So last time we did a bunch of random shit, but we’re not going to get sidetracked right now, we’ve got to go save-
No! Bad Aya! Bad! I just said-
Have you heard of the comedy duo Ota-Yan Union? The funny man tells a silly joke, and then the straight man flips out. That’s basically their entire act.
But rumor has it that Aniki, the straight man, has lost his timing. And now he’s a shell of his former self on stage…
Otakura, the funny man, wrote on his blog that they’re training in Harajuku for the Manzai Grand Prix, a comedy contest. Itsuki, please go and check it out for me. A mere shell… That worries me.
Yep, that’s great Aya, we’ll get right on it. You said Illusory DTV right? On my way.
(The real answer, of course, is that we barely scraped by in Illusory Shibuya and we would get destroyed by the Illusory DTV enemies.)
And hey, speaking of Illusory DTV enemies, the Red Barbarian is newest axe enemy in town. He’s actually kind of a pain, because he resists both electricity and ice, which is the cornerstone of the Itsuki/Ellie/Kiria party.
Ellie’s stage rank being so low to start isn’t nearly as big of a deal as it seems, since she gets a lot of stuff really early. Her first sidequest is at Rank 3, and she gets an incredibly important skill at Rank 6 when everyone else gets it around Rank 8 or 9.
And while it’s always nice to pick up more session skills, Elec-Snipe is about as useless of one as you can get. It pretty much exists solely to let her combo off of Itsuki since she’s the only other party member with Electric skills, and no one else can pick up from Bow skills.
Anyway, since we lit all the lanterns, the director removes the barrier and we can head upstairs. On to 2F!
New floor, new enemies. Yomotsu Shikome can fuck your day up with wind spells if you let them, but they’re weak to electricity. Itsuki and Ellie should make short work of them, no matter how little you’ve used her.
There are a pair of beads just hanging out immediately to our right on 2F. It’s kind of absurd how easy it is to get high-end healing items in this game, and combined with the fact that you have multiple items that do the same thing (see Fresh Spicy Curry and Revival Beads), it’s really hard to actually die unless you get way in over your head.
The center of 2F has a locked chest, our teleporter, and the director with another task for us. We’ll start with the director.
The AD’s waiting close to the small room to the north, so go get your next instructions!
He rules with an iron fist…
…You say something, guy?
N-No! Nothing!
The ol’ delegation move, what a classic. Well, before we head north, let’s crack that chest open.
That…was probably not the best use of a chest key. But sure, whatever, I’ll take it.
The director asked us to come help the AD… Is that you?
Oh, much obliged! I need you to adjust the lighting in the cast members’ waiting room. I was in a rush and got them wrong…
Find out what each cast member wants to figure out how many paper lanterns they want on, and fix them accordingly. After you adjust the lightning, make sure you confirm with each cast member before you come back.
You can turn the paper lanterns on with these, so good luck!
I actually kind of like this one, since it requires a little thought. More than “Press the four buttons” did, anyway.
There’s a lantern room immediatly to the AD’s left, so let’s pop in real quick and see how it works.
So right now, one of the three lanterns are lit, which we know is wrong. If we talk to the demon…
Alright, easy enough. We have two spare light sources, so we’ll use one of them to light a second lantern and try again.
And that’s one down. Note that lighting the lantern did consume one of our light sources, but if we need more we can always go back and talk to the director again.
On our way to the west door, we meet these fuckers. Knights have a massive pile of HP and defense, and resist bows, wind and lances. However, outside of Itsuki’s Zio skills, we have no way of inflicting magical fire or electric damage, so they might as well resist that too. But like the Infernos, they have a massive Kiria-sized problem in that they’re weak to ice and have non-existent resistance.
Mind you, the HP is still a problem. It would go marginally faster if we swapped Ellie out for Tsubasa, but a 200+ damage hit doesn’t even knock them below half health. Hell, Itsuki’s Fatal Sword, despite being a Tier 2 Sword skill, barely cracks 130 damage.
Ellie picks up Tarunda as we work our way around the west deck. An attack debuff is probably the least useful thing she can be doing, but I guess it’s better than nothing.
That said, now that she’s maxed out her current weapon and unlocked her first sidequest, there’s no real need to keep her in the party either. Tsubasa and Kiria are both one rank away from their next sidequests, so we’ll be rolling with them for the time being.
The western lantern room starts with all three lit, and he wants it a little darker. Two lanterns will do the trick here.
Stage Rank 7 simply nets Itsuki Endless Act, the physical get-out-of-jail-free card.
That person likes his room bright, but I don’t need it to be THAT bright.
The southern room, while not particularly difficult on its own (he wants it dropped to one lantern), mostly exists to set up the final one. That one is not completable without taking the flame essences from this room (or backtracking all the way to the director to get an extra one).
Because the east room requires you to have three banked flame essences. If this is the last one that you do, you should have the three that you need ready to go, but if not, you’re going to be doing some backtracking.
Anyway, with all four dressing rooms taken care of, let’s head back to the director.
Along the way, Tsubasa picks up Healing Expertise, which increases the amount of HP her spells restore. Passive skills aren’t as useful as you’d think in this game, but there are definitely clear winners and losers, and a heal boost is a hell of a lot more useful than Res +2.
You probably won’t get lost…but don’t stop and smell the roses, or you’ll be late!
And with that, we are now completely done with the first half of the dungeon. Coming up next is the miniboss, so let’s go cash in our radiant skills and make some new weapons.
Itsuki has a trio of new toys, but we’re going to be paying special attention to the Matador. Not only does it come with intrinsic Auto-Sukukaja, it teaches Itsuki the skill Dual Dispatch, which rolls Horseslayer and Armorslayer into one skill for just 10 MP. As far as utility skills go, it’s about as good as you’re going to get on Itsuki.
For Tsubasa, the Stingray and Hayakaze are largely identical, it just depends on whether you want to upgrade her lance skills or wind magic first. As nice as Assault Dive is, it’s not that much of an upgrade for her, so we definitely want the Hayakaze here.
Kiria is in a similar position. Lorelei increases her magic evasion and the Vajra blocks confusion, but otherwise this is a pretty blatant “DO YOU WANT FIRE, ICE OR WIND MAGIC?” choice.
And finally, Ellie picks up this…interesting weapon. On the surface, it doesn’t look very good since it makes her weak to every flavor of physical attacks, but the skills that it has make it worth it. Flame Strike (Tier 2 fire attack), Fire Boost, and a very early Arrow Rain (Tier 2 arrow damage to all enemies) makes it worth putting up with the weaknesses, especially early on in the dungeon.
But we’re not going to be doing any of that nonsense next time. Next time, we’re going on a date. See you then!