Summary
: I realized we never turned in the last UMA, so let’s do that quick in order to pick up Natan’s final UMA hunt. I also got the replacement for my old LP drive installed this morning. I have named it Frank.
: This is misleading, because we can talk to Nvwoti again and get the final UMA request without even leaving the tent.
: If I was writing this, it would be Bigfoot with the Tsuchinoko on his head.
: “Calm down. When you get like that, I cannot understand what you are saying.”
: “Hm. And where is this UMA?”
: “The end? The end of the earth?”
: Ever since Innocent Sin, I will never be able to read the words “I just heard a rumor” the same again.
: “You became so excited over such limited news?”
: We need to head to Arkham now, but while we’re there, we can finally cash in all of those steps we’ve been taking with the pedometer.
: This is Ricardo’s final armor, and will be useful when we do his final sidequest in the next update. We could theoretically grab Natan’s before doing his quest… except it requires us to clear every Pit Fight.
: “All right! Thanks!”
: We can then exchange our steps for prizes. I wind up buying the Hit Area Expand and Strike Area Expand, because the Ultra Belt is kinda pointless at this stage in the game. There’s just not enough slots.
: “Went missing?”
: We’re right next to the Pit Fights, but I want to wait until we’ve done all of the other sidequests first, including all the grinding for Mao’s bullshit.
: You remember how we got a Cure stellar in here right at the beginning of the game? Do you remember where that was? I hope you do.
: The research file is in the same spot.
: “This seems to be their file. Let us take a look.”
: If they got Private Hulk, we’re probably pretty fucked.
: The Guiana Highlands are a real place that stretches from Venezuela (which is apparently where the dungeon is in this game) to northern Brazil.
: We’re controlling Natan now, and the first thing we want to do… is leave the Guiana Highlands and go back to the Grand Canyon.
: “What’s this, all of a sudden…”
: “…!? That gun?!”
: “…How could I forget? That was the first gun I held.”
: “Hey, what are you guys talking about?”
: “…”
: I’m… not entirely sure how this makes sense. Natan told us earlier that he was from the same tribe as Shania. I guess he’s adopted?
: I looked this up, and it is actually plausible - there are, in fact, black bears that live in parts of the Grand Canyon.
: “I could not pull the trigger. I was frightened by the beast before me, and of the weapon in my hand. Because of my fear, my mother lost her life.”
: “My regret still runs deep. Regret that I could not pull the trigger. That I couldn’t save my mother… and though I held the utmost power in my hands, I could not handle it. Thus, the gun is my chosen weapon now.”
: “Of course. I am a warrior of Garvoy. I will not succumb to the same fear twice.”
: “I appreciate it. And I will make a pledge now. When I pull this trigger, it will not be to take life, but to save it!”
: I think Natan has revolvers confused with the medigun from Team Fortress 2.
: Now we can go back to Guiana Highlands.
: There’s a skeleton here that Natan reacts to, so let’s investigate.
: Hulk must have gotten a posthumous promotion to Officer.
: A few steps in, we run into the welcome wagon. Seymouria (the little raptor things) have 155 HP each and can inflict Fake Ring on hit. Soldes (the flying one) has around 300 and can use Red Gravity.
: The enemies here also tend to be pretty fast, so getting stock nuked like this is pretty common.
: We want to head off to the left first.
: Now we have our objective: use bait the UMA doesn’t like to force it into a particular position, at which point we feed it and attack after it goes to sleep.
: We can then head off to the right from where we entered.
: You know, I’m not sure I get the timeline of what went on here. These guys came down here, started researching the UMA, went back up to Massachusetts to hide their notes, and then came back to Venezuela one by one and died?
: I went to look up where we go to start setting the bait, and I found something very important: BEFORE YOU SET THE BAIT, HARD SAVE THE GAME. DO NOT TOUCH THAT SAVE. The reason is because apparently there’s some kind of bug where you can get permafucked if you use the wrong bait.
: Being wary of this, I decided that instead of trying to item hunt as we place bait, we’ll item hunt first. Back to the left side we go.
: This goes on Frank. Unlike the other two P-Defend Downs, this one actually triggers fairly often - and it’ll be invaluable when we’re going up against bosses that will not allow us to buff.
: I also tested out Natan’s final ability powerups. With the Missing 51, Natan sucks a lot less than he used to - his specials are now definitely worth using over his regular attack.
: We can also go up into the boss arena to find the Thief Earrings, which increase both money and item drops - in other words, they’re useless unless you’re trying to grind to max all the star charts.
: There’s also a Lottery Ticket here, which I suppose we could blow on more Hit/Strike Expands. The rest of the items we can grab while setting the bait.
: If we go north from where we found Vince’s body, we can find the first bait point in a small alcove off to the left.
: Here, we want to bait the area with honey, which gets us a random encounter with a bunch of Seymouria.
: “It disappeared… no. It is putting distance between us, and watching us.”
: We then need to head to both of the larger bodies of water in this area - one is in the southeast near where we found Vince, and the other is in the northwest corner.
: We want to plant a Maiden’s Hair at each of the spots.
: This tree is near the north-western pool of water, and we want to plant Gold Ore here.
: The Morpho Scales go here.
: Here, we apply Fly Paper. We now have all the trees marked, so it’s time to actually bait the UMA again.
: Johnny, that’s not a UMA.
: Finally, we need to head to this waterfall - it’s right across from where we planted the honey earlier - and set out the last bait item, the Hare.
: “Its thirst for blood has gone away. Perhaps it is now full. Full beasts should return to their lair.”
: “It’s not here.”
: “…Uh, isn’t that a problem??”
: “Of course. Brace yourself, it is coming.”
: For the record, I went into this fight with a really unoptimized star chart loadout. There are much better ways to do this fight than I did it.
: This thing is Mudopkan - it’s Light-element (which is admittedly not great because I forgot to bring Dark Edge for Frank) and has 5,000 HP.
: Mudopkan has Ring Abnormality, which sucks - not because we can’t avoid it, but because it works like Johnny’s Snap ability and increases Mudopkan’s speed for a turn.
: Our new strategy in fights is to have Frank (and whoever winds up with SP-Defense Down 3, which comes from Ricardo’s dungeon) attack until they manage to land their Ring effects. In this case, Frank gets it on his first attack.
: We then have Hilda cast Arc Surge, followed by Johnny casting Rage on Frank and Natan. This gives both Frank and Natan an effective damage increase of 72%, not counting the 20% from the Demon Earrings.
: The trickiest part, and one which requires extensive use of “handy tools” that I probably would not have needed if I had Dark Edge, is landing both Natan and Frank’s regular attack as part of a D-Combo.
: This screenshot, by the way, is with Natan being the second one in the combo chain. That 72% extra damage is REALLY nice.
: Frank brings the total over 3,000 with a regular attack (he has Wind Edge on to not take a damage penalty) and Fast Snowball.
: The party at this point in the game is DISGUSTINGLY overpowered.
: We could have done even more damage with Dark Edge, but this will do.
: The second pair of Demon Earrings is going to be split between Natan and Mao, depending on who we’re using. For the foreseeable future, it will probably be on Mao for cat coin farming.
: The Seal of Strength is going on Frank to make him even more overpowered, because at this point I think the only thing that can outdo Frank is a 72%-buffed Hilda.
: “I regret having to put it in the jar. Let us bring it to Lord Nvwoti.”
: “Yes. While an enemy, it is an UMA worthy of respect. Please take good care of it.”
: Soul Valet is Natan’s final skill, and is… yet another anti-air skill. Why do we have so many of those?
: “I understand. It was a good experience, this hunt. Please accept my thanks.”
: I wish I could invest in a UMA-based retirement plan.
: “I see. Well then, to protect you into your old age, we are going to return to the original purpose of our journey.”
: This kind of makes me want to bring Natan to the final Pit Fight, which… you’ll see. From the New World is the only Shadow Hearts game where 100%ing the game without anyone dying is… very hard.
: As a bonus, let’s do this Pit Fight, which requires Natan.
: Natan has a short voice line here that does not at all sound like it’s even from the same voiceactor.
: He does a dance with his pistols, which admittedly kinda rules.
: It’s not really that great, possibly because it has the same fucked-up scaling that Slug Shell and Rapid Shot did up until they reached max power.
: This Pit Fight is actually kinda hard at high levels - you need to do a full combo and then kill the Ghatanothoa with Combo Magic - more specifically, Air Shot.
: Next time, we’ll do Ricardo’s final sidequest.
: Also, Salty’s piece about what I thought Frank’s final sidequest would be is done. I honestly thought it was gonna be Neo Turf Masters except Frank rides on a giant squirrel.
: “You want something?”
: “Don’t make that face towards me. I just heard an interesting story, so I thought I’d tell you.”
: “Well that was a long-winded excuse if I ever heard one.”
