Talk to Russell to give him the data crystals whenever you have new ones.
Data crystals: There are four in each tower.
Hidden Book: After completing the red tower, with クローゼ in your party, talk to アントワーヌ (the cat).
Screenshot
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Vocabulary
Vocab Sheet, thank you to everyone who helps with this.
Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Discussion Guidelines
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
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Discussion Questions
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
Red Tower?
Blue Tower?
Any interesting conversations at base?
Participation
Will you be playing along with us this week?
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Party Members Poll
アガット
アネラス
エステル
オリビエ
クローゼ
ケビン
シェラザード
ジン
ティータ
ユリア
ヨシュア
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He’s my hardest melee hitter now! They grow up so fast He’s actually really good at tanking with his self buff craft so I kind of do like him now, I just wish he had a taunt type ability to pull aggro intentionally…
This guy sure wasn’t enjoyable to deal with at all. Did my one loss to learn the status effect and cancel it but afterwards he’s cancelling arts and the dogs are all using Joshua’s attack so that characters get one turn every hundred years.
I have never seen the 偃 in 偃月, doesn’t happen too often anymore.
I’m dying of tooth pain from a failed root canal so I’ll try to get to the second half later…
Ohhh I thought the abilities always explained everything about them in the first line because the lower one is usually just a more aesthetic explanation of the move or restating the same stuff, but it only mentions 挑発 as an effect in the lower part I didn’t pay attention to (well it’s also the name but )
That should help a lot, thanks. I’m keeping Jinn with me for the second tower now because I’ve decided it’s most amusing to hard switch to working around him after almost 2 straight games of shunning him.
Beat the wardrobe malfunction boss. I got a little confused for a moment by the enemies with their damage negation gimmick but she was weirdly way easier than the previous guy.
Between the aching and how little sleep I’ve had the last few days, most things that happen are just kind of going in one ear and out the other so I won’t try to comment on the story too much. I’m just happy Jinn’s working out for me. Schera was not very helpful at all but I guess she’s one of my least invested in members.
Jin’s physical attacks aren’t so bad, but arts are almost nothing… Maybe I didn’t arrange quartzs correctly. Upon going up (?) the tower, I have to defeat several self-exploding muppets, and that’s a problem (or just accept the damage anyway to be healed later). Actually, as self-exs use arts, I tried to area’d 封魔 them… bad idea – they try to attack at close-quarter instead (pkmn struggle?), and still self-ex on dead.
Blue one, I brought Agate. Now, I truly just want to balance levels, not sure what Agate would comment on お姉さん of Scherazade.
I swapped to Croze briefly to get the book from the cat . Other people in the party just don’t try comprehend what the cat is gesturing at all. Croze doesn’t seem to understand cat lang, but at least she tries.
Scherazade have Attack Advance with AOE that I find useful, not attack particularly; though the whip can just barely expel those self-exploders. Joshua has Attack Delay. And Kevin has several supportive crafts.
Robots now surprise attack instead of being the boss’s side guys. Luciola? doesn’t do much, not very hard. Pretty much the same as by swamp-side that time. She needs no mecha help.
I didn’t notice that * malfunction in my version though maybe not that many CGs here.
Only that her minions are critical to ground, immune to fire, resist the remaining elemental arts; and I don’t have ground artists in the party. Joshua’s dark arts repeatedly here.
Now, next week tower, I have two slots to fill now. I wonder who the S-rank bracer would want to discuss with at this time…
Nah I think he’s just meant to be only suited for physical fighting; it’s probably not worth trying to force him into mediocre arts casting. I mean if you get a good buff/debuff set up I guess that wouldn’t matter as much, but mainly he wants to punch. I mostly dedicated his quartz into passive buffs for fighting.
You missed me starting to actually use him last week to mess around and tbh I don’t think he’s so bad anymore. He gets VERY tanky with his self buff which is pretty appreciated at this point and I think the value of group AoE isn’t as high as when we first met him compared to just focusing something. Not to mention how this game likes to cancel your arts sometimes…
I feel you, all my clubs are about to slip behind given the state I’m in right now.
It’s not til this week that I got him properly geared and realized I was wishing he had a move he literally has lol, but yeah, I kinda like him now honestly.
I’d forgotten to save before going up the final elevator here, so I was sweating. Couldn’t save scum to figure out what status effect ヴァルタ inflicts without re-playing the whole tower, just had to push through. Turned out none of my party members were guarded against 気絶, but thankfully I’d unlocked a bunch of クローゼ’s rank 3 slots so she had 600mp and was able to cast アースウォール as much as I needed! Maybe I got lucky but I was never arts canceled either, whew.
I can absolutely believe Jin’s very strong when you use him right but I can’t make myself drag around the character I care the least about. I enjoyed the out-of-combat fight sequence that destroyed bits of the environment though, that was fun.
Also キリカ climbing the tower solo? Sus. The last seemingly innocent NPC who was climbing towers by themselves was the 教授. Coincidence? I think not. (I joke)
紺碧の塔
ルシオラ was easier for me also, in part because I took the game hint of the master beads being placed tight next to the elevator to heart, but also thanks to more big earth quartz spells. Easy game.
The news that she killed the troupe leader was unexpected. More unexpected was that apparently none of them were told what they were doing in the towers? There is such a thing as too much company secrecy, ya know.
I didn’t expect that we would get a third tier of quartz. Makes sense, those high-end spells require an absurd amount of sepis and I couldn’t figure out how we would get there given what we get on average from tier 2 quartz. I like when the plot and gameplay intersect like this. It’s nice to have more EP boost for Croze too.
The background makes it look like they’re hundreds of meters in the air. That’s a long lift!
One of the dungeons of all time. I can enjoy a good maze dungeon but the teleporters mean that I lose my bearings all the time, so I’ll see “oh there’s a chest over there” but then I teleport and I have no idea where anything is anymore.
The boss felt easier than Lupin last week (which was yesterday for me). The robots seemed to have less HP and he didn’t respawn them (did I get lucky?). Sunglasses guy is by far the Ouroboros member I find the least interesting or compelling. Looks like he wants you to buy Bitcoin. I guess the fact that the interpersonal drama involves Jin doesn’t help.
I don’t see why you say that AoE is less valuable this time around @Daisoujou. Literally every tough encounter involves at least four strong opponents (sometimes many more in trapped chests), and often respawnable ones too. Crowd control is my main concern for most non-trivial encounters. Once you get the main boss 1-on-1 the fight is basically over.
It’s entirely my fault but I wish I had a one week break between these two weeks because, color aside, there’s not much novelty to this dungeon and I expect that the next one will be more of the same. I hope we get to meet my waifu at least.
I’m relieved that they decided to go with a different concept for every THE ANOTHER SPACE OF THE TOWER, I didn’t want to do a 2nd maze in a row.
There’s something satisfying about those underlevel characters gaining 3 levels a fight. I always found the “adaptive XP” system these games use to be a bit odd, but it works well here.
It’s weird that this is just a retread of the boss fight in the forest without any new mechanical enemies. It wasn’t a particularly fun one either, with more respawning enemies… I wish the fight would just be over when I take the main baddie out. Or at least all non-respawning enemies.
She actually gave us some answers but still puts firm boundaries. Slay, queen. I hope she becomes the protagonist of a future game. Just pushing people off cliffs like the icon she is.
I appreciate that the story really ramps now, with the various cuts to every corner of the kingdom. We get a sense of scale and the game is building on top of all those established characters. That’s cool. Would be even cooler if we had any idea of what’s happening but, still.
I wonder if we’ll get to fight the mecha next. That would be cool.
I thought we would be forced to take Tita with us but apparently not. I decided to go with Agathe, it’s been a while.
replies
Amusingly the same word appears at the end of FF3, but here it’s just spelled 円月輪. I think it was in FF2 too?
I mean I think it’s the same word, it’s got the same reading and apparently describes the same type of weapon.
Ok that’s a compelling argument in favour of the EVO version.
There’s actually a reason for the secrecy, but it’s a secret too.
I agree on trapped chests needing to just have a wide area nuked, but that’s about it for me. Random fights are all essentially trivial encounters. At this point nearly every tougher fight has some reason AoEing them just doesn’t seem to work very well. The fact that they respawn in certain fights is a big one actually, I don’t get why that makes you want to hit them more when they immediately come back. Is there a limit on how many spawn? When I saw it was happening I changed to just hitting the the main guy because that seemed like the solution to make things actually stop.
I mean I’ll definitely make some use of AoE when it’s freely available to, Estelle’s spin and Joshua’s dash and all for sure if they line up for me, but it’s really far down my priority list. These days arts gets cancelled in half these fights. The enemies sometimes scatter wildly (thinking of this week’s first boss with the dashing things especially). They have full resistances to phys/mag so that an AoE won’t hurt half the targets. There’s always something.
Now that I have Jin doing sufficient enough damage (and quite good damage on S-Crafts) the big thing is just the relief every time I see him get targeted. With his well over 10k HP, self regen and +50% defense on a single craft, he shrugs off those long cutscene attacks without me even needing to heal him later that might just straight up kill someone else. You’ll at least appreciate that the biggest reason I have him here is for him to get hit constantly, heh.
Honestly after this week’s tower I have no idea what anyone does with Schera other than move forward the turns of people who aren’t Schera.
I couldn’t come close to the level of damage needed without that feeling like wasted time for the time it bought. Were you actually getting arts off in that first one? I know @Sasabonsam said they didn’t get them cancelled apparently. It felt like another fight where any arts that took longer to cast than when the main boss moved were disallowed on my end…
Wait a second oh my god I checked a few videos and the mech dogs in that fight don’t do the AT delay thing on your version? Is that right? God Evo is annoying.
So on my mine the dash has the full properties of Joshua’s dash meaning every time people get hit their turn order is pushed further and further down the list while I watch the enemies take like 8 turns and then my party gets 1 each then they do that to us once again. Which is all the more reason I can’t afford to get arts countered once because that was my only turn for the next 10 minutes.
It probably makes all the more sense that I value someone good at tanking when my version doesn’t allow me to do anything but get hit.
Oh AND with us getting delayed he gets more chances to arts counter more people! Yay!