EarthBound high playthrough log part 8

Reading the Scaraba/Deep Darkness part of the guide now... lol I really like how the first section introducing Scaraba highlights all of the things Ness's party does there in the form of newspaper headlines...

Some thieves raided the pyramid and stole the rare and mysterious Hawk Eye.. A group of traveler were seen running through the desert at extremely high speed, before vanishing... a man-shaped tower came to life and was seen heading south...

The guide suggests a snake bag from Scaraba is useful, but I never found it to be that useful at all. it just does weak damage.. The Deep Darkness introduction page has some minor spoilers on what's happening behind the scenes during this part of the game... The map of this place shows where all the hidden truffles are... I decided to walk back through Deep Darkness using the guide and stocked up on truffles and leveled up a bit... this place becomes so easy once Poo is back on your team.

Bought the Combat Yo-Yo for Ness here to replace the terrible inaccurate bat he had before...
lol oh yeah, I never used that "Monkey's love" item yet, should try it out...

The Stonehenge Cave was now ridiculously easy compared to the first time I tried it. of course having a decent weapon on Ness helped a lot... it turns out I didn't even need all those magic truffles and bottle rockets I saved up. Even the Starman DX was a piece of cake... I guess those few extra levels helped a lot, or I was just playing badly last time. I noticed how if you stand still when the starman enemies warp over to where you are, you'll likely get a first-attack on them. also it's really easy to take advantage of the invisibility frames to get first attacks on enemies that would normally be hard to sneak up on.
By the time I got to the end of this my levels were at 70 / 63 / 62 / 58

Apple Kid says he returned the "Overcoming Shyness" book to the Onett library... Andonuts says he's working on some weapon to help fight the aliens... I can use an exit mouse to warp out, but out of curiosity I walked back instead... and the entire underground lab is now empty. all the aliens and robots are gone...
The mouse back at Andonut's lab says he's no longer needed here, so he's headed back to Saturn Village.

The guide says that the Starman Supers you encounter at the Stonehenge cave has a small chance of dropping the Sword of Kings, the only weapon that Poo can equip.. it suggests fighting them over and over to level up until you've found it. I never found the thing... oh well, either I'll find more Starman Supers later or I'll beat the game without it.

Obviously I know what to do next, but I went to the hint guy just for laughs...

Well, usually you find books at the library. One who goes to the fishmonger and expects to find books is likely to get very embarrassed indeed.

Library clerk:

Hi! It's not necessary to return the map now. Come back in the year 2001 to return it.

lol I bet the devs working on the unreleased Earthbound 64 were hoping to get the game out by 2001 in order to call back to this.
I noticed some of the Onett NPCs have different dialog now.

hmm... This masked kid talking about the "Overcoming Shyness" book... I don't recall but was he talking about this book at the beginning of the game too?
After you get the book, now this kid is talking like he's practicing what he learned in the shyness book...

I'd love to sit down and chat with you someday. I'll talk about my adventure, and you can tell me about your mistakes.

Went back to Ness's house to store some things with Tracy for free.

Oh yeah, I haven't tried using this "Bag of Dragonite" item yet...
Huh... I thought Pokey's house would be totally empty, but it turns out Picky is still there in his room...

Just realized I never did talk to the NPCs in Threed again after the zombie stuff was solved.

Hey, do you remember me? I had to run all over to escape the zombies. Now I can't remember where my house is... I told you this before, remember? Huh? I never saw you before? I guess I can't remember anything right.

Hey this is a weird/cool piece of lore and meta humor... I'm not sure if I remember this kid or not lol
Also yeah, I remember now where Jeff went to rescue Ness and Paula... it was underneath Threed's smaller graveyard, not in the Stonehenge cave like I thought. Stonehenge cave was always blocked by an eraser statue.

Wow I hadn't realized how all the earlier danger zone areas that used to be flooded with alien enemies, are now totally safe zones... I walked from Threed to Saturn Village without encountering a single enemy... and the normal wild animal/weird people enemies are still there but they no longer try to fight you... so like the game knows that Deep Darkness and Winters/Stonehenge are the only areas with enemies that are actually still somewhat of a threat to you at your current level, so it doesn't bother making you refight any enemies weaker than that unless you want to. you can easily re-explore the earlier areas without fighting any enemies if you wanted to.

Okay... there's no excuses here... I have some inventory space after getting rid of stuff, and like infinite money... and there's no reason not to stock up on a bunch of horn of life... Trying to teleport from inside Saturn Village is a decent fun little challenge... I don't think there was enough room to do circles with the control stick (or maybe there was and I'm just bad at it idk), but I did it in like 5 tries after finding just barely enough of a runway with a couple precise 90 degree turns...
k I'm done revisiting everything that I think has new dialog...

- Tenda Village part 2 -

Suddenly a voice calls out to me from out of nowhere... I think it's Jeff's friend again... he to confirm my (the player's) name.. saying I can change it now if I want...

The leader of the Tenda tribe read "Overcoming Shyness" to everyone... I exchanged the book for a Tendakraut.. suddenly the photo guy comes, now that the Tendas have lost their shyness... Awesome, now I have access to such great dialog as...

Welcome. To this far. Take a rest. Long journey, must have been.

In the hole, inn we have. Free. Stay? Okay. You Stay.

lol I like how everybody who reads this "Overcoming shyness" book sounds so rigid in their speech... they're like these weird little green cavemen people or something...
they're kinda like a less wacky/scrambled up version of the Mr Saturns...

And just like the Mr Saturns... one of the Tendas shares a moment of clarity with you while serving tea... talks about how you might've realized how much your power has grown... how almost nothing in the world opposed you now... Giygas is frightened of you and has been trying to stop your journey... and reminds you about Pokey asking "what happened to him, anyway?", in case you haven't caught on yet that he's the bad guy.

This shopkeeper is like "I like the horn of life. Give me the horn of life, I give you something."
I see... so it's a shop that only accepts the thing that you can only buy at Saturn Village for 1780 as currency... everything costs 1780...
Ooh, hall of fame bat? I'll take that... wait what, I don't get to choose from the list what I want? plain roll.. plain yogurt... well damn I guess that bat costs a lot more than I thought...

A scrambled hint similar to what the Mr. Saturns give you...
lol that one Tenda that was never shy... "Recently, everyone is able to talk a lot, so I've lost my identity."

Underground, very large area. Exist. Dinosaurs. Big. Scary. Lost Underworld. Stone. There is. Talks lots.

Good evening. I'm a talking rock.

lmao

Don't forget to talk to the rock. It's important.

Oh man... so this is a huge maze.
I'm looking for a certain rock that talks a lot.
there's a lot of ralks that tock, but most of them don't tock alawt, but there's one that tocks that rock a lot.
Moonswel toc dime.

So far this place just has a bunch of scrub purple tenda-like enemies...
omg this grinning electric skeleton enemy called the "Conducting Spirit"... this thing looks terrifying

Jeff has gotten a lot more powerful now too I noticed... since I started using the bazooka and other stuff with him more often now than I did in my first playthrough

The earth's belly button

huh... this is reminding me of the dungeon man maze now...
The enemies get slightly harder on the lower floors... but they're nothing with Paula and Poo both available to constantly suck PP out of them...

This seemed kinda confusing, but after wandering aimlessly and finding a bunch of items, I just happened to come across the 7th melody boss... oh and just passed that is a Rabbit's foot... gear that protects you from paralysis and increases your speed a lot... this is going on Ness.
Paula has that same effect with her Crystal Charm she has on...

The 7th sanctuary boss is electro spectre... He's not as scary looking as the grinning electric skeleton guy... At first he actually poses a threat and takes out Paula... but then I managed to revive and recover with PSI and then quickly learned to only use physical attacks on this boss, since it seems to reflect all PSI attacks... Jeff's stuff and the Dragonite and all those other offense battle items I had stocked up come in handy here. It kept cancelling PSI effects on everyone, so I stopped using stuff like PSI shield and Offense up, and instead just focused on bashing and using Jeff's bazooka a lot... I also tried out the dragonite.. it's a really hard hitting attack with several uses... Both Jeff and Poo have one.

That wasn't too hard, only took one try... and I still have a nearly full supply of useful items in stock and nobody is even near dead or out of PP yet... lol I think I'm a bit overleveled.

my levels after beating this boss are 71 / 65 / 64 / 60

Soon I'll be... What will happen to us? What's happening? My thoughts are getting written on the wall?

NESS's sound stone recorded the melody of Lumine Hall.

All of these sanctuary locations are very strange...

After that, I fall down some hole, into a huge field where the camera is zoomed out.

- Lost Underworld -

Now I'm playing as 4 tiny sprites in a giant dinosaur land... there's a tiny village of tendas and a bird... the smell of the Tendakraut convinces them to let me in... oh the bird is a phone, it's the same kind of bird phone as at Poo's palace.

The earthquakes make the geysers erupt.. the blue eruptions heal HP, the red eruptions cure,

This chomposaur enemy is tough until you figure out the strategy... it has reflective shields and other PSI powers.. Jeff's counter-PSI unit is perfect against this guy... then just PSI freeze and PSI magnet with Paula and Poo a lot... and actually, the slime generator works really well against the non-PSI dinosaurs... cuz they're slower than Jeff and it can basically make them miss every turn without fail as long as you keep using it.
Yeah wow... Jeff's arsenal actually makes this dinosaur enemies EXP fodder

But man this place is huge and confusing, despite it being so open.. I think it mostly just feels annoying cuz you move so slow. otherwise it wouldn't be that confusing at all.

Ego Orb

omg this enemy... wat

Found a new pendant that's resistant to a lot of stuff... putting this on Jeff... tried to sell the night pendant, but the customer calls and says he can't find this lost underworld location...
found another slightly bigger (but still looks tiny at this zoomout) underworld tenda village...

A chubby, obnoxious kid from some foreign country said something heartrending... so I'm healing my wounds in the hot springs.

There's a fence around this village.. the talking rock is here... I think these Tendas think of the fence surrounding this village as the cage for the dinosaurs...
The tenda who like to talk separated from the untalkative awkward tendas up above...
Oh, good... one of the tendas here works as bank machine.. there's a bunch of new weapons to buy here
Woah what, they charge a fee that is equal to the amount of withdrawal... damn

This rock drops the biggest plot exposition dump so far in the game... talking about what the sanctuaries are for...

When the sound stone has recorded the melodies of all eight power spots... you can finally see "Your World".

1. "Giant Step" in Onett
2. "Lilliput Steps" in Peaceful Rest Valley near Twoson
3. "Milky Well" in Grapefruit Falls in Saturn Valley
4. "Rainy Circle" found by JEFF in Winters
5. "Magnet Hill" at the edge of the city of Fourside
6. "Pink Cloud" which POO knows
7. and... "Lumine Hole" where the shining lichen lives in the cave

8. A new place is now going to be opened up to you.
"Fire Spring", located southwest of here.

The time will come. The time when the destiny of you and the whole universe will overlap...

Woah... the cave northwest of here leads to a dark floating island area, with lots of alien looking stuff around... that's probably toward the end game

Jeez, these fire enemies inside the fire spring cave are even easier than the dinosaurs... just bash them a lot, and use counter PSI on the enemies that use PSI... and they are reduced to EXP fodder... After a bit of leveling up, I can now even insta kill these enemies when I sneak up on them.

The path to this final sanctuary is pretty linear... all of the wrong doors just lead to a dead end with an item... and it looks like I know exactly where to go to end the game after this...
wow yeah, there was no struggle through this whole section of the game at all... I'm definitely overleveled lol

Okay nevermind... this Carbon Dog boss battle is pretty intense. Then it gets even harder when he turns into Diamond Dog... you really have to pay attention to the enemy's powers/buffs and come up with the right strategy to avoid getting destroyed... I'm still not really sure if I can do anything other than spam PSI attacks until I run out of PP, cuz its power shield reflects every physical attack I do.

damn...got a bunch of crying/paralysis/strange now too... I'm gonna resort to trying Pray with Paula and Mirror with Poo.

Okay that didn't work... actually I guess it's best to just bash the enemy and heal with Poo used a multi bottle rocket cuz I was getting desperate and that finished the fight... might've wasted it I dunno.
Beat him first try though

Now my levels are at 75 / 69 / 68 / 64

Recorded the melody of the Fire Spring... the last note of the melody...

Then there's a black and white scene where it shows Ness walking up to some house, isolated from everything else... he disappears, and then it shows baby Ness in his crib, and his parents are there talking, but they're invisible...

- Magicant -

No joke... it was exactly 4:20pm when I got to the part where Ness goes into his inner mindscape world, Magicant. Totally on accident.

NESS, you've stood on the eight power spots of the earth. From these, you created Magicant, the realm of your mind. In Magicant, there's beauty, kindness, sorrow, and hatred. Of course, there's an evil and violent side of you. The Sea of Eden sits at the center of those feelings. It takes you to the truth about yourself.

What the hell... talking to that old man makes the colors of the world change... then talking to Everdred makes the colors change again, and Everdred vanishes.. Ness's mom and sister and other characters he's met are also here...
Talking to the little yellow bird makes everything look Green again, more like Onett...
There's a bunch of these yellow birds around... one of them is like "I'm just a faint memory. You don't usually remember me. But you've heard my song in the back of your mind."...

Slept in the hotel.. the guy here says you'll have a "dream within a dream"
Also a bunch of characters Ness knows but I don't... Pokey is here too...

This one house contains grown up version of those yellow birds, called the "Flying Man"... I can get one of them to temporarily join Ness's party... this is just like Ninten's Magicant world in Mother 1...

Up ahead, the path to Sea of Eden has enemies... and a lot of items that I have to throw away old equipment to pick up... eventually got to a mysterious plant in the middle of the Sea of Eden, and it warped me to water cave... the Kraken appears as a normal respawning enemy here... but Solo NESS can beat them easily.

Found the source of this area's corruption.. the Mani statue.

I'm the evil part of your brain. You can't beat me. Because you are the one who forced me into being...

NESS's Nightmare doesn't actually do much, except cast reflect shields on himself and shine a scary light on NESS that doesn't do anything to him...
Phew... that was hard... it has all the same attacks as NESS.. it's just a matter of powering through and defeating it before you run out of the PP you need to constantly heal yourself... Beat it first try. The brain food lunch I had helped a lot.

NESS heard a familiar voice at the Sea of Eden...

Giygas' goal is to destroy you. Everything in the universe could be destroyed at the hands of Giygas. But he and his followers are also in trouble.
The Apple of Enlightenment has foretold that Giygas' attempt will fail. It is because of the existence of a boy named NESS... That's me!

NESS's inner voice then tells him he already knows where to go from here... to get something at Saturn Valley.

Soon, Magicant will be no more. We must be quick!

Suddenly NESS glows, and all of the sanctuaries add their power to him, increasing a bunch of his stats... and he gained 200'000 exp out of nowhere..
Got to level 79 and learned Teleport Beta

NESS absorbed the power of the land into his heart, and Magicant was no more.
he woke up back in the fire spring sanctuary... the others kept hearing him mention Saturn Valley as he was passed out... then we used Teleport Beta to go straight to Saturn Valley...

levels are now 79 / 69 / 68 / 64

Dr. Andonuts, Apple Kid, and some other guy are there with Mr. Saturn.. they've finished building a device that can teleport you anywhere in the current time period... it's also sensing enemies in the Lost Underworld...

Andonuts says the Phase Distorter he made was stolen by someone resembling a pig, and he took Mr. Saturn too.. The teleporting machine doesn't actually work yet, it needs a material from some meteorite... Also he says Onett is under Giygas' control now, so it'll be hard to get to it.