The Cavern of Earth
Nope, right first time - this is our Cavern, and it looks at first glance like a bit of a maze. I'm going to try and be exhaustive and check all the little rooms on each floor here, using the dungeon map (Square on the PS5, but I'm 99.9% sure this'll be a quality-of-life bit) as a reference.
We head north-east first, and we're attacked by Cobras a couple of times - again the Marsh Cave toughest enemies are sort of standard enemies now. We enter the room and our first chest contains:
- Monsters!
We encounter an Earth Elemental by itself, which is giving sub-boss vibes just by being 1 vs 4. We try to be clever on the first round, with Clair trying to Silence it and Glitz throwing out a Thundara (I assume Thunder is opposite to Earth, and therefore strong). Unfortunately Silence misses and Thundara is pretty underwhelming.
We go back to just slicing, hitting and stabbing though, and that works a treat. Two turns and it's toast.
Decent EXP haul - 1536, and 768 gil too, so pretty good value for money, and on top of that, it was protecting 1975 gil. Imagine all of the antidotes that would buy...
In the south east we find a room with 2 chests:
- Monsters! (an Earth Elemental protecting An Antidote!)
- More Monsters! (another one protecting 795 gil)
Seems like there's some straws that are shorter than others for these Earth Elementals. That or the monster hierarchy values antidotes a lot more highly than we do. Which would be odd, given that we're the ones who get poisoned.
During those fights we also reach Level 19, and get moderate gains all round.
I really start to notice and love the area theme's Eastern sounding flute, and out of curiosity I decide to compare the arranged version to the original, and while it sort of gets the vibe, there's some times when the increase in tech allowing recorded music really makes a difference.
In the very south of B1 I find a couple more chests. What're the bets it's Earth Elementals protecting things? Survey says:
- 880 gil
- Monsters! (it was too good to last)
That Earth Elemental protected a Potion! Wow-ee.
To be fair to them, the Earth Elementals seem to hit like a truck, still doing 70+ damage to my weaker party members. Fortunately our HP numbers are high enough now that we can take a few of those sorts of hits now and then, particularly 1 vs 4.
We head to the second floor dungeon, and I only see one door that isn't the stairs down, so we make our way to the east of the room toward both of them.
Once again we have the "Kee"-ing bats, so I think we have a thread through these areas. We navigate our way around them, and the room has 3 chests. I'm guessing 2/3 with Monsters. From left to right:
- Coral Sword
- A Tent
- 330 gil
Oh me of little faith...
The Coral Sword is stat-wise the same as the Wyrmkiller, but is effective against aquatic enemies. I'll have to try and keep that in the back of my mind if I have any upcoming wet bosses.
We make our way down to B3, and we're almost immediately greeted with a room with a chest:
- A sleeping bag
It's sort of weirding me out how nice the game is being at the moment. We make our way round to the next chest and:
- Monsters!
That's better, another Earth Elemental, all feels well with the world again. So much so that I forget to note what I got, I think it might have been a Potion.
Another room at the top of the area has a chest in, containing:
- 3400 gil
Nice. that'll buy all the Antidotes I'd ever need. In the room at the north west, there's what I now know to be an enemy standing in my way. Fighting him though, it's just another Earth Elemental. They're a pretty easy win at this point. No chests in the room though
A little one further down has one though:
- Monsters! (another Earth Elemental protecting 1020 gil)
The shape of B3 leads to one door, and entering it, there's what looks like a blue bat in my way. Turns out it's the Vampire I'm looking for - "All things in this world are destined to end in death... The seal cannot be broken, and so the earth shall rot".
He then transforms into a human guise. "You cannot alter destiny. Mere mortals cannot kill the undying." He must be talking about Kaili.
We get some proper boss music, though so things must be serious. That being said, a couple of turns and he's done, leaving 2000 gil and 1200 EXP. The chest behind him contains the Star Ruby. I feel like this might tie into that giant, but I'm not sure yet. We can also head deeper into the Cavern, which interests me, but it just leads to a stone slab set into the floor.
The stone slab emanates an evil force. I guess we'll leave that be for now, and head back up and out to Melmond.