So! It's been a while since an update. Since then, the Four Job Fiesta event has ended. I was focusing more on actually finishing my playthrough than updating the diaries, so I apologize for that. But I did get the playthrough done just a day before it was "due," so that's good! And now I can churn out entries back to back haha.

When we last left off, we were looking for clues on what to do next to try to save the Earth Crystal. We didn't find much, but there were so many places we could now explore since we can fly on a Black Chocobo now, even though the Fire-Powered Ship sunk into a whirlpool outside of Crescent. This time, we're going to head to the Library of Ancients where we might find Cid and Mid, who can hopefully give us a clue on where to go next.

They are in the library like they said they would be, and when we tell them about the shipwreck, they seem to think it's no big deal at all. They say they'll just build another one as if it were nothing, but they quickly change the topic anyway -- it seems King Tycoon was spotted nearby! Apparently he was seen in Karnak, and then in the desert to the west.

The western desert is called the Desert of Shifting Sands, because the sands flow like water and it's impossible for people to enter. The obvious question is that if it's impossible, how did the king enter? Well, it seems that he was floating. Everyone seems pretty shocked to hear that he was floating, despite the fact that we have access to the Float spell and even acknowledge that floating exits in conversation...

But maybe somehow we know it's different from that floating. I guess.

We head to the desert, but of course, like we discussed, there's no way to cross. But Cid and Mid have a great idea. They're going to summon a giant sandworm that occupies the desert, and when we kill it, we can use its body as a bridge to cross the shifting sands.

Mid warns us that if we use magic on the worm, we'll "be sorry," which is awesome because we have an entire party of nothing but magic-based Jobs.

The main 'problem' is that if we hit the worm with magic, it uses Gravity on the entire party, which cuts our current HP in half. It also regularly uses Sap on the party, so our HP is constantly dangerous. So having big chunks of our HP cut out is pretty dangerous. Throughout the battle, the worm pops up in different holes, and we can target any of the holes with attacks. If we accidentally attack a hole where the worm isn't popping out at the moment, it will also use the Gravity attack again...

So basically we have to play an extremely drawn-out game of Whack-A-Mole-But-With-Knives.

Without its Gravity attack, the worm doesn't pose much of a threat, so we just slowly whittle its HP down until it turns into little squares. But then somehow is also a giant corpse that we can walk on.

The worm body doesn't really go too far, though, but it gets us past the impassible opening to the desert. From there, we have to navigate a maze of sorts made out of sand streams that pull us along like conveyor belts. Once we step onto one, it will carry us until the end of its path, so we have to be careful about stepping onto new ones. There are little patches of settled sand where we can get off and step onto new ones. Overall it's not very difficult at all -- mostly if you step on a "wrong" one, you just go back where you were before and try again. And there are only two destinations you can end up. One is a big pyramid-like ruins in the center of the desert -- though this doesn't seem to be something we can interact with now, as the front door is locked and there's nothing on top if we climb up the outside. The other destination is the exit to the south.

Leaving the desert to the south, we find the remains of what was once a city, now aptly name Town of Ruin.

As we wander around, randomly King Tycoon will appear and fly quickly across the screen to random locations. I tried to screencap it, but whenever he popped up, he was already off the screen before I could hit the screencap keys.

Eventually we "corner" him in a broken-down building. Faris recognizes the King as his "Papa," but then the ground opens below us and we fall into some kind of weird ruins below.

Inside, Galuf gets separated from the rest of the group, and Lenna rejoices in learning that Faris is indeed her long-lost "sister."

Faris said he wasn't entirely sure if he really was related to her yet, so he hadn't wanted to tell her, but seeing the King was the confirmation he needed, since he still remembered the face of his father.

When they wonder where Galuf is, Bartz says he's a "tough old cuss" and we'll find him eventually. Apparently Galuf can hear everything we are saying, but we can't hear him, and he gets mad and like... flies around parts of the screen until he is caught up with everyone and then scolds Bartz for wanting to leave him behind. Cue the laugh track.

Despite the fact that we're in what I assume is supposed to be some kind of big reveal in the story, it seems to just be filled with weird jokes. As we continue through the ruins, we find a sort of living quarters. In the bedroom, the "!" appears above Lenna's head to show we can interact with one of the potted plants, which has a note on it that says "... the notepad in the room to the right ..."

But when we read the notebook, it just seems it was some kind of kids' prank. Bartz gets angry for some reason and says "That little--!" as if he knows who wrote it.

Lenna and Faris calm him down, showing him that there's another note along with the teasing one. It just says to check the urn. On the opposite side of the quarters there are some urns. One of them allows us to interact with it, and a frog jumps out, knocking a book off of a shelf. The book has a note inside that says to go "down 8 and right 4 and pull what's there," though because this version of the game is not locked to a grid like the original, "eight" and "four" are now meaningless.

But heading down, there's a switch on the wall that we can pull, with some treasures hidden on the other side of a nearby wall. This is so blatantly obvious that there's no way we would have even needed all of these hints to help us find this. Two of the treasures just have Shurikens in them, but the last one does contain the White Magic spell Mini, which can both turn targets into Mini or restore Mini status from an ailed ally.

Later we flip another switch, and this time we cut to a scene of Cid and Mid in the Chocobo Forest where we found our Black Chocobo. The ground falls out from under them, and they, too, go falling down into some ruins.

The switch also opened a door for us, and we exit the ruins to find the Fire-Powered Ship. And there's another strange ship next to it with propellers on it. We also find Cid and Mid who have just fallen from above, and we learn that we're under Crescent Island, which explains why we found the Fire-Powered Ship.

Cid gets excited and starts running around the new ship. It seems it's an airship, and he and Mid fix it up quickly so now we're flying. Yes, it's that sudden.

But as soon as we get into the sky (from some weird new launchpad thing that appeared where the Crescent whirlpool ate the Fire-Powered Ship) something starts "dragging us down," and we get into a fight with a boss monster called Cray Claw.

It's not difficult at all, though, so there's not anything to say about it, really...

And we finally have an airship, so we can now fly around the skies! ... Again! It's a bit opposite the Black Chocobo, which could only land in forests; the airship can only land on solid ground.

But only seconds into flying, yet another event occurs. When we fly near the City of Ruin where we were chasing Floaty Daddy before, the city just kind of... explodes, and some giant mech building thing rises out of the ground...

Apparently these are the ruins of the Ronka people, who used the Earth Crystal's power to make their cities fly, but when they realized that amplifying the crystal's power would break it, they stopped using it (and I guess somehow that made their cities go underground? idk...)

But now that the ruins are floating again, it means that someone has found the Earth Crystal and is amplifying it again with the machine, so it will break, just like the others. Faris and Lenna worry for a second that possibly their father could be the one who committed this act, but instead of dwelling on it, we decide we need to just fly up there ourselves.

Good thing we have a flying ship! Just kidding, it can't fly that high I guess. But if we had Adamantite, we could. Galuf says there was some in the meteor that he used to arrive in this world.

Yes, the pacing really is this fast and random.

We head to the meteor crash site where the game began, and upon entering find some Adamantite just lying around. But when we try to pick it up, a boss called Adamantoise appears! Lenna does a little dance which causes a cave-in, and the thing turns to little squares immediately. Oops?

We give the Adamantite to Cid and Mid, who "install" it and now our ship can fly higher. They warn us that the Ronka Ruins are equipped with some powerful defense mechanism, but we decide we have to go anyway.

The ruins have some guns on the sides, and when we blow all those up (which is pretty easy), a big gun comes out of the center. This thing is pretty tough.

Throughout the battle we see various messages like "BARREL PRESSURE RISING" and "ENERGY CELLS 128% CAPACITY." The cannon can blast the entire party at once, dealing tons of damage, sending out missiles that kill or almost kill party members, and for some reason causing some of the party members to be afflicted with the Old status effect.

The cannon is severely weak against lightning attacks, though, so we have to employ a strategy we have yet to try out in the entire playthrough: breaking rods. If a Job can equip Rod-type weapons, they're also able to "break" them, forcing them to cast their innate spell. In Karnak before, we stocked up on Rods, because I knew there would come a moment we'd have to use them. But I also kind of kept forgetting they were even available for use until this fight where it became a necessity.

During battle, you can use the "Item" command to change equipment as well as use items. If you go to change your equipment and equip a Rod, and then select it while it is equipped, it will use the Rod in battle rather than equipping it. This causes the character to shatter the rod, releasing the spell inside. So our Thunder Rods can now be "spent" to cast Thundaga instantly, without even spending any MP or needing to have Black Magic available!

This is really something I should have been doing for a while now -- these were available as soon as we got to Karnak (and they were even on sale at first!) and I knew that this existed I just... never thought to use it. In fact, the name of this version of the Four Job Fiesta challenge is "Team 750" because the cost of Rods are 750 Gil, and you're expected to need to use a lot of them throughout the game.

It was still a rough fight, but breaking a few Thunder Rods, we were able to destroy the Soul Cannon and get inside the floating ruins.

The inside of the ruins is kinda strange. There are a ton of invisible floors, so it looks like we're just walking on top of the background. And we have no idea where these floors are, especially since we aren't able to use the Thief Job which can see secret floors and stuff. So we just have to push against the background everywhere and see if we happen to walk onto them. When we finally get to the chest in the screenshot above, it contains Golden Armor which we cannot use.

There are these obnoxious Enchanted Fan enemies that can use an ability called White Wind, which heals all of the enemy party for the amount of HP the user has remaining. These things start with 1000 HP and love to spam White Wind, so they're very annoying to take out. It doesn't help that the Geomancer's Gaia ability usually summons a wind-based attack called Wind Slash inside the ruins, which also heals the Enchanted Fans.

After a lot of twisting passages, flipping switches, and invisible floors, we finally are able to at least see King Tycoon in another room. There's still a lot of obnoxious exploring before we're able to actually reach that room, though. In fact, we encounter two consecrated circles before even reaching that room.

We eventually do, though, and it seems that King Tycoon is confronted with the Archeoaevis (wow, four vowels in a row!) that is blocking the room where the Earth Crystal is being amplified. Maybe he's trying to stop it, too?

We get into a battle, and Daddy warns us that the monster can change its weakness at will. This isn't too terrible, since we have the Libra spell that can tell us the enemy's weakness. Attacking with anything else is pretty futile, so we just keep using Libra and then breaking Rods or using Gaia to exploit the weakness. It takes a little while, and we do have to keep up on healing a bit, but overall it's not so bad.

Afterward, King Tycoon does an evil laugh, happy that we cleared the path to the Crystal for him.

We rush after him into the Crystal's chamber, and he says that it'll be easier to kill all four of us at once now that we're all gathered together. But we've kinda been gathered together for the entire game, so I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. Anyway, Bartz and Galuf prepare to battle, but Faris and Lenna jump in front and say they'll refuse to let them. Daddy summons a meteor which knocks us all down, but then a kid bursts into the room and shoots a tiny green sparkle at him, instantly defeating him.

The girl runs to Galuf, calling him "Grandpa," and we realize this was the same girl that we saw in Galuf's flashbacks and stuff before. Galuf gets a "?" sign over his head, but then he like, punches it away or something, and it makes his memories return! He remembers his granddaughter Krile, and all of his memories come flooding back. Lenna and Faris rush to their father's side, worried for his safety, but Krile says that she only hit him with "a little strike of Thunder," so he should be fine. I'm not sure how that was able to completely incapacitate him, but whatever.

And Tycoon seems to be okay suddenly, getting up and being confused about where he is. He immediately refers to Faris as "Sarisa," who turns away when he hears his birth name. But after King rejoices a bit more to realize his other child is still alive, Faris turns back and calls him "Papa" again.

But our touching reunion is cut short when the Earth Crystal starts going haywire and explodes, just like the other Crystals did before it.

We're shown a scene of some crazy lightning stuff happening outside...

And Exdeath appears! Well, it looks like we failed to protect any of the crystals and the seal has been broken. Exdeath greets Galuf in typical villain fashion, complete with mwahahaha. He commands the power of the broken Crystals to "smite" us. Bartz tries to charge him, but... falls down.

Then Exdeath disappears and ... more people fall down. And stand up. And like there is just a bunch of falling down and I really don't understand what is supposed to be going on here. Oh, and the Crystal shards sometimes float around and stuff. Are we fighting something? Why does everyone keep falling down? Either way, somehow, this makes King Tycoon die (?!?!) and Faris and Lenna grieve as he disappears, telling Bartz to take care of his children as he is now unable to.

And with that, we finally get the power of the souls of warriors past that rest within the Crystal's shards around us, granting us four new jobs: Samurai, Dragoon, Dancer, and Chemist. Of course, we'll only be able to use one of them, and we'll finally have gotten our Four Jobs for the Fiesta. Stay tuned to find out which one we get to play with! (Or, you know, look at my tweets or youtube or whatever since I've already cleared the game and everything lol)

STAY TUNED!!

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