With little idea of where to go, we start revisiting the Final Fantasy Five areas we’ve been to before. We fly to the Ancient Library, but nothing happens. Cid and Mid aren’t even there this time. We check Karnak. Nothing. On a whim, we return to the ruins south of the desert. Aha! As we approach, the entire pile of ruins lifts off the ground and goes floating up into the sky. Wow! What ruins! This must be significant!

My guess is that it’s time to find Cid and Mid again. We start scouring the globe for them, but they are nowhere to be found. We try a half dozen different places: Chocobo Forest, Crescent, Castle Tycoon, and others. Still nothing. On a whim we fly over the small metallic patch in the ocen, where we rose up from the ocean’s depths. Bingo! We descent through the water and there are Cid and Mid again!

They also knew of the flying ruins, and tell us that we can take our Flying Ship up even higher to go after theirs. But there is always a catch, and sure enough, to go that high we’ll need some adamantite, a rare metal. Fortunately, Galuf remembers that there was some of the stuff in the meteor he traveled in to get here!

With little time wasted, we fly off to the meteor, and gain access to the core by using a switch hidden on the outside. Once inside, it’s a simple matter of walking up to the adamantite, picking it up, and leaving.

I just know things aren’t going to be this easy, and sure enough, a giant turtle attacks us before we can exit the meteor. The creature is fairly tough, but our healing powers are too strong, and within a couple of quick minutes we have downed the creature.

Adamantite now safely in hand, we fly back to Cid and Mid in Underwater World.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

Once again, we find ourselves with little guidance regarding where to go to find the surprisingly elusive Earth Crystal in Final Fantasy Five. The nice thing at the moment, however, is that we have a powerful Flying Ship that can take us nearly anwhere—including over mountains. We wander the world for a while, looking for places that we have yet to visit. Our map indicates some sort of structure in the northwest corner of the world, so we head there first.

Once there, we discover Easterly, a small town of seeming insignificance. We talk to some of the locals, but there no clues regarding the Earth Crystal. We do have a moment of light humor, however. As we wander through a small field, a sheep kicks our entire party over a small fence. That’s some sheep to get all four of us in one shot! And some pretty wimpy party members, in that we apparently can kill huge monsters but can’t climb over a small fence.

But anyway, once on the other side, a local teaches us a new song as a reward for getting kicked in the butt. I’m guessing this song must be of use to a bard, but we don’t have one at the moment.

The locals also mention some sort of creature living to the east, and for lack of a better alternative, we decide to check it out. We leave town and head into the woods to the east of town, but a strong pack of what look like raptors attack us. We battle them for about five minutes, but it’s a losing cause: they are too strong. We run away, and scamper back into town.

And with that, I think I’ve seen about everywhere in the world that I can get to at the moment. Apparently, we’ve got to revisit locations to get things going again. We’ll start searching for that place tomorrow.

Status: Lost Again, Maybe?

When we stopped yesterday, we had tracked the King of Tycoon to a pile of ruins south of the Desert of Shifting Sands. Today, we entered the ruins and began our search for the King. It didn’t take long to spot him, but as soon as we did, the guy ran away and hid. What kind of dad is this? We spend the next few minutes chasing the guy around the ruins, until finally we corner him in the remains of a building’s foundation. But just as we are ready to confront the guy, our party drops through a trap door in the ground. Whaaaa!

We land in some sort of an underground facility, with lots of cables and wires going all over the place. We wander around a bit, and end up stepping on some sort of a teleporter that whisks us away to a similar underground facility near the town of Crescent. Here we are surprised to find Cid’s Fire Ship, and another ship that looks to be powered by propellers. Even more surprsingly, as we stand there and gawk at the propeller ship, who should walk up but Cid and Mid themselves! Apparently they flew to Crescent to take the Chocobo back, then fell through a trap door when we pressed a switch at some point underground.

Cid gets all excited about the Flying Ship, and proceeds to set it up so that we can fly around in it. Once done, we fly up through a door in the ocean and are airborne again. But I should have known that nothing comes without a price in Final Fantasy games, and sure enough, within seconds a massive crustacean that was stuck to the bottom of the ship attacks us. Fortunately, the battle is straightforward and well within our abilities. We demolish the creature with little fanfare. The ship is ours!

We leave Cid and Mid in Crescent to keep looking for clues about the Earth Crystal, while we are expected to fly around and find it. Humm. Once again I wonder: Fly around where? I’ll pick up the adventure at this point tomorrow.

Status: Wandering Again
Photo Credit: crystalt728

We land the Black Chocobo in the woods outside the Ancient Library and make our way inside the building. Cid and Mid greet us immediately and tell us the the King of Tycoon—Lenna and Faris’ father—was seen heading through the area recently. Supposedly he headed west, to that desert of shifting sands. Everyone decides to give chase, so we pack up and once again head through the narrow valley that leads to the desert. Once again, we enter the desert and can’t find a way out, but this time our fate is different.

Cid and Mid show up and tell us that they can summon a giant sandworm. If we can kill it, we can use it as a land bridge to get across the desert. Sounds like a good plan to us! Within seconds, we find ourselves in a battle to the death against a shifting, tricky enemy that keeps popping up out of different holes in the desert. We miss quite a few times, but in the end the battle is fairly straightforward. The creature drops to the ground and we are victorious! After telling Cid and Mid to take care of our Black Chocobo while we are gone, we use the creature’s corpse as a bridge and make our way across the desert.

Once on the other side, we come upon some ruins. I’m guessing that we’ll find the King—and perhaps other suprises—in here. We’ll continue tomorrow.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

Finally! A Final Fantasy Five breakthrough! We set sail from the Ancient Library and head southeast, to Crescent Moon Island. On the way, we notice a small island that looks to house another library, but the library is nestled inside a ring of uncrossable mountains, so we assume that structure will come into play at a later date. We continue on. After a while, we pull our ship to the edge of the bay of Crescent Moon Island, and hike into the small town that lies there.

As we enter the town, a old guy in a purple gown runs up to us and warns us of an impending earthquake. Sure enough, seconds later the earth rumbles and rattles, and we go tumbling over. Even worse, the earthquake causes a whirlpool at the mouth of the bay that sucks Cid’s Fire Ship into the depths! Oh, no, Mr. Wizard! We’ve lost our ship.

At this point, I was seriously wondering if I had borked my game for good: there didn’t appear to be any way to get off the island, there was precious little space to explore, and the inhabitants weren’t saying much of anything useful. But our worries were for naught. One inhabitant mentioned spotting an elusive Black Chocobo in the forest to the south of town! Aha! Black Chocobos! I remember them. They can fly!

We immediately head to the forest, where we quickly catch the tricky creature. Even better: it turns out he had some crystal shards stuck in his feathers, which fall out when Bartz tries to ride him. We gather up the shards and immediately open up two new job paths. Nice! We eventually get control of the Chocobo, and go sailing out of Crescent.

But to where? I have no idea where to go again. I try flying back to the small island I spotted on the way to Crescent, but there is no way to land the Chocobo there. I then take a whirlwind tour of the world, and notice what looks like some ruins to the south of that desert with all the shifting sands, but there is no way to land there either.

Stymied again, I head back to the Ancient Library to see if Cid and Mid can provide more information. We probably should tell the guy we lost his ship, too.

Status: Perhaps Rolling Again.