Monster Vomit

Weeeeeeee!

The runaway girl with the name I'll never be able to pronounce doesn't really care about us. We'll see her again along the Silk Road, but it's mostly to point out the block in the road. She thinks her boyfriend is on the otherside but can't get past it. So we'll keep going north!

This is the mining town of Altin. Most of the village is flooded, and we'll see why in a moment. There are mobs that are vomiting water into the mine. We'll chase the first one in a nearby cave. After a quick chase, we'll finally beat up a statue. We've been pushing them the whole game, but this is the first we've beaten up. They use a lot of AoE water magic, but they're also pretty fragile. This guy teaches us how to use Freeze without the proper djinn setup, which'll be helpful in the future.

From here, we make our way through two more mine floors chasing the same things. The gimmick of this place is we'll need to navigate a few minecart tracks to reach the guardian statues and a djinn. There's only one switch per track, so this isn't an unbearable task. This place feels like a massive maze, but there's only one path forward until you "drain" the waters. Every time you slay a statue, the water level in town drops, opening up more shops and NPCs. It also opens up more places to explore in the dungeon. The inn is always available, though.

At the very bottom is a flashy, smooth stoned alter. On it is another giant guardian statue. Its attacks are similar to the small fries but with boss like attributes. If you go into the fight at full HP, then Vlad won't die in the second round. Be prepared to heal. The best plan would be to make sure you have every djinn. I skipped over the random encounter one you find on a random peninsula north of Xian. Getting that and the one in the mines will allow Mia to equip four Mercury djinns and learn a team wide heal. Defiantly worth getting and resetting the neat setup I had.

Afterwards, the team wonders why the statues would begin moving on their own. No one says anything, but I assume it's because of the Psy stones. Behind the boss is a chest that contains the Lift Psyenergy. This allows us to lift certain rocks in our way. None of which are by th runaway girl. Retreat to the entrance of the last cave and head back in. We can now move stones to go deeper in. Follow the path until you get to the world map. We're on the otherside of the mountain from Altin. Trying to get past the pass lets us see a guy trapped under a rock. We can't help him, so good luck, bud. We're outside Lama Temple, so I'll learn some Buddhist stuff...

.. tomorrow!

I tried to skip ahead, but there's a desert to the south. All of my teammates kept complaining about the heat, so I just came back. All I wanted were more djinns!