FILE 004 - BUGS N' SLUGS
Let’s get back to it.
Our latest hero is DigiDesmond, and he’s here for the long haul. We select the red and green eggs and begin our journey (fast forwarding through most of the stuff we already saw with DigiDana, of course)…
…and I immediately jump the gun.
Bruce is going to become a flower child, which is reasonable enough. I just have to avoid raising their strength too high, otherwise we’ll get another Goblimon.
I was going to turn Ryuki into a Guilmon, but I forgot to check the requirements. Turns out Guilmon is completely unreasonable to get at the start. Whoops! Oh well, we’ll have a Ryuki Jr at some point.
I decide to go for Solarmon instead.
So of course he qualifies for 2, and opts to become a Goblimon instead. I guess I’m just gonna let Ryuki do what he wants. 
These were their stats before Digivolving, by the way. In case you wanted to compare them to Guilmon’s requirements.
Bruce follows the plan. I have no concrete direction for Bruce, I’m just going for Digimon that are green, which means they’ll probably turn into something blue or purple or whatever.
In retrospect, trying to act on thread suggestions was a little pointless, and will be for the first 2 or 3 generations.
It’s very unlikely that our Digimon will get strong enough to Digivolve to Mega, and on top of that it’s usually really easy to qualify for 2+ Digimon unless you neglect an important stat for several days, and we don’t have full control over what our partners can become yet.
Still, we can take solace in the fact that Ryuki and Bruce will be building the foundation which we’ll eventually use to sculpt our partners into digital gods.
We continue to train until it’s time to sleep. I’m going to have to train them a little more in the morning, because Bruce is going to disintegrate the moment something looks at them.
We don’t get out of town until the evening, which means the field is populated with Numemon. It’s typically more dangerous to explore after night, because most Digimon get replaced with more powerful Digimon.
[VIDEO] Trying to remember the controls while defeating a poopslug
We go ahead and fight a few, and Bruce’s lack of Stamina really shows. Yeesh.
Now, here’s a neat thing that’ll almost never happen when you need it to. Bruce needs healing, so I get ready to chuck a single Recovery Disc.
You see that ring? Items actually have a small “Area of Effect.” If both Digimon are next to eachother, like they currently are…
…they’ll both get healed with a single item. There are healing items with a much larger AoE ring, but it’s nice that even the basic items let you do it. (though it’ll usually be accidental, because AI is AI)
Bruce also manages to finish the fight with a special attack.
Completely humbled by our display, the Numemon tells us how to…fart at things. Good deal, though neither of our partners can use it.
We return to Floatia and turn in for the night. Now we’ve caught up to where we were before!
The next day, we set out and immediately find corna Duty Fruit.
Much of the afternoon is spent gathering materials and foraging for food.
Our partners are also strong enough to make the local Goblimon wary. They’ll no longer chase us on-sight, and they’ll even back away if we get closer, most of the time.
Whoops. I spent so long collecting things and re-orienting myself to the layout of the first region that dusk rolled around. Time really does fly in this game, if you have something you want to do, try not to get distracted or you might find yourself in a dangerous place at night time. Or you could just make sure you have an auto-pilot handy.
Nonetheless, we can still take a peek at the rest of our surroundings.
The Power Plant (apparently the second one) is a small area. It features a small patch of dirt that holds no significance.
The gathering spot behind it also has a chance to give us DigiQuartz, our first rare material.
Thanks to the time, the central field is full of Numemon who are a bit above level 2. I might be able to take one down, but they’re close enough that one or two of their friends are liable to join the fight.
If you squint at the shadows in the back, you also might notice that there’s something there. We’ll get to it later.
We leave Power Plant #2 and head to another area, the Old Cableway. You might notice another Digimon loitering in the back. Soon…
There are also some murderous BlackGabumon tooling around.
Returning to the Vast Plateau, we find more new food: a Baby Strawberry.
We also narrowly avoid getting ambushed by two Numemon.
As night falls, we reach the exit near the restroom and move to the Forest Path. I decide I may as well beat something up tonight.
[VIDEO] Slightly stronger Goblimon
Oh beans, he has a new attack. Ryuki actually takes 580 damage from this. If you haven’t watched any of the fight videos, the damage done/taken ticks up from 0. I can’t really get the full amount and the effect of an attack into the same screenshot because of this.
Oof. Looks like both of them could use some Stamina training.
Bruce pulls off their special, and we finally land a good hit.
The pair immediately rush Goblimon and finish him before he has a chance to stand up.
We get a green digistalk for our trouble, and the Goblimon’s spin kick eludes our discovery. Oh well, all things come with time.
Green digistalks aren’t particularly rare. In fact, Forest Path is littered with them. It’s a decent place to stockpile some food during the day.
With that encounter, we return to Floatia for the night, and DigiDesmond gains his first Tamer Level.
There are a lot of skills to get in this game, and most of them are very useful. I’ll be going over them as we get them, but you might be able to glean what a few of them do just from looking at their icons.
That said, some of them are critical for the early-game. I go with Health Runner first, which lets our partners regenerate health as we run around the world. It’s not massive, but it’ll help us save a few Recovery Discs for battle use.
The original Digimon World had a similar feature, Health Shoes, but they only healed one HP per step you took, and they only functioned while you were walking. It also took up an inventory space. Regeneration in this game seems to be calculated using a percentage of our partner’s maximum HP, so the higher their health pool is, the more health they’ll regenerate with each tick, and it works while running! Infinitely better, I’d say.
Ryuki and Bruce train until they’re tuckered out, then we call it a day.
Oh, and while we’re back in Floatia, we may as well check in with our new friends.
“Eh heh heh, well look what the cat dragged in. Leave all the fieldwork to me!”
“This field is a bit small, so it’ll be hard to do any major improvements…”
“Still, for now let’s work on upping the crop yield! Here we go!”
Sounds like Palmon is trying to tell us something…
“A bigger field would be reaaal nice right about now…”
Hmm. Anyway, we’ll get 8 meat every day with Palmon in town, much better than 5-a-day, that’s for sure.
On the other side of Floatia, we find that Tentomon has set up shop next to Patamon.
“What is it, DigiDesmond? Thanks for coming on over!”
“C’mon, don’t front on me! You know why you’re here, this is an item shop, after all!”
“You wanna buy, you can buy. Got something to sell, I’m your 'mon!”
“We’re not official as of yet, if you know’m sayin’, but I’m open for business!”
“Thanks for your business! And by that, I mean whatcha buyin’, buddy?”
His stock is typical RPG fare. We can get the most basic recovery items, as well as portable toilets and auto-pilots if we need them. We really don’t, as of now. Koromon gives us enough that we don’t really need to shop for a while.
“A pleasure doing business with ya, homie!”
“Man, whadda BIT-pincher.”
We leave Floatia and head towards Forest Path again, when we…
…uh…
…I’m in awe at the size of this Numemon.
Occasionally, a rare “elite” Digimon will spawn in certain places. They are very large, and tend to be pretty strong. They also tend to drop high-quality items, a fair amount of Tamer EXP, and a good amount of BIT. Being the bottom rung of that particular ladder though, Numemon really only gives the latter two. I’ll err on the side of caution this time, because I value our Digimon’s ability to continue breathing. Enough about oversized Digimon…
We arrive again at Forest Path, during daylight hours this time. Other Aruraumon tend to hang out around here.
They’re not particularly aggressive towards us, but they not terribly difficult and tend to drop food and Recovery Discs. Did I mention it’s easy to stock up on food here?
Just around the corner, we have… another Numemon. This one has something to say.
“This is a momentous occasion indeed! You see, I want five green digistalks…”
“Bollocks, I left my green digistalks at home.”
“Bloop bloop… F-food…”
Numemon emails us immediately to tell us how hungry he is.
“Gourmand or no, you seem rather picky for a poopslug who seems to be dying of starvation.”
Well, guess we’ll have to somehow scrounge up some green digistalks. Wonder where we’ll find them.
Oh, right, Forest Path. We nab two of them, not even ten feet away from Numemon.
Our partners decided they need to poop about a minute ago. Rather than leave the area, I elect to get it out of the way without loading screens. Turns out, Bruce doesn’t like waterfowl.
“Come on Bruce, it looks like a cute little duck, it’s not that bad.”
“Could be worse. Could be a goose.”
When you praise/scold your Digimon, your partners can sometimes interact. When this happens, the stats they gain from it are increased. 10 Discipline would be a pretty hefty boost, if we were pursuing a Digimon that needed it.
I still have no idea how the hell this thing is a toilet. It looks like a miniature paddle-boat to me. But I digress, we’re still only 3/5 of the way through Numemon’s request.
Scavenging the rest of the forest yields one more green digistalk, we’ll get the last one by picking on more Arur-
-wait, is that-
-it’s a Golden Acorn! These only show up in a few places, and sell for 2000 BIT. That’s a hefty chunk of change early in the game!
Ryuki manages to pull off his special attack. In a shocking twist; it involves hitting something with his club.
Or rather, a fireball that he shoots out of his club. I guess they felt the need to justify the fact that these attacks will always hit their target, regardless of distance.
The Aruraumon is so impressed that it drops a pretty rare item (at least for this point in the game). Hunks of Meat are what you get when regular Meat Digivolves. Okay, not really, but I’m sure you know what I’m getting at: it’s more filling and gives our Digimon more weight. It’s a good idea to hold on to it until we get a Digimon with a bigger appetite. It’s a better idea to hold onto it for another purpose.
At the tail end of Forest Path are a pair of RedVegiemon, who serve as a sort of warning flag. We could kite our way around them, but if we can’t take down a RedVegiemon, we have no business going back there.
Now then, we have 5 green digistalks, let’s head back to Numemon.
“Did somebody order some digistalks?”
He’s so happy. Maybe we’ll get a cool reward.
“Yeahhh, I’m so full! When I eat, I just chow down, ya know?!”
“A full belly gets me raring to go! I’ll fight with you!”
DigiDamn it. Oh well, guess we’ll see how-
[VIDEO] -oh, Ryuki turbodunked him in like one second. Alright.
“I’m sure you’re not just a featherweight.”
“But all that fighting helped me chill out. Forgive me, I’ll go to the city…”
Numemon joins the ranks of Floatia. I’m sure Jijimon will appreciate this.
We had back to the end of the forest (you know, it seems a little sparse for a forest, now that I think about it) because there’s another friend here…
“Hi Zugbug.”
“I may have been abandoned in a previous save file…”
“…but I still want to help people. The problem is, my only skill is making this thread…”
“I’m confident in its strength, but what can I use it for?”
“You’re retired, why not use it to fish?”
“Fishing line! What a great idea! Even I could make something like that.”
“…but I don’t have anything I could use as a rod. Could you find me a stick or something?”
“Sure.”
“Really?! Wow, thanks so much! I’m counting on you!”
Heading back to the start of Forest Path reveals a yellow ring.
Yeah, we found the one stick in the whole forest. No, we couldn’t see it before getting the quest to build a fishing rod. Let’s get it back to Zugbug.
“Did you bring me something I could use as a fishing rod?”
“I found a stick.”
“Ooh, that’s the ticket!”
“We’re surrounded by thousands of sticks.”
“But this is a very good stick.”
“Fair enough.”
“Now, I just tie the string to the end…”
“Presto, fishing rod complete! Couldn’t have done it without you!”
“Take this fishing rod as my thanks!”
“I hope this helps with your fishing! Use it well!”
Zugbug sets off for Floatia. I’m sure he’ll run a successful business. Fishing is, uh, a thing we can do. We’ll get to it eventually, but right now we’d basically waste an entire day and get nothing to show for it.
Dusk falls, but I’m not ready to return to Floatia just yet. We’re going to get those two Digimon we saw lurking in the back of Power Plant #2 and Old Cableway first.
At the Plant, we dig up a bit more Quartz and another Old Card. Like I said before, the Cards are pretty much worthless. I may have mentioned that the game is at least merciful enough to not allow repeat Cards to drop, but it’s still an obnoxious grind to get them all.
We can’t even look at them yet, by the way.
Hmm, right, those Numemon… there’s quite a bit of clearance on the left, so we might be able to squeeze past without them noticing.
I think they noticed us. At least there’s plenty of room to keep running and escape their “territory.”
Danger evaded, we find Kuwagamon.
“Huh?”
“I AM KUWAGAMON. I AM LOOKING FOR FOOD TO EAT.”
“I LOVE ROYAL DIGIJELLY. IT IS ON FOREST PATH IN NIGH PLAINS.”
Good thing we went there first. A curated, efficient experience this isn’t. 
“BUT I GOT LOST ON THE WAY, AND I DO NOT KNOW WHERE I AM.”
“SO PLEASE, I ASK YOU! PLEASE BRING ME ROYAL DIGIJELLY!”
Kuwagamon is another Digimon who is content to stand around and starve to death instead of trying a bit harder to find his food. Good thing we’re here!
“You seem alright, I’ll get the royal digijelly for you.”
“YOU ARE A GOOD HUMAN!”
We’ll save him soon enough, but we may as well check out the actual Power Plant of Power Plant #2 while we’re here.
It features a field of oversized lemons. The liquid node gets us some DigiAcid…
…and we can harvest some Conductor Lemons nearby. I guess the implication is that Digimon use lemons as a power source, kind of like that school experiment where you use lemons or potatoes as a battery for a light bulb. I think that’s a cute detail. The liquid node behind the Power Plant contains DigiOil.
On our way to Forest Path, we stop by the Old Cableway for the second Digimon. The Numemon still hate us, but I notice there’s a path between the trees that might let us skirt around both them and the BlackGabumon.
We make it through, learning that it was Kabuterimon we saw in the back. A few Numemon are hanging around him. Unfortunate, but it gives me a chance to drop an important tip:
If a “quest” Digimon is surrounded by hostile Digimon, get rid of them first. In the event that the quest requires a fight, you’ll be moved around, and once the fight is done you might be in a place that will immediately get you in a fight with nearby Digimon. Nothing is worse than scraping by a tough boss battle just to have a Numemon finish you off.
Now, these guys are level 7, which means they’re probably going to be pretty tough.
[VIDEO] Let’s go for it!
Ryuki bops Numemon immediately. We Support this.
Numemon bops back. Not a tremendous amount of damage, but I get the feeling he has a stronger move up his sleeve.
Both partners attack, and Bruce manages to poison Numemon. A well-timed Support gets them plenty of OP. Numemon’s a sturdy boy though, so we’ll bide our time until we can finish him off.
We get them both to 150 OP, so it’s time to do the move.
Our partners get fired up! They unleash their DigiFuse skills…
…which means they both use their special move at the same time. It’s not super impressive to look at…
…but hoo boy, it makes that Numemon super dead. DigiFuse is pretty great, you get both special attacks at once, it can hit more than one enemy at a time, and it also counts as a combo, so you deal more damage than you’d do using their specials individually.
Those are some impressive stat gains! Remember that training a particular stat in Floatia got us about 30 in the one stat. Fighting can be a good way to train, but it can be a bit complex to execute.
Basically, if you’re looking to make full use of it in place of training, you’d need to know which Digimon will give you which benefits for your current powerlevel, while being easy enough to farm without getting yourself killed. These stat gains have diminishing returns once you pass their power level in a particular stat, as seen with their wisdom bonuses.
The battle finished, we praise our partners for their efforts. They also praise each other, boosting the results!
We clear out a few more Numemon to be safe, then we take a moment to jog around and heal our partners. It takes 20-30 seconds to heal the ~10% Ryuki was missing. It may not seem like much, but it’s a million times better than having no regeneration at all.
Let’s see what Kabuterimon has to say.
LIKE KUWAGAMON, KABUTERIMON IS VERY LOUD.
“ME, KABUTERIMON. ME WANT BE STRONG, SO ME TRAIN!”
UNLIKE KUWAGAMON, KABUTERIMON SPEAKS LIKE TARZAN.
“ME WANT SEE HOW STRONG ME AM! YOU FIGHT ME?”
“BUT ME TELL YOU, ME STRONG GUY! REAL STRONG!!!”
“Alright, let’s do it.”
“ME THANK YOU! LET’S FIGHT!!!”
[VIDEO] ME FIGHT KABUTERIMON
Bruce opens by…taking a surprising amount of Kabuterimon’s health. He might be weaker than the surrounding Numemon…
Kabuterimon breathes fire on Bruce…
…dealing 10 damage? With a 1.5x multiplier? Something’s not right here, I remember him being tougher than-
-YUMPIN’ YIMINY! He follows up by dropping a boulder on Bruce, dealing roughly two Bruces worth of damage.
This angers Ryuki, who buffs his own Strength in retaliation.
“BRUUUUUUUUUUCE!”
Bruce gets back on their feet just in time for Ryuki to get his own helping of boulder-to-the-face. That was a close one! Bruce manages to heal themselves some, I can’t tell if they were in range of the second revival disc I threw or if it was retaliation for Ryuki’s demise.
Both are back on their feet and, oh hell, Bruce is getting crushed again… At least we see the boulder this time.
But they survive! Turns out both of them automatically put up their guard. Guarding, by default, will protect a Digimon from 90% of the damage they would otherwise take, but they can’t move or attack while doing so.
Even fire is no match for crossing your arms.
Let’s put an end to this before Kabuterimon finds any more rocks.
And he’s down! That was a bit more stressful than I anticipated.
“OW OW OW! YOU, STRONG…”
“WHAT TRAINING YOU DO? …HUH? TRAIN…IN CITY?”
“CITY…FLOATIA CITY…BETTER THAN TRAINING OUT HERE?”
“Yeah, the risk of dying to falling rocks is way lower there.”
“OKAY, ME WANT TRAIN IN CITY! ME GOOD WITH TOOLS, TOO!”
Kabuterimon heads to Floatia! Hopefully he doesn’t ruin Jijimon’s power tools.
Now, let’s continue our quest for royal digijelly. Forest Path is populated with Goblimon again, but I’m confident we can handle them after all that.
[VIDEO] In fact, let’s handle two.
They quickly corner Bruce and stunlock them for a bit. Damn those spin kicks!
Both partners manage to finish off the first Goblimon with a combo attack.
Bruce attempts to finish the other with a special. Goblimon hangs on by a thread, but…
…Ryuki isn’t about to take prisoners.
The fight brings us to Tamer Level 2!
You remember how Bruce blocked 90% of Kabuterimon’s death rock? Let’s buy the most useful skill in the game: the ability to guard on command. This is essential for surviving most boss fights.
Heading towards the end of Forest Path, we find another Golden Acorn and a ring indicating…
…that we’ve found our jelly. Let’s get this back to Kuwagamon.
The Numemon Squad isn’t actually that difficult to avoid if you don’t slow down. Your partners are actually solid models, and can sometimes act as obstacles that keep them from catching up to you.
“Here it is!”
*slurp slurp*
“DELICIOUS! THIS IS MY FAVORITE! I AM ALL FULL NOW!”
“HUH? WHAT AM I DOING HERE? WHERE AM I? THINKING MAKES ME HUNGRY…”
“I WANT TO EAT ROYAL DIGIJELLY. WHERE IS ROYAL DIGIJELLY? LET US GO LOOK!”
“Great, we’re going to have to make the trip three times, aren’t we?”
Actually, he just joins after saying that. Kuwagamon is strange.
And our partners are sleepy. It’s late, so let’s just sleep in this cozy little corner tonight.
We’ve done a fair amount of work so far, this might be a good spot to-oh, hang on, Jijimon is buzzing me.
Ah, looks like some plot is about to happen! What did Jijimon learn? We’ll find out in the next File!
"Get back, DigiDave! We can take it from here! You just need to give us commands as usual!
“What is it, DigiDave?! You’ve always given us commands in battle!”
“Hrm?!”
who will be occupying the rest of this introduction. I guess he’s also kind of like the Mayor of Floatia, since he’s A) The only one in town who is trying to get things done, and B) The only current resident who isn’t a baby.
“This is a tremendous success! Then their rebirths will be complete.”
“Just remember: As their Tamer, you have a duty to care for them.”
“I still have no idea what’s going on.”
I mobilized my knowledge and technology to build a trap, in order to capture the
"HRMMM…"
“You can use these items by opening Care Mode with the Square button.”
“But enough of that… What did you want to talk about, puni?”
“You’re that human Tamer, ain’tcha. Nice to meet ya, the name’s Tanemon!”
“Hey, you! I’m over here by the phone! Let me tell you about all about food.”
“I’m Motimon, the master of training!”
"And I’m Tsunomon, I don’t really do anything!"
“You can find them when you pick up materials sometimes.”
“But then Machinedramon tore on through, and all the Digimon just scattered…”
“What are you talking about? And uh,”
obtained.
“I want to fly all through the sky! The thing is, though, I’m not very good at it…”
“Himari! Look! Look! It’s a human!”
“I told you. We don’t know what’s going on here, so we have to be careful.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Before you ask someone’s name, isn’t it polite to give your own name first?”
“Even though my special move is so cool and strong! I’ll never go back there!”
“Veemon learned a new move.”
“All things here belong to me, Garudamon!”
“Whoa! Who the heck’re you?! D-Don’t tell me you heard that just now?”
“
”
“You… You are not from this world, are you? Begone at once, interloper!”
“I am Meramon! I endeavor to guard this gate at the behest of Lord Taomon.”
“Laaa la la laaa…naw, still not right…”
“This ‘Bruce’ is clearly the knock-off, 
"Heh heh…shocked?
“This clone technique is my pride and joy…”
“With two of these clones, I’ll test you right here!”
“Leave and don’t come back.”
“What are you doing?!”
