The Crestlands
It's time for our journey to begin!
Oh hey, a random traveler waiting just outside our starting character's location.
What do I do now...? I won't be able to continue my travels without it...
I'm also on a journey. My name is Al. It's a pleasure to meet you.
Thieves abound at night. I lost my bag to one such man. Now I need to figure out how to get it back...
This side story does a couple things. First off, it introduces us to the concept of night, a new feature in OT2. We've already seen some of it, but basically night has more difficult enemies, but also activates a couple of talents, such as Temenos's.
It also changes towns, in that NPCs may be in different locations and some NPCs in particular only show up in day or night. Likewise, each character has a different path action depending on whether it's day or night.
This side story also introduces you to the concept of, well, side stories. They usually require path actions to solve (though this one does not), and may have a couple ways to solve them. OT2 cut down on the number of these from 100 to 67, but it helps keep some of the fluff out and results in more story content instead, so it's all worth it.
Right, so we have to find this thief. He can't have gone far, and Al suggested he lost it at night, so basically we should change it to night to find this jerk.
First, though, we get a really nice armor upgrade.
And while we're here, since this is a pretty short update, let's get into Temenos's skills. This unlocks as soon as your starting character has 30JP. Each job starts with two skills, then you can unlock five of the other six in any order, and the final skill is a powerful Divine Skill which always requires 3BP to even use. Unlocking job skills also unlocks Support Skills, passives that add buffs, stats, or some really fun effects to battle. EX Skills are character-exclusive, and we'll go into those much later.
I may do a more detailed write-up of the jobs later once we unlock everyone, but here's a quick run-down of Temenos's skills:
Heal Wounds - Restores HP to all allies. Expensive, but a solid healing spell, and SP isn't a major issue as we'll soon see.
Holy Light - Deal light-based damage to a single foe. Temenos's main method of attacking foes, and light is obviously handy against all the evil foes we'll encounter.
Prayer to the Flame - Buffs physical defense and elemental defense of a single ally for two turns, more with each BP spent. There are ways to spread this out, which makes this fantastic, but it's still great single-target for boss battles if you can spend the BP to max its duration out.
Mystical Staff - Deals a staff attack on a target two times, stealing SP equal to 10% of the damage dealt. Temenos has rather weak physical attack, but with a good enough staff it'll make up for its SP cost and then some, plus it's a great way to attack foes with staff weaknesses. One of my personal favorites.
Luminescence - Deal light-based damage to all foes. Obviously great for groups of foes, whether to break them or to deal damage on them. One that's better to get sooner than later.
Sacred Shield - Grants a shield to a single ally that reduces damage from the next hit by 50%, with more hits per BP spent. (Edit: Spending BP instead increases the amount of damage blocked, up to 100% at full BP. It's still only one shield regardless of BP spent.) I never really messed with this much, as I much prefer the more reliable buffs from PttF, but I'm sure it can be valuable in some situations, such as a boss's ultimate attack.
Revive - Revive all allies. This is more of a panic button since it costs a ridiculous 40SP, plus it revives people at only 1HP unless you spend a BP to buff the amount it heals. More of a luxury, but in the rare instances you need it, it can literally turn the tides of a battle.
Divine Skill: Aelfric's Blessing - Grant a single ally an additional action immediately after their current one for three turns. This spends 3BP and a turn to give a target up two or three extra actions (depending on turn order when the caster uses this), which can shake a lot of things up. Note they aren't gaining turns from this, so no stuff like extra BP or regen effect procs, but the extra actions can shake a lot of things up. Situational, but can be very useful.
Support Skills:
Resilience - Boosts the amount of HP restored when healed to the equipped character. Fine as a starting ability, gets outclassed later on. (Edit: This skill is mistranslated, it instead buffs the healing by the character, which makes it much better as an ability, particularly for dedicated healers like Temenos and Castti.)
Inner Strength - Raises Max SP by 50. Again, nice for some of the more expensive skills early on, but nothing worth keeping over other skills.
Evil Ward - Increases the chance to flee from encounters (multiple instances of this skill does nothing). Mainly useful if you're doing a bit of sequence breaking and trying to get to towns or dungeons early to get some good loot, as it's generally difficult to run from higher-level encounters. Definitely nice for convenience.
Rise Again - When knocked out, the character revives once per battle with 25% of their max HP. It's alright, but honestly there's so many good skills out there that will help a lot more in battle than a one-time panic button.
I opt for Mystical Staff for the staff hits and SP regen. I'm probably gonna go Luminecense next, followed by PttF and Revive.
Job skills get more expensive with each purchase. The next one will require 100JP.
A couple more enemies, in addition to the ones we saw a couple updates ago on the march to the Cathedral.
Pomegranates give BP in battle. These smaller ones aren't that useful, but the Large ones especially will be very handy late-game.
Upon turning to night, I also come across an elemental wisp. These things are a handy source of soulstones.
The Crestlands (Night)
Most towns and landscapes have different, more subdued music at night. These outdoor areas between towns usually have backing vocals as well. It's a nice backdrop to these areas.
Looks like we found our thief.
Huh? A map? I ain't ever seen a place like this...
Hah! You have no idea who you're dealin' with, do ya? But that doesn't mean I'll go easy on ya! Hand over all your leaves, now!
It does not work out for the thief.
Damn, you can have it! This stupid bag is worthless anyway!
Mission accomplished!
You can check your inventory to look at key items and look at minor descriptions of them.
This even applies to information you learn, such as the clues Temenos found in his chapter.
This will be handy once we have an apothecary.
Let's finish this up and go on our way.
Don't tell me you got it back from the thief!? I cannot thank you enough! Now I can continue my journey.
I must be off now. I pray we meet again!
Not a bad haul. An evasion-boosting nut, some grapes, and cold hard cash. Hard to beat that!
And side story completed!
Speaking of which, the Journal will tell you about all the side stories you've encountered, both completed and in progress.
And you can also revisit previous story chapters if desired.
Next time, we check out the town of Flamechurch to prepare for our journey.
