OK, so I'm a Piranha-Man, and I need to explore. Where should I go?
If you answered "The Sewers", congratulations. You are correct.
Now that I can swim, I can take the upper path out of the sewer. Unfortunately I currently have no way of reaching that door.
Or that chest.
This door is perfectly accessible, though.
A nice little hit of cash, charm, and thunder.
Continuing to the right, I find an insurmountable gap. I jump bravely, but cannot make it. On the plus side, I'm back at the seaside. That's a pretty good place for a fish-man to be.
I couldn't get here as the lizard- or mouse-men.
The aqua shield scores Piranha-Man a tidy ten point defence upgrade. The boost it gives to non-piranha forms is not as good.
I head to the right, but passage is obstructed by more of those blocks. I have no choice but to leave the area for now.
There's no way in on the other side, either. And the chest hasn't been restocked.
I carry on, finding nothing new in the area except for the goblin mail that I'm now charming enough to buy.
Unfortunately goblin mail sucks, so I put my shogun lamellar back on and head back to town. Where else can I go?
Back when I was lizard-man, I declared that going right here was suicide and took a left instead. Well, there isn't really anywhere else to go now, so I'm taking another shot. That hovering smog is getting annoying. I might try my archery skills again.
Aww yeah.
I carry on and meet the blue variant of the giant toads. Red toads jump at you when you approach them. Green toads jump of their own volition. Both are easily avoided by walking under them. Blue toads come at you jumping, and can be walked under pretty easily, but then they turn around and chase after you again. It's pretty annoying!
I meet a green cyclops. These take a lot of hits to kill. The health drop is welcome. This is actually a pretty tough area of the game, with some hard-hitting enemies.
Red air giants and fire flowers are not them.
The lava is an added bonus. You can swim in it, but it'll hurt you.
Best to stick to the top floor. I'm getting pretty lucky with health drops at the moment, so I'm in pretty good shape.
Green air giants still take me two hits to kill. They can be a real nuisance when you're trying to stay on the floating platforms, since they usually float between them.
It drops a charm stone, which would be nice to have, but not nice enough to go into the lava for.
Avoiding blue crabs at the same time isn't making this any easier.
These guys shouldn't be a threat alone on flat ground, but I manage to take a hit anyway. Luckily the full heal he drops makes up for it.
Master skeltons! I haven't seen these guys since the intro! That medicine drop would be awesome if I didn't already have more than I can carry.
Piranha-Man has a big advantage over lizard-man in being able to block projectiles from either height of fire flower, but he has to jump to hit the tall ones.
This fight goes really badly. The skelton can walk through the spring block, but I can't. Plus, the lava is hurting me. I run away, having lost over half of my health.
I pick up the dragon mail for a very reasonable price.
The chest is a nice bonus.
With the way I've been playing, 60G for a heal is a sound investment. The dragon mail I just got doesn't have as good a defence rating or as much charm as the shogun lamellar, but it has one big advantage:
Wearing it makes me immune to lava! But not to skeltons.
Nope, not immune to skeltons at all.
Which is a shame, because the game is pulling the wandering born/skull combination trick again. The master skull knocks me clear into the last screen.
My new strategy (jumping over the enemy) leads to my getting hit, but I don't get pushed back. I call that a win.
I decide discretion is the better part of valour and just avoid these fireball spewing master skulls.
Cyclopses have been a real problem for the entire game so far, but piranha-man is the first form to carry a shield capable of blocking their arrows, so they're much less of a threat.
Fire stones are pretty much just an annoyance now. I'm still taking hits, but they don't really matter.
I finally reach the end of this area, and enter a flooded building.
Swimming is my special skill, so I clear the first room easily, but I still can't get through the blocks surrounding the lower door there, and I can't climb the mouse block in this form. Mouse-man, where are you?
Oh. There you are.
Mouse-man clears the area with ease and picks up a sword from the chest.
It's the thunder saber! Note that my attack power has dropped to zero. Yep, this sword sucks.
But it lets me smash blocks!
Actually just owning the sword allows you to smash blocks, it doesn't matter what you have equipped. With this in mind, I switch back to the shogun blade. The previously obstructed door takes me back to town.
This section of mouse block makes a lot more sense now.
I walk over some more smashable blocks. Without a wall to stick to, mouse-man can't attack downwards to get through these. Then I drop into a well and am flung to the mouse block on the roof. Try as I might, I can't get mouse-man to swing his sword quickly enough after jumping off the roof to break that block up there (in retrospect, maybe I should've tried to hit it on the way up). I guess I'll have to deal with it later.
Droppng down the well at the far end of the room leads me to a room full of mouse blocks and breakable blocks. My two favourite things!
Smashing the blocks actually gets kind of tedious, but it's all over soon. The last one drops a question mark block.
Picking it up scores me the magical saber. Just like the thunder saber, I take a pretty big hit to my attack power by equipping it. Also like the thunder saber, it has a secondary use.
Swinging it makes breakable blocks appear! Good thing, too, or I wouldn't've been able to get out of that room. It only works on background tiles with that star pattern on them.
Back in town I find some more breakable blocks. Only one is in reach, and I make about ten attempts to smash it before remembering that I still have the magical saber equipped and need to swap to something else if I want to smash stuff. I make it happen, and the block drops another question mark, making another door appear. What's inside?
It's a transformation room! The very thing I needed, having expended the mouse-exclusive options available to me.
I head back out to this previously inaccessible shop. Unfortunately even now that I can get in he won't sell me anything.
Then I remember that I'm still wearing the dragon mail. I put my magnificent shogun lamellar back on, and now he'll sell me the samurai armor. Nice! The charm boost from that allows me to pick up the lucky sword. Or it would, if I had another 13G.
I head outside and smash some blocks, picking up 12G and a heart. Then I leave the screen and come back and smash blocks for a while, but nothing more drops. Frustration!
I go kill a snake for the other coin I need and head back to the shop. The lucky sword is pretty great. Besides increasing my AP by five, it increases the amount of money you get. So, what else can I do besides continuing with the main quest?
I'm on my way back to the pyramid. I didn't fall into the water this time, so here's a look at the green crab I missed as lizard man.
Piranha-man's attack goes out at middle height, so unlike lizard-man he can't hit these hovering smogs.
He is carrying a fair bit of magic though, so it's not a big problem.
I make it back to the sphinx. The chest remains empty, but take a look at those walls.
Yep, there's a hidden room. It's got eight chests in it, but annoyingly you can only open one per trip. If you come here without the lucky sword equipped the first chest drops coins instead of bags, so it's worth getting the sword first. You can press up anywhere in this room to make a door appear.
When you go back in you have to jump over the chests you've already opened, or they'll reopen and you won't be able to get a new one. There are two chests full of money, one for each kind of magic, and one with charm stones and a medicine. Notice that I got a lot of money out of this.
Then I have to walk all the way back to town. If I'd thought to go out as mouse-man I could've used the return door in the pyramid. Oh well. At least this way I get to show off my tornado magic.
I take the underwater route back home, as befits a fish, then change into a mouse.
Now that my charm is fairly high and I've got a fair bit of cash, I swing by the shop on the outskirts of town. I can't afford both items: the prince armor pretty much cleans me out. Still, it gives a respectable boost to my DP and a huge boost to my charm. I think it also increases item drops from enemies, which might actually be a bad thing since it means less money. Or maybe a good thing, since it means more health.
My high charm score makes the crystal gear for sale in the tower in town available to me. Unfortunately I can't afford any of it. The shop in the basement still wants nothing to do with me.
Well, unless I think of something else that's all I can do at the moment short of continuing with the main quest. Time for a break.
Next time: more swimming!
Bonus material!
I noticed that the goblin mail is pretty rubbish, and I wondered why it was even in the game. I wasn't able to buy it when I reached the shop where it's sold as lizard-man, the only time when it might have been an upgrade. But then I remembered that I'd had to skip the mithril armor because I didn't get any money from the meka dragon. So I started a new game and made sure to get some cash, and sure enough:
The mithril armor gives you enough charm to pick it up. Sure, I can't afford it, but that's because I went straight there and didn't fall in the ocean on the way or bother picking up many enemy drops.
Also, regarding lizard-man not being able to go right in the desert: he does have one advantage:
Even without dragon mail he's immune to lava.
This makes the path to the shop selling the mail much easier, because you can avoid most of the enemies by taking the low road. It might not be a bad idea to go that way as lizard-man and pick up the dragon mail early so that it's easier to get through with piranha-man later.
Or not, since you can't buy the stuff with lizard-man's low charm. I thought that maybe the problem was that I hadn't upgraded my armour and was still wearing mithril, but in fact the goblin mail has even less charm, so that isn't it. I think that sometimes the enemies in this area drop the dragon mail though, so it might not be a total waste of time, but really you're probably better off not going for it until you've got the fish. You can't sequence break through the area, because you can't climb the tower at the end until you've got access to both Mouse-Man and Piranha-Man forms.
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