Snakes & the Radical Dreamers:

Time to look around Kaldor Trade City.

Not much to see at first glance except for a new weapon available for purchase, the Arcane Sword. Expensive, but as I learned very quickly at the next town, that's because the prices are higher than normal. Not a bad pickup in any case because it gives a huge seven point boost to magic.

At the pub, there's some interesting fellows. Most are from the so called Radical Dreamers gang, but one particular guy in the northwest seems very familiar if you remember Oboro's flashbacks. Could just be a random NPC, but who knows. Might have to swing back here after finding Oboro.

Anyways, talking to all the Radical Dreamers reveals that their leader wants to get into Durandal Castle and reclaim their treasure from the storage room there. They leave the pub once all of them have said their piece. Rather than follow them to the docks, head back into town to find a curious new individual, Snakes. Totally Serin, but he's denying it...and probably for good reason.

Follow Serin to the docks and you can get on the boat that technically should bring you to Seascape Town. It doesn't, placing you on a continent where you'll have to do some walking around the mountains. A few new enemies around, some that can be surprisingly dangerous if you're not paying attention, but otherwise can be handled with timely healing and letting Tifa or Ronan, whomever is handling all the damage dealing, wreck house.

On this Continent we have previous monsters in Fairy Dragons, Green Slimes, Hellhounds, and Kabutops, while the new monsters are:

• Dragonzord - Rare encounter found in the desert on the east side of the continent. May cause a 'WTF moment' the first time you encounter one of them. It is for all intents a boss in terms of difficulty, so you should avoid encountering it until later when you're good and ready. It's high level and has an extensive attack script with some powerful spells, and can counter most character skills with its special attack, Dragon Missile, which is unblockable and condemns the target. The reason to fight them? They can drop Omni Elixirs and have Golden Apples as a rare steal! It is weak to Earth and Ice.
• Malpixie - Fairly high level, they use status effect attacks including Love Token, Charm, Death Roulette, and a chance to cast a really nasty one called Vertigo, which is an unblockable Confuse to all party members.
• Skag - Armored canine creatures who roam free in this barren wasteland. They are moderately tough.

There is also a forested area enclosed by mountains. We'll be going there later.

Once you reach Seascape Town, there's an interesting NPC at the entrance who offers his services to you. His name is Zeke and he's got the Steal command available and doesn't do half bad damage with his physicals honestly. He's another person to take hits which helps out immensely.

Your only main task in Seascape Town is to locate Snakes. He's in the inn which you can access via the relic shop or the pub. Talk to him and he'll head out along with his gang.

Make sure to check everywhere around town. Spots that had an item in the World of Balance may now have another item here. You'll also want to check out the southwestern most house. Besides a guy claiming he's still error, there's a hidden staircase behind him. At the end of it is a familiar fellow, BMO. Jake & Finn in Alvantes will be happy to have him back...and you can do it now if you really want since you can take a ship back outside Kaldor Trade City. I'm gonna hold on to this now though since I'll have a much more flexible form of transportation soon enough. BMO actually becomes a Rare Item in the inventory which is pretty neat.

When you're ready to leave, grab a chocobo to find this particular portion of the world goes into the twilight zone. Just north of where the Kaldor Trade City boat deposited you is a familiar cave entrance.

Big Poe:

Time to see what our foray into the Thieves' Cave (The cave that linked the giant desert region where Durandal Castle was to Seascape Town) brings as we keep up with Snakes & his gang. At the entrance we find Lone Wolf, who advises us to wait while he clears out the monsters... Like hell we will!

Now inside, two of the enemies we encounter are the same as that one small cave near the Beast Plains that had the Cael Hammer chest. Those are the EvilWeapon & Mochi. The former hits hard and can confuse a target, but should die before it has a chance to launch several powerful tier 2 elemental spells back to back. The latter tends to come in groups of four and are more annoying than threatening.

Then, you have the new enemies not seen from that little cave. The Cerberus we fought much earlier returns, and a rare encounter featuring a Korok. These are high level water-elemental monsters that have a high magic stat. Focus on removing them right away. Then there are Gitrogs who are frail and cast weak spells, not much else... but there is one enemy that shows up alone and gets the FFMQ battle theme whenever you run into it. That enemy is another entry into the long line of dragons being jerks, the Elder Dragon. And much like the previously mentioned Dragonzord, it is more or less a boss pretending to be a random monster... so there is no shame in running away from it for now if need be. I, however, for the sake of science will be challenging one.

Elder Dragons have powerful physicals and even more powerful lightning attacks. Nova can easily kill anyone not packing lightning resistance or a Shell buff, Giga Volt hurts slightly less, Twin Plasma likely hurts like hell (but it only used it once in this time), and Flash Rain can easily lop off 1000 or more health from everyone. Rubber Shields will greatly help out Tifa & Ronan survive while Zeke had best pray a Nova, Giga Volt, or Twin Plasma isn't sent his way. The only attack not likely to kill anyone is 1000 Needles for obvious reasons (Does a flat 1k damage to its target). Its special attack, Shout, is unblockable and inflicts Silence, and it can heal itself once in a while, or even use Reraise which can't be dispeled in this mod. It absorbs lightning, fire won't hurt it, but it is weak to earth. Finally, once it dies, it has a chance to use Revenge as one last hoorah... so prepare for this accordingly.

Loot wise, Elder Dragons have a common Remedy steal, a rare Serpent Rod steal, and may rarely drop Golden Apples. Decent exp & gil too so it may not be a bad grinding zone when you get the necessary gear to easily soak their attacks.

As for the cave itself, the chests have new loot in them much like how certain barrels/bushes/whatnot in towns had new items to uncover. You'll walk away with 20k gil, a X-Potion, and a Cosmos Ring.

As you catch up to Snakes & the gang, they go into a new part of the cave via turtle hopping. Follow suit and you'll find a bunch of opened chests in the first room, then a fork in the second room where you can keep on heading west or detour north. If you head north, you'll find resident wolfman thief Lone Wolf. Apparently he's looking for something, then runs off, dropping a sparkly in the process. Lucky for us we can pick that up...after dealing with a ghost that also wants the sparkly, the Big Poe.

Back in my previous playthrough, I didn't go after the Big Poe until I got more characters into my team. Here though, I have Zeke. That one extra person makes a world of a difference in letting me win the fight now instead of later.

In any case...the Big Poe likes to spam Freeze & Blizzard, but neither does enough damage to be of any major concern. Besides the uncommon casting of Holy, Big Poe's only real dangerous move is Ninth Dimension for roughly 2000 damage to a target. It will counter both Holy and Flare with it too, so if you make the cavern your first place to visit after acquiring the airship, you'll want to pick one character to deal all the damage and let the others support.

My strategy here is more or less what I've been doing for random battles to this point...let Ronan handle all the damage dealing and keep Tifa on standby to drop a Cura or Raise if it's needed (and for Zeke, those Raise castings were very much needed)

If you want to use specific elements, stay away from poison as it can absorb it. Fire & holy are its weaknesses. Zeke can attempt to steal a Necronomicon, but otherwise try to have him defend and only pop an item when it's desperately needed.

If an ally has Reflect status, it will use its special attack, Mirror Breaker, to remove it. If affected by Slow, it'll use Black Shock on a random ally, followed by two regular attacks.

After the battle, you get a nice Prism Cape drop and can pick up the treasure chest key that Lone Wolf dropped.

Durandal Castle rises again:

Tifa & the gang make it out of the cave and into a very welcome place...Durandal Castle. Sounds like Serin might have gotten help from the Radical Dreamers in order to find his precious castle. Makes sense considering how upside down the world's become.

Since the castle's submerged, you can only head down to Basement 2. Trying to talk to the guy that usually shuttles you to a new desert zone reveals he KINDA needs air. Sounds like the castle's been submerged for quite some time. Must be a reason why it hasn't done so at all. That reason lies down the staircase to the east leading to a new portion of the castle. Monster ridden, but new loot and all that.

Of the new loot in this area, the most significant is the Kaiser Crown. Decent defenses and gives a 1 point boost to might/speed/stamina/magic.

When you're all done looting, head back to the room with three exits and four chests. The middle door goes straight north to the engine room. You'll want Tifa & Ronan to equip a Holy Amulet and maybe Speed Boots or the Eaglehorn before entering said engine room.

Inside, there appears to be a bunch of zombie arms messing with the engines that let Durandal Castle submerge & move around. Snakes tells the gang to go grab the treasure while he deals with the undead dirtbags. Once they leave, he immediately drops his whole Snakes persona and goes back to regular 'ol Serin and requests the trio's help in the undead cleansing. Works for me!

The fight is against Corpser, two Zombie Heads, and two Zombie Arms. Despite the volume of enemies, it's not too bad. The damage is respectable, but nothing that Tifa or Ronan should have an issue healing up. They can use moves that, predictably, inflict zombify, as well as an onslaught of poison. With Tifa & Ronan protected, you only need to run damage control if the others get zombified. The most important thing to do is act fast before they overwhelm the party. For damage, AoE attacks work best so use moves like Ronan's Rising Phoenix or Wolf Wind Attack alongside Serin's Psycho Blade. Thankfully the game did us a favor and auto-equipped Serin.

The arms have a special attack, Grab, that inflicts Slow. They will then Seize any slowed character every now and then, so they should be dealt with first, whereas the heads will use lightning attacks. If anyone has learned Death or Break, the heads are susceptible to both for an easy kill. The Corpser is the strongest of the lot and can attack slowed characters with Cursed Breath and Will-o'-the-Wisp. It's special attack, Vomit, condemns the target. Overall it shouldn't take long to drop all of them if everything goes right.

After the battle, Serin tells the story of why he kept up the Snakes ruse for so long. He heard the castle was in trouble, but had no idea where to look, hence the Radical Dreamers and their "secret cave". Simple enough really.

With Serin back and the zombie crisis dealt with, Durandal Castle can move again. Before doing that, there's a couple things to do.

First, the so called storage room where the Radical Dreamers went (and exited from only to assume their leader became zombie food). While the treasure chests have been looted, nobody thought to check the suit of armor. There's a Wraith Blade on it. If you wanted to pull off some odd Soul Reaver kind of cosplay, here ya go because the Wraith Blade deals mp damage and randomly casts Death. There is also a one-of-a-kind encounter in this room featuring a 4-pack of Torturer monsters. No real reason to fight them other than completion. The monsters outside of this room however are now gone!

The other thing to do is after Durandal Castle has surfaced. Remember that locked chest in Serin's bedroom? I believe that key from the post-Big Poe fight can unlock it. Inside is a...questionable magazine, but it'll serve a purpose later. There's also a Psionic Wave if you missed the one back in the Underworld.

When you're ready to depart, have the guy responsible for submerging/surfacing the castle take you to the continent in the far south. From there, it's a long walk northeast upon exiting the castle and you'll find the next town, Quartz Village. There are no new monsters that we haven't already gone over on this continent.