Final Fantasy XII - Tracking Down the Draklor Laboratory
Good evening, and welcome to this blog version of a Let's Play for Final Fantasy XII. Joe and I get together a few times a month to play our favorite games, usually including a game from the Final Fantasy series. The game of choice lately has been Final Fantasy XII (FFXII).
Last game session we explored the Stillshrine of Mariam. It was a fun dungeon with secret rooms, puzzles, and fun battles. We finished up the night with 6 new Hunts. Joe and I agree right away that we are going to kick off tonight sessions by looking into a few of these Hunts.
Hunts
In FFXII there are special quests called Hunts. These are typically picked up at either the Notice Boards posted in most restaurants/bars or from the leader of the Clan Hall, Montblanc. A Hunt is what it sounds like, a quest to hunt down a monster and kill it.
The process is:
There Hunts come in different ranks, I, II, III, IV, I, VI, VII, and VIII. As you progress through the game, harder Hunts will become available from the Notice Board and Montblanc.
|
The first two we look at are "The Mine Flayer" and "A Chase through the Woods".
A Chase Through the Woods
Hunt #14 - A Chase Through the Woods - This is a level 31 hunt for Vorpal Bunny.We speak to the petitioner Nera in Eruypt Village, and she advises us that a black dreamhare is running (or jumping) loose in the Golmore Jungle. We head off to the Golmore Jungle to find this bunny with a funny name. We come upon it's spawn location, it shows up just as we had hoped, but before we can even get in more than one hit it runs off. This little bunny leads us on a goose chase all over Golmore Jungle. As we chase it, we gather up quite the entourage of enemies trying to kill us!
We get one or two hits on the Vorpal Bunny each time we catch up to it before it runs off again. This drags out the fight for a while as we slowly whittle away at it's HP. Sometimes our party ends up targetting one of the many adds we have at this point. Finally, we manage to get in a few more good hits on the bunny, and it begins looking pretty shabby. One more time we think as we follow it again, nearly losing sight of it around several corners. At last we catch up to it again, and put the final arrow into its tiny little rear; Vorpal Bunny has been Vanquished.
Our rewards for this endeavor are:
- 2000 gil
- Lightning Arrows (an upgrade for us)
- Gillie Boots
- Rabbit's Tail
The Mine Flayer
Hunt #15 - The Mine Flayer - This is a level 35 hunt for Mindflayer.This hunt is kicked off in Jahara, by speaking to Warrior Guromu. There is a Mindflyer that is drawn to magick users in Henne Mines and asks us to take care of it. We find where it is supposed to spawn fairly quickly; heading outside of Jahara to grab the Chocobo, then sprinting through the secret passage in southwest Ozmone Plain into Henne Mines. From there, you just follow the wall on your right till the dead end. The issue for us is that the Mindflayer didn't spawn. After looking into the quest requirements online, the party has to be all close to full MP (>= 90% avg). This was not mentioned in the official guide, or even the first two online resources I used. It does make sense based on the quest hints: ".. attracted to magic users". To remedy this we pop a few Ethers, zone into Ozmone Plain and back to Henne Mines, and try again. Sure enough, this time he popped, and then we killerized him!
Our rewards for this endeavor are:
- 2200 gil
- Carmagnole (not sure what this is for)
Zeromus Sucks
With the first two hunts out of the way, we look into the game guide and see that we missed an item from Mt. Bur-Omisace: Stone of the Condemner. You pick this up from the Acolyte, and it unlocks a room that the Esper Zeromus resides in. Without even looking at his level or any battle recommendations, we strike out to engage him.
Right away we find that Zeromus blocks all magic use when in battle with him. In addition, he continues to summon undead enemies to keep us occupied. With the use of several Quickenings, we are able to take his like down to almost half. In one Quickening we actually chain 13 hits!!! Regardless of this progress, with a limited supply of Hi-Potions, we are just not able to keep the party healed long enough to do much additional damage to Zeromus. Seeing no success possible, we load back to the title screen and load up our save just before entering the Stillshrine of Mariam for Zermomus, and re-direct our attention on continuing the story. There is actually quite a bit of exploring to do along the way.
Nalbina Fortress
After the previous story element where the seer Gran Kiltias at Mt. Bur-Oisace was killed, Ashe convinced the rest of the party to head towards the Draklor Laboratory in Archades. This will take more traveling than we have previously done between story elements. To get to Archades we need to travel through Dalmasca Eastersand, Nalbina Fortress & Town, Mosphoran Highwaste, The Salikawood, and The Phone Coast. All of these places are new or mostly new for us so we will be checking for any chests that we need to farm, and any rare monsters in those areas.
We didn't see any upgrades from the armor and weapon vendors in Nalbina Fortress, so without staying long, we move on to the Mosphoran Highwaste.
Mosphoran Highwaste
What is interesting about the Mosphoran Highwaste is all the extra areas that you can't access yet. There are Shrines all other the place the supposedly allow access to these extra areas. As it was getting late at night and we were sleepy, we didn't fully research this. I think we will circle back and work on this during the next session.
We did manage to find a Rare Game in the Mosphoran Highwaste, the Wary Wolf. Our guide advised that there is a 7% chance to spawn as you kill the Worgens in the area, but we ran into him during our first time in.
In addition to this, we also found the monster for the hunt Trouble in the Hills.
Hunt #17 - Trouble in the Hills - This is a level 33 hunt for Atomos.
Apparently, this huge monster is disrupting trade in the area. Simple task for us; kill it and reap the rewards.
Our rewards for this endeavor are:
- 1800 gil
- Gaia Rod
- Platinum Shield
After this hunt, we progressed to the Salikawood.
The Salikawood
At this point, I don't remember much as it was getting close to 3am, and I stopped taking notes. We only made it one screen into the save crystal, and then closed out the PS4 for the night.
Thanks for reading this session. Take care and Happy Game Nights!
Comments
Post a Comment