We drive back into the Forbidden Land of Eureka. After a while, we find ourselves standing in front of another altar. This one holds a glimmering sword. We reach for it, and are surprised to find that it is the famous Excalibur sword!

A large armored figure, named the General, challenges us for the right to take the sword. With that, the battle begins. We’re going to use the same strategy we used against the Ninja. Devout casts haste, spams heals; everyone else beats the tar out of the enemy.

The General turns out to be much less of an adversary than the Ninja. He only attacks twice per round, and for less damage than the ninja did. After just a handful of easily managed rounds, the General drops to the ground.

Excalibur is ours! Unfortunately…no one can equip it. Oh, well, still makes for a nice collector’s item.

We teleport out, save our game, and get ready to go back in for another sword.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, Level 53

Our strategy for this fight will be simple. Last time, he cast haste on himself, which let him kick our butts before we could heal ourselves. This time, we’ll counter that by having our Devout cast heal on herself. I’m hoping that will allow our devout to spam massive heals on us before the Ninja can attack. Everyone else will hit the ninja as hard as they can. Also, last time I focused on healing the poisoning attacks the ninja put on us. This time I’m going to ignore the poison. It doesn’t do much damage, so it makes more sense to attack.

We have two things going in our favor this battle. The last time, the ninja hit for about 700 points each attack, and he could attack three times. Each of our party members was around 2,000 hip points, which left us in deep trouble if he focused on only one party member with his three attacks. This time, we’re all around 2,400 hit points, which leaves us a fair chance of surviving even if he hits one of us three times.

Second, last time our ninja was Job Level 1, and was still suffering the job change penalties. This time our ninja is Job Level 12 and fully powered.

We fight our way into Eureka, approach the dais, grab the sword, and the fight gets under way…

Our strategy works perfectly. The ninja launches some deadly attacks, but he usually only hits the same character twice in a round. Our Devout heals everyone before the ninja can launch an attack, which leaves us with a full strength party as the round kicks in. Our ninja, dragoon, and summoner pour on the damage.

After about four rounds, the ninja crumbles. Revenge!

With that, we pick up the Masamune sword, give it to our ninja, teleport out, and save the game.

Next, we’ll try for one of those other swords!

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, Level 53

We continue pounding away on the enemies in the Ancient’s Maze. We are getting quite strong in here. Our ninja is advancing job levels quickly. He now can hit for between 4,000 and 6,000 hit points. With our dragoon hitting for similar damage, we can consistently take down opponents in the Maze in the first round, often before they can hit us.

After a while, I decide to explore some more in the Forbidden Land of Eureka. I quickly arrive at the Masamune pedestal, but pass by it to see what lies farther on. We quickly come up three more similar daises. Two have what appear to be swords. The third has some green lumpy thing, but I can’t tell exactly whether it’s a weapon or some kind of armor.

After the third of these daises, the dungeon appears to have a teleporter for exiting.

So it looks like we’ve got four boss battles in front of us if we wish to get all the goodies in the Forbidden Land of Eureka.

By the end of this run, we have driven our party to Level 53. I think it’s time for another shot at the Ninja. We’ll take him on tomorrow.

Status: Grinding, Level 53

Not much exciting to report here. We drive back into the Ancient’s Maze and push our levels up to 51 with some old fashioned grinding.

I’m starting to like the ninja job class. It’s nice and quick, with some good offensive punch. Our party has sorely lacked power since I moved from a Knight to an Onion Knight, and from a Geomancer to a Summoner.

I’m even a bit tempted to switch our Summoner back to a Geomancer to see if that might give us some more power against the Ninja guarding the Masamune sword.

Status: Grinding, Level 51

I’ve decided to turn on the automatic comment approval feature of the blog. Up to now, I’ve had comments set for me to manually approve all of them before they appear in the blog. This was designed to help control spam comments.

Although we get spammed, the filters I have in place now seem to pick up all of the junk nearly flawlessy. By turning off the comment approval feature, visitors can now post and see comments right away without having to wait for me to approve them.