Attack!!!

Well I may have reached a turning point in this game. One of my party members have leveled up enough that they can use their full area spirit attack in the first turn, and since they normally attack first it means that often all monsters in an encounter are killed within the first few seconds!

This changes the rampant random encounters into quick bursts of getting exp, making leveling faster and exploring much less tedious. Also leveling faster made the boss fights at the end of the section much quicker since I was much higher level than I would have been.

Story wise it turns out that I had to talk to the king again, and he sent me to find 2 markers that pointed out the location of the moon stone (not in the moon stone temple oddly enough). After finding them, I made my way through the hidden temple and fought a giant guradian bird, killing it in 5 rounds (the last guradian took 50 rounds). When I went to get moon crystal it was gone, it turns out that the king had it all along and was planning to use it to summon the giant weapon to fight the empire while I was keeping them busy.

But of course the weapon (a giant green humanoid) gets out of control and I have to take out both it and a empire gunship. Having done that I got the moon crystal and now have to make my way north to the empire capital (again) to get their moon crystal.