Forgive me a second- we're wandering over to the Champs Sauvage right now, and we're stopping to get accosted by some Costa Valor new enemies.
Leaders among mermen and skilled strategists, they like to spray enemies with poison to weaken them, then call in their underlings to finish the job.
The merking appeared in DQs 3 and 8, and while it does like to poison you with a venomous mist, it doesn't seem to call for help. It can, however, summon pillars of water for a torrential attack. DQ6 also has an enemy called a merking, but it looked like this instead.
Behelmeted beasties who win victory in battle by calling on countless companions to overwhelm the enemy.
Octopots call DQ10 their home, and can drain magic as well as call for help. And when things seem extra dire, they also have a Kerplunk dance to bring back every enemy that died at the cost of their own life.
The "magic drain" dance drains magic from all party members, but the Octopot itself doesn't seem to get all of the MP for itself.
Rab shows off his new trick: savaging enemies with his claws to fish for crits. He also drains a little MP back for landing a hit in general.
The octopots notice they're somewhat outmatched.
Anyway, something about the Champs Sauvage? We enter from just south of the Eerie Eyrie.
Hendrik: The fall of Yggdrasil has taken its toll even here... This place was once a paradise on Erdrea, but now that the Lord of Shadows reigns supreme, one cannot know what horrors lurk behind every corner. Be on your guard, Erdward.
Rab: If we could get our hands on Erdwin's famous flying contraption, we could soar on up to the Lord of Shadows' gaff and give the blighter what-for! But first, we better see about tracking down our auld pals. None of them were exactly the giving-up sort, eh? Not even the fall of Yggdrasil would be enough to keep them down. So what do ye say we kill two birds with one stone? We can ask around for information about Erdwin's flying thingumajig and keep an eye out for familiar faces along the way.
These airborne menaces are a common cause of unexplained disappearances among wandering merchants, or so the stories say.
Well, considering they have a freezing blizzard breath and Thwack, no wonder. Terrornodons come from DQs 4 and 10.
This is going to be a pretty short update overall, and we'll be spending most of it here, in L'Academie.
Hendrik: How very peaceful this place is. I was raised among rough and rowdy warriors-to-be, with the sound of clashing swords and the smell of sweat ever in the air. This school is... different.
Rab: Looks like the girls are still in high spirits, even in these benighted times. That's Monsieur Médaillé's influence, mark my words. Aye, if it's enthusiasm ye're after, ye couldn't ask for a finer role model than him. Maybe he could give me a few tips on being a good role model to you...
As things go, L'Academie took the Fall surprisingly well, all things considered.
"Well" doesn't mean that they brushing it aside. They have to tackle the problem head-on, same as everyone else.
And that means the addition of PE to the course, for making strategic escapes.
The remarkably challenging balancing act of being ladylike and also surviving the Vicious monsters.
It doesn't hurt to still be the former- although all cutlery gets the food in your mouth in the end. And I'm not entirely sure whether the L'Academie girls are expected to be able to fight monsters or just fend them off. When it comes to us, it's usually a matter of doing both.
...Whatever makes you feel grown-up, I suppose.
The monster girls are all still here, and this seems to be the crux of L'Academie's safety. As a place where humans and monsters get along, there's a certain sentiment keeping the monsters away. With that said, it's not the be-all and end-all.
On the other hand, Madame Labouche has suddenly gotten fed up with our unhindered presence here, and I'm not ruling out Viciousness being the cause of that rather than just a lack of patience.
Me? But Rab's standing right there!
The way she says this implies we must do this to continue having unhindered access to L'Academie... but this is not backed up in any way by the mechanics.
This is a perfectly ordinary sidequest in all possible ways. With the possible exception of the fact that the thing Labouche wants to see is not used in any other sidequest.
Madame Labouche wants us to come back to her with a certain level of the Charm stat on Erdward. Erdward specifically- Sylvando would probably wipe the floor with her demands.
Labouche allows using equipment to increase your Charm, and to reach her requirements, you're going to have to use it. DQs 6 and 7 included a major sidequest involving maximising your Style, complete with costume bonuses to make your score go up even higher. There are no costume bonuses in this game, but considering the things Erdward can do, Labouche's demands are fairly reasonable.
I think the number you're looking to reach is 330.
L'Academie is positively filled with sidequests- there's two more that aren't labelled on this map! One only appears at night, while the other is a special side quest that isn't on the Quest List.
Starting off at the door, we have this lady.
She reminisces about one of her old pupils.
...There aren't a lot of pleasant reasons one can come up with to explain how that came about.
Madame Augustine's only unfinished business as an educator at this school is resolving this unexplained student absence- even if it's so much as figuring out what happened.
This sidequest is one of many around here that we cannot complete yet: The student in question can only be found in an area we need to go back to later as part of the Act 2 plot. Good thing we can accept as many Sidequests as we feel like!
We need to head to Sniflheim, incidentally.
We have a name and we have a place. Not much, but somehow, I've had worse.
Fishing for the enjoyment of the experience means you could probably get away with sitting anywhere with a fishing rod, but it helps to be actually over a water feature.
...I doubt this one ever had fish in it.
The thing she's smelling isn't actually anything to do with the river, but rather with Malodorine running out of perfume. It suddenly occurs to me we, the party, probably get a pretty putrid whiff of things when we fight walking corpses and their ilk. Thankfully, we don't have smell-o-vision yet.
Malodorine wants us to go fetch a bottle of her perfume from her home.
Considering... waves arm vaguely, there a number of reasons for this, many of them terrifying.
Malodorine's family lives in the Cryptic Crypt. This "recently moved" matter is actually reflected mechanically- they are NPCs in the environment (naturally, for how this sidequest would have to be handled), so they weren't around when we were bashing walking corpses as enemies there the first time we went.
The game doesn't expect you to go to Hotto until much later in Act 2, but the option opens up relatively soon, and with care, you can certainly do this one pretty quick.
This is the unlabelled sidequest: Madame Waloppe has some concerns she would like us to address.
If there are any young madamoiselles who could use a new sanctuary in their lives, she wants us to send them to the L'Academie.
This girl also has something to say about Malodorine's behaviour. Somewhat remarkably, the only person who's actually worried about anything here is Malodorine herself. Not to diminish the downsides of a poor self-esteem, but you'd think a putrid walking corpse as a student would cause more problems than it has.
Perfectly fair objection. How rude.
...Although aparently both of them asked the same thing.
If you take her up on that offer, she'll sing the school song. Although of course, I've got no context for how well.
I feel like she's confused "an emergency" with an illness... and "an illness" with a wild animal.
This relates to the other Quest not marked on our map.
There really is a ghost girl hanging around L'Academie, but she only comes out at night.
This Seaslime in the library has some riddles for us to solve. She's not a Madame, so I suspect she's a student and not a teacher.
This Quest demands we find and present pieces of equipment to her.
Starting with our first riddle, we need a Sword "that sounds like you should pilfer it".
I forged a Steel Broadsword, which was the correct answer, to complete the task now. Forged, because I didn't have one already. It feels like I should, but it just never came up.
Incidentally, for the Definitive players, Erik has one from his Side Story, so you can always wait until you pick him up. It's not like that'll force you to complete the sidequest any slower: You'll have access to Erik the same time you can finish the riddle.
I don't think that's a riddle, even if it was funny. Clever, maybe.
The second riddle is much more difficult. And considering where the first one was coming from, that's saying something.
I still don't understand how the answer connects to the question. We can't acquire this weapon at all yet, and how quickly you can depends on how badly you want to acquire the reward for this sidequest. I prefer to let it sit from "as soon as possible".
Never met him before in my life.
I'm certain any effort to actually treat this friendship as something worth maintaining is only going to end in disaster for all involved.
The kitchen has been struggling with the Fall.
Croque's demand hasn't gone down, but her supply has. And as a woman more concerned with essential nutrition than taste, she has chosen to set taste to one side to make sure she nails the nutrition for now. She can make things up when the situation improves.
These two girls have changed their concerns significantly.
When last we met them, it was the short-haired girl who was crushing, although with the new priorities the Fall has imposed, things have changed such that it's the other way around.
The glombolero is a coat that can be worn by anyone, giving defence, magical might, and having a 20% chance to absorb the MP from hostile spells. This doesn't actually reduce the damage of the spells themselves, so this is kind of a... meh reward? We could've got this one before the duplication point, but I barely want the one as it is.
The spiked armour returns part of the damage you take on physical attackers back at them. This is... less bad, but still very situational and not something I'd use seriously. You couldn't get this before the duplication point, but you could get it before Act 2.
This, though, is the first prize it must be Act 2 to acquire. The Miracle Sword is one of the more powerful swords in Act 2, coming up short only of some very clearly lategame swords, and 25% of the damage you deal is converted into your own HP. While the very strong prefer the second hit of the Falcon Blade, this weapon goes wonderfully on Erik or Hendrik seeking to land a single, solid blow.
It's also got a decent Charm score, so it's worth reforging to get points with Madame Labouche alone. I'll probably find a chance to use it as an actual sword later.
There are some rideable honeyhead horknights around the Champs Sauvage now.
And Erdward took the chance to add Kasizz to his spell list. For what it's worth.
He's been rebuilding some of the good panels up here. It'll be a while before plans change.
There's some sparkly spots only accessible from horknight-back, and also some treasures like this one.
The place where your ship comes up is also available for looting. Even if we still had access to the Salty Stallion, I'm not sure it would appear here, and less sure whether it would get in the way of us harvesting the sparklies.
Don't forget to take the horknight along this part of the map.
And there's also this one that I can never feel like I'm hitting.
Time to stop in the Eerie Eyrie. This place is exclusively for sidequests in Act 2, although it apparently rated just enough importance that it got a Vicious enemy and a new enemy.
Their mohican-topped helmets make them particularly popular with trend-conscious teens- a fact they're privately proud of.
The knight aberrant appeared in DQs 1 and 10, in the former as a boss: It guarded Erdrick's Armour, the best armour in the game. It comes with the ability to block attacks, a powerful tackle, and the Snooze spell, only the last of which it had in DQ1. It was a lot easier to be scary in DQ1. Not the least to speak of the stats involved- this knight aberrant would wipe the floor with the one in DQ1.
If we make it to the top of the Eyrie and walk around the nest, we can bump into a dragurn back here who seems to have had a rough time of it.
Not only that, but she's the only dragurn in her pack to not have gone Vicious.
...With that said, apparently there are no Vicious Dragurns in the game?
I think, because this sidequest requires a little more to it than most, they have to use different rules. Jarmina is one of the students Madame Waloppe wants to help.
Well, that's one girl helped out. Who else have we bumped into that's a young girl with nowhere else to go...
Well, I'm glad something helped out.
She seems open to the idea, at least.
And yes, this man will comment on her newfound home.
On the way back to L'Academie, it just happened that it turned to night, so we're checking in on the ghost girl first.
There's enough Undead in the world of DQ that there are custom swords for dealing with them, but the games are no stranger to including the literal kind. DQ9 made them glow blue, mostly because DQ9 made a big deal about seeing ghosts as part of its narrative, but when they appear, either they're your family giving you encouraging words, or restless spirits you have to settle their business. Rose is the latter type.
Who can see ghosts varies from game to game, but the Hero is usually the kind who can.
Rose doesn't really want to settle her unfinished business, she wants to pass on and her unfinished business is an obstacle in the way.
So what could a little girl wish for?
Some medal hunter left behind treasure, and she would like us to find it. Not the worst ask in the world, but...
We'll need to go to Zwaardsrust to find it. So, it shouldn't be too hard, since there's not a whole lot that gets in the way around there.
Jarmina can be found out in the garden, drinking from her jar and spitting on the flowers. I presume this is good for watering them.
I don't think any of the monsters that have appeared thus far are as massive as a dragurn yet. The biggest one I can think of is honestly the walking corpse, although the hammerhood is probably heavier.
...Oh wait, I think the hammerhood was a teacher.
...Do I want to know? The Lucky Dragon's Wing gives 25-40% resistance to Fire and Light damage, and is the best accessory for protecting against these elements in the game. Accessory slots do not normally dabble in blocking elemental damage, and no accessory has universal coverage.
And our little girl has found a place where she's content!
All-weather earrings block Ice and Wind damage by 10-25%. This reward is not equal to the lucky dragon's wing, but note I'm mostly saying that as exposition rather than as a complaint. Rewards are rewards, and I doubt a Venus' tear or sovereign symbol (the two accessories that belong in the set including the lucky dragon's wing) would be a fitting prize from a kid like this.
...As much as some kids really need one of those, I'm not sure that's something to be aspiring to. I will say teaching is a great career choice for most of those reasons, but that hug thing might get you in trouble.
Madame Waloppe has this to say, which is unfortunate confirmation that these are the only girls that the game has prepared to send to L'Academie. Feels like a quest that should have more to it than it does, but I guess the nature of the quest, it's unmarked nature and how it'd work later on handicap it.
You seem like a great teacher. I'll try and keep a lid on the hug thing- that girl really needed one.
...Told you it'd be a short one. I'd comment a little more on L'Academie, but as a collection of sidequests we're going to finish one by one as the game progresses, I'm not really sure how that would work. It's neat to see how an area that's explicitly better off than many other places in the world is a) still suffering and b) how it understands that level of privilege. L'Academie is a safe place, and thus they should be more welcoming of the people that need it most. And also making sure that the girls can fend off monsters should the situation change. No one seems too concerned about the possibility of the monster students and staff turning Vicious, but it seems to be a fightable instinct in the rest of the story anyway.
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