Last time we left off, Mid stormed out of the library in frustration because his grandfather seems to have gone into a slump or something.

There's no indication at all where Cid is, so we just have to... go find him.

I first look around Karnak and don't see him. We do find a Flame Rod in a barrel that we couldn't access before, though, and play the "piano" which we forgot to do before, too. With no Cid, we head to the Fire-Powered Ship, but he's not there, either. I even went back to the library to see if maybe he swapped places with Mid after he left or something.

Eventually after a lot more wandering, I went into the upper room of the Karnak Inn, where I hadn't looked before when I was searching through the city, and we find him there.

He seems pretty pretty bummed out. I guess when you invent the machines that inadvertently destroy the world, you might get sad about that. He calls himself a "worthless old lump," which is way too adorable. That level of cute with that mustache should be illegal. I honestly can't handle it...

The gang tries to cheer him up with old "scold someone for being depressed" routine, which has a 0% success rate, but everyone uses it anyway.

As expected, it does not work at all.

Then Mid rushes in from below and starts beating Cid up. Because when crushing someone's self-worth when they're feeling bad doesn't drag them out of it, the next step is to physically beat the sad out of them.

Mid reminds his grandfather that he taught him never to give up. And somehow, that is enough to pull Cid out of it. The Earth Crystal still lives on, so we can't give up yet. They talk about the Fire-Powered Ship, and Mid shows Cid the book he found in the Library, and they dash off.

We follow them to the Fire-Powered ship, where they immediately begin doing some kind of work vigorously. The battle party rests in the ship for a bit, and Galuf's head starts hurting again. He seems to be remembering something, though.

We get a flashback of the entire Cid and Mid scene that we just got done watching only a moment ago... and then we see Galuf's flashback. He's standing on some kind of rooftop, and a young girl who calls him grandpa starts punching him and calling him a silly old fool, much like Mid did with Cid. (lol "Mid did with Cid... by Dr Seuss" XD)

Galuf remembers the name "Krile," but it seems like his memory hasn't fully returned.

He does remember some pretty wild stuff though -- he's not actually from this world! He came to this world once before long ago to seal the dark warlock Exdeath, and had come back via meteor this time because the seal is weakening.

We get another little flashback where Galuf is remembering sealing Exdeath on this world with the power of the Crystals.

His head really starts to ache and he collapses on the ground. But he seems to be OK, I guess. He says "M Okay" so that settles it.

Cid and Mid are done with the boat, though, so we pick Galuf up or something and head out to see them. Whatever they did, we now a boat that can sail without wind, and without Syldra, too. Granpop and Tiny go back to the Library of the Ancients and leave us to go along on our way.

Since we're starting in different waters than we started in when we got our first boat, we now have access to a lot more places, since we're not surrounded by land and a canal with monsters that will wreck our boat.

There are still many places around the map that we can't access, though, like this place that looks like the Wind Shrine or the Library of the Ancients, but is completely surrounded by mountains on a little island...

While navigating our ship, we run across various enemies, but they're not really much of a problem because our Gaia skill Tsunami does massive damage to all enemies on the boat -- enough to defeat anything that shows up in one hit. And it triggers pretty commonly, too.

We don't really have any direction right now other than "save the Earth Crystal," though we don't know where that is or how we can save it. But looking at our fairly-newly-acquired world map, we can look at the names and locations of various towns and stuff around the world. First we head to a little shepherds' town called Istory in the northwest.

There's not a lot to see here, really. A little girl tells us she "took a spin around the flower bed and found something good," so when we find a little "ring" (it's a square, because this game was originally grid-based) of flowers, we walk around them and a frog pops out of the ground and runs off, dropping the Toad magic spell.

There's a person standing around in the northern part of town but there doesn't seem to be any way to reach them. We talk to the little girl standing among the sheep and she tells us that the one in the corner of the pen is temperamental, so like good RPG heroes, we go over to it and start poking it. It kicks us and we go flying over the fence, now able to talk to the person hidden away in the back of town.

The minstrel in the back teaches us Romeo's Ballad, a song for the Bard class to use that stops all enemies' ATB Gauges momentarily. Of course, we can't make use of it at all...

Someone else in town talks about a "monster" terrorizing the forest to the east, so we head out there to see what that's about.

And we run into Ramuh, the god of thunder whose signature look is his fantastic, beautiful, flowing mustache...

... *swoon*

We seem to have snuck up on him, as we begin the battle with a First Strike. And then the battle is over almost as quickly as it began, because using Gaia we slow him down with Bindweed and then destroy him with the overpowered Branch Spear.

After we take out his HP swiftly, he somehow "notices" that Ifrit is with us, and they seem to be buddies. They have a little chat and Ifrit asks Ramuh to join us, so we get our third summon. And now we have Ifrit, Shiva, and Ramuh, the classic Final Fantasy elemental trio.

But of course, we can't use Summoners, so we can make no use of them at all.

But we're not eternally travelling with a gorgeous silverdaddy with a giant mustache who can zap people, so I'm not going to complain one bit~

People in Istory also talk about Istory Falls, but it seems to be a location we can't get to right now.

Next we head to a little crescent-shaped island, where there is a little forest called Black Chocobo Forest, and a little town called... Crescent.

As soon as we walk into town, though, there's an earthquake! I can't even count how many earthquakes we've encountered in this game so far. Like at least five maybe?

Anyway, the earthquake seems to have opened up a whirlpool in the waters outside the village, and our ship gets eaten up. That's two ships lost to whirlpools now...

The old man in the front of the town tells us that whirlpools appear every time there are quakes, and the quakes are quite common. Then he laughs at us for having lost our ship (...) and it looks like we are stuck in Crescent...

Despite this, though, the island seems to be "blessed" and crops grow easily without even having to tend them and the soil never goes infertile. It also seems to hardly rain here, so it really is some kind of miracle island. There's a fountain in town that continuously supplies water somehow, and someone else talks about how they sometimes hear creepy sounds coming from underground.

We meet another minstrel in a house that teaches us the Might March song, and we get to "borrow" his "piano" to level up our piano skills, as well.

Pretty much everyone else talks about how Black Chocobos are a type of extinct Chocobo that can fly while carrying people. And there was a Black Chocobo Forest just outside this town. And we just lost our only means of transportation. Hmm, I wonder what we are supposed to do next?

Before heading to the forest, though, we stop by the armor shop to buy four Sage's Surplices, which are a body armor that is 2 points higher in Defense and Resistance than our previous Silk Robes. Sadly, the weapon shop only sells bows and harps, so we can't upgrade our weapons here.

Anyway, dictionary time. Oh, okay. So a surplice is one of those... priest top things. Neat.

In the Black Chocobo Forest, we find none other than a supposedly-extinct Black Chocobo. Raise your hand if you were surprised! Bartz chases it around and catches it. (You actually have to control Bartz yourself and the thing runs around randomly. It ran to the outer part of the map for me and was beneath trees so I couldn't even see it... I just ran around and mashed the A button until I somehow caught it...) After catching it, he hops on top and tells it to "giddy up." It actually does start flying! But then it suddenly crashes back down to the ground, dropping Bartz in the process.

Galuf makes a joke about it, but Faris scolds him and checks on the Chocobo. Apparently it has something stuck in its throat.

So he proceeds to walk around behind the poor bird and punch it in the back, causing it to choke up whatever was lodged inside.

And it was two Crystal Shards...

Within them, the warrior spirits of Bard and Ranger rest, and we get two new Jobs we can't use.

And now we have yet another mode of transportation! The Black Chocobo is superior to Hiryu in that it can fly over mountains, allowing us to go pretty much anywhere on the map now, with the only caveat being that it can only take off and land from forested areas, so sometimes we have to walk a bit to get to our destination if there's not a forest nearby. Thankfully almost everywhere has a forest right next to it, though, so it's pretty convenient overall.

With still no real lead on what to do next, we continue to explore places we haven't been looking for clues about the Earth Crystal. We come to the northern town of Lix, which is surrounded by mountains and forest. How do people get out of here? Do they all have Black Chocobos?

Everyone seems to recognize Bartz here, and we find out this is his hometown. He didn't have anything to say about it personally, though. Just a lot of hellos from the NPC's.

One of Bartz's old friends says we should "hang out like old times," and Bartz has a flashback to playing hide-and-seek with the kid. Bartz hides on the roof, and the kid never comes to find him. But Bartz can't get down and is stuck up there until nightfall, when he eventually falls off of the second story roof... and apparently, that's how Bartz got his fear of heights.

The shopkeep says that Bartz's dad helped him out a lot when he was alive, so he gives us a discount. We're able to score some Tents for only 125 Gil!

The magic shop here only sells Esuna, but we got it early by picking it up in a chest during the whole Karnak Castle escape scene.

We go into Bartz's old house, where a bard has moved in. He allows us to take a look around (as if you need permission to snoop around houses in a game like this...) and we find an old music box on the counter. Upon opening it, Bartz is reminded of his childhood, and we get another flashback.

This one features yet another handsome mustached fellow. This game really has quite the selection of hot mustache dads.

In this one, Bartz's parents, Stella and Dorgann, are talking at the table. Stella has a feeling Dorgann is leaving again, and asks him to stay. Apparently she is unwell, though she doesn't need him to stay and take care of her, she would at least like to stay together as a family. Dorgann insists she get some rest and goes over to Bartz. He tells him not to tell his mother that he saw him leaving, and then he leaves.

But before he can leave, Dorgann turns to find Stella collapsed on the ground. He yells out her name, and although this is supposed to be an emotional flashback, I can't help but think of this scene whenever the STELLA!!!!! comes on the screen...

Also, during this scene, this music box music is supposed to play (I think it's actually supposed to be the music that evokes the memory) but for some reason in my version of the game, it didn't play. I don't know if it was a fluke this one time, or if this is a persistent glitch in the Steam version, or what. But it was a little disappointing to finally see this scene again, but have to watch it in silence. I need good music while I ogle mustaches...

After the flashback, the bard teaches us the Alluring Air song. We're able to visit the gravestone to the west of the house, which just says "HERE LIES STELLA." And that's about all we can do in Lix, it seems...

There was a forest on a little island near crescent, so I decided to see if there was anything interesting on the land.

There were these enemies called Black Flame which we hadn't seen before. I got lucky and battled them on the beach at first, where we could take them out with the Big Wave elemental skill. But if we encountered them in the grasslands area, we could barely damage them and they easily overpowered us, so we had to flee. There's actually only one little "square" on the entire island that actually initiates battle in a beach area, so I was really lucky to have run into them there first, or else I would have thought I couldn't fight them and just moved on. But thanks to Gaia and a bit of luck, we got to add another enemy to the bestiary.

Heading to the southwestern portion of the world map, we find a town far from forests. We park a way away and walk to the town of Jachol, fighting Bombs and other enemies along the way. For some reason, I remember when I first played this when I was younger, I thought walking to Jachol was really hard. It's not hard at all.

Jachol is a pretty boring town. Almost everyone just talks about how there might be treasures in the northern cave or how there's something underneath Crescent, which we already kind of learned about by going to Crescent. Though you're able to come here before going to Crescent, so that's probably a hint that you need to go there to proceed with the game.

We're able to buy a knife here called Mage Masher, which is stronger than the knives we have now other than the Main Gauche, and can also silence the enemy upon contact! We buy a few for the whole party and head out to the caves.

The Jachol Caves are full of those skull-shaped button things on the wall. There's one hallway where there's just a bunch of them in a row, but every so many seconds, they will all disappear except for one. It's during this moment that you have to press that one switch. I remember the delay between disappearances being kind of long, so that you may not even realize this happens your first time in here, at least when I was playing on the PS1 version. There's someone in town who will give you a hint telling you that the trick is to stand and wait patiently here, though.

But in this version, they disappear so often I feel like you wouldn't be able to miss it just walking by. Pushing the button moves one of the cave walls and opens up another path.

There are various treasures around the cave, like a Shuriken, Tent, and Blitz Whip. But importantly...

There are Skull Eaters!

While they may look like cute little gray squirrels, and you may think they are not any more threatening than the pushover Nutkin enemies you also find in the cave, Skull Eaters are pretty terrifying. With a single attack, they can dish out more than 1,000 damage to a single party member. With our Max HP not even close to 1,000 yet, this means every attack it does is instant death.

Now and then it will flee, causing the battle to end, which actually awards the party with 5 Ability Points! So this is a really great place to level up Jobs.

Trying to fight it seems pretty futile -- it only has 1 HP, but it also has defense, magic, and resistance of 90, meaning you'll almost always miss, and when you do hit, you'll deal 0 damage.

...Unless you use the Geomancer's Gaia skill, which almost always rolls Cave-In while in caves, causing massive damage to random enemy targets. It does several hits and chooses which enemy to damage at random with each hit... but since there's only one Skull Eater, it chooses it for every hit. Each hit dishes out tons of damage, so it's very easy to deal that 1 HP damage we need to take the thing out!

In addition to 5 AP, we also get 100 EXP if we actually defeat it, which isn't really much. But to get 5 AP with a quick battle like this is pretty awesome.

And you need it to be a quick battle, too. In addition to running away or OHKO'ing a party member, Skull Eater can also call for backup. Cave-In chooses its targets at random, and chances are it's not going to choose each of the six Skull Eaters on the field when they're all there, and any other Gaia skill you might end up using will just do 0 damage. And with six Skull Eaters attacking you, your party will be defeated in less than a single round of combat. I died a couple times, but I tried triggering this and winning to see if you would get 600 EXP and 30 AP. You still only get 5 AP even if you defeat six Skull Eaters in battle, so this battle is definitely a big risk. If you can't take out Skull Eater right away, just run! You can always try to encounter another later.

After tripping lots of switches, we finally get to a opening in the ceiling, where we can climb out. But there's nothing up there. And we have to walk all the way back out.

Still no leads on the Earth Crystal, either. Earlier after fixing up the ship again, Cid and Mid said they were heading back to the Library, so maybe we should go ask them if they have any advice. Especially since we already broke the ship they fixed only moments after receiving it... but we'll save that for next time.

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