Final Fantasy XII - Escaping the Stilshrine of Mariam

Good evening, and welcome to this blog version of a Let's Play for Final Fantasy XII. Joe and I get together about once a week to play our favorite games, usually including a game from the Final Fantasy series, since they have at least a few games. The game of choice lately has been FFXII.

Tonight is our 12th session for Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age for the PlayStation 4. Last week we explored an optional area called The Feywood. We also finished up a few monster hunts that we had on our list for a while. Tonight we are going to continue the main story, and navigate the maze at Stilshrine of Miriam. I took a fair bit of pictures from our gaming session, and here's a collage of them I put together.

Now before you get too excited about exploring a new area, we do have to make a pitstop at Paramin Rift. See, there's this pesky little monster there called the Trickster that killed us not once, but twice! It's time for it to go down!

Knowing that we were completely slaughtered twice, we are only giving this another attempt due to recent circumstances. We have gained a few levels, acquired a few new pieces of equipment, but the biggest gain is the fact that we have the Bubble spell now. This nifty spell will double the max HP of a character. This is HUGE for many of the tougher fights in this game.

With our gambits tricked out with Bubble and sleep tactics, we charge in with our fingers crossed. Third time is the charm?

The sleep trick didn't work like we expect (he is Immune to sleep by the time we try at 30% HP), so we are forced to try and finish him with Quickenings when he gets to about 10% life. This fails as well, and does very little damage! Okay, we are hurting now... we are barely staying alive. We do stay alive longer than our previous attempts, but eventually, we lose to the tide of damage that Trickster is dealing out.

Bringing in our second party, we kick off Quickenings again, but Trickster still denies us a victory, attacking relentlessly. We have just about given up all hope, expecting to see our third Game Over screen any moment. Against all odds, we started landing damage on Trickster again. Realizing that his Pailing status has finally worn off, we scramble to do as much damage as possible before we ourselves are wiped out. We have never survived long enough for his Pailing status to where off; this status blocks almost all damage types.

Just when we're on our last leg, Tricksters hits the ground dead, and we have our victory! The trophy message should say "You Finally Did it! Trophy WELL Earned!".

In a celebratory mood, we take a short break to make some tasty snacks; fried jalapeno chips and queso!

With plenty of snacks and drinks, we head to town to sell off loot and stock up on supplies. We are disappointed that Montblanc didn't seem to care how hard we worked to save Paramina Rift from Trickster, so we had to be satisfied with the knowledge that one less dangerous animal is roaming free in Ivalice.

Turning back to our main task at hand tonight, we head south to the Stilshrine of Mariam. We go through the two large double doors, and begin to see what is in store for us tonight. Entering the first room, we walk up to the balcony ahead and see the top of a large statue, several stories tall. There are two different pathways to take along the sides of the room, but we soon realize that we can't go anywhere. Both doors are locked and there doesn't seem to be any way to open them here. 

Backtracking our steps, we notice an inconspicuous little pedestal in the center the main foyer. We try reading the inscription on the Pedestal of the Dawn and also try touching it, but the doors are still locked. Then we realized that we have a Dawn Shard accessory in our inventory, so we equip it on Vaan and try again. Voila, which french for "I just found out" (a quote from my new favorite movie).

Now instead of unlocking the doors, we find ourselves teleported to another part of the shrine. Now we are running into some very different enemies, statues that are stepping off their foundation to engage us, and "faces" jumping out of the wall. 

We even run into a green crystal that attacks us when we try to save our game. Luckily it leaves behind a blue save crystal after we defeat it.

Checking in with our maps, we see there is a hidden wall on the south side of the room. We clear out all the enemies in the zone, and then the secret wall just fades away as we get closer. Some more new enemies await; Oilers. Turns out these guys respawn over and over in the hallway, so we build u a chain upwards of 65 to farm up some items and EXP / LP. 


Before continuing, we are warned to equip Steel Pauldrens or float on the team, so set up Penelo only with the Pauldrens. Turns out there are confuse and beserk traps just on the other side of the door. OUCH! Thank goodness we have Penelo to toss out Esuna right away. It doesn't cure Beserk though, and since our leader is Beserked, we just speed up the game and wait for the status to wear off.

This little room has a single one time chest with a Shell Shield guarded by about 5 Oilings. Two or three of these guys were pretty easy in the previous hallway, but 5 at a time got a bit tricky. 

Returning back from our hidden passage, we run into the Neglamuur. Nice little find, this level 31 rare monster starts spawning undead monsters one after the other. Seems like a great place to level up for a while. Maybe we will have to come back and try it out. For now though, we'll keep going.

Fighting our way through the south hallway, we run into the bottom of a massive sword from the statue we saw at the beginning of the shrine. The sword is so big it's blocking our pathway forwards. Upon touching it though, a room back up north was opened. This provided us access to another Pedestal of the Dawn that teleported us back to the first pedestal. The difference is that this time one of the doors are actually unlocked now. Wahoo! This is quite a maze, but we are making progress.

Moving ahead we come to a medium-sized statue that can be triggered to rotate. The eyes light up when facing east (the center of the shrine). Illuminated eyes gotta be better than blank ones, so we'll go with that. Almost all of the chests in the next room have new equipment for us. Zoning and in and out several times, we farm these chests until we get at least one of each piece of equipment. New ninja sword, ax, staff, bow; it's Christmas!

Among these chests is one more of those statues that turn. Seeing the pattern at this point, we turn the statue to face the center of the shrine, this time north. As expected, the eyes light up. Spooky.


Nearing the last rooms on the east side of the shrine, we run right into an unexpected boss fight; Vinuskar. This level 27 boss is not difficult, as our party is close to 40 by now. We had more challenge fighting the 5 Oilings at the same time. He does have a neat trick though; he activates a magnetic field that slows down all the party members that have heavy gear. On top of that, he likes casting slow on the party. We toss Haste into our Gambits and recover easily.

After the "mini" boss Vinuskar, we find the third and final rotating statue and point it towards the center as well (west). "The colossus has undergone some change..." we are told, but we're not quite sure what it means. 

Close by is another Sage's Ring. This is the awesome ring that helped restore all Penelo's MP last session Now we have two.

Upon exiting the east rooms to head back towards the main foyer, we witness a cutscene that explains exactly what the change the colossus underwent; It raised its huge sword so we can explore into that deep southwest passage.

On the home stretch now, we head to the hallway and underneath that gigantic sword. We are meet full on by the esper Mateus The Corrupt. Mateus surrounds himself with a flurry of ice elementals, so we take those out first. Mateus himself puts up a solid fight but falls like all the rest that come against us.

Finally, at the end of the shrine, we come to find the goal of this trek, the Sword of Kings, rumored to be able to destroy Nethicite. Not satisfied with just the rumor, Ashe turns the sword on the Dawn Shard to destroy its power. Ashe's short-lived husband (the King of Rabanastre) shows up as a kind of ghost for a few seconds, then the Dawn Shard goes quiet.

Exiting the shrine into the daylight, the Imperial Fleet passes over as they leave Mt Bur-Omisace. That doesn't sound good, and as we come into town there is smoke spiraling up from town, and people are dirty and crying. "I see dead people".

The locals tell us "Imperial forces have desecrated the holy mountain". Before running to the temple and getting caught up in all the excitement, we decide to shop at the mall! We stop by the shops and find a nice magic upgrade, Bio. This will surely come in handy. Checking in on the Gran Kiltias Anastasis, he is definitely looking dead. We are jumped by Judge Bergan, who is acting pretty strange. He is hopped up on some Nethicite and pulls out not just one huge blade, but two!

Bergan is tossing out dark, water, and aero spells. We make good progress on his health, but as his life gets lower, his attack speed increases. Now down to about 30% left, we initiate a Quickening to take out the rest of his life. 

Al-Cid shows up and tells us that Larsa was taken away. He implores lady Ashe to come with him, but Ashe is having none of it. Her and Balthier set their destination to the Draklor Laboratory instead. This is where the Empire does its weapon research on Nethicite. This will take quite a bit of traveling as a guided map shows us going through the Mosphoran Highwaste followed by Salikawood and then the Phon Coast.

Finishing this fateful leg of the FFXII story arc, we head back to Rabanastre to sell loot and check in with the shops. We are quite surprised to find that there are 6 new hunts available!!! That will sure keep us busy for our next session. Speaking to Montblanc, he likes our work with Neglamuur so much that he gives us a hunt as well.

Thanks for reading this session. Take care, and Happy Game Nights!