We make a quick push through the Ancient’s Maze, enter the Crystal Tower, and begin our ascent. The fighting is easier now, and we are able to conserve our magic spells. Most enemies fall in the first round, without getting off an attack. Our ninja is deadly, and our relatively weak Black Knight is now hitting for about 5,000 points each round as well.

Towards the top (at least I think it’s the top), dragons once more attack. This time we hold our ground and topple them rather efficiently. All in all, we take out three dragons with little damage. We are stronger.

We end up in a large room that has some dragon statues and a large mirror in the middle. This feels ominous. We’ll check out the mirror tomorrow.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, Level 62

After a short bit of powerleveling to push us to Level 61, we fight our way to the top of the Crystal Tower again. Things are going very well, but suddenly our fortunes shift again: Dragon Ambush! This time it’s a Yellow Dragon! This bites. The dragon rips through us in its free attack, and has us in out of position for round two.

In desperation, I try to run…and succeed!

Wonderful! Surviving is such a nice thing. At this point, I’m fairly low on potions and spells from the past few days’ adventuring. I teleport out, run through the Ancient’s Maze, resupply with potions, and rest to bring us to full strength.

It’s time. Tomorrow, I’m going to drive for the top of the Crystal Tower. We can make it, dragons be damned.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, Level 62

At some point in the end game of Final Fantasy 3 DS, you will likely want to grind a few levels. In the lower levels of the Crystal Tower there is a perfect place to do this. Right after you enter the Crystal Tower, creatures that look like purple walruses, called Blucks, will occasionally attack you. They will either attack for low physical damage or summon purple ghost-things, called Kum Kum, which are easy as cake to defeat. If you want to get a ton of experience quickly, let two of the Blucks survive. Generally, one of them will summon a Kum Kum in any given round. The next round, attack the Kum Kum with enough power to take it out, but have everyone else block so that you don’t attack the Blucks.

You will kill the Kum Kum, leaving the two Blucks again. Chances are they will have summoned another Kum Kum to replace the one you just killed. Rinse and repeat.

With this method, I timed myself, and could kill three Kum Kum in a minute, on average. This gives 6,600 experience points per minute. In ten minutes, you can rack up over 65,000 experience points.

There are three tricks to making this work effectively. First, you need someone to cast an occasional heal. I used our Devout when our HP fell to below 2,000 hit points. Second, you don’t want to give the Kum Kum a chance to attack, so attacking him with someone fast and powerful enough to take him out first in every round is key. Our ninja is the perfect choice for this, as he hits the Kum Kum for 9,999 hit points every time, and always gets off his attack before the Kum Kum can do anything. Third, this tactic works better if you leave two Bluck alive each round. You can do it with only one Bluck alive, but they only summon Kum Kum about half the time, so you end up waiting for a summoning quite often if there is only one Bluck alive. With two alive, you will have a Kum Kum each round 75% of the time.

Using this last night, we powered up to Level 60 in about 40 minutes. Revenge for that damn red dragon catastrophe.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, Level 60

Disappointed to lose that hour of fighting, we head back into the left side of the Crystal Tower, determined to exact revenge. I think the top part of the dungeon might be a bit tricky for me, so I’m going to grind through a level or two before I head back up.

With that in mind, we set to work against the enemies in the lower levels of the Crystal Tower. About 30 minutes into this, I stumble onto an idea for power leveling that works perfectly, and our leveling pace accelerates. I’ll explain this a bit more tomorrow.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, Level 57

We keep fighting our way up towards the top of the Crystal Tower. In many ways this feels culminating, as if we heading toward the climax of the story. Resistance continues to be heavy. We go up what must be another half dozen levels, when we finally reach what appears to be a top of the tower. We check either side and get ready to go through what may be a final door. Just before we can do so, a red dragon attacks us.

Oh, crap. Our lightly armored ninja drops almost immediately. Our Dragoon takes a heavy hit. We all get blasted with a spell. Stupidly, I forget that our Devout has an instant revival/full-heal spell. Instead of casting that, I use a Raise spell, which brings our ninja back with just a few hundred hit points. We immediately all get hammered with more damage, which of course takes our ninja down again. We’re putting some damage on the dragon, but will it be enough?

Then our dragoon falls. I get everyone back up by the end of a round, but we are all below 500 hit points. I set up our Devout to cast a powerful heal for everyone in the party, but the dragon attacks us first and wipes us out.

What a dummy I was. I panicked.

Status: Death by Red Dragon, Was Level 58, now Level 56