“Brother, my brother/Tell me, what are we fighting for/We’ve got to end this war”

I find myself watching cats gang up on each other. As you could guess by the large amount of names in red, I did not make it out of this one unscathed. I fought my hardest, but my weak paw swings and feeble attempts to evade enemy strikes did me in. I also had a distinct lack of healing herbs, so I was doomed from the start.

Combat in this game consists primarily of hitting the Space Bar to attack and using the WASD keys to maneuver around the battlefield. The world pauses when the inventory is opened, so that also makes for a brief reprieve as I desperately searched for a healing item. The combat is simple so far. I tend to mash the Space Bar and stand in one spot more often than not; the aim on the attack isn’t as precise as I would like it to be, but it’s also possible that there are upgrades to the radius of the swing that I haven’t gotten yet. Regardless, it’s not a great strategy.

I think I’m just bad at every game.

On the bright side, I found my way to the mine north of my home camp after a few wasted days of trying to catch stupid squirrels for a new quest I picked up. The quest, given by Coco in the center of the map at the Sacred Temple, involves catching a certain amount of prey animals and delivering them to that spot. Doing this taught me the “Hold” function, which allows me to keep something in my mouth and potentially give it to other characters in the game. It became clear that I could gift these to other cats to raise my relationship standing with them. Now, to get everyone to be my best friend…

I entered the mine and was greeted by a mole who insisted I needed to bring him gems and ore to get Mole Coins, as he wouldn’t accept the cat-standard Mews. These Mole Coins could be used in his shop to buy rare items, such as the Black Hare required for the quest I’m working on with Coco.

My cat clearly has superpowers to be able to smash a rock with their paws, but realism has already been thrown out the window anyway. I’m trying to hang out with a cat who has horns. There’s no explanation for those either, but here we are.

I gathered piles of debris and was repeatedly assaulted by bats, but I managed to get out of this one alive and even made it to the 25th floor! My reward was merely being able to buy a warp to get back to the 25th floor and reap better rewards with less effort. However, I didn’t have enough Mole Coins to buy it, so I’m gonna have to manually traverse the mine again anyway to earn them.

The mine makes for a good spelunking experience after spending most of my time thus far killing frogs and mice and losing territory battles with other cats. I am one step closer to discovering the deepest riches of the mines–one step closer to finding gems and having Very Super Special Mole Coins™.