Treasure Hunting
-First step is to stock up on some Dead Peppers. Yay for Hot & Cold! I like the Chocobo Lagoon much more for that than the Chocobo Forest. Less ground to cover since I don’t need to transition to those two cliff-faces.
-Gotten pretty good at Hot & Cold. Currently at just over 3,300 points. Eventually my goal is 10,000 for Robe of Lords since I’m curious what does, but not too worried about it.
-This is weird. I used a Dead Pepper at the frothing water beneath Quan’s Cave, and nothing happened. Am I doing it wrong?
-I don’t think I’m doing it wrong. I did the same thing at another frothy-water spot at the south tip of the Forgotten Continent. Got a Black Robe, Genji Gloves, and a Blue Narciss card. Though the frothy-water doesn’t go away. Perhaps I already got the treasure beneath Quan’s without realizing it.
-The cracked wall on the Forgotten Continent nets me a Genji Helm. Steiner enjoying the full Genji treatment.
-I’m excited for this next one. It’s the long island north of the Outer Continent, where a chocobo heard “Kupo!” from a wall crack.
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Mognet Central
-Hell. Yes.
-Where do I know this music from? Feels very familiar from a past game, but can’t place it. My spidey-senses are screaming “FFIV! FFIV!” but I don’t fully trust them.
-The equipment here is broken and the moogles don’t know what to do.
-One of the moogles, Moss, wishes they had “that item.” I smell a quest.
-lololol – Artemicion is here, and the thing he used up was otherwise used for gears. He wanted to enhance his coat!
Basically, he used the mechanical oil/grease for personal shampoo or something and now the machines are breaking down. XD
I’m glad that amidst the story of Kuja and Garland, we get a moogle accidentally causing work trouble because he just wants to make his coat shiny, and a chocobo searching for home.
-That’s about all there is here for now. Going to keep my eyes open for grease of some sort. I’ll bet it comes as a reward if I continue with the Mognet delivery quests.
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The Hunt for the Shimmering Island
-Gotten all the treasures I can get for now. Can’t find “Ocean,” and I have a bunch of empty spaces for one more batch of Chocograph treasures. Perhaps I’ll find them on the Shimmering Island? (not likely – Terra sounds likelier.)
-So next, I’m gonna try tracking down the Shimmering Island. First will get some more Dead Peppers from the Lagoon, then fly up to find a shadow and use a pepper while flying above one.
-Success!!
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Chocobo’s Air Garden
-This must be the last of the places I find chocographs.
-Hee!! The Shimmering Island, the center of that kind of holy religious focus, is a chocobo playground basically.
-This place is so flat-out weird. Definitely the toughest to navigate of the three chocobo areas in hot & cold.
-OH SHIT OH SHIT YESSSSS– I was trying to map out the cloud path from platform to platform and found “eidolon cave.” There’s an eidolon up here. This must be where I find the chocobo summon in FFIX.
-Mene stops me. Feels a “strange presence” inside. Ghost chocobo? Ancestral chocobo?
-He literally says it’s not a ghost. It’s otherworldly. Now I’m curious.
-Ok, wtf game? This is like the seventeenth “I don’t think you should…” warning it’s giving me. Now I’m nervous.
-Whatever. My curiosity must be sated. Let’s do this.
-Boss music.
Ozma.
-And it’s a big spinny ball of colors. New eidolon. Not one I’m familiar with.
-A POWERFUL big spinny ball. It wipes out Steiner in its initial Holy cast.
-Just used Madeen for the first time on Eiko, giving me the “Wolf in Mog’s Clothing” achievement. That confirms to me that the Griever-esque Madeen was actually Mog.
-It uses Level 4 Holy as well, so having party members at that level range is a disadvantage.
-Casts Berserk.
-Aaaaand it casts Meteor. I’ll take that as my final neon flashing sign that says “COME BACK LATER.”
-lol. And poor Amarant can’t even reach. I guess this is a range-only fight, which makes something like Berserk particularly nasty. Amarant could’ve otherwise used No Mercy for ranged damage.
-Annihilated. Didn’t have Dagger to scan, but I get the sense that I wasn’t even close. Welp. I can’t say the game didn’t try to warn me.
-Back to Hot & Cold for now. Did that until I exhausted the chocographs. Found all the chocographs there are to find.
-I have some thoughts on this place. It is by far the most unwieldy of the three chocobo areas to navigate, with such heavy platforming. It’s also the most luck-dependent, most reliant on getting treasures spawning on the same island for a good run. I really don’t like that the area at the end of the far platform is a dead end.
All that said, I don’t really care about the negatives. The art and atmosphere of the place is mind-blowing. I don’t need it to be super-fast – I have the Lagoon for speed. It didn’t take long to find the Chocographs so I’m not forced to be there long.
(And this whole chocobo side-thing is optional, so nobody is forced to be here at all now that I think about it.)
Yeah. The Air Garden is my favorite of the three locations. Favorite in small doses, sure, but favorite nonetheless. What a cool place.
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Treasure Hunting
-My next goal is to finish off finding this chocobo treasure. Yes, even “Ocean.”
-Genji Armor (unlocking the Steam achievement “Path of the Samurai”), RAGNAROK??? Holy shit. Steiner is gonna be a BEAST. This doubles the attack of his current sword, and teaches him Beatrix’s “Shock” ability.
-Next chest include Holy Mitre and a Dark Matter card. This is Vile Island, so getting tf outta here asap before any adorable little Yans can rain destruction upon me.
-Penultimate chest found. Ribbon (second), Rebirth Ring, Ark card.
-That just leaves the dreaded “Ocean.”
-I was rereading the description for “Ocean,” and might have an insight. It says “Look carefully! There’s a small reef, kupo!” I had been thinking of “reef” as “protruding body of land.” But in FFIX terms, it’s very specifically means shallow water. The light blue chocobo upgrade, the first one, allowed me to walk on “reef.” So I’m looking for some shallow water amidst ocean. That’s more doable.
Rinse, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And…
[40 minutes later]
-Ok. Fuck this. I give up. I’ve searched the oceans for the smallest speck of light-blue reef and just CANNOT. FIND. IT. Fhdjklafhadjklsfhdajklsfhdkldas
This is like playing Where’s Waldo inside a magic eye puzzle, and my eyes hurt and I’m incredibly frustrated right now. I was SO CLOSE to completing this chocobo side-quest! I was having fun, and enjoying the map exploration, and now I’m just hoping to be able to discern a slightly lighter shade of blue amidst a literal ocean of darker shades of blue. I hate this. I’m out.
-what.
-I was heading back to my ship clicking randomly in eye-rolling frustration, and I got a hit. There’s no reef-colored water under me at all!
How am I remotely near it? Not to mention that I’m pretty close to shore rather than being in the middle of the ocean.
-Well, I got it. That SUCKED. Most of this was about engagement with the environment and exploration. This one just felt badly designed – either that, or I’m missing something major. [non-rhetorical question for y’all: what’s up with this one? What am I missing about this? I don’t want to just write it off to “that was badly designed.” What should I have looked for as a marker?]
[Later edit: I’m writing this the next day. I’ve calmed down a bit. I do get that these depend on perspective, and that I should’ve thought outside the box about the meaning of the phrase “small reef,” but even now I feel it was a spectacularly unhelpful hint. My salt levels are still dangerously high.]
-Got a Light Robe, Whale Whisker (lol), and Alexander card.
-Had to take a minute to pull myself back, look at the big picture. This was a massively fun and addicting mini-game, with some pretty substantial rewards. I won’t let this one lone treasure chest sour it for me.
-Traveled back to Chocobo’s Paradise because I thought I might be done, but it seems not. A new chocobo tells me that the western side of the Seaways Canyon mountain has a crack, albeit one that’s difficult to find.
-That wasn’t too bad (though without the hint, I doubt I would’ve found it). Got Maiden Prayer, Dragon’s Hair, Gauntlets, Odin Card.
-And I’m done for now! With the chocobo stuff at least. I’ll keep an eye out for more cracks and bubbles, but I’m feeling really satisfied.
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Next time: non-chocobo-related world exploration. Starting out by turning in Scorpio coin in Treno, then revisiting Madain Sari and the Black Mage Village on the Outer Continent. After that will head to Esto Gaza to see If there’s new dialogue opened up since I’ve now been to their Shimmering Island.
I also got a lot of gear this time but didn’t look through it carefully. At some point before I hit Ipsen’s Castle, going to do a more thorough check.
