I have recently acquired a treasure map labelled 'Ruby World of Fear Lv. 74'. It points to a place just west-south-west of Upover. Before entering it, I made a pit stop at Pluvi Isle to pick up an Yggdrasil Leaf, because there are probably going to be some really tough monsters down there.

Upon entering the grotto, I began seeing such things as alarmours, freaky tikis and sluggerslaughts, which I think are rank 8. We also found that, with the help of an Oomph spell, George is now able to one-shot an octagoon with Cattle Prod.

I think I forgot to mention that there are gem jamborees too. :)

I started seeing some unfamiliar monsters on floor 8 downward: cyber spiders and boa bishops. Somehow boa bishops can summon a tidal wave to hit us all for 100 points of damage, even though we're about 30 metres underground and there's no water here. They also have Eye Gleam, which I have seen some bosses (Corvus and Fowleye) using.

Descending to floor B15, I found Hammibal waiting for me, but the team isn't in the right condition to fight a boss right now. Because, on floor 14, we found something known only as a gem slime. I had heard about those things. Apparently they give a lotof gold when felled.

The bad news is that they also have Magic Burst, which is a bit problematic because it can wipe out 3/4 of our team in one go. So we need defense, Defending Champion to be precise. They can only use Magic Burst once, because it drains all their MP, then we can spam Thunder Thrust on them.

Each gem slime kill nets us a whopping 10 080 gold coins. We got two of them so far, and when I reconnect, we will go for some more.

I have this arcade game as part of the compilation Namco Museum DS, along with Galaxian, Pac-Man, Galaga, Xevious, Super Xevious,Mappyand Dig Dug II:

[The] Tower of Druaga(1984) – Assume the role of Gil, a hero climbing to the top of a tower to save the kidnapped maiden, Ki. Can you save Ki from the evil clutches of Druaga?

Apparently not on just one coin. The highest I got was floor 17. Yesterday, however, I found out that I did not need to hack the game, because there is a legit 'Continue Mode'. The secret is to hold down the SWORD button while pressing 1 PLAYER START, then you can start at any floor from floor 1 to wherever you fell.

The DS remake also includes guides on how to find the treasure chests. I found these very helpful.

I found Druaga on floor 59... and he one-shot me. It turns out I had not collected the Hyper Armour from floor 57. So I had to start over again, this time getting every item that wasn't a Power Potion, Drain Potion, Death Potion, Evil accessory or Sapphire Mace (which does nothing). It appears that if the Hyper Armour absorbs a spell, it also drains all of the wearer's energy so they can't fight knights (or Druaga) any more.

On the following attempt I successfully slayed Druaga. After revealing some of those post things on floor 60 (I have no idea what those are for) I found Ishtar (the goddess) and Ki waiting for me.I wasn't sure how we were going to get out of the tower, but our getting zapped down really helped that along :D

There is some sort of bug in the game such that continuing does not reset my score. My final score was 1 664 530 points.

I recently acquired my eighth Unova Pokémon Gym Badge, the Legend Badge, from the Opelucid City Gym. (That's the Dragon-type one.) Now the only thing left is to challenge the Pokémon League's Elite Four... and stick to the trail of Team Plasma.

On Route 10 I ran into a wild Pokémon known as Audino. Audino onlyappears where the grass shakes, and if you knock it out it gives more experience than normal. However, when I set Yoshi, my Simisage, on her, she used the move Heal Pulse to heal him. We were hesitant about attacking her from that point onward. Eventually I captured her with a Poké Ball to help in team battles as a healer.

Apart from the move Heal Pulse, she also has the ability Healer, which sometimes removes status afflictions such as poison, and Entertainment which can give Yoshi that ability too.

Speaking of team battles, a Trainer named Hilda and I recently achieved 20 consecutive victories in the Nimbasa City Battle Subway. This qualified us to challenge the Subway Boss team. They honestly weren't very difficult to defeat. The other Trainers who were on the platform called the Boss team 'a piece of cake'.

It is now nearly 11 PM on the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011. :)

In term 3, I found a recipe for sage's elixir while exploring the secret shop of Dourbridge. The problem is that it takes three jars of nectar to make one phial of sage's elixir. So last week we went to the Bloomingdale area to get some more off the pink sanguinis in the area.

Eventually George, Jasmine and I left bacause we weren't doing anything, and let Marcus steal some stuff on his own. (He has some experience as a thief, so he is more fit for this task.)Since I am the leader of the team, registering this involved a bit of tampering with our save file.

Two goes in, he reached level 68. At that point, the pink sanguinis started running away the second they saw him. That didn't stop him from sneaking up on them from behind and nicking items while their backs were turned. They had a lot of trouble hitting him because of his defense.

Overall he managed to steal ten jars of nectar. Now we have rejoined him to continue the quest to find a grotto that has an S rank chest in it.

We've taken a break from metal king slime hunting for a while (actually, we ran out of MP and I had to call it off) to try and beat some grottoes. We descend to the bottom of a water grotto and find Elusid waiting there.

From past experience, Elusid uses spells far too often for his own good and does nothave Disruptive Wave like most other grotto bosses (and George) do. This means that we can put Magic Mirror on ourselves in the first turn to block his spell attacks, and he's too thick to do anything about it.

I estimate that, over the whole battle (which only went for about five minutes), he did about 1600 points of damage to himselfwith a combination of Kafrizz, Kaboom and Kacrack, culminating when his final Kafrizz got deflected, rebounded upon him and killedhim!

FAIL, Elusid!! :lol:

Not only can we publicly ridicule Elusid for killing himself, he also dropped something that is apparently called a pair of sensible sandals. Putting them on, I find that my maximum MP increases by 5.They also apparently give a 4.5% chance to dodge an attack.When I went to leave the grotto I noticed my MP being gradually restored.

I have been looking for this sort of effect pretty much since I found out that it existed, but the problem is that only one of us can use it at a time. When we go hunting for metal slimes again, that will probably be Marcus because he needs MP to heal the rest of us and he's only 50 000 experience away from learning Thunder Thrust.

After overhearing on the forums that you can hunt metal king slimes from level 1, I decided to give it a try as George is rather proficient with Thunder Thrust. The main difficulty is slugly betsy / moai minstrel allies. I've asked for advice on the forums, and learned that Thunder Thrust is rather effective against these enemies (especially metal slimes) and that Marcus and I would be very busy with resurrection and healing.

It's going very well so far. Marcus has even gotten two metal king slime kills with Pressure Pointer.

I still haven't found out whether it's better to get someone to super high tension when fighting high-stamina monsters. Jasmine and I decided to see just how much damage she can do in one hit:

annihilator127 eggs Jasmine on with a rallying cheer.
Jasmine's tension increases to 100.
Jasmine achieves a state of super high tension!

Marcus casts Midheal.
Marcus recovers 245 HP.

Jasmine casts Kafrizz.
Does 2160 points of damage to the slugly betsy.
The slugly betsy is defeated.

annihilator127: Holy crap!
Jasmine: Now that is a burn.

By the way, if any of you other GameSpot members are reading these, please feel free to post in the comments and say hi.

Recently, my curiosity led me to a tower north of Coffinwell that I can only get to by golden flying train. It seemed to match my map labelled 'Tower of Nod'. The first thing I noticed was that my holy water was ineffective. The second thing I noticed was that there were some red treasure chests there.

Probably the most important things I found were the splatterhorns on the second-to-top floor. They are somehow of a higher tier than normal splatterhorns, have more stamina, hit harder and give more experience when felled. I often got 3000-4000 experience points after some battles with them. (I have noticed three different levels of slimes too.)

At the top of the tower there is a vine leading to what looks like a nest. There is a big something sleeping in it. I don't know what it is, but it is in a deep sleep and I think it best to leave it there for now.

Although I am as good as a mortal now, and none of the mortals remember about the Guardians any more, I am still going to continue my old job of helping people. It's going well so far.

A woman named Jade in Coffinwell told me about how her son, Lionel, was always fibbing about his schoolwork. His latest story involved his test result paper blowing away on the wind just outside Coffinwell. Jade asked me to see if there is any truth in this. I had this logged as an official quest and went outside to see if the monsters in the area knew anything about this.

Soon I found the paper... or at least, part of it. It looked like it had been torn up, but I don't think it was Lionel who did that. Written on the paper fragment was '0 points'. Jade didn't seem too upset about this, but she said Lionel would probably deny that it was his because his name wasn't on it. So I went to look for the rest of the paper.

I found the second piece just north-west of Coffinwell. It read 'Lion'. The third piece took me a longer time to find, but eventually I found that too. Written on that was 'el: 10'.

I remember audibly exclaiming OMG at that point. I went back to show Jade, and she was very excited when she found that, when put together, the paper read 'Lionel: 100 points'.

Lionel cornered me and said that I should come and see him later because he had something to tell me in secret. That evening, I found him on the west side of Coffinwell, and he told me that the marks on the test were actually out of five hundred, not one hundred, and he hoped Jade never finds out.

But 100/500 (which is 20%) is still a lot better than zero! :)

As I have now reached level 99 in two vocations (minstrel and armamentalist) I think it is time for us to revocate. The thing about revocation is that it isn't reversible like changing your vocation is (you can change back at any time).

I asked the people in Alltrades Abbey (including the Abbott Jack himself) about revocation. They told me that revocation resets the undertaker to the first level in their current vocation, so they can gain even further skill (skill points and abilities remain unchanged), and that this is not to be taken lightly.

But we went and revocated anyway, of course.

Now we are each at level 45. Since revocating we have gained the following abilities:

• Sword Skill – Falcon Slash: use 2 MP to attack twice (four times with a falcon blade).
• Spear Skill – Thunder Thrust: hard to aim, but does a lot of damage. I have seen Dragon Quest VIII players using this against metal slimes to great effect.
• Knife Skill – Assassin's Stab: gives a chance to instantly kill an enemy.
• Wand Skill – Auto MP Recovery: regenerates between 1 and 5 MP at the end of every turn.
• Whip Skill – Schadenfreude: heals the user by 12.5% of the damage done.
• Fan Skill – Schizofanic: uses 8 MP to create a döppleganger of the user in order to avoid an attack.
• Shield Skill – Back Atcha: allows the user to dodge an attack and strike back at random, like some monsters do. There is a danger of accidentally hitting teammates though.
• Litheness – Have a Ball: throws eight juggling balls at the enemy, each one doing about 15 points of damage (or one point against a metal slime). Works well against metal slimes.
• Faith – Alma Mater: blocks negative status effects.

Now that I have Life Fource (86 skill points in Fource studies) I can go and accept the quest offered to me a long time ago at Alltrades Abbey, to prove my competence with the Fource.

For this quest, I need to go and find certain monsters and pwn them with elemental attacks that they have some resistance to. I need to kill a magmalice with Fire Fource, a great gruffon with Frost Fource, a cumulus rex with Gale Fource, a raving reaper with Funereal Fource and a king slime with Life Fource. I let my friends each get one of these kills.

I returned to Windy to tell him I had beaten his challenge. He said that he was hapy that there was another who might be as good an armamentalist as he is, and gave me a scroll called 'Armamentalist's Album'. I have actually been interested in this power-up ever since becoming an armamentalist, because it allows me to focus the Fource on my entire team in one go! Now I can use the Fource to its fullest.

I have now reached level 99 as an armamentalist.

The good thing about having experience as an armamentalist is that I can use the Fource in anyvocation, because the Fource abilities are skill abilities and not spells.

I have noticed that, in the skill point assignment screen, the heading 'Fource' on the top screen is misspelled 'Force'.