Curate of Curiosities

Previously on Mardek, our heroes did a few errands for the priesthood of Belfan's sun god, which eventually led them to one of the elemental crystals sustaining the world. Now, the king of Goznor, who is most certainly not possesed by a space alien, is asking the party to gather the rest of them.

While it's here that the game opens up, you are led to Canonia right off the bat, since its shaman might know something about the crystals.

Since Mardek and pals whacked the last shaman back in chapter 2, Gloria, at that time a random NPC, has now taken her place. She doesn't seem to know much about the crystals, but does tell you to meet her friend, Elwyen, whom she's been living with in the intervening years.

But you'll need to bench all of your party members before she'll give you the time of day.

So here's her main character trait: she's absolutely crazy for Mardek. Why else did you think that you had to be alone before you could recruit her? What's more, she claims that Mardek promised her that they would be together when she turned seventeen, when I don't remember him sating anything of the sort. And this has some implications about Belfan's age of majority that I really don't want to get into.

Oh right, her skillset. She's a bard. Like most bards, she uses a harp. Normally I would just leave it at that, but there's one thing about her that makes her rather unique. All of her skills have either a stat buff for the party or a damage-over-time effect for the enemies, whose effectiveness scales off of her magic stat.

Go back to Canonia with her in the party, and Gloria will immediately shirk her duties as shaman to join you.

Gloria is this chapter's substitute for Emela, being a mage who can learn spells of all four natural elements. Unlike Emela, her repertoire of spells does not end there; she starts with an AoE heal spell, and can learn a defense buff and spells that block attacks of the natural elements.

With her in your party, she nudges you to the Dreamcave north of Canonia.

Inside is a portal to the The problem: at this moment, only four of your party members can actually enter the dreamrealm: Mardek, due to Rohoph's influence, Gloria, due to her attunement with nature, Elwyen, and Solaar. It's a good thing that Solaar is a surprisingly useful party member, physical frailty aside.

All of the enemies in the Dreamrealm are of the never-before-seen Fig element, associated with the imagination. While this game does officially introduce this element, it was also present in Deliverance, albeit unimplemented.

All of the enemies in this area are, appropriately, figments of the collective unconscious. The one enemy you absolutely need to look out for are Pixies. Between their ridiculous physical evasion, ability to act twice per turn, and variety of status moves, they are far from something to be taken lightly.

While this is the only thing we actually need from the Dreamrealm, there are other such portals in the nearby forest and dungeon, which you otherwise have no reason to visit in this chapter.

Back in chapter 1, there was an inventor who lived in Goznor who sent two children into the sewers to deal with poisonous rats. Here, he wants to build a robot powered by the souls of the dead, and seeks to make use of unholy magic to finish his project. Since we're already doing one globetrotting fetch quest, he decides to join us to have a better chance of finding what he's looking for.

Meraeador is a pretty unusual party member. Where any other party member would have one slot for a weapon, sometimes two slots for a weapon and shield, he can equip up to two different inventions, which have to be crafted at his workbench (with him in the active party, of course) beforehand. These inventions have a variety of different effects, like inficting status effects or full party buffs. However, this means that, in effect, he can only have two different skills available at any one time, so I didn't get much use out of him.

As you can clearly see in the screenshot above, he's got a bit of a stutter. Remember this for later.

Throughout the world, you find these trilobite warriors standing around, raring to challenge the party. They're pretty simple to fight, they're packing water and earth elements spells, plus one that reduces a party member to critical health.

The Water Crystal is in Lake Qur, you say? Just our luck! If you remember, the only way to get under the lake was by use of a spell that allowed the party to breath underwater, but we haven't seen heads or tails of the one person who could cast it ever since we defeated Moric.

And somehow, I just knew that there was something more to this lake than a monster-infested cavern.

But there's no need to worry, the shaman can make us a potion with the exact same effect as the spell from before. And while he helpfully informs us that most of the ingredients can be found on the southern continent, there's only one way to get there from here.

Remember how on the main page, I brought up there was an area in this game that was based on post-9/11 paranoia? This is that place. In order to access the teleporter that allows transit between the two continents, you need to purchase a warp ticket and go through a total of nine security guards, who ask you various inane questions that often have nothing to do with ensuring the safety of the warping service, that you need to answer to their liking to proceed.

Oh, hello again, Clavis. If it's balance you're worried about, then it's no big deal. We're relieving all the temples of their crystals. If all the crystals are gone, it's perfectly balanced, right?

This might be completely incidental, but right after going through the TSA parody, you're spat out right near a desert city that's filled with people in outfits you've never seen before, that practice a different faith from the people of the northern continent, that call your party a bunch of dirty, savage foreigners.

This is the city of Aeropolis. It's the largest city in the game, with the widest selection of shops. Aside from having most of the ingredients you'll need to make the potion, you can also buy some amazing equipment upgrades, such as an elemental sword for Mardek, and magical and stat-boosting equipment of all sorts.

Out of place valley girl accent aside, it's from this guy that we find out where the Fire and Earth Crystals are. The Fire Crystal is in a Volcano, and the Earth Crystal is deep in the woods. Surprised?

This is Zack. I'm not going to beat around the bush here, he is Shadow from Final Fantasy VI. He was available in chapter 2, but there, you couldn't have both him and Vehrn in the active party at once, and with the vast abundance of undead in that chapter, he simply does not see much use.

Almost all of his skills are physical attacks. The good thing about his skills is that most of them don't require MP, but still have situational use.

The Lifewood, aside from being home to the Earth Crystal, also has another portal to the Dreamrealm.

A metaphysical ligament? I'm sure this will be useful for something.

While aimlessly exploring the Dreamrealm here, I wind up stumbling across a surprisinglly difficult miniboss. Didn't the shaman mention something about a serpent? Anyways, I might have been underleveled for this, but it wasn't too much trouble.

Hey look, it's the first boss from chapter 2. Looks like he's gone straight, and abandoned his search for the crystals--while standing right in front of the temple housing one of them.

But just in case we forgot, we're here to pick up a book that'll teach us how to call forth the dead to do our bidding.

Our next trip on our tour of the southern continent is the Crimson Peak, home of the Fire Crystal. But we're not after the crystal just yet. Instead, there's a sidequest we can do about an imprisoned spirit. You need to go to the hermit who lives in the volcano and have him tell you the incantation needed to free him.

Unsurprisingly, he's evil, and attacks you so that he can use the Fire Crystal to carry out whatever plot he's cooked up while imprisoned.

Or at least, he would have if Solaar didn't completely wreck him.

For now, that's all we need to do on the southern continent. Next stop, the house in the woods in the northern continent.

As you can plainly see, this game was written in the 2000s.

He sics a couple of zombies at us, nothing we haven't faced about a million of back in chapter 2.

"Yeah, this is what happens when you walk into weird teleporters. By the way, I once had this friend who was into necromancy like this guy. Crazy, huh?"

That's funny, the only other necromancer we know was one of Rohoph's buddies.

It's an undead version of the miniboss in Moric's battleship. It can stun you, which can be annoying, but I didn't have too much trouble with it, since we have a total of three party members that are effective against the undead. And this is when Mardek is finally coming into his own as a physical party member. Back in chapter 2, his skillset consisted entirely of healing and support skills, but now that you have access to elemental swords, he can now actually make use of this solid attack and hit the weaknesses of a variety of foes.

With the necromancy book in hand, we can now figure out what ingredients we need for the ritual. What luck, we already have two of them already!

And speaking of ingredients, we now have all the ingredients we need to make the potion and reach the Water Temple. And since this is the successor to Deliverance, you might have some idea of what to expect.

Yes, there's still quite a bit of walking around and backtracking, but it's nowhere near as tedious as in Deliverance. This temple revolves around an extension of the gem switch mechanics from earlier: in order to reach the inner sanctum you need to deactive all the switches in the dungeon to form a bridge over the water. This is much easier said than done, as there are four different switches, found on opposite sides of the temple, and you need to activate them first anyways in order to open the way further.

Along the way, you'll face this miniboss. It's one of the hardest I've faced so far in this chapter, but I may have just been underprepared. It can switch its elemental attribute every turn, but defending yourself against multiple elements be pretty tricky at this point in the game.

And that's the last of the ingredients. Back to Meraeador's house to carry out the ritual.

Since this was his pet project, he's the one who recites the incantation. Sure, he's got a bit of a stutter, but there's no way that whatever cosmic forces they're invoking will care.

...Except it looks like they did care after all, and summoned four souls into the robot, rather than just one. Just be lucky that you weren't incinerated on the spot, like what usually happens when you mess up summoning rituals like this.

Legion is the party's blue mage. For those unfamiliar, he can use particular spells that are used by monsters. If you know which types of skills he can learn, and what monsters he can learn them from, he can easily become the party's most powerful and versatile asset.

Being a robot, you can't get his special equipment in stores. Instead, you have to craft them at Meraeador's workbench. Of course, its best for him to master the skills for his existing equipment before upgrading them.

The original plan for this page was to stop after claiming one of the crystals, but there's something else I've been meaning to show off. It's time to find out what happens when you piss off the warport security.

Let me let you in on a secret. Most of the enemies in this game are vulnerable to one or more status ailments. Despite being set up to be an impossible-to-defeat foe, the Security Demon is no exception. What's more, despite it packing an instant-death spell, no form of resistance to death was coded into the game. Do you see where this is going?

We confuse it and trick it into casting Death on itself. Take that, fantasy TSA.

Seriously, why are these people so worried about terrorists? You've got literal demons staffing this place!