PATH TO THE TRUE ENDING FOUND!!! (SPOILERS!!!)

[Sogetsu_]

After reading about a potential 4th ending I started browsing through japanese webpages for a guide and found this: http://www.pixiv.net/novel/show.php?id=4756304 . It contains lists of all items in the game, quests and the endings. Since I don't know Japanese, I had to resort to using google translate until I found a passage describing how to get to the true end of the game:

First, you have to lose the final battle (I'm not sure to which King, I lost to Winged King). Next you have to go to the port and get on the ship at night. The knight will let you get on the ship, but he will ask you to visit a certain place first, which is the final dungeon.

I'm really excited about finding the true end, however, it's 1:30 a.m. over here and the game will have to wait for tomorrow.

BTW, could someone versed in Japanese check if there are other possible solutions to certain quests?

[Sogetsu_]

All right, the final dungeon is unlike anything you can see in throughout the rest of the game. The first floor is pretty straightforward. There are no enemies and the chests contain some shards.

The second floor has a lot of powerful artifacts locked behind flames, four merchants to unlock with black shards (tle leftmost one sells healing items, the second to left sells arrows, the second to right sells bullets and the rightmost one is a storage clerk (a waste of black shard, if you ask me). The fountain in the eastern wing fully revives the whole party and saves your game (be careful!) but each time you use the fountain, the water gets dirty and you have to use a white shard to purify it. The stairs behind a flame in the western wing lead to a chamber with 9 chests behind three doors. The contents of the chests is random and respawns every time you revisit the chamber but you have to pay a lot of money to unlock them. The left door lets you in for 50000 gold and lets you open only one chest, the middle door lets you open three chests for 100000 and the right door lets you open five chests for 150000.

As for the artifacts behind the flames, so far I only checked the top right and the bottom right in the western wing. The top one is Waves of Life (Slowly regenerates one ally, 20MP) and the bottom one is Feather of Rebirth (Prevents an ally from being downed, but only once, 30MP)

The third floor is a maze with a platform in the centre. To get there you have to touch a flame, which appears randomly in one of the four paths near the platform. The chests contain random loot (usually money) and are often guarded by enemies. The boss of the floor is Death with two forms. The boss respawns every time you revisit the floor and every time you defeat the boss, the chests respawn.

The fourth floor works in a similar way to the previous one, the boss is Death once again, but this time, its second form is different.

The fifth floor is quite simple, there are only two chests (again, they respawn every time you defeat the boss of the floor). There are at least two different bosses on this floor. I think it's random which one you fight. One of them has a very high defence and you have to use a debuff if you even think of beating it.

The sixth floor is the last one, there are two chests containing shards (I don't know if they respawn) and the boss here is probably the true final boss of the game.

[elfolampo]

Well, I was sure there was another main ending to the game, now maybe I can get motivated enough to actually finish it. The main problem was there was no information AT ALL anywhere ever, and despite being an RPG Maker game, apparently no one had taken it apart yet.

[elfolampo]

From what I read there, it seems Master's Proof that's bought for 200k at night from the old guard captain raises evasion by 15% and makes you always count as level 55 for battle calculations. Also there seems to be +5 hp and +2 mp items in the final dungeon, so you can grind stats up with enough patience the guide mentions that you can raise all stats except defense eventually. There definitely is an accessory that gives double the combat hits in the final dungeon: makes you attack twice, 4 times if you are an unarmed monk. There also seems to be an item that allows for double casts (at double mp costs), and an item that gives unlimited party 70 hp heals. If this works with shamans, it might be worth it to bring one to spam that heal doubled. These 3 all are in the chests in the final dungeon floor 2. There also are some more powerful healing items, one can even raise fallen allies.

[Endarire]

The Healing Censer key item was usable only once by my party, but it healed about 70 HP to everyone and cured Poison on everyone.

[Endarire]

Has anyone beaten the TRUE FINAL BOSS yet? I'm quite surprised that the game expects you to reach and beat the dude with ONE MANA BAR!

[Sogetsu_]

I reached him several times but wasn't able to beat him. I think you need a lot of runs through the final dungeon to build up stats and get all of the artifacts from 2F. I can't find a good strategy for that boss.

[Endarire]

Gold Temple feels like the Special Zone of Super Mario World, except the temple is a raid with lots of expected grinding to complete.

[mooncalf477]

This is some schoolyard rumor level stuff, I'm impressed the devs took a chance on this bit of oldschool design, this is way cool. I'd wondered if something special would happen if I lost to both final bosses then took the boat, but hadn't bothered to test it. I wouldn't have thought to try it specifically at night, though, so I may not have found it, anyway.

EDIT: So, did some playing, and made some findings. First, the arrow guy's inventory (and possibly the bullet guy's) can be expanded by offering further Black Shards, for instance unlocking Crystal Arrows from the arrow merchant. Additionally, the final boss is The Adjudicator, and comes with a pair of totems representing the Swamp King and Winged King, and worse yet, they have access to those respective bosses' attacks. The Adjudicator himself doesn't seem that dangerous on his own, a fairly powerful attack and that's it. Also, for more detail on Death, the first fight has him switch from being a caster to a moderately dangerous attacker, and the second has him split into two identical copies. The fifth floor boss I've found is the Wise Monstrosity, who has some reasonable damage output, but is not a huge threat. Overall, it seems like the first three fights are just there to drain your resources. Also, the enemies on the third floor are extremely nasty. In particular are magic-immune slugs that use Warped Mirror like it's going out of style, confusing your party fairly easily. Hopefully, you obtained the Circlets for a pair of party members (one is found in the Swamp King's castle in a massive treasure room, the other is bought from a guy in the bandit hideout for 150k), rendering them immune to status effects. You can also get more than one use out of the healing fountain, I found. I got two before it got dirty. Additionally, you'll need multiple shards to unlock the various elements in the main chamber (the flames for the healing artifacts and the chest room need three shards each, the passive artifacts on the left need a whopping five shards). Additionally, every treasure in the three "combat" floors is trapped with a random encounter, but only the first time they're opened, after which they're safe. Hope that helps people prepare for what's clearly the ultimate challenge in the game.

EDIT 2: One of the items you can get from chests is the Stone of Returning, which will teleport you back to the first room like a warp scroll, but it's consumable, so use it wisely. Also, be sure not to use white shards frivolously, or you won't be able to recharge the fountain, at which point you become reliant on the RNG to even continue progressing (having Soul of Steel on the guy with Heavenly Gates is basically your only hope to even get more than a single floor's chance of snagging a white shard to get the fountain running).

EDIT 3: The Burly Monstrosity, the other boss of the fifth floor, yeah, you aren't killing it without the Steelbreaker artifact. He also takes lessened damage from Sword of Light, like many endgame bosses, so use Dragon's Breath, same results for less MP. Also, the chest traps do return, but only rarely.

EDIT 4: Which Monstrosity you face is determined each time you fight, so if you have trouble with Burly, you can end up with Wise the next time, even if you lose the fight.

[Endarire]

I added Gold Temple vendor inventories to my Vendor Guide.

The slugs are still hurtable with the Whirlwind Staff and Magic Blast spell. These abilities do untyped damage. Likely, other abilities that do untyped damage will also hurt them.

Thanks for telling me about Circlets being useful! I thought they were just scams. What status effects do they prevent?

Anyone else notice the similarities in color and theme between Gold Temple and Undertale's end game throne room?

[mooncalf477]

Circlets prevent all status effects (neither of the characters wearing them have been affected by any status spell since first putting them on, not dizzy, not sleep, nothing) and cause regeneration both in AND out of combat (you gain HP with each step out of combat, in combat it restores a small amount each turn, like reverse Poison).

Also, talking to the boat actually just returns you to the harbor with the option to go back to the temple just by talking to the dude at night again. So, turns out you don't need to freak out about a lack of white shards, you can just walk back to an inn.

EDIT: Also, the place is just ominously referred to as "there" in-game, just an interesting and creepy note. Watch as somebody beats The Adjudicator just to find out the ending is still "castle collapses, you become artifacts".

[Sogetsu_]

Ok, I managed to beat the Adjudicator, here's the ending I got:

http://imgur.com/a/eLQCP

I wonder whether this is the true ending or is there more to it. I also wonder what happens if you choose "No".

[mooncalf477]

Can we get some info on the ten artifacts in 2F? White shards are distressingly rare...

EDIT: By the way, turns out five of the artifacts require White Shards, the other five require Black Shards. Also, if you don't know where the other six are, they're in the room to the south of the stairs, it's easy to not even look down there.

[Sogetsu_]

Here's the list of artifacts:

The room to the west of the stairs:

Watchful Spirit - May provide a barrier at start of battle, 0MP. Top left of the room, requires 5 white shards.

Waves of Life - Slowly regenerates one ally, 20MP. Top right, 3 white shards.

Fateful Opponent - May grant regeneration at start of battle, 0MP. Bottom left, 5 white shards.

Feather of Rebirth - Prevents an ally from being downed, but only once, 30MP. Bottom right, 3 white shards.

The room to the south of the stairs:

Ogre's Wrath - May boost attack power at start of battle, 0MP. Top left, 5 black shards.

Unbreakable Guard - May boost defense power at start of battle, 0MP. Middle left, 5 black shards.

Clever Star - May boost intelligence at start of battle, 0MP. Bottom left, 5 black shards.

Phoenix Feather - May grant rebirth at start of battle, 0MP. Bottom right, 5 white shards.

Pack Instinct - May boost speed at start of battle, 0MP. Middle right, 5 black shards.

Gift of Magic - Give half of your MP to an ally, 1/2 current MP. Top right, 3 black shards.


As for farming shards, it's totally random. Last time I went through 3F and 4F I got around 5 white shards and some black ones, whereas during other runs I got just one or two shards in total.

[mooncalf477]

Just discovered a third Monstrosity on 5F, the Brutal Monstrosity. Open with Giant's shield, because this one's a powerful physical attacker with two actions per turn like the Wise Monstrosity (Burly only has one action per turn). It's got a hit-all physical attack, as well, even more reason to keep your defenses up.

EDIT: Oh, right, and Brutal has a war cry that causes Confusion, which is extremely dangerous, obviously. Also Dizziness, but that's less bad.

[Endarire]

Gold Temple Artifacts: May we get a full description of these? What about the frequency of their activation? (The black shard artifacts I tested had a 50% of activating at the start of a fight.)

Is the auto-resurrection like Final Fantasy's Rerise/Reraise condition where if you die with it active, you auto-res? How much HP do you get upon revival?

How much do the regen abilities regen?

What's the barrier do?