EarthBound high playthrough log part 7

Reading the guide for the Summers/Dalaam section now... it seems that I'm not yet finished the "6th melody" chapter of the game. I stopped at getting the rabbit key. I recall the enemies in the game are getting much harder now, and it expects you to use your teleport ability often in order to stock up on items from all the different shops.
Stopped at page 79 in the guide for now and resume playing

- Dalaam part 2 -

Now at level 51, 42, 42, and 36
Actually the enemies in this Dalaam cave aren't hard at all.. the franklin badge helps a lot, but even without that, the amount of healing capabilities that Ness and Poo have now, and the sheer power that my party has overall, makes these enemies a joke. I explored the whole cave, falling down all the holes...

6th sanctuary boss is quite appropriate... thunder and storm.. two demons interlocked in a yin yang. It was actually kinda tough.. but I managed to beat it in one try with everyone alive, by using good strategy. PSI Freeze is legit.

Sanctuary 6 is on a cloud, hanging on the edge of the floating island...
Ness had a short vision of seeing his mother when she was young. Ness's sound stone recorded the melody of the Pink Cloud.

I just intuitively guessed that the next place you're supposed to go from here is across the ocean, from the port town Toto.. an NPC in Summers earlier said:

Are you from Eagleland? If you like adventure, this isn't your kind of place. You should travel across the sea to Scaraba from Toto, the port town.

This one npc in Toto is acting like he's discovered the big revelation that "dinosaurs existed"...

This sprite zoom out is unexpected. I love this sailing music...

The captain gets seasick for a bit.. is surprised that us kids are okay. and then he sees the prince from Dalaam, and realizes we must be serious adventurers...
The kraken attacks the ship the same way a normal enemy sprite would attack you on the field. That boss battle is actually way hard... even though I leveled up a lot in Dalaam... I stayed at the expensive hotel again... Summers really is a tourist trap.. the hotel isn't any better than the cheaper ones.. and the newspaper guy only says "today is the same as yesterday."
Jeff fixed a new weapon, the Double Beam... it's not much of an upgrade at all. Tried the kraken battle again but brought a teddy bear with me this time. It's still really tough. it deals tons of damage to the whole team constantly... the bear didn't even help... I beat it just by sheer force, barely surviving with rolling HP healing tactics.

Captain:

I also helped in battle. I threw my slippers at the beast. maybe you didn't notice.

This next town is hilarious... it reminds me of Gerudo town too.

- Scaraba -

Did you come from Toto? There's a scary monster in the sea. Did you beat him, or did you escaoe? Either way, you are fantastic!

Some guy sitting on a building, under a rope:

I'm doing this as a hobby. Isn't it cool? I recently made a friend. He used to be a dungeon maker. and now he's a dungeon man. would you like to meet him?

...Yes

All righty then, I'll give you the key so that you can enter him. Oh no... I don't have it! I must have lost it somewhere. I'm sorry, I don't worry about small things.

Oh, be careful where you walk. It's filthy. A chubby kid did his business out here somewhere.

There's a bunch of shops selling all kinds of weird items...

Bought a "Snake bag" with a hole in it... it's the same as a snake item except it works many times.
Bought a crystal charm for Paula... and a piggy nose... it lets you search for magic truffles when you wear it.
Stayed at the hotel... the clerk warned me about scorpions...
The Scaraba Papyrus news:

Kraken, the evil sea monster, now gone forever!

Exploring the desert area to the south...
Oh wow, I first-striked a red bird enemy and autokilled it, and it gave me 20k exp.. was that just a lucky find?
Found a hint guy...

After you've made all the necessary preparations, go to the pyramid. In front of the pyramid, as the writing on the hieroglyph told, step on the round stone plates in front of the sphinx, and draw a star. That was really too much info to give out as a hint, wasn't it?

Oh.. so that's what the weird numerical hint in the hieroglyphs was about.

A sphinx is talking to me...

Warriors, enter now. Search for the Hawk eye.

This guardian hieroglyph enemy... they are basically free exp with my current team.. since they are stuck on the wall and can only move directly forward from where they are on the wall, so they can't attack in groups. This area is just a lengthy linear path of staircases and hieroglyph enemies... eventually got the Hawk eye, it lets you see in the dark...

Found an exit to the pyramid that lead to across the water.. now I can go south of Scaraba to the next area.

Suddenly some strange bald person flies down on a tornado...

We finally meet, Prince Poo. The stars foretold that I would meet you here... so now it's time to show you the way of Starstorm... For a while, you must live far away from your friends and live with me.

Poo had to go off on a training mission. My party is now back to 3. Poo and Ness both have teleport, and Paula has long distance telepathy, so it's not like it'll be hard for them to meet up again.

Talked to a random npc here and got a key to the northwest dungeon man tower.

Welcome, you are inside my body.
... Brick Road

lol... a junction with present enemies to the right... a billboard says

My statistics show about 70% of hte people go to the right first.

If you go left instead, there's a phone, an ATM, a hospital... a bench that works just like a hotel...
The billboards in this dungeon man maze are all hilarious. This place is more like a town due to how all the enemies are basically not a threat (same enemies as way back in Fourside), and the billboards are like the NPCs that I'm autistically searching out and talking to all of them so I don't miss anything...
Knocked on a bathroom door...

I wonder why I'm in this rest room right here. Just who ami I? What is life all about?...Oh I'm sorry. Did I make you nervous? I'm not dangerous. Don't worry.

lol the sign at the end of this dead end junction wing:

There is a useful item at the dead-end after you make quite a long walk.

and near a treasure chest at a junction:

Items that are easy to get to are usually disappointing.

opened the chest, it contained $5.

2nd floor the enemies do get a bit tougher, and the maze gets tougher too. I'm not sure if I explored everywhere or not.
There's so many good items here I can't carry them all with Poo not around... this is totally on purpose lol...
3rd floor just has enemy exhibits... they are locked away in another elevation of land so you can't fight them, and the floor itself is very easy to navigate.
Both 2nd and 3rd floor have holes you can't get to yet.

Found Brick Road's head in the wall... it's that same guy with the funky mustache Jeff met in Winters way back at that Threed/Winters section.

Dr. Andonuts finally made me a dungeon man. If you want, I'll come with you guys for a while.

Fell down the return hole, which takes you down through the holes on the 3rd and 2nd floor, back to the beginning... oh wow... that sign at the beginning of the dungeon that said "Keep this sign in mind", that sign was how I knew that I was close to the entrance... it's like the dungeon designer knew that a lot of this dungeon looked the same, so he put that sign there to get you to know where the entrance is.

After you exit the dungeon, the dungeon man joins your party and follows you around... Ah dang.. at first it looked like dungeon man would be a lot of help... but then it turns out you can't take him south to the next area anyway cuz of the trees in the way.

A scary place called Deep Darkness is on the other side of the river.

He says it's impossible to cross this bottomless swamp without a submarine.

Went all the way back through the dungeon man maze to get the submarine from him, used the submarine to go through the giant swamp and arrived at a jungle swamp island called Deep Darkness...

- Deep Darkness -

This place has no map... and you need to use the Hawk Eye you got from the pyramid to see in the darkness...
This first part of the jungle is like a little village with monkey/animal npcs and some humans selling top tier gear and items. There are deep swamp parts that drain your health as you walk through them... The music here is very intimidating...

One of the monkeys tells me that magic truffles can be found in this swamp somewhere if you have the pig mask (that I bought from Scaraba)... this turned out to actually be useful cuz truffles restore your PP.

A monkey recognized that I had the teleport move.. and I taught it to him, and he gave me "Monkey's love", a battle item with an unknown effect.
wtf.. further down in the deep swamp water, I found a character acting as an ATM...
The enemies here are pretty tough... especially the electric eel that seems to ALWAYS hit everyone with thunder... only Ness can reflect it.. not even Paula's PSI Shield helps.
Hell yeah I found a magic truffle... Found another one of those birds that repeat what people say... This one's just talking nonsense

Found a crashed helicopter. I think this is the helicopter Pokey took from Monotoli.. Jeff can't fix it cuz it has no engine.

Woops... lol I accidentally ate the magic truffle when I didn't need to.
Now I'm getting lost.. this swamp isn't too confusing, but the swamp water making you go very slowly makes navigating it feel harder than it is.
At the end of this swamp area is the Belch monster who I met near Saturn Village, who is now renamed Puke. I was doing alright against him... between Ness and Paula's PSI powers, and all of our crazy good items we filled up on.. it looked like we had the battle in the bag... then Poo comes in and uses PSI Starstorm and finishes it off taking all the glory and shit... lol, just like with that robot boss in the Monotoli building... I think it was supposed to be harder than it was. I was too over-prepared cuz of my collecting everything and talking to everyone..

Levels are now 62, 54, 53, 47

- Tenda Village -

Now I'm in a cave village of weird shy blob people... like the cousin of Saturn Village... Found the one Tenda in Tenda Village who's not shy.. he says there's a bunch of scary dinosaurs below here, so they covered up the hole with a rock.. but the only tenda who can move this rock is too shy to talk to...

I can't go down to this scary dinosaur place until I can cure their shyness... I guess this will be where I find the 7th melody...

Another Tenda who is a bit less shy tells me that there's a book to fix shyness... that's all I have to go off of now... guess I gotta think of where that could be and teleport there.
Just then, as soon as I go back outside to Deep Darkness to find a place to teleport, I get a call from Apple Kid... this kid is so based, he always comes through right when I need him the most. Apple Kid says he's at Dr. Andonuts' lab... but Andonuts isn't around.. he's just working on his eraser eraser machine.. just then, I here something going on, Apple Kid seems to be in trouble!
Then I get a call from Orange Kid, says he's just about figured out how to change a boiled egg to a raw egg... and also to tell us that Apple Kid is missing and he was hoping to borrow the book "Overcoming Shyness" from him...

- Winters part 2 -

When I go to visit Winters again, I find out Jeff's friend Tony is also missing...
Woah wtf.. Winters now has higher level enemies roaming around than before... something weird is going on around here...

Of course the cave with the rain puddle sanctuary in it still just has normal wild animal enemies that run away from me...
Got the eraser eraser from Apple Kid's mouse at the lab... that can be used to go into that Stonehenge cave that Jeff had access to way back, but it was always blocked off by an eraser statue...
It's a huge underground cave full of dead ends.. Then you get to a big spooky lab area...

I actually had to use all my PSI caramels to get through cuz of how much healing was required through all this... Finally got to the end of this weird underground lab... see Jeff's friends, a Mr. Saturn, Dr. Andonuts, that Mr. T guy, Apple Kid, and some hippie sealed in tubes...

Also it really sucks that Ness's new bat that I equipped and replaced the old one with, has terrible accuracy.. I may as well not even have a weapon equipped if it's gonna miss this often.

Now after fighting through so many starmans... a Starman Deluxe boss is the only thing standing in my way... it did give me an exit mouse right before this... so if I gotta warp out and try again with full PSI I can.
Yeah just as I thought... I'm no match for this thing without a full stock of PSI...
Obviously I need to prepare better for this fight. I'll go and get a different weapon for Ness, and see if I can find more magic truffles in the swamp and level up a bit...

Ending here for now, at level 65 / 58 / 57 / 52...
Next session will be the 7th melody, and maybe the 8th as well.