Update 20: Go Fetch Grandma’s Dildo from Item World
With all of the buildings we were able to construct, there’s only one we don’t have a person for, and that’s the higglery.
Evan immediately makes a suggestion that requires us to go back and visit that annoying goddamn old lady because of course he does.
Once we hit the road, you can see that the overworld model for Evermore has changed since the last time we were here. There’s one thing I didn’t explain in the last update, and that’s kingdom level.
Evermore has total of four kingdom levels, which cost a (usually huge) amount of kingsguilders and are only accessible once we recruit enough people. The game actually locks progress behind this - you cannot finish the game past a certain point without your kingdom being level 3. Right now, we’re at level 1.
I have a theory that at one point, the developers intended to implement microtransactions for kingdom management mode but backed down because of the outcry over EA and the way they handled Battlefront 2.
If you’ll remember from.. how long ago was that again? We grabbed one of our first trip doors right outside of Martha’s cottage, so we can just warp there.
This entire segment is an introduction to sidequests. Roughly half the sidequests in this game award us a recruit for Evermore, though many of those are part of a different mechanic we won’t see until much later. The rest award crafting materials, and are largely not worth doing apart from one.
: “We’ve.. um.. a favor to ask. We’ve started our new kingdom, you see, and we were wondering if you might like to come and live there. We need someone who knows about higgledies.”
By the way, all of the sidequests are blatant fetch quests, apart from a handful related to skirmish mode and a few that task you with killing superbosses.
Except… and there’s always an except..
We need to find the old lady’s magic dildo, because that is absolutely a name for a dildo.
EVAN! NO!
: “It’ll get even the filthiest pot sparkling clean with just a swish and a swash.” : “And my little higgledy-darlings outright refuse to be born into anything but the cleanest of cauldrons! So, you see, I can’t be doing without it!”
: “But who do you think could have stolen it, Auntie Martha?”
If I had to guess, I’d say dementia. I have fifty bucks that says the higgledies are like those things in My Neighbor Totoro where only the young (and impressionable) and old (and very senile) can see them. Roland has just been playing along this whole time while he finds a home to put her in.
: “Well then… we’ll get it back for you!”
Yep, nothing to see here but an old, racist, senile grandma.
Welcome to the sidequest screen. I won’t be showing this off much in the LP, but this is a screen you will be seeing a lot if you play this game yourself. The reward is.. actually kind of tempting for this point in the game. This sidequest is mandatory, but three-leafed soreaways are NNK2’s equivalent of a hi-potion, and are pretty much the best healing item you can get outside of kingdom management mode.
The Grotty Grotto is just a bit east of Auntie Martha’s house. There are a lot of caves in this game, but Grotty Grotto is actually special for one reason.
This quest is dead simple: the grotto is laid out such that it’s a straight shot to the only group of enemies in the entire area, who are carrying the dildo.
Even on Extreme mode, these guys are done within seconds.
Before we can leave, though..
We get introduced to a character who will become one of the final recruits for Evermore, much later in the game. I finished her sidequest shortly before I went after the final boss on my first run.
Her name is Mileniyah, and apart from being extremely annoying, she adds almost nothing in kingdom management mode if you ever bother recruiting her.
: “Um.. is there something we can help you with?”
: “But you said you had a special mission for-”
Mileniyah then gives us the Dreamer’s Key. There’s a whole conversation that explains what it is, but I’ll spare you and just tell you myself.
There are nine caves in the magical isekai kingdom that have a door, like this one. You could theoretically have run across this one before getting this quest, so the key is just to stop you going in before then.
Coming across it will remind you to save before going in. This is absolutely something you want to do, because the Dreamer’s Maze is essentially Item World from Disgaea, except without the ability to leave until it’s completed. Unlike Item World, there are a limited number of mazes (nine) and each one has a fixed number of levels and a fixed enemy level range.
Inside the maze, your goal is to find the door on each level that leads to the next level. The levels are procedurally generated as far as I know.
You’ll notice up in the top-right that there’s a “danger meter”. The dungeon starts at danger level 1, and the circular meter increases every couple of frames. Each danger level (there’s four, I think) increases the level of all enemies within the maze.
Just underneath that meter is our orb count. Enemies in the mazes drop orbs, as do random breakable objects. You can use kingdom management to increase the number of orbs you get, as well as lower the rate at which the danger level rises.. and eventually just make it so the game will point you to where the door is.
There’s not much of a difference as far as I know between danger level 1 and danger level max.
There are also blue chests we can waste orbs on, but orbs have a far more important use.
Each floor has an idol hidden in it that will take your orbs and allow you to reset the danger level to 1. This is important not so much for the sidequest mazes as for the big one at the end of the game, which is 100 floors long and requires you to clear all of the other mazes to enter.
The door leading to the final level of a maze will always give you this notification. Thankfully, the danger meter stops once we reach the final floor (and also pauses in menus), and there’s no difference between 1% and 99% on the bar, so long as the actual level doesn’t increase. Grotty Grotto is only three floors.
The final floor of each maze is a boss. Keep in mind that we’re still on Extreme at this point, so let’s just see..
NOPE!
Even on Normal, this thing is a damage sponge.
It took me.. I want to say around four minutes to kill this thing, which has significantly more HP than the one we fought in the forest.
This gets us one of the nine chaos emeralds, which we need to combine to access that final maze at the end of the game.. if we want to. It’s optional.
Next time, we’ll go back to Goldpaw and start grinding sidequests.