What do you do with a hero with three balls?

Walk him and pitch to the fairy.

When I looked at the screen shot for the Vault of Tears, I noticed that there was a strong frog theme in all the sculpture but the big naga in the centre. Kind of weird for a snake themed dungeon. But then i figured out why they are there shortly after entering the room with tsaid statue... 

Frogged! (also still colour coordinated!)

The stone naga casts Toad on the party and turns them all into frogs. This isn't as big a set back as you might figure, since all it does it stops Oliver from using magic and blocks off a couple areas with fast moving water. They can still summon familiars in a fight, use items, and even can swim across pools of standing water. Also, after following a rainbow frog, they quickly find a magic circle that changes them back. There's even one of the magic circles at the entrance, so you can't leave as a frog, but the party doesn't even remark on having the curse suddenly lifted that way (the stature just curses you again on returning).

If Oliver was a frog from the start, his mom would still be alive. Oh well, back to human.

The rainbow frog then leads them to a frog man locked in a jail cell. On freeing him, Esther recognises him from an old fairy tale about a price who turned himself into a frog so that the evil naga that was attacking the land would eat him and he could kill the naga from the inside (that old tale). But then it turns out the potion he used to turn into a frog was permanent, and also made him immortal (not bad deal). He was so upset that he was now forggish, he left his princess and just hung out in the Vault of Tears for a millennium. Then recently some one brought the naga back to life (the evil wizard finally did something), and he was locked in the cell.

  

Looks like they're mixing up their Disney princes.

So now it's off to explore the temple. It's not as large as the ice caves, and it's much more centred around puzzles than combat. There's only a few monsters around, mostly snake or lizard based, but there was one that stood out for two particular reasons...

Snake tits! (alternative title of this post)

Well, what ever floats the naga's boat I guess. Although, I would have more figured he would be an asp man. 

After solving a couple of simple puzzles, it was time to take on the naga guarding the magic stone! It was a pretty strait forward fight, since the naga mostly used physical attacks and not much ranged or stat affecting stuff. Half way through the fight Drippy suggested using speed down spells on it so it wouldn't attack as quick, which only worked about a third of the time. 

Worst Indiana Jones impression ever!

After a constant beat down, the snake man finally had too much and poofed out of existence, dropping the magic stone we were after!  

That's two down!

As a bonus the fog prince returned to human form (there goes immortality), and the rainbow frog that helped us turned out to be his princess (who took the same frog potion). Apparently they never spoke to each other after a thousand years hanging out in that temple. Also she didn't seem to mind at all that he left her and his kingdom due to his own vanity. In the end nothing was learned and nobody chnaged. Yay? 

Better not come back in Ni No Kuni 2!

So just that ghost ship remaining! Since the first dungeon was combat oriented, and the second was puzzles, I figured that this one would rely a lot on magic (still have about a dozen spells I never used). So I got on my own ship and headed out to where it was, figuring that i would get to the first save point in the ship and call it quits for the night. But the game had other plans...

As soon as my ship made contact with the ghost ship, which was clarified as a ghost galleon (due to the wall of canons on the side), there was a cut scene and some freaky zombie steam-punk cyborg pirate attacked!

Umm, cool?

It was more or less just a mid boss and the party stomped him without much effort. After that the captain of the ghost ship shows up in another cut scene. I was figuring that now the party will be captured and we would have to fight through the ghost ship to escape. Nope again! The captain just straight up attacked!

This world doesn't even have 7 seas! It's all open oceans

The captain wasn't much more of a challenge than the last fight and the party stomped him in no time. As he was poofing way I was still hoping to get to raid the ghost ship to find the stone, but nope!

Two weak bosses to get this thing?! The bad guys are not even trying any more!

I get the feeling that I wound up doing this in the wrong order. I was meant to start off with the short ghost fights, then the medium puzzle temple, and work my way up to the big ice cave. The way i did it was all down hill. 

After all the ghost pirates fade away, having been bested in glorious combat, the game cuts to another session with the characters barely in the plot. The counsel member that helped Oliver with the time stuff questions the evil wizard's loyalty. I guess he's feeling out if the wizard could be used for good, but covers it as checking if he's loyal to the cause of doing big evil stuff for reasons. The wizard also dosen't seem to trust the council member much either.

Can't bee all that forbidden if people keep casting it! 

So back with the party, they finally notice that each one of the stones are bigger than the wand they are meant to go in. Not the most observant lot here. So they figured they should check in with the sage emperor prince (aka Swaine's brother) to see if he knows how to get big balls into little holes. 

The way this story works, the place has likely gone to shit the moment you left...