Summary
: It’s Day 5, and there’s another message on Leigh’s phone.
Sis, where are you? Something’s wrong with Dad. He went out to look for you, but you weren’t at your apartment. He’s sick, and we’re getting extremely worried. It was stupid of him to leave, but we haven’t heard from you in days. He’s not coherent anymore, and his body is changing in ways that shouldn’t be medically possible.
It’s been days, Sis. Please send anything. A text, a call. We are sorry about what we said, and know that we will always support you. Let us know you’re okay. We love you.
: If we go to Sam’s bathroom and try to brush his teeth, we get this scene.
Although you wouldn’t call yourself a model citizen, you’d never stolen anything before. That’s changed. You walk into peoples’ homes and take things from their shelves. You take supplies, valuables, medicine from their cabinets. You even take valueless keepsakes. You look at yourself in the mirror and see a thief. What happened?
: The “valueless keepsakes” part I’m pretty sure is from taking the drawings in the rat baby’s room, which are worthless. This part honestly seems kinda dumb to me.
That’s the way the world is now. You have to take from others to survive. You might wish it was another way, but it’s not. And that makes you a thief. What is this? Why are you doing this? Stop it. You shake your head and snap back to reality.
: As far as I know, that scene has no bearing on anything. It doesn’t really work when most of the people we’re stealing from are effectively dead.
: I’ve also never heard anyone argue that Leon Kennedy is a thief for stealing all those treasures in Resident Evil 4.
: If anything, I could maybe see the argument of “Are we killing people who could potentially be saved?” applying, but even then it’s like feeling bad for the lickers in Resident Evil.
: We’ve gotten enough roaches that they’ve started giving us messages.
The paper is gnawed into a rough rectangle. Letters scrawled by tiny pincers form a message. The writing is hard to parse, like the scribbles of a child. “HELLO HI US WANT LIVE HERE OK?”
: As soon as we leave Sam’s apartment, the Shadow approaches us. You can also see that Joel’s apartment has mutated into a mouth.
: The Shadow leaves us a rose, which is a critical item for getting one of the esoteric bullshit endings. In fact, we have only two days to get one of the items for that.
: Down the hall, this door is now open and there’s a perfectly normal Canadian taxidermist sitting outside. We’ll kill them later.
: Instead, we’ll go to the first floor and visit Frederic.
: Frederic is a reference to a Belgian comic called Philemon, which is drawn by an artist with a really long name who shortens it to just “Fred”.
: It’s kind of funny how I LPed the game with Philemon in it, and now years later I’m LPing a different game that also has Philemon in it.
: “OH! Hey. Hi. Sorry. I need help. I feel like I’m going mad.. this is going to sound crazy, I know.. but ever since I made THAT painting, my life has been turned upside down.”
: “My paintings have come to life. I made a series of portraits, but they escaped their canvasses. Some are prowling about in my home, and a few others escaped out into the hall.”
: “They are plotting something. I KNOW they are. I can hear their thoughts in my head. It’s driving me insane. Here are my keys. You should have access to most of my home with these.”
: “Not since this started, but I did look outside a few days before. It’s when I made.. that painting. Something about the sky that night felt compelling.”
: “Yes. A painting of the evening sky. Nothing more! At least, that’s what I thought. But, later that day, looking at it again, something wasn’t right.”
: “I was having coffee with my friend Fabrice and asked him to take a look.”
: “I still don’t know. When Fabrice looked at it, he made this horrible noise. He looked horrified. I looked back at the painting, but I still don’t see it.”
: “As I stared at the painting, I heard Fabrice run out the door. He sounded howling mad! Snarling like a beast.. I haven’t seen him since.”
: “It’s in my workshop. Somewhere at the back. Still wet, I imagine. It hurts my head when I look at it, so I turned all the lights off.”
: “I painted these portraits, and they all came to life. Some of them got paint brushes and made even more paintings. There were 9 of them in total.”
: “I know one of them is looking at me right now I see myself out of its eyes. It’s hiding in my fridge. Go see for yourself! But be careful, it’s dangerous.”
: Fred’s apartment is a moral conundrum of sorts. There are ten Freds - nine paintings plus the original. Each Fred will give you a reward if you kill all of the other Freds.
: If this Fred we’re talking to is the last one standing, he gives you a paint palette that goes in the ranged slot. It decreases attack but gives you a 5% chance of inflicting a bunch of different status effects (for a total of 35% to inflict an effect).
: This is Wriggly Fred. I wish you could get the reward for killing all the other Freds without killing him, because he’s the best Fred but offers one of the worst rewards.
: If Wriggly Fred is the last one standing, he gives you the Fred Ring and moves into Sam’s apartment, where he helps you cook.
: This is true. I know a Fred, and he has fewer legs. I think. He could be a centipede thing and I just had no idea.
: I really wish there was a way to save Wriggly Fred - it could be that bringing him far enough from the real one makes his consciousness split or something.
: Instead, we’re killing him.
: Wriggly Fred is a non-threat.
: We want to go this way to get a clue about something later.
: There’s a green enemy here called a Paintling. They’re part of one of the Freds, and have to be killed to kill that Fred for good.
: They can poison on hit, which is why we have the Lapis Band. Antidotes are pretty rare in this game.
: We can see a blob of ooze guarding a hat. The hat is a trap.
: In the same room, just off-screen to the north, is a dresser with Scared Fred in it.
: If Scared Fred is the last one standing, he gives you the Coward Boots, which boost your chances of running from battle. We kill him just like Wriggly.
: The room to the right of the entrance has nine paintings, and two of them are restored.
: We can take Fred’s beer stein and his “vintage game console” to sell.
: We also know that the easel has blue paint on it, and that the paint is fresh. This is how you’re meant to find the painting. On Cursed, its location is randomized. On Survivor, it isn’t.
: To get the painting, we need to kill a minimum of three Freds and talk to the Fred in the entrance.
: If we go into the bathroom (the lower door on the right), we run into Tumor Fred.
: Tumor Fred doesn’t talk and can’t attack you. He regenerates HP every turn unless he is acid burned.
: If Tumor Fred is the last Fred standing, he gives you three Tumor Lumps. Tumor Lumps are weak grenades that do flesh damage, which is one of the only ways to do flesh damage at all. They multiply every night, so you can get a lot of them if you do this early.
: Instead, we’re going to kill him.
: Next up is the door in the back. This leads to Fred’s studio.
: Lurking back here is Shadow Fred. Shadow Fred doesn’t have a reward for being the last one standing, and is always hostile. Leigh kills him in one hit.
: Far in the back is a game cartridge. This one kinda sucks, but you use it to unlock the superboss in the Meat World version of Sam’s apartment.
: There’s a door here the key won’t open.
: On Survivor, this painting is the correct one. We’ll come back for it in a minute.
: To the left is a door with another Fred and a paintling.
: This is Fred Who Bites. If he’s the last one standing, he gives you the Rage Armor, which boosts attack by 50% and gives you a chance to counterattack when attacked at the cost of being in rage (party member can only physically attack).
: We’ll kill him instead.
: Two hits and he’s gone.
: On the right side of that last hallway is what we actually came here for. The table has a Hunting Shotgun, as well as a bunch of shotgun shells.
: This is Godhead Fred. Godhead Fred has two rewards depending on how you talk to him. I’m not going to do his whole repeating letter thing.
: “WE HAVE TRANSCENDED MORTAL FORM. WE HAVE A QUEST FOR THEE. TERRIBLE DEMONS HAVE GATHERED. THERE ARE NINE. THEY MUST BE SLAIN. PERFORM THIS TASK, AND WE SHALL GRANT YOU A BOON.”
: “WE HAVE SPOKEN. DOST THOU ACCEPT THY QUEST?”
: If you accept, and Godhead Fred is the last one standing, he gives you a Strange Feather, which increases HP and Stamina by 5 and gives 5 Luck. It’s a pretty good reward.
: What if you don’t?
: "Okay. I’m stopping the god schtick. Just don’t tell anyone, alright? The scam is all I got. I mean, look at me. I’m a gatdamn freak. I can’t even put clothes on.
: Calling him out gets you an achievement and changes the reward to $400. Godhead Fred is easily the second best Fred after Wriggly Fred.
: You can ask him a couple of questions, including if he’s the real Fred.
: I saw this, immediately clicked on my Discord, and went “Salty Vanilla, I need my bat as an angel god thing.”
: Godhead Fred dies. I really wish there was a way to save him and Wriggly Fred.
: There’s one other door from the main room we haven’t looked at - it’s the upper one on the right side. This leads to Bright Fred. DO NOT KILL BRIGHT FRED.
: Bright Fred has the best reward of all the Freds. He will heal your entire party once a day - the amount increases with every Fred you kill until it hits a max of 225.
: If he is the last Fred, Bright Fred gives you a Medic in a Jar, which restores 50% HP to everyone.
: Once you kill a certain number of Freds, the Fred in the entrance will give you items. Turpentine is an acid grenade that all the Freds are weak to.
: We’ll take that painting and head to the basement. The remaining Freds will wait for another day. We have a boss gauntlet to do.
: If we go left of where we met Beryl yesterday, we run into the parking garage.
: Near the door, one of the stacks of tires comes alive and attacks. It dies quickly.
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: There’s an enemy hidden in these traffic cones, so we’ll walk past it and head down.
: We’ll dodge this car, which doesn’t count as a boss. We only get into a fight if it hits Sam.
: Down here is the reason we got that car key from the plant apartment. As it turns out, on my second run the Moss Freak didn’t drop the Mossy Hammer and I didn’t realize.
: The car has a double-barrel shotgun and a bunch of shells in it. Putting this on Leigh would be a good idea, but I don’t do it.
: This hole in the wall will be important tomorrow if you plan on getting one of the esoteric bullshit endings.
: There’s a door here we definitely want to use.
: This is Stuart. He was originally going to be a party member until he was cut.
: If you have Audrey with you, he sells parts for her.
: At a minimum, we want the Coffee Unit and the Carbonator. I wind up buying everything, which may cause a bit of an issue when we go to kill Henderson.
: The Coffee Unit unlocks Burning Shot, one of the only sources of fire damage that aren’t a molotov or firebomb. The Carbonator instead unlocks Explosive Shot, which does blast damage.
: The Quad Wheels are for a gimmick build involving boosting Audrey’s agility. They suck. The Spiked Bumper raises her attack and makes her counterattack, so we’ll take that instead.
: To the left of Stuart is this hole. The hole is part of one of the bullshit endings, and is why we needed that rose from the Shadow.
: The game will ask us twice if we want to jump down. Do it.
The ground oscillates like a rolling sea of slick muscle and sinew. Your arm is stuck inside one of many large rubbery tubes that suck air in and out. There’s a mucus-y ‘pop’ when you pull it out. As you struggle to find your footing on the shifting mass, you dig your knee into a large eyeball under you. It winces in pain and shuts tight.
: That’s harsh. : “Hellol Nice to meet you, Sam!”You feel movement near you, though you can barely see anything. You think Charan is offering you a hand to shake. The handshake is bizarre. The enormous, fleshy limb you grasp is cold, with two inch-thick digits. It feels like you’re holding a piece of rotten steak.
Charan is only holding its ‘hand’ up for you to shake. The motion is entirely from you. You’re not sure if his anatomy is too clumsy to grasp your hand, or if it’s just scared of hurting you. Is this even a hand you’re holding, or a foot? This was by far the worst handshake you’ve ever experienced. You would not give this thing a job. With a handshake like that, you would take a job away from it if you could.
: Charan is a Version 2.0 addition, and according to the Steam achievement stats, fewer than 5% of people have ever talked to him.
: “I can help you climb up whenever you like. Just ask. I’ll be moving on from here in a few days. I’ve just been resting in this hideout for a while. It might be difficult for you to get back out when I’m gone. I mean, maybe there’s a way out that I’m blocking. I do take up a lot of space.”You feel the gaze of hundreds of eyes. The breathing tubes seem to line the creature’s back like a strange dorsal fin.
: Charan is blocking an optional boss guarding one of the things we’d need for the “Mask” ending. Let me briefly explain how that works.
: For the Mask ending, you need to find four “Strange Offerings” that aren’t depictions of the Visitor. Each one is guarded by one of those giant shade enemies.
: The first one we can access is in the pit Charan is blocking. The pit closes on Day 8, and the only way to get in there is to give Charan the rose.
: Let’s show him the rose.
: This is why you want to talk to Charan and do the Shadow sidequest. The Azure Greatsword is one of the best weapons in the game.
: Like the regular Greatsword, it has multiple break states and has safe hits on each one. Judging by the description, it sounds like it’s probably a reference to the Moonlight Greatsword from the Souls games.
: If we keep going north from Stuart’s room, we run into the Cop Car. It does count as a boss, but we’re not fighting it.
: That’s because just north of it is a SWAT van, which we’re going to fight instead.
: The SWAT Truck is a difficult fight.. unless you have that super explosive from the sewer.
: The main body of the truck only has 600 HP, but…
: After one turn, it lets out its three tongues. The protestor on the right is unfortunately beyond help.
: Papineau cleaves with the Azure Greatsword and does a shitload of damage. The left tongue will block all damage to the main body until it is killed.
: Between Papineau and the Super Explosive, the tongues die off. The main body has max bleed stacks and acid burn, and dies not long thereafter.
: This gets us the Chobham Armor for Audrey, which would be best in slot if not for something the APC in Henderson’s apartment drops. It makes Audrey a super tank with some of the highest possible defense in the game.
: At the far north of the garage, we can walk through the flesh spaghetti to find some items.
: There’s a flamethrower and some gasoline here. We want both, but taking them will make that red car come alive. The car can be dodged, but we’ll kill it instead.
: This is the Hellride. It’s weak to fire and acid.
: After a few turns, the Hellride eats you. This is where the fight really begins.
: We now need to kill the commuters inside, who are weak to bullet damage. They only have a few hundred HP.
: We then need to fight the Steering Wheel, Rearview Mirror, and Windshield Wiper. They also have a few hundred HP each, but Papineau’s cleave attack and Sam’s shotgun kill them quickly.
: Once they’re dead, we have only a few turns to kill the Hell Mouth, which has around 400 HP.
: The Hell Mouth hurts a lot, but it dies just the same.
: It gives you five Tonics, which help with all the damage it does.
: The Hellride drops Demon Plating for Audrey. I should mention that boss drops for Audrey only happen if she is in the active party when they die.
: If you go to the right of the Hellride, there’s a hidden passage. This only really applies to the Unity ending.
: This is the Hellsword. The Hellsword is the best weapon in the game.
: It does a ton of damage, but reduces max HP and stamina. There’s an optional boss that isn’t the Furnace I might use this against.
: Across from where Hellride was is the end of the parking garage.
: Let’s ignore that giant tongue grabbing a guy from above.
: South of Gaston is this door. Keep this door in mind. The door to the right is a shortcut that comes out near where the SWAT Truck was, which is why we took it out.
: The elevator is down here, and we can go right inside. I’m sure nothing bad will…
: Oh.
: The fourth floor is a hidden area that you need a “password” to get to. To get it, you’d need to do the pipe sidequest.
: This is the Elevator Thing. It has 1200 HP and no weaknesses.
: It starts by paralyzing Sam before Sam can get Nitro Boost off. That’s not good.
: There’s elevator music playing in the background that gets slower and warped with each passing turn. On turn 4, the elevator will crash.
: Everyone needs to guard because the fall can instakill Sam.
: Not that it helps much, because the Elevator Thing kills him anyway.
: The fight lasts long enough that Leigh gets knocked out of Grinning Beast, but the Elevator Thing is bleeding and has acid on it.
: Leigh gets her final skill. Remember how she could “bite again and again” when we fought her? She can do that to enemies now.
: To save Gaston, we need to head to the ground floor. To the south is a shortcut that allows you to get to the main part of the ground floor without using any discs, which will allow us to get a very powerful weapon.
: We unlock everything and find some fridges. The south door is the back door to Mutt’s - you can kill Mutt and take all his stuff for free if you want.
: If we head north from the elevator, we find Gaston. There are two ways to fight this upcoming boss. You can fight it here, or you can go back to the basement and fight it down there.
: Fighting the basement version doesn’t count for ranking points.
: This is the Garbage Worm. It has 1400 HP, and like the Elevator Thing has no weaknesses.
: It has a multi-hit attack that causes bleeding, but because Audrey has the Spiked Bumper on, she’s counterattacking every hit.
: We get bad RNG and Leigh attacks Papineau.
: Gaston will mutate as the fight goes on. After four turns, he starts attacking.
: He’s one turn away from fully mutating when we kill the worm.
: The party is badly injured.
: If you go back down the elevator, Gaston’s key ring is on the edge of the.. I think it’s meant to be a dumpster. This unlocks all the janitor’s closets, and is how you’d get Papineau if he’s in there.
: We’re going to head back to the apartment and heal as much as possible, because we have a mandatory boss fight that we have to do first thing tomorrow.
: While cooking, we get this guy at the door. You remember how we kept telling the astronomers that we want to kill the Visitor? This guy is the next step in that ending.
: He sells video games. Of these, Octocook is the most important. It unlocks a skill called Octostrike that allows Sam to hit 8 times with his melee weapon.
: We also want to get Massacre Princess. This is the second step in what’s called the “True Final Ending”. We’ll be really short on cash but there are safes we can open and we still haven’t done the taxidermy apartment.
: All the Japanese this guy speaks is hilariously wrong. “Gyakusatsu” is another word for a gyaru.
: He’ll offer us $200 for it. Nope.
: If you know even the barest minimum of Japanese, you know this is wrong. “Neko no Shoben” translates to “Cat Piss”.
: There’s an achievement if you trade for the katana, but we want Massacre Princess.
: The Gamer can show up at random as a door encounter, but given that he showed up on my first playthrough right around this time (one day after telling Beryl you want to kill the Visitor) I think it might be scripted that he’s guaranteed to show up if you’ve done all the steps for the True Final Ending.
: We can also open the janitor closets now, so let’s open the one on Floor 2.
: Inside are some cleaning products, another pair of rubber gloves, a gas mask, and a free herbicide.
: People thought the gas mask protected against something we’ll probably see next update, but it doesn’t.
: We can use the herbicide to open this door in the back of Lyle’s apartment.
: Inside is an enemy I have no intention of fighting and a bunch of raw beef.
: This door is a trap. It leads to Meat World, but you need a key for it. You only get a handful of those, and this entrance is useless.
: Space Truckerz gives Sam a kind of garbage skill.
: What we really came here for is this. If you recruited Lyle and you have three other party members, you can use the tabletop RPG book to play a game with everyone.
: The game takes.. I think six sessions, and you can only play at night. There’s an achievement for starting it and a different one for finishing it.
: My recommendation is that if you want to see it, you can do it while going for the True Final Ending, since beating Massacre Princess takes like a week.
: We finish the night by playing Wizard’s Hell.
: Here’s an updated score sheet. I realized I forgot a few things last time.
Bosses Defeated: (100 pts)
- Grinning Beast
- Stargazer
- Baby Teeth
- Rat King
- Rat Chimera
- Crawler
- Sewer Beast
- Enforcer
- SWAT Truck
- Hellride
- Elevator Thing
- Garbage Worm
Total: 1200 points
Party Members Recruited: (200 pts)
- Leigh
- Papineau
- Joel
- Audrey
Total: 800 points
Party Members Recruited: (Not Counted)
- Ernest
- Aster
- Lyle
Total: 2000 points
: While I was healing the party, I got a couple of conversations.
You’re not sure, but did Audrey’s paint become just a little bit more red? A can plunks down into her delivery compartment.
: “Hoo-eee! No skin off my back! You gotta do what you gotta do, right Colonel?”
: “Aww, don’t sweat it! Hey.. got any beer in there?”
Leigh pauses momentarily as she passes the sleeping Ernest. She turns towards him and stares for.. seconds. Her hand slowly moves toward his neck - hovers just above it. Her eyes glint menacingly.. and then she shakes his shoulder. Ernest leaps off the couch and yelps in surprise.
: “Jeez louise, Lady! You scared the livin’ daylights outta me!”
: Next time, we’ll go into the basement to solve a power outage before turning our flamethrower on some perfectly normal Canadian mushrooms. We’ll also meet this game’s Ralsei.