Soooooooo… you guys remember how I totally didn’t save after Part 1 and had to recreate everything for Part 2?

Yeah, well, turns out I also totally didn’t save at any point during Part 5, meaning that I’ve had to go back and replay Days 4 and 5 as closely as I can to how I did it before. Obviously, since there’s an RNG element involved in what items I get from the dungeon and what I can sell them for, things didn’t go exactly as before, but I think we’re close enough. We’ll carry on just as we would have, anyway!

Having raised the 10K I need to make my first repayment to Tear’s weird-ass ‘finance company’, I figure we may as well go back and see what lies in the Jade Way beyond the Crowned Slime’s floor. Louie’s up to level 8 after our escapades in the dungeon last time! (Pretty sure I levelled him up more than that the first time, but it’s still not bad.) Let’s head back into that place and see what bountiful treasures lie beyond the fifth floor.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any food left except a single piece of candy, but hopefully we’ll pick some up. I also take along an insect trap that a wasp dropped on my last run – isn’t it kind of weird that a wasp would have something designed for killing wasps? – on the off-chance that I can actually use it myself rather than having to sell it.

Well, this already looks more ominous than the upper floors. Something tells me I might get my first death at some point during this run.

It’s all about the trees and mushrooms and slimes and goat-men still, it seems! I do pick up a Magician’s Staff from one of the first chests I open, though, which is pretty sweet (they go for about 1,600 pix, which is about the upper end of what I’m selling at the moment). Seems like lower floors really do have better loot, unless I just got lucky. There is a palette-swapped tree who freaks me out, but he goes down just as easy as his more normal-coloured friends. No fear.

Rather than take too many screenshots, which is just a real nightmare in combat, I’ll just sort of sum up what goes on for the rest of my descent:

• We pick up a few decent items including another Magician’s Staff, which will look lovely in the shop window.
• Louie levels up a couple of times, making me proud and turning him into a right little adventurer!
• The different-colour trees are faster and harder-hitting than their cousins, and at one point I get swarmed by about five of them, only surviving by eating a chocolate bar I found on the ground. They have a health-draining attack, which I suspect the normal ones did too but I just never saw it because I was killing them too fast.
• I HATE GOATS WITH RANGED ATTACKS
• We find a backscratcher which has a pretty nice price tag, as well as a shark fin which an RRP of 2,000 pix! Apparently it’s a nice ingredient if you know how to cook it; sadly, I’m guessing Recette probably doesn’t.
• I feel as if Louie’s getting stronger, taking out weaker enemies pretty speedily.
• I open a chest on floor 9 which warps me right to the exit rather than give me any treasure, which is great and all, but… the exit’s right over there and frankly I’d rather have had treasure.

A worthwhile trip so far, I think! It’s time to head down to floor 10, though, which I’m expecting to be… dicey.

OH SHIIIIIT

Why do you have a grudge, Reginald Drisby? Is it a grudge against me? Did I do something to offend you?!

So, uh… Reginald Drisby is a giant rat or something (I know he’s nominally a mouse, but he looks more like a rat) with a crowbar who blows bubbles. He’s a pretty original boss design, I’ll give him that. I’m a bit upset to see yet another depiction of rats as villainous, though, since I have two pet rats who are the most loving and adorable smooshballs in the whole world. Further note: I wonder whether this Reginald knows Expository Reginald the Merchant Guy? (Probably not, since Expository Reginald is not, in fact, his canon name, a fact I’d sort of forgotten.) Reginald’s using the little pop-up mushrooms to heal, so I guess I’ll have to adopt a similar strategy to the Crowned Slime and take out the adds before attacking him. He gets a fair chunk of HP back each time, as well – probably more than I can take off if he’s allowed to keep healing regularly.

It seems that the red mushrooms heal Reginald, whilst purple ones cause him to fall over; I switch to taking out the red shrooms as quickly as possible and leaving the purple ones on the field. I still need to avoid the purple ones, as they can damage Louie too.

Like the smaller version of the Crowned Slime, Reginald Drisby takes more damage when he’s been debuffed by the purplishrooms. He’s actually not as hard as I was thinking he might be at first; trying to hit him while he had a plentiful supply of reds and super-high defence was almost worthless, but now he’s munching on purples he’s going down much faster. Begs the question of why he lives in a cave with purple mushrooms that can knock him on his back, let alone why he actively chooses to munch on them.

Reginald sits up for a moment after being defeated, then falls back and fades into… something-or-other.

WE DID IT! Yuuusssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. Time to go and sell all this sweet-ass stock!

Look at this beautiful shop. This is amazing. I do wonder whether we’ll ever unlock more shelf space or if this is what we’re stuck with; to be honest, I’m not too concerned. It’s weirdly fun just laying stuff out.

I sell a few things, opting to run with a pretty solid 120% price. Most people go for it first time; I do let Louie have a nice little windbreaker for slightly less, because he’s Louie and without him we wouldn’t have any of this awesome stuff.

I don’t think I’ve had a single day so far where I haven’t exceeded expectations. I’m a pretty awesome shopkeeper! (Slash-dungeon-crawler-slash-cuckoolander-slash-indentured-orphan.) We’re now on Day 7, with payment number 1 due tomorrow on Day 8; I figure it’s probably a good idea to spend this day just selling, so I’ve still got enough money left to buy more stuff once that 10 grand gets deducted.

I haven’t seen this before; this guy doesn’t want a particular item, but ‘some food’. I try to sell the super-valuable shark fin to him, but apparently that’s not enough like food. Whoops.

😦

The next guy wants ‘a hat’, and I don’t have any hats! A necklace is the closest thing, but no joy. I hope this doesn’t happen too much…

YES IT IS. BUY IT.

I sort of feel bad charging Louie the regular rate for such a premium item, but hey. He’s the one that came in and wanted it.

Hmmmm… an interesting offer. Well, it’s a high-value item and I happen to have a little spare cash, so why not?

As long as I can sell it, that represents a good six or seven hundred pix profit. Not bad!

This guy’s daughter-in-law apparently wants a backscratcher. It’s okay, man, you’re allowed to want it for yourself, no need to lie to me. But yeah, daughter-in-law. Whatever. Wink.

There’s also another guy who wants a hat, which isn’t great for me. I think I really need to get some hats in stock if there’s this much demand for them. I work through another session or two of selling, just trying to build up as much of a cash buffer as I can before I lose 10 grand of it to the fairy bailiffs; I’m noticing that I’m getting something called a ‘Just Combo’ as I keep selling. I think it’s because I’m selling stuff at a pretty fair price; it’s almost like a little mini-morality system. Wonder what sort of rewards I get for being fair to my customers? If Tear’s explanations are any indication, I might get them to be more willing to spend highly and regularly.

We end Day 7 with over 21 thousand pix, which I’m pretty happy with. Time to go to sleep, and when we wake up… this overbearing fairy will steal about half of it. Sweet dreams!

I’m still dumbfounded that this contract is enforceable on Recette, who never actually entered into it, but whatever. I hope there isn’t some twist at the end of this where it turns out Tear actually doesn’t have anything legally binding on Recette and she’s just swindling a poor innocent girl.

Oh, shit. Did I know that? I don’t think I knew that! Now I’m worried.

The 10K isn’t due until the end of Day 8, which is pretty nice. I might be grateful for that in future if I get to payment day and I’m just a little bit shy of the required cash.

I’m not really sure what to spend this day doing, so I pop over to visit Reg and see what he’s got. Looks as if our Merchant Level increase has indeed resulted in a pretty nice upgrade to the available stock, but I don’t really want to buy anything new on payment day. I’ll come back in a day or two to grab some high-value stuff, I reckon.

Screw it, let’s just go back to the dungeon.

Oh, hey, we’re back in daylight! That’s nice.

We start encountering some new enemies pretty fast: a weird flying eye-thing and a blue knight dude. The eye guy has some sort of sonic ranged attack, while Blue Knight is totally unassailable from the front thanks to his shield. I don’t know whether I’m gonna make it back alive this time!

By 12F, we’re starting to get swarmed by flocks of enemies – luckily, only things I can deal with like mushrooms and slimes seem to show up in hordes, but I’m guessing it’ll get worse. Fortunately, the upbeat music as we wander through the dungeon is keeping me happy! I don’t actually play with the sound on that much, so I’m also learning that every time Louie gets hit, Recette asks him if he’s okay (‘daijoubu desu ka?!’), which is very sweet. She has a few other little soundbytes, too, but my Japanese isn’t good enough to try working out what they are!

I seriously hate these wasps (there’s one just visible on Louie’s right). They go down easy, but they’re so small it’s hard to get that one good hit in – plus they cause a sort of paralysis-like effect if they can sting Louie.

Some chests contain nothing more than a circular arrangement of slimes! Oh noes! Luckily, Louie’s spin attack is perfect for taking them all out in one go.

I GOT KILLED BY FISH. See that flying one? Yeah, that killed me. Not the most heroic way of going out, but whatever. I didn’t really need to get too much from this run anyway, so it’s not too bad.

Tear reiterates her earlier explanation: since Louie’s too hurt to go on, we’ll drag him into our field of invincibility and bugger off.

We only get to bring one item back with us, so naturally we should go for the most valuable one. As it turns out, that’s a Bat Wing, with a base price of 1,500 pix.

Since it’s dark by the time we get back into town, licking our wounds (well, Louie’s wounds), I figure a drink might be in order and venture into the pub.

Tear answers that adventurers do indeed enjoy their ‘liquid pleasure’, which sounds a bit dirty to me, but the pub is important for another reason: it also handles quests, so many of the adventurers in the pub are actually there looking for work. Recette sensibly asks why the pub deals with quests when the Adventurer’s Guild is pretty much exclusively for that sort of thing: according to Tear, the whole ‘needing a card to hire an adventurer’ thing puts some less well-to-do clients off the Guild, so the pub deals with a slightly different portfolio.

There’s a list of quest requests up on the wall, so Recette takes a look.

Wow. That’s some… good quests right there. Tear observes that it might seem like a bit of a crappy business, but the variety of handyman-type jobs on offer is evidence that the adventurers have blended in to daily city life pretty well.

Sadly, while anyone can post a quest, only those registered with the Adventurer’s Guild can accept the jobs, which… sort of negates the whole ‘pub as alternative adventurer provider’ dealio. I mean, it still allows customers with no adventurers’ cards to hire someone at a better rate, but why would a card-carrying adventurer take a pub job when they could be getting bona fide hero shit at the Guild?

Day over, I guess it’s time to head back to the shop.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. My first day of not exceeding expectations!

Hurray! We sold a child into labour so that she could pay back a tiny amount of an enormous debt that she didn’t even accrue! Wahoo!

Oh, I don’t like the look of this.

I think we might start to experience some… rival shops from here on out. I hope they don’t steal my valued customers such as ‘Old Man’.

The next day, there’s a mysterious package delivered to the shop. Well… wandering around the shop. Naturally, we talk to the box. To my disappointment, Solid Snake is not inside.

Er… thanks? Box Girl goes on to insult Recettear a bit more, wondering whether we’re secretly running some sort of illegal panda trade or selling… ‘adult’ merchandise. Recette eventually interrupts her rambling to ask her to come out of the box.

I mean, I’ll take that as a compliment, but I really don’t appreciate being called plebeian. Or a prole. I feel like this bourgeois bitch is going to be a problem for us.

I should have realised we’d get a rival.

Recette wonders what ‘Big Bash’ is, prompting Tear to show up and explain that it’s an enormous store chain with ‘a capital stock value of fifteen billion pix and a yearly gross profit of five billion’. Can’t I just invest in Big Bash and pay my debt back that way?

Alouette’s defence is that Recette’s superior wiliness overwhelmed her otherwise undetectable… cardboard box. Recette, meanwhile, is initially astonished to see a fairy, until Prime reminds her that she (Recette) herself spends most of her time hanging out with on and so it’s really not all that weird. I’ll let Alouette and Prime get on with the rest of their own introductions.

Introductions over, it’s time to start our second week!

And we shall do so… next time. In the meantime, enjoy this thing I found on the internet: