Update 7: Cloudcoil Canyon
Welcome to Cloudcoil Canyon - a sort of halfway point between an actual story dungeon with a boss and one of the sidequest dungeons that we’ll get to later. I should mention that in between the last update and this one, I built an entirely new PC with much better specs that allowed me to crank everything to Ultra.
: “Yes, and that’s not the only challenge we’ll face. The King’s Cradle is at the other end of Cloudcoil Canyon, on an island near the Heartlands.”
: “… I’m afraid so. But we must worry about that later. First, we need to make it through the valley.”
So Roland, who is supposed to be the sensible person in all of this, just follows along because clearly everything Evan has ever read in a book is true.
Right away, there’s a warp point just beyond the save point that’s visible in the cutscene. The developers of Ni no Kuni 2 were really nice in that most large areas have multiple warp points. This is especially true of Cloudcoil Canyon, for reasons we’ll see in just a bit.
Behind the warp point is this guy, who is this area’s merchant.
: “What’s a merchant doing all the way out here?”
: “Well, it’s quite a story actually. You see, I was based in Ding Dong Dell, but there was a little.. political trouble out that way, and now the mice are in control.”
: “I didn’t much like the way things were going, so I made good my escape while I still could.”
: “You’re… you’re from Ding Dong Dell, you say..?”
: “Everybody on Leafbook was saying you’d been killed, so I just assumed the rumors must be true!”
: “Oh, well.. umm.. not actually. I survived - just.”
: “I’m afraid I haven’t the foggiest idea..”
Yes, Ni no Kuni 2 apparently takes place in a world where modern-day Earth never invents social media, but the magical isekai kingdom does. You know, I think that explains where Mark Zuckerburg came from.
So again, I’d like to point out that a mere six updates ago, Roland pulled out a modern cellphone and attempted to use it. I like to think that the reason Roland got nuked is because he outlawed everything on a cellphone except for making and receiving calls.
Even weirder, this random jerk has a bunch of these magic cellphone things. As we’ll find out shortly, so does pretty much everyone in the magical isekai realm except for Evan.
This is what Leafbook looks like - there’s a dedicated button for it and everything. Strangely, there’s no old people posting about how they think Congress has been taken over by aliens or making arts and crafts with firearms. I’m not going to show this off at all after this point, mostly because it contains spoilers for areas we haven’t been to yet. In fact, one of the pictures on this screen is of an area that we won’t visit until maybe two hours from the end of the game (assuming no sidequests in between).
You can also “like” posts, which I don’t think does anything. This isn’t, say, the email mechanic in Xenosaga where if you failed to answer the first email you recieve (which that game at no point explains how to do) you miss out on the best weapon in the game.
Moving on, we encounter two new enemy types.
The first one is Dynagoo, which is the first elemental upgrade to the basic Goo enemy we fought in the sewers. These guys tend to run away and attack from range, and if left alone for a short period of time will turn silver.
This makes them one of the most annoying enemies in the game, simply because you need magic (not just elemental attacks) to break them out of this state and make them vulnerable to physical attacks again. Evan’s fireball or water ball spells will both do the trick, but Roland doesn’t have any spells yet, and won’t for a while.
The other enemy type is the Sylph, which later gains colored re-skins. Sylves are also ranged attackers, though instead of spamming weaker attacks, they charge up and release a homing bolt that hits for around 75 damage at this level. It’s honestly kind of hard to get a screenshot of the actual projectile, mostly because the sylph will usually die before it ever gets a chance to use it.
Behind a couple of Dynagoo/Sylph encounters, Evan spots.. a plant.
You can tell that Roland is getting ready to outlaw these the same way he outlawed social media.
: “This is hardly the time for a botany lesson.”: “But.. I’ve only ever seen them in books before! I.. sorry, of course, we should get moving.”
You would think that the cutscene would be there so we’d remember where that clover is… and as you’ll see in just a minute, you’d be completely and utterly wrong. In the meantime, we have another two new enemy types: Porcs and birds.
Porcs are among the tankiest non-miniboss enemies in the game. This one has pretty much the same amount of HP that the wyvern did in the last update.
Really, they’re more of an annoyance than anything - they can block attacks from the front and mostly attack by charging in a straight line, which is really easy to dodge and also offers ample opportunity to hit them with charged special attacks.
They can also charge up and release an AOE explosion. While they’re totally vulnerable to being hit during the charge, they can’t be knocked down.
Birds, on the other hand, are basically flying sylphs. One or two light attacks in air will knock them down, and a few more will kill them off.
Once we get to the end of the area with the first Porc encounter, we run into a bit of a problem.
One short walk down a side path later..
The higgledies start doing something strange, and out comes..
Our first wind-element higgledie! These are pretty much the only useful higgledies, short of a handful of end-game ones, because their activation ability provides an AOE heal over time.
They also give Evan an old twig, which is pretty much what he deserves…
We’ve now learned this area’s out of battle spell. Each of the game’s major areas has one.
Wind Whipper allows Evan to turn the prop clovers into bounce pads that open up new areas.
Now, you might be asking yourself, what was beyond that first clover? Well, let’s find out.
The answer is a bunch of level 20 enemies that can and will destroy Roland in one hit at this point in the game. You might think the developers had that cutscene earlier so we’d remember to come back here later, only when we DO need to come back here, there’s a map marker for it.
The intended route is just to the left of the bridge, which bounces us up to the top of the cliff.
Right at the top is another battle, and the final new enemy type we’ll be seeing for a while.
These are “incarnates”, which are really just elementals. Unlike most enemies, they don’t show up on the map until battle starts, and spend most of their time running away frorm you. They don’t attack, but are impervious to pretty much anything but elemental attacks. Thankfully, Roland has the fire broadsword, which killed this one quickly.
Roland also levelled up to 8 in that battle, which earned him a new technique whose name escapes me at the moment - it’s either Circle Cut or Circle Slice and I forget which. Like its name implies, Circle Cut is a circular AOE attack that hits anything within range two or three times. It can be charged by wind elemental higgledies into what you see here.
One short jump over a gap later, and we’re mere inches from a cutscene trigger.. and the end of this update. Next time, we’ll meet the sky pirates of Cloudcoil Canyon.