🍔 Mother 2 / Earthbound (Game Club) - Week 10

[ChristopherFritz]

(Image source.)

Welcome to Week 10 of Mother 2 Club

Home Thread | Game Club

Apologies for another short post, but between a little overtime at work and some last-minute holiday guest planning, this week’s gotten away from me.

Week 10	Jul 3rd
Last Week	Week 9
Start Point	Return to Ranma for the Bunnies
End Point	Reach the Swamp and Talk to the Bird Phone
Next Week	Week 11

A guide to this week 🐇 🚢 🐪 🪸

After defeating the last boss and gaining a melody, a conveniently placed gift box had a carrot in it. You can recall a certain distant land with a certain cave blocked off by a certain collection of rabbit statues. Head to Ranma next, and adventure through the cave.

Once done there, return to Summers. It’s time to take a boat trip! There’s been talk of something out there, but I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.

Upon safe arrival on dry land again, you’ll find yourself in the desert. Check out the town, then head south in search of the Sphinx. Do you recall the pattern on the hieroglyphic tablet you saw in the museum? If not, you should have a copy in your copies to refer to.

Or if you just want to see it without the effort...

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4 3
2 5

Step on the buttons in order to unlock access to the pyramid. It’s fairly straightforward. Complete things there, and you’ll lose <redacted> but gain access to the strange tower that looks like a person. (If you haven’t seen it, explore the desert to the northwest.)

Go through the tower. Once back outside, head south until you find a local who’ll suggest taking a submarine to continue your journey. (You may have noticed one in Dungeon Man.)

Ride the submarine, then when you reach land, talk to the bird phone to save for the week.

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Walkthrough: English | Japanese

Script (with kanji!): Script

Participation

Will you be joining us this week?

• Yes, I’m playing along
• I’m still playing but haven’t reached this point yet
• I’m just here for the discussion
• I’m playing after the club has ended

Set this thread to “Watching” to get updates

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Busy week for me this week, so no bonus material here.

[Daisoujou]

This is the week! It’s time for my favorite man, and my favorite Earthbound song that I was alluding to being excited for others to hear, weeks back.

[steckums]

I love the picture this week, nice find!

[awesometownrocks]

Don’t worry I’ll throw in some bonus tips (Now complete after finishing the week, oof I got cold and poison mixed up though sorry!)

Tips

Are you checking the PSI descriptions on the stats menu? I didn’t notice it but at some point, Poo learned a move that makes teleporting easier but we probably had it already. And if enemies are tough, it may be worthwhile to grind him up to level 35 (36?)

(Edit) Are you NOT checking the PSI descriptions on the stats menu? Even though it sounds like I don’t, I do that too. Sometimes I forget which status conditions are healed with A or B and I don’t feel like checking so I just default to B. I’m such a pro at forgetting that I even suggested using Healing A for どく only to realize that I got it mixed up with かぜ and had to edit this, whoops!

I think I noticed an enemy dropped a double skip sandwich at some point, and while the enemies are a little tough to avoid, it’s doable. It’s ok to stock up and have a quadruple double skip sandwich jamboree every now and then, it is healthy if done in moderation

Idk if I quoted this right but like @Daisoujou said keep an eye out for a piece of equipment that appears early on this week!

@Daisoujou

Item spoiler

[Sasabonsam]

Week 10

@Daisoujou

This is the week! It’s time for my favorite man, and my favorite Earthbound song that I was alluding to being excited for others to hear, weeks back.

Is it this one, kraken of the sea? It’s got a dangerous vibe to it that previous battle tracks don’t have, it’s really good. I love it!

The visual style of this guy reminds me of what a small kid might draw with crayons, it’s so adorable. Then it breathed fire and killed everybody except for Ness, who only took like 4 damage for some reason. Probably something he’s wearing. The second time went a lot better!

Some potty humor I wasn’t expecting in the desert. The writers just wanted Pokey to be as gross as possible huh? I took care not to step on the dots

The pyramid felt like a bit of a slog, but I enjoyed the weirdness of dungeon man’s dungeon body. Totally normal guy. For one thing, I was able to get a lot more reading in with the silly signs, and second, the free rest bench meant I could get the pile of broken stuff in Jeff’s inventory fixed! The super bazooka is amazing though I did spend more time than was strictly necessary trying to find out how to get to that museum only to give up get surprised later, haha…

We’re now definitely past the point I played up to as a kid, since I’m sure I’ve never seen the swamp before. Onwards into the unknown!

[awesometownrocks]

@Sasabonsam

Some potty humor I wasn’t expecting in the desert. The writers just wanted Pokey to be as gross as possible huh? I took care not to step on the dots

no way, I never heard of ノグソ and checked the dots first and saw they belonged to Pokey and was like “Oh that word must mean they’re like his traces?” And I thought they were like tiny footprints, I didn’t think they had a different kind of traces in mind

[Daisoujou]

@awesometownrocks

“Oh that word must mean they’re like his traces?” And I thought they were like tiny footprints, I didn’t think they had a different kind of traces in mind

My eternal problem of figuring things out based on context being hard when I’m reading things that tend to say some weird stuff

Week 10

@Sasabonsam

Is it this one, kraken of the sea? It’s got a dangerous vibe to it that previous battle tracks don’t have, it’s really good. I love it!

It’s really good! But I’m a more annoying person and actually meant Dungeon Man’s Theme . I mentioned wanting people to hear something in the context of someone, simias I think, talking about music earlier bordering on annoying. I love weird experimental music and this one is intentionally using a lot of offputting sounds and being kind of annoying but I genuinely like it a lot too, heh. Proud of Dungeon Man:

Bummer that we lose Poo already; I had forgotten about this but I do remember thinking he wasn’t around for much of the game so on top of joining last, that’d be why

Anyway the Dungeon Man section is such a highlight for me, a dungeon that’s kind of bad on purpose with nonstop running commentary from the in-universe creator really amuses me. The fact that they make it kind of an assault on your ears (at least for people whose brains aren’t as rotted as mine when it comes to music) and then make you immediately go through the whole place a second time is awesome.

I wanted to highlight this joke because this is like literally the kind of comically forced title drop people joke about online that I’ve seen a bunch of in the last few years or so. Very modern bit of humor.

[Sasabonsam]

d.m. theme

@Daisoujou

But I’m a more annoying person and actually meant Dungeon Man’s Theme . I mentioned wanting people to hear something in the context of someone, simias I think, talking about music earlier bordering on annoying. I love weird experimental music and this one is intentionally using a lot of offputting sounds and being kind of annoying but I genuinely like it a lot too, heh.

OH my bad, I think I’d kind of tuned out dungeon man’s theme because I was in there for so long, the loop is only like a minute. Rather than annoying, I’d rather say it sets the mood well Unusual and a little nonsensical, the perfect dungeon man feel!

[Daisoujou]

Item spoiler

Oh yeah, I wanted to mention one of Poo’s equipment pieces is in the pink cloud cave

[awesometownrocks]

Week 10, time flies and at some point this week I was wondering if we’re starting to get close to the end of the game, but I think we still got a ways to go and I’m all for it

Say cheese sandwich!

I don’t got pictures this week because most of the stuff that happened I can describe, like how cheese sandwich landed on a palm tree, it was awesome. I liked going through the pyramid as a team of 4, it was kinda tough at first but it grew on me once Poo learned Healing C and could revive party members. I’m starting to notice that it’s a little tougher to heal on the spot though, one extra text box for not only the team’s attacks, but their reactions as well made it so that by the time I healed it was too late.

By the time Poo went away I was kinda short on inventory and didn’t want to warp away and have to do the pyramid again so I just pressed forward, wasn’t that bad though, I hardly encountered any enemies inside dungeon man so I was mostly just getting rid of stuff I didn’t need (I just remembered there was a telephone inside him, I shoulda called escargo)

One enemy caught my eye though, a metallic octopus called まる で たこ and I thought it’d be really cool if the タコケシマシン could instantly erase him, but unfortunately it didn’t work. But I was thinking, what if it DID work? Maybe the game’s localization would have turned out slightly different, like @steckums mentioned they changed the octopus statues to pencils and created a pencil eraser but it’d be a little harder to explain if it erased a metallic octopus enemy for no reason

[steckums]

@awesometownrocks

One enemy caught my eye though, a metallic octopus called まる で たこ and I thought it’d be really cool if the タコケシマシン could instantly erase him, but unfortunately it didn’t work. But I was thinking, what if it DID work? Maybe the game’s localization would have turned out slightly different, like @steckums mentioned they changed the octopus statues to pencils and created a pencil eraser but it’d be a little harder to explain if it erased a metallic octopus enemy for no reason

Dang, that would’ve been so cool. Itoi what were you thinking?! Missed opportunity

We’re coming up on the pun I mentioned like 6 weeks ago, too!

[Daisoujou]

I had the same exact thought with that enemy but I’m pretty sure I have the item stashed away so I didn’t check! I’m glad you tested for us. Bummed it didn’t work.

[VikingSchism]

Week 10

This man loved dungeons so much he turned himself into one. That’s dedication to the craft, have to respect it. And was cool to have him walk along with you and help in battles for a bit after finishing the dungeon. And very funny that it lasts for like a minute before he gets stuck between trees and tells you to go on without him

The kraken fight wasn’t too bad besides it one-shorting ポーラ right at the start of combat. I just pushed through and revived her at the hospital afterwards

The pyramid was a big PP drain, really don’t like those big statue enemies (the ones that look like a coffin before battle). But fighting living hieroglyphics was a cool concept. Fortunately there was a room with a butterfly where I could exit and re-enter to spawn a new butterfly partway through so I just used that to get back up to full health

Shame that プー leaves so early after you get him, though seems like he’ll be back. But that’s just going to make the level gap even wider… He was in the 30s while スネス is now in the 50s