We return to the Moogle grove and jump in the small hole where the creature disappeared. We quickly end up in an underground passage filled with fast flowing waterways. Random creatures attack us as we swiftly flow downstream. This is a fun, brisk area, but shortly we find ourselves at the end. There we run into a massive Tyranosaurus and the Moogle that we first saw way back in the grove. The Moogle flees through an exit, but the Tyranosaurus decides that we’d make a tasty lunch.

We pour on the damage to the beast, but he just won’t go down. Fortunately, we’re easily able to maintain health in our party easily. The fight drags on and on, but finally Galuf lands a Bios spell does more than 1,000 damage. Aha! Three rounds later the fight ends with the mighty dinosaur crashing to the ground. Victory.

We quickly exit the underground area and follow the Moogle to a large forest to the northeast. There run into an entire village of the Moogles. Here we pick up some treasure. We also dress up as a Moogle to trick a guard and get an Elven Cape.

Appranently Moogles can communicate telepathically, as one of the Moogles in the forest lets Krile’s pet Moogle know where we are. This sets her in action, and before we know it, we’re on the back of a huge dragon heading back to the castle where Galuf and Krile live.

Status: Flying High

Way back on Bartz’s World, when we first entered the desert south of Karnak, we got ambushed by a ferocious creature that wiped us out before we knew what hit us. Tonight, we nearly had the same thing happen again.

We headed east from the Sealed Castle. We were looking for some sort of clue as to how to advance the story, but there doesn’t seem to be any structures left on our world map that we can reach on this continent. Finally, we come to a small forest. Inside, we come upon a Moogle, a small creature that reminds me of a jigglypuff. The creature flees, jumps into a hole in the ground, and disappears. Humm. Rather than follow him at the moment, I decide to continue a bit more past the forest.

Past the forest is a large desert, which we enter. As on Bartz’s World, we are immediately attacked by a vicious creature—a huge, stubbornly durable sandworm that casts a wind spell that reduces everyone in our party to just s few hitpoints. Eek!

I figure we’re dead yet again, but I decide to go down with a fight. I frantically revive our fallen party members when they go down, and we do our best to damage our tough foe. Almost every round we lose someone to a hit from the beast. We can’t build up any sort of hit point base, as the worm keeps casting that tornado spell that takes nearly all of our hit points away. I set Lenna to casting “Revive” spells as fast as she can, but no matter how much damage we put on the sandworm, the thing just won’t fall. After a bit, Lenna runs out of magic points, and we start burning through our valuable Phoenix Downs to revive our dead.

Finally, however, just as I’m wondering whether we can ever win, the creature falls to a nasty hit from Bartz! Whew! We hang on and win!

Thinking that further exploration in this desert might be a bad idea, we turn back to the Moogle Forest and head inside. We’ll jump down that hole and see where that leads tomorrow.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

We efficiently make our way south from Lugor. The fighting is more than manageable. Within a short while, we come upon a large castle in the woods. Thinking this must be the next trigger in the story, we quickly make our way inside and begin to explore the interior.

Let’s just say that things don’t go well. After a little while, we are ambushed by a massive dragon. The thing hits for over 300 hit points each shot, fights fast, and casts some sort of spell that takes over our party members. Our weapons do almost no damage against the thing. Within a couple of quick rounds, I’ve got one member dead and two other members fighting for the dragon. I try to flee, but we can’t escape. A couple of rounds later we’re all dead. We had no chance.

We revert to our last save (fortunately, nearby), and give it one more try. This time we head straight through the castle. We make it through a few rooms and suddenly enter a large room with a dais in the middle and twelve large statues surrounding it. Each statue appears to be tied to a magical weapon of some sort. Other than getting explanations for the weapons when we approach the statues, nothing happens. Even at the dais, nothing happens. Humm.

At this point, I’m convinced this place must come into play later, when my party is stronger and the story has advanced more. We turn around and try to make a bee-line for the exit.

Not to be. The damn dragon jumps us again. Once again, we’re dead in a few short rounds.

I make a mental note to return to this castle later, revert to my last save, and head on past the castle.

Status: Driving On!

If you checked here in the past few hours, you would have seen a post that was a bit out of order…

I’ve got to take a trip later this week, so I played ahead a bit this weekend, and now I’m trying to stack up seven posts so that I’ll have a post every day I’m gone. I screwed up the timing on this (I’m not used to doing this), however, so it came up out of order. I’ll fix today’s post shortly and get the posts back in line.

Sorry about the confusion!

I’ll be gone from Thursday through Tuesday, but hope to have a post go up for each day that I’m gone.

We spend a hour or so wandering the forests south of Lugor and wiping out the various fauna that try to eat us. It doesn’t take long before we’ve been able to afford the main upgrades in the shops of Lugor.

We’ve still got a long way to go to get job improvement, though. I’d like to boost Lenna’s white magic skills, Galuf’s Black Magic skills, and Bartz’s Samurai skills, but it’s slow going here. Most battles only give us one job point, and we need tons of points for most of us to move up in job levels now.

By the end of the hour, our party has made some strong improvements in gear, spells, and potion supplies. We also gain a couple of levels. We now look like this:
Bartz (Level 27): L2 Samurai (Master Knight)
Lenna (Level 27): L5 White Mage (Monk)
Galuf (Level 27: L4 Black Mage (Monk)
Faris (Level 27): L4 Ninja

Status: Onward!