Having stopped last time only part way to our goal, to face Lily in the Free Pal Alliance Tower, the obvious path when we returned was to get back on the path to get there.

We had ended last time at the Sealed Realm of the Swift, the boss chamber for Verdash, which also happened to have a fast travel point next to it.  Handy, that, as travel tends to be an obstacle avoiding trudge.  I don’t mind blazing a trail once, but it isn’t something I want to put on repeat.

Verdash from last time

I got on ahead of time to scout our way ahead to Lily, only to travel out and find myself in a hot LZ.  I had forgotten all the Beegards that spawn around the fast travel point, so on loading into the location I was immediately in combat… and those Beegardes don’t mess around.  They are aggro, unlike a lot of Pals in the wild, and they have strapped on the suicide bomb vest and will charge at you and blow themselves up, and they do a lot of damage in the process.

I survived, once I got Verdash out.  I caught him last time and he has some powerful attacks including a ranged whirlwind that bowls down Beegardes pretty well.  But it was touch and go for a bit because the bees come for you before your screen had finished drawing.

Anyway, Verdash had me covered and once we had secured the area I began the scouting advance towards Lily.  That involved an ascent up a mountain, though there were at least some plateaus to work with and those air swirls that will boost you up to the next area, so I was able to get pretty far along, until I hit the snow line.  Then I ran into something new.  Cold.

Cold in the snow? Really?

Well, cold in the game isn’t new in and of itself.  You can get cold and take damage at night if the temp dips down too far.  But this was environmental cold, and you could catch a deadly chill in broad daylight with the sun warming you.

I dropped back down below the snow line and headed back to the fast travel point to get myself to base.  I had to run the Beegarde gauntlet again, as they respawn pretty quickly.

Back and base I went through my options, finding some cold resist armor.  I also made sure to have a fire pet with me, as just having one of those out and traveling with you will keep you warm.  As a backup, there is always a torch, which adds a little heat as well.

When Potshot and Lysol got on, I advised them of the temperature situation, and we got ourselves kitted out to go.  Then Potshot went ahead to the fast travel point where he too learned about it being a hot LZ, all the Beegardes having respawned.

Lysol and I traveled through and we put down the Beegardes once again

The Beegarde beat down… with a grenade launcher

Once things we clear, we took a run at Verdash… his place is right there… and knocked him down again, Lysol managing the catch in the end.  Then, once we were out and had cleared the respawns once more, it was up the mountain, going from ledge to ledge, exploring along the way.  We found, for example, a huge egg… that wasn’t an egg at all, but just some landscaping I guess.

Totally not a real egg…

This is in contrast to other eggs you find in the wild which are either food ingredients or eggs from which you can hatch pals.

We made it up into the snow zone and found a new lair to try out, the Sealed Realm of the Pristine.  These locations do all seem to have pretty grandiose titles.

The Sealed Realm of the Pristine discovered

We put a pin in that and kept heading towards the Free Pal Alliance Tower.  By that point we had out our warm pals, Foxsparks being  the fire pal of choice for the group.  It was not too far to the tower and the fast travel point close by.

The fast travel point reached

The light in that image is fading into night, during which we ran into the challenge of who had enough cold protection.  Temperatures go down with the sun and it turned out that Potshot was shy some level of cold protection and succumbed to freezing before he could get back to base via fast travel.

We struggled with that for a bit, until the sunrise made the problem moot.  Then, assembled once more, we went to the tower to go through the major trial of the game… getting the group into the same battle.

The UI for this is… not finished.  You have to join the battle then confirm that you are ready to go into the instance.  But the first person who joins only sees their name.  The dialog is not dynamic, it does not update.  So, as the first person to queue up I just saw this.

Just me listed there

The third person to join will see the other two names.  However, communicating what you are seeing over voice is… prone to error.  So when I asked if everybody was in the dialog, it turned out I was the only one in the final dialog, so when I pressed “Confirm” I ended up alone in the battle.  That ended as expected.

Wilhelm, Face Down Dead

I lasted the full 10 minutes allotted, but did not have the damage output to solo the boss… and when the 10 minutes are up you die.  So I respawned, got cleaned up, then fast traveled to the tower again, where we got everybody to the right dialog.  The rule now is that only the person who sees the whole party is allowed to click the “Confirm” button.

Then, finally, we were all in the battle with

Time for Lily and Lyleen!

That battle went well enough.  Lyleen is a grass type… totally not stolen from Pokemon types, because how can you trademark “grass,” though I am sure Nintendo would try if they could find somebody dumb enough at the USPTO… and we had, among other things, brought along fire spewing pals, which quite effective at dealing damage to Lyleen.  We managed to wrap the battle up within the requisite 10 minutes without too much going wrong, and collected our rewards.

Victory over Lily and Lyleen

Well, there was ONE issue.  A couple blows short of the final one that did Lyleen in, Potshot took a bad hit and went down, but the battle was over seconds later, so nobody could get to him for a revive.  So he got credit and the quest update, but had to respawn back to base by himself, rather than being kicked out at the top of the tower and the fast travel point perched up there.

We decided not to redo the battle, heading back over to the Sealed Realm of the Pristine to see what we could find there.  That turned out to be the domain of Sibelyx, a big, honking pal in a hat suitable for a royal wedding.

Sibelyx revealed, pristine or not

We went all in on that and I managed to catch Sibelyx as we got her down to her final few hit points, adding her to my growing collection of pals.  She hits pretty hard and would end up coming in handy a few times.

Having completed that, we had been given our next goal, to defeat Axel in the Bothers of the Eternal Pyre Tower.  I think I am starting to see a pattern in these.  So that would be our next destination, another tower on top of a mountain, just visible from the mountain we were currently standing on.

Somewhere up there is our next destination

We went back to base to repair, restock, and learn new recipes before it was time to head out again.