06 - Edited for Content

Quest 6 - Edited for Content

Rewards:

1,000 experience points

500 gold

Sindarin du Vide Lesson

If you are following along with the guide, then the party should be aaround level 11 or 12. This is the perfect level to be going into the next quest. In order to start the quest “Edited for Content” we simply need to examine the grave outside Sindarin’s shop in Ordolus.

1. Talk to Lily’s husband.

Go into Sindarin’s Shop and ask him about the grave outside his house. It turns out Sindarin du Vide is a famous editor and offers to help edit Ardus’ manuscript. If Cynthia is with you at this point, she will also talk about her eccentric roommate’s views on Lily du Vide’s children book “Fortis the Tortoise”.

2. Meet Sindarin in his house in the Mindscape.

Go to sleep using the bed in Sindarin’s house. Follow him into his Editing Room.

We can wake up and leave through Exit 1 whenever we want and Exit 2 is actually Sindarin himself. Before we talk to him there are a few things we can pick up here. Examine the books at point A and B.

A - Caranthian Book of Prayer

B - Recipe for Lily’s Vichyssoise

Solidarity, the skill learned from the Caranthian Book of Prayer, is an especially useful utility skill that every party member should learn to use. It allows anyone to gift half of their current EP to another party member. Since you can go in any order on your turn in the Logomancer, this gives the player another level of tactics to employ by deciding how to distribute their resources..

Creator Commentary: Caranthians, the Caranthos Mori, and Chasaduin (pronounced kuh-SAW-doo-in) are all concepts that have to do with the cosmology of the greater universe that the Logomancer and my other stories and games take place in. At the time of the Logomancer’s release, there aren’t actually any other of my stories available, but I hope to make more games and tell more stories in the future!

Creator Commentary: A vichyssoise is a type of soup and a very fun word to say. I actually learned the word from V’s introductory monologue in the movie, V for Vendetta.

Easter Eggs: A lot of the other notes on the ground in Sindarin’s Editing Room have jokes and references to other games, books and movies in them. One of them describes the entire plot of the highly influential game, Persona 4. Some other references include:

• • The grizzled, mute soldier from Id Software’s Doom

  • The account of the phonological shift from Berith to Berys references the English localization of Aerith / Aeris’ name from Final Fantasy VII

  • The spiraled haircut from Junji Ito’s manga Uzumaki

More Creator Commentary: When talking to Sindarin, prepare to enter a world of meta-commentary not only on video game design in general but the thought process behind writing this game in particular. All of Sindarin’s insights about Ardus’ plot, Ardus’ misgivings about overloading the reader with information and his insecurities about writing interesting female characters are basically thinly veiled anecdotes from the writing process for the Logomancer’s story as a whole.

After talking to Sindarin, the way forward into Ardus’ novel “The Tower of Ideals” is open. Examine the book on the table in front of Sindarin to enter Winthgraden Tower.

3. Revise and edit Ardus’ novel.

Creator Commentary: The most obvious thing about Ardus’ Winthgraden Tower is the complete visual change in the graphics. In-game, Sindarin uses the Mindscape to visualize stories, but doesn’t have the same skill as a logomancer like Glenton so everything appears a bit simpler than other areas. This means the entire tower dungeon looks suspiciously like the Temple of Fiends from the first Final Fantasy game.

We begin in 1F (upper-left on the map). Our goal is to completely remove all of the grammatical errors in Ardus’ novel and then talk with Malebaldur on 4F. The grammatical errors are the floating red diamonds that are wandering about each floor.

If you ever need to exit the tower you can examine the book at point A to return to Sindarin’s Editing Room. Since we’re here on 1F, though, let’s run into one of the nearby floating diamonds. Ardus is given a passage from his book that has a particular grammatical error in it. Simply choose the phrase that contains the error to start a rhetorical battle with the punctuation that is causing the issue.

There are three grammar quizzes that must be passed (in addition to defeating all of the encounters themselves), one for each type of punctuation enemy.

The answer to the apostrophe quiz is option 2 “Monolithic statue’s” because “statues” should be plural and not possessive.

The answer to the contraction quiz is option 3 “it’s writhing appendage” because “its” is possessive and not a contraction of “it is”.

The answer to the semicolon quiz is option 3 “inched back;” because the second half of the sentence is a phrase and not a complete sentence so it should be linked with a comma and not a semicolon.

Let’s take a closer look at the types of punctuation enemies inside Winthgraden Tower.

Creator Commentary: The Evangelion references continue past the seven-eyed mask and spill into the Semicolons attack skills and description in Cynthia’s research journal. They can use the Spear of Longinus, which is the apocryphal name of the spear used to pierce Christ (John 19:34), but is also the term for the bident-shaped control rod for the primordial angels in Evangelion. The last line of the Research menu description is “Congratulations!” as well, a callback to the bafflingly cheap conclusion to the original anime series.

As an aside, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a hugely successful and influential anime but is not necessarily recommended due to collapsing under the weight of its underwhelming protagonist. The mythology behind the series and the real life drama surrounding its creation are fascinating though. Also, the 2.0 movies do feature more of a Gurren Lagann influence which is appreciated.

Okay, back to the Logomancer!

Here’s a rundown of what to do each floor start with 1F. Open the treasure chest at point B to get an Apropos Verbiage. Defeat the 2 Apostrophes and 1 Contraction, then take the stairs at Exit 1 to get to 2F (upper-right segment of the map).

On 2F, defeat the Aportrophe, Contraction and Semicolon enemies, then examine the treasure chests at point C and D to get 2 Memories of Experience. Next, take the stairs at Exit 2 to reach 3F.

You may wonder how to use the Memory of Experience since it doesn’t work from the item menu. We won’t be able to use the Experience items until we’re more than halfway done with the quest Fill in the Blank.

On 3F, defeat the Semicolon and the Contraction, then take the hidden passage that leads to Exit 4. This will take you back down to 2F where we can now grab the treasure chest at point E which contains a Virtuosity of Practice. Head back up to 3F through Exit 4, then take the stairs at Exit 3 to reach the top floor, 4F.

There is another hidden passageway at point G. Walk through the wall and around to Exit 5, which takes you down to 3F, just in front of point F. Open the treasure chest at point F to receive a new Macguffin, the Plot Twist.

The Plot Twist is used during the Malebaldur encounter, but if you don’t find it until after completing the encounter, Ardus will still explain what the twist was and regret not thinking of it sooner.

Return to 4F and defeat the final Semicolon enemy. Now that all 9 errors have been corrected, Sindarin sets the stage for the final battle with Malebaldur. If Cynthia is in your party, she will leave and get ready to play the part of Sylvanne. This means the encounter with Malebaldur has to be done with only Ardus and John - or Ardarius and Jonathaniel.

Talk to Malebaldur at point H on 4F to start the boss battle for Winthgraden Tower.

Depending on if you have Cynthia in your party and if you found the Plot Twist, the conversation with Malebaldur can have some subtle differences in it. Either way, Ardarius refuses to listen to reason and a rhetorical fight starts with Malebaldur.

The Malebaldur fight is divided into 5 distinct phases. In phase one, Malebaldur starts off in the logos state since he is trying to reason with Ardarius. In this phase, he can only use verbal attacks. If he is inflicted with the Incoherent state, he will counter with the Tabula Rasa skill which will clear all negative states. Assuming Ardus’ level is higher than 9, it is recommended to keep using Bravado on John so he can deal significantly more damage with his pathos skills. Once Malebaldur’s WP reaches 0, phase 2 will begin.

In phase 2, Malebaldur will be immune to logos damage and his Shadow will appear. He has access to the very destructive Aphasia skill which not only hits everyone for a lot of WP damage, but inflicts the Incoherent state. Trout Fillets or the Bravado skill will undo this debilitating state. Continue the same strategy from phase 1 and have John deal pathos damage while Ardus continues to buff and heal if necessary.

In phase 3, Malebaldur will steal 4,500 WP from his shadow and become immune to all logos and pathos damage. He can now use the Spear of Longinus skill as well. Tactics remain the same, except Ardus and John should focus on using ethos attacks. Have John use the Provoke skill so ethos attacks do more damage to Malebaldur.

In phase 4, Malebaldur will once again steal 4,500 WP from his shadow. Now, he is immune to pathos, logos and ethos damage which means this phase we will focus on using verbal skills. The Fantastic Pun learned from Glenton is particularly useful here in conjunction with Bravado and Tongue Twister which is learned from Eventide. This is assuming those quests were completed before arriving.

In phase 5, Malebaldru will steal the rest of his Shadow’s WP in order to give himself the extremely rare Omni Armor state which makes him immune to all damage types. Fortunately, the battle is a foregone conclusion at this point since a single point of WP damage will destroy his weakened shadow and end the fight.

If you want to bypass some of Malebaldur’s phase changes, it is entirely possible to debuff his shadow with higher level skills like Ardus’ Cult of Personality and John’s Dysphemism. Then, merely focus on taking out the shadow’s WP. Once the shadow is defeated, the fight is over!

Creator Commentary: The Ancestral Seed skill that Malebaldur use s will bypass your party’s CON stat. It is also another in a long string of references to the anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Now that Malebaldur is defeated, Ardus’ manuscript has been officially edited! This is also where Ardus interjects his Plot Twist if you found it earlier. Finding the Plot Twist also changes the dialog with John after exiting Winthgraden Tower. Sindarin thanks Ardus for the chance to get back into editing. The party can now learn lessons from Sindarin du Vide!

The previous part of the walkthrough was Louder Then Words, the next part is Haunting Memories