i lost all my friends!!!! no!!!!!!!! there's a weird reset mechanic with this mode. there's basically an exp bar for each floor, and i lose some points everytime i die. then if it ever gets empty i lose absolutely everything except for the floor i'm on, including all my items and built-up stat bonuses and monster friendships. that's a whole lot of progress to be lost if i'm only consistently reckless for long enough, which is strange

it only happened this time because i didn't know; i died once and thought ok i guess i don't lose anything but temporary buffs so i'll attempt the harder rifts. but now i know. rebuilding everything back up i have to go through all the same monster conversations again, which really drills it in that losing everything is a major screw-up. what makes things tougher is having to fight Gilgamesh every few floors to be able to progress to the next, and he gets a little ridiculous

i'm now firmly in the "optimize equipment button being useless" zone. was hoping it would be confined solely to the postgame, because when i look at the sheer amount of different stats and types of bonuses and affinities available i start to miss FFXIV where stats don't matter and you just pick the one with the biggest level. i wanted to not have to look up builds but even doing that is overwhelming! it wouldn't be so bad if every guide didn't stress how much of a grind it'll be to get any decent build down, so i'm extremely hesitant to invest in anything

i finished the second DLC last night. i started making better use of the rift buffs and items and feeding my lil guys real good to really show Gigglemesh what for. wasn't expecting to get it done so soon, especially when i made it to the final story boss which was just absurdly difficult

every post i read online that was like "are you serious with this" everyone would say yeah just use Extra Mode. i keep running into parts of this game that i'm amazed are required to beat to progress the story, then remembering Extra Mode exists and that i'm just stubborn. dreading the final-final boss where i won't be able to use all my rift bonuses and i may have to finally break my Gamer's Code

i'm actually not that excited to have to play outside the rift again in general, aside from seeing the end of the story. it's not an amazing gamemode - all that's randomized is mobs and loot so it gets boring replaying the same levels that were already getting boring to replay in the last DLC - but it kind of feels like this is what the game is now. like now i have to go back to stripped-down tutorialworld for a while. well hopefully there'll finally be a couple new levels to play

that being said i'm hangin out a little longer. there's still some unique stuff i have left to unlock like monster stories. i have another tonberry friend now who wants to kill me, but then i give them money and they are momentarily hesitantly thankful. and i saw there was a trophy to do with maxing out affinity the blacksmith tonberry? i wanna know what that's about. there must be a good amount of tonberry game i haven't seen yet. i wanna finish the tonberry gamemode

from what i could glean of this game's plot it's mainly a love story between Jack and Astos i'm fairly sure. which is why it was pretty disappointing when after thousands of years they reunite in NPC text dialogue at the end of the DLC, after his death was such a big cutscene in the base game

made it to floor 31 in the rift and i think i've done almost everything there is to see. it says there's ultra crazy upgrades past floor 100 but i'm already at over 50 hours and would like to move on. onto the final DLC - Different Future..........

funny it's called Fantasy's End because it sure doesn't seem like i'm making it past this point

the first boss is the bad guy from FF2. also the DLC logo is in the same font as the original FF2 logo so i guess we're doing that now. anyway this boss is ridiculous, and unfortunately not the kind of ridiculous from before where the rift labyrinth gave me ways to brute force things. it's "i'm absolutely going to have to look up a build online, or use Extra Mode, or both" ridiculous

and so today was a grindday. i studied a build guide i found, which from gameplay looks just absolutely absurd to play. i can't wait. it's not so much grinding for materials like i thought it would be, and more hoping the RNG dragonshop stocks something good when it lets me refresh it after every few missions

although maybe that's only just now the case. this DLC introduced yet another new difficulty, LUFENIA, and the rewards from playing that super-cheeseable mission from before on it are wild. i be showing up to Bahamut's store cleaning the place out and im like yea keep the change..