The first steps through the Lacuer continent were pretty uneventful. Claude easily mowed down everything on the path leading to Lacuer itself. In the process, he unlocked an interesting special art:
Sword of Life hits enemies around him, while healing him. It was much more awkward to use than Meteor Palm, but it gave him a viable option to sustain himself, so long as he could sufficiently reduce the damage he took. I didn't equip it yet, but I would keep it in mind.
Double Slash, on the other hand, was boring. It just makes Claude execute two attacks with a small aoe. Most often, he could get more damage in by just attacking. Kind of a pointless move, honestly!
Claude easily won second place in the Lacuer Armory Contest, and proceeded on to the Sacred Ground of Linga. By now, Power Burst had been maxed, and Godspeed had gotten pretty high. He also got Alchemy to level 8, but that didn't unlock any useful options for him for the moment, unfortunately.
The Sacred Ground of Linga was definitely a big step up, as the enemies within were able to withstand his attacks despite him upgrading his sword twice. I found to my satisfaction that he was able to handle this place well despite that, only running into some trouble with a Killer Rabbit miniboss accompanied by Blood Hounds. Its attack buff was enough to let them kill Claude in three hits, but he easily dealt with them by focusing the Killer Rabbit down with Helmetbreak and Ultime Camui, then cleaning up the rest of the mob.
He leveled up Godspeed some more, then got Customization to level 7, which also didn't unlock anything useful at the moment. He also unlocked Breaker, which would let his moves break shields more reliably. I went ahead and made him Customize a Farcutter into a Searing Sword. He also crafted a Blue Talisman with a design document rewarded by a guild quest. This was notable for being a hefty boost to his defense, raising it by as much as 30%! And it halved water damage! And the defensive boost stacked with multiple copies equipped! I still kept the Berserker Ring on for now, but this was a remarkable find that would come in handy later.
From Hoffman Ruins onwards, he would switch in this special art. Knuckle Burst was a mid ranged fireball attack that would break shields. I already explained why this was good with Helmetbreak, and this did it even better. That said, Helmetbreak was still useful, and would still be used.
Hoffman Ruins served up the dreaded Bowladies. They were archers that could hit quite hard with their arrows and often fill the battlefields with them. Those were bad enough, but they could also melee quite hard! These were easily the worst threats here, and even in relatively small packs they could easily whittle down Claude's HP. I took those fights very seriously and kept Claude moving so as to not be nabbed by them. Knuckle Burst travelled through targets, which was quite helpful in taking them down whenever they lined up.
Hoffman Ruins was also where enemy shields started getting noticeably tougher. It was pretty clear Helmetbreaker wouldn't serve its shield breaking role for much longer, and Knuckle Burst would have to pick up its slack. Thankfully, this wasn't really a serious problem, as Claude could still reasonably deal with most encounters here with his Searing Sword.
He turned up a Light Cross here, which he equipped in place of the Sacrificial Doll. It provided a hefty MP boost as well as a considerable boost to his defense, evasion and critical defend rate(called Guts here). It also made him weak to fire, earth and darkness, but those didn't really matter against the regular enemies here. For bosses, he would of course switch back to the doll, as its revival property was just way too good, and the elemental resistances would help out more against their most dangerous moves.
This was the hardest regular enemy encounter here. The Bowlady miniboss buffed the attack of her group, and the Protectors in front were completely immune to fire, on top of blocking most attacks from the front. This was quite a quandry, as both Knuckle Burst and the Searing Sword were fire elemental! Claude eventually defeated them by spamming Knuckle Burst and pulling out Rock Explosion, but boy did he have to run around a whole lot! Good thing blocking Knuckle Burst's element didn't stop it from breaking their shields.
Oh yeah, Rock Explosion. It was his next special art, and it hit an aoe around him. It dealt pretty good damage, but it locked him in place, and making use of the aoe was rather tricky, so I didn't pull it out much. It was good to have for crowds of weak enemies though, and I would certainly use it for both its aoe and its element, as the situation called.
Claude got Replication to level 8 and started levelling up Familiar. The Familiar skill calls upon one of several birds to let the character shop from wherever they are. Dungeons would just get longer from here onward, and he would absolutely need it to reliably resupply himself. He also maxed out Godspeed and started working on Guardbreak to further raise his damage. Enemy defense would scale up massively throughout the game, and this skill would help him negate that and keep his damage output up.
The Halfnyxes were...a complete anticlimax. Lining them up and spamming Knuckle Bursts quickly did away with their shields. Claude ran out of MP a few times, but he was never truly in danger. They were just way too inept.
Claude had a hefty sum of skill points, which went into leveling Familiar and Art. Familiar hit level 8, and would stay there till he got some Rainbow Diamonds. His equally high battle points went into getting Guardbreak high, almost close to max.
The game wouldn't really pick up until the continent of Ell. I used the downtime between the Halfnyxes and reaching it to experiment a bit with his new move, Dragon Roar. It was rather slow to start, and locked him in place, but it did do good damage, covered a pretty decent range, and also hurt shields. It wouldn't replace Knuckle Burst, but it had some decent potential for fights when maneuvering wasn't very important.
There wasn't much else happening. Cynne was a joke as usual, and his accompanying Stone Statues weren't much better. He reunited with his "party" at Ell and was ready to brave its dangers. Join me next time to watch him tackle those. See you then!
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