Nanimani
Probably listening to music
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, they were talking about all three of them, so you weren't wrong about that?
Last edited:
All Aboard The Magic Hellbus! Let's Play Limbus Company
- Thread starter ZerbanDaGreat
- Start date
- Let's Play
Canto IV: The Unchanging (Part 3) - A Hole, With No Sign Of Mending
New
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
CW: Themes of suicidal ideation.
Dongrang: "He can't be helped, Dongbaek. So... what do you plan to show us at this illuminator's conference? I can't help but look forward to something you've been working on tirelessly in your room."
Yi Sang comes to on the floor of the L Corp branch office, Dante still calling out to him in worry.
He doesn't look all that thrilled about the save, does he?
Dongbaek is gone - for that is the identity of the mystery woman in the old coat and hood from last update, Dongrang presumably revealing her name to the others while Yi Sang was unconscious. Once the Golden Bough pierced Yi Sang's chest it released a blinding flash of light, dazzling all present for long enough that Dongbaek was able to make her escape without resistance. "The smiles the people in the photograph made at each other were nowhere to be seen now", Dante's narration observes.
Dongrang, unaffected or business-minded enough to ignore anything Dongbaek's reappearance may have stirred in him, surmises that Dongbaek's plan was to stab him this whole time. After all, while Shrenne and Ran doubtless warned Dongbaek that he was bringing outside help, neither of them could've known Yi Sang by sight. A crime of passion then, a coinflip as Dongbaek chose on impulse to impale the man who can't die instead of the one who can.
Hong Lu: "Ah~. So you've brought Yi Sang here on purpose?"
Dongrang: "Mm... Are you asking if I invited him as a meat shield knowing that I'd be ambushed? As excellent as my ability to predict courses of events is, I am no prophet."
Yeah yeah I think we all trust Dongrang as far as we can throw him right about now.
Samjo: "Either way, things went in our favour. The assault was clearly made with intent to kill."
Gregor: "What did you just...? You can't be serious... A colleague of ours got stabbed to death for your boss, and you're talking like everything went well..."
Samjo: "It's not our responsibility to compensate for any injuries, is it? If this has left psychological scars, you are free to demand compensation, but please know that the procedures will be rather complex..."
Yi Sang: "I do not feel an ounce of pain. So you have no need to pursue this matter further."
Narration: When I turn the clock, every consequence is reversed. Torn clothing, bloodied stains, even the smallest scars are undone.
Narration: But that doesn't make the cause of that damage something that never happened.
Narration: Which is why I have to ask.
Yi Sang: "I see, you must have been rather curious."
Yi Sang: "I was once part of an organisation named the League of Nine. Gubo, Dongrang, and Dongbaek, the one who stabbed my chest. Those faces you have seen were members of it as well, manager."
Yi Sang: "However, it disbanded and scattered one day. Each of us was flown away into our own path."
Yi Sang: "That was all there was to it."
Rodion, perhaps due to her experiences with Leftist Infighting, is first to call bullshit on his lightweight 'explanation'. After all, there must be more to the story than 'things happened and we broke up' if the survivors are now all pointing knives at each other. Sinclair even chimes in going as far to suggest that they were never really friends at all.
Yi Sang: "It was no more than a moment. I believe my testimony to be apt for a time as transient as that."
Ironically, even this evasiveness is still markedly more talkative about his personal life than he's ever been in Dante's (admittedly brief) memory, lending credence to Faust's prior words that it's more complicated than him being the quiet sort.
Dante: <Are you really sure you're okay, Yi Sang?>
Said the man voted Least Okay On The Bus of 984-05
Again, Dante feels the urge to pry deeper. They know that there's more to this, they still feel that urge to do something for his wellbeing no matter how fumbling and inexpert their attempts.
Dante: <From your recent memory, umm... Have you had any particularly happy or painful memories or something like that?>
Yi Sang: "... you are devoting an unusal degree of attention to me today. While it does not please me... I will give you an answer since your dmeeanour is quite unlike the usual."
Yi Sang: "If I were to choose one, the happiest occasion in recent memory would be... when we held an illuminator's conference."
Yi Sang: "And the most hopeless one would be..."
Yi Sang: "At the forest where I first met you."
Yi Sang: "The very moment my life resumed when I was certain that it had ended there. Another such moment is now. I am once again realising that this regeneration is ever so flawless, unchanging."
Yi Sang: "I hope that sates your curiosity."
Dante: <...>
Narration: Although the wound was perfectly erased, there was still...
Man...
Ran was afraid of K Corp's healing ampules being used to keep her alive in torment when all she'd want is the escape of death, and that's exactly the fate that's befallen Yi Sang. His happiest memory is a moment where he can't be sure if he achieved something wonderful or doomed himself because at least that came from a time where he could believe he'd done something worthy of pride, and his worst memory is the night Dante first dragged his soul back from Hell. There's something bleakly comical about the idea of a passively suicidal man who gets to die as much as he likes, because here we see brought back into sharp relief that theme of the nature of pain and what it teaches us. Outis claimed that enduring death and revival would train the Sinners to fear death and harm too much to fight, the K Corp security staff stood in example of the idea that enduring mutilation and revival would train them to be fearless berserkers, but Yi Sang shows the third and perhaps most harmful option of all - pain that does nothing at all. Pain that can't move the needle because it's become the background radiation of your existence. Pain that numbs you and suffocates you until caring about anything, including and especially your own wellbeing, just seems bothersome. It's reminiscent of my own personal rejoinder to the idea that suffering builds character and adjacent sentiments: no, pain mostly just hurts you.
As much as Dante would doubtless like to keep digging into the case of Yi Sang, or indeed have a few quiet moments to process everything in general, such luxuries are not to be found in the domain of The Fucky Bus. Samjo alerts the gang that the lab has once more been raided in their absence, in far greater numbers. Outis instantly recognises this whole boondoggle for the bait-and-switch it was, cursing what is presumably Shrenne's bisected corpse for her betrayal in her helpless frustration. Sinclair, perhaps due to having a second to reflect on how much opposition they did or didn't face from the previous occupants on the way in, remarks that they've never made it all the way into a branch office without having to tango with an Abnormality or two before. Heathcliff assumes, likely based on how badly everyone (including them) has done at facing Abnormalities in a straight-up fight, that the TLA figured out a way to use or modify the branch office's equipment to revert an Abnormality to its egg without risking life and limb on direct 'suppression'. Surprisingly Faust lends the theory enough credence not to dismiss it out of hand, instead observing that the ability to achieve something like that implies the TLA were capable of more besides.
Greg has gotten a lot to say this Canto and we love him for it, maybe the corporate hellscience theme has got him feeling a bit spicy.
Dongrang: "It'll work out somehow. In our group is K Corp's most successful researcher... and better yet, two of the greatest geniuses in the City."
Let's put a pin in this line for later. Suffice it to say for now that it's very interesting that Dongrang would describe himself as successful in contrast to calling Yi Sang and Faust geniuses, implicitly placing his own raw skill and intellect below theirs. Yet he's never been one to shy away from self-aggrandising before, far from it. Motherfucker can't shut up about his awards and certificates and statues and diplomas for three seconds. Is he being passive-aggressive again, needling Yi Sang and Faust for being stuck in dead-end jobs working for a brand-new no-name subdivision like LCB while he's soared up the corporate ladder, or is he concealing yet deeper meanings?
The trip back to the K Corp building is so uneventful that the game simply hard cuts from the depths of the branch office to the lobby between map nodes, the Sinners really did just massacre the robots and Rosespanner fixers to the last. Dongrang is flagged down by a panicked researcher on sight and must step away to discuss something about the evolving crisis, leaving Dante awkwardly standing around waiting for him to finish up.
According to the narration she 'scuttled' over to do this, sis is never beating the La Creatura allegations.
Don, whose ADHD burns with the fire of a sun, cannot stand idle for more than a few seconds and rushes over to a selection of what appear to be children's picturebooks? This draws the attention not only of Dante, but of Yi Sang, and before they can think any deeper on why he would show interest a golden haze unfolds into the story within.
We return to reality on, what else, Ishmael rambling about how K Corp's Nest has a particular holiday where everyone goes outside without an umbrella to stand in the rain because she's the only one who does the reading. It's sort of unclear what exactly happened there, at first I thought maybe Dante experienced the storybook in A Certain Way while Don simply read it, but the fact the entire team got a chance to hear and process the story throws a wrench in that because no way everybody crowded around and craned their necks over Don's shoulder to read along with her. I guess City bizarrotech means even random picturebooks lying around in the lobby of a corporate skyscraper can be High-Definition Fully-Realised Audiovisual Experiences.
Quibbling over details aside, Sinclair observes that the story of the healing tears that fall like rain are rather similar to what the regeneration ampules are capable of. Rodion is confused, since Dongrang told them the ampules are full of nanobots small enough to behave similarly to fluid rather than actual liquid (in a line that I skimmed over for the flow of the scene), so Dante asks Faust for her input.
Faust: "I am a woman of science. I prefer judgement based on facts over metaphors. This... so-called analysis and interpretation of stars and clouds might be an area Yi Sang is more familiar with. He's a researcher like me, but we're not quite the same."
Yi Sang is oomfie and I love him and feel for him and need to see him wrapped in a blanket but this is the funniest goddamn image to me right now he received the most backhanded of compliments and is too tired to even formulate a response to it.
Dongrang returns before anybody can press Yi Sang for his take on the matter any further. The situation is even more serious than before, the TLA having managed to penetrate deeper into the building than ever before. Don, being entirely on the ball for once, asks how that can be the case when everyone is still very much at work rather than fleeing for their lives.
The fact that the only person who responds to this insane statement is Dante once again drives home how Like That the City is. Not like we're exactly strangers to that here in the real world, are we? Shout-outs to all my Essential Workers in the audience, if Amazon wants you to work through a plague and a hurricane it would absolutely try to make you work through an active terror attack too.
Outis: "I don't get it. How was this attack possible? It didn't seem like a structure that allowed intruders to sneak into the room undetected."
Dongrang: "We're running short of time, so I'll explain as we go up."
Ryoshu: "Object."
Ryoshu: "Give one reason we should go with you."
Meursault: "Indeed. The contract has been fulfilled."
My amusement every time I see Ryoshu heavy coping rivals, but does not exceed, my shared desire to see this man beaten to death with hammers.
Rodion: "Is this... really right? Hey... What does the contract exactly say?"
Samjo: "Hm... I couldn't say, I'm not all too knowledeable when it comes to legal matters..."
Samjo suddenly gets real quiet and makes himself look busy cleaning his glasses.
Ryoshu: "S. A."
Sinclair: "Mister Samjo... She wants answers..."
Samjo: "Mm?"
Sinclair: "S-Samjo... She says she'll assail you this time...!"
Dante: <L-let's hurry along for now, Ryoshu...>
I lowkey love this talksprite because it exudes a similar energy to putting big angry eyebrows on a wojak. Ryoshu is honestly getting it so rough this canto and it's hysterical.
Narration: The hallway that was clean and calm hours ago...
Thus, I had been living without knowing for certain if I truly had wings or if I was a mere half-wit.
Dongrang: "He can't be helped, Dongbaek. So... what do you plan to show us at this illuminator's conference? I can't help but look forward to something you've been working on tirelessly in your room."
Thus, it has always remained unclear.
Unsure if I regret that day, or reminisce it fondly.
Unsure if I regret that day, or reminisce it fondly.
Yi Sang comes to on the floor of the L Corp branch office, Dante still calling out to him in worry.
He doesn't look all that thrilled about the save, does he?
Dongbaek is gone - for that is the identity of the mystery woman in the old coat and hood from last update, Dongrang presumably revealing her name to the others while Yi Sang was unconscious. Once the Golden Bough pierced Yi Sang's chest it released a blinding flash of light, dazzling all present for long enough that Dongbaek was able to make her escape without resistance. "The smiles the people in the photograph made at each other were nowhere to be seen now", Dante's narration observes.
Dongrang, unaffected or business-minded enough to ignore anything Dongbaek's reappearance may have stirred in him, surmises that Dongbaek's plan was to stab him this whole time. After all, while Shrenne and Ran doubtless warned Dongbaek that he was bringing outside help, neither of them could've known Yi Sang by sight. A crime of passion then, a coinflip as Dongbaek chose on impulse to impale the man who can't die instead of the one who can.
Hong Lu: "Ah~. So you've brought Yi Sang here on purpose?"
Dongrang: "Mm... Are you asking if I invited him as a meat shield knowing that I'd be ambushed? As excellent as my ability to predict courses of events is, I am no prophet."
Yeah yeah I think we all trust Dongrang as far as we can throw him right about now.
Samjo: "Either way, things went in our favour. The assault was clearly made with intent to kill."
Gregor: "What did you just...? You can't be serious... A colleague of ours got stabbed to death for your boss, and you're talking like everything went well..."
Samjo: "It's not our responsibility to compensate for any injuries, is it? If this has left psychological scars, you are free to demand compensation, but please know that the procedures will be rather complex..."
Yi Sang: "I do not feel an ounce of pain. So you have no need to pursue this matter further."
Narration: When I turn the clock, every consequence is reversed. Torn clothing, bloodied stains, even the smallest scars are undone.
Narration: But that doesn't make the cause of that damage something that never happened.
Narration: Which is why I have to ask.
Yi Sang: "I see, you must have been rather curious."
Yi Sang: "I was once part of an organisation named the League of Nine. Gubo, Dongrang, and Dongbaek, the one who stabbed my chest. Those faces you have seen were members of it as well, manager."
Yi Sang: "However, it disbanded and scattered one day. Each of us was flown away into our own path."
Yi Sang: "That was all there was to it."
Rodion, perhaps due to her experiences with Leftist Infighting, is first to call bullshit on his lightweight 'explanation'. After all, there must be more to the story than 'things happened and we broke up' if the survivors are now all pointing knives at each other. Sinclair even chimes in going as far to suggest that they were never really friends at all.
Yi Sang: "It was no more than a moment. I believe my testimony to be apt for a time as transient as that."
Ironically, even this evasiveness is still markedly more talkative about his personal life than he's ever been in Dante's (admittedly brief) memory, lending credence to Faust's prior words that it's more complicated than him being the quiet sort.
Dante: <Are you really sure you're okay, Yi Sang?>
Said the man voted Least Okay On The Bus of 984-05
Again, Dante feels the urge to pry deeper. They know that there's more to this, they still feel that urge to do something for his wellbeing no matter how fumbling and inexpert their attempts.
Dante: <From your recent memory, umm... Have you had any particularly happy or painful memories or something like that?>
Yi Sang: "... you are devoting an unusal degree of attention to me today. While it does not please me... I will give you an answer since your dmeeanour is quite unlike the usual."
Yi Sang: "If I were to choose one, the happiest occasion in recent memory would be... when we held an illuminator's conference."
Yi Sang: "And the most hopeless one would be..."
Yi Sang: "At the forest where I first met you."
Yi Sang: "The very moment my life resumed when I was certain that it had ended there. Another such moment is now. I am once again realising that this regeneration is ever so flawless, unchanging."
Yi Sang: "I hope that sates your curiosity."
Dante: <...>
Narration: Although the wound was perfectly erased, there was still...
Man...
Ran was afraid of K Corp's healing ampules being used to keep her alive in torment when all she'd want is the escape of death, and that's exactly the fate that's befallen Yi Sang. His happiest memory is a moment where he can't be sure if he achieved something wonderful or doomed himself because at least that came from a time where he could believe he'd done something worthy of pride, and his worst memory is the night Dante first dragged his soul back from Hell. There's something bleakly comical about the idea of a passively suicidal man who gets to die as much as he likes, because here we see brought back into sharp relief that theme of the nature of pain and what it teaches us. Outis claimed that enduring death and revival would train the Sinners to fear death and harm too much to fight, the K Corp security staff stood in example of the idea that enduring mutilation and revival would train them to be fearless berserkers, but Yi Sang shows the third and perhaps most harmful option of all - pain that does nothing at all. Pain that can't move the needle because it's become the background radiation of your existence. Pain that numbs you and suffocates you until caring about anything, including and especially your own wellbeing, just seems bothersome. It's reminiscent of my own personal rejoinder to the idea that suffering builds character and adjacent sentiments: no, pain mostly just hurts you.
As much as Dante would doubtless like to keep digging into the case of Yi Sang, or indeed have a few quiet moments to process everything in general, such luxuries are not to be found in the domain of The Fucky Bus. Samjo alerts the gang that the lab has once more been raided in their absence, in far greater numbers. Outis instantly recognises this whole boondoggle for the bait-and-switch it was, cursing what is presumably Shrenne's bisected corpse for her betrayal in her helpless frustration. Sinclair, perhaps due to having a second to reflect on how much opposition they did or didn't face from the previous occupants on the way in, remarks that they've never made it all the way into a branch office without having to tango with an Abnormality or two before. Heathcliff assumes, likely based on how badly everyone (including them) has done at facing Abnormalities in a straight-up fight, that the TLA figured out a way to use or modify the branch office's equipment to revert an Abnormality to its egg without risking life and limb on direct 'suppression'. Surprisingly Faust lends the theory enough credence not to dismiss it out of hand, instead observing that the ability to achieve something like that implies the TLA were capable of more besides.
Greg has gotten a lot to say this Canto and we love him for it, maybe the corporate hellscience theme has got him feeling a bit spicy.
Dongrang: "It'll work out somehow. In our group is K Corp's most successful researcher... and better yet, two of the greatest geniuses in the City."
Let's put a pin in this line for later. Suffice it to say for now that it's very interesting that Dongrang would describe himself as successful in contrast to calling Yi Sang and Faust geniuses, implicitly placing his own raw skill and intellect below theirs. Yet he's never been one to shy away from self-aggrandising before, far from it. Motherfucker can't shut up about his awards and certificates and statues and diplomas for three seconds. Is he being passive-aggressive again, needling Yi Sang and Faust for being stuck in dead-end jobs working for a brand-new no-name subdivision like LCB while he's soared up the corporate ladder, or is he concealing yet deeper meanings?
The trip back to the K Corp building is so uneventful that the game simply hard cuts from the depths of the branch office to the lobby between map nodes, the Sinners really did just massacre the robots and Rosespanner fixers to the last. Dongrang is flagged down by a panicked researcher on sight and must step away to discuss something about the evolving crisis, leaving Dante awkwardly standing around waiting for him to finish up.
According to the narration she 'scuttled' over to do this, sis is never beating the La Creatura allegations.
Don, whose ADHD burns with the fire of a sun, cannot stand idle for more than a few seconds and rushes over to a selection of what appear to be children's picturebooks? This draws the attention not only of Dante, but of Yi Sang, and before they can think any deeper on why he would show interest a golden haze unfolds into the story within.
In their eyes were twinkling stars.
The person gave them names, and made up stories for them as they liked.
Stories are like skeins of thread without an end; they're drawn and woven together in an effort to find meaning from meaninglessness.
All kinds of stories in the world, happy and sad, circled in the night sky.
Stories are like skeins of thread without an end; they're drawn and woven together in an effort to find meaning from meaninglessness.
All kinds of stories in the world, happy and sad, circled in the night sky.
Like any other day, the person spoke into the sky about the grief they felt.
And then...
And then...
'Dear person who named me and gave me a story, thanks to you, I was cast onto the land and pushed by the flow of time, feeling the world in full.'
'Did you know that stars can grant wishes?'
'The tears I shed will clear you of your pain.'
'Did you know that stars can grant wishes?'
'The tears I shed will clear you of your pain.'
Everyone caught in the rain was all healed up.
The person's ill family recovered to health, too.
Since then, the person and their family, as well as all the residents of the city, have looked up at the sky and talked about happiness every night.
The person's ill family recovered to health, too.
Since then, the person and their family, as well as all the residents of the city, have looked up at the sky and talked about happiness every night.
We return to reality on, what else, Ishmael rambling about how K Corp's Nest has a particular holiday where everyone goes outside without an umbrella to stand in the rain because she's the only one who does the reading. It's sort of unclear what exactly happened there, at first I thought maybe Dante experienced the storybook in A Certain Way while Don simply read it, but the fact the entire team got a chance to hear and process the story throws a wrench in that because no way everybody crowded around and craned their necks over Don's shoulder to read along with her. I guess City bizarrotech means even random picturebooks lying around in the lobby of a corporate skyscraper can be High-Definition Fully-Realised Audiovisual Experiences.
Quibbling over details aside, Sinclair observes that the story of the healing tears that fall like rain are rather similar to what the regeneration ampules are capable of. Rodion is confused, since Dongrang told them the ampules are full of nanobots small enough to behave similarly to fluid rather than actual liquid (in a line that I skimmed over for the flow of the scene), so Dante asks Faust for her input.
Faust: "I am a woman of science. I prefer judgement based on facts over metaphors. This... so-called analysis and interpretation of stars and clouds might be an area Yi Sang is more familiar with. He's a researcher like me, but we're not quite the same."
Yi Sang is oomfie and I love him and feel for him and need to see him wrapped in a blanket but this is the funniest goddamn image to me right now he received the most backhanded of compliments and is too tired to even formulate a response to it.
Dongrang returns before anybody can press Yi Sang for his take on the matter any further. The situation is even more serious than before, the TLA having managed to penetrate deeper into the building than ever before. Don, being entirely on the ball for once, asks how that can be the case when everyone is still very much at work rather than fleeing for their lives.
The fact that the only person who responds to this insane statement is Dante once again drives home how Like That the City is. Not like we're exactly strangers to that here in the real world, are we? Shout-outs to all my Essential Workers in the audience, if Amazon wants you to work through a plague and a hurricane it would absolutely try to make you work through an active terror attack too.
Outis: "I don't get it. How was this attack possible? It didn't seem like a structure that allowed intruders to sneak into the room undetected."
Dongrang: "We're running short of time, so I'll explain as we go up."
Ryoshu: "Object."
Ryoshu: "Give one reason we should go with you."
Meursault: "Indeed. The contract has been fulfilled."
My amusement every time I see Ryoshu heavy coping rivals, but does not exceed, my shared desire to see this man beaten to death with hammers.
Rodion: "Is this... really right? Hey... What does the contract exactly say?"
Samjo: "Hm... I couldn't say, I'm not all too knowledeable when it comes to legal matters..."
Samjo suddenly gets real quiet and makes himself look busy cleaning his glasses.
Ryoshu: "S. A."
Sinclair: "Mister Samjo... She wants answers..."
Samjo: "Mm?"
Sinclair: "S-Samjo... She says she'll assail you this time...!"
Dante: <L-let's hurry along for now, Ryoshu...>
I lowkey love this talksprite because it exudes a similar energy to putting big angry eyebrows on a wojak. Ryoshu is honestly getting it so rough this canto and it's hysterical.
Narration: The hallway that was clean and calm hours ago...
Last edited:
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
The gang arrive in the middle of a warzone, happening upon a dying researcher clinging to a TLA member's coattails as he cries out for Dongrang to save him.
Dongrang: "If it's intelligence you want, I'll give it to you. We were planning to go out for a staff dinner tomorrow, and the restaurant we booked serves such delicious meat. It'd be rather unfortunate if the smell awaiting us tomorrow came from incense sticks at a funeral instead of meat on a grill. Wouldn't you agree?"
Me when someone asks me how I play Project Moon games while illiterate.
Heathcliff: "Huh, you're walking in unarmed now? What happened to your robots that did the fighting for you wimps?"
Alliance Member: "We have no need to bring our robots, either. I see plenty of useful-looking ones here."
More K Corp security officers march in to suppress the threat, Ishmael spectacularly failing to read the room as she remarks with a sigh of relief that they all outnumber the TLA so much it'll be a cinch to beat them back this time. Outis is slightly quicker on the uptake, but not quite quick enough to do anything about what comes next.
Alliance Member: "Ms. Ran's expertise was hijacking machines. She was more experienced in hacking than fighting."
Class 2 Excision Staff: "Huh, wait... What's..."
So hey, remember that plot point we established earlier where the drones shoot you with Melt Your Balls serum for 'deserting' the combat zone?
Check it out, the evil red optic is one thing but its nameplate changes to the TLA's colours too.
The K Corp security staff may not fear pain and injury, but they do fear death, and the decay ampules promise exactly that if they breach the combat parameters set by the hacked drones.
Class 2 Excision Staff: "Damn it... I've got no choice..."
Meursault: "...!"
Don Quixote: "Why...!"
Class 2 Excision Staff: "I... don't wanna get hit by the decay ampule. I want to live..."
Ampule Helper: "Current status: no deserters detected, all status green. Please stand in line for regeneration ampules."
Meursault: "... I see."
Again I find it interesting the times Outis doesn't go rat mode compared to the times she does. Much like when she realised Shrenne's treachery she seems troubled, or at the very least solemn about the affair, and even Meursault appears to be given pause by the horrific circumstances pitting the K Corp guards against them again. Perhaps it's no coincidence that the two who advocated for the fear of death weakening the Sinners at the start of the Canto are forced to confront opponents who only stand up and fight them through fear of death.
Dante grants the authorisation Outis seeks, and battle commences.
The coerced K Corp guards come in three variants - Terrified, Stiffened and Shaking - corresponding to the three variants encountered earlier. They appear with attack skills unaltered and max hp lowered slightly in exchange for no longer becoming Staggered when entering panic, as fear of death at the hands of the Decay Ampules overrides all others. Those special status effects they're seen acquiring at the start of combat (and not listed in their passives or on the wiki, annoyingly) grant them buffs once they hit -25 SP, as what their passives do explain is that they lose 3 SP every time they see an ally strike another ally. Specifically, when that Hacked K Corp Regen Drone does its thing.
(This is another thing where the game stretches every fight out to five nodes so initially you fight special 'weak' variants of the Regen Drones with limited skill repertoires and an evade instead of a guard but I'll be condensing things to talk about their full-power forms.)
Here we see the drone administering healing serum via its preferred method of violently plunging many foot-long needles into a man's face and eyes. This is a special attack that can only target allies, forcibly healing them by the value of the damage it should have done - hence this 'attack' with a raw value of 20 hitting a Staggered fighter hard enough to bring him up from 4hp to 51. They can also administer Resister Ampules, which grant 1 Protection vs a random damage affinity next turn, which is... truly, impressively useless. Even if it was neutral Protection it would still be useless but making it affinity-specific and also random adds insult to injury by leaving open the possibility of not even reducing the damage type you primarily use, so it effectively only serves to drain a free 3 SP from the guards and waste an action slot. Far more effective are the buffs the full-strength variants utilise later, Continue Engaging and Do Not Reserve Your Strength granting 2 Damage Up and 2 Attack Power Up + 2 Fragile respectively.
Posting this just because Hongler is extremely slay and I liked the in-between frame I captured. This was the killing blow that rendered his target into a mound of rough-cut salsa and boy did they make it look like his Keyblade would do that to a person if he swung it this hard.
Yi Sang: "You are aware that I was compelled to do it to them."
The drones can also, as you might expect, inflict Decay Ampules on you. Decay Ampule deals 2% of the victim's max HP per stack as fixed damage at the end of the turn (Meursault shown here suffering from the piddly one stack the weak drone variant can inflict) and I honestly can't say whether they fall off at turn end or just stick around perpetually since the fight ended so soon after this. The full-strength variant is far more of a problem, first with Discharging Decay Ampule which inflicts 2 Paralyse next turn which would be scary enough even without the 2 Decay Ampule on heads hit, and second with Exposing Weakness that inflicts up to 3 Fragile next turn on top of 3 Decay Ampule. These robots are fucked up and I'm glad N Corp Sinclair is filled with such racially motivated hatred for them that they explode the second he so much as touches them.
So yeah we fight three nodes of these guys at two waves apiece before new story stuff happens so SKIP and we return to Heathcliff heckling the nearby TLA member for not scarpering while the gang mulched the K Corp guards.
Alliance Member: "..."
Heathcliff: "You're so dead now. Bunch of book-smart sods who think using things others made is talent..."
Alliance Member: "Fair point."
The Sinners don't know what the fuck they're looking at, but anyone familiar with Lobcorp the videogame sure is - the TLA have outfitted themselves with EGO suits, and intend to use their power to accomplish whatever the hacked drones can't.
The short version is that one of the benefits of successfully working on and containing Abnormalities is that you can eventually extract equipment from them in the form of EGO weapons, EGO suits and (much more rarely) EGO gifts. These suits would augment an agent's abilities and alter their damage resistances, so fittingly enough these are the first human foes we've faced since Kromer to have sin affinities that aren't just neutral across the board. The Sloshing suit wearers (the green goo and fairy wings) have a minor resistance to Gluttony and Slash while weak to Envy and fatal to Pierce, whereas the Red Sheet suit wearers have a minor resistance to Slash and Wrath while weak to Gloom and fatal to Blunt. Unfortunately for them Gloom, Blunt and Pierce are not in short supply for this team.
Again there's the hullabaloo of fighting weak variants for a while so I'll skip that and talk about the full-strength variants. The Sloshing suit wearers inflict and burst Tremor with some Bind for good measure, and upon using most of their skills gain a stack of Morale Boost. Morale Boost is a unique form of Damage Up that remains active in perpetuity until it reaches 5 stacks, at which point it's all converted into Tipsy which reduces their Clash Power by the stack amount instead. At this point they're forced to waste a turn using their guard, healing a chunk of health and clearing all Tipsy but gaining 2 Fragile next turn anyway. Outside of extremely lucky coinflips you can effectively discount these ones as threats because the Sloshing suit comes with -3 Offence Level mod across the board and deeply unimpressive power ceilings to boot.
The Red Sheet suit wearers are mono-Lust where the Sloshing suits were split Gluttony and Sloth, revolving around inflicting a metric shit-ton of Rupture Count all while gaining the unique status Entangled Curse Talisman. Talisman is a plain stack% damage boost for the Red Sheet wearer, right up until 9+ stacks when they gain a perpetual 2 Attack Power Down and must vent it all with their strongest skill Pronounced Wound. The problem here is that they have quite good power ceilings and coin counts and a +4 Offence Level mod across the board, making them far deadlier than their fellows even before the damage multipliers and Rupture triggers. The first round of my first node battle with this lot a Red Sheet fighter pointed at Faust and immediately shattered all her bones in one attack.
I recovered quickly, and with Sinclair forced to pop Branch of Knowledge to win an otherwise impossible clash I have the opportunity to talk about how the great base EGO rebalance of Whenever The Fuck It Was that made everyone absolutely hate his base EGO made it a crucial part of fielding N Corp Sinclair. What's that? -5 SP and +10% damage every time the reverse-coin ID that inflicts One Gorillion Damage with every skill fumbles a coinflip or two? Don't mind if I do!
Gregor, having never seen the wearable kind of EGO before in his life, starts the conversation on what the hell was going on with those TLA dudes. He's well aware of the mental strain it takes any one of them to trigger an extracted EGO, and Rodion chimes in to wonder at how a bunch of random lab workers with no combat experience could be more proficient than all of them the professional murderhobos at wielding it. Faust explains in her own words what I just did a few images ago about materialising the EGO in equipment form from a captured, egg-form Abnormality using the abandoned L Corp branch office facilities. Thanks to the Qliphoth Deterrence of the Golden Bough, they would even be able to resist the Corrosion effect. Appropriately enough the Sloshing and Red Sheet EGO-users have the special panic type Maddened which causes them to target indiscriminately when first entering a Low Morale state and when Panicking, just like when a Sinner's extracted EGO goes haywire.
Gregor: "Does that mean... Lobotomy Corporation did the same..."
Faust: "Yes, rather than Fixers, regular employees were given the EGO to work with. Of course, what we have right now isn't as refined as what the Wing used to have."
And there we have plain confirmation that EGO works the way it does in Limbus because the tech to refine EGO into armour and weapons that can be wielded effectively in perpetuity is lost to them. Burning a bunch of sin resources to manifest it for one big blast and then reverting is the best they can do. Of course the Identity system allows them to cheat things a bit, but we'll get to that another time.
In the meantime, Ishmael realises that if these EGO suits require the Golden Bough's aura to function properly that must mean it -and by extension Dongbaek- must be nearby. Outis, slightly more practically, asks how Dongbaek has apparently managed to secure the run of the place going by the fact no one has managed to stop her or even report a sighting of her since they showed up. Samjo stammers that he doesn't have the excuses he'd like to retort with, while Dongrang blows it off as a consequence of the TLA being formed of such bright scientific minds.
Samjo: "Don't let them fascinate you. If they were so wise, they wouldn't have quit their enviable jobs at large firms for a terrorist organisation in the first place."
A surprisingly solemn comment from Ishmael, and quite the reversal from her corporate simpery earlier. Why does Ishmael empathise with these scientists dropping everything to brave the unknown? Considering the literary Ishmael explains in the first paragraph of his story that the only cure for his morbid ennui is to race off to sea, we can make some fairly good guesses!
A quick jaunt through a second battle node (oh god let it end) and Dongrang is interrupted from his fretting about just how deep the TLA are pushing into the facility by a call from Director Alfonso herself. He tries to get Samjo to blow it off on his behalf, but unfortunately the most powerful woman in the company won't be stalled out forever, so Dongrang excuses himself to take the call. In the quiet that follows the gang spy a researcher wandering the halls in a daze, and The Rat Woman gets an idea.
Outis: "It most likely means you've found someone with useful information. It would be wise to make good use of them."
Outis strides forward and catches the fretting employee.
Outis: "Hey, we're agents from a subcontracting firm here to deal with this commotion. What's going on?"
Nervous Employee: "I-I've been looking for Ms. Shrenne, but I can't find her anywhere. I need to tell her to evacuate... She's left her computer on... Where could she be..."
Sinclair: "Ah... actually, she-"
Outis: "Alright, we'll find her. You evacuate first."
Nervous Employee: "Thank you."
Outis: "Now, while the terrorists' informant has been removed, the staff is still in a muddle, and her computer is left on. We're in a complete tactical advantage. It didn't even cost us any strength."
Hysterical. The only thing funnier than a bootlicking tryhard is a bootlicking tryhard who gets hardcore sandbagged.
We even have Shrenne's password thanks to Dongrang saying it out loud down in the L Corp branch, so Shrenne's workstation represents a potential goldmine of information about the TLA and their goals (I would say I hope Shrenne and Ran didn't talk too explicitly about the TLA via her goddamn work email but I have zero expectations at this point). Dante orders the team to pursue the lead for that very reason.
She sucks Dante's toes every half-hour like clockwork but thinks they'd be too dumb to breathe if their head weren't a clock, it's truly a potent combo.
Gregor: "Alright, good. The problem is how we're gonna sneak into the office... Who on our team is gonna walk in there bold-faced and get it done without rousing suspicion..."
Dante: <If I had to choose a Sinner who can keep a still face and avoid suspicion...>
Don Quixote: "Give this humble knight one more chance, and I shall succeed...!"
Dante: <Meursault! Think you can handle it?>
Meursault: "... as long as you command."
There's something hilarious about the fact that out of all the Sinners the one arguably in the running for third most pleasant interpersonal relationship with Dante is Meursault. Already you can see Dante has mentally filed him away as The One Who Will Actually Do What I Fucking Ask, and sure enough after two more nodes of endless fighting (stop the pain please let it end) he delivers results.
Brief aside to say that after each battle node the MVP of your team will have a special voice line boasting their success, but by the same token if you fail a node (or simply quit out as I did here) they have a 'defeat wail' instead. This is how you know that N Corp Sinclair is the evillest of all Sinclairs, for he is willing and able to say the shit word. You might also notice that failing/quitting here restored 19 of the 20 enkephalin expended to enter the node in the first place, which is a genuine goddamn blessing and yet another reason this LP is even possible.
Meursault: "I've returned. There was one message in Shrenne's mailbox that was deemed worth reading."
Meursault: "The environment did not permit me to print it out, so I memorised the mail's content."
They're calling him the most autistic man alive, he owns a theoretically infinite amount of Drive jackets. The emoticon he's describing is (☆💧💧⁓^^) as best I can reproduce, or (☆╥╥⁓^^) if we take 'tear' to mean the unicode symbol commonly used in Korean emoticons to make a sad/crying face like (╥_╥), and I think I lean towards the latter because it feels like Shrenne trying to type a lil kitty or other such Creature for Ran.
Dante: <Y-You can skip those parts...>
Meursault: "Understood. I will them disperse with punctuation marks that do not appear important."
Meursault (slowly fading out to be replaced by Shrenne's voice): " 'I've been trying to figure out if what you said was really true, but that sucker is making it hard.' "
Shrenne: " 'And now he's recruited collaborators from the outside, probably to help with whatever he's plotting. I heard they're from a newly-found company, and I haven't checked what kind of people they are yet. I bet they're all haughty and arrogant just like their client.' "
Shrenne: " 'Still... Still, the plan will proceed as intended. We'll succeed... and return to a glorious past.' "
Shrenne: " 'To tell you the truth, my most dazzlign memory was when I first met you after joining the company. But our goal is more ambitious than that.' "
Shrenne: ' 'So, let's promise to meet again there. In a past where no technologies existed, allowing everything that existed to shine brighter. There, chickens will fly free over the meadows, their wings uncut. When a person loses their arm, we'll comfort them... and learn how to live together even if an arm is missing.' "
Shrenne: " 'We may not be able to enjoy sumptuous feasts or conveniences of modern civilisation, and we won't have nearly as many resources at our disposal... In that vastness... We'll be free to walk all day.' "
Shrenne (beginning to fade out): " 'Oh, I'm planning to bring Fixers from the outside for the plan. My juniors have gotten too used to the ampules. If rapid development can only be achieved by means that cause pain and suffering to people...' "
Meursault: " 'Then I'm willing to give up on all the prosperity it brings. That's all I have to say for now. Yours in haste...' "
Ishmael: "How ironic. I guess it's fortunate for her that she didn't get to see liberation alliance members murdering researchers without mercy..."
Rodion: "She probably believed she was working for a noble cause to end violence until the end of her life..."
Man.
Here lies Shrenne, the literal worst at infosec in the whole wide world, holy shit. She said all that on her work laptop, through her work email, and was still posting through it basically the day everything went down. IT is asleep at the wheel if she managed to get as far as joining Dongrang and the gang on the trip to L Corp's branch office with the spiked ampules.
Then there are two more generic battle nodeswhy has god forsaken me before we come to the next cutscene. Along the way as the gang continue in hot pursuit of Dongbaek they bump into a cadre of elite K Corp staff coming the other way, whom Gregor attempts to flag down with information about a group of researchers in need of evacuation.
Being ripped drugged-up cyberchads the Class 3 Excision Staff completely ignore him and trudge on upstairs towards their quarry. Dongrang (jumpscaring the gang as he returns from the phonecall) helpfully explains that these are basically K Corp's special forces, deployed solely to eliminate intruders and secure classified technology. 'Rescuing' people is left to the Class 1 staff.
Samjo: "Sorry? In this Nest, Class 1 is the lowest level, and higher numbers indicate better ranks..."
The yellow creature is flabbergasted.
Don Quixote: "... Even still, none can be too lordly or lowly to save lives, so how can the roles be divided?"
Dongrang: "Haha, bigger is better for numbers and riches alike, isn't that right?"
Don Quixote: "thou sayest naught which applies to mine question-"
Swiftly changing the subject, Dongrang announces that he managed to get permission from the Director.
Dongrang: "Normally it seems to require a bunch of paperwork as well, but since we're in an emergency, let's skip the procedures that we can. Should be fine, right Samjo?"
Samjo: "Well... I believe it could be managed with three and a half days of working on the report overtime. And strictly speaking, the problem already began when you brought them to your lab without any report."
Dongrang: "It seems Dongbaek has headed that way."
Dongrang: "If it's intelligence you want, I'll give it to you. We were planning to go out for a staff dinner tomorrow, and the restaurant we booked serves such delicious meat. It'd be rather unfortunate if the smell awaiting us tomorrow came from incense sticks at a funeral instead of meat on a grill. Wouldn't you agree?"
Me when someone asks me how I play Project Moon games while illiterate.
Heathcliff: "Huh, you're walking in unarmed now? What happened to your robots that did the fighting for you wimps?"
Alliance Member: "We have no need to bring our robots, either. I see plenty of useful-looking ones here."
More K Corp security officers march in to suppress the threat, Ishmael spectacularly failing to read the room as she remarks with a sigh of relief that they all outnumber the TLA so much it'll be a cinch to beat them back this time. Outis is slightly quicker on the uptake, but not quite quick enough to do anything about what comes next.
Alliance Member: "Ms. Ran's expertise was hijacking machines. She was more experienced in hacking than fighting."
Class 2 Excision Staff: "Huh, wait... What's..."
So hey, remember that plot point we established earlier where the drones shoot you with Melt Your Balls serum for 'deserting' the combat zone?
Check it out, the evil red optic is one thing but its nameplate changes to the TLA's colours too.
The K Corp security staff may not fear pain and injury, but they do fear death, and the decay ampules promise exactly that if they breach the combat parameters set by the hacked drones.
Class 2 Excision Staff: "Damn it... I've got no choice..."
Meursault: "...!"
Don Quixote: "Why...!"
Class 2 Excision Staff: "I... don't wanna get hit by the decay ampule. I want to live..."
Ampule Helper: "Current status: no deserters detected, all status green. Please stand in line for regeneration ampules."
Meursault: "... I see."
Again I find it interesting the times Outis doesn't go rat mode compared to the times she does. Much like when she realised Shrenne's treachery she seems troubled, or at the very least solemn about the affair, and even Meursault appears to be given pause by the horrific circumstances pitting the K Corp guards against them again. Perhaps it's no coincidence that the two who advocated for the fear of death weakening the Sinners at the start of the Canto are forced to confront opponents who only stand up and fight them through fear of death.
Dante grants the authorisation Outis seeks, and battle commences.
The coerced K Corp guards come in three variants - Terrified, Stiffened and Shaking - corresponding to the three variants encountered earlier. They appear with attack skills unaltered and max hp lowered slightly in exchange for no longer becoming Staggered when entering panic, as fear of death at the hands of the Decay Ampules overrides all others. Those special status effects they're seen acquiring at the start of combat (and not listed in their passives or on the wiki, annoyingly) grant them buffs once they hit -25 SP, as what their passives do explain is that they lose 3 SP every time they see an ally strike another ally. Specifically, when that Hacked K Corp Regen Drone does its thing.
(This is another thing where the game stretches every fight out to five nodes so initially you fight special 'weak' variants of the Regen Drones with limited skill repertoires and an evade instead of a guard but I'll be condensing things to talk about their full-power forms.)
Here we see the drone administering healing serum via its preferred method of violently plunging many foot-long needles into a man's face and eyes. This is a special attack that can only target allies, forcibly healing them by the value of the damage it should have done - hence this 'attack' with a raw value of 20 hitting a Staggered fighter hard enough to bring him up from 4hp to 51. They can also administer Resister Ampules, which grant 1 Protection vs a random damage affinity next turn, which is... truly, impressively useless. Even if it was neutral Protection it would still be useless but making it affinity-specific and also random adds insult to injury by leaving open the possibility of not even reducing the damage type you primarily use, so it effectively only serves to drain a free 3 SP from the guards and waste an action slot. Far more effective are the buffs the full-strength variants utilise later, Continue Engaging and Do Not Reserve Your Strength granting 2 Damage Up and 2 Attack Power Up + 2 Fragile respectively.
Posting this just because Hongler is extremely slay and I liked the in-between frame I captured. This was the killing blow that rendered his target into a mound of rough-cut salsa and boy did they make it look like his Keyblade would do that to a person if he swung it this hard.
Yi Sang: "You are aware that I was compelled to do it to them."
The drones can also, as you might expect, inflict Decay Ampules on you. Decay Ampule deals 2% of the victim's max HP per stack as fixed damage at the end of the turn (Meursault shown here suffering from the piddly one stack the weak drone variant can inflict) and I honestly can't say whether they fall off at turn end or just stick around perpetually since the fight ended so soon after this. The full-strength variant is far more of a problem, first with Discharging Decay Ampule which inflicts 2 Paralyse next turn which would be scary enough even without the 2 Decay Ampule on heads hit, and second with Exposing Weakness that inflicts up to 3 Fragile next turn on top of 3 Decay Ampule. These robots are fucked up and I'm glad N Corp Sinclair is filled with such racially motivated hatred for them that they explode the second he so much as touches them.
So yeah we fight three nodes of these guys at two waves apiece before new story stuff happens so SKIP and we return to Heathcliff heckling the nearby TLA member for not scarpering while the gang mulched the K Corp guards.
Alliance Member: "..."
Heathcliff: "You're so dead now. Bunch of book-smart sods who think using things others made is talent..."
Alliance Member: "Fair point."
The Sinners don't know what the fuck they're looking at, but anyone familiar with Lobcorp the videogame sure is - the TLA have outfitted themselves with EGO suits, and intend to use their power to accomplish whatever the hacked drones can't.
The short version is that one of the benefits of successfully working on and containing Abnormalities is that you can eventually extract equipment from them in the form of EGO weapons, EGO suits and (much more rarely) EGO gifts. These suits would augment an agent's abilities and alter their damage resistances, so fittingly enough these are the first human foes we've faced since Kromer to have sin affinities that aren't just neutral across the board. The Sloshing suit wearers (the green goo and fairy wings) have a minor resistance to Gluttony and Slash while weak to Envy and fatal to Pierce, whereas the Red Sheet suit wearers have a minor resistance to Slash and Wrath while weak to Gloom and fatal to Blunt. Unfortunately for them Gloom, Blunt and Pierce are not in short supply for this team.
Again there's the hullabaloo of fighting weak variants for a while so I'll skip that and talk about the full-strength variants. The Sloshing suit wearers inflict and burst Tremor with some Bind for good measure, and upon using most of their skills gain a stack of Morale Boost. Morale Boost is a unique form of Damage Up that remains active in perpetuity until it reaches 5 stacks, at which point it's all converted into Tipsy which reduces their Clash Power by the stack amount instead. At this point they're forced to waste a turn using their guard, healing a chunk of health and clearing all Tipsy but gaining 2 Fragile next turn anyway. Outside of extremely lucky coinflips you can effectively discount these ones as threats because the Sloshing suit comes with -3 Offence Level mod across the board and deeply unimpressive power ceilings to boot.
The Red Sheet suit wearers are mono-Lust where the Sloshing suits were split Gluttony and Sloth, revolving around inflicting a metric shit-ton of Rupture Count all while gaining the unique status Entangled Curse Talisman. Talisman is a plain stack% damage boost for the Red Sheet wearer, right up until 9+ stacks when they gain a perpetual 2 Attack Power Down and must vent it all with their strongest skill Pronounced Wound. The problem here is that they have quite good power ceilings and coin counts and a +4 Offence Level mod across the board, making them far deadlier than their fellows even before the damage multipliers and Rupture triggers. The first round of my first node battle with this lot a Red Sheet fighter pointed at Faust and immediately shattered all her bones in one attack.
I recovered quickly, and with Sinclair forced to pop Branch of Knowledge to win an otherwise impossible clash I have the opportunity to talk about how the great base EGO rebalance of Whenever The Fuck It Was that made everyone absolutely hate his base EGO made it a crucial part of fielding N Corp Sinclair. What's that? -5 SP and +10% damage every time the reverse-coin ID that inflicts One Gorillion Damage with every skill fumbles a coinflip or two? Don't mind if I do!
Gregor, having never seen the wearable kind of EGO before in his life, starts the conversation on what the hell was going on with those TLA dudes. He's well aware of the mental strain it takes any one of them to trigger an extracted EGO, and Rodion chimes in to wonder at how a bunch of random lab workers with no combat experience could be more proficient than all of them the professional murderhobos at wielding it. Faust explains in her own words what I just did a few images ago about materialising the EGO in equipment form from a captured, egg-form Abnormality using the abandoned L Corp branch office facilities. Thanks to the Qliphoth Deterrence of the Golden Bough, they would even be able to resist the Corrosion effect. Appropriately enough the Sloshing and Red Sheet EGO-users have the special panic type Maddened which causes them to target indiscriminately when first entering a Low Morale state and when Panicking, just like when a Sinner's extracted EGO goes haywire.
Gregor: "Does that mean... Lobotomy Corporation did the same..."
Faust: "Yes, rather than Fixers, regular employees were given the EGO to work with. Of course, what we have right now isn't as refined as what the Wing used to have."
And there we have plain confirmation that EGO works the way it does in Limbus because the tech to refine EGO into armour and weapons that can be wielded effectively in perpetuity is lost to them. Burning a bunch of sin resources to manifest it for one big blast and then reverting is the best they can do. Of course the Identity system allows them to cheat things a bit, but we'll get to that another time.
In the meantime, Ishmael realises that if these EGO suits require the Golden Bough's aura to function properly that must mean it -and by extension Dongbaek- must be nearby. Outis, slightly more practically, asks how Dongbaek has apparently managed to secure the run of the place going by the fact no one has managed to stop her or even report a sighting of her since they showed up. Samjo stammers that he doesn't have the excuses he'd like to retort with, while Dongrang blows it off as a consequence of the TLA being formed of such bright scientific minds.
Samjo: "Don't let them fascinate you. If they were so wise, they wouldn't have quit their enviable jobs at large firms for a terrorist organisation in the first place."
A surprisingly solemn comment from Ishmael, and quite the reversal from her corporate simpery earlier. Why does Ishmael empathise with these scientists dropping everything to brave the unknown? Considering the literary Ishmael explains in the first paragraph of his story that the only cure for his morbid ennui is to race off to sea, we can make some fairly good guesses!
A quick jaunt through a second battle node (oh god let it end) and Dongrang is interrupted from his fretting about just how deep the TLA are pushing into the facility by a call from Director Alfonso herself. He tries to get Samjo to blow it off on his behalf, but unfortunately the most powerful woman in the company won't be stalled out forever, so Dongrang excuses himself to take the call. In the quiet that follows the gang spy a researcher wandering the halls in a daze, and The Rat Woman gets an idea.
Outis: "It most likely means you've found someone with useful information. It would be wise to make good use of them."
Outis strides forward and catches the fretting employee.
Outis: "Hey, we're agents from a subcontracting firm here to deal with this commotion. What's going on?"
Nervous Employee: "I-I've been looking for Ms. Shrenne, but I can't find her anywhere. I need to tell her to evacuate... She's left her computer on... Where could she be..."
Sinclair: "Ah... actually, she-"
Outis: "Alright, we'll find her. You evacuate first."
Nervous Employee: "Thank you."
Outis: "Now, while the terrorists' informant has been removed, the staff is still in a muddle, and her computer is left on. We're in a complete tactical advantage. It didn't even cost us any strength."
Hysterical. The only thing funnier than a bootlicking tryhard is a bootlicking tryhard who gets hardcore sandbagged.
We even have Shrenne's password thanks to Dongrang saying it out loud down in the L Corp branch, so Shrenne's workstation represents a potential goldmine of information about the TLA and their goals (I would say I hope Shrenne and Ran didn't talk too explicitly about the TLA via her goddamn work email but I have zero expectations at this point). Dante orders the team to pursue the lead for that very reason.
She sucks Dante's toes every half-hour like clockwork but thinks they'd be too dumb to breathe if their head weren't a clock, it's truly a potent combo.
Gregor: "Alright, good. The problem is how we're gonna sneak into the office... Who on our team is gonna walk in there bold-faced and get it done without rousing suspicion..."
Dante: <If I had to choose a Sinner who can keep a still face and avoid suspicion...>
Don Quixote: "Give this humble knight one more chance, and I shall succeed...!"
Dante: <Meursault! Think you can handle it?>
Meursault: "... as long as you command."
There's something hilarious about the fact that out of all the Sinners the one arguably in the running for third most pleasant interpersonal relationship with Dante is Meursault. Already you can see Dante has mentally filed him away as The One Who Will Actually Do What I Fucking Ask, and sure enough after two more nodes of endless fighting (stop the pain please let it end) he delivers results.
Brief aside to say that after each battle node the MVP of your team will have a special voice line boasting their success, but by the same token if you fail a node (or simply quit out as I did here) they have a 'defeat wail' instead. This is how you know that N Corp Sinclair is the evillest of all Sinclairs, for he is willing and able to say the shit word. You might also notice that failing/quitting here restored 19 of the 20 enkephalin expended to enter the node in the first place, which is a genuine goddamn blessing and yet another reason this LP is even possible.
Meursault: "I've returned. There was one message in Shrenne's mailbox that was deemed worth reading."
Meursault: "The environment did not permit me to print it out, so I memorised the mail's content."
They're calling him the most autistic man alive, he owns a theoretically infinite amount of Drive jackets. The emoticon he's describing is (☆💧💧⁓^^) as best I can reproduce, or (☆╥╥⁓^^) if we take 'tear' to mean the unicode symbol commonly used in Korean emoticons to make a sad/crying face like (╥_╥), and I think I lean towards the latter because it feels like Shrenne trying to type a lil kitty or other such Creature for Ran.
Dante: <Y-You can skip those parts...>
Meursault: "Understood. I will them disperse with punctuation marks that do not appear important."
Meursault (slowly fading out to be replaced by Shrenne's voice): " 'I've been trying to figure out if what you said was really true, but that sucker is making it hard.' "
Shrenne: " 'And now he's recruited collaborators from the outside, probably to help with whatever he's plotting. I heard they're from a newly-found company, and I haven't checked what kind of people they are yet. I bet they're all haughty and arrogant just like their client.' "
Shrenne: " 'Still... Still, the plan will proceed as intended. We'll succeed... and return to a glorious past.' "
Shrenne: " 'To tell you the truth, my most dazzlign memory was when I first met you after joining the company. But our goal is more ambitious than that.' "
Shrenne: ' 'So, let's promise to meet again there. In a past where no technologies existed, allowing everything that existed to shine brighter. There, chickens will fly free over the meadows, their wings uncut. When a person loses their arm, we'll comfort them... and learn how to live together even if an arm is missing.' "
Shrenne: " 'We may not be able to enjoy sumptuous feasts or conveniences of modern civilisation, and we won't have nearly as many resources at our disposal... In that vastness... We'll be free to walk all day.' "
Shrenne (beginning to fade out): " 'Oh, I'm planning to bring Fixers from the outside for the plan. My juniors have gotten too used to the ampules. If rapid development can only be achieved by means that cause pain and suffering to people...' "
Meursault: " 'Then I'm willing to give up on all the prosperity it brings. That's all I have to say for now. Yours in haste...' "
Ishmael: "How ironic. I guess it's fortunate for her that she didn't get to see liberation alliance members murdering researchers without mercy..."
Rodion: "She probably believed she was working for a noble cause to end violence until the end of her life..."
Man.
Here lies Shrenne, the literal worst at infosec in the whole wide world, holy shit. She said all that on her work laptop, through her work email, and was still posting through it basically the day everything went down. IT is asleep at the wheel if she managed to get as far as joining Dongrang and the gang on the trip to L Corp's branch office with the spiked ampules.
Then there are two more generic battle nodes
Being ripped drugged-up cyberchads the Class 3 Excision Staff completely ignore him and trudge on upstairs towards their quarry. Dongrang (jumpscaring the gang as he returns from the phonecall) helpfully explains that these are basically K Corp's special forces, deployed solely to eliminate intruders and secure classified technology. 'Rescuing' people is left to the Class 1 staff.
Samjo: "Sorry? In this Nest, Class 1 is the lowest level, and higher numbers indicate better ranks..."
The yellow creature is flabbergasted.
Don Quixote: "... Even still, none can be too lordly or lowly to save lives, so how can the roles be divided?"
Dongrang: "Haha, bigger is better for numbers and riches alike, isn't that right?"
Don Quixote: "thou sayest naught which applies to mine question-"
Swiftly changing the subject, Dongrang announces that he managed to get permission from the Director.
Dongrang: "Normally it seems to require a bunch of paperwork as well, but since we're in an emergency, let's skip the procedures that we can. Should be fine, right Samjo?"
Samjo: "Well... I believe it could be managed with three and a half days of working on the report overtime. And strictly speaking, the problem already began when you brought them to your lab without any report."
Dongrang: "It seems Dongbaek has headed that way."
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
The gang have their destination, however mysterious its nature and function, and it's at the very top of the tower. Nothing left but to carry onwards and upwards, eliminating all resistance in their path. This of course involves yet more story-less battle nodes because I'm screaming and crying and throwing up. We'll skip those and instead jump forward to the 'miniboss' of Act 2, as we square up with the curt and taciturn TLA member Marile who we first met alongside Ran.
Dongrang: "Really? Samjo... You applied for B corp, too?"
Samjo: "... Of course, K Corp was my primary choice... A man of mediocrity like me has to send an application to every Wing in hopes that one will accept it."
At which point Samjo becomes aware of the many bodies strewn about the lab, courtesy of Marile and his Red Sheet EGO. We mercifully receive few details as to the state of them, Dante's narration saying only that " 'appalling' couldn't even begin to describe [it]".
Samjo rushes off with his hand over his mouth. Dongrang has a stronger stomach, it seems, and remains to question Marile.
Dongrang: "Our researchers... couldn't have been able to fight back at all."
There is little productive dialogue to be had here. Outis demands to know where Dongbaek is, Marile wants to know how the Sinners are able to come back, but the impending deadlock is broken by an interjection from Faust of all people.
Faust: "Even if you were to return to an age without technology, you won't find the peace you seek. Once accustomed to the luxury brought by technology, people won't be able to withstand life in the past. Think of the time when trips to the Backstreets were trending among the rich. They only use the experience to take another look at their own lives and be thankful for everything they have. Hardly any would live in a less opulent era given the opportunity."
Marile: "... And? I don't like talkative people. Not fond of explaining things to you, either."
Faust: "I'm not the talkative sort. And I don't require explanations in any field. I was simply curious to know the difference in perspectives."
Marile: "... none of us take WARP trains. We don't eat the meat the City has to offer, either."
Hong Lu: "Hm... The elders in my family, who must know even greater things than I do, didn't have any problem using them though?"
Marile: "The masses are ignorant. They won't believe it even if you show it before their eyes."
Heathcliff: "And this is your conclusion? Get rid of everything and make 'em live in that empty world?"
Marile: "You wouldn't get-"
Heathcliff: "There are plenty of blighters out there who just don't get it if you talk nicely. They'd only start empathising with the likes of me after they get a couple bruises and scars on their faces. It gives me the urge to just wreck it all."
Marile: "..."
Marile: "If we ever recruit new members..."
Marile: "I'll try excluding the educational background from the requisites."
Ishmael: "Although Heathcliff never told us about what schools he went to... I can see where it's coming from. Still, you're going way over the line."
I can't believe that not only is Heathcliff getting razzed by terrorists for being uneducated, even Ishmael is like 'whoah there friend you need to slow down'. It doesn't matter much either way, because it's time for our boss fight.
Now, here's the thing. You see that 'ENEMY' counter that reads 0/12 in the top left? That's courtesy of the battle system update that dropped with Canto VII. As recently as 'when this LP actually started' the game was very rigidly wave-based, i.e. you must kill every enemy in a wave before the game fades to black and you're dropped on the next wave, so on and so forth until you've cleared everything. Then Chain Battles were implemented as of Intervallo IV-2, and while I'm going to save as much as I can for when that system is actually introduced, it coincided with a more freeform kind of battle structure where enemy reinforcements will simply fill in the gaps left by dead foes until they reach that battle's simultaneous combatant limit or run out of reserves. The Canto VII update backported this dynamic fill-in system to whatever battle nodes could feasibly support it, resulting in nodes like this one where three waves of four enemies apiece are consolidated into a single 'wave' where you must kill all 12 enemies as they trickle in. This is broadly much smoother and faster, and allows a lot of IDs to avoid wasting certain resources or opportunities that they otherwise would. However... it has some unintended side effects.
Namely that by the time Marile actually shows up he has the incredible misfortune of being the very last spawn of the battle, causing him to be outnumbered 11:3 in action economy and, as they say in the biz, Completely Fucked.
I could tell you all his mechanics but like, let's not kid ourselves here, he's a nothing character who exploded before I could even finish the turn.
Meursault: "Gaze into the fist of Meursault."
And you know what the worst part is? There's still three more fucking generic combat nodes 'til the proper boss fight and only one cutscene. Marile doesn't even get a sendoff, he just unceremoniously explodes. All in all there are 18 fights in Act 2 and 10 of them are generic battle nodes devoid of any story content at all, it's the worst it's ever been and, thankfully, will ever be again. In any case, we return on a chat amongst the Sinners.
This SANGRIA is driving me insane. Even assuming she's cheating and counting 'yisang' as one word what the fuck does the E stand for, this is another of the examples that has no suggested translation on her wiki page.
Yi Sang: "... did you call?"
Ryoshu: "That man who keeps clinging to us claiming to be your friend. What's the relationship?"
Yi Sang: "As can be seen, that tie has long been severed."
Ryoshu: "I don't like butting in, and I hate speaking for long even more..."
Ryoshu: "But I'm telling you this since the smile of that ignorance-feigning scoundrel Dongrang is detestable."
Ryoshu: "That one desk, one that was even more disgusting than the others because it was clean and empty."
Damn, I should've gone with my gut when I first assumed it was a place reserved for Yi Sang.
Yi Sang: "..."
Dante: <He was planning to give Yi Sang that position all along?>
Ishmael: "Do you think he's trying to headhunt him? That's supposedly a violation of moral principles between firms or something like that, isn't it?"
Ryoshu may be an evil violence-obsessed freak but she's also funny so she's morally grey.
Ryoshu: "Orange hair, you say you used to work on a ship for a long while? As a Fixer? You have serious delusions about Wings and firms. Did you dump your common sense into the great lake as chum? Bringing up morality in the world we live in... pretty amusing for a joke."
Meursault: "Headhunting and changing jobs between firms are done based on interests and efficiency."
Would you two just suck each other silly already, the tension is suffocating.
Dante: <Even if that was the case... This is really strange. He's not taking Yi Sang's thoughts into account at all...>
Yi Sang: "Pay it no heed. Thoughts are rather meagre things. I am quite used to the life of being taxidermied."
Sinclair: "Are you sure you don't mind? Yi Sang, when you joined the company... No, actually... Didn't all of us receive the same offer?"
Dante pauses briefly to reflect on the circumstances of their own 'hiring'. The job offer in which they were promised the opportunity to carve the aspect. An offer that caused them to accept on the spot, as if by pure instinct. As if it was already known their only choice would be to accept it.
Ishmael: "The thing I recited to myself every night..."
Outis: "Yes, the thing I thought would be impossible..."
Faust: "They promised to make it a possibility. Most certainly."
Gregor: "How thoroughly did they look into our backgrounds?"
Heathcliff: "Hah... guess we had our version of wish-granting tales just like that storybook we read earlier."
Yi Sang: "In truth, even that wish was no more than a futile dream."
Heathcliff: "What, you weren't that desperate for it? Why did you join, then?"
Yi Sang: "The bus I saw then appeared rather inviting."
Ryoshu: "Hah. That can't be it, can it? We all..."
Faust: "That's enough of it. Our company rules forbid disclosing the contents of the job contract in detail."
Faust: "Let's proceed."
Narration: Unlike most other Sinners, Yi Sang wouldn't vocalise his pain.
Narration: Because of that, I would often discover his injuries late.
Narration: Was he keeping it in... or was it spilling out?
Coming up next, we reach the summit of the K Corp skyscraper, and face the truth behind behind Dongrang and Dongbaek's actions.
Dongrang: "Really? Samjo... You applied for B corp, too?"
Samjo: "... Of course, K Corp was my primary choice... A man of mediocrity like me has to send an application to every Wing in hopes that one will accept it."
At which point Samjo becomes aware of the many bodies strewn about the lab, courtesy of Marile and his Red Sheet EGO. We mercifully receive few details as to the state of them, Dante's narration saying only that " 'appalling' couldn't even begin to describe [it]".
Samjo rushes off with his hand over his mouth. Dongrang has a stronger stomach, it seems, and remains to question Marile.
Dongrang: "Our researchers... couldn't have been able to fight back at all."
There is little productive dialogue to be had here. Outis demands to know where Dongbaek is, Marile wants to know how the Sinners are able to come back, but the impending deadlock is broken by an interjection from Faust of all people.
Faust: "Even if you were to return to an age without technology, you won't find the peace you seek. Once accustomed to the luxury brought by technology, people won't be able to withstand life in the past. Think of the time when trips to the Backstreets were trending among the rich. They only use the experience to take another look at their own lives and be thankful for everything they have. Hardly any would live in a less opulent era given the opportunity."
Marile: "... And? I don't like talkative people. Not fond of explaining things to you, either."
Faust: "I'm not the talkative sort. And I don't require explanations in any field. I was simply curious to know the difference in perspectives."
Marile: "... none of us take WARP trains. We don't eat the meat the City has to offer, either."
Hong Lu: "Hm... The elders in my family, who must know even greater things than I do, didn't have any problem using them though?"
Marile: "The masses are ignorant. They won't believe it even if you show it before their eyes."
Heathcliff: "And this is your conclusion? Get rid of everything and make 'em live in that empty world?"
Marile: "You wouldn't get-"
Heathcliff: "There are plenty of blighters out there who just don't get it if you talk nicely. They'd only start empathising with the likes of me after they get a couple bruises and scars on their faces. It gives me the urge to just wreck it all."
Marile: "..."
Marile: "If we ever recruit new members..."
Marile: "I'll try excluding the educational background from the requisites."
Ishmael: "Although Heathcliff never told us about what schools he went to... I can see where it's coming from. Still, you're going way over the line."
I can't believe that not only is Heathcliff getting razzed by terrorists for being uneducated, even Ishmael is like 'whoah there friend you need to slow down'. It doesn't matter much either way, because it's time for our boss fight.
Now, here's the thing. You see that 'ENEMY' counter that reads 0/12 in the top left? That's courtesy of the battle system update that dropped with Canto VII. As recently as 'when this LP actually started' the game was very rigidly wave-based, i.e. you must kill every enemy in a wave before the game fades to black and you're dropped on the next wave, so on and so forth until you've cleared everything. Then Chain Battles were implemented as of Intervallo IV-2, and while I'm going to save as much as I can for when that system is actually introduced, it coincided with a more freeform kind of battle structure where enemy reinforcements will simply fill in the gaps left by dead foes until they reach that battle's simultaneous combatant limit or run out of reserves. The Canto VII update backported this dynamic fill-in system to whatever battle nodes could feasibly support it, resulting in nodes like this one where three waves of four enemies apiece are consolidated into a single 'wave' where you must kill all 12 enemies as they trickle in. This is broadly much smoother and faster, and allows a lot of IDs to avoid wasting certain resources or opportunities that they otherwise would. However... it has some unintended side effects.
Namely that by the time Marile actually shows up he has the incredible misfortune of being the very last spawn of the battle, causing him to be outnumbered 11:3 in action economy and, as they say in the biz, Completely Fucked.
I could tell you all his mechanics but like, let's not kid ourselves here, he's a nothing character who exploded before I could even finish the turn.
Meursault: "Gaze into the fist of Meursault."
And you know what the worst part is? There's still three more fucking generic combat nodes 'til the proper boss fight and only one cutscene. Marile doesn't even get a sendoff, he just unceremoniously explodes. All in all there are 18 fights in Act 2 and 10 of them are generic battle nodes devoid of any story content at all, it's the worst it's ever been and, thankfully, will ever be again. In any case, we return on a chat amongst the Sinners.
This SANGRIA is driving me insane. Even assuming she's cheating and counting 'yisang' as one word what the fuck does the E stand for, this is another of the examples that has no suggested translation on her wiki page.
Yi Sang: "... did you call?"
Ryoshu: "That man who keeps clinging to us claiming to be your friend. What's the relationship?"
Yi Sang: "As can be seen, that tie has long been severed."
Ryoshu: "I don't like butting in, and I hate speaking for long even more..."
Ryoshu: "But I'm telling you this since the smile of that ignorance-feigning scoundrel Dongrang is detestable."
Ryoshu: "That one desk, one that was even more disgusting than the others because it was clean and empty."
Damn, I should've gone with my gut when I first assumed it was a place reserved for Yi Sang.
Yi Sang: "..."
Dante: <He was planning to give Yi Sang that position all along?>
Ishmael: "Do you think he's trying to headhunt him? That's supposedly a violation of moral principles between firms or something like that, isn't it?"
Ryoshu may be an evil violence-obsessed freak but she's also funny so she's morally grey.
Ryoshu: "Orange hair, you say you used to work on a ship for a long while? As a Fixer? You have serious delusions about Wings and firms. Did you dump your common sense into the great lake as chum? Bringing up morality in the world we live in... pretty amusing for a joke."
Meursault: "Headhunting and changing jobs between firms are done based on interests and efficiency."
Would you two just suck each other silly already, the tension is suffocating.
Dante: <Even if that was the case... This is really strange. He's not taking Yi Sang's thoughts into account at all...>
Yi Sang: "Pay it no heed. Thoughts are rather meagre things. I am quite used to the life of being taxidermied."
Sinclair: "Are you sure you don't mind? Yi Sang, when you joined the company... No, actually... Didn't all of us receive the same offer?"
Dante pauses briefly to reflect on the circumstances of their own 'hiring'. The job offer in which they were promised the opportunity to carve the aspect. An offer that caused them to accept on the spot, as if by pure instinct. As if it was already known their only choice would be to accept it.
Ishmael: "The thing I recited to myself every night..."
Outis: "Yes, the thing I thought would be impossible..."
Faust: "They promised to make it a possibility. Most certainly."
Gregor: "How thoroughly did they look into our backgrounds?"
Heathcliff: "Hah... guess we had our version of wish-granting tales just like that storybook we read earlier."
Yi Sang: "In truth, even that wish was no more than a futile dream."
Heathcliff: "What, you weren't that desperate for it? Why did you join, then?"
Yi Sang: "The bus I saw then appeared rather inviting."
Ryoshu: "Hah. That can't be it, can it? We all..."
Faust: "That's enough of it. Our company rules forbid disclosing the contents of the job contract in detail."
Faust: "Let's proceed."
Narration: Unlike most other Sinners, Yi Sang wouldn't vocalise his pain.
Narration: Because of that, I would often discover his injuries late.
Narration: Was he keeping it in... or was it spilling out?
Coming up next, we reach the summit of the K Corp skyscraper, and face the truth behind behind Dongrang and Dongbaek's actions.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Meursault: "I've returned. There was one message in Shrenne's mailbox that was deemed worth reading."
Meursault: "The environment did not permit me to print it out, so I memorised the mail's content."
They're calling him the most autistic man alive, he owns a theoretically infinite amount of Drive jackets. The emoticon he's describing is (☆💧💧⁓^^) as best I can reproduce, or (☆╥╥⁓^^) if we take 'tear' to mean the unicode symbol commonly used in Korean emoticons to make a sad/crying face like (╥_╥), and I think I lean towards the latter because it feels like Shrenne trying to type a lil kitty or other such Creature for Ran.
Dante: <Y-You can skip those parts...>
Meursault: "Understood. I will them disperse with punctuation marks that do not appear important."
Meursault (slowly fading out to be replaced by Shrenne's voice): " 'I've been trying to figure out if what you said was really true, but that sucker is making it hard.' "
Shrenne: " 'And now he's recruited collaborators from the outside, probably to help with whatever he's plotting. I heard they're from a newly-found company, and I haven't checked what kind of people they are yet. I bet they're all haughty and arrogant just like their client.' "
Shrenne: " 'Still... Still, the plan will proceed as intended. We'll succeed... and return to a glorious past.' "
Shrenne: " 'To tell you the truth, my most dazzlign memory was when I first met you after joining the company. But our goal is more ambitious than that.' "
Shrenne: ' 'So, let's promise to meet again there. In a past where no technologies existed, allowing everything that existed to shine brighter. There, chickens will fly free over the meadows, their wings uncut. When a person loses their arm, we'll comfort them... and learn how to live together even if an arm is missing.' "
Shrenne: " 'We may not be able to enjoy sumptuous feasts or conveniences of modern civilisation, and we won't have nearly as many resources at our disposal... In that vastness... We'll be free to walk all day.' "
Shrenne (beginning to fade out): " 'Oh, I'm planning to bring Fixers from the outside for the plan. My juniors have gotten too used to the ampules. If rapid development can only be achieved by means that cause pain and suffering to people...' "
Meursault: " 'Then I'm willing to give up on all the prosperity it brings. That's all I have to say for now. Yours in haste...' "
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVwVucEGVH0
This game's voice acting is incredible.
...honestly I had no idea what Shrenne's emoticon thing was until you pointed out that it was a cat or something.
Last edited:
Fourthmatchflame
Fangirl of Ryoshu and Scorched Girl
- Location
- A certain Pale Librarians Book.
- Pronouns
- She/Fae
I wish I spoke Korean sometimes.
LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
As someone who began playing because of this LP (and because my significant other inflicted terrible brainworms upon me), allow me to confirm that this act structure suuuuUUUUUuucks out loud. The amount of 'drop in and fight another x units' is so tedious for 20 energy a pop; by the time I'd get through them, the story that I'm here for would have only advanced a few steps.
Allow me to also complain briefly about the absolute wall that Zerban will be tackling in the next update. AKA the reason I finally started using supports.
(I ended up rolling a lot of the Liu Association IDs, so I've been progressing with a burn team through the story thus far)
Allow me to also complain briefly about the absolute wall that Zerban will be tackling in the next update. AKA the reason I finally started using supports.
(I ended up rolling a lot of the Liu Association IDs, so I've been progressing with a burn team through the story thus far)
How does that play? I know it is one of the easiest statuses to go count positive on, but is the slowest playing- but have never gotten a burn mains perspective on it. (rupture man all the way personally) anything you willing to offer about the blessings of burn?
Explain?
As in, "Explain, Yi Sang?" In which case the Y could even be "yourself" to avoid the cheating for Yi Sang, but I think Yi Sang is the more likely reading there.
Last edited:
LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
It's definitely a grindy sort of team. Burn is a snowball effect; the higher a count you can inflict, the Liu IDs get incrementally more powerful. Certain thresholds like 6 burn, 10 burn, 15 burn. One of the big issues is just getting the burn from expiring, as only specific skills can really up the turn count they operate on, and its easy to lose a lot of progress if you're unlucky.
One of the problems is that burn caps out at 99, so the amount of extra damage per turn becomes fixed. Some mechanics exist to halve the burn count and inflict the difference as wrath damage on the target. It all works wonders for mirror dungeons, because there are absolutley cracked E.G.O gifts out there that cause every attack to inflict burn between multiple enemies or spread it when an enemy is defeated. For Canto V, where I'm currently on, I've decided to switch to a tremor team both to diverify my roster and because my team wasn't performing as well in the area.
Dybbukpossesed
Falling Somewhere
- Location
- California
Heathcliff: "You're so dead now. Bunch of book-smart sods who think using things others made is talent..."
Alliance Member: "Fair point."
I remember audibly going "oh shit" when that sprite was revealed... Undercut slightly by running right over them with my team right after. But still, seeing old style EGO was a kick in the pants and had me actually paying attention.
Meursault (slowly fading out to be replaced by Shrenne's voice): " 'I've been trying to figure out if what you said was really true, but that sucker is making it hard.' "
Holy shit Shrenne maybe part of the reason you never got any awards is because you covered your work laptop in every sticker under the sun? Save that stuff for your personal... Oh no she was actually using her work laptop as her personal computer... It cannot be stated hard enough how bad at this she is.
Fourthmatchflame
Fangirl of Ryoshu and Scorched Girl
- Location
- A certain Pale Librarians Book.
- Pronouns
- She/Fae
I'm half convinced she joined the TLA solely to get in rans pants.
Critian Caceorte
Currently Suffering from Space-Time Narcolepsy
- Location
- Washington State
Oh I'm fully convinced, girl's absolutely desperate and, as we've already established before, not exactly the subtle sort.
Seriously, on your work laptop, with your work email? Honey, no...
Legend of Ruina
Growing eyes on the inside
If you think that's bad, you should see their Library.
i always just interpreted it as Don reading the story aloud with her usual enthusiasm, so everyone in the area hears it even if they dont want to
- Location
- Vermont
It's IT, if they have the free time to read your emails instead of trying to figure out how all of these people have ruined the newest program, nightmare hell-korea has better staffing than we do today. Besides, they don't get paid to catch people playing videogames or watching porn or plotting terrorism, that's HR's job.
Birthday
Have a Happy One!
- Location
- Somewhere
To be fair, considering how shit life is in the City even as a Feather of a Wing, I'm not entirely sure they even have personal computers.
...that must have been so incredibly uncomfortable for her, i can only imagine shrenne also decided to keep a diary on her computer as well, gushing about how much she loves ran
- Location
- Southern USA
Looking forward to what comes next- I've heard the next bossfight is apparently a nightmare for some newer players. It's been so long since since Canto 4 launched, I don't remember how that fight went for me lol.
I think my favorite bit of this LP so far has been the enemy kit analysis- it's been so long since I've seen a lot of these enemies as anything more than speedbumps in MD that it's nice to be reminded of what they could do.Even if they're still mostly jokes if you're even slightly overleveled
I think my favorite bit of this LP so far has been the enemy kit analysis- it's been so long since I've seen a lot of these enemies as anything more than speedbumps in MD that it's nice to be reminded of what they could do.
Dybbukpossesed
Falling Somewhere
- Location
- California
As someone who started playing again because of this LP I can safely say that the boss is only difficult if you don't bother to read the effects and passives. Which explains why so many had trouble
questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
Such is the curse of reading comprehension many PM fans suffer from.As someone who started playing again because of this LP I can safely say that the boss is only difficult if you don't bother to read the effects and passives. Which explains why so many had trouble
Like some kind of disease on the mind we gain when we play these games.
Fourthmatchflame
Fangirl of Ryoshu and Scorched Girl
- Location
- A certain Pale Librarians Book.
- Pronouns
- She/Fae
A disease of the mind, you say? Why, surely we must preform tests on such a thing! Perhaps on some murderer nobody will miss? One could even call him a Forsaken Murderer.
I kind of assumed it was Golden Bough Storytime until it was revealed to not actually still be stuck in Yi Sang in some metaphysical fashion. Still, they do alter their surroundings as part of their schtick...
Dongrang: All according to keikaku (keikaku means reading Shrenne's emails).
This is so fucking funny to me. Don Quixote jumping to attention and Dante not even saying anything and turning a full 90 degrees. Such is the sandbag roulette of the Sinners.
DuoRogue
Eternal Space Raptor
- Pronouns
- It/Its
anyone who gets filtered by the upcoming boss deserved to get filtered, is my take.
Good lp! As someone whos been playing since s1 and beaten all story, this was a very fun look back at the early nodes, without all the pain of things like ch4's insane amount of battles, plus some new information besides, or just things i missed entirely my first time through.
Some notes I had while reading:
Good lp! As someone whos been playing since s1 and beaten all story, this was a very fun look back at the early nodes, without all the pain of things like ch4's insane amount of battles, plus some new information besides, or just things i missed entirely my first time through.
Some notes I had while reading:
- The "SP Bug" mentioned a few times earlier was no bug; it was, i believe, exactly 0.45% per SP, meaning at +45 you got a cool 70% heads chance. This made single coin ids (which there were a lot of at launch) much, much worse, since as any modern limbus player will tell you, 70% may as well be 30% heads chance for how reliable it is.
- Offense level got buffed majorly since launch; Before, IDs had "growth rates" for their skills, like gaining 0.68 offense level on level up. This was overhauled into a simple ±X applied to the ID's skills, so that the gaps between IDs wouldnt become huge as level values raised. Back then, every 5 offense level was 1 clash power, but it since got overhauled to be the current 3:1; since resonance is flat boosts to offense level, this made it nearly twice as effective at boosting clash power. (Resonance, in fact, did not originally boost offense level; that was added in the same patch that let defense skills redirect in focused encounters and rebalanced stagger thresholds to make tanks tankier.)
- A-Res also works in an... odd way. It not only spreads the highest bonus to the entire a-res, it also treats the number of skills as +1.... Sometimes. Notably, resonance only boosts by odd numbers, so if it would boost to an even number (5 a-res, for example, being treated as "6") then it wouldn't give any additional offense level to the rightmost skill, but if it was a 6 a-res, that would get boosted to 7.
- Sin resources used to halve between dungeon nodes, so you'd often be going into bosses with single digits, not 30+, even if you hadn't used any the entire time. The change is very, very welcome, imo.
