Lava, Lava Everywhere
B4 seems like it's the same but worse - mostly lava to suffer through. I do notice that it seems like we can't get into encounters on the lava though. But often the second we step onto terra firma we get an immediate fight. I'd guess there's a mechanic that triggers a fight after a certain threshold's reached, but it's not allowed to trigger it on a cell that deals damage.
We head back up to another part of B3, which is more of the lava dodging fare, before dropping back down to B4 where we have access to some storerooms with chests:
- Gold Needle (guarded)
- 2750 gil (guarded)
Followed by another room with:
- 1760 gil
Other than these rooms, this is fairly prosaic dungeon crawling, we're topping up HP periodically, but that's about it.
The next store room has an enemy in it, blocking the entrance on guard. It's just another Lava Worm though. The chests in this room:
- 1150 gil
- 1155 gil
I guess he was trying to cover off both of them. To the north of the east, there's another store room:
- Cottage
- 2000 gil
- Potion
They're getting lax down here, no guards at all. In the final lower eastern store room in B4 we get:
- Staff (guarded)
- 1250 gil (guarded)
In that room, everyone makes it to Level 32 too. But I'm hoping that we're on a 5 layer dungeon again, as it's starting to feel a bit samey.
We get to B5, and we're presented with almost a wheel of different directions to go off in, each with a door hiding something. Seeing as we're facing to the left as we head down, I head for the left hand door, which reveals an open room with an enemy in it (a trivial Fire Lizard) and a chest:
- Flame Mail (guarded by a Red Dragon)
The dragon felt a touch tougher, but still down in 1 round because it was 1 vs 4. The Flame Mail looks nice for Rukus though, same defence as the Knight Armour, but a bit more Evasion, and because it's infused with Fire, it guards against Ice. Maybe not a benefit here, but I'm sure it will be at some point given one of our Crystals is blue.
I use the borderline-exploit of the map inside of this room to scout the other 7 rooms, and discover that only the 3 on the left hand side have a chest in, while the bottom left is our Crystal source, so we'll be sure to heal up and prepare for that better this time.
Given that this area seems to be much of the same otherwise, I'll just list out my haul from the other chests top to bottom:
- Potion
- Potion
- Potion
Well... cool. I'd dare say that's a touch underwhelming for the final level of a plot dungeon.
Perhaps being a bit blase after that, we run into three Ogre Mages who decide it's time to take turns seeing who can do the best Blizzara, and we have a close call on the Death Counter - Glitz finishing the fight on 23 HP and Kaili on 20! We'd been a bit uncaring about walking through the lava, and that could well have bitten us in the backside.
That being said we're in a position to head to what I assume is the boss of this area, fully healed after our scare. We walk in and talk to the orb, similar to in the Cavern of Earth. This time it's red though.