Getting Closer

I've been pressing forward in my Dragon Quest II play-throughs. I believe I will finish my project in time for the holidays. I'm taking a vacation starting the 23rd and I want to finish before then so I can take my Game Boy with me.

I don't remember if I mentioned that my Dragon Warrior I/II cartridge won't hold a save file, so my Game Boy (Advance SP) has has been on with the game running the entire time I've been doing this challenge. It stays on the charger in a corner of my bedroom where it won't get bumped. I carefully take it off the charger for only a few hours at a time when I play to make sure the battery doesn't die on me. (I recently realized that I don't think I can get the Water Robe (Water Flying Cloth), as it involves a game reset that I can't do without starting all the way over.)

I'm anxious to finish the challenge so I can play Dragon Warrior Monsters on my system, and, if I can find my copy, Dragon Warrior III.

On my Famicom and NES challenges, I have finished the sea cave and am ready to begin the road to Rhone/Rendarek. I am over half-way through said cave on my Super Famicom file and expect to finish it on that system and possibly also on my Game Boy tonight. If I can finish it on my Game Boy by the time I leave for work tomorrow morning, then I can do the smartphone version during my commute and/or my lunch tomorrow, and proceed tomorrow evening to the dreaded labyrinth that leads to the game's final areas.

The Full Moon Tower and the Sea Cave were not as difficult as I expected on my two challenge play-throughs. I had read a rather old post on the game's message boards on Gamefaqs.com from someone who tried this challenge where they said they abandoned the challenge in this zone of the game due to its difficulty. However, although I did die a few times, I was able to get through both areas on my solo challenge with no more difficulty than I have had in previous areas. And unlike most of the dungeons, I could actually fight a majority of the battles instead of running all the time, since I had the Shield of Strength to heal my health. Of course, there were still numerous encounters where discretion was still the better part of valor, but more often than not the risk of fighting the battle is actually less than the risk of trying to run and failing. The Sea Cave takes a little more endurance as the dungeon is longer and you cannot walk off the edge to get out quickly. Fun fact: the Water Flying Cloth negates damage from the fire tiles in this dungeon. (I think it also negates damage from swamp tiles, but I'm pretty sure it does NOT negate damage from the barrier tiles such as those found in the final dungeon, though Erdrick's Armor will protect against those.)

Of course, on my NES no-equipment challenge, my characters were already highly leveled from getting the "Open" spell, so the battles weren't to big of a challenge spamming Defeat, Firebane, and Explodet in each battle. At that level, I had plenty of MP to finish the dungeons with liberal spellcasting, although I did have to make a few trips into and out of the Sea Cave due to the monsters that dance their strange jigs in there. The dungeons have also posed no particular challenge on any of my remake play-throughs. Another fun fact: in the remake versions of the game, Firebane's power is greatly increased to almost rival Explodet in the original game, making battles in this stage ridiculously easy. I do not yet know if they tweaked Explodet to be more powerful still. Interestingly, in the smartphone version only, Firebane (or Sizzle as it's called there) has been changed to be a one-group spell rather than all enemies, one of the few changes I've seen that actually makes things slightly more challenging than the previous remakes.

That's all for now. Maybe by the time I post next I'll be finished with Dragon Quest II, or nearly so.