has a few neat things to look for as well as you explore. The main gimmick of the dungeon is that you'll occasionally encounter a Golem enemy who will run away from you. Once you reach the halfway point, you'll encounter it in a battle with two zombie enemies and if you can kill both of them before they slay the Golem, he will join you and give you one of the best defensive summons in the game. Golem will no-sell physical damage that is based on a formula that uses the casters Level. Pretty nifty. Other than that, you can obtain a Gale Bow from the Poison Eagles as a rare steal as well as poet Robe as a rare steal from the Drippy enemies. If you still haven;t acquired Magic Hammer, the Drippy enemy has it. The only other enemy to look for is the Dragon Zombie. If you plan on using a chemist, these enemies are gold mines for the two rarest components. You can steal Dark Matters off of them, though it's a rare steal, but they will always drop Dragon Fang's with a 100% drop rate. If you plan on using the class extensively, then I would suggest sticking around and farming them for awhile.This dungeon also has some interesting loot. The Hypno Crown gives anyone with the Control command a higher success rate. The Wind Slash is a katana that is weaker than the Koutetsu you purchased in Querlb, but if has the ability to randomely cast Wind Slash when used, making it a great group hitting option for Samurai no wanting to part with their hard earned Gil. Finally we have our first piece of Cursed gear in the form of the Bone Mail. This armor sports the highest defense in the game, but wearing it gives the user the properties of a zombie, so healing magic hurts them and they will gain a weakness for fire and holy attacks. Oddly enough the armor does sport some other advantages. It makes the user immune to instant death, old, poison, darkness, confusion, and berserk. It also makes the user take halkf damage from Ice elemental attacks and they will absorb poison elements abilites. So there is some utility here if you're willing to work around it. It should also be noted that Optimize Equipment is now your enemy, as it will always default to this armor since it has the highest defense stat in the game.
Finally we reach the Dragon Flower and discover the reason why no one comes back from Drakenvale whether you're human or a dragon. The damn thing is a flesh eating monster. On paper, the Dragon Pod and it's six Dragon Flowers sound like a nightmare. The main boss will summon the flowers and each of them has a physical attack that has a high chance of inflicting some awful status effects like Old, Confused, Paralyze, Poison and good ole Darkness. That sounds pretty annoying but this boss has so many weaknesses... All of the flowers do physiocal attacks that inflict the status magic, so using your recently acquired Golem summon will largely negate this whole issue. The Flowers also have low HP so a groups spell or summon can usually take them all down in one go. Finally the Pod itself lacks the Heavy status meaning it is susceptible to Insta-Death abilities like Death Sickle, Death Claw, the Death Spell or the Samurai's Ianuki skill if you were crazy enough to master the class before reaching this point. Suffice to say this is an easy battle. Next, we'll be returning to Bal Castle in our next installment and using our newly healed Wind Drake to properly explore Galuf's world. What classes should I use this time?