Further into Chaos
We step down into B3 and looking at the map, we need to get from the north west where we've just arrived to the south east. Easier said than done though, as there's no direct route, but a lot of doors and rooms. At a glance though, we may need to do something in the vertical plane to help us get down there.
Or maybe it's just a bit circuitous. Entering the first room demonstrates that a lot of the areas that appear to be closed off are just further corridors. There don't appear to be any chests here, just the route to work out. More of that winding through limited space again.
There's another room with what appears to be a plinth in the centre too, though nothing seems to indicate what to do with it. I'm sort of dreading having to come back through these for some reason.
The enemies in B3 are about at the level we're used to. I got a little sidetracked earlier, but the whole gang are now at Level 49. If it doesn't happen organically, Level 50 feels like it needs to happen before we wrap things up.
At some point Rukus has hit 999 HP. Looking at the UI in the menu there is scope to go into four figures, but that's another reason again to get ourselves to Level 50. He also manages to get into 4 figures damage, so I suspect he's just been unlucky with being on the cusp.
We're starting to pick up 5 figures of EXP per battle now, which is rapidly levelling us, but also puts into contrast the 1 gil and 2000 EXP we received from Lich and Marilith. Balance feels like a strange thing at places in this game. Maybe a bit crude, but it seems to just about work.
As suspected though, this area is more about finding your way through and putting up with the enemies rather than anything to find or do.
At the southwest staircase there's a blue orb, so it looks like Kraken awaits us.
I heal up, and after the Marilith fight, I'm curious to see if last night's sleepy strategy will just work as a pattern for the Fiends - I have an abundance of Ethers still, so I decide to set up my party with Rukus and Kaili attacking, Clair casting Healaga, and Glitz casting Flare on repeat.
As suspected, we make light work of him, Clair sometimes redundantly healing after Kraken tries to Ink us. Otherwise his magic and physical attacks pale in comparison to the 250-ish HP recovered for all party members for each turn. It's a little hard to gauge with auto-battle, but I think we were again on the third or fourth round when he dropped.
We end up defeating Kraken with all members on full HP though, which is crazy really for what I'm guessing is the third-last boss of the game.
Rukus was really pulling his weight this time too, his attacks doing over 500 damage, meaning between the three of us, we were probably doing over 1000 damage a term - Glitz with about 430 and Kaili trying their best.
All clear though, so down we go again.