We now turn to Celine, our first non main character. Celine is a wizard. That means she specializes in casting damage spells. I already covered how spells work in Rena's run, go read it if you want to familiarize yourself. Celine is recruited at Krosse, and recruited for real at the end of the Krosse Cave. However, she can be set to fight solo the moment she joins, so that's what I'll do.
In addition, I felt that Writing broke character progression too much, so I'm adding another rule to my runs from now on:
- I will not use books to raise character skills.
Note that I will still put points in Writing, and still use it to complete guild quests, but won't make the characters read any of the books, whether written or found in world. Hopefully that's pretty clear.
GALAXY
Celine started her journey by completing all the guild quests. She starts with a level in Alchemy, and that's pretty helpful actually; the initial 60 points required for Faeriology is actually quite demanding early on. Unfortunately, she couldn't actually change equipment until after clearing Krosse Cave, so investing into most item creation was kinda moot at this point.
I took her outside and tested her in some battles. For now, her toolkit performed well, swiftly striking enemies at range for good damage. Her melee attack wasn't too bad either, it was hitting for passable damage and swinging pretty fast. Spellcasting was quite heavy on her mana, so she often resorted to it to finish off sufficiently weakened enemies.
I invested into Godspeed first, Rena's run had taught me the value of maneuverability and speed greatly. She proceeded into Krosse Cave, which was mostly not too much of a step up. She could target the elemental weaknesses of the enemies within, and that proved quite handy. I invested into Herbology heavily to cut into her consumption of Blackberries. Despite that, she ran out shortly before the cave's inner savepoint, and had to fight three battles with no mana, which was quite embarassing!
I gave a shot at fighting the Gargoyles, but they clearly outmatched her, they were too fast and her spells weren't doing much damage to them. She clearly couldn't beat them with her basic equipment, so I left the cave, got her to join as a full time party member, then proceeded to Craft and Customize for her. She returned with a Chameleon Rod, a Thunder Ring to boost the damage of her wind spells, and an Emerald Earring for a free level 6 Hasten Speech. That made them more reasonable, but the battle was still quite difficult! I was worried about her prospects going forward, this was not a good sign.
The journey to Marze was uneventful. Thunder Bolt kept handling most regular enemies well, and Fire Bolt easily cleared enemies weak to fire. She switched to the Escape Shift battle formation for the bonus evade; while Square Shift 1 would be useful for its Body Armor effect letting her cast her high end spells, she hadn't unlocked any of them yet, and Fire Bolt and Thunder Bolt were still pretty capable. The Forest of Symbols was fairly straightforward, though the Witchettes resisted both fire and wind elements, forcing her to thwack them!
The Snow Ogre was a tough, time consuming fight. Even with Fire Bolt hitting its weakness, it had a ton of health, and was fast enough to keep pace with her, especially since she had to stand still to cast anything! Her spells were definitely getting long in the tooth, and while I would invest into them to alleviate that somewhat, she needed better spells soon!
The Lacuer continent's encounters proved rather difficult for her, so I went back to the Krosse continent, grinded up a bit more, and leveled up Fire Bolt, Thunder Bolt and Wind Blade. That also incidentally gave her enough skill points to get up Customization high enough to craft the Silver Rod, which did wonders for boosting her spell damage. She could now actually reliably do damage to the Lacuer continent enemies, especially if Wind Blade hit multiple times! She swapped between the Thunder Ring and Fire Ring depending on the encounter, though her wind spells generally proved more reliable. I was still hoping for better spells to show up, and soon.
Why am I only mentioning three of her spells? Well, while she did technically unlock more spells, all of them weren't an element she could boost. Further, they took too long to charge up, for not much more damage than her basic three spells she started with. Spellcasting is unfortunately generally not well implemented in this game, despite many improvements from the original. I really hope fans mod the game to fix it someday.
Lacuer gave her a Rainbow Diamond, which let her Alchemize some Star Rubies. It also let her craft the Ruby Rod:
With these stats, a fire boosting property, and some footwork, she was able to hold on. Fights were still very long in the tooth, however. I deliberately took some extra fights outside Linga to get her more levels and better spells, but no dice. At level 30, I sighed, stopped, and moved on.
Celine got Trance and Concentration to level 5, then leveled up Hasten Speech to level 4. The Sacred Grounds of Linga were looking like a rough chore. Then she unlocked Thunder Storm.
Finally, a worthwhile new spell! Thunder Storm hit its target with four lines of lightning crossing through it. It wasn't always the best spell to cast, and sometimes Fire Bolt and Wind Blade got in more damage, but its presence was definitely welcome. Celine now finally switched over to Square Shift 1 to take more advantage of it.
The dungeon was relatively slow going, but otherwise not noteworthy. Celine started working on Qiqong and getting her Alchemy up. She retrieved the second Rainbow Diamond here, and used its skill boost to craft a Holy Rod. With that, she was done with the main item creation skills for a while, and would focus on boosting her support item creation skills instead.
At level 34 she unlocked Eruption, which seemed to hit harder and more often than Thunder Storm. Further, it often hit enemies around the affected unit, which was usually more useful than the line shaped targeting of the latter spell. She switched to a Fire Ring, only to switch back to a Thunder Ring when she recalled that the enemies here were largely weak to Wind. Ahh, the pains of relying on elemental spells!
In the Hoffman Ruins, I discovered that the kobolds and slimes were extremely vulnerable to her staff's smackings! The Holy Rod had a Light element attached to it, naturally, and I would remember to keep a copy of it around for future use, as Light weaknesses are actually quite common in this game. Now Celine of course didn't have the strength of Claude or Rena, and generally preferred casting spells, but having the option on hand couldn't hurt!
The archer ladies turned out to be the main threat, once again. They were quick and had strong ranged attacks, and in packs they were fast enough to punish Celine for trying to cast anything besides her basic spells. They were also weak to Wind, forcing her to slap on a Thunder Ring again. Arrgh! Why couldn't enemies be weak to the useful spells?!
The shielded enemies were interesting to fight, as they nullified both fire and wind elements, and had no weaknesses to exploit. At least they didn't resist Light element, so her staff was still able to take them down, but battles became considerably slower when they were involved, and the one fight with six or so of them buffed by an archer lady miniboss was quite tricky! She had one minor advantage however: Bless, an accuracy buff she learned at lower levels, allowed her to punch through their shields! It was not often, and circling to their back was still far more effective, but it sure helped!
Qiqong was done. Celine began working on raising Hasten Speech further to be free of the Emerald Earring. Eruption was also upgraded once, as it seemed like her most useful damage spell so far. Lunar Light had unlocked, but it looked considerably less impressive in its coverage, while taking considerably longer to charge.
The Halfnyxes were weak to light, and so fell fast to her smacks! It's amusing that a wizard character was best served hitting a boss with their staff to defeat them, but such is this game. What can I tell you, spellcasting is designed badly!
Explode was her next spell, and while it was a tad slow, it sure did a lot of damage! Enemies weak to it often died in one cast, and those that survived did so with very little HP remaining. It also did a lot of damage to their shields, it was not uncommon for a few survivors to end up with broken shields.
She gambled on Customization in the Lacuer Front Base and ended up with the Dragonstaff. This was her ultimate rod as far as I knew, it had good attack stats on it and also boosted all her spells to their max level! This was significant, as it not only raised the damage her spells did, it also saved her lots of battle points!
The continent of Ell was rather awkward for Celine, as she had to work without her formation bonuses for a while, thanks to the forced loss! I settled for making her smack things with the Dragonstaff, and that worked fine, especially since some enemies were lackadaiscal enough to let her cast her big spells regardless. She built it back up before tackling the tower itself.
Well, it turns out all that prep work made the tower itself a cakewalk! She could deal with its encounters quite easily. With the Dragonstaff, she was also actually somewhat competent at melee. Somewhat. Then again, this was only Galaxy difficulty after all.
Cynne was taken down with a lot of staff hits and some poison. I would like to tell you that it was a tense, climactic battle...but it really wasn't.
See you in Energy Nede!
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