Darker aeons

It's late; Gotta do this quick (again).

Besaid seems fine, but only if you ignore the marlboros that roam the outskirts. Inside the village is a slightly different story. Lulu informs us that Besaid is safe because Wakka has kept the fiends at bay, but there's more turmoil afoot. No one knows if more will come, so is there a way to prevent future attacks? Wakka has gone into the temple to investigate, but Beclem wants to burn the temple. We don't tell them what happened in Macalania, but we enter the temple. Wakka is before the elevator to the fayth, and he's injured. He'll be fine, but we want him to be there for his son, so the Gullwings take it from here.

As it was in Bevelle, we see an aeon waiting for us. Valefor, Yuna's first, is before us. With less hesitation, we attack her. Valefor is only slightly easier than Bahamut. We reconnect with Wakka, who's actually giving Beclem's idea a thought. Wakka cares about his memories, but "memories are just memories." He has a family, and he needs to protect them, even if it costs him those memories.

Every location we've visited so far in chapter three has had Shinra following us, setting up blue spheres as we go. It is now that he tells us he's interconnecting everywhere with his TVs. We also get a second area to run the Gunner's Gauntlet. This time it's a rail shooter inside the Cloister of Trials! It sucks.

I next undid my "mistake" and went to the Calm Lands. Nothing's changed, but there's a fayth down there. As before, the Chamber of the Stolen Fayth is fiend infested. Unlike the others, there is no protector, but there are a lot of tourists. Agree to help, and we'll have to save fifteen people "trapped" in the cave. For some dumb reason, everyone down here has traits that complicate protecting them. They refuse to be part of a group if it's too big! You can save them one-by-one or find a guide to get them all at once. Either way, equip a charm bangle for this to remove random encounters. There's a lot of backtracking, and it sucks. When we bring the group to the cave mouth, some give us things to power the teleporter. After a few, we can repower the path to Yojimbo. Save first, though, because I finally died!

Have Rikku mix hi-potions the entire battle. Equipping her with an anti poison accessory is also advised. Enkidu can poison a character, and it WILL kill you. Yojimbo's Zanmato won't kill us, but it will take our hp and mp to one, hence why spamming mega-potions is the way to go and why poison is so deadly.

Another item I got for saving people was the Besaid Sphere. With this, go back home, and we cab start part two of Wakka's cave. We'll have to find the four hidden ciphers, but good luck. Finding them is easy, but decoding the font is hard. What a dumb font they choose for this. The reward is a grid I don't think I'll use, so I gave up. I then finished the first part of the cactuar quest, and I'll finish chapter three...

... tomorrow!

Happy 501st blog update.