FILE 003 - MEET, GREET, AND BEAT
Alright, time to leave Floatia and get our first taste of the outside world…
…after I do a little training. Terra and Zugbug get a little more stamina and some extra health.
Now, let’s head to the Nigh Plains.
[NEW MUSIC] Blue Sky, Big Step
Outside of the city, Digimon aren’t so friendly. Most of them will try to pummel us on sight, and if our Digimon don’t look particularly tough, they’ll try and chase us down if we wander too close.
If a Digimon doesn’t seem to react to us, or they have an “!” hanging on them, then we can usually talk to them. The “!” means they’re related to some kind of quest, and the quest will usually end with a Digimon returning to Floatia, or giving us some items, or trading us something for something else.
That said, we’re immediately presented with a not-so-evil-looking Digimon. Hey, Patamon!
Patamon doesn’t seem to react to our presence, and he has a… we’ll just call them “quest markers.” Let’s talk to him and see what happens.
“Ho, questgiver! How many bear asses must I collect for your reward?”
“What are you talking about? And uh,”
The way Patamon undulates as he talks is kind of mesmerizing.
“?!”
“Are you one of those humans?! Oh, I see! You were controlling Machinedramon!”
That’s QUITE a leap there, pal. Rather than explain herself, DigiDana continues to spew out a bunch of punctuation marks.
“How dare you mess with Floatia! I’ll take you down!”
[VIDEO] Vs. Patamon
[NEW MUSIC] Rebuffing Fight (Ne0 Version)
(If you’ve never played the original, it’s worth mentioning that tracks with “Ne0 Version” in their name are remixes of songs from DW1, this theme being among them)
Welp, looks like we have to turn Patamon into paste to proceed. Patamon isn’t threatening at all, even for tutorial purposes.
Case in point: Patamon just bodychecked Terra for like, 2% of their health.
He’ll normally go down with one good hit, the problem here is, well… both of our Digimon only have a single short-range attack.
Zugbug what are you even doing Patamon’s that way. In addition to having no range, the moves we have also come with a big wind-up.
Terra delivers a glancing blow with his rancid breath. Seems Patamon was able to guard against it.
Zugbug proceeds to spit in Patamon’s eyes, instantly destroying the rest of his health bar.
We gain some stats, some EXP, some BIT, and if the Digimon we fought knows a Skill we don’t, we can sometimes learn that as well.
“I attacked you with bubbles, of course it doesn’t hurt.”
“Anyway, Jijimon’s waiting for you back in town.”
“…You know Jijimon? Don’t tell me…you’re not a bad guy?!”
DigiDana waves her hand, finally telling Patamon that she is, in fact, not evil.
“Is that right? My bad… I got a bit ahead of myself.”
“I’ve never seen a human before, y’see…”
“Right, then. I’m going back to Floatia. Gimme a holler if you see me out there!”
Patamon returns to Floatia. We’ll check in on him in a bit. We also get some new DigiMail.
Before Patamon sucked us into a fight, I noticed something under that tree.
It says it’s a “Quick Fruit,” but it’s one of the items that actually falls under the “Nut” category.
Rule of thumb: Fruits are based on actual fruits, like apples and bananas. Nuts are geometric shapes with a pattern on them.
Heading up the path on the right leads us to a fellow who almost immediately notices us.
He’s not friendly.
“CRIPES that was close!”
Something to note about hostile Digimon: most of them actually do move a bit faster than us, so we need to be careful if we need to get around one without fighting them. I goofed and ran into a wall, so Fugamon got dangerously close. If he bumped into us, we would’ve been returning to Floatia carrying two cans of green paste.
Let’s take the left path instead. Going down the left path prompts the game to tell us about gathering.
Throughout our adventure, we’ll be gathering two things pretty much constantly:
Ingredients are items that we can feed to our Digimon, and we’ll regularly get Mushrooms, Fruits and Nuts this way. Some of them will also get us some decent money at the item shop. (when we get one)
Materials are found in these glowing halos on the ground, and the color of the halo tells us what type of material we’ll get. In this case, yellow = metal. It’s not super-important yet, since we don’t have a Builder, but we’ll be needing this stuff later in the game. May as well grab 'em when we can.
Materials are stored in a separate inventory, and the maximum amount we can hold is determined by our Digimon’s Stamina stats, up to a maximum of 200. We drop our materials into a stockpile whenever we return to Floatia.
The game also takes a moment to tell us that there are 8 regions in the Digital World, and the further out from Floatia we go, the stronger our enemies will be.
And finally, it’s going to make us beat up a Goblimon, but not before telling us how the Tactics and Item Box menus work. I don’t think I need to go into much detail about the former; we press Square to open it, and we can select targets, tell our partners to pull their punches or go all out with their MP-spending attacks, and flee from battle.
We can also press Triangle to open the Item Box. The main thing to keep in mind is that we have the option to use two of an item at once, one for each Digimon, so we need to be cautious in cases where we only want to heal one of them, lest we waste some perfectly good healing items.
Time also stops while either menu is open, which is nice.
[NEW MUSIC] Chance Meetings, Dancing Lariats
"Zugbug please."
"Zugbug thank you."
We take FakeTerra’s lunch money, and we learn the secret art of “punch things.” The Goblimon gets up and immediately bolts from the scene.
Look at all those Skills we can steallearn from digital ruffians. The squares that are lit up are moves that the current Digimon is capable of using. Rookies are usually stuck with 6 or 7 moves in the upper half of the chart. The closer to the bottom we get, the more powerful the move. Usually.
I consider Mach Jab, but decide to stick with the chance of Poisoning dudes.
As we travel, our partners will often react to their surroundings. Both are getting excited because they’re detecting a nearby digistalk.
Up the hill, we also find a salty fruit, and our partners also lead us to some water. Liquid materials are marked by blue halos.
Then they’re hungry again. At least we’re finding food now.
Also, since we’re no longer being railroaded by tutorials, the fights can last more than 10 seconds.
[VIDEO] Our first non-tutorial battle
Ah, here’s something to note: Timing Support with your attacks only works with attacks your Digimon do on their own. If you spend OP to command them, timing Support well won’t give you a bonus.
Zugbug also manages to Slow the enemy Goblimon. Slow causes a Digimon’s movement speed to tank, making it very difficult for them to move out of the way of incoming attacks.
Goblimon down, 
obtained.
The tree nearby has a treat for us. That little smiley peeking out is a cheerful apple! Probably the most common fruit by virtue of being found right outside of town.
Oh, we also began unlocking Digivolution requirements for Champion Digimon. Beyond Rookie, we have to “learn” what can shape our Digimon in the future. Every time we praise or scold them, we’ll randomly learn 1-3 things about their potential forms. It wouldn’t be a Digimon game if there wasn’t at least one dumb aspect to a mechanic. There’s an alternative later that effectively lets us learn these for BIT.
On the plus side, these stay unlocked forever, so if we unlock half of Ogremon’s info with Goblimon, and get another Digimon who can become Ogremon, his sheet will be halfway filled. Honestly though, nobody will blame you for using a guide instead.
After some more wandering, we encounter another Digimon. Tentomon!
“Boy howdy! It must’ve been fate that brought us together! I’ve got something to tell you, in fact…”
“So whaddaya think? Have I piqued your interest? Or you want I should pick your nose instead?”
I think the answer here is obvious.
“One boogerectomy coming right up! …Okay, that wasn’t as funny as I thought it’d be.”
There’s something delightfully “Digimon” about some of these pointless choices. I don’t remember if it ever gets to “world-ending being laments getting the pizza crust” levels, but I digress…
“You’ve piqued my interest!”
“Allll riiight, I could tell you were a sharp one! Now then, check out this bad boy.”
Tentomon whips out a disc.
“Ta-daaah! A Recovery Disc! Just what every Tamer needs!”
“I can let it go now for a paltry sum of 100 BIT!”
“So whaddaya think?”
We’re given the option to haggle with Tentomon. Recovery Discs normally cost 100 BIT at the item shop. Let’s stare at him…
“Alright, buddy, you drive a hard bargain… Fine! Have it your way!”
“How much would you pay for this bad boy?”
“Make it 30 BIT!”
DigiDana, no! Prices like that’ll run him outta business!
“Don’t ask the impossible! Prices like that’ll run me outta business!”
See?
“Right, how about this? Let’s call it… 70 BIT! That’s my best offer!”
“How about 60 BIT?”
“Man, what a skinflint! Nnngh, all right, all right, sold for 60 BIT!”
“I can see I’ve got a lot to learn… You win this round!”
“Ah well, come on back and see me sometime!”
You can do this as much as you want to stock up on cheap Recovery Discs, but it doesn’t complete Tentomon’s quest. In order to get him to Floatia, well, he needs to make some profit.
“I’ll buy it for 100 BIT!”
“Really? No foolin’?! Well then, pleasure doing business with you, pardner!”
“Thanks to you, I can finally open my item shop!”
“I’ll have more deals down the line, so gimme a holler in town!”
“Peace out, hombre!”
Tentomon sheds his cowpoke accent and moves to the not-quite-big city.
Zugbug picks up on something near the center of the zone, these red ones get us Stone materials.
Whoops. We dug up so much DigiStone and DigiSand that we run out of space for them. We can only carry about 30 materials currently, which really doesn’t last that long.
DigiCopper is apparently similar to brass, which makes me wonder why they didn’t just name it DigiBrass.
We set out to find more Digimon when dusk falls on the Digital World. The time of day does play a role into which Digimon you’ll encounter, though they don’t switch over until you leave and re-enter the map, but enough about that, we find a new thing!
That little weed is scratchy grass. It’s… well, it’s a handful of grass that Digimon don’t particularly like, but it counts as a mushroom. Sounds like eating it isn’t very pleasant.
A short distance from the grass, we find another Digimon-of-Interest! It’s a Palmon, so I’ve got a good feeling about this one.
“I’m looking for fertilizer to help me make some tasty meat, but I’m having a little trouble.”
“That’s where you come in.”
“More meat? I’m already like 300% into this.”
“Awesome, thanks! You’re the best.”
“Bring me a cheerful apple, a digistalk, and a salty fruit when you find them!”
“Got it?”
“I already have all of those things, but you bet!”
“Oh sweet! You brought all three of 'em!”
“Thanks a bunch! Just what I needed for my fertilizer. Alright, time to make a delicious fruit!”
“I thought you were growing fresh meat.”
“Oho, no. I said fruit treats!”
I suppose it’s just an oddity with the translation. The game has quite a few of them. Anyhow, Palmon heads to Floatia.
With Palmon recruited, there’s just one quest marker left in the zone, and it’s on top of the central hill. Let’s take a look.
We find Biyomon and a Rolly Fruit.
“I want to fly all through the sky! The thing is, though, I’m not very good at it…”
“Won’t someone teach me how to fly?”
“Keep trying, you’ll get it!”
“I will, thanks! If you meet any Digimon that could give some pointers, please let me know!”
Unfortunately, this is all we can do with Biyomon for a while, and this more-or-less wraps up the current zone.
I actually really like this, because the Digimon we encounter introduce us to the most common methods we’ll be using to recruit Digimon:
- Like Patamon, some of them require us to fight them.
- Like Tentomon, some of them need us to speak to them in a certain way.
- Like Palmon, some of them want us to bring them something, or do something in the world first.
- Like Biyomon, some of them are waiting for something or someone to be in Floatia.
There are other recruitment methods we’ll run into throughout the game, but most of them will involve doing one or more of those four methods.
We find an Unlucky Shroom. I have a tendency of never using things with names that sound bad, so I’ve never actually fed this to a Digimon. Maybe it actually gives them superpowers.
Terra has to go, so we beeline across the zone to the toilet. The bridge in this zone is optional, and we can walk through the shallow water. We make it to the restroom without issue.
There are a handful of these dotted across the world. Reaching one in time normally isn’t too hard, but when we’re a few zones away and there are a bunch of Digimon in the way, it’s usually better (and quicker, remember that time spent is life spent) to use a portable toilet.
Toilets also have vending machines nearby. Their prices are far from reasonable. Besides the drinks, which are only available from vending machines, these are mainly here if you need emergency supplies.
We head towards a slightly-wooded area and get in another fight.
The most notable thing that happens is that our partners pull off a combo. If both Digimon land attacks on the same enemy in quick succession, then the enemy will take some extra damage.
Combos are good, once you recognize the timing of various attacks, you can set them up relatively easily by issuing commands.
The Goblimon drops a Bandage for us. How nice!
Nighttime rolls around, and as is Digimon World’s tradition, night replaces most music with ambience. Zugbug points out our final type of material: Wood, highlighted by green halos. We can also see the entrance to another zone in the back.
We can also find Liquid materials on land. Generally, these points will give us things like DigiRubber, DigiLatex, and DigiTreeSap.
I figure now is a good time to head back to Floatia, here’s a video if you want to check out the ambience I mentioned. I actually really like that the game does this.
Whenever we return after recruiting a Digimon, we get a scene like this where Jijimon tells us about them.
“You’re back, DigiDana! I have good news!”
“Patamon has come back to Floatia! He has opened a warehouse!”
“Tentomon has come back to Floatia! He’s opening an item shop!”
“Palmon has come back to Floatia! He’ll improve your fields!”
“The city’s Prosperity is now 3. There’s still a long way to go…”
We also hit up Koromon for our daily items and we get an Auto-Pilot! They’re very handy, we’re teleported to Floatia when we use them.
[NEW MUSIC] Starry Sky’s Goodnight (Ne0 Version)
Patamon has already set up his corner, but the others won’t show up until morning.
The Warehouse is very useful for storing items we won’t be using for a while, especially considering how small our inventory is to start with.
We’re nearly done with DigiDana and the bulk of the tutorials, you guys. I just have one last thing to do.
You see, everything we’ve done today has earned us Tamer EXP, and by everything, I mean everything. Feeding, training, using the bathroom, fighting, all of it gets us some EXP, and we’ve gotten dangerously close to our first level.
This includes moving. We’re going to take a quick stroll in the field to get that 56 EXP.
After a walk and a quick poop, we triumphantly return to Floatia, one last time.
That wasn’t necessarily good timing on my part, Tamer EXP is collected as we play, but we only level up when we return to Floatia.
With every level we gain, we’ll get some TP, and TP is used to get Tamer Skills. There’s a wide variety to choose from, ranging from things like “enemies are more likely to drop an item” to “your Digimon are reborn with higher stats” to “you can now cook and combine food for stronger effects.”
In a lot of cases, it’s hard to prioritize upgrades because a lot of them are really useful! We’ll eventually have a method of respeccing our TP, so we don’t need to worry too much about whether something is best saved for the end-game or whatever.
The maximum Tamer Level we can get is 50, and at 50 we’ll have enough TP to get every Tamer Skill.
That being said, it’s time we let Terra and Zugbug sleep. Their job is done now, but we might hear from them again in the future.
We’re done. The bulk of the tutorials are out of the way, I’ve talked about most of the mechanics we’ll be dealing with, and we’re free to explore the world at our leisure. At least, until we hit a wall that needs story progress to pass.
Next time, we’ll get our protagonist for the rest of the game, and we’ll start our adventure proper.