reynard531

Now here's where I had an advantage over the info at the Gamer's Hood forum. When I last played this game, I painstakingly tested each and every princess for each and every status effect, dividing the bubbles to test between players and testing them in bunches for one princess at a time, re-engaging the fight many, many times over. The game actually froze at one point, but thankfully corrected itself. That's how much I wanted to be able to figure out this game.

Because of that, I managed to develop a list of the weakness for each Princess. And here it is:

Sleeping Beauty: vulnerable only to slow, empty mind, and poison.
Cinderella: vulnerable to burn, slow, and empty mind
Snow White: vulnerable only to burn
Rapunzel: vulnerable to poison and empty mind

And by playing an altered version of the game, I managed to gather a whole lot more data on them safely.

Based on the calculations I made as to how much the burn and poison effect take off, I managed to get estimates on their maximum HP. Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty all have about 10,000 HP, and Sleeping Beauty has 9,000 HP. As for their maximum DP, is seems infinite. I tried using Dream Eater on them, and I kept getting returns in the triple digits, with no definite sign of the returns steadily decreasing. Maybe it was the altered version of the game, but that sort of thing is too difficult to test in the regular game (correction, tested it, same result)

And these women are dangerous. This fight is very hard, and you'll have a hard time staying alive, let alone killing them. Here's the team I went in with after preparing the best I could, and this is on the regular game.

Team, in this order: Alan, Jack, Alessa. Best weapons and armor.

Alan
Weapon Bubbles: Fire level 3, Thunder level 2, Vampire level 3, Ice level 2, Reborn, Regen level 2, Empty Mind level 3, Dream Eater level 2, Poison level 3.

Armor Bubbles: Life level 3, Fire level 3, Poison level 3, Dreams level 3, Chaos level 2, Life level 2, Ice level 3, Dreams level 2, Surprise, Medusa level 3, Multiple Attack, Counter Attack. 

Jack
Weapon Bubbles: Fire level 3, Life level 3, Thunder level 2, Dream Eater level 2, Holy level 2, Empty Mind level 3, Poison level 3, Cure, Slow level 3.

Armor Bubbles: Fire level 3, Thunder level 1, Life level 3, Ice level 3, Turbo, Earth level 2, Dreams level 3, Chaos level 2, Poison level 3, Life level 2, Dreams level 2.

Alessa
Weapon Bubbles: Explosion level 3, Ice level 3, Darkness level 1, Regen level 3, Fire level 3, Thunder level 2, Cure, Poison level 3, Holy level 3, Slow level 3, Dream Eater level 3, Medusa level 3, Shield level 3, Comet level 3, Empty Mind level 3.

Armor Bubbles: Life level 3, Dreams level 3, Life level 2, Chaos level 2, Earth level 2, Dreams level 2, More Armor, Ice level 3, Fire level 3, Poison level 3, Mirror level 3.

Out of all those Bubbles, I bought three level 3 Empty Mind Bubbles, a level 3 Slow Bubble, a Cure Bubble, one level 3 Fire Bubble, five level 3 Poison Bubbles, and a level 3 Life Bubble (for Jack's weapon). I also bought 9 Total Elsirs, to bring my total supply to 15. Everybody had their special ready, and after buying all that I had 672, 008D left, and I had started with 765, 308D.

And I needed those supplies. The first thing you want to do in this fight is to cast Empty Mind on Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, for what it's worth anyway. Blocking their spells will make this fight much easier, though that's only relative. You are still going to have to work real hard.

Snow White will be a problem because she still has her spells. The spells she can use, at least as many as I have documented, and I may have missed one, are as follows: Shield, Vampire, Mirror, Life (restories 10% HP, not matching the spells given to the player).

She also has two attacks besides her Kick move that you should worry about. One is called Super Sword. I don't know why it is, because she's not using a sword. In any case, it hits everybody for ice damage, and has a chance of freezing. It has frozen two or three of my characters. The other thing she can use is Holy Ball, another group targeting attack that hits for holy damage, and hits hard.

So after you put Empty Mind on everyone, and make sure to do that first, set Snow White on fire. Yes, I said set Snow White on fire. Burn her, burn her skin off and make her scream in pain. She needs to go. Besides, she's insane and kicking you with sharpened stiletto heels.

You could also try slowing down Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, if you can find the time. It's great to make their heavy attacks less frequent. But you may be too busy trying to keep everybody alive. This is a fight where giving everybody the Regen status is not such a good idea, as the gain won't keep up with the damage, and you can't waste the time.

Cinderella is interesting. As far as spells go, she can use Adrenalin and Slow. She has her basic Fan Attack of course, but she also has a move called Super Fan that hits everybody for stronger damage. She also has a group attack called Fire Fan, which hits everybody for fire damage and can cause burning.

Sleeping Beauty is the spell casting type. She can use a Comet spell, a Life spell (for 10%) and a Shield spell. As far as attacks, she has a Thunder and Earth attack that hits a single target, and she has an attack called Explosion that hits everybody and an attack called Holy that hits everybody.

Rapunzel has her basic Sword attack. As far as spells, the only one I've seen her use is Explosion. As for other attacks, also knows Holy Ball, which hits for really serious damage (Alessa was losing 600-700 damage in one hit, and she has 1820 HP with level 2 and level 3 Life Bubbles). She also knows a move called Poison Ball. Like Holy Ball, it hits everybody. It hits for poison damage and has a chance of poisoning.

Now here's something interesting you should know. These attacks like Sleeping Beauty's Holy, Earth, Thunder Explosion, Rapunzel and Snow's Holy Ball, Rapunzel's Poison Ball, Cindy's Fire Fan, or probably Snow's Super Sword, these aren't spells, so Mirror doesn't protect against then or their status effects.

Also, if a character has the Mirror status on them, then they will reflect all spells, not just enemy ones. In my testing, I used Pea Princess. She had Mirror on her and then got poisoned by Poison Ball. I tried using Alessa's Cure Bubble to heal the poison, only for the Cure spell to reflect it back to Alessa. Thankfully mirror doesn't last too long, but you see the problem.

It's also a good idea to get the Shield status on someone like Alessa, if you use her, or at least on the weakest person and/or the person in the middle. There were several points where my characters were very close to dying, and Alessa actually died once. So keep an eye out. After burning Snow White, set Cinderella on fire too, and poison Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel.

Snow White was the first to go down thanks to the burns I gave her, and the fact that I used all my specials. Rapunzel was next because those Holy Ball and Poison Ball moves of hers were really hurting. Then I burned up Cinderella and she was down. I had to use the level 3 Comet spell once, even if it took a lot of Alessa's DP. Sleeping Beauty was the last to go, and with that I finally finished the game.

The fight got me 0D, no items, and 18000XP that's pretty much worthless now. But hey, I beat the game! :D

I ended up using a total of one Reborn Potion, two X-Potions, and eight Total Elisirs. Alan was left with 2106 HP out of 2485, and 240 DP out of 350. Jack had 1459/2301 HP and 190/385 DP, and Alessa had 1032/1820HP and 546/546 DP.

And after that, you get these cut scenes:

With a final slash, the last princess was defeated. Alan stepped towards the four girls, and suddenly his sword became burning hot. Stuck by a misterious power, it began to fall to pieces...

[Alan is shown backing up into a wall and saying "What..." as his sword shatters] [Wait, it shatters?! WHY?]

The sword fragments fell to the ground, but at this point Alan didn't need is [another typo from the game] any longer. [Why wouldn't he need it any longer?! He still has friends to rescue and that sword just appeared in his hand. I'd say he needs it a lot! And I beat up Vincent for that thing!]

The princesses had no choice but to surrender, and in exchange for their lives they told Alan and his companions [Oh, now they exist...] where his friend Juseppes was being held...

[Cinderella and Snow while are shown against gray walls (despite the room being pink). Their clothes are torn. Cinderella yells "We surrender!". Alan says "Wise choice! Now where's Juseppes?"]

Rapuntzel [There's that typo I ignored..] gave him a key, and with that Alan ran to the dunegeons, where he could finally free his friend...

[The scene shows an open cell with that kid in the magician's outfit saying "Alan!!! You came to rescue me!" Alan is running towards him saying "Juseppes!! You okay?" Jack is there too, looking rather smug...I think. It's hard with a Jack O' Lantern face...]

Followed by Juseppes, Alan and his brave companions departed from the Sleeping Castle, leaving the four princesses locked in their own prisons.

"The Sleeping World is finally free", said King Jack. "but the rest of Dreamland is still under Geppetto's tyranny". The battle for freedom in Dreamland has only just begun...

And that' s it. You have a chance to submit your score, and mine was 5755963.

And I'll wrap this whole thing up with my final thoughts in the next post.

In which I make one, hopefully final, list of observations.

Now before I begin getting into the fight, I want to talk about several new observations I made. First of all, I discovered, thanks to some comments on Kongregate, that the action bars actually stop when you click on a character that's ready to move. That includes the enemies too. Somehow I never picked up on that. So I will admit, to my embarrassment, that I was wrong about my complaints on not having enough time to pick spells. Sorry about that.

Also, I did more testing on how well the status protections offered by Dream Bubbles works. I started to get the impression that they didn't count at all in the game's calculations. I started to think that after Charming's Empty Mind spell reflected back to him and he said "Immune to Mind". Jack says that when you use a Empty Mind spell on him, and his Dark Suit has a rating of 100 for the status.

So that would indicate that 100 really is the number for immunity, and they aren't working on some weird mathematical scale. And yet when Alan had 180% poison resistance on his armor, he still got poisoned. Unfortunately, my testing couldn't really prove that the things don't count at all, at least not without probably getting tons more data than I was willing to collect.

My testing was in using the Darkness Bubble. I was playing an altered version of the game that allowed me to test all I wanted. I had Alessa use a level 3 Darkness spell (100% probability) on herself about 20 times each under three different conditions: no bubble protection, and she has no armor protection, with a level 1 Darkness Bubble on her armor (40% resistance) and with a level 3 Darkness Bubble on her armor (100% resistance).

On all three occasions, the darkness status inflicted every single time, even with the 100% probability. Then I tried another set of 20 tries with Alessa having a level 3 bubble on her armor and using a level 2 bubble (70% probability) on herself. Here the results were different. The status applied itself 75% of the time, and failed 25% of the time. And again, this is with 100% protection. But the fail rate was pretty close to the chance of failing for the level 2 bubble.

Another set of 20 tries with a level 2 Darkness Bubble and no protection was a little weirder. The fail rate was about 45%. With a 70% chance of working with every single try, I suppose the best way to figure this thing out would be to try it 100 times like that, but I didn't really want to do that. So I can't really say if the status protections from the bubbles don't count at all or whether they are just glitched somewhere or something. Still, the only person that has any guaranteed immunity to any status effect is Jack and the Empty Mind status.

I can say however that the elemental protections from the bubbles seems to work. I hit Alan with a fire spell from the same person ten times on two occasions, once with no fire protection, and one with all three levels of fire bubbles on his armor. The average amount of damage went down with the fire bubbles. And bubbles for status effects can still be used to cure if you don't want to use the Cure Bubble to get rid of everything.

Unfortunately, I couldn't confirm if 100 is number needed in elemental resistance to gain health. Even with all three levels of bubbles (except for poison, since the level 1 version of that is non-existent), none of them added up to 100 on any piece of armor. And I mean every piece of armor in the game, not just the best pieces.

Well, there was one case, and that's the sad part really. Alessa's Silk Dress had a dark resistance of 65, and with all three Dark Bubbles, she could have had a resistance of 105. Pea Princess was similar, but not quite there, having a holy resistance on her Gold Dress of 40, with all three Holy Bubbles bringing it to 90. But like I said before, the Holy And Dark Bubbles seem to have been given the wrong programming, because they only have the sword icon and go on weapons, rather than going on both weapons and armor like they should. So I couldn't get any data.

Also, I found two more typos. The level 1 and level 2 Medusa Bubbles says, "caos spell" under the weapon category. And the level 1 Sleep Bubble says it cures the "poison spell". And the level 3 Sleep Bubble says that it casts a "holy spell". And there were several more, but I won't list them here, too many. But I will say that there is a serious inconsistency in the terms for the Medusa Bubble, on whether to call it the stone spell, the petrify spell, or the Medusa spell.

Also, the spell for the level 1 Empty Mind Bubble costs 15 in battle despite saying it costs 40 in the description. The level 2 and 3 versions have the same problems. But unlike the case of the Regen Bubbles, where the difference seemed proportional, this one was not. The level 2 bubble says it costs 60 when it actually costs 30 in battle. The level 3 bubble says it costs 100, but in battle it only costs 60 DP.

Oh, and I managed to figure out the confusion with the whole "Does the Beast's Super Claw hit one target or everybody" thing. I know Vincent's multiple claw attack said Multi-Claw, and his single attack said Super Claw, but it's a little different for the other Beast enemies. The move called Super-Claw, when used by a Young Beast, hits only one target. But when a Beast (as in adult, not species) uses a move called Super-Claw, it hits everybody. I also found that Beasts and Young Beasts are vulnerable to every status effect except petrify.

Also, you can use the Vampire and Dream Eater Bubbles on your own characters. And when you first start wandering in the game, you can't go into Darkville before dealing with the Cobbler. You also can't get into the actual Zzz Forest without Wolf, and Jack will even tell you they need the Big Bad Wolf in "Halloween Town". Without the potion, you get stopped right before entering the actual Sleeping Castle from the World Map. And when it comes to the Pea Princess, you can enter her house from the world map, but you can't go in her door without Alessa. She'll just say "I won't open the door, is that clear? Go away you ugly men!"

Speaking of the Pea Princess, I managed to get data on her as an optional boss, for anybody that's interested. I still say this fight really isn't worth it, because you end up killing one extra party member and she's still level 15, which you may not be prepared for.

Like I said, if you fight her, she will always be accompanied by a level 10 Axe Soldier and a level 11 Hammer Soldier. The background for the fight looks like the inside of her house, gray walls, gray floor, two brown dressers and a brown cabinet, and a couple of windows showing far away mountains and letting in sunlight (despite the fact that the regular view from her windows, like all the windows, is DARK).

Besides being level 15, she's also immune to every single status effect. Also, her tiara is silver with jewels in it, and in the middle is this gold circle with something red on it. I want to say it's a red heart with a red X over it, but I'm not sure. She uses a Comet spell for 100 DP, an Empty Mind spell, a Chaos spell, and a Dream Eater spell. She also can shoot a variety of elemental attacks from her gun with status effects. For example, she shot at Alan with an ice attack, a fire attack, an earth attack, a thunder attack, and a holy attack.

The ice and fire attacks have the chance of inflicting freezing or burning. Also, while the fire, ice, earth, and thunder attacks are single target moves, the holy attack hits everybody. She didn't seem to have a dark or poison based attack, and she also didn't seem to absorb any elemental damage. And based on what I got when I used regen on her (you can do that), I'd say her max HP is somewhere around 5015.

And I also got better data on the Red Apple Tree. It's full list of status weaknesses are slow, burn, and empty mind, and it only absorbs earth and holy attacks.

Seriously though, I really would suggest not bothering to fight her. It's not worth it in my opinion. In other news, the weapon called Cobra's Fang for Big Bad Wolf really is a poison-type weapon. Unfortunately, just like how Jack's Submachine Gun and it's dark nature, this weapon's element is totally unlisted.

And I think that's about it, so in the next part I'll get back to the final boss fight.

Okay, now it's time to head to the Sleeping Castle. I stopped by the merchant before the castle to resupply again, because I got hit on the way back. I had about 734,887D. I skipped all the fight until I got to the castle.

The icon on the map shows a castle that's colored pink, white, and purple. It also has a little flag on top that's white with a single red heart. How...ironic.

You can enter the place without any dialogue or cutscenes or anything. You enter from the south, and the first map you see is a garden. When you get on this map, the Anti-Shield Potion is strangely still in the inventory.

This garden is actually rather nice looking. It's has a stone path that goes in a sort of cross pattern, and in each quadrant there's this almost complete square made of bushes, with benches inside them. The center of the path has a small patch of grass with some flowers, three blue, two red/pink, and one white. There are glowing street lamps here too, the same design as Sleeping City.

This first map has two buried items. One is a Dream Catalyzer. The other is a Total Elisir.

The only exit off this map is to the north. This next map is filled by a large hedge maze. There is a way out, but you should search the whole maze for a few items of loot. I also noticed here that the brick walls surrounding the place are painted pink like Sleeping City.

There are three buried items in the maze and one chest. Two of the buried items are S-Potions. The other buried item is a level 3 Explosion Bubble. This makes for the second level 3 Explosion Bubble you will ever get, so hang onto it. And if you sold the first one by accident, at least you have another. The chest here contains an X-Potion.

Once you have all the loot, you can focus on getting out of the maze. This is the exact way through the maze:

Enter the maze through the one opening on the lower left corner.
Take the first path to the right.
Go down that path and turn left at the first chance
Turn left again
Go up a little bit
Go right all the way, ignoring the path that goes downward
Go up again, and then turn left, then go downward, then left again
Go up and then take the vertical path to the left
At the end of the path, turn right
Go down and and around to the other side of the hedge wall
On the other side, there's another hedge wall making a perpendicular angle with the wall you went around

But what's this? The path out of the maze is being blocked by someone. He's dressed in white and blue and has his arms crossed over his chest. Blond hair, blue eyes...why yes people, it's Prince Charming, the leader of the personal guard of the Four Princesses. And after the Red Apple Tree, he's the second official boss in this game.

First, save your game right here. If you don't you will regret it. Also, if you don't want to engage him, don't get too close. You don't need to get rid up next to him to set him off. That wall that makes the perpendicular angle helps make the spot where Charming's in a sort of square. The minute you take a step into that space, you engage him.

Now before I begin, I'd like to, as before, go over what I went into this battle with. My team was Alan, Jack, and Alessa, in that exact order. Money wise I was doing very well, 734, 887D. In terms of supplies, I had 45 Potions, 32 S-Potions, 28 X-Potions, 45 Dreams, 30 Wonderful Dreams, 14 Dream Catalyzers, 44 Elisirs, 10 Total Elisirs, and 29 Reborn Potions.

Everyone had their special attack ready, and in terms of bubbles, I had this:

Alan
Weapon: Fire level 2, Thunder level 2, Vampire level 3, Ice level 2, Reborn, Regen level 2.

Armor: Life level 3, Fire level 3, Earth level 2, Dreams level 3, Chaos level 2, Life level 2, Ice level 3, Dreams level 2, Surprise, Medusa level 3, Multiple Attack, Counter Attack

Jack
Weapon: Fire level 1, Life level 2, Thunder level 2, Dream Eater level 2, Holy level 2.

Armor: Fire level 3, Thunder level 1, Life level 3, Ice level 3, Turbo, Dreams level 3, Earth level 2, Chaos level 2, Life level 2, Dreams level 2.

Alessa
Weapon: Explosion level 3, Ice level 3, Darkness level 1, Regen level 3, Fire level 3, Thunder level 2, Cure, Mirror level 3, Poison level 3, Holy level 3, Slow level 3, Dream Eater level 3, Medusa level 3, Shield level 3, Comet level 3.

Armor: Life level 3, Dreams level 3, Life level 2, Chaos level 2, Earth level 2, Dreams level 2, More Armor, Ice level 3, Fire level 3, Poison level 2.

Those level 3 Fire and Ice Bubbles on Jack and Alessa's armor are the ones I had on Hook and Wolf's armor. They weren't using them, so I thought I would move them around. I didn't actually use Explosion or Comet here, but I figured Alessa was the best person to have them because the spells cost lots of DP and she's the only one who could afford to use them.

Now if you go up to Prince Charming, this conversation starts:

Prince Charming: ...you killed my troops...and now you want to enter the Castle? [not a proper noun]

Jack: Go away Charming, and we won't hurt you. You're not obliged to obey the princesses. It's not your battle.

Prince Charming: Yes it is! I'm their servant and I will serve them as long as I live! Prepare to fight!

Alan: Okay, if that's what you want...

And that's it. Personally, I love this conversation. You know why? Because this is perhaps the only time in the actual dialogue (and not a quest hint) that the game acknowledges that Alan isn't traveling alone. Jack actually got to speak to Charming, and he said we won't hurt you, we, as in we are a group.

Also, in the portrait of Charming when he speaks, it looks like his eyes are brown, not blue, as they are supposed to be. Maybe they are blue, it's hard to tell.

I really don't want these to get too long, so I'll put the rest in another post.

There are many things to know about Vincent. As someone on the Gamer's Hood forum said, poison is the key to beating him. I can confirm this through my own experiments, and that's why I got the level 3 Poison Bubble. The person on that forum also said that the poison status takes off about 1/35 of the maximum HP, so they calculated that his HP was somewhere around 70,000. Actually it should be a bit higher than that, because he takes 2188 in poison damage.

In my last run of the game, I tested every status effect on him to see which ones he was immune to and which ones he wasn't. Poison is one of the only ones. The other one that I found he is vulnerable to, which the forum did not mention, is the slow effect. That's why I got a level 3 Slow Bubble and ten slowing items, the items being just in case I couldn't spare the DP.

I also gave the Slow Bubble to Captain Hook because Alan already had many of the spells I needed or wanted as precautions, and I couldn't put all the responsibility of spell casting on him. Besides, the spell cost 50 DP, and with Hook's DP of 89, he could at least use it once.

So make your first action in this battle to have Alan try to poison him. I did, but the poison effect failed on the first try. 100% poison just doesn't work like it used to.

Now here is what to expect as far as attacks and spells. Vincent's basic weapon, like all Beasts, are his claws, and they hit one enemy. During this fight, he also had a move that hit everybody, and I saw that it said Multi-Claw. This seems to solve that confusion I had about whether the Super Claw move used by the other Beasts hit one person or everybody. Maybe I didn't see the name. In any case, Vincent also has a Super Claw move, and it hits one target for greater damage.

One other thing you should know about him is that he absorbs dark and holy attacks, another reason why characters like Jack, Alessa, and Pea Princess wouldn't exactly be best for this battle, besides their lower HP making them easier to kill with how hard Vincent can hit.

As far as spells go, I know from the battle from the last run of this game that he knows a Vampire spell and a Dream Eater spell, just like the other Beasts. But unlike the other Beasts, he also has a large arsenal of other spells.

From my previous play of the game, I know he has a Comet spell, even if he didn't use it this time. He also knows a Petrify spell, which is why I gave Alan the level 3 Medusa Bubble on his armor (though now that I think about it, I didn't really have to give him another one on his weapon...oh well). The reason for the Shield Bubble is that I had one last time, and a spell that increases defense is more than welcome here. I bought the Mirror Bubble too, thinking it might come in handy. In the battle I had now, it didn't, but as I keep saying, whatever advantage you can get.

The Cure Bubble was to cure any status effects he inflicted. On a side note, in the inventory, the description for the Cure spell has the same spelling error as the item. Also, as a slight correction, it's only the level 2 version of the Chaos Bubble that mistakenly says it cures the sleep status. The level 1 an level 3 versions say they cure chaos (though all three of them have the same spelling error of "caos" throughout their text).

The level 3 Fire an Ice Bubbles I put on everyone's armor was to try an get some protection against some of Vincent's other powers. In the last fight, I knew he had a freezing spell. This battle clarified that for me. See, besides his basic Claw move, the Super Claw, and the Multi-Claw, he also has attacks like Fire Claw, Ice Claw, Dark Claw, and Holy Claw.

Each off these special claw moves is elemental, and they attack everybody. The Fire and Ice Claws have the chance of inflicting burning or freezing, and despite my statistical protection, the Fire Claw move resulted on one occasion in causing two out of three of my characters to burn. With Ice Claw, one use froze two out of three of my characters.

That's really unfair you know. I mean, these enemies seem to be designed pretty much like the player characters, and the player never gets an area-effect freeze attack. Oh sure, there's the Comet spell that has a chance of inflicting burn, but that's it for area-effect attacks other than special attacks with certain weapons, Explosion spells that do explosion damage, and explosion items.

Vincent also knows an Empty Mind Spell, and he also used a Life Spell at one point that cost him 30 DP and healed him for like 28,000 (I think that was the number, wen by too fast). It's really not fair that he of all enemies has a healing spell, and a vampire spell on top of that. And who knows what other spells he may have in his arsenal. I mean I know he has a Comet and Medusa spell from the last time I played, but he didn't use them here, so who knows what other abilities he has.

In any case, the basic strategy is again, to poison him. I got that on the second try. I also managed to use the Slow spell to slow him down on the first try, and ultimately didn't use the slowing items I had purchased. Slowing him down is good, because he will attack you less frequently. On a side note, here's another good question. If the More Armor Bubble "increase armor values by 30%", does that just mean the base protection, or does it mean the elemental and status protection too?

I used the Shield Bubble on Alan once for extra protection, and used the Mirror spell on Hook once just in case, since he was in the middle spot and that seems like the more likely target.

As far as items go, besides the slowing items, I really didn't buy anything beyond my usual stock goals. I had 40 Elisirs from loot and drops before I started preparing, and got another one here in loot, and I didn't end up using any of them. And before I started preparing in the village, I also had collected 13 Total Elisirs. I figured that was as good a number as any.

And I did end up using only Total Elisirs in this fight, four of them to be precise since I took inventory before fighting him.

Anyway, if you poison him an slow him down, hit him with your specials and use high level items like Elisirs, or, more importantly, Total Elisirs, you will be fine. Of course how effectively you'll be able to get those status effects on him, even with the best Dream Bubbles, is down to pure luck I suppose.

One other thing to know is that when the Cure Bubble says it cures all status effects (or it means to say that), it really does mean all of them, the negative and the positive. For example, during the fight I had already cast the Regen spell on everybody. And then Wolf got hit with Empty Mind. I used the Cure spell on him, and it took off the empty mind status along with the regeneration status.

So after a long fight, I finally beat Vincent the Terrible, who now doubt died from all the poison I pumped into him. Victory is mine! The fight didn't drop any items, but it gave me 18,000D and 25,000XP, not that I needed it. Everybody was at full health, and as for DP, by the end of the fight Alan was left with 315/350.

Now don't think this was an easy fight by any means. This game is just a bit easier for me because I have a general idea of what to do.

After the fight, there's no transformation scene like the fairy tale or the Disney movie, Vincent just disappears into nothingness and the game tells you that you got an item. That's right folks, this is it, the most powerful sword ever made, ever. Forget Excalibur, forget the Sword of Omens, forget He-Man's Sword of Power. Behold, the one, the only, Crystal Dominator!

Now here are the stats on this super-sword:

Element: None
Basic Attack: 480-550
Special Attack: 850-1000 (multiple targets)
Slots: +10
Cost: 1,000,000D

One million Denari...wow. Not that you would ever want to sell this thing, since this is the only copy. And it hits multiple targets, which is fantastic. Compare this to the stats for the Crystal Omega Blade:

Element: None
Basic Attack: 370-420
Special Attack: 740-890 (single target)
Slots: +8
Cost: 65,000D

This raises Alan's final total of weapon slots to 15. Also, we sadly never get to enter that castle Vincent was standing in front of. We just get handed the sword. I was rather disappointed by that, because I was really curious about what the inside of the place looked like. Could I have walked in and picked the sword off an alter like it was a holy object? It really would have been nice to see.

So here I am again, and back to the plot of the game. I had just gotten every character leveled up and ready, and had gone back to the Dwarven Village to restock my supplies. After I did that, I had 717, 628D. Yeah, it's a lot, an thankfully it won't go down too easily.

I had switched out Alessa so that my active party consisted of, of course, Alan in the first spot, Hook in the second, and Big Bad Wolf in the third. Why? Because now, ladies and gentlemen, I was preparing to face down Vincent the Terrible. You remember Vincent, right? He's the leader of the Beasts, former head of the personal guard for the Four Princesses, before Prince Charming and the other Princes came along. He's also supposed to have the most powerful sword ever made. And let me tell you, that rumor is true, and that sword will be a big help in finishing the game. So this is one more detour before we wrap up the main quest.

But, as always in this game, it seriously pays to be prepared. And trust me, walking in on Vincent the Terrible is a monumentally bad idea. Now as to why I picked Hook and Wolf to join the active party is something I will explain when I actually get to Vincent. Just know that this is the reason I spent all that time bringing them up to the level cap.

After lots of choices, ideas, and consulting my old notes and resources, I made several purchases, planning for several possibilities, and headed out of the Dwarven Village, cutting across the desert and skipping every single fight all the way to the Beast Fortress. I would suggest skipping every fight too. Vincent is no pushover, as you will soon see, and it pays to have every advantage you can have against him, and that includes being at absolute full health and power, and having all special attacks ready, and having full supplies, not wasting it on anything.

So let us steel ourselves for battle as we leave the Dwarven Village. Play the Mob Song everybody, and follow the advice. Grab your guns, knives, any weapon you can find. We're going to kill the leader of the Beasts, and this time there's no Belle to sooth him, and really no sympathy at all for killing him really. Kill the Beast!

Cross that bridge to the east of Sleeping City, and follow the road a short way until you come to this little icon. It looks like a gray square castle tower with...ramparts? Is that what you call those square blocks on a castle that make it look like a crown? Whatever, the stories about Vincent living between the mountains was true, because the thing is sitting between two mountains.

Just like how the visual design of the maps composing the Zzz Forest shared the same template as those that made up the Cobbler's woods, the maps that compose the area of the Beast Fortress share the same visual template as the Drowsy Gate. The map is gray with a few trees, mostly rocks, raise areas with stairs, and a dirt path that twists an turns just like the Drowsy Gate.

You enter the first map from the south. In terms of loot, this map has only one buried item, an X-Potion. This map also has one other exit, one that goes tot he north.

Also be aware that there are random encounters all through these maps. But unlike the Disney version, Vincent's place wasn't guarded by lively, inanimate objects. No, here you're attacked by hoards of young and adult Beasts, all of whom are trying to rip out our guts and gnaw on our bone marrow.

Personally, I would have preferred the army of inanimate objects...

I was skipping these fights, but for anybody that's interested, here are the combinations I encountered here. I think these are all the combinations here, because I ran into quite a few battles.

1. Young Beast level 15/ Young Beast level 17/ Beast level 22/ Beast level 24

2. Beast level 25/ Young Beast level 18/ Beast level 24.

3. Young Beast level 18 (x4)

4. Young Beast level 18 (x2)/ Beast level 25

5. Beast level 25/ Young Beast level 15/ Big Magic Tree level 18 (this was very surprising, as I thought all the fights here were composed entirely of Beasts and Young Beasts)

Anyway, moving on to the second map, the one you get to by taking that one path to the north. In terms of loot on this second map, there are only two buried objects. One is an Elisir. The other is a level 3 Comet Bubble. This was surprising to me, because the shops at the Dwarven Village had only a level 2 Comet Bubble. Sine they sold level 3, top level versions of every other type of bubble they had, not counting Reborn and Cure, I thought that the Comet Bubble only went to level 2.

You know what? This ties back to my original theory. Remember how I said that the Dwaven Village is probably safe because the Dwarves keep the best stuff for themselves and use it to keep everybody out? They probably have the level 3 Comet Bubble, and they keep it and unleash it on anybody that gets close.

By the way, the background for the battles here is the same as that for the Drowsy Gate, a ground that's mostly rocky, some grass, and mountains in the background. I would have liked something more interesting personally.

If you follow the dirt path, it forks at the very end into two paths. One goes north, the other goes west. I went to the north first. This next map had a dirt path that turned to the left but then cut off, and other separate path that went east to the only other exit. In terms of loot, this map has three things. Two of those are buried objects, one is an X-Potion, the other is a level 3 Regen Bubble.

I already had the level 2 Regen Bubble on Alan's weapon, but I switched it for that one. It lasts for 45 turns instead of 35, and costs 45 DP instead of 35.

The last item here is a chest, and it contains a level 3 Holy Bubble.

If you leave the map via that path to the east, you end up on the map with the boss. And also, if you took that east path on the map with the fork, you would also end up there. Both ways have dirt paths that go right up to him.

Look, in the distance! What is it? Well it isn't Vincent Price or Vincent Valentine.

It's Vincent the Terrible. And since this is getting kind of long, and there's still a lot to go over here, I'll split this into two posts. Kill the Beast!

My intention was to head back to the Dwarven Village to finish up the leveling process. Once I got past the Drowsy Gate and headed towards the desert, I got into a battle with a very dangerous combination. There were six enemies. The three in front where Dwarves, all level 15, a poison one, an ice one, and a fire one. Behind them were three level 19 Princes, one for poison, one for ice, and one for fire.

This fight was very hard, and I actually had to use a Total Elisir to win. After that I got into a battle with a Dark Prince, two Pinocchio Generals, an Ice Dwarf, and a Poison Dwarf. This was a fight I had to escape because Alessa got frozen and then Alan was in chaos, so I couldn't cure her. Then Alan attacked Alessa. Have I mentioned how much I hate chaos? No? Well I hate it immensely.

While resupplying myself, I ended up replacing the level 1 Fire Bubble on Alan's armor with the level 2 version I picked up so Alan would have better protection, for whatever it was worth anyway. After a few Beast fights, I got Hook to level 20. That left only the Big Bad Wolf. I left him at level 13.

I switched Hook for Wolf, and gave Wolf the Turbo Bubble because between him, Alan, and Alessa, he had the lowest speed. Although the difference wasn't by much. His speed was 67, while Alan's was 76 and Alessa's was 69. I also put a level 1 Fire, Ice, and Thunder Bubble on his just to give him some spells, even if his DP was rather low. I also gave his armor a level 1 Chaos Bubble to protect him in case of...problems.

I also gave Wolf the Multiple Attack and Counter Attack Bubbles because out of the group he had the strongest basic and special attack. I also gave him a level 1 Earth Bubble on his weapon, just because. Right outside the village I got into a battle with that Dwarf/Prince combination I saw earlier. I had to escape this fight because even though I got rid of the Poison Dwarf, both Wolf and Alessa were frozen and Alan was on fire.

Let that be a lesson, if you encounter that combination here, be very careful, because they're very dangerous. After another, successful, battle, I got Wolf to level 14. On the way to the Merchant closer to the village, I ran into a new group of enemies. There was a level 19 Spell Caster, a level 15 Thunder Dwarf, a level 19 Pinocchio General, and surprisingly enough, a level 15 Earth Dwarf. I had finally seen all seven types of Dwarves.

Seven Dwarves, seven elements. I wonder now, what type of dwarf would each of the original seven dwarves be? In any case, I beat them, even if the Spell Caster put Alessa in chaos, which made Alessa inflict darkness on Alan. The effect for that is that the character's colors go dark and the symbol is this black swirly thing.

Another combination here was a level 19 Spell Caster accompanied by five level 15 Dwarves, holy, dark, thunder, poison, and fire. Again, try to focus on hitting the Spell Caster, but also freeze these Dwarves before they become annoying.

Another group you may encounter here is made of two level 18 Young Beasts, a level 15 Holy Dwarf, and three level 19 Spell Casters. I ran away from that fight because there was no way I was dealing with three of those Spell Casters along with two Young Beasts.

I kept wandering around, and went back into the Zzz Forest. There I found a new enemy combination. There was a level 10 Bowman, a level 12 Hammer Soldier, a level 12 Pinocchio Commander, two level 16 Big Magic Trees, and a level 18 Earth Prince. That was the only Prince type I hadn't seen yet, so hooray for that. The fight got me another level 1 Chaos Bubble. Oh, and if I hadn't mentioned it before, Princes can use the Empty Mind spell.

Wolf soon leveled up to 15, so I went back to the desert again to try fighting Beasts. After some fighting he leveled again to 16. At that point his natural speed was 70, which then made Alessa the slowest of the group at 69, so I gave her the Turbo Bubble.

I got into a battle with the level 22 Beasts and they actually managed to kill Alessa. I managed to revive her with the Reborn spell I gave Alan. It brought her back with 364 HP. That's interesting, because I just did the math comparing this incident to when I had to use a Reborn Potion on Pea Princess.

I think the Reborn spell might be better than the Reborn Potion. I think that both the spell and the potion are programmed to revive a character with a set percentage of their HP, and I think that amount might be based on the character's original HP maximum, not counting Life Bubbles.

Based on my calculations, the Reborn Potion gave back 25.98% of Pea's base HP the one time I used it. However, when I used the Reborn spell on Alessa, my calculations show it gave back 35% of her base HP. This is just what I'm seeing right now, and I could be wrong. I haven't use revival potions or spells too often in this game.

I got Wolf to level 17, and while I was back in the village, I decided to try out the slowing item, Rallenty. I had a lot of money by that point, 480, 707D, and each one was 200D, so I could play around a bit. I bought ten of them and tried them out on the Beasts. In one fight I used about four of them, and out of those four, two of those failed to work. Another fight had me use three more, and only one of those worked. I sold the remaining three back.

I was still getting bored by the monotony of the whole process, so I wandered back to Sleeping City. There I got into a fight with a level 16 Lead Commander, a level 20 Lead General, a level 18 Lead Commander, and two level 19 Spell Casters. I had to escape the fight when Alessa was put in chaos. But right before I escaped I saw something strange. All the enemies had green numbers above their heads all at once, indicating that they had been healed. There's no spell that heals everybody at once, so it seemed to me like one of them, more likely a Spell Caster, used a Total Elisir or something, the only item that heals the whole party.

If it's true that they can use Total Elisirs, that's really not fair. I mean they just get back all their HP and DP, just like that. Or, now that I think about it, perhaps Alessa used it on them. But she was busy escaping...hmm.

So I continued wandering around Sleeping City, to Pea Princess's house, and even a little bit towards the Beast Fortress (without entering it). Some of the combinations of Beasts I saw while walking around the Fortress area included:

1. Young Beast level 18 (x4)
2. Young Beast level 18 (x2)/ Beast level 25
3. Beast level 25/ Beast level 22/ Beast level 23
4. Young Beast level 16/ Young Beast level 18/ Beast level 21/ Beast level 24. 

I didn't do too many of those before wandering again. Combinations of enemies I saw around the Sleeping City area, Pea's house, and the nearby coast included:

1. Lead General level 20 (x3)/ Earth Prince level 19
2. Dark Prince level 19/ Earth Prince level 19/ Thunder Prince level 19/ Spell Caster level 19 (x2)
3. Lead Commander level 17 (x2)/ Lead Commander level 18/ Pinocchio General level 18 (x2)/ Lead General level 20.
4. Dark Prince level 19 (x2)/ Spell Caster level 18 (x2)/ Spell Caster level 19 (I escaped this fight)

With all these fights, I got Wolf to level 19, and I had also gotten a level 2 Earth Bubble and a level 2 Fire Bubble as drops. I walked back to the village to finish things off. I went into the Zzz Forest for a bit, and got another level 2 Earth Bubble. And while I was quite a bit west of the village, I ran into a group completely made of Dwarves. There was a Holy Dwarf, a Poison Dwarf, a Fire Dwarf, an Ice Dwarf, a Thunder Dwarf, and an Earth Dwarf. The poison, ice, and fire ones were level 14, while the holy, thunder, and earth ones were level 15.

I ran into that combination of dwarves and princes a couple more times. I beat them both times, but in one I had to use two Total Elisirs and a Mind Regenerator when the Princes used Empty Mind successfully on Alessa and Alan. But the good news is that with one more Beast fight after that, I finally got Wolf to level 20 and finally finished leveling up everybody.

More in the next part.

After one more fight outside the village, I wandered into the desert. Yes, yes, I know I said not to go in there except to cut across from the Drowsy Gate. But the rate of getting XP from other battles was rather slow, and I wanted to try to accelerate the process of maxing out my characters.

The first battle I got into involved two level 22 Beasts. I managed to freeze both and I actually beat them. The battle got me 1800D, 9000XP, and two S-Potions. After a few more fights I got Pea Princess to level up to level 19.

In general, there are four combinations of battles in the desert area here. They are:

1. Young Beast level 18 (x4)

2. Beast level 22 (x2)

3. Young Beast level 18 (x2)/Beast level 25

4. Young Beast level 15 (x2)/Beast level 19 (x2)

And while I am able to beat these now, it still isn't easy, and I was doing better because I had better gear and my characters were higher level, so level grinding in this area is only for later.

After getting Pea Princess to level 19, I went back to the village to get more supplies, and I also bought three level 3 Life Bubbles for my current party to finally give them the best health boost. These bubbles, again, cast a heal spell that restores 85% health or raise max HP by 40%. I switched these level 3 bubbles with the level 1 versions on everyone's armor. Like I said, if you don't have room for bubbles of all levels, at least go for a level 3 and a level 2. Each level 3 bubble cost me 6500D, and all that left me with 12, 377D.

While I was at it, I switched the level 1 Chaos Bubble on Jack's armor with a level 2 version I had in my inventory, just because. I also bought a level 3 Vampire Bubble for Alan's weapon while I had the money, and it cost 8000D. Alan's level 1 Vampire Bubble wasn't doing much anyway. So then I was left with only 4377D.

From there I had more fights in the desert, and even wandering back into the Zzz Forest. I got another L1 Fire Bubble, and some Total Elisirs. A few fights in the Zzz Forest actually dropped a new item, a Wake-Up, which cures the sleep status. I got a total of three of those.

Along the way I also gave Alan the Counter Attack Bubble that I had previously given Jack, since with Alan's new Omega Blade, he had the strongest attack, and Counter attacks do half the damage of a regular attack (indicated by the guide but not in the bubble description).

Once I got Pea to level 20, I switched her out for Alessa, who was still level 15. I also bought Alessa a level 3 Life Bubble and switched her level 1 Life Bubble for the level 3. After doing all that, I had 60, 969D.

I gave Alessa the More Armor Bubble, and gave her almost all the bubbles I put on Pea Princess's weapon, specifically the level 3 Ice Bubble, the level 3 Fire Bubble, and the level 3 Explosion Bubble. Alessa already had a level 2 Ice, level 2 Fire, and level 1 Explosion Bubble on her weapon. I kept the level 1 Explosion in the inventory, and put the level 2 Fire and Ice Bubbles on her armor instead. I also have Alessa the level 2 Thunder Bubble because of the Lead Soldiers. The only bubble I let Pea keep was the level 2 Dark Bubble, which she needed more than Alessa. Let it be noted at this point that at level 15 and with her best gear, Alessa had 19 weapon slots, when I thought the limit was 18. They are fully working too, so it's not like a glitch.

When I started to level up Alessa, I had a Poison Dwarf dodge her level 3 Ice spell. It was something I'd never noticed before. This means spells have four outcomes: they can fail entirely, taking your DP for no benefit whatsoever, they can be dodged entirely, they can hit and do damage, but the status effect with them, if any, is resisted and fails to apply, or they can hit, do damage, and the status effect can work.

I fought battles in the woods and the Zzz Forest first to be safe. I got a level 2 Ice Bubble out it, which I used to replace the level 1 version I had on Alan's weapon. I also gave Alessa the level 3 Dream Eater Bubble and Jack the level 2, since they were the ones using so many spells.

Alessa hadn't leveled up any when I decided to just go into the desert. For the Beast fights, I had to use Jack's level 2 Regen spell. And here's something you should know about the Regen spell, it only works on one person at a time. It was a real surprise to me because I was used to situations like Epic Battle Fantasy 3 where the regeneration spell worked on everybody at once.

As far as I can figure, the "duration:35" thing in the bubble's description means 35 turns. Also, the amount of HP given to the character is determined by their maximum base health, not altered by Life Bubbles. When Alessa was level 15, it gave her 55 HP back, which didn't help much against the kind of damage the Beasts were doing.

I did some calculations with other characters, and it looks like it returns something like 6.8% of the character base HP max. It's not much, but I suppose it isn't too bad. Just don't expect it to be able to keep your characters alive without a level 2 or 3 healing spell every now and then.

And if I haven't mentioned it before, here's what to expect from beast enemies. Their basic attack seems to be a claw move, and it can hurt, especially if multiple hit all at once. They also have a Super-Claw move that hits either one character for greater damage or everybody for significant damage, I'm not sure, but I've seen a group attack anyway. Usually the Super-Claw is proceeded by them throwing both their arms back. They don't seem to use items, thank goodness, and in terms of spells they only know vampire and dream eater.

A couple of Beast fights managed to push Alessa to level 16. And on the way back from the village, a fight with a Pinocchio General put her in chaos, and she wasted an Elisir on the Pinocchio General. Isn't chaos really annoying?

As far as strategy goes for these desert battles with the Beasts, you may want to start off by casting Regen on your weakest character. For me, that was Alessa. I also frequently had Alessa use her level 3 Ice spell to try to freeze them. As I've already stated, this is met with mixed results, most often the spell works but the freeze fails to take hold. Ultimately I guess it comes down to pure luck. I even tried the level 3 Fire spell once, which says "100% burn", and often times the burn effect failed on them. As time went on, I ended up buying a level 3 Poison Bubble for reasons that will make sense later. It says "100% poison", and yet it's effect usually failed here too.

It's one thing with the Red Apple Tree. A game designer could say "well that was a boss fight, of course the burn effect isn't going to work right away,". They could make that argument. But I don't think that was the case with the boss, because look what happens here. These Beasts are not bosses. They are upper-tier enemies, yes, but they are not bosses. And yet the fire spell which says "100% burn", a statement that reads as a 100% chance to cause the burn effect, frequently fails to burn them. Or the freeze effect often fails to work several times in a row, despite saying "90%" or poison fails.

I consider this a glitch, that or a massive flaw in the game design. When something says "100%", it better be 100%, or if the mathematical scales go beyond that, you better make that apparent and give us more information, because otherwise you are flat out lying to the players, and that doesn't endear you to them at all. The same thing is true of the protections. The level 3 Fire, Ice, and Poison say 100% protection from poison, burning, or freezing, and yet in my last run of the game, it still happened.

Another thing to do in these Beast fights is to use Dream Eater when you get low on DP. And when the return from Dream Eater gets low, move to another enemy.

After leveling Alessa to 17 and going back for supplies, I bought two level 3 Dreams Bubbles for Jack and Alan to replace their level 1 versions. After going back out into the desert and getting Alessa to level 18, I went back and bought two more for Wolf and Hook.

I also found myself once again confused by the order of the spells in battle. Alesa's level 2 Thunder spell was listed above her level 3 Dream Eater spell. I thought the list was sorted first by name and then by level. Also, when navigating the list, it's easier to use the arrows than the scroll bar.

In testing out the Poison Bubble I bought I found that it took 122 points off a level 18 Young Beast. Research from a gaming forum said that poison takes off about 1/35 of a character's max HP, so that would give the thing a max health of 4270, or something around there.

And after several more fights, I finally got Alessa to level 20. That made four out of six characters done. Captain Hook was my next target. I left him at level 13. I actually ended up taking Jack out of the group, because I had come to rely on the level 3 Ice Bubble and the level 2 Regen and Life Bubbles. I put Alessa in Jack's number 3 spot and Hook in the middle spot. I gave Alessa the level 2 Life and Regen Bubbles I previously had on Jack's weapon, and I put the Surprise Bubble on her armor. I also gave Alan one of my spare level 1 Ice Bubbles on his armor so he could cure freeze. I also bought Hook and Wolf level 3 Life Bubbles, something I realized I hadn't done yet.

I left Alessa with the More Armor Bubble because she had lower health and armor, and Hook had very strong armor. I did however give Hook the Turbo Bubble, because he was the slowest of the group. I started him off with battles around the village and in the Zzz Forest. One of those gave me another level 2 Earth Bubble. I am definitely going to end up selling many of these bubbles at the end game because by then I will be able to determine which ones truly are excessive. I still wouldn't advise selling bubbles until the end though, I really wouldn't. I put that one on Alan's armor to replace the level 1 version he had, for no other reason than to take advantage of the opportunity.

Hook had gotten to level 14 when I decided to take a chance and wander once again into the desert. There I got into a battle with two level 22 Beasts, and surprisingly managed to beat them. After one more fight there, Hook was level 15. I also noticed that the Beasts seemed to attack him more and attack Alessa less. It's funny, because when I had Pea in the group, she was in the middle spot, and the Beasts seemed to attack her a lot. I thought to myself "I guess they really don't like princesses after getting fired, huh?"

Whenever I had switched characters, it was always in that middle slot, basically because Hook was there first and he was the first to be switched out. When I brought Alessa back in, placing her in the middle, the Beasts seemed to attack her a lot. These fights with Alessa in the third slot make me think that perhaps the game is programmed to have enemies more frequently attack whoever is in the middle position. This is just a guess from what I was seeing.

At one point going back and forth from the village to the desert, I wondered if maybe I should use Cluster Bombs (the best explosion item) to help make the fights go faster. Each one costs 400D, and I had the money, so I bought five of them, and used them all up.

I had gotten Hook to level 16 after a bit, but by then I was starting to get really tired. Level grinding can be monotonous, and doing these same Beast fights over and over, which a few fights elsewhere, was getting boring. And I had already been doing this for so long, and in one day. So I restocked my supplies and left the village to go progress the main plot.

There were more battles on the way back, but there was nothing new so I didn't record them in my own notes. I built up a good amount of money again, and stopped by the merchant caravan near the Cobbler for more supplies. And then I finally made it into the shop of the Baker Witch before I called it a night.

After I got past the Gate, I got into another battle involving Dwarves, just as I thought. Of course this time it was more than just Dwarves. It was a group of six, a level 15 Poison Dwarf, a level 15 Ice Dwarf, a level 18 Young Beast, a level 11 Axe Soldier, and two level 18 Pinocchio Generals.

This fight  was really hard. The Young Beast used Dream Eater, and while it's basic attack seemed to be Claw, it also had this move called Super Claw that I believe hit Pea Princess for a lot of damage, I think something in the 400s. In fact, if I remember right, one of the Beasts from earlier also had a Super Claw move, but it hit everybody (and that's on top a powerful Dream Eater spell and a powerful Vampire spell that takes 300+ HP). And the Ice spell kept failing to freeze the Young Beast time after time.

One more battle on the road before I managed to walk the rest of the way into Sleeping City, without trying to visit that merchant close to the Dwarven Village. Since my supplies were getting low, my first stop was the item shop on the center map. Of course I had to go through three more battles before I could get in the door. One of those had a Lead General that hit Jack for 440 damage.

On another note, I noticed that the urban background for these fights changed. The roof tops in the background now where more orange when before they were purple. It matches the color difference between the houses in the Halloween Kingdom and Sleeping City, and that's a really nice detail to add.

When I got into the item shop and I had fully healed everyone's HP and DP, I had only 2 Potions, 16 S-Potions, 27 X-Potions, 22 Dreams, 23 Wonderful Dreams, and 3 Dream Catalyzers. And I also had 192, 098D. And remember, I left Halloween City with 45 Potions and Dreams, and I restocked myself at the merchant near the Cobbler.

This shop carries Dream Catalyzers, and if you are interested, Total Elisirs. They also carry level 2 Life Bubbles, level 2 Dreams Bubbles, and level 2 Regen Bubbles, and a few other level 2 bubbles.

After refilling my supplies, I was left with 188, 458D. And then I realized it was probably a good time to upgrade the Life Bubbles I put on everyone's armor, and Dreams Bubbles too. Level 2 Life Bubbles sell for 1500D, and level 2 Dreams Bubbles are 1000D.

So I bought six level 2 Life Bubbles, and six level 2 Dreams Bubbles. Now in this case I didn't simply switch the old Life Bubbles with the new ones. This time I just added the new level 2 Bubbles onto their armor.

I know I mentioned this before, but while you can't have two Bubbles of the same level on armor or weapons, you can have two of the same Bubble on a weapon or piece of armor at different levels. This strategy is great with Life and Dreams Bubbles. And I did some experimenting right here, so I can tell you exactly how the math works.

Let's star with Alan. At level 19 here, his basic HP max, without any Life Bubbles on his armor, is 1347. With the level 1 Life Bubble and its 30% increase, it goes up to 1751. Now the level 2 Life Bubble increases HP by 35%. Does this mean that if I add the level 2 Bubble now, that it will increase Alan's HP by 35% of 1751? Does it matter then what order you put the bubbles on the armor? Do you get different numbers?

The answer is no. I took Alan's level 1 bubble off, and then I put the level 1 back on, followed by the new level 2 Life Bubble. The final HP maximum I got was 2,222. Then I took the bubbles off again and put the level 2 on first, followed by the level 1. This also got me 2,222. You see, when a Life Bubbles increases the maximum HP, it bases the percentage on the base health.

So 35% of 1347 is 471.45. 471.45 + 1751 = 2, 222.45.

Since Dreams Bubbles provide the same sort of increase, the mathematics would be the same. This also means that the best combinations for either types of bubbles would be placing one of each level on armor. Of course, you may not have the room for that, so the next best combination would be a level 3 bubble and a level 2.

With the new level 2 Life Bubbles, Pea Princess's HP went up to 1791, and Jack's went up to 2069. And then I started putting in the level 2 Dreams Bubbles. Alan already had a level 1 Dreams Bubble, so with the level 2 his DP went from 240 to 305. Pea Princess already had a level 3 Dreams Bubble, and with the level 2 her DP went from 366 to 458. Jack never had a Dreams Bubble, so his DP went from 210 to 283.

And after that, I gave out the other bubbles to the other half of the group. Alessa already had a level 1 Life Bubble and a level 3 Dreams Bubble, and her HP went from 1055 to 1339, and her DP went up from 380 to 476.

For Captain Hook, he had a level 1 Life Bubble and a level 1 Dreams Bubble. With the two new bubbles, his HP went from 1523 to 1933, and his DP went from 61 to 77.

The Big Bad Wolf had a level 1 Life Bubble, but no Dreams Bubbles, and with the additions, his HP went from 1674 to 2125 and his DP went from 30 to 40.

With these new Bubbles, my characters would be a bit stronger and last longer, and that's exactly what I needed. I also ended up buying a level 2 Regen Bubble for 3500D and giving it to Jack's Weapon.

After buying all that, healing all six characters to full health and power, and restocking again, I was left with 169, 303D. But it was worth it if I could help keep my characters alive, and the way things were going I couldn't afford to wait until the Dwarven Village to get the level 3 Life and Dreams Bubbles they offer there.

After that I had to go to the Mill, so I took the road through the north map because the armor shop was on the north map. I thought I would look at what Bubbles they offered. The armor shop here offers level 2 versions of the Poison, Holy, Dark, Sleep, Chaos, Medusa, Darkness, Empty Mind, and Mirror, Fury, and Shield Bubbles. I didn't buy any.

I got into a few battles along the way, mixes of higher tier Pinocchio enemies and Lead Soldier enemies, some members of the Princess Army, and some Princes. One fight got me another level 1 Chaos Bubble, and another battle with a Thunder Prince dropped a level 2 Thunder Bubble. I replaced the level 1 Thunder Bubble on Alan's weapon for that one.

Then I got into the mill. There is one person there, a man with red hair. And the place is filled with bags of flour, so flour can't be that rare overall. Anyway, talking to him started this conversation:

Alan: Good day, sir. I need some flour.

Mill owner: A bag costs 350 coins. [I truly am curious why the game doesn't use Denari like it does in the screen after the battle. They could have just abbreviated it as "D" like I do.]

Then the game gives me a screen that says "Do you want to buy the flour (2000) ? Yes or No?"

Wait...2,000D?

But he said a bag costs 350D.

2000/350 = 5.71.

Okay, there are three answers here.

1. The price in the dialogue and the price from the game prompt are correct and I am buying almost six bags of flour.

2. The price in the dialogue is wrong and it was meant to say 2000.

3. The price in the game prompt is wrong and it was meant to say 350.

If the first possibility is the correct one, then I am really confused. I know zip about cooking, but we're just making one cookie. Why would you need nearly six bags of flour (and these sacks don't seem small) to bake one cookie? Do they call the thing the Hansel & Gretel Cookie because it's as big as the witch's candy house?! If anyone reading this has any knowledge of cooking, would you be able to enlighten me on how much flour five and three fourths bags contains, and how much one cookie needs? If the second option is true, then the prices are crazy, and if the third option is true, then I am being ripped off.

I bought the flour, and after comparing my money before and after, it really did cost me 2000D. And I was left with 193, 676D. In the Special Objects tab, the item is labeled Tender Flour, an it's just a big cloth sack labeled Flour, that's all.

After that I managed to make it to the weapon shop just to check it out for the Dream Bubbles, since I was thinking about maybe upgrading some of mine. It has level 2 versions of the Fire, Ice, Thunder, Earth, Comet, Explosion, and Vampire Bubbles.

And that's where I called it quits for the night. More in part 22.

Okay, so the first stop on the list is the Darkville candy shop. I just walk out the door to the Wicked Witches Guild and...

...and I encounter a battle?

Yes, that's right folks. Once you walk out the door to the Wicked Witch Guild, the next enemy upgrade started. And with that upgrade comes the fact that you now encounter random battles in the cities and towns, complete with new urban background.

Isn't that just like these urban areas? You can't walk more than two feet without getting attacked by the wooden and robotic soldiers of a megalomaniac carpenter and the armies of four twisted storybook princesses. I don't know about all of you, but I know it happens to me all the time.

Actually this exact thing happened to me the last time I played the game, I just walked out of the guild building when I got into a fight. I guess the game is programmed to do that, just like it seems programmed to get you into a fight with Dwarves once you get to the Sleeping Kingdom side of the Drowsy Gate.

The fight I got into this time was a group of three. There were two Lead Riflemen, one level 13 and the other level 16. The other enemy was a level 17 Poison Prince. You know I ran into an Ice Prince on the way back to Darkville, so that's three types of Princes I've seen thus far. Anyway, since the Prince is the toughest, and his group can use S-Potions like the Dwarves, use a level 3 Ice spell to freeze him over, get rid of the Lead Soldiers, and shatter the prince into little tiny pieces. The fight gave me two more Grenades. I'm building up quite an arsenal of those things.

The candy shop is where you get the Quizzical Sweets. The shop is on the map to the east of the map with the Wicked Witch Guild. Go in there and you will be able to talk to the lady running the store.

Lady Shopkeeper: I sell sweets, what do you need?

Alan: Some Quizzical Sweets, please.

Lady Shopkeeper: Here...1500 coins.

First, once again game, must I remind you that the term for your currency is Denari? Second...1500D!? One thousand five hundred units of currency for a set of candy?!

...that's ridiculously priced candy...

It must be really good candy though, after all that guy in Sleeping City walked all the way here to get candy from this place.

Then the game has a prompt that says "Do you want to buy the playful candy (1500)? Yes or No?"

...playful candy?

They are Quizzical Sweets! You just listed them off more than once as being called Quizzical Sweets! Alan just asked for Quizzical Sweets!

So I bought the things. And in the inventory under Special Items, it shows a bunch of possibly candy-looking things called Playful Candies.

Why can't the game stick with names? Why?! They just named the things, and said the name several times, and yet the inventory item has a different name altogether. *slams head into wall repeatedly* I think I'm starting to develop a Rita Repulsa tier headache...

After that, I had about 93, 510D left. The other three ingredients are soft wheat flour, Dwarven Sugar, and raisins. Now we know to go to the Sleeping City mill for flour, and Dwarven Sugar is self explanatory, especially since we know the Dwarven Village has a sugar shop. Now as for raisins, you might think they would be at the Greengrocer in Sleeping City. That would be a good guess, but they are not. The Greengrocer only exists to give you the new pea for the Pea Princess. No, the raisins are elsewhere. And if you need help figuring out where, you can get a hint if you talk to the baker in Halloween City.

Her shop, oddly enough, isn't marked on the secret maps, but it's on that second map of Halloween City when you enter it, the same map with the armor shop, and it's on the left. If you talk to her, she says:

"I cannot prepare the cookie if I don't have all the ingredients...In case you forgot, they are soft wheat flour, Dwarven Sugar, raisins, and Quizzical Sweets. Look for the raisins in the farm near Darkville. One of the three brothers there grows grapes."

Now I actually knew to go to the Darkville Farms without going back to Halloween City to talk to her, all thanks to the notes I made from last time. But if you were stuck, that's how you would figure it out. Anyway, after buying the Quizzical-Sweets-that-liked-to-call-themselves-Playful-Candies, I headed out to the Darkville Farms. Also, I noticed that the stove in the Darkville candy shop had a glow effect going on that made it seem like there was a fire burning, and the pot of water on top had a steam effect. It's another one of those nice little touches that I somehow missed last time I played this.

Right outside the candy shop, I got mugged...I mean I got into another battle. At this point it's not just the enemies being stronger, certain enemies appearing more frequently, or the fights being inside cities. The average number of opponents has also seemed to go up. The group here was made of six, two level 10 Lead Gunmen, and four level 12 Lead Swordsmen.

Since two thirds of the group were of the same enemy type, and thus had the same speed, all of those Swordsmen attacked at once. In situations like that characters can take a lot of damage really fast. While I beat the fight, Pea Princess got seriously hurt, and had to be healed a lot of times. Although the fight did get me 8,960D, 1908XP, a Grenade (I am creating a serious stockpile of those by this point since I never use them), and an Elisir.

Thankfully the local item shop was on the same map, so I restocked my supplies. After that I had 102, 220D. Right outside of Darkville I ended up fighting that same group again, and while it got me the same experience and money, the loot was different, instead being an S-Potion and a Grenade.

After that I managed to make it all the way to the farms without getting in another brawl. Just like last time, the first map of the Darkville Farms area was totally free of random encounters, and broke off into three paths. Now if you will remember, the one who grew the grapes here was Primo. To get to Primo's part of the farm, take the south path. And if you didn't remember which way was which, you could always talk to Secondo to the east. Talking to him will start the same conversation as last time, so he just seems to be there to direct you (also indicated by the fact that you never learn what he himself grows).

Coincidentally, talking to Diretto again to the north of map one just has him say: "You got what you were looking for. Now leave me alone to my job!" What a grouch.

Anyway, if you go to Primo's house and talk to him, this conversation starts up.

Primo: Good day kid, what do you need?

Alan: Mr [there is no period after Mr] Primo, they told me you have some raisins....

Primo: Yes, you can find it in my field over the hill.

Talking to him again right after that results in the same conversation.

So then you go into his field, which is to the east of the map with his house. And to my surprise, the map is free of random encounters. You will remember that the last time we were here, the fields belonging to Primo and Secondo were full of loot and random encounters that I skipped, and Diretto's field had voluntary fights.

Anyway, to get the raisins, look for a raised part of the field on the far side that's connected to a set of stairs. On top of that raised platform are a plot of what look to be purple grapes (there are red grapes, just in case you think that was redundant). All you have to do is walk up the stairs and make contact with the plants, and the game instantly tells you that you got the Wither Currant.

Now I had to look this up when I read it here, but a currant is a term used for a dried version of a particular kin of grape, so it works here. And in the Special Objects tab, the item appears as a bunch of yellow things. The picture of raisins I saw had some yellow or lighter colored objects, so that works too. But grammatically speaking, shouldn't it be "Withered Currant"?

And that's it. The item is totally free. Talking to Primo again initiates the conversation about raisins, before it goes back to that original conversation we had on the first visit. Really, that's it. We don't have to pay for it, we don't have to do any work for it. We just asked Primo for raisins, and he's basically "Raisins? Oh sure, I've got raisins, they're over in my field, help yourself to them!"

You know, back when the Wicked Witch Superior told us to get the Tom Thumb's Seed, she said the only farmer there that could grow the seed was "wise and willing". But please compare:

Primo: We ask for raisins, and he simply points out where they are and lets us take of them freely for nothing at all, and his demeanor and response to our question is nothing but friendly.

Diretto: Our question was greeted with anger and hostility. He was unwilling to sell the Tom Thumb's Seed initially, and we had to go out and remove weeds from his field (aka kill 30 rabid Were-Bushes), which technically is his job, and after all that, we still had to buy the seed from him for 200 Denari. This is in the face of our traveling with the king of the whole kingdom, Captain Hook, who has kept the kingdom safe, and the daughter of the Wicked Witch Superior who lives down the road and who is in charge of the most powerful sorcerers int he world. And afterwards, his demeanor is still unfriendly and angry.

Alessa? Um, I don't mean any offense here, but I seriously think your mother has some wires crossed somewhere. After all, this is the same lady that told us to go southwest to get to the farms...

Like I was saying, upgrade Hook's armor and level him up in the Zzz Forest to avoid the Dwarves and a need to freeze them with the level 3 Ice Bubble. In terms of armor for Hook in the Dwarven Village, the best option is also the only option. It's called the Black Corsair Suit. It has a base protection of 35 and has 10 points of protection against fire, ice, and thunder. It offers five points of protection against earth and poison elements. Against explosion damage it offers 7 points of protection, but against dark, holy, and mind it offers 0.

In terms of status protection, it offers 5 for stone, 20 for slow, 50 for chaos, 10 for burn and 10 for freeze, and 0 for everything else. It has +4 slots and costs 25, 700D.

As far as weapons go, there are three options. The first is the Gold Hook for 18,000D. Then there is the Platinum Hook for 23,00D, which is better in almost every way to the Gold Hook, except the Platinum Hook offers +3 slots where the Gold one offers +4. The last and best option, which is better in every way, is the Adamantium Hook for 45,000D. I guess that way Hook will be a sort of one-clawed Wolverine. All of Hook's weapons have specials that only hit one target.

I just went for the armor to help keep him alive right then. After buying it and selling off the old one, I was left with 15, 168D. Once I got into the forest, I had one fight with a level 15 Big Magic Tree and a level 15 Pinocchio General. That fight made Hook go up to level 9 right away, and with his new armor and the More Armor Bubble, not to mention his high HP, he was holding up rather well.

One odd thing about when I equipped the Black Corsair Suit was a change in the stats that I noticed. When he had the default Pirate suit attached, the numbers for Dodge read "19-15", but when I equipped the Black Corsair suit, the numbers actually changed to "19-14". There's nothing on the armor to indicate it affecting dodge. It's just protections. Is it some sort of weight thing? And how come the Dodge stat, and all the other stats, are two numbers separated by a dash? Is it part of another randomness or probability mechanic like the weapon or spell damage? How can you have strength and dodge vary? And why is dodge listed with the higher number first and the lower number second? If it is meant to be a range, then why wouldn't it read left to right? I know that the description says it was meant to be styled as a Japanese RPG but the game makers seem to be from Italy.

Something else to note is that when Hook leveled up from 8 to 9, his base health (not counting the 30% boost) went up from 802 to 876. As I leveled him up I kept seeing such large jumps in HP. I also put a level 2 Earth Bubble on his armor that I got as a drop from one of these fights.

After a while I was starting to get tired, so after Hook had reached level 13 I decided that was good enough progress for the moment. I didn't buy him any weapon upgrades. So I went back to the village, resupplied myself, and walked back to Darkville, switching out Hook for Big Bad, who was still level 13.

In terms of armor for Big Bad Wolf, there was one option, the Magic Collar. It's funny though because it doesn't look like a collar, it looks like his fur. In fact, all the weapon or armor options for a given character look exactly the same. All of Jack's weapons look the same, all of Alan's swords, all of Jack's armor options, etc. And they don't make any visual difference in battle. Jack is still using the rifle he always has, despite him wielding a submachine gun.

The Magic Collar offers a base protection of 26 and offers 5 points of protection for every element but mind, which is 0. In terms of status protection it offers 10 points for sleep, slow, fury, chaos, and 0 for everything else. It has +7 slots and costs 31, 500D.

In the way of weapons, there are three options. There's the Cobra's Fang (which is a paw, and the line under the title says Werewolf Fang) for 11, 500D. Then there is the Titanium Fang for 23, 600D. It's better than the last one in every way. The last one is the Deadly Fang for 41, 000D, which is better than the Titanium one, except that the Deadly Fang offers +2 slots while the Titanium has +3. I didn't end up buying him any upgrades.

Why is it that his armor has to be a collar and his his weapon being fangs? A collar isn't anything in terms of armor. In my mind, since the Big Bad Wolf seems sentient, I would think he would wear some sort of real armor over parts of his body, or even wear clawed gloves on his paws as weapons. I've seen the clawed gloves thing before. I just think of Battlecat from He-Man. And Big Bad has this mane thing going on with his fur, the way parts of it spike out behind him all around, and his tail is so spiky you could use it for a spear.

And while I didn't get him to level up any, the trip back was very educational. For one, I found out that the Big Bad Wolf is an earth elemental. Would you have guessed that? I didn't remember that from last time. Apparently it was listed on an internet guide I found but I never remembered it. I was fighting a Big Magic Tree in the Drowsy Gate area, when the tree did this move it called "Rock" on Big Bad, it's basically the thing throwing a rock at him. And to my surprise, he gained something over 100 health from the attack. Now that attack seemed like an earth attack to me. And Big Bad's default armor had a 0 when it came to earth elemental protection. A later fight confirmed this when Big Bad healed from an earth spell.

It's just like that time with Jack when a dark enemy attacked him and he gained 100 something health, even though his armor's dark resistance wasn't all that high. The character of Jack O' Lantern, and now, Big Bad, seem to have some inherent resistance to certain elements that's totally separate from their armor. Thankfully his attacks aren't naturally earth elemental, as he was still doing damage on the tree, and I hadn't given him any spells (with his low DP of 30 it didn't seem worth it). But still, it would have been really nice for the game to tell the player that.

Would you even realize that? The only enemies that do earth damage are the Little and Big Magic Trees, Hammer Soldiers, the Red Apple Tree, the Earth Prince, and the Earth Dwarf. And would you believe that despite the many times I fought dwarves, I never once saw an Earth Dwarf? Were we supposed to think Jack had a natural dark resistance because his clothes are black? I mean I know many enemies are color coded to elements here but still. And it would have been REALLY nice to know that, because that means he would have been a good choice against the Red Apple Tree and its Earthquake attack. I mean they said I needed his nose, but I didn't need him in the active party to go into the forest.

On the way back to Darkville, I ran into a very dangerous battle. It was a group of three enemies. One was a level 7 Pinocchio Rifleman, another was a level 8 Lead Gunman, but the third...the third was a level 16 Princess.

This was why I chose to spend a very long time doing what I could leveling my characters and gaining money. I couldn't remember exactly, but I thought there was a possibility that this particular enemy would appear with the next enemy upgrade, and trying to level up the whole way with her around would have been a pain.

What is a Princess you ask? Well, first of all they are not in the exact same group as the Four Princesses or the Pea Princess. They are the other part of the personal guard of the Four Princesses besides the Princes. What you will see is a brown-haired young woman with a cape and wielding a staff. The character description in the guide says:

Princess ( levels 16-19) "Powerful wizards trained by the Four Princesses. They rarely take part in a battle, usually supporting princes. They can cast a wide range of powerful spells. Strong against any kind of magic."

Personally I would have given them a better, more distinguishable name than just "Princess". Maybe "Princess Spell Caster". Anyway, as the description indicates, these women cast a large number of spells. I ran into this group of enemies twice. Between those two, I saw the Princess cast a thunder spell, an earth spell, what might have been an empty mind (no spells) spell, and a comet spell. That comet spell put the burn status on everybody. And thankfully, with his armor, Jack is apparently "immune to mind", or so the game said. When I saw her here, I panicked, because I didn't remember her at this point, and I focused all my attention on her, unloading all my special attacks.

And not only is the Princess capable of using a wide variety of elemental magic and inducing status effects (the last time I played she used empty mind to take away my spells), but she's super resistant. Okay, let me rephrase that. The guide says she's strong against all magic, right? Well strong doesn't always mean immune, so the last time I played I decided to test every status effect on this type of enemy. And guess what? She immune to them all! She's not just resistant, she's 100% immune, the game said so on every one.

She's even immune to Empty Mind, which is totally unfair because the primary strategy with an enemy like this, that casts a large number of annoying and dangerous status effects, is to try to cripple her ability to use them.

Finally, after getting into Darkville, I resupplied all my stuff and had 90, 740D. And in the process of all those many, many battles, the total number of bubbles I got as drops from fights was:

Chaos Bubble level 1 (x2)
Chaos Bubble level 2 (x1)
Earth Bubble level 2 (x6)
Fire Bubble level 1 (x2)
Ice Bubble level 1 (x4)
Ice Bubble level 2 (x1)

I also got some Grenades as drops too, along with some Elisirs and a Dream Catalyzer from the Princess, along with various Potions, S-Potions, X-Potions, etc.