All Aboard The Magic Hellbus! Let's Play Limbus Company
- Thread starter ZerbanDaGreat
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Location
- Somewhere on Earth
I was surprised too because you didn't make much of a note of the 'Giant Enemy Crab' reference earlier on in the Intervallo.
For a company that produces such heart wrenching stories they're kind of a bunch of fuckin' memelords at times.Gotta love Meursault taking the time during a crisis to mansplain crabs to the child, we love a man with uncompromising dedication to facts and logic. Dante hustles everybody outside to repel the threat, but the oncoming crabbo attack is not quite as simple as more standard waves.
MEGA CRABBO
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
It is fascinating how much foreshadowing there is here. Most of which I can't comment on because I have almost no ability to distinguish between reasonable extrapolation and what literally happens later! I'm learning.
I do want to note though that The Whale's abilities are explicitly linked to U-Corp's singularity. Given the Great Lake stretches into the Outskirts (on map and Ish's earlier testimony), point towards these things originating from outside The City and being brought inwards.
Absolutely adore how Heathcliff is just radiating raw disappointment with Ishmael.
Yi Sang really took his character development to heart! God bless that depresso espresso.
Appreciate that Ishmael was so traumatized that a Color Fixer is just barely more terrifying then facing her past. Even then, I get the impression her willingness to acquiesce is more rooted in her core personality then fear.
I love Outis here. There is something comedically tragic that she can be competent but only when she's divorced from the Sinners.
Oh, and it's rad how using Molar Ishmael's skill 3 on the boss let's you recreate Olga's intro.
I do want to note though that The Whale's abilities are explicitly linked to U-Corp's singularity. Given the Great Lake stretches into the Outskirts (on map and Ish's earlier testimony), point towards these things originating from outside The City and being brought inwards.
Absolutely adore how Heathcliff is just radiating raw disappointment with Ishmael.
Yi Sang really took his character development to heart! God bless that depresso espresso.
Appreciate that Ishmael was so traumatized that a Color Fixer is just barely more terrifying then facing her past. Even then, I get the impression her willingness to acquiesce is more rooted in her core personality then fear.
I love Outis here. There is something comedically tragic that she can be competent but only when she's divorced from the Sinners.
Oh, and it's rad how using Molar Ishmael's skill 3 on the boss let's you recreate Olga's intro.
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questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
Talk about a Blind Obsession.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Ishmael slowly losing her shit and repeatedly going, "we are not prepared" at increasing volume is such a great way to build hype for Canto V.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
Are you sure? I'm not sure Ishmael said the word "Whale" enough for this to not be a spoiler.
Are you sure? I'm not sure Ishmael said the word "Whale" enough for this to not be a spoiler.
I'm pretty sure the thing with the eye bigger than the boat is evidence enough.
- Location
- Portugal
What a quirky, concerning, dangerous beach trip! It's shockingly adorable to see Yi Sang being so... sociable. Oomfie really is doing better, it's so nice to see even though the team frictions are coming to a head elsewhere. Watching Ishmael spiral with the mindset that she's the only one who can understand the severity of the danger because she's the only one to have witnessed it and everything that rolls outwards from that, on the other hand, is quite painful. What went unsaid in Heathcliff's disappointed words to her in their altercation seems huge, but the rift formed between them seems to only be rivaled among the Sinners by the one formed between her and Dante. They don't have a good answer for this kind of chasm and the mire that's set in, but I can only hope they'll hold on firmly to their intention to be a better manager for all the others.
It's not a very hopeful set up for the next Canto. But at least Don Quixote had a bit of BEACH VOLLEYBALL.
It's not a very hopeful set up for the next Canto. But at least Don Quixote had a bit of BEACH VOLLEYBALL.
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just found out about this little run down of one of my latest obsessions and i gotta say you do a damn good job on your analysis more than most i find
i would say more but ive never been the best at conveying my thought over text
in the mean time keep up the good work ill be watching from the side lines
i would say more but ive never been the best at conveying my thought over text
in the mean time keep up the good work ill be watching from the side lines
Season 2 Abnormality Roundup
New
DimensionalGuy
Lazy Bastard
- Location
- Sweden
With that, season 2 is at its end, and I'd like to once again shine a spotlight on the abnormalities that had their debut outside of the main story. Much like season 1, there are 5 of them. 1 introduced with season 2s mirror dungeon, Mirror of Mirrors, and 4 that appeared with Refraction Railway 2: Möbius. Much like last time, I shall start with the Mirror Dungeon abnormality:
Fairy-Long-Legs (classification number F-01-11-15, TETH), the lanky counterpart to Fairy Gentleman, both dressed in fancy accessories while being made out of green jelly, having mouths on their stomach/chest, and holding a separate item that it will spawn during the battle. Speaking of it's battle, however, is not very interesting. It has three body parts; Head, Body and Left Arm. And out of these, the head does absolutely nothing besides being a target. The body sometimes counters with a fairly decent 5+10 skill that heals Fairy-Long-Legs depending on the targets Bleed (while remvoing all of it...), which leaves the hand which has 3 skills, 2 equally unimpressive (a 6+7 and a 5+8) to inflict some Bleed and Bleed Count, and one that is somewhat intimidating (a 5+6+6) that heals Long-Legs by 20(!) HP. All of this is unimpressive, but that's not surprising as I've left out the main gimmick of the battle!
Namely, once Fairy-Long-Legs has taken enough damage (about 30%) it will use it's ultimate move, Casting Shade (17+8), that will spawn a giant clover next turn (with 70% health if the Skill lost the clash). Now, what does this clover do? Well, you see, it passively boosts his healing by 10%, and gives him 1 Power Up. It has no attacks, and while it is on the field, Long-Legs will not use Casting Shade again. It basicaly does nothing at all outside of the original move. Long-Legs doesn't even have any interesting passives changing the flow of the battle, as the only thing his two passives does is nerf him if his arm or the clover is destroyed. There is nothing to this fight, you just kill it as any other enemy.
That is, outside of Refraction Railway! Within the old, forgotten (more like repressed) memories of RR2 you had the opportunity to fight Long-Legs and Gentleman together, with buffed skills and abilities. Mainly, the clover being up gives 30% more healing, to both of them. This makes it actually relevant, since Gentleman has On Use: Heal %. However, they changed the AI so that Long-Legs would only use the counter while the clover is up, and nothing else, allowing the player to just focus Gentleman down. Such a dissapointment.
Oh well, here's the Observation Logs:
Written by Ishmael, I assume from the written sigh.
Up next, we have the abnormality described by Zerban in postscript 1 as "the absolute fucking bastard", and rightly so.
Steam Transport Machine (classification number O-06-21-16, HE), the absolute fucking bastard is a nightmare, and to properly explain why, I'll first need to go over the mechanics of Refraction Railway 2: Möbius. You see, to contrast with RR1, which had 13 battles one after another, this RR only consists of 9 battles. However, after having done the first 3 Fights (So That No One Will Cry, This piece of shit, Drifting Fox) you have to loop back to the beginning and do it all over again, with another fight added (2 the second time) for a total of 29 fights. Well, at least you get a small buff of your choice each loop, along with a complication of your choice. Furthermore, the fights tended to scale their effects depending on the loop. For example, Drifting Fox spawns an additional umbrella every loop, from 2 to 7, and gains 1 Protection for every Umbrella. Basically, round and round you go, with fights becoming increasingly more painful, and every time, this absolute fucking bastard is there to greet you.
To actually talk about the Abnormality, it isn't overly complicated. It has a status called "Accumulated Past" which is equal to your turn count (as in, your actual Railway turncount) and increases with every turn, effectively keeping track of it. If "Accumulated Past" is even, STM gains Protection and Damage Down, taking and dealing less damage. If it's odd, STM gains Damage up and Fragile, dealing and taking more damage. Once fightable in the Mirror Dungeon, "Accumulated Past" starts at 1, and increases with 11 each turn, keeping this stance-changing effect while still allowing the status to grow.
You see, if "Accumulated Past" gets above 50, and STM's HP gets below 80%, then it will spend 50 "Accumulated Past" to heal the core by 200. (In RR, it gained additional buffs, such as Attack Power Up and additional skill slots once above 80 as well.) None of this is what makes the battle terrible, however. What does that is the fact that once the body is broken, all attack types and affinities become resistant (0.5) the next turn, instead of the usual double damage. So, halfway through the fight this fucker just starts taking a quarter of the damage you should be doing to it, making it an absolute slog. The intended solution to this is to break its only other part, the steam blaster (which will become severed and untargetable), so that every time it gains Poise, it also gains fragile equal to its Poise. However, since 1 Fragile increases damage done by 10%, instead of doing 0.25% you do 0.275%. With 10 Fragile, the maximum, you do 0.5. It's fucking atrocious. It has some threating skills, and is capable of inflicting Paralysis, but all of that is completely unimportant compared to everything already mentioned, so I'll not add further bloat to STM, and just conclude this segment.
I do recommend reading this one, if only for more Don fun.
Next up!
Faelantern (classification number F-04-21-03, TETH). At first glance, one might compare this abnormality with Long-Legs and Gentleman as yet another fairy, but that would be like falling for its trap. This isn't a fairy, but rather an anglerfish, using a fairy-shaped lure in order to attract prey, which it will then skewer with tree-like roots shooting up from its great subterrenean body. It starts the battle in this state, with half of the tree submerged, waving its lure back and forth. This will charm your slowest units, changing their skills to a non-damaging, sin-less skill that is forced to target the Fairy part. Faelantern will in return attack the charmed sinners, with an unclashable skill "Snagged Lure" (5+6). This isn't that dangerous, but it will gain attack weight for every turn that goes by without you destroying the Fairy part.
Upon destroying the Fairy, the main body will emerge and attack for a turn, and if it isn't staggered during this turn, it will submerge and heal the Fairy, charming an additional unit. As a bonus for the player, when the main body emerges all sinners gain 5 Poise and 2 Poise Count. While emergerd, Faelantern will use fairly strong single-coin skills, many with increased Attack Weight, inflicting a not insubstantial amount of Rupture and Bleed. However, the easisest solution to the fight reveals itself when you consider its speed range. It is fixed at one speed, meaning that you can just attack one-sidedly, staggering it, and then killing it.
The only real way for Faelantern to be troublesome is if you do not have any good slash-skills, on the later loops of RR2. Having your only non-lured sinner unable to destroy the Fairy in one turn. An incredibly straight-forward battle otherwise.
Heathcliff and Ishmael violence continues on, even in logs, eternally.
Only the final two fights of Möbius are left. Firstly:
Wayward Passenger (classification number T-02-21-07, HE), this unfortunate passenger (with an uniform?), forever lost between dimensions. Surely, this abnormality does not pertain to a certain transportation company that was just mentioned? Oh well, that will certainly come up later. Anyway, this battle always annoyed me, because I greatly enjoyed it but had to endure 27 torturous fights in order to fight it again. Wayward Passenger has two body parts; its Left Blade, and its Right Blade. There is not a great difference in these, but the Left Blade will use a counter that can deal high damage against vulnerable targets. The main gimmick generally comes into effect on turn 2, where Wayward Passenger will escape into a pocket dimension, opening up 4 rifts of differing colours on the field. These are Hemorraghing (Red), Poisonous (Green), Tremoring (Yellow) and Electrifying (Light Blue) Dimension. These are weak to the sins of their corresponding colours, and you have 1 turn to kill them all, and failure to do so will accrue complications. For every one of these alive after a turn, Wayward Passenger will get a stacking buff depending on the specific rift (Red = 10% Damage Up per stack. Green = +20% Max Health per stack. Yellow = +1 Speed per stack. Light Blue = +1 Coin Power per stack.)
Once all rifts are destroyed, Wayward Passenger returns for a turn, before once again escaping. Importantly, Wayward Passenger cannot escape if both of its Blades are staggered (it still escapes if both Blades are destroyed), or if it is beneath 30% HP. This is when it starts to use its skill "High-Speed Rip Space" (10+8, Attack weight of 7), which gains power by its highest rift stack. I only mention this skill because it's absolutely great to witness, and can absolutely shred your entire team if you let it, so don't.
The main trouble, outside of Railway, is if you let it build up stacks, especially yellow and blue. Speed and Clash control remain as the king of the game, and whenever the Passenger starts to get too fast, you start taking damage quickly, so once again, don't let it.
Some logs are more obvious than others, but it's pretty much always clear whenever it's Meursault.
Last up: The final boss of Möbius
Sign of Roses (classification number O-04-21-22, WAW). A mass of flesh, contained by brambles and stuck to a wooden cross. The music, the visuals... It's hard to not see allusions towards christianity with this one, but I'm not really here to write about that, so let's just move into the fight mechanics. On the first turn, Sign of Roses will use a move to inflict "Crown of Thorns" to all sinners, and not much more. What this does, is apparent on turn 2. You see, every sinner with "Crown of Thorns" spawn a rose with the same colour as the sinners Skill 1. This rose is linked to that sinner, and each colour has its own attacks and abilities, the only one relevant enough to mention is the Wrath-drenched Rose, that will deal damage to its killer when killed (Equal to the damage it just took, can easily just end a sinner if not careful). All of these roses are weak to their colour only, and greatly resists all other sin affinities.
Anyway, all of these roses spawn in with one "Blooming Sin", and gain an additional one every turn. What "Blooming Sin" actually does is the main crux of the battle, as every time a rose gains it, the linked sinner takes 25% of its Max HP as damage, and at 4 stacks, the linked sinner is killed instantly. Furthermore, you also lose 10% of your corresponding sin resources, and if a sinner dies, then all resources of that colour. Also, Sign of Roses heals 5% of its Max HP for every rose that gains "Blooming Sin", and has 1 protection for every living rose. Thankfully, killing a rose will return all the stolen HP. One turn after all roses are killed, Sign of Roses will attempt to use its Skill to spawn more.
Now, this doesn't give that much time for the player to actually focus down the main abnormality without being distracted by the roses, and it doesn't help that if it can spawn more roses it will heal up again. Thankfully, every time a rose is killed, the Sign of Roses gets weaker to that specific sin affinity. Furthermore, the event for this fight is constantly triggered, and you can further reduce sin resistances depending on the answer given. Ultimately, once you've grasped that the roses should be killed ASAP, the fight isn't very difficult. Still very neat, though.
Hong Lu does bring up an interesting point here. Any sinner killed by the draining effect of the rose will have a special death animation, leaving behind a different corpse then usual.
And that's all of them! Going through this again, I've actually come to realize that I quite liked Möbius. At the moment I played it, it was torture, but it was engaging torture. I remember having to ration my resourses and carefully plan to play through this piece of content. It was fundamentally flawed. Like, who thought it was a good idea to start everything with So That No One Will Cry, completely preventing the usage of Burn team, and whomever designed Steam Transport Machine needs to unlearn everything and take some manner of course. Drifting Fox was a nightmare, with the sanity drain and 7 protection, and of course, fuck Shock Centipede. Oh right, how could I forget having to fight the T Corp. stooges again. You know what? I take it back. The rose-tinted glasses are off, Möbius was trash, ignore this entire bit of text.
Until next time.
Namely, once Fairy-Long-Legs has taken enough damage (about 30%) it will use it's ultimate move, Casting Shade (17+8), that will spawn a giant clover next turn (with 70% health if the Skill lost the clash). Now, what does this clover do? Well, you see, it passively boosts his healing by 10%, and gives him 1 Power Up. It has no attacks, and while it is on the field, Long-Legs will not use Casting Shade again. It basicaly does nothing at all outside of the original move. Long-Legs doesn't even have any interesting passives changing the flow of the battle, as the only thing his two passives does is nerf him if his arm or the clover is destroyed. There is nothing to this fight, you just kill it as any other enemy.
That is, outside of Refraction Railway! Within the old, forgotten (more like repressed) memories of RR2 you had the opportunity to fight Long-Legs and Gentleman together, with buffed skills and abilities. Mainly, the clover being up gives 30% more healing, to both of them. This makes it actually relevant, since Gentleman has On Use: Heal %. However, they changed the AI so that Long-Legs would only use the counter while the clover is up, and nothing else, allowing the player to just focus Gentleman down. Such a dissapointment.
Oh well, here's the Observation Logs:
Observation Level 1:
It...was like a green, semi-transparent jelly.
It's not my first time seeing things like these... So when I peeped at observation logs, those things were all called fairies. In that case, I bet this thing is a fairy, too. It even has the unusually small wings.
Well, whatever it's called, I guess it's nothing more than an Abnormality at the end of the day.
Anyway... Its left arm was like a long paddle, if I can call it that... Right, it was also like those sticky tapes you sometimes see at Backstreets restaurants.
And on the other hand...it held a giant leaf. A four-leaf clover, was it? It was putting it up like an umbrella.
Huh... An umbrella.
That's right. It looked like it rained in that area all the time.
The rain was unpleasant... It felt muddy and damp. It was like being splashed with the sea water from a breaking wave.
It didn't feel too strong. Well, I'll figure out more as we fight.
Observation Level 2:
Ugh... It sure is an Abnormality. The "fairy" title gave me a bit of fantastical preconception, I'll admit. I was frankly expecting the battle to be more normal than what happened.
Haah... That sticky sundew-like arm stretched out and brushed against us. I didn't think it'd stretch that long, so I couldn't think to block it.
What it did after was just as difficult to respond to. Before I could make any decisions, it retracted its arm. At the tip of that arm...was bits of our flesh.
It shoved those flesh bits into the mouth (not sure if it's the right way to call it, but I can't think of anything else) on its torso and chewed it up like they were tasty cuts of a steak.
Seems like that'show it heals itself up. We should try and stop it from taking our flesh...
But the attack is quick, so we'll want to plan out our course of action.
Observation Level 3:
It would occasionally make this giant clover...tree thing?
Come to think of it, we were rarely hit by the rain while standing under it. And...the fairy seemed like it was doing it on purpose.
The clover it was holding sometimes got torn during battle; when that happened, it looked pretty displeased judging from its reaction. What's more...it seemed to get slower.
"The relish is lost"...? I think it said something along the lines of that. The glare it gave us was intense for sure.
The rain might have actual effects on combat other than just feeling awful to be in.
Aha.
If that's the case, the reason it makes the clover tree to grow...is to keep us from being hit by the harmful rain so that gains more benefits when eating our flesh?
To...make its meals tastier.
Ugh, I really think that thing doesn't deserve to be called a fairy.
It...was like a green, semi-transparent jelly.
It's not my first time seeing things like these... So when I peeped at observation logs, those things were all called fairies. In that case, I bet this thing is a fairy, too. It even has the unusually small wings.
Well, whatever it's called, I guess it's nothing more than an Abnormality at the end of the day.
Anyway... Its left arm was like a long paddle, if I can call it that... Right, it was also like those sticky tapes you sometimes see at Backstreets restaurants.
And on the other hand...it held a giant leaf. A four-leaf clover, was it? It was putting it up like an umbrella.
Huh... An umbrella.
That's right. It looked like it rained in that area all the time.
The rain was unpleasant... It felt muddy and damp. It was like being splashed with the sea water from a breaking wave.
It didn't feel too strong. Well, I'll figure out more as we fight.
Observation Level 2:
Ugh... It sure is an Abnormality. The "fairy" title gave me a bit of fantastical preconception, I'll admit. I was frankly expecting the battle to be more normal than what happened.
Haah... That sticky sundew-like arm stretched out and brushed against us. I didn't think it'd stretch that long, so I couldn't think to block it.
What it did after was just as difficult to respond to. Before I could make any decisions, it retracted its arm. At the tip of that arm...was bits of our flesh.
It shoved those flesh bits into the mouth (not sure if it's the right way to call it, but I can't think of anything else) on its torso and chewed it up like they were tasty cuts of a steak.
Seems like that'show it heals itself up. We should try and stop it from taking our flesh...
But the attack is quick, so we'll want to plan out our course of action.
Observation Level 3:
It would occasionally make this giant clover...tree thing?
Come to think of it, we were rarely hit by the rain while standing under it. And...the fairy seemed like it was doing it on purpose.
The clover it was holding sometimes got torn during battle; when that happened, it looked pretty displeased judging from its reaction. What's more...it seemed to get slower.
"The relish is lost"...? I think it said something along the lines of that. The glare it gave us was intense for sure.
The rain might have actual effects on combat other than just feeling awful to be in.
Aha.
If that's the case, the reason it makes the clover tree to grow...is to keep us from being hit by the harmful rain so that gains more benefits when eating our flesh?
To...make its meals tastier.
Ugh, I really think that thing doesn't deserve to be called a fairy.
Up next, we have the abnormality described by Zerban in postscript 1 as "the absolute fucking bastard", and rightly so.
To actually talk about the Abnormality, it isn't overly complicated. It has a status called "Accumulated Past" which is equal to your turn count (as in, your actual Railway turncount) and increases with every turn, effectively keeping track of it. If "Accumulated Past" is even, STM gains Protection and Damage Down, taking and dealing less damage. If it's odd, STM gains Damage up and Fragile, dealing and taking more damage. Once fightable in the Mirror Dungeon, "Accumulated Past" starts at 1, and increases with 11 each turn, keeping this stance-changing effect while still allowing the status to grow.
You see, if "Accumulated Past" gets above 50, and STM's HP gets below 80%, then it will spend 50 "Accumulated Past" to heal the core by 200. (In RR, it gained additional buffs, such as Attack Power Up and additional skill slots once above 80 as well.) None of this is what makes the battle terrible, however. What does that is the fact that once the body is broken, all attack types and affinities become resistant (0.5) the next turn, instead of the usual double damage. So, halfway through the fight this fucker just starts taking a quarter of the damage you should be doing to it, making it an absolute slog. The intended solution to this is to break its only other part, the steam blaster (which will become severed and untargetable), so that every time it gains Poise, it also gains fragile equal to its Poise. However, since 1 Fragile increases damage done by 10%, instead of doing 0.25% you do 0.275%. With 10 Fragile, the maximum, you do 0.5. It's fucking atrocious. It has some threating skills, and is capable of inflicting Paralysis, but all of that is completely unimportant compared to everything already mentioned, so I'll not add further bloat to STM, and just conclude this segment.
Observation Level 1:
Allow me to describe this steam—discharging machine!
'Tis a gargantuan metal beast, nigh threefold mine height!
I observed four lamps of sorts, each displaying certain numbers in the middle of its body. 'Tis called a 'vacuum tube', if my memory serves me right!
Though I spied naught else of note, closer scrutiny revealed that this machine is filled with remarkably elaborate bits!
Huge gears are attached to its arms and legs, and atop its torso are chimneys ceaselessly discharging steam!
'Tis akin to a colossal factory given life and mobility, is it not? Quite the fetching specimen, if I do say so myself!
→ …? We're letting the lass write this report? Are we okay with this?
→ I doubt she will attempt to ingest this entity. This will not be like the incident with the chickens. There is no need for concern.
Observation Level 2:
We had a kerfuffle with the machine!
Its approach was, as expected, to pound us using its large and hefty body!
Alas, there was one little aspect which I have failed to foresee…
Its assault of hot steam, exploding from its arm—chimneys!
High-pressure steam bombarded us, like water from a fireman's water hose. 'Twas hot enough that mine own eyeballs were thoroughly boiled to blindness!
Ah… and another detail to call thine attention to!
I believe its steam escalated in strength and heat the higher the numbers on its torso rose. I recall it vividly, as the time it took for mine eyeballs to thoroughly cook varied depending on the number!
→ I think the numbers represent the time we took to get here… The number on the machine was the same as the one we saw on the train.
→ Interesting… We'll have to hurry if we want to get out of this station.
→ Guys? Are we just going to ignore how the kid said it cooked her eyeballs off like it was nothing? Guys?
Observation Level 3:
I scribble on, for I have further findings to share!
I witnessed the machine repair itself, though I understand not its exact workings.
Ah, and the number on its torso changed also!
Hohmm… 'twasn't that it released tiny machines to repair itself; it was as though it un—did the damages that had already transpired.
Ah! 'Tis similar to how Manager Esquire revives us, is it not? Mayhaps I must inquire them to learn further!
→ Ohh… Is that why you requested a meeting? Sorry, but I don't exactly know how my rewinding works, either…
→ We do not have enough data to determine if any links exist between these two regeneration methodologies. I am unable to draw a conclusion at this time.
→ Shattering its vacuum tubes seemed to prove effective against this entity. It was unable to reconstruct itself once they were destroyed.
Allow me to describe this steam—discharging machine!
'Tis a gargantuan metal beast, nigh threefold mine height!
I observed four lamps of sorts, each displaying certain numbers in the middle of its body. 'Tis called a 'vacuum tube', if my memory serves me right!
Though I spied naught else of note, closer scrutiny revealed that this machine is filled with remarkably elaborate bits!
Huge gears are attached to its arms and legs, and atop its torso are chimneys ceaselessly discharging steam!
'Tis akin to a colossal factory given life and mobility, is it not? Quite the fetching specimen, if I do say so myself!
→ …? We're letting the lass write this report? Are we okay with this?
→ I doubt she will attempt to ingest this entity. This will not be like the incident with the chickens. There is no need for concern.
Observation Level 2:
We had a kerfuffle with the machine!
Its approach was, as expected, to pound us using its large and hefty body!
Alas, there was one little aspect which I have failed to foresee…
Its assault of hot steam, exploding from its arm—chimneys!
High-pressure steam bombarded us, like water from a fireman's water hose. 'Twas hot enough that mine own eyeballs were thoroughly boiled to blindness!
Ah… and another detail to call thine attention to!
I believe its steam escalated in strength and heat the higher the numbers on its torso rose. I recall it vividly, as the time it took for mine eyeballs to thoroughly cook varied depending on the number!
→ I think the numbers represent the time we took to get here… The number on the machine was the same as the one we saw on the train.
→ Interesting… We'll have to hurry if we want to get out of this station.
→ Guys? Are we just going to ignore how the kid said it cooked her eyeballs off like it was nothing? Guys?
Observation Level 3:
I scribble on, for I have further findings to share!
I witnessed the machine repair itself, though I understand not its exact workings.
Ah, and the number on its torso changed also!
Hohmm… 'twasn't that it released tiny machines to repair itself; it was as though it un—did the damages that had already transpired.
Ah! 'Tis similar to how Manager Esquire revives us, is it not? Mayhaps I must inquire them to learn further!
→ Ohh… Is that why you requested a meeting? Sorry, but I don't exactly know how my rewinding works, either…
→ We do not have enough data to determine if any links exist between these two regeneration methodologies. I am unable to draw a conclusion at this time.
→ Shattering its vacuum tubes seemed to prove effective against this entity. It was unable to reconstruct itself once they were destroyed.
Next up!
Upon destroying the Fairy, the main body will emerge and attack for a turn, and if it isn't staggered during this turn, it will submerge and heal the Fairy, charming an additional unit. As a bonus for the player, when the main body emerges all sinners gain 5 Poise and 2 Poise Count. While emergerd, Faelantern will use fairly strong single-coin skills, many with increased Attack Weight, inflicting a not insubstantial amount of Rupture and Bleed. However, the easisest solution to the fight reveals itself when you consider its speed range. It is fixed at one speed, meaning that you can just attack one-sidedly, staggering it, and then killing it.
The only real way for Faelantern to be troublesome is if you do not have any good slash-skills, on the later loops of RR2. Having your only non-lured sinner unable to destroy the Fairy in one turn. An incredibly straight-forward battle otherwise.
Observation Level 1:
Performing the post-mortem report as ordered by the Executive Manager.
The entity was encountered around 1440 hours today. To elaborate, that is the precise time when we identified it as an enemy and prepared for battle.
Its appearance is akin to a hideous, ancient tree. I estimate its age to be easily over 100 years old. I raise its broad wrinkles and wide pillar as supporting evidence.
What was odd, however, was that its height was far too stocky despite its aforementioned traits.
Its twisting branches all point to a singular direction, and clues indicate that its roots are broad and deep-reaching…
After a thorough observation of the blue fairy(I'm unsure if this is an appropriate designation for it, but I was unable to find another suitable name), which hangs from the tip of one of the branches and radiates a bright light,
I concluded that this is a trap contingent on deception.
Such deceptive traps were often used in numerous battles I have participated in. Install something to draw the attention of your enemies and ambush them from where they least expect… It's a rather rudimentary trap.
I have ordered the Sinners to halt their advance and await the Executive Manager's orders.
Please consult this guide in your future commands.
Thank you.
→ Wow… I guess you're not a veteran for nothing, huh? Didn't know you were this good~
→ I've both encountered and installed many similar traps. Even a civilian could identify such an obvious trap if they have even a modicum of perceptiveness.
→ Right~? Even a MODICUM(This word appears to have been bolded for emphasis) of perceptiveness, that is~
→ …Shut up.
Observation Level 2:
We engaged with the entity in a meaningful capacity around 1900 hours today. Thus I report the following findings.
Just as I expected, it immediately attacked us from the ground as soon as one of us advanced into its proximity.
We suffered some losses, but considering that the said personnel decided to charge the enemy in spite of my warnings, I don't suppose he would have been of much use in the battle anyway.
However, the intel we've gathered through the involuntary decoy was rather valuable. Now we know why its height betrays its apparent age.
The majority of its bulk, its main body, is buried underground.
Countless roots, long enough to make measurement of their individual lengths difficult, burst out of the ground to impale us. Still, we were able to identify that this opponent's main mode of attack involves luring its victims toward its main body to guarantee a strike.
Sometimes it focused on a single Sinner, but there were also instances in which it targeted multiple of us at once.
I also identified the blue fairy swaying from side to side, as though to seduce its victims.
Though it may be difficult to engage this opponent while evading its numerous roots, because we are currently unaware of the magnitude of its main body, I believe that continued collection of intel through repeated encounters is necessary to prepare the appropriate countermeasures. Some losses are to be expected, however.
Concluding the report.
Thank you.
→ Seriously, Heathcliff! Why the hell would you walk out there AFTER we specifically told you not to? AGAIN?
→ Haah, dammit… I don't know. Something about how that happened was uncanny. It's not like I wanted to walk there…
→ It appears that the fairy has the power to charm its victims. Perhaps it would be preferable that we focus our attacks on the fairy in our next encounter.
Observation Level 3:
I write to inform you that further intel has been gathered during our encounter with the entity around 0920 hours today.
Dispatching the blue fairy seems to have been the key to drawing out its main body.
Once the blue fairy was defeated, a part of its main body emerged from the ground, giving us a significant offensive advantage.
Of course, I presume there is more to its subterranean body, but I concluded that what we have gathered so far is enough to give us an edge in this encounter. Considering the estimated losses we would suffer in the process, I don't believe that there is any further intel that would outweigh the potential costs.
Concluding the report.
Thank you.
Performing the post-mortem report as ordered by the Executive Manager.
The entity was encountered around 1440 hours today. To elaborate, that is the precise time when we identified it as an enemy and prepared for battle.
Its appearance is akin to a hideous, ancient tree. I estimate its age to be easily over 100 years old. I raise its broad wrinkles and wide pillar as supporting evidence.
What was odd, however, was that its height was far too stocky despite its aforementioned traits.
Its twisting branches all point to a singular direction, and clues indicate that its roots are broad and deep-reaching…
After a thorough observation of the blue fairy(I'm unsure if this is an appropriate designation for it, but I was unable to find another suitable name), which hangs from the tip of one of the branches and radiates a bright light,
I concluded that this is a trap contingent on deception.
Such deceptive traps were often used in numerous battles I have participated in. Install something to draw the attention of your enemies and ambush them from where they least expect… It's a rather rudimentary trap.
I have ordered the Sinners to halt their advance and await the Executive Manager's orders.
Please consult this guide in your future commands.
Thank you.
→ Wow… I guess you're not a veteran for nothing, huh? Didn't know you were this good~
→ I've both encountered and installed many similar traps. Even a civilian could identify such an obvious trap if they have even a modicum of perceptiveness.
→ Right~? Even a MODICUM(This word appears to have been bolded for emphasis) of perceptiveness, that is~
→ …Shut up.
Observation Level 2:
We engaged with the entity in a meaningful capacity around 1900 hours today. Thus I report the following findings.
Just as I expected, it immediately attacked us from the ground as soon as one of us advanced into its proximity.
We suffered some losses, but considering that the said personnel decided to charge the enemy in spite of my warnings, I don't suppose he would have been of much use in the battle anyway.
However, the intel we've gathered through the involuntary decoy was rather valuable. Now we know why its height betrays its apparent age.
The majority of its bulk, its main body, is buried underground.
Countless roots, long enough to make measurement of their individual lengths difficult, burst out of the ground to impale us. Still, we were able to identify that this opponent's main mode of attack involves luring its victims toward its main body to guarantee a strike.
Sometimes it focused on a single Sinner, but there were also instances in which it targeted multiple of us at once.
I also identified the blue fairy swaying from side to side, as though to seduce its victims.
Though it may be difficult to engage this opponent while evading its numerous roots, because we are currently unaware of the magnitude of its main body, I believe that continued collection of intel through repeated encounters is necessary to prepare the appropriate countermeasures. Some losses are to be expected, however.
Concluding the report.
Thank you.
→ Seriously, Heathcliff! Why the hell would you walk out there AFTER we specifically told you not to? AGAIN?
→ Haah, dammit… I don't know. Something about how that happened was uncanny. It's not like I wanted to walk there…
→ It appears that the fairy has the power to charm its victims. Perhaps it would be preferable that we focus our attacks on the fairy in our next encounter.
Observation Level 3:
I write to inform you that further intel has been gathered during our encounter with the entity around 0920 hours today.
Dispatching the blue fairy seems to have been the key to drawing out its main body.
Once the blue fairy was defeated, a part of its main body emerged from the ground, giving us a significant offensive advantage.
Of course, I presume there is more to its subterranean body, but I concluded that what we have gathered so far is enough to give us an edge in this encounter. Considering the estimated losses we would suffer in the process, I don't believe that there is any further intel that would outweigh the potential costs.
Concluding the report.
Thank you.
Only the final two fights of Möbius are left. Firstly:
Once all rifts are destroyed, Wayward Passenger returns for a turn, before once again escaping. Importantly, Wayward Passenger cannot escape if both of its Blades are staggered (it still escapes if both Blades are destroyed), or if it is beneath 30% HP. This is when it starts to use its skill "High-Speed Rip Space" (10+8, Attack weight of 7), which gains power by its highest rift stack. I only mention this skill because it's absolutely great to witness, and can absolutely shred your entire team if you let it, so don't.
The main trouble, outside of Railway, is if you let it build up stacks, especially yellow and blue. Speed and Clash control remain as the king of the game, and whenever the Passenger starts to get too fast, you start taking damage quickly, so once again, don't let it.
Observation Level 1:
- It is difficult to say that this entity is, while bipedal, a humanoid.
- Weapons made of unrefined energy can be observed protruding from both of its wrists.
- A large cavity runs down the middle of its torso. It is reminiscent of the maws of a beast.
- No skin tissue is observed on its upper body. Its muscle tissues, some torn and in various states of mutilation, are clearly visible.
- Its lower body is covered by cloth material and can not be observed.
- One may extrapolate from the color and style of the clothing that this entity holds a certain connection to W Corp.
- Further reports will be made with additional observations.
Observation Level 2:
- It uses its energy-based wrist weapons to tear between spaces and appear at different locations.
- Distancing is irrelevant against this entity; it can tear between spaces and catch any Sinner, no matter their distance, from behind.
- It can also exist in spaces imperceptible to our eyes.
- It is capable of making entrances to not only that particular space but also various other spaces.
- The entity opened doors to numerous spaces during our encounter. Upon closer inspection of the spaces, it was revealed that each open space was composed of unique colors.
- Certain inexpressible scents or aura could be detected from those spaces. Each was of differing temperatures and air currents.
- Further reports will be made with additional observations.
Observation Level 3:
- Applying sufficient physical force to the said 'spaces' will close them.
- Closing the spaces also eliminates the aforementioned auras. Its exact mechanisms are unclear.
- There are four different 'spaces'. Once they are opened the entity will, without fail, proceed to hide in one of them and become protected from our offensive maneuvers.
- The entity appears to receive beneficial effects as long as the spaces remain open.
- It does not receive the said effects when the spaces are closed.
- Because this entity is inclined to appear and disappear frequently, closing as many spaces as possible before it emerges would be advantageous.
- Only through repeated combat can we determine the effects of each space it opens.
- Below are other Sinners' observations.
- The entity grew more aggressive when the red space opened.
- Green one seemed to make it more resilient to our attacks…
- The yellow space! Forsooth, it appeared to hasten the beast!
- When the blue one opened… Something about it made it harder for us to match its strength.
- No further discoveries are to be made. This observation log is concluded.
- It is difficult to say that this entity is, while bipedal, a humanoid.
- Weapons made of unrefined energy can be observed protruding from both of its wrists.
- A large cavity runs down the middle of its torso. It is reminiscent of the maws of a beast.
- No skin tissue is observed on its upper body. Its muscle tissues, some torn and in various states of mutilation, are clearly visible.
- Its lower body is covered by cloth material and can not be observed.
- One may extrapolate from the color and style of the clothing that this entity holds a certain connection to W Corp.
- Further reports will be made with additional observations.
Observation Level 2:
- It uses its energy-based wrist weapons to tear between spaces and appear at different locations.
- Distancing is irrelevant against this entity; it can tear between spaces and catch any Sinner, no matter their distance, from behind.
- It can also exist in spaces imperceptible to our eyes.
- It is capable of making entrances to not only that particular space but also various other spaces.
- The entity opened doors to numerous spaces during our encounter. Upon closer inspection of the spaces, it was revealed that each open space was composed of unique colors.
- Certain inexpressible scents or aura could be detected from those spaces. Each was of differing temperatures and air currents.
- Further reports will be made with additional observations.
Observation Level 3:
- Applying sufficient physical force to the said 'spaces' will close them.
- Closing the spaces also eliminates the aforementioned auras. Its exact mechanisms are unclear.
- There are four different 'spaces'. Once they are opened the entity will, without fail, proceed to hide in one of them and become protected from our offensive maneuvers.
- The entity appears to receive beneficial effects as long as the spaces remain open.
- It does not receive the said effects when the spaces are closed.
- Because this entity is inclined to appear and disappear frequently, closing as many spaces as possible before it emerges would be advantageous.
- Only through repeated combat can we determine the effects of each space it opens.
- Below are other Sinners' observations.
- The entity grew more aggressive when the red space opened.
- Green one seemed to make it more resilient to our attacks…
- The yellow space! Forsooth, it appeared to hasten the beast!
- When the blue one opened… Something about it made it harder for us to match its strength.
- No further discoveries are to be made. This observation log is concluded.
Last up: The final boss of Möbius
Sign of Roses (classification number O-04-21-22, WAW). A mass of flesh, contained by brambles and stuck to a wooden cross. The music, the visuals... It's hard to not see allusions towards christianity with this one, but I'm not really here to write about that, so let's just move into the fight mechanics. On the first turn, Sign of Roses will use a move to inflict "Crown of Thorns" to all sinners, and not much more. What this does, is apparent on turn 2. You see, every sinner with "Crown of Thorns" spawn a rose with the same colour as the sinners Skill 1. This rose is linked to that sinner, and each colour has its own attacks and abilities, the only one relevant enough to mention is the Wrath-drenched Rose, that will deal damage to its killer when killed (Equal to the damage it just took, can easily just end a sinner if not careful). All of these roses are weak to their colour only, and greatly resists all other sin affinities.
Anyway, all of these roses spawn in with one "Blooming Sin", and gain an additional one every turn. What "Blooming Sin" actually does is the main crux of the battle, as every time a rose gains it, the linked sinner takes 25% of its Max HP as damage, and at 4 stacks, the linked sinner is killed instantly. Furthermore, you also lose 10% of your corresponding sin resources, and if a sinner dies, then all resources of that colour. Also, Sign of Roses heals 5% of its Max HP for every rose that gains "Blooming Sin", and has 1 protection for every living rose. Thankfully, killing a rose will return all the stolen HP. One turn after all roses are killed, Sign of Roses will attempt to use its Skill to spawn more.
Now, this doesn't give that much time for the player to actually focus down the main abnormality without being distracted by the roses, and it doesn't help that if it can spawn more roses it will heal up again. Thankfully, every time a rose is killed, the Sign of Roses gets weaker to that specific sin affinity. Furthermore, the event for this fight is constantly triggered, and you can further reduce sin resistances depending on the answer given. Ultimately, once you've grasped that the roses should be killed ASAP, the fight isn't very difficult. Still very neat, though.
Observation Level 1:
Okay, let's see~
So I gotta write about the weird, messy, rose—infested wooden planks?
My, my. I've not seen a more slapdash flower arrangement work in my entire life. Whoever made that thing should feel lucky they don't work for my family.
Well… I guess every gardener has different standards of beauty. But from what I can see, I don't really get what kind of beauty they were going for?
Like, the… the thing? Object? They hung in the middle of the wooden planks. I think it has eyes, or something.
Maybe they were trying to say something with this work. Like 'Surveillance and Bondage', or something?
Anyway, I don't really enjoy artworks that are this hideous~
→ It's all sunshine and rainbows with you, innit? Gardener? Piece of art? What is wrong with you? It's a monster that skewers people!
→ Disagreed. T.I.A. (Someone scribbled "I think she's saying 'This Is Art'!" here.) From grotesqueries rises artistic merit. I'm surprised that you caught on.
Observation Level 2:
Its attack patterns…
I think it's pretty similar to the apple—headed thing... oh, or the tree with aggressive roots that we met earlier in this train trip.
Oh, but I don't think we've ever been slapped by a plank of wood that falls from the sky. I guess that's what's so special about this ugly thing.
As soon as we encounetered them, they tied us down here, like they were trying to stop us from going any further.
Observation Level 3:
I had no idea… that getting wrapped up in those rose brambles could hurt that much.
Back home, I saw some people get roped up and made to kneel for their wrongdoings… I never realized how merciful my family was. We used plain ropes for that.
And those thorns… it was like they were draining my blood. Like it was hungry for nutrients.
And there's more. You know how we sometimes… die, during these fights?
Bodies weren't the only things falling—people's resolve did, too. Oh, it's not like being stressed or psychologically pressured. It's completely different. It was like some… emotion in me was getting snapped in half.
And the way they died was also unusual. Its vines crawled up their legs, binding them… Soon blooming with Roses.
Oh, and... the color of those roses changed as well. Everyone told me that it was as though the bottled—up feelings inside them were melting away. And so did I.
And when we killed it… Everyone who fell in the battle exploded along with it.
Leaving behind nothing but… petals.
Okay, let's see~
So I gotta write about the weird, messy, rose—infested wooden planks?
My, my. I've not seen a more slapdash flower arrangement work in my entire life. Whoever made that thing should feel lucky they don't work for my family.
Well… I guess every gardener has different standards of beauty. But from what I can see, I don't really get what kind of beauty they were going for?
Like, the… the thing? Object? They hung in the middle of the wooden planks. I think it has eyes, or something.
Maybe they were trying to say something with this work. Like 'Surveillance and Bondage', or something?
Anyway, I don't really enjoy artworks that are this hideous~
→ It's all sunshine and rainbows with you, innit? Gardener? Piece of art? What is wrong with you? It's a monster that skewers people!
→ Disagreed. T.I.A. (Someone scribbled "I think she's saying 'This Is Art'!" here.) From grotesqueries rises artistic merit. I'm surprised that you caught on.
Observation Level 2:
Its attack patterns…
I think it's pretty similar to the apple—headed thing... oh, or the tree with aggressive roots that we met earlier in this train trip.
Oh, but I don't think we've ever been slapped by a plank of wood that falls from the sky. I guess that's what's so special about this ugly thing.
As soon as we encounetered them, they tied us down here, like they were trying to stop us from going any further.
Observation Level 3:
I had no idea… that getting wrapped up in those rose brambles could hurt that much.
Back home, I saw some people get roped up and made to kneel for their wrongdoings… I never realized how merciful my family was. We used plain ropes for that.
And those thorns… it was like they were draining my blood. Like it was hungry for nutrients.
And there's more. You know how we sometimes… die, during these fights?
Bodies weren't the only things falling—people's resolve did, too. Oh, it's not like being stressed or psychologically pressured. It's completely different. It was like some… emotion in me was getting snapped in half.
And the way they died was also unusual. Its vines crawled up their legs, binding them… Soon blooming with Roses.
Oh, and... the color of those roses changed as well. Everyone told me that it was as though the bottled—up feelings inside them were melting away. And so did I.
And when we killed it… Everyone who fell in the battle exploded along with it.
Leaving behind nothing but… petals.
And that's all of them! Going through this again, I've actually come to realize that I quite liked Möbius. At the moment I played it, it was torture, but it was engaging torture. I remember having to ration my resourses and carefully plan to play through this piece of content. It was fundamentally flawed. Like, who thought it was a good idea to start everything with So That No One Will Cry, completely preventing the usage of Burn team, and whomever designed Steam Transport Machine needs to unlearn everything and take some manner of course. Drifting Fox was a nightmare, with the sanity drain and 7 protection, and of course, fuck Shock Centipede. Oh right, how could I forget having to fight the T Corp. stooges again. You know what? I take it back. The rose-tinted glasses are off, Möbius was trash, ignore this entire bit of text.
Until next time.
SoothingCoffee
Umumumu
- Location
- The Library
Ah yes, Möbius. The Refraction Railway that actually made me drop the game for a year (and start again just a couple or few months ago) because I had managed to (with gruelsome effort) reach the end of the loop and screwed myself so much with Resources and dead IDs that I was completely roadblocked by the Sign of Roses.
It was indeed painful.
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Ariamaki
Judge of Scales
- Location
- Land of Breath and Balance
- Pronouns
- He/They
This is a very odd perspective: Masquerade (the current Railway, but to be clear no spoilers being discussed) was both the easiest and most well-balanced of all the Railways so far, broken into nice digestible segments, with the ability to swap teams to actually counter the themes and gimmicks of each segment. Meanwhile Mobius was a backbreaking unfun slog through 30-ish terribly designed fights where all of the worst ones were the ones you had to repeat the most times. FAR from relevant here, but like... What a strange thing to say.
Don Quixote Eyeball Trauma thankfully limited only to text here, but I just love her exuberance about the whole thing. She kept track of how long her viscera was boiling for, like some kind of neurotic chef. What a precious bean... An overdone bean in this case but still.
I'd have to disagree here a bit thematically, every single fairy/fae abnormality have a single unifying theme of presenting a helpful/kinder face over an animalistic hunger. The gentlemen and Long-legs develop this theme into a more british-coded way of being more polite in how they're flesh eating monster(and in Gentleman's case, genuinely)
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
What gets me about Long Legs is that it's clearly his arm that's long, c'mon Ishmael.
DuoRogue
Eternal Space Raptor
- Pronouns
- It/Its
ED: im moving this to the main PM thread cause it fits better there; is railway talk
The post in question
The post in question
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FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Yeah, Mobius caused me to ragequit as well. My only solid team was Burn and, well, the first fight is So That No One Will Cry. Yeah.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Mobius was the only RR where I gave up doing the "Do in X turns or less" because I didn't hit X on the first attempt and the idea of having to run Mobius again would've caused me physical pain.
Minisodes 2 & The Elephant In The Room: Rooms Past The Backdoor, The 1st Walpurgis Night, and the Vellmori Incident
New
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Forward
Best to get this out of the way first thing, no fucking around. I went back and forth a lot on whether to bring this up or not due to the risk of a derail and my own worries about errors in my memory, but ultimately I decided it would be cowardly to try and dodge talking about something that will be plainly self-evident come next update. I have no desire to see the incident relitigated in my thread, if you want to do that take it to general - I'm here to do my duty in explaining why the art style is about to radically change for the benefit of those who don't already know.
Project Moon is a small company. The credits for Limbus Company (to be more specific those shown at the end of Canto III which are replicated on MobyGames) are under 80 people long, even including 5 of the HamHamPangPang cafe staff and all the voice actors who are presumably not full-time employees. Of those credits there are five illustration artists (i.e. not responsible for the sprite rigs used for in-combat graphics); Kim Yoonjoong, Kim Donghwan, Yang Hoyeon, Jung Jaehee, and Vellmori. Yoonjoong is the art lead on Limbus and has been with Project Moon on art since Lobcorp (albeit credited with the alternate romanisation of 'Yoonjung', something that briefly made me insane while looking this up) and Donghwan is another carryover, just from Ruina. It can be surmised that these two are the ones responsible for the background art and the character talksprites, as they share the very distinctive blocky, roughly-rendered style of Ruina that stands very much at odds with the story CGs and the Identity uptie art. For these jobs they brought in the artist Vellmori to do the former and presumably the combination of Hoyeon Yang and Jaehee Jung to do the latter (as that is two impressive rendered pieces per Identity of which there's one or two every couple weeks, plus EGO art).
Art became a problem for Project Moon in late June of 2023 because they, in their funnyman hubris, flew too close to the sun by having a parody summer event in their gacha game. Everyone with half a brain knew it was a parody, you could tell just from the preview teaser with the funny upbeat penis music playing as the bus hurtled past a shimmering white-sand beach under a bright blue sky before Melting ominously, and the full trailer only made it more obvious by showing everyone forced to fight off the oncoming tide of carcinisation on the average beach circa 2030. Unfortunately they made their game a gacha game, and a gacha game attracts brainrotted incels like a dog attracts fleas, so shortly after the launch of the Magic Hellbus event a hubbub was raised about the character designs. You see, Molar Boatworks Ishmael committed the crime of being based on Olga's appearance in the Intervallo, so she appears wearing the same wetsuit Olga made her debut in. She wasn't in the ugliest fucking bikini you've ever seen in your life like an F/GO summer servant, and that made the incels angry. Plus, in a one-two punch of the feminism agenda, the event freebie 00 was Molar Boatworks Sinclair patterned off Rain's outfit, and he committed the crime of being absolute dogshit, but more importantly of being a very fuckable young twink wearing a choker and an open shirt.
The incels were furious about this, but the character illustration artists were all men. Fortunately there was a single woman on the team, Vellmori, who they could direct their ire towards. Vellmori of course had zero say in any of that shit, so in the vein of rightwingers everywhere the incels vividly hallucinated reasons to be upset and decided she'd hidden feminist hate symbols in her art based on microscopic details in the way Yi Sang held things during Canto IV, on top of digging up years-old deleted tweets in which she expressed controversial opinions like 'I hate being a woman in society'. They clamoured for her removal so that Limbus could become based, to the point of physically showing up outside the head office demanding to be let in, brandishing charming little 'manifestos' about their delusions. They were ultimately mollified by learning Vellmori had been fired, and parted amicably.
Unfortunately Vellmori had not actually been fired, and everything got a whole lot worse.
This is where it gets murky, because this coincides with the point where Project Moon elected to ignore the English-speaking side of the fanbase entirely in favour of making moves in Korean, which was an insanely bad move because the English-speaking side of the fanbase had eyes and access to Google Translate which they immediately used rather than patiently wait in the dark. This inevitably lead to the introduction of errors and misinformation which became very difficult to untangle, so at the time I stopped playing Limbus and waited to see if Vellmori would ultimately get to keep her job.
Here are the facts: Vellmori never produced any art for the game again after Intervallo II. The artist behind the Wonderlab webcomic, MIMI, nuked it from orbit shortly after the controversy in August (though it was very difficult for me to find more information about her and her specific motivations for doing so). The artist behind the Limbus prequel webcomic Leviathan, Monggeu, dumped the project back in June of 2022 only six months in because the pace Project Moon wanted was grinding them into powder - this resulted in Leviathan turning into a webnovel for its back half, a webnovel that has not been officially translated because the two guys responsible for that were already busy on Limbus Company. In fact make that one guys responsible for that now, because one of them quit in August of 2023.
Vellmori was not a full-time employee of Project Moon, she was an outside contractor. She either resigned or elected not to renew her contract, whether due to pressure from Project Moon or not wishing to be targeted by rabid incels or just wanting to get away from the punishing pace they were setting or a combination of all three. Project Moon claimed they had fired her because the tweets the incels dug up were in breach of contract, and whether that was to try and curry favour and street credit with the incels to make them leave them alone or as a way to try and 'protect' Vellmori by claiming she was duly punished for her transgressions, it was ultimately what we call in the business "a lie". A lie that was such flagrant bullshit it aggroed every labour organisation in a 300 mile radius and made the situation even worse. The fact that it was a lie is why I ultimately resumed playing Limbus Company, but the fact that it was a lie is why I will never give Project Moon the benefit of the doubt when they make another fucky-wucky because they can be just a little bit absolutely braindead and they conduct themselves too much like a big YouTuber who just starts kneejerk Saying Shit when the drama happens instead of shutting up and thinking things through (see: the fucking Ring Pointillist Yi Sang debacle, which is a conversation beyond the purview of this thread, but those who know, know).
Starting from Canto V, all story CGs will now be done by the same artist as the talksprites, Ruina-style. Project Moon also claimed that they would go back and retroactively replace all Vellmori art with the in-house style, but I feel safe in saying that was another one of their trademark Flagrant Lies because it's been a year and a half and as you can plainly see that shit's still in there. It's an incident that makes me very annoyed, because Vellmori's art was stunning and expressive and I can tell you for sure that I just plain don't like the new CGs as much, and we lost that both because of incels and because of Project Moon bumblefucking their way straight into a dumpster because they still haven't outgrown their 'ten guys in a shed' mentality yet.
The controversy ultimately extended Season 2's length by a month, pushing Canto V's launch date into November - this made it a whopping 168 days long, to be surpassed only by Season 4 coming just barely shy of the 200-day mark. It should also be mentioned that they once listed both a Season's start and planned end date on the battlepass screen, which is how we know that Season 2 was meant to end on the 12th of October 2023, in a staggering act of organisational hubris from which they have seemingly learned their lesson. Seasons 3 and 4 appear to have marked a distinct period of the company needing to get its shit together in general behind the scenes, as various more minor mechanical controversies kept popping up on top of the shift away from voiced Intervallos because it had become an interruption in the pipeline delaying every other part of the game, as I previously mentioned when Intervallos first became a thing. Hence, going forward Intervallos will now be unvoiced, and in exchange will be two-to-a-season starting with Intervallo III-1 and Intervallo III-2.
That is, until just recently, when Project Moon made the shockingly sensible decision to start rerunning Intervallo events to give people more shit to do during lulls in the release schedule, and as an added bonus add voice acting to them plus all preceding Minisodes. We just recently had an Intervallo III-1 rerun, which I will say nothing about because of spoilers save for the Very Good Don Noises that came with it, which means that the minisodes I'll be covering now have been voice-acted. This pretty plainly goes to show that they're getting back on top of things, having solved or otherwise ameliorated the issues Even More Voice Acting introduced to the pipeline, and while I will never be shy about criticising Project Moon I'd also like to believe that this is an indication that they've finished getting their shit together and the Volumetric Shit Compressor will remain running for the foreseeable future.
Now, I believe that's all that need be said about the situation. Let's continue with one last appetiser before the main course that is Canto V.
Episode Mini-4: Rooms Past The Backdoor
We open on Dante giving the close-of-business spiel, the Sinners filing away to their rooms to settle in for R&R. The bus team, now busboat team, have it pretty easy these days - despite Dante's assumption that they'd be well underway forging across the open waters of U Corp by now, instead they've been sitting around twiddling their thumbs just off the coast where they started, waiting. Faust in her usual reticence has explained nothing about the situation, but Dante guesses it's some kind of esoteric customs procedure not unlike the checkpoint they had to cross to get into K Corp initially (and indeed they're about due since they crossed over from K Corp to U Corp without stated incident at the start of Intervallo II in the span of a single tunnel).
The Sinners are going a little bit stir-crazy as people like the Sinners are wont to do, but Dante knows that they're all equally exhausted by the endless cavalcade of dramatic and traumatic bullshit that's assailed them since the Prologue, and so "we each elected to enjoy this brief maritime respite in our own ways".
Which Yi Sang does by blowing chunks all over the side, because Canto IV was not the end of his suffering.
Don Quixote: "If thou needest mine assistance..."
Yi Sang: "... As I have repeatedly made myself clear..."
Yi Sang: "I am... quite... alright..."
Don Quixote: "Thy countenance, returning the contents within thy stomach to the Lake with such vigour... sayeth otherwise..."
Dante: <Yi Sang, the day's over. You can go back to your room now...>
On this bus? No way!
Dante: <Seriously, I told you that you could rest in your room if you wanted.>
Yi Sang: "Our fellows must also have their share of suffering... I can not, in good faith, seek comfort only for myself."
Dante: <You're the one with the biggest share of suffering right now...>
Unfortunately it looks like old habits die hard, and Yi Sang's self-harming by neglect all while reasoning that it's actually the only fair thing to do. He's clearly still dealing with his guilt over failing to mend things between Heathcliff and Ishmael, though Dante elects not to turn it into a debate with him right at closing time. Instead they offer him a shoulder and walk him back into the bus, where he shambles into his room to rest. It also bears mentioning, it's quite cute that Don also stayed past closing time to ask if he was alright.
Yi Sang: "I thank you, Dante. Then... until later."
Don Quixote: "Then I shall seek myself respite as well, Manager Esquire!"
Dante: <Yeah, rest well.>
Dante lingers, trying to sneak a peek at Don's room over her shoulder as she enters. They're unable to see much detail (and I assume the mechanics of the Backdoor prevent anyone but the assigned Sinner from just following into their room somehow unless Dante's really too socially awkward to just ask to be let in) but they see enough to know for sure it's different to Yi Sang's. Further proof of the three-to-a-door-in-Sinner-number-order theme, as Yi Sang and Don are #1 and #3 respectively. I should take the opportunity to mention what those numbers are actually based on, as Faust calling Yi Sang 'the first Sinner' in his flashback was a certified What Did She Mean By This moment but on a more immediately obvious read it's because the nationality of each Sinner corresponds with the number of their respective Fixer Association: Hong Lu, Sinner #6, is Chinese, and the Liu (六, or 6) Association is the sixth Association in the City. Yi Sang, Sinner #1, corresponds to the Hana (1 in Korean) Association, Faust to the Zwei (2 in German), even the Devyat mentioned in passing at the very tail end of Intervallo II are '9' in Russian to correspond with Rodion. The most curious links in this particular chain of connections are Gregor as Sinner #13, because there are only meant to be 12 Associations in the City, and Dante, who corresponds to the Dieci (10) Association - and their hat is the constant acquisition and subsequent loss or 'burning' of knowledge to fuel their abilities, a somewhat sus correlation with Dante's lost memories.
And if there's anybody we could ask about Fixers it'd be Don Quixote, so as a treat let's take a peek into her room where Dante couldn't shall we?
Courtesy of limbuscompany.wiki.gg
Look at her playing with her toys on a bright colourful mat on the floor, she's so silly and childlike- hey Don what's with the bloody impaled corpses on the carousel out the window? Miss Don? The Vlad The Impaler imagery is kind of concerning. As is the giant horse-skeleton shadow cast across specifically your wall of funny stickers and posters - look, the shadow completely fades out where the wall meets the floor, like it only exists as a dark shape looming above and around Don while she herself can remain cheerfully oblivious to it.
Also her EGO is named The Blood Of Sancho in Spanish, and while the resemblance is hardly exact the fact it's a bright scarlet double-helix very much reminds me of Evangelion's Lance of Longinus, which would be concerning even if its passive didn't cause her to life-leech on hit vs foes with Bleed.
12 Sinners at 3 to a room makes 4 doors, leaving 2 before the velvet rope marking the end of the safe stretch of the corridor, so presumably Dante gets a room all to themself while Vergilius and Charon share the one opposite. However the strong fisheye lens effect along with the fact that the doors are set in a zigzag pattern across the corridor rather than directly facing each other makes it a little hard to judge, even moreso a moment later as Dante is tempted to stop and glance through a door "immediately to the right" of the velvet rope.
Well hush my mouth, forget 'starting Canto V' this is in the Ruina style so clearly they started with the new art right now.
Due to the strong lightsource to Dante's left, and the way their hand is lingering on the doorframe in a manner that would be an entirely natural pose if they were walking straight ahead then hung a left, I honestly think that at some stage in the process this was meant to be the door to the left of the velvet rope. Going by the CG just above that left door is in fact just barely across the threshold of 'safety', whereas the next door on the right appears to be well beyond the divider. Not that any of this shit really matters, it's just something I noticed now that I'm doing a close read of this stuff.
Anyway, this hallway off to the side of the main corridor is a reference to the old UI. The door on the left there is the Luxcavation door, where you select either XP or Thread battle nodes from the submenu. The door in the middle is the old Mirror Dungeon, specifically the Season 2 variant Mirror of Mirrors. The third and final door is the one to the current Refraction Railway Line, which in this case is Line 2 - Mobius (released mid-September alongside the Uptie 4 update) due to the green strip of paint across the lower half.
Dante is currently peering down this hallway - in fact they duck in and open all three doors a crack to take a peek inside - because they appear to have an unspoken hunch that something is about to change. They couch it in terms of "I've never managed to catch the changes myself, but who knows?", even briefly entertaining the notion of seeing something "worth keeping to myself" (which they guiltily add would be something they should report to Faust), but it's a coincidence too great to ignore that this random spike of curiosity from Dante...
A loud klaxon begins blaring at this very moment.
Narration: Something must've caught wind of my rather mischievous thought.
... just so happens to coincide with an alarm from Mephistopheles that something is afoot. Dante whips around to find the Sinners beginning to emerge from their rooms one by one, drawn by the noise - which of course brings to mind logistical questions of 'what happens if multiple occupants of one room all try to leave at the same time when there's only one door on the outside' but I suspect those don't matter unless used for a gag about Sinners knocking each other's lights out with their bedrooms doors at a later stage. Faust invites Dante to the helm to "observe the disturbance together" and the two depart without a word.
Narration: She fiddled with a few buttons, and shut off the alarm. Incomprehensible, complicated-looking letters began to fill the round screen.
Faust: "Even Faust needs a moment to decipher."
Dante: <Right, right...>
That siren is in fact the same siren that sounds on the top level game menu screen to alert the player to a new content drop. In-universe it accompanied the release of new Mirror Dungeons, Luxcavation stages, and Refraction Railway lines, causing Dante to volunteer that they didn't see anything new a moment ago when they checked the doors. Faust dismisses the possibility that Line 3 would come so soon after Line 2, causing Dante to reminisce momentarily about the formerly-offscreen first appearance of the Railway.
You can tell it's Line 1 because Line 1 was blue the same way Line 2 was green - according to wiki.gg this is because the lines are largely based on Seoul's subway lines, which is kinda funny so I respect it.
Narration: Its appearance somewhat resembled that of Mephistopheles... but it was also patently clear I'd never seen anything like it before. An odd feeling.
Faust: "Well, I recall that you had a rather violent reaction when I entered the train to observe its interiors."
Dante: <Come on, I wasn't the only one that freaked out. Everyone did...>
Faust, being a sigma female, promptly about-faces and walks away from the helm without another word before Dante can even elaborate on their worry that the train could've taken off with Faust on it and left everybody else behind. Dante hurries after her to check that the alarm indeed wasn't signalling the opening of a new door, Faust simply saying that the particular volatility Mephi alerted them about is "not something we can utilise".
Dante: <Right... I thought it was an awkward time for a new door to appear. Too soon, too soon.>
Faust: "The Dungeons and the Railways appeared at 'awkward times' as well, Dante. I recommend that you refrain from settling into a premature conclusion. A new variable may present itself at any moment."
Faust: "... moreover..."
Faust: "If this volatility has triggered an alarm in Mephistopheles' engine, then it naturally follows that a new door has appeared at an indeterminate location down the corridor. This may reveal a space from which one could never return. It is best that we keep track of these incidents."
Dante: <Even Heathcliff won't do anything like that again... Probably.>
Free my man Heathcliff he doesn't deserve this.
With that, Faust recommends Dante go get their rest and heads off for the night. Left alone at the helm Dante makes a token effort to parse the symbols they see.
Narration: Numbers. Unintelligible letters. Drawings and symbols depicting something. I had to shake my clock head after staring at that dizzying sight for a while.
Dante: <I wonder if this is how Yi Sang felt earlier... I'm starting to feel nauseous.>
Narration: I was barely able to hold back the vertigo from setting in.
They beat a hasty retreat, and I am forced to point out how sus it is that attempting to read Mephi's screen rapidly made Dante dizzy and physically ill right after their intuition just so happened to spike right before the siren. Coincidence, or a sign of some deeper connection? Who knows?
Episode Mini-5: The 1st Walpurgis Night
Another klaxon sounds across the bus, rousing the Sinners from their rest.
Thank God for the voice acting update because Gregor genuinely sounds like he went from 'sleeping soundly' to 'edging a heart attack' in 1.5 seconds here.
Narration: It's that alarm again - warning us of a volatility in Mephistopheles. But it was much louder, much more painful than the ones we've heard before. And this time, it wasn't the only thing that assaulted our senses.
Rodion: "Huhh...? We've never had flashing lights like this before, right?"
Don Quixote: "Ooo!! This must be a signal that the long-awaited adventure is finally nigh!!!"
Sinclair: "I-is this... what we've been waiting for this whole time?"
For once, Dante spies confusion in Vergilius' face.
Charon: "Weewoo weewoo. Mephi's blaring and crying. Mephi sick?"
Vergilius: "What is this, Ms. Faust? I wasn't informed about a siren like this before."
Faust pauses to think.
And decides Priority #1 is roasting Heathcliff.
Faust: "It does make infrequent use of the Enkephalin supply gear installed in the engine for fuel, but that is of no negative consequence. Even if it was, whatever issues that may arise can handily be repaired after a proper total disassembly-"
Heathcliff: "That was just a figure of speech! Tsk. So what's this now? Sounds like the bus is about to explode!"
Faust: "To label Mephistopheles as some 'bloody rickety bus' completely disregards the amount of pain and effort Faust dedicated to designing and-"
Heathcliff: "Haah, seriously...?"
Rodion: "Yeah, Heath. Take it back... The bus might actually blow up before she explains anything!"
Heathcliff: "Ugh..."
Yapping at speeds hitherto unseen since Meursault's chicken rap.
Narration: The cabin briefly echoes with his cries, then... a brief silence.
Faust: "Good."
Faust is so fucking petty that she left Vergilius on read for the sake of that bit, I love her.
Faust: "It is quite simple. The Night is here."
Ryoshu: "W.D.Y.M."
Sinclair: "Talk, Or I Snap Your-"
Faust: "Walpurgis Night is here, it seems."
Meursault: "The night is not here. That is very apparent, at least in this coastal area."
Faust: "The... name does not refer to the time of day in which the sun moves beyond our line of sight."
An understated Meursaultment but one I find very endearing regardless. Him genuinely saying "but how is it Walpurgisnacht if the sun is out" and seeming faintly annoyed about yet satisfied with the answer being 'it's not literal' is such a vibe.
Faust launches into some exposition about the ID extraction mechanics and how the possibilities on offer have been steadily expanding over the course of their journey, at which point Heathcliff pulls the brakes and asks about the very same thing I mentioned earlier about Identities being small SD card sized objects (or mahjong tiles as Hong Lu likens them to) which Dante slots into their tablet before battle. In fact it turns out that's how Dante determines who has access to what EGO in-universe too.
This devious bitch, no way that wasn't on purpose.
Heathcliff: "You lookin' to get your head smashed in or what?"
Gregor: "Right, right. Knock it off, you guys. Guide Bud's giving us the evil eye."
Yet through this razzing of Heathcliff for being oblivious, Dante notices Don Quixote wearing a forlorn expression as she watches the conversation in silence.
Dante: <What's wrong, Don Quixote?>
Don Quixote: "Well I..."
Yup. If you were starting to wonder where Ishmael had gone, you noticed a deliberate change in the dynamic - Ishmael is just Not Around right now. She's taking her promise to only be the most exactingly to-the-letter obedient robot possible to heart, and that means she's recused herself from any and all non-critical Sinner interactions. I'm forced to assume that she comes out of her room at times just because all hands have to run 12-hour dayshifts as a matter of course, but it seems she's been keeping to herself to the maximum allowable extent.
Back to the extraction conversation, Faust is talking about there being cases where Dante has drawn Identity Cards from Mephi's engine without spending Lunacy which is, I'm going to be honest, very difficult to parse. She might be talking about the pity system (which as far as I can tell was not in at launch but was added during Season 2), wherein each roll causes you to stock up Ideality, and at 200 Ideality you can simply grab something you want from whatever banner you were rolling on (and leftover Ideality becomes Thread when the banner ends), or she could be talking about exchanging event reward currency for a freebie 00, neither of which are particularly relevant to the phenomenon currently taking place but if I were to hazard a guess I'd say it's Ideality. EDIT: Thank you Birthday, Faust was probably referring to the Molar Office Fixer IDs for Outis and Yi Sang which were handed out for free around the time of this minisode back in 2023 as a login event, just like how Blade Lineage Yi Sang was handed out for completely free during the launch period.
The important part is what she says next.
Faust: "Enkephalin fuels the Engine, yes. However, Extractions and reconstructions utilise chaos... Well, in easier terms, you could say that it uses the concept of possibilities itself as fuel. Our Extraction range grows when we are able to clearly observe specific possibilities in the infinitely branching mirror worlds. During this period, however... the borders between the mirror realities are entirely shattered."
Faust: "Using the present as our anchoring point, it could be said that our current Extraction range is approximately three years to the past or the future. During Walpurgis Night, however, that range grows to about 10 years or even more."
Long story short, Walpurgisnacht is a special limited event banner in which IDs that are direct fanservice for past PM games rather than based on things we've already seen in Limbus become available - which is why it was very strange when Hell's Chicken gave us IDs based on Jack and Pierre from Ruina, as they would certainly have been Walpurgisnacht IDs if... well if they'd had any better ideas for event IDs at the time probably. The figures Faust cites here about the range of Extraction are also of interest, as the 'three years' statement lets us determine pretty handily that Sinclair is 20 both because 20 is the minimum age for a Fixer license in the City and because that would place his 'divergence point' for IDs back when he was 17, i.e. in his last year of highschool with Kromer and Demian. Walpurgisnacht increasing the range limit to 10 is also worthy of note because... well, we'll put a pin in that.
Faust: "Theoretically speaking, yes. But each Walpurgis Night has its own peculiarities. It will not let us reach into all potential possibilities.
It is so important to me you know that, with the new voice acting update, Don is audibly slurping her own saliva with excitement during this line-read, to the point it honestly sounds like Kim Yea-lim almost broke character at her own bullshit but they used the take anyway.
Don skipped straight past the 'bait used to be believable' stage and right to 'HOLY SHIT IS THAT THE RED MIST!?' It's very endearing because pretty much from launch you'll hear Limbus fans speculating who'll get this or that Colour Fixer ID like they ain't gonna hold off on pulling that trigger as long as humanly possible, and Don embodies that very same manic glee at the possibilities.
Faust: "... that is extremely unlikely. But I will not completely dismiss the possibility."
Faust: "The extended range, I suppose, could be defined by worlds affected by entities that were indispensible to the formation of this current state of the world. An example of that would be the Lobotomy Corporation Headquarters prior to the 'White Nights and Dark Days' incident."
Dante has no context for what Faust is talking about, but with Vergilius' eyes at a level 2 glow (wherein the threat level rises from 'watch yourself' to 'uh-oh') they conclude that these things are of no small amount of significance. The Sinners, too, become unsettled by Faust's conjecture.
Vergilius: "We can conclude that this siren is no cause for any immediate concern, then."
Faust: "No, it isn't. Consider it... a festival that arrives once in a while. For now."
Charon: "Festival. Festive times. Charon is festive too."
Sinclair: "I don't know if I got all that, but... this isn't what we've been waiting for, is it?"
Vergilius: "No. We will continue to wait."
Best to get this out of the way first thing, no fucking around. I went back and forth a lot on whether to bring this up or not due to the risk of a derail and my own worries about errors in my memory, but ultimately I decided it would be cowardly to try and dodge talking about something that will be plainly self-evident come next update. I have no desire to see the incident relitigated in my thread, if you want to do that take it to general - I'm here to do my duty in explaining why the art style is about to radically change for the benefit of those who don't already know.
Project Moon is a small company. The credits for Limbus Company (to be more specific those shown at the end of Canto III which are replicated on MobyGames) are under 80 people long, even including 5 of the HamHamPangPang cafe staff and all the voice actors who are presumably not full-time employees. Of those credits there are five illustration artists (i.e. not responsible for the sprite rigs used for in-combat graphics); Kim Yoonjoong, Kim Donghwan, Yang Hoyeon, Jung Jaehee, and Vellmori. Yoonjoong is the art lead on Limbus and has been with Project Moon on art since Lobcorp (albeit credited with the alternate romanisation of 'Yoonjung', something that briefly made me insane while looking this up) and Donghwan is another carryover, just from Ruina. It can be surmised that these two are the ones responsible for the background art and the character talksprites, as they share the very distinctive blocky, roughly-rendered style of Ruina that stands very much at odds with the story CGs and the Identity uptie art. For these jobs they brought in the artist Vellmori to do the former and presumably the combination of Hoyeon Yang and Jaehee Jung to do the latter (as that is two impressive rendered pieces per Identity of which there's one or two every couple weeks, plus EGO art).
Art became a problem for Project Moon in late June of 2023 because they, in their funnyman hubris, flew too close to the sun by having a parody summer event in their gacha game. Everyone with half a brain knew it was a parody, you could tell just from the preview teaser with the funny upbeat penis music playing as the bus hurtled past a shimmering white-sand beach under a bright blue sky before Melting ominously, and the full trailer only made it more obvious by showing everyone forced to fight off the oncoming tide of carcinisation on the average beach circa 2030. Unfortunately they made their game a gacha game, and a gacha game attracts brainrotted incels like a dog attracts fleas, so shortly after the launch of the Magic Hellbus event a hubbub was raised about the character designs. You see, Molar Boatworks Ishmael committed the crime of being based on Olga's appearance in the Intervallo, so she appears wearing the same wetsuit Olga made her debut in. She wasn't in the ugliest fucking bikini you've ever seen in your life like an F/GO summer servant, and that made the incels angry. Plus, in a one-two punch of the feminism agenda, the event freebie 00 was Molar Boatworks Sinclair patterned off Rain's outfit, and he committed the crime of being absolute dogshit, but more importantly of being a very fuckable young twink wearing a choker and an open shirt.
The incels were furious about this, but the character illustration artists were all men. Fortunately there was a single woman on the team, Vellmori, who they could direct their ire towards. Vellmori of course had zero say in any of that shit, so in the vein of rightwingers everywhere the incels vividly hallucinated reasons to be upset and decided she'd hidden feminist hate symbols in her art based on microscopic details in the way Yi Sang held things during Canto IV, on top of digging up years-old deleted tweets in which she expressed controversial opinions like 'I hate being a woman in society'. They clamoured for her removal so that Limbus could become based, to the point of physically showing up outside the head office demanding to be let in, brandishing charming little 'manifestos' about their delusions. They were ultimately mollified by learning Vellmori had been fired, and parted amicably.
Unfortunately Vellmori had not actually been fired, and everything got a whole lot worse.
This is where it gets murky, because this coincides with the point where Project Moon elected to ignore the English-speaking side of the fanbase entirely in favour of making moves in Korean, which was an insanely bad move because the English-speaking side of the fanbase had eyes and access to Google Translate which they immediately used rather than patiently wait in the dark. This inevitably lead to the introduction of errors and misinformation which became very difficult to untangle, so at the time I stopped playing Limbus and waited to see if Vellmori would ultimately get to keep her job.
Here are the facts: Vellmori never produced any art for the game again after Intervallo II. The artist behind the Wonderlab webcomic, MIMI, nuked it from orbit shortly after the controversy in August (though it was very difficult for me to find more information about her and her specific motivations for doing so). The artist behind the Limbus prequel webcomic Leviathan, Monggeu, dumped the project back in June of 2022 only six months in because the pace Project Moon wanted was grinding them into powder - this resulted in Leviathan turning into a webnovel for its back half, a webnovel that has not been officially translated because the two guys responsible for that were already busy on Limbus Company. In fact make that one guys responsible for that now, because one of them quit in August of 2023.
Vellmori was not a full-time employee of Project Moon, she was an outside contractor. She either resigned or elected not to renew her contract, whether due to pressure from Project Moon or not wishing to be targeted by rabid incels or just wanting to get away from the punishing pace they were setting or a combination of all three. Project Moon claimed they had fired her because the tweets the incels dug up were in breach of contract, and whether that was to try and curry favour and street credit with the incels to make them leave them alone or as a way to try and 'protect' Vellmori by claiming she was duly punished for her transgressions, it was ultimately what we call in the business "a lie". A lie that was such flagrant bullshit it aggroed every labour organisation in a 300 mile radius and made the situation even worse. The fact that it was a lie is why I ultimately resumed playing Limbus Company, but the fact that it was a lie is why I will never give Project Moon the benefit of the doubt when they make another fucky-wucky because they can be just a little bit absolutely braindead and they conduct themselves too much like a big YouTuber who just starts kneejerk Saying Shit when the drama happens instead of shutting up and thinking things through (see: the fucking Ring Pointillist Yi Sang debacle, which is a conversation beyond the purview of this thread, but those who know, know).
Starting from Canto V, all story CGs will now be done by the same artist as the talksprites, Ruina-style. Project Moon also claimed that they would go back and retroactively replace all Vellmori art with the in-house style, but I feel safe in saying that was another one of their trademark Flagrant Lies because it's been a year and a half and as you can plainly see that shit's still in there. It's an incident that makes me very annoyed, because Vellmori's art was stunning and expressive and I can tell you for sure that I just plain don't like the new CGs as much, and we lost that both because of incels and because of Project Moon bumblefucking their way straight into a dumpster because they still haven't outgrown their 'ten guys in a shed' mentality yet.
The controversy ultimately extended Season 2's length by a month, pushing Canto V's launch date into November - this made it a whopping 168 days long, to be surpassed only by Season 4 coming just barely shy of the 200-day mark. It should also be mentioned that they once listed both a Season's start and planned end date on the battlepass screen, which is how we know that Season 2 was meant to end on the 12th of October 2023, in a staggering act of organisational hubris from which they have seemingly learned their lesson. Seasons 3 and 4 appear to have marked a distinct period of the company needing to get its shit together in general behind the scenes, as various more minor mechanical controversies kept popping up on top of the shift away from voiced Intervallos because it had become an interruption in the pipeline delaying every other part of the game, as I previously mentioned when Intervallos first became a thing. Hence, going forward Intervallos will now be unvoiced, and in exchange will be two-to-a-season starting with Intervallo III-1 and Intervallo III-2.
That is, until just recently, when Project Moon made the shockingly sensible decision to start rerunning Intervallo events to give people more shit to do during lulls in the release schedule, and as an added bonus add voice acting to them plus all preceding Minisodes. We just recently had an Intervallo III-1 rerun, which I will say nothing about because of spoilers save for the Very Good Don Noises that came with it, which means that the minisodes I'll be covering now have been voice-acted. This pretty plainly goes to show that they're getting back on top of things, having solved or otherwise ameliorated the issues Even More Voice Acting introduced to the pipeline, and while I will never be shy about criticising Project Moon I'd also like to believe that this is an indication that they've finished getting their shit together and the Volumetric Shit Compressor will remain running for the foreseeable future.
Now, I believe that's all that need be said about the situation. Let's continue with one last appetiser before the main course that is Canto V.
Episode Mini-4: Rooms Past The Backdoor
We open on Dante giving the close-of-business spiel, the Sinners filing away to their rooms to settle in for R&R. The bus team, now busboat team, have it pretty easy these days - despite Dante's assumption that they'd be well underway forging across the open waters of U Corp by now, instead they've been sitting around twiddling their thumbs just off the coast where they started, waiting. Faust in her usual reticence has explained nothing about the situation, but Dante guesses it's some kind of esoteric customs procedure not unlike the checkpoint they had to cross to get into K Corp initially (and indeed they're about due since they crossed over from K Corp to U Corp without stated incident at the start of Intervallo II in the span of a single tunnel).
The Sinners are going a little bit stir-crazy as people like the Sinners are wont to do, but Dante knows that they're all equally exhausted by the endless cavalcade of dramatic and traumatic bullshit that's assailed them since the Prologue, and so "we each elected to enjoy this brief maritime respite in our own ways".
Which Yi Sang does by blowing chunks all over the side, because Canto IV was not the end of his suffering.
Don Quixote: "If thou needest mine assistance..."
Yi Sang: "... As I have repeatedly made myself clear..."
Yi Sang: "I am... quite... alright..."
Don Quixote: "Thy countenance, returning the contents within thy stomach to the Lake with such vigour... sayeth otherwise..."
Dante: <Yi Sang, the day's over. You can go back to your room now...>
On this bus? No way!
Dante: <Seriously, I told you that you could rest in your room if you wanted.>
Yi Sang: "Our fellows must also have their share of suffering... I can not, in good faith, seek comfort only for myself."
Dante: <You're the one with the biggest share of suffering right now...>
Unfortunately it looks like old habits die hard, and Yi Sang's self-harming by neglect all while reasoning that it's actually the only fair thing to do. He's clearly still dealing with his guilt over failing to mend things between Heathcliff and Ishmael, though Dante elects not to turn it into a debate with him right at closing time. Instead they offer him a shoulder and walk him back into the bus, where he shambles into his room to rest. It also bears mentioning, it's quite cute that Don also stayed past closing time to ask if he was alright.
Yi Sang: "I thank you, Dante. Then... until later."
Don Quixote: "Then I shall seek myself respite as well, Manager Esquire!"
Dante: <Yeah, rest well.>
Dante lingers, trying to sneak a peek at Don's room over her shoulder as she enters. They're unable to see much detail (and I assume the mechanics of the Backdoor prevent anyone but the assigned Sinner from just following into their room somehow unless Dante's really too socially awkward to just ask to be let in) but they see enough to know for sure it's different to Yi Sang's. Further proof of the three-to-a-door-in-Sinner-number-order theme, as Yi Sang and Don are #1 and #3 respectively. I should take the opportunity to mention what those numbers are actually based on, as Faust calling Yi Sang 'the first Sinner' in his flashback was a certified What Did She Mean By This moment but on a more immediately obvious read it's because the nationality of each Sinner corresponds with the number of their respective Fixer Association: Hong Lu, Sinner #6, is Chinese, and the Liu (六, or 6) Association is the sixth Association in the City. Yi Sang, Sinner #1, corresponds to the Hana (1 in Korean) Association, Faust to the Zwei (2 in German), even the Devyat mentioned in passing at the very tail end of Intervallo II are '9' in Russian to correspond with Rodion. The most curious links in this particular chain of connections are Gregor as Sinner #13, because there are only meant to be 12 Associations in the City, and Dante, who corresponds to the Dieci (10) Association - and their hat is the constant acquisition and subsequent loss or 'burning' of knowledge to fuel their abilities, a somewhat sus correlation with Dante's lost memories.
And if there's anybody we could ask about Fixers it'd be Don Quixote, so as a treat let's take a peek into her room where Dante couldn't shall we?
Courtesy of limbuscompany.wiki.gg
Look at her playing with her toys on a bright colourful mat on the floor, she's so silly and childlike- hey Don what's with the bloody impaled corpses on the carousel out the window? Miss Don? The Vlad The Impaler imagery is kind of concerning. As is the giant horse-skeleton shadow cast across specifically your wall of funny stickers and posters - look, the shadow completely fades out where the wall meets the floor, like it only exists as a dark shape looming above and around Don while she herself can remain cheerfully oblivious to it.
Also her EGO is named The Blood Of Sancho in Spanish, and while the resemblance is hardly exact the fact it's a bright scarlet double-helix very much reminds me of Evangelion's Lance of Longinus, which would be concerning even if its passive didn't cause her to life-leech on hit vs foes with Bleed.
12 Sinners at 3 to a room makes 4 doors, leaving 2 before the velvet rope marking the end of the safe stretch of the corridor, so presumably Dante gets a room all to themself while Vergilius and Charon share the one opposite. However the strong fisheye lens effect along with the fact that the doors are set in a zigzag pattern across the corridor rather than directly facing each other makes it a little hard to judge, even moreso a moment later as Dante is tempted to stop and glance through a door "immediately to the right" of the velvet rope.
Well hush my mouth, forget 'starting Canto V' this is in the Ruina style so clearly they started with the new art right now.
Due to the strong lightsource to Dante's left, and the way their hand is lingering on the doorframe in a manner that would be an entirely natural pose if they were walking straight ahead then hung a left, I honestly think that at some stage in the process this was meant to be the door to the left of the velvet rope. Going by the CG just above that left door is in fact just barely across the threshold of 'safety', whereas the next door on the right appears to be well beyond the divider. Not that any of this shit really matters, it's just something I noticed now that I'm doing a close read of this stuff.
Anyway, this hallway off to the side of the main corridor is a reference to the old UI. The door on the left there is the Luxcavation door, where you select either XP or Thread battle nodes from the submenu. The door in the middle is the old Mirror Dungeon, specifically the Season 2 variant Mirror of Mirrors. The third and final door is the one to the current Refraction Railway Line, which in this case is Line 2 - Mobius (released mid-September alongside the Uptie 4 update) due to the green strip of paint across the lower half.
Dante is currently peering down this hallway - in fact they duck in and open all three doors a crack to take a peek inside - because they appear to have an unspoken hunch that something is about to change. They couch it in terms of "I've never managed to catch the changes myself, but who knows?", even briefly entertaining the notion of seeing something "worth keeping to myself" (which they guiltily add would be something they should report to Faust), but it's a coincidence too great to ignore that this random spike of curiosity from Dante...
A loud klaxon begins blaring at this very moment.
Narration: Something must've caught wind of my rather mischievous thought.
... just so happens to coincide with an alarm from Mephistopheles that something is afoot. Dante whips around to find the Sinners beginning to emerge from their rooms one by one, drawn by the noise - which of course brings to mind logistical questions of 'what happens if multiple occupants of one room all try to leave at the same time when there's only one door on the outside' but I suspect those don't matter unless used for a gag about Sinners knocking each other's lights out with their bedrooms doors at a later stage. Faust invites Dante to the helm to "observe the disturbance together" and the two depart without a word.
Narration: She fiddled with a few buttons, and shut off the alarm. Incomprehensible, complicated-looking letters began to fill the round screen.
Faust: "Even Faust needs a moment to decipher."
Dante: <Right, right...>
That siren is in fact the same siren that sounds on the top level game menu screen to alert the player to a new content drop. In-universe it accompanied the release of new Mirror Dungeons, Luxcavation stages, and Refraction Railway lines, causing Dante to volunteer that they didn't see anything new a moment ago when they checked the doors. Faust dismisses the possibility that Line 3 would come so soon after Line 2, causing Dante to reminisce momentarily about the formerly-offscreen first appearance of the Railway.
You can tell it's Line 1 because Line 1 was blue the same way Line 2 was green - according to wiki.gg this is because the lines are largely based on Seoul's subway lines, which is kinda funny so I respect it.
Narration: Its appearance somewhat resembled that of Mephistopheles... but it was also patently clear I'd never seen anything like it before. An odd feeling.
Faust: "Well, I recall that you had a rather violent reaction when I entered the train to observe its interiors."
Dante: <Come on, I wasn't the only one that freaked out. Everyone did...>
Faust, being a sigma female, promptly about-faces and walks away from the helm without another word before Dante can even elaborate on their worry that the train could've taken off with Faust on it and left everybody else behind. Dante hurries after her to check that the alarm indeed wasn't signalling the opening of a new door, Faust simply saying that the particular volatility Mephi alerted them about is "not something we can utilise".
Dante: <Right... I thought it was an awkward time for a new door to appear. Too soon, too soon.>
Faust: "The Dungeons and the Railways appeared at 'awkward times' as well, Dante. I recommend that you refrain from settling into a premature conclusion. A new variable may present itself at any moment."
Faust: "... moreover..."
Faust: "If this volatility has triggered an alarm in Mephistopheles' engine, then it naturally follows that a new door has appeared at an indeterminate location down the corridor. This may reveal a space from which one could never return. It is best that we keep track of these incidents."
Dante: <Even Heathcliff won't do anything like that again... Probably.>
Free my man Heathcliff he doesn't deserve this.
With that, Faust recommends Dante go get their rest and heads off for the night. Left alone at the helm Dante makes a token effort to parse the symbols they see.
Narration: Numbers. Unintelligible letters. Drawings and symbols depicting something. I had to shake my clock head after staring at that dizzying sight for a while.
Dante: <I wonder if this is how Yi Sang felt earlier... I'm starting to feel nauseous.>
Narration: I was barely able to hold back the vertigo from setting in.
They beat a hasty retreat, and I am forced to point out how sus it is that attempting to read Mephi's screen rapidly made Dante dizzy and physically ill right after their intuition just so happened to spike right before the siren. Coincidence, or a sign of some deeper connection? Who knows?
Episode Mini-5: The 1st Walpurgis Night
Another klaxon sounds across the bus, rousing the Sinners from their rest.
Thank God for the voice acting update because Gregor genuinely sounds like he went from 'sleeping soundly' to 'edging a heart attack' in 1.5 seconds here.
Narration: It's that alarm again - warning us of a volatility in Mephistopheles. But it was much louder, much more painful than the ones we've heard before. And this time, it wasn't the only thing that assaulted our senses.
Rodion: "Huhh...? We've never had flashing lights like this before, right?"
Don Quixote: "Ooo!! This must be a signal that the long-awaited adventure is finally nigh!!!"
Sinclair: "I-is this... what we've been waiting for this whole time?"
For once, Dante spies confusion in Vergilius' face.
Charon: "Weewoo weewoo. Mephi's blaring and crying. Mephi sick?"
Vergilius: "What is this, Ms. Faust? I wasn't informed about a siren like this before."
Faust pauses to think.
And decides Priority #1 is roasting Heathcliff.
Faust: "It does make infrequent use of the Enkephalin supply gear installed in the engine for fuel, but that is of no negative consequence. Even if it was, whatever issues that may arise can handily be repaired after a proper total disassembly-"
Heathcliff: "That was just a figure of speech! Tsk. So what's this now? Sounds like the bus is about to explode!"
Faust: "To label Mephistopheles as some 'bloody rickety bus' completely disregards the amount of pain and effort Faust dedicated to designing and-"
Heathcliff: "Haah, seriously...?"
Rodion: "Yeah, Heath. Take it back... The bus might actually blow up before she explains anything!"
Heathcliff: "Ugh..."
Yapping at speeds hitherto unseen since Meursault's chicken rap.
Narration: The cabin briefly echoes with his cries, then... a brief silence.
Faust: "Good."
Faust is so fucking petty that she left Vergilius on read for the sake of that bit, I love her.
Faust: "It is quite simple. The Night is here."
Ryoshu: "W.D.Y.M."
Sinclair: "Talk, Or I Snap Your-"
Faust: "Walpurgis Night is here, it seems."
Meursault: "The night is not here. That is very apparent, at least in this coastal area."
Faust: "The... name does not refer to the time of day in which the sun moves beyond our line of sight."
An understated Meursaultment but one I find very endearing regardless. Him genuinely saying "but how is it Walpurgisnacht if the sun is out" and seeming faintly annoyed about yet satisfied with the answer being 'it's not literal' is such a vibe.
Faust launches into some exposition about the ID extraction mechanics and how the possibilities on offer have been steadily expanding over the course of their journey, at which point Heathcliff pulls the brakes and asks about the very same thing I mentioned earlier about Identities being small SD card sized objects (or mahjong tiles as Hong Lu likens them to) which Dante slots into their tablet before battle. In fact it turns out that's how Dante determines who has access to what EGO in-universe too.
This devious bitch, no way that wasn't on purpose.
Heathcliff: "You lookin' to get your head smashed in or what?"
Gregor: "Right, right. Knock it off, you guys. Guide Bud's giving us the evil eye."
Yet through this razzing of Heathcliff for being oblivious, Dante notices Don Quixote wearing a forlorn expression as she watches the conversation in silence.
Dante: <What's wrong, Don Quixote?>
Don Quixote: "Well I..."
Yup. If you were starting to wonder where Ishmael had gone, you noticed a deliberate change in the dynamic - Ishmael is just Not Around right now. She's taking her promise to only be the most exactingly to-the-letter obedient robot possible to heart, and that means she's recused herself from any and all non-critical Sinner interactions. I'm forced to assume that she comes out of her room at times just because all hands have to run 12-hour dayshifts as a matter of course, but it seems she's been keeping to herself to the maximum allowable extent.
Back to the extraction conversation, Faust is talking about there being cases where Dante has drawn Identity Cards from Mephi's engine without spending Lunacy which is, I'm going to be honest, very difficult to parse. She might be talking about the pity system (which as far as I can tell was not in at launch but was added during Season 2), wherein each roll causes you to stock up Ideality, and at 200 Ideality you can simply grab something you want from whatever banner you were rolling on (and leftover Ideality becomes Thread when the banner ends), or she could be talking about exchanging event reward currency for a freebie 00, neither of which are particularly relevant to the phenomenon currently taking place but if I were to hazard a guess I'd say it's Ideality. EDIT: Thank you Birthday, Faust was probably referring to the Molar Office Fixer IDs for Outis and Yi Sang which were handed out for free around the time of this minisode back in 2023 as a login event, just like how Blade Lineage Yi Sang was handed out for completely free during the launch period.
The important part is what she says next.
Faust: "Enkephalin fuels the Engine, yes. However, Extractions and reconstructions utilise chaos... Well, in easier terms, you could say that it uses the concept of possibilities itself as fuel. Our Extraction range grows when we are able to clearly observe specific possibilities in the infinitely branching mirror worlds. During this period, however... the borders between the mirror realities are entirely shattered."
Faust: "Using the present as our anchoring point, it could be said that our current Extraction range is approximately three years to the past or the future. During Walpurgis Night, however, that range grows to about 10 years or even more."
Long story short, Walpurgisnacht is a special limited event banner in which IDs that are direct fanservice for past PM games rather than based on things we've already seen in Limbus become available - which is why it was very strange when Hell's Chicken gave us IDs based on Jack and Pierre from Ruina, as they would certainly have been Walpurgisnacht IDs if... well if they'd had any better ideas for event IDs at the time probably. The figures Faust cites here about the range of Extraction are also of interest, as the 'three years' statement lets us determine pretty handily that Sinclair is 20 both because 20 is the minimum age for a Fixer license in the City and because that would place his 'divergence point' for IDs back when he was 17, i.e. in his last year of highschool with Kromer and Demian. Walpurgisnacht increasing the range limit to 10 is also worthy of note because... well, we'll put a pin in that.
Faust: "Theoretically speaking, yes. But each Walpurgis Night has its own peculiarities. It will not let us reach into all potential possibilities.
It is so important to me you know that, with the new voice acting update, Don is audibly slurping her own saliva with excitement during this line-read, to the point it honestly sounds like Kim Yea-lim almost broke character at her own bullshit but they used the take anyway.
Don skipped straight past the 'bait used to be believable' stage and right to 'HOLY SHIT IS THAT THE RED MIST!?' It's very endearing because pretty much from launch you'll hear Limbus fans speculating who'll get this or that Colour Fixer ID like they ain't gonna hold off on pulling that trigger as long as humanly possible, and Don embodies that very same manic glee at the possibilities.
Faust: "... that is extremely unlikely. But I will not completely dismiss the possibility."
Faust: "The extended range, I suppose, could be defined by worlds affected by entities that were indispensible to the formation of this current state of the world. An example of that would be the Lobotomy Corporation Headquarters prior to the 'White Nights and Dark Days' incident."
Dante has no context for what Faust is talking about, but with Vergilius' eyes at a level 2 glow (wherein the threat level rises from 'watch yourself' to 'uh-oh') they conclude that these things are of no small amount of significance. The Sinners, too, become unsettled by Faust's conjecture.
Vergilius: "We can conclude that this siren is no cause for any immediate concern, then."
Faust: "No, it isn't. Consider it... a festival that arrives once in a while. For now."
Charon: "Festival. Festive times. Charon is festive too."
Sinclair: "I don't know if I got all that, but... this isn't what we've been waiting for, is it?"
Vergilius: "No. We will continue to wait."
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ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
The tension slowly fizzles out as all involve realise that the Walpurgisnacht alarm isn't anything to be concerned about, Vergilius curtly ordering Dante to go extract something already so the lights stop flashing.
She hates lame fights and grinding, what a real one.
Hong Lu: "Still, this leisureliness is a very rare opportunity, isn't it~?"
Yi Sang: "Blessed be the patient ones, or so it is said."
The gang all return to their seats or step out on deck to look at the water - and man it must be a relief that the busboat transformation also gave them more physical space to stretch their legs on, the bus is decently big but just wait until you find out how long they've got left until Canto V.
Well, all of them save Outis.
Dante: <Huh?
Outis: "About what that mad scientist said. 'For now'... there has to be more to that statement. Should I investigate this matter further?"
Narration: Outis was right... While Faust did tell us to consider this nothing more than a festival that arrives once in a while... she definitely knew more than what she was letting on.
Narration: But if Faust speaks of something in her characteristically cryptic manner... it means she'll never tell us until she wants to.
Outis: "Well, it does bother me a little... but right now, we don't have a lot of options. Let's just put a pin in it for now."
While Walpurgisnacht is ultimately just a recurring banner event to try and make the playerbase blow all their Lunacy on noticably stronger time-limited IDs and EGO, Outis isn't wrong that there's more in store that Faust isn't telling. While I won't reveal any details, we haven't seen the last of these Walpurgisnacht-focused minisodes, and they've been growing decently elaborate compared to how it started. Which is why, ultimately, I feel I should give the rundown on each Walpurgisnacht drop as they come in the course of this thread.
SPOILER WARNING: This is a softer spoiler warning than the Ruina one because Lobotomy Corporation is A) completely unlike Ruina or Limbus in playstyle and B) hard as fucking balls so expecting people to stop and play it for fear of being spoiled feels like a less reasonable ask. Regardless, the 000 ID uptie story very blatantly alludes to certain reveals in the story that make it effectively impossible for me to dance around, so for the sake of the reading experience I simply won't. This does not mean all of LobCorp is free game, and in particular "Miss Carmen" as Dongrang addressed her in the previous Canto will wait for a later date. If you know, you know when I probably mean.
Every subsequent Walpurgisnacht has focused on either Lobotomy Corporation or Library of Ruina in an A-B-A-B pattern, something I might as well bring up right now so that I can mention how the first Walpurgisnacht is the outlier for having Identities from both. But first I want to look at an elephant in the room that I already alluded to - That One EGO That Completely Changed How Everyone Perceives Any Future Meursault ID Or TETH-Rank Meursault EGO Ever.
Regret is an insane EGO. The Awakening and Corrosion are fine, better than fine even, 20+10 is a strong roll for a TETH EGO and its sin costs are pretty manageable for a lot of possible Meursault teams. In particular its Awakening is (or rather, was at this stage of the game) one of the few ways to actually deal damage with Tremor, as it inflicts a Count-free Tremor Burst on hit but if the target has no unbroken Stagger Thresholds left to raise it simply converts the total outgoing stagger into Wrath damage. But take a look at that passive.
Coin Power is insane, it's one of the most valuable buffs in the game due to how its effectiveness only multiplies when combined with multi-coin attacks (the best kind of attacks). 2 Coin Power is especially insane, as it ensures the -1 Base Power drawback will be balanced out even on single-coin skills, and quickly spirals out of control if you pair it with a Meursault ID that throws 3 or even 4-coin skills. LCB Meursault is bad like pretty much all LCB IDs are bad but the fact a single EGO can just add +8 to the final power potential of his skill 3 (then -1 base power of course), taking it from a ceiling of 8 (12 at U4) to 15 (19 at U4) is nutty. In fact it's even funnier than that, because check the second clause of that passive - at 4 Speed or lower, Meursault gains 1 Blunt Power Up (likely based on the Chained Wrath page in Ruina that raises the power of all Blunt dice a librarian uses in exchange for locking their Speed to 1 for the rest of the reception). A lot of Meursault IDs are Blunt-based, and a lot of Meursault IDs are slow as fuck. You can also pair this with Meursault's Capote, whose passive gives him +1 Base Power when targeted by multiple enemy skills, and since a lot of his IDs are also tanks...
Yeah this EGO is so fucking good that pretty much the only downside to it is that the passive explicitly only offers this insane buff to his leftmost skill, meaning once he gains more than one action slot for any reason the benefit drops off. It's so good that you really gotta ask yourself if the alternative (two alternatives as of about 9 months ago) is worth having something that isn't Regret slotted. Which isn't to say it's impossible! It's not a god-EGO, for certain IDs you'll be pushing shit uphill to get the most use out of it, and in at least one team comp I can indeed see reasons not to use it, but it's still one of those options that's just so immediately useful it warps any kind of discussion around it in its favour.
Now, let's take a look at the ID stories shall we? Why don't we start with... Hook Office Hong Lu.
You can tell he's from Ruina because of the golden pages fluttering about at the margins of the ID art. You can also tell he's a Walp ID because of the green frequency waves around the borders.
Hong Lu: "Mm, mm~ The air smells as pleasant as always tonight. It's musty and hazy. Now that's the Backstreets I know and love."
Narrator: "The child pulled his mask down and breathed in a lungful of air. The stench of slightly rotten trash, the exhaust fume smell of an unknown origin. The Backstreets reeks with a smell not unlike burning incense of stubborn, industrial dust. The child seems to love it, though."
Narrator: "It was not so long ago when all this child ever knew was the high-brow, lavish aroma of his affluent home. Maybe that's why he enjoyed the smell that most denizens of the City would gag at. He said it reminds him of... 'the common people'."
Ryoshu: "Y.D.Y."
Meursault: "I cannot agree with that statement, but I understand your sentiment behind it."
Narrator: "The child was flanked by two other children. One wore a mask and hid her face under the hood of her parka. The other wore a mask that covered his entire face. They've been roaming and causing trouble in the Backstreets together for the last few years."
Hong Lu: "Sure! Well~ We don't have to agree on everything, right? As long as we can agree on one thing."
Hong Lu: "That we all love ripping people to pieces."
Ryoshu: "Watch your words. Fixers aren't allowed to kill for no reason. Don't want anyone listening and snitching on us to the Rep."
Meursault: "There are nothing but rats in a 500-metre radius. No one is here to listen. And if anyone does listen, we'll tear them apart as well."
Hong Lu: "Right? Why should we gag ourselves? It's gotta be so frustrating, living like that~"
Hong Lu: "Also, Ryoshu! Didn't you have a lot of fun yesterday, hmm? And thanks to you, we ended up killing way more people than intended."
Meursault: "Yes. Which led to unscheduled muscle pain and lack of payment for our extra kills. It was inefficient."
Ryoshu: "... it was a rare opportunity. It's hard to come by material consistent enough to be in the same exhibition... I'll consider this incident sorry."
Hong Lu: "Was that even an apology? ... Ha ha."
Narrator: "The child shrugged and let go of the discussion. There was no point in dragging it on. It wasn't going to change anything, anyway. Besides, he also had fun yesterday. He certainly wasn't the one to talk."
Hong Lu: "Well, if it's all the same to you... I think I enjoy getting paid a consistent rate for killing people."
Hong Lu: "Who would've thunk that people like us, people from a killer Syndicate, would be working for an Office? Business cards and all."
Ryoshu: "S.O.R. Picking up Backstreets dogs like us... now that's one Strange Office Rep."
Meursault: "This is our niche. There are as many Offices as there are Syndicates; it is a reasonable choice for a businessman to prioritise a smaller niche in an over-saturated market."
Hong Lu: "Hm... But I have a feeling that this office won't last too long."
Hong Lu: "We can tear people up into pretty little straps and hang them up all day... but it's not like we're leaving our business cards behind. There's no way to get the Office's name out there."
Ryoshu: "I.A. This canvas is not nearly good enough for real, proper art."
Hong Lu: "This office isn't going to get any new clientele beyond fledgeling Syndicates or other poor people who want to hire us for petty scare jobs."
Meursault: "Will you propose an alternative, then?"
Hong Lu: "Hm? Why would I?"
Narrator: "The child looked at the other innocently and cocked his head. It was as though he didn't understand where the question was coming from."
Hong Lu: "Well... Are we ever going to build a real resume to rise through the Fixer ranks? Or are we going to suck up to the Rep to get him to recognise us? No, we're just doing some temp work. When there's nothing more to get out of this Office, we'll leave and saunter back to the Backstreets."
Meursault: "That is also a reasonable suggestion."
Narrator: "The child shrugged affirmatively. So did the bionic weapon on his shoulder."
Ryoshu: "That weapon. It's from the Union Co. Workshop, isn't it?"
Hong Lu: "Oh, yeah! It's cheap and decently handy. How's that? couldn't have gotten this without a stable income~"
Ryoshu: "That Workshop is filled with amateurs. They pick up their meat from random piles of corpses to make their weapons. There's no refinement to them, only a facade of it."
Hong Lu: "Well, that's why they're cheap, and that's why I like them... Though using these really drains my energy. I'm hungry all the time."
Meursault: "That is an insignificant problem. Simply take more work, increase your earnings, and consume more calories."
I'm sorry I gotta stop here to underscore this second patented Meursaultment: "just work more hours and buy more food 4head" is such a funny response and one liable to get the other person to maul you like a kodiak bear if you aren't also 6'4 in all directions like Meursault.
Ryoshu: "Agreed. Let's tear it up some more."
Narrator: "The three children giggled, as though a funny thought had crossed their minds. They were confident, on top of the world - nothing could possibly stand in their way. Or so they thought, at least."
Meursault: "Incoming contact. It's from the Representative."
Hong Lu: "Oh! New work?"
Meursault: "Precisely. It appears that our next job is... at some Library."
Hong Lu: "Nice. Let's hurry there."
Narrator: "The children leisurely strolled through the Backstreets. Where will these children go?"
Narrator: "... well, there is no way to know for now."
And so the Uptie story ends on the gang heading to the Library for their fateful reception. Hongler is patterned after the ace Fixer of the Hook Office, Taein, while Ryoshu and Meursault are Naoki and McCullin respectively. They're all pretty much identical to their inspirations in their designs, save the red glow from the near eyehole of Meursault's mask that McCullin's talksprite lacks and what appears to be a prosthetic left hand on Taein that Hong Lu - who only takes his hands out of his pockets for his Evade sprite - appears to have replaced or covered up with an ordinary black glove. Just like Taein, Hongler fights exclusively with his shoulder-mounted armblades, and despite being a mere 00 he's dynamite for Bleed, especially at U4 or with some kind of Haste support. He inflicts plenty of Bleed but more importantly Bleed Count, with plenty of powerful conditionals triggering based on either the absolute value of his speed or on relative speed vs his target. His s3 even comes with a plain damage conditional scaling with how injured the target already is - 0.5% bonus damage per 1% missing hp - which sounds neat but not gamechanging until you realise that the Parts of an Abnormality are treated like their own entity, meaning a destroyed-but-not-severed Part is technically at 0% HP, thus causing him to deal 1.5x damage on top of all other modifiers. Check it, he's even got an SP heal like so many other Hong Lu IDs, the first coin regenerating SP based on the target's Bleed on heads-hit to boost his odds of hitting heads on the rest too.
It's very interesting, when I covered Tingtang Hongler's uptie story earlier in this thread I was mostly just confused and came away feeling like I'd wasted my time. With this one, twice may be a coincidence but two points make a line, and that line says 'maybe Hongler is secretly absolutely feral and only needs time away from his family to go absolutely apeshitt'. We know this is a particularly remote possibility for him due to its nature as a Walp ID, but more importantly he makes absolutely zero mention of his family while also never alluding to having access to more money than what he can earn with his own work. Not so much as a whiff of 'haha my grandmother recommended I join the Smelly Murder Hobo Office to broaden my horizons~', bro is just built like this in this world. I feel like I'm being edged by everything I read about Hongler, new or old, knowing that Canto VIII is looming in the middle distance.
Now, remember when I made a note of what Faust said with regards to the Extraction range expanding to about 10 years? Well, Lobotomy Corporation took place in a timeloop, where any of the player's failed attempts to clear all 50 days of the game and subsequent resetting were also canon, and while millions of years passed within the bubble at Lobcorp HQ on the outside roughly 10 passed between the beginning of the plan to the White Nights and Dark Days. All this to say that Lobotomy Corp IDs are only extractable during Walpurgisnacht because that's the only time Mephi can reach far enough into the past for the Sinners to even get hired there before it turns into a completely closed system and then explodes. But who better to kick us off than...
Faust: "Initiating Voice Log."
Faust: "This is Control Team Captain Agent Faust. Logging today's Work records. My current location is... the Lobotomy Corporation Headquarters. Upper Layer, Control Team Department. It has been 9 days since the Manager's first day at work. 3 days have passed since the Information Team Department opened. The Clerks are almost all here... It is quite busy. This voice log will resume when Management Work begins. Pausing the recording."
Faust: "... Resuming Voice Log. I am... currently headed to educate our new hires. Also, the Manager has requested that I be assigned to manage the new Abnormality we received yesterday. It appears that the personnel newly deployed to the Control Team has expired. It seems that we've hired a new employee..."
Faust: "Oh, excuse me..." shuffling noises
Faust: "Hello, Jacob. What is it? You are hesitating outside the containment unit."
Jacob (Level 1 Agent): "Ah, Team Captain Faust... I-It's my first assignment, and I'm... a bit scared..."
Faust: "There is no cause for concern, Jacob. The Abnormality assigned to you is likely to be the safest Abnormality here."
Jacob: "But... Its name here, look... It's really intimidating..."
Jacob: "One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds... Team Captain! W-what happens if I get unlucky and the thing decides to commit that one Sin against me? I-I don't... I still haven't..."
Faust: "Relax. That is not how this Abnormality behaves. Peruse the Abnormality Details, and conduct Insight or Attachment Works. And nothing will happen."
Jacob: "R-really...?"
Faust: "Faust does not lie."
Pausing the uptie story briefly to look into the camera like I'm on The Office.
Jacob: "O-okay. Thank you, Team Captain."
Faust: "... We are running somewhat behind schedule. Jacob is one of the newest hires assigned to the Control Team. It appears he was unnecessarily intimidated by a brief description of the Abnormality. I suppose this is a part of a Team Captain's job. I am certain that the Manager will be understanding. Then... I will continue this recording once I arrive at the containment unit."
Faust: "Testing, testing. Resuming Voice Log. My arrival was delayed beyond my initial predictions... I had a run-in with Ms. Malkuth, and had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with her. She inquired about the Work we had planned for the day, so I made an impromptu report. While it was unexpected that she wanted to know the expected completion time down to the seconds, I believe that records were helpful in giving her a satisfactory answer. She is a Sephirah, after all. She is responsible for an entire department. Her demands are not entirely unreasonable."
Faust: "Moving on... This is the containment unit of T-01-54, also known as the Forsaken Murderer. According to the prior records... as long as the Work results are good, there shouldn't be any difficulties with managing this Abnormality. Hmm..." sounds of flipping through papers "Work records show that the employee previously assigned to this Abnormality conducted Repression Works."
Faust: "... which resulted in the overproduction of NE-Box. The Abnormality's head transformed into something akin to a metallic substance, which it used to crush the employee to death... Hm. Not many would understand the process by which a person's head transforms from flesh to metal. But that ineffability is simply the nature of Abnormalities. This record at least informed me that avoiding Repression Work on this Abnormality would be preferable."
Faust: "Even if somthing were to happen... I have an EGO Suit resistant against RED damage, so I foresee little trouble ahead. I will continue this documentation once the Work is complete."
Quick sidebar about what the hell she meant by 'red damage' - before Ruina swapped to the Slash/Pierce/Blunt multiplier system and Limbus added sin affinity, Lobcorp only had four types of damage. These were RED (HP damage aka purely physical trauma), WHITE (SP damage aka purely mental damage), BLACK (both HP and SP, aka simultaneous physical and mental attack, ignores RED or WHITE damage resistances) and PALE (damages based on human target's max health aka direct soul-damage). These damage typings are based on, what else, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: most people probably know that Death rides a pale horse, but fewer know that Pestilence rides a white one, War a red one and Famine black. This information may be a surprise tool to help us later so try to keep it in mind, but for now all you need to know is that Forsaken Murderer can only deal pure blunt-force trauma if it gets pissed off and Faust's EGO Suit will protect her from that.
Faust: "... this is Faust. The Work was successful. The Abnormality was observed muttering something to itself. It shuddered with anxiety and refused to look away from the floor. A proper communication was deemed difficult. It looked rather emaciated, so I attempted to perform Instinct Work by providing it food items that humans finds useful. The results are encouraging. I will record that Instinct Work is effective for this Abnormality."
Faust: "But... I have not observed any signs of its head turning into metal, nor am I any closer to learning the mechanics behind that phenomenon. Considering this EGO weapon was extracted from the Abnormality in question, it seems evident that the Abnormality's characteristics are at least partially carried over to the shape and particularities of the EGO weapon."
Suddenly, an alarm rings out throughout the facility.
Faust: "Ah, the siren..."
Announcement: [WARNING. ORDEAL OF GREEN DAWN ALERT. SUPPRESSION PERSONNEL FROM ALL DEPARTMENTS MUST IMMEDIATELY ASSEMBLE AT THE BOTTOM RIGHT ELEVATOR OF THE UPPER LAYER.]
Faust: "The Manager's orders have arrived via the devices... it is time for the Ordeals already, then."
Faust: "I must go and assist them in Suppressing this Ordeal."
Faust: "I am not particularly concerned. Maybe this Ordeal will be Suppressed before Faust even gets there. The manager does not yet know... but the Ordeal of Green Dawn is quite insignificant compared to what is to come."
Faust: "... Hm, no. I must hold my tongue, lest I risk confusing any other individual who will be listening to this recording."
Faust: "Faust is... determined to struggle, to survive the remaining 41 days of Work."
Faust: "And I will leave it at that."
Faust: "Well then... Faust, ending the Voice Log."
You see what I mean? She already knows about the Ordeals (randomised events that trigger throughout the day at Lobcorp after a certain point that force you to get in fights all the time as well as trying to keep Abnos from breaching), enough to consider the Green Dawn to be child's play in comparison to all the rest, she already knows exactly how many days she has left to survive, and she even stops herself from saying more in case her voice memo causes any unforeseen problems. Faust is sus as hell but the idea of her running around in Lobcorp like she's already on NG+ (or looking at a walkthrough in another tab) only makes her even more sus.
Now, as is probably quite obvious Regret Faust is based on the eponymous EGO Suit and weapon derived from the Forsaken Murderer. She was one of the first real Hopium IDs for Tremor enjoyers - while her numbers aren't amazing she's a self-Tremor ID who can quickly gain Count using her s1 (even on Clash Lose) or counter and subsequently use that to gain extra ATK Weight on her s2 and s3. On her s2 it's only 1 extra ATK Weight which isn't even enough to hit an extra Part on a lot of Abnos, but it's fine because she inflicts Plus Coin Drop with it and that's pretty much the God Debuff on anything that's not flipping reverse-coins at you. More important is her s3, which can get up to 3 ATK Weight and builds on the mechanic that Molar Office Fixer Outis first introduced of dealing bonus aspected damage on Tremor Burst based on the stagger damage - albeit Outis does it as a combat passive while Faust does it solely with her s3. 30% stagger damage dealt as Wrath damage across up to three targets, three times, all for only 3 Tremor Count? She's dynamite with decent setup, and the best part is Plus Coin Drop is so good you'll even want her for single-Part bosses like humans. She's never left my Tremor team since I got her, and boy I can't wait until I can talk about the very Funny EGO she got to support said Tremor team last year.
And with that, all the housekeeping is done and dusted. Let's wave goodbye to Canto IV, Intervallo II and all its sundry trappings as land disappears over the horizon, and set sail for Canto V!
She hates lame fights and grinding, what a real one.
Hong Lu: "Still, this leisureliness is a very rare opportunity, isn't it~?"
Yi Sang: "Blessed be the patient ones, or so it is said."
The gang all return to their seats or step out on deck to look at the water - and man it must be a relief that the busboat transformation also gave them more physical space to stretch their legs on, the bus is decently big but just wait until you find out how long they've got left until Canto V.
Well, all of them save Outis.
Dante: <Huh?
Outis: "About what that mad scientist said. 'For now'... there has to be more to that statement. Should I investigate this matter further?"
Narration: Outis was right... While Faust did tell us to consider this nothing more than a festival that arrives once in a while... she definitely knew more than what she was letting on.
Narration: But if Faust speaks of something in her characteristically cryptic manner... it means she'll never tell us until she wants to.
Outis: "Well, it does bother me a little... but right now, we don't have a lot of options. Let's just put a pin in it for now."
While Walpurgisnacht is ultimately just a recurring banner event to try and make the playerbase blow all their Lunacy on noticably stronger time-limited IDs and EGO, Outis isn't wrong that there's more in store that Faust isn't telling. While I won't reveal any details, we haven't seen the last of these Walpurgisnacht-focused minisodes, and they've been growing decently elaborate compared to how it started. Which is why, ultimately, I feel I should give the rundown on each Walpurgisnacht drop as they come in the course of this thread.
SPOILER WARNING: This is a softer spoiler warning than the Ruina one because Lobotomy Corporation is A) completely unlike Ruina or Limbus in playstyle and B) hard as fucking balls so expecting people to stop and play it for fear of being spoiled feels like a less reasonable ask. Regardless, the 000 ID uptie story very blatantly alludes to certain reveals in the story that make it effectively impossible for me to dance around, so for the sake of the reading experience I simply won't. This does not mean all of LobCorp is free game, and in particular "Miss Carmen" as Dongrang addressed her in the previous Canto will wait for a later date. If you know, you know when I probably mean.
Every subsequent Walpurgisnacht has focused on either Lobotomy Corporation or Library of Ruina in an A-B-A-B pattern, something I might as well bring up right now so that I can mention how the first Walpurgisnacht is the outlier for having Identities from both. But first I want to look at an elephant in the room that I already alluded to - That One EGO That Completely Changed How Everyone Perceives Any Future Meursault ID Or TETH-Rank Meursault EGO Ever.
Regret is an insane EGO. The Awakening and Corrosion are fine, better than fine even, 20+10 is a strong roll for a TETH EGO and its sin costs are pretty manageable for a lot of possible Meursault teams. In particular its Awakening is (or rather, was at this stage of the game) one of the few ways to actually deal damage with Tremor, as it inflicts a Count-free Tremor Burst on hit but if the target has no unbroken Stagger Thresholds left to raise it simply converts the total outgoing stagger into Wrath damage. But take a look at that passive.
Coin Power is insane, it's one of the most valuable buffs in the game due to how its effectiveness only multiplies when combined with multi-coin attacks (the best kind of attacks). 2 Coin Power is especially insane, as it ensures the -1 Base Power drawback will be balanced out even on single-coin skills, and quickly spirals out of control if you pair it with a Meursault ID that throws 3 or even 4-coin skills. LCB Meursault is bad like pretty much all LCB IDs are bad but the fact a single EGO can just add +8 to the final power potential of his skill 3 (then -1 base power of course), taking it from a ceiling of 8 (12 at U4) to 15 (19 at U4) is nutty. In fact it's even funnier than that, because check the second clause of that passive - at 4 Speed or lower, Meursault gains 1 Blunt Power Up (likely based on the Chained Wrath page in Ruina that raises the power of all Blunt dice a librarian uses in exchange for locking their Speed to 1 for the rest of the reception). A lot of Meursault IDs are Blunt-based, and a lot of Meursault IDs are slow as fuck. You can also pair this with Meursault's Capote, whose passive gives him +1 Base Power when targeted by multiple enemy skills, and since a lot of his IDs are also tanks...
Yeah this EGO is so fucking good that pretty much the only downside to it is that the passive explicitly only offers this insane buff to his leftmost skill, meaning once he gains more than one action slot for any reason the benefit drops off. It's so good that you really gotta ask yourself if the alternative (two alternatives as of about 9 months ago) is worth having something that isn't Regret slotted. Which isn't to say it's impossible! It's not a god-EGO, for certain IDs you'll be pushing shit uphill to get the most use out of it, and in at least one team comp I can indeed see reasons not to use it, but it's still one of those options that's just so immediately useful it warps any kind of discussion around it in its favour.
Now, let's take a look at the ID stories shall we? Why don't we start with... Hook Office Hong Lu.
You can tell he's from Ruina because of the golden pages fluttering about at the margins of the ID art. You can also tell he's a Walp ID because of the green frequency waves around the borders.
Hong Lu: "Mm, mm~ The air smells as pleasant as always tonight. It's musty and hazy. Now that's the Backstreets I know and love."
Narrator: "The child pulled his mask down and breathed in a lungful of air. The stench of slightly rotten trash, the exhaust fume smell of an unknown origin. The Backstreets reeks with a smell not unlike burning incense of stubborn, industrial dust. The child seems to love it, though."
Narrator: "It was not so long ago when all this child ever knew was the high-brow, lavish aroma of his affluent home. Maybe that's why he enjoyed the smell that most denizens of the City would gag at. He said it reminds him of... 'the common people'."
Ryoshu: "Y.D.Y."
Meursault: "I cannot agree with that statement, but I understand your sentiment behind it."
Narrator: "The child was flanked by two other children. One wore a mask and hid her face under the hood of her parka. The other wore a mask that covered his entire face. They've been roaming and causing trouble in the Backstreets together for the last few years."
Hong Lu: "Sure! Well~ We don't have to agree on everything, right? As long as we can agree on one thing."
Hong Lu: "That we all love ripping people to pieces."
Ryoshu: "Watch your words. Fixers aren't allowed to kill for no reason. Don't want anyone listening and snitching on us to the Rep."
Meursault: "There are nothing but rats in a 500-metre radius. No one is here to listen. And if anyone does listen, we'll tear them apart as well."
Hong Lu: "Right? Why should we gag ourselves? It's gotta be so frustrating, living like that~"
Hong Lu: "Also, Ryoshu! Didn't you have a lot of fun yesterday, hmm? And thanks to you, we ended up killing way more people than intended."
Meursault: "Yes. Which led to unscheduled muscle pain and lack of payment for our extra kills. It was inefficient."
Ryoshu: "... it was a rare opportunity. It's hard to come by material consistent enough to be in the same exhibition... I'll consider this incident sorry."
Hong Lu: "Was that even an apology? ... Ha ha."
Narrator: "The child shrugged and let go of the discussion. There was no point in dragging it on. It wasn't going to change anything, anyway. Besides, he also had fun yesterday. He certainly wasn't the one to talk."
Hong Lu: "Well, if it's all the same to you... I think I enjoy getting paid a consistent rate for killing people."
Hong Lu: "Who would've thunk that people like us, people from a killer Syndicate, would be working for an Office? Business cards and all."
Ryoshu: "S.O.R. Picking up Backstreets dogs like us... now that's one Strange Office Rep."
Meursault: "This is our niche. There are as many Offices as there are Syndicates; it is a reasonable choice for a businessman to prioritise a smaller niche in an over-saturated market."
Hong Lu: "Hm... But I have a feeling that this office won't last too long."
Hong Lu: "We can tear people up into pretty little straps and hang them up all day... but it's not like we're leaving our business cards behind. There's no way to get the Office's name out there."
Ryoshu: "I.A. This canvas is not nearly good enough for real, proper art."
Hong Lu: "This office isn't going to get any new clientele beyond fledgeling Syndicates or other poor people who want to hire us for petty scare jobs."
Meursault: "Will you propose an alternative, then?"
Hong Lu: "Hm? Why would I?"
Narrator: "The child looked at the other innocently and cocked his head. It was as though he didn't understand where the question was coming from."
Hong Lu: "Well... Are we ever going to build a real resume to rise through the Fixer ranks? Or are we going to suck up to the Rep to get him to recognise us? No, we're just doing some temp work. When there's nothing more to get out of this Office, we'll leave and saunter back to the Backstreets."
Meursault: "That is also a reasonable suggestion."
Narrator: "The child shrugged affirmatively. So did the bionic weapon on his shoulder."
Ryoshu: "That weapon. It's from the Union Co. Workshop, isn't it?"
Hong Lu: "Oh, yeah! It's cheap and decently handy. How's that? couldn't have gotten this without a stable income~"
Ryoshu: "That Workshop is filled with amateurs. They pick up their meat from random piles of corpses to make their weapons. There's no refinement to them, only a facade of it."
Hong Lu: "Well, that's why they're cheap, and that's why I like them... Though using these really drains my energy. I'm hungry all the time."
Meursault: "That is an insignificant problem. Simply take more work, increase your earnings, and consume more calories."
I'm sorry I gotta stop here to underscore this second patented Meursaultment: "just work more hours and buy more food 4head" is such a funny response and one liable to get the other person to maul you like a kodiak bear if you aren't also 6'4 in all directions like Meursault.
Ryoshu: "Agreed. Let's tear it up some more."
Narrator: "The three children giggled, as though a funny thought had crossed their minds. They were confident, on top of the world - nothing could possibly stand in their way. Or so they thought, at least."
Meursault: "Incoming contact. It's from the Representative."
Hong Lu: "Oh! New work?"
Meursault: "Precisely. It appears that our next job is... at some Library."
Hong Lu: "Nice. Let's hurry there."
Narrator: "The children leisurely strolled through the Backstreets. Where will these children go?"
Narrator: "... well, there is no way to know for now."
And so the Uptie story ends on the gang heading to the Library for their fateful reception. Hongler is patterned after the ace Fixer of the Hook Office, Taein, while Ryoshu and Meursault are Naoki and McCullin respectively. They're all pretty much identical to their inspirations in their designs, save the red glow from the near eyehole of Meursault's mask that McCullin's talksprite lacks and what appears to be a prosthetic left hand on Taein that Hong Lu - who only takes his hands out of his pockets for his Evade sprite - appears to have replaced or covered up with an ordinary black glove. Just like Taein, Hongler fights exclusively with his shoulder-mounted armblades, and despite being a mere 00 he's dynamite for Bleed, especially at U4 or with some kind of Haste support. He inflicts plenty of Bleed but more importantly Bleed Count, with plenty of powerful conditionals triggering based on either the absolute value of his speed or on relative speed vs his target. His s3 even comes with a plain damage conditional scaling with how injured the target already is - 0.5% bonus damage per 1% missing hp - which sounds neat but not gamechanging until you realise that the Parts of an Abnormality are treated like their own entity, meaning a destroyed-but-not-severed Part is technically at 0% HP, thus causing him to deal 1.5x damage on top of all other modifiers. Check it, he's even got an SP heal like so many other Hong Lu IDs, the first coin regenerating SP based on the target's Bleed on heads-hit to boost his odds of hitting heads on the rest too.
It's very interesting, when I covered Tingtang Hongler's uptie story earlier in this thread I was mostly just confused and came away feeling like I'd wasted my time. With this one, twice may be a coincidence but two points make a line, and that line says 'maybe Hongler is secretly absolutely feral and only needs time away from his family to go absolutely apeshitt'. We know this is a particularly remote possibility for him due to its nature as a Walp ID, but more importantly he makes absolutely zero mention of his family while also never alluding to having access to more money than what he can earn with his own work. Not so much as a whiff of 'haha my grandmother recommended I join the Smelly Murder Hobo Office to broaden my horizons~', bro is just built like this in this world. I feel like I'm being edged by everything I read about Hongler, new or old, knowing that Canto VIII is looming in the middle distance.
Now, remember when I made a note of what Faust said with regards to the Extraction range expanding to about 10 years? Well, Lobotomy Corporation took place in a timeloop, where any of the player's failed attempts to clear all 50 days of the game and subsequent resetting were also canon, and while millions of years passed within the bubble at Lobcorp HQ on the outside roughly 10 passed between the beginning of the plan to the White Nights and Dark Days. All this to say that Lobotomy Corp IDs are only extractable during Walpurgisnacht because that's the only time Mephi can reach far enough into the past for the Sinners to even get hired there before it turns into a completely closed system and then explodes. But who better to kick us off than...
Faust: "Initiating Voice Log."
Faust: "This is Control Team Captain Agent Faust. Logging today's Work records. My current location is... the Lobotomy Corporation Headquarters. Upper Layer, Control Team Department. It has been 9 days since the Manager's first day at work. 3 days have passed since the Information Team Department opened. The Clerks are almost all here... It is quite busy. This voice log will resume when Management Work begins. Pausing the recording."
Faust: "... Resuming Voice Log. I am... currently headed to educate our new hires. Also, the Manager has requested that I be assigned to manage the new Abnormality we received yesterday. It appears that the personnel newly deployed to the Control Team has expired. It seems that we've hired a new employee..."
Faust: "Oh, excuse me..." shuffling noises
Faust: "Hello, Jacob. What is it? You are hesitating outside the containment unit."
Jacob (Level 1 Agent): "Ah, Team Captain Faust... I-It's my first assignment, and I'm... a bit scared..."
Faust: "There is no cause for concern, Jacob. The Abnormality assigned to you is likely to be the safest Abnormality here."
Jacob: "But... Its name here, look... It's really intimidating..."
Jacob: "One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds... Team Captain! W-what happens if I get unlucky and the thing decides to commit that one Sin against me? I-I don't... I still haven't..."
Faust: "Relax. That is not how this Abnormality behaves. Peruse the Abnormality Details, and conduct Insight or Attachment Works. And nothing will happen."
Jacob: "R-really...?"
Faust: "Faust does not lie."
Pausing the uptie story briefly to look into the camera like I'm on The Office.
Jacob: "O-okay. Thank you, Team Captain."
Faust: "... We are running somewhat behind schedule. Jacob is one of the newest hires assigned to the Control Team. It appears he was unnecessarily intimidated by a brief description of the Abnormality. I suppose this is a part of a Team Captain's job. I am certain that the Manager will be understanding. Then... I will continue this recording once I arrive at the containment unit."
Faust: "Testing, testing. Resuming Voice Log. My arrival was delayed beyond my initial predictions... I had a run-in with Ms. Malkuth, and had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with her. She inquired about the Work we had planned for the day, so I made an impromptu report. While it was unexpected that she wanted to know the expected completion time down to the seconds, I believe that records were helpful in giving her a satisfactory answer. She is a Sephirah, after all. She is responsible for an entire department. Her demands are not entirely unreasonable."
Faust: "Moving on... This is the containment unit of T-01-54, also known as the Forsaken Murderer. According to the prior records... as long as the Work results are good, there shouldn't be any difficulties with managing this Abnormality. Hmm..." sounds of flipping through papers "Work records show that the employee previously assigned to this Abnormality conducted Repression Works."
Faust: "... which resulted in the overproduction of NE-Box. The Abnormality's head transformed into something akin to a metallic substance, which it used to crush the employee to death... Hm. Not many would understand the process by which a person's head transforms from flesh to metal. But that ineffability is simply the nature of Abnormalities. This record at least informed me that avoiding Repression Work on this Abnormality would be preferable."
Faust: "Even if somthing were to happen... I have an EGO Suit resistant against RED damage, so I foresee little trouble ahead. I will continue this documentation once the Work is complete."
Quick sidebar about what the hell she meant by 'red damage' - before Ruina swapped to the Slash/Pierce/Blunt multiplier system and Limbus added sin affinity, Lobcorp only had four types of damage. These were RED (HP damage aka purely physical trauma), WHITE (SP damage aka purely mental damage), BLACK (both HP and SP, aka simultaneous physical and mental attack, ignores RED or WHITE damage resistances) and PALE (damages based on human target's max health aka direct soul-damage). These damage typings are based on, what else, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: most people probably know that Death rides a pale horse, but fewer know that Pestilence rides a white one, War a red one and Famine black. This information may be a surprise tool to help us later so try to keep it in mind, but for now all you need to know is that Forsaken Murderer can only deal pure blunt-force trauma if it gets pissed off and Faust's EGO Suit will protect her from that.
Faust: "... this is Faust. The Work was successful. The Abnormality was observed muttering something to itself. It shuddered with anxiety and refused to look away from the floor. A proper communication was deemed difficult. It looked rather emaciated, so I attempted to perform Instinct Work by providing it food items that humans finds useful. The results are encouraging. I will record that Instinct Work is effective for this Abnormality."
Faust: "But... I have not observed any signs of its head turning into metal, nor am I any closer to learning the mechanics behind that phenomenon. Considering this EGO weapon was extracted from the Abnormality in question, it seems evident that the Abnormality's characteristics are at least partially carried over to the shape and particularities of the EGO weapon."
Suddenly, an alarm rings out throughout the facility.
Faust: "Ah, the siren..."
Announcement: [WARNING. ORDEAL OF GREEN DAWN ALERT. SUPPRESSION PERSONNEL FROM ALL DEPARTMENTS MUST IMMEDIATELY ASSEMBLE AT THE BOTTOM RIGHT ELEVATOR OF THE UPPER LAYER.]
Faust: "The Manager's orders have arrived via the devices... it is time for the Ordeals already, then."
Faust: "I must go and assist them in Suppressing this Ordeal."
Faust: "I am not particularly concerned. Maybe this Ordeal will be Suppressed before Faust even gets there. The manager does not yet know... but the Ordeal of Green Dawn is quite insignificant compared to what is to come."
Faust: "... Hm, no. I must hold my tongue, lest I risk confusing any other individual who will be listening to this recording."
Faust: "Faust is... determined to struggle, to survive the remaining 41 days of Work."
Faust: "And I will leave it at that."
Faust: "Well then... Faust, ending the Voice Log."
You see what I mean? She already knows about the Ordeals (randomised events that trigger throughout the day at Lobcorp after a certain point that force you to get in fights all the time as well as trying to keep Abnos from breaching), enough to consider the Green Dawn to be child's play in comparison to all the rest, she already knows exactly how many days she has left to survive, and she even stops herself from saying more in case her voice memo causes any unforeseen problems. Faust is sus as hell but the idea of her running around in Lobcorp like she's already on NG+ (or looking at a walkthrough in another tab) only makes her even more sus.
Now, as is probably quite obvious Regret Faust is based on the eponymous EGO Suit and weapon derived from the Forsaken Murderer. She was one of the first real Hopium IDs for Tremor enjoyers - while her numbers aren't amazing she's a self-Tremor ID who can quickly gain Count using her s1 (even on Clash Lose) or counter and subsequently use that to gain extra ATK Weight on her s2 and s3. On her s2 it's only 1 extra ATK Weight which isn't even enough to hit an extra Part on a lot of Abnos, but it's fine because she inflicts Plus Coin Drop with it and that's pretty much the God Debuff on anything that's not flipping reverse-coins at you. More important is her s3, which can get up to 3 ATK Weight and builds on the mechanic that Molar Office Fixer Outis first introduced of dealing bonus aspected damage on Tremor Burst based on the stagger damage - albeit Outis does it as a combat passive while Faust does it solely with her s3. 30% stagger damage dealt as Wrath damage across up to three targets, three times, all for only 3 Tremor Count? She's dynamite with decent setup, and the best part is Plus Coin Drop is so good you'll even want her for single-Part bosses like humans. She's never left my Tremor team since I got her, and boy I can't wait until I can talk about the very Funny EGO she got to support said Tremor team last year.
And with that, all the housekeeping is done and dusted. Let's wave goodbye to Canto IV, Intervallo II and all its sundry trappings as land disappears over the horizon, and set sail for Canto V!
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Birthday
Have a Happy One!
- Location
- Somewhere
Oh, I can explain this bit. She's most likely referring to Blade Lineage Yi Sang, Molar Office Yisang and Molar Office Outis, because both of these were IDs that were given to us for free. BL Yi Sang as pre-registration reward, and Molar Yisang/Outis as a Login Reward. Specifically, I believe this mini-episode would have take place during or soon after said Login Event, which is why I believe this is referring to those IDs specifically.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
God help me if I were Dante I would not be able to resist the urge to shake Faust by the shoulders shouting "SPILL YOUR GODDAMNED SECRETS" this is the most suspicious woman on planet earth
I love that we get those Intervallos to just hang out with the Sinners a bit in-between the bouts of MAXIMUM TRAUMA, can't wait to see what fucked up reimagining of the white whale they're cooking for Ishmael
I love that we get those Intervallos to just hang out with the Sinners a bit in-between the bouts of MAXIMUM TRAUMA, can't wait to see what fucked up reimagining of the white whale they're cooking for Ishmael
- Location
- Not your place of residence
I think the reason Dante is 10 matches up with the others; Dieci is Italian for 10, and the Divine Comedy/Dante's Inferno is Italian.
Unless you're saying the strange part is that Dante is 10 despite seeming to enter the bus last, in which case…I dunno.
Unless you're saying the strange part is that Dante is 10 despite seeming to enter the bus last, in which case…I dunno.