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Cie’th Stone Hunting
-Hunt #6 is the Munchkin Maestro. Aw. The munchkins are my favorites.
Those adorable headphones, roller skates, and gaping toothy chest maws.
-New analect, “The Age of Fading Glory.” A frustrated criticism of Pulse’s decline. Gran Pulse was once united. Now it fights among itself.
“Even Haeri, at the height of its glory, laid to ruin by a menace greater still! Surely the vipers within that floating nest look down upon us with self-righteous scorn, to see this decline of our once-great civilization.”
Haeri must have been one of the main Pulsian cities or nations. I feel more certain now that Gran Pulse isn’t secretly working together with Barthandalus. There’s real hatred for Cocoon.
-New Cie’th enemy type, the Undying. Normal Cie’th eventually stop and turn to stone, but the Undying keep pushing on, fueled by rage, “cursing their former fal’Cie masters for forsaking them at the end of their forced servitude.”
#TeamUndying
-This next Undying mark, #7, Bituitus the Pillager, is no easy task. Drops a metric ton of debuffs on me.
(Speaking of which, no malboros yet. I wonder if that’ll keep up.)
-New rank: Archaeopoliton Idol.
WHOOOA – that’s kind of beautiful? On defeat, Bituitus turns into some kind of crystalline onion.
-That’s the last active Cie’th stone in the area. Time to progress.
-Vanille and Hope stop to chat. Hope’s calmer, taking this all in.
-There’s a lot of strange talk here, about possible past lives. Hard to tell how much is metaphorical and how much is literal.
-lol, Hope even jokes about having a big ol’ crush on Vanille (though tbh who wouldn’t?) to make her all embarrassed. It’s adorable.
-Getting a lot of organic components on Gran Pulse when I really need inorganic components.
[Later edit: I later noticed that I can add modifiers to the upgraded weapons, making the organic components waaaay more useful. Idk why, but I’d assumed on seeing the transformed weapons that the lack of a modifier meant I couldn’t add one, not that they reset.
Still could use some inorganic components or the gil to buy some.]
-Found the next hunt on the way through the valley. For a rakshasa.
-OOOH GOT THE COLLECTOR CATALOG! An accessory increasing my chance of getting items from enemies. Maybe that’ll improve my lackluster bank account.
-I also have access to a new store, R&D. Incredibly expensive catalysts. I feel like I’m missing something because I’ve had like zero access to gil this game, let alone the massive quantities required for these items.
Maybe I’ll come across good farming grounds later.
-There’s another hunt available, just before the Archylte Steppe zoneline. “And Then There Was One.” Not picking it up just yet because it’s listed as Mission #32. I’ve only completed #8 so far.
-Found #9 just inside the Steppe, to kill a Kaiser behemoth. Here we go.
Behemoths weren’t tough enough, so let’s give ‘em cleavers I guess.
-That went SO much better! The Kaiser behemoth’s “Hurl” only did a bit of my health.
-Datalog shows that he’s weaker than the behemoth kings, but I’ll bet my progress on the Stage 8 crystariums and all those +100 HP nodes really helped.
-#10 is a strange metal beast, Ambia Bellows. Classified as a Combat Engineer.
Robot Wilford Brimley.
Extremely easy since I got the drop on him with a pre-emptive strike.
-New analects, “Lindzei’s Nest.” About a viper (again, probably metaphorical) called Lindzei who ripped a chunk from Gran Pulse and made Cocoon.
“Lies spilled forth from the serpent’s tongue: ‘Within this shell lies paradise.’ Men heard these lies and were seduced and led away.”
Is Lindzei another name for Orphan?
-#11, “Pride Before a Fall.” A swarm of those weird penguin caster dudes.
-Ruh oh. Found #12, a stone outside a Cie’th “paling,” that red wall. The game warns me that this mark is unusually difficult, Geiseric the Profane.
The hands across his face give off strong FFX Anima vibes.
-Two deaths. Rough stuff, his Murderous Might attack keeps killing me.
-WAIT I GOT IT! Libra told me that he was targetable in multiple places but I wasn’t seeing it. The next time, I checked the target options during Murderous Might, and his fist becomes targetable.
That must be it. I gotta burn it down, like the Nail in FFXIV Ifrit. During Murderous Might.
-GOT HIM HAHA!! That did the trick. Rank of Baneslayer.
-Let’s see what lies beyond this paling.
-Uh oh. Sazh smells something. Malboro boss?
-OH MY GOD I COULDN’T HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG. ITS ALL THE CHOCOBOS. ALL THE CHOCOBOS LIVE HERE
-Sazh wonders if he should leave his li’l chocobo with his friends here. And chocobo pecks him in the fucking nose.
Sazh deserved that for even thinking of leaving Chocobo here. Chocobo is with Sazh until Dajh awakens.
This is amazing.
-Fang overhears Sazh talking about Dajh. It’s a bit awkward. She feels guilty for what happened to him, and Sazh tries to allay that guilt.
Each tries to take the blame.
SAZH: “I’ve got this guy [Chocobo, to help me deal with the guilt]. And you, you’ve got Vanille. You weren’t alone. That kept you going, didn’t it?”
FANG: “Don’t give up. You’re getting the hang of it. Really.”
I LOVE LOVE LOVE how this game develops the party. A common failing in games with a core protag is that you 95% of the character development centers on that character, not allowing that the other characters can have their own relationship dynamics.
XIII avoids that, developing its full cast in relation to each other. It’s so much richer for it.
-Digging the hell out of the XIII chocobo music.
-There’s a whole chocobo grove here!
-Also, some new enemies: sahagins. XIII’s incarnation makes them look less like fish monsters and more like mech-chocobos.
-They’re really tough. Fast, relentless.
-There’s a chocobo icon on the map. I can’t seem to interact with that particular chocobo no matter how many buttons I press. Maybe I need a harness or something.
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Next time: more missions in the Archylte Steppe.
