As I continue my easy-mode playthrough of Lies of P's main game using a new Advance build, it's interesting to see what I missed the first time around. I bought the last of the Cryptic Ciphers, which becomes available when you turn in the final Krat supply box, and this allowed me to enter the cave right before the Green Hunter boss. The cave, as it turns out, is its own little mini-dungeon, with some interesting lore implications (I might realize I'm being very dumb, but when you find a journal by Medoro, the journalist doing all those "Veningi Guides" you get earlier in the game, he mentions his friends being Lorenzini, Sofia, and Lumacchio, as well as "H" and I can't quite figure out who that would be. Also, after taking about two hours to defeat Lumacchio on my other playthrough, I have very little good will left for the guy.)
I think I'm being fairly thorough in grabbing every last item, but short of just following a walkthrough, I know that some might evade me.
At this stage, I now have the bigger, heavier Advance Electric and Fire weapons (the latter found in that cave,) while I think the bigger and heavier Acid one isn't found until the Isle of Alchemists.
It is funny, because in an RPG like Final Fantasy, having weapons you find in the final dungeon makes some sense, as you're constantly replacing old weapons with better ones. But in a Souls-like, where the means to upgrade a weapon are quite limited, and where you can potentially finish the game with a weapon you got pretty early on, these late-game weapons have a kind of strange status.
For example, I always thought the Burial Blade in Bloodborne was really cool, but you literally have to beat the potentially-final boss to get it, and the only way you're going to have a chance to use it before NG+ is if you die to the final-final boss so you can go back to the Workshop and spend those bloodstones.
One advantage on doing a pure-Advance build is that, with weapon options so limited (seemingly just two weapons for each element,) there's less agonizing to do about which ones you upgrade. Having the final Krat supply box also means that I can now get everything to +9 without fear of running out (though I've burned through a fair amount of my crystallized Ergo - I love the DLC-patch's addition of a thing at any vendor that lets you convert those ergo items en masse while also being able to see what the thing you're trying to buy costs, and also that it excludes any of the special boss Ergos you'd want to use on a special weapon or amulet.
That is one funny thing, though: while I do have a couple more bosses to take down (if memory serves, Black Rabbit Brotherhood Rematch, Laxasia, Simon Manus, and Nameless Puppet, and then of course the DLC bosses) it seems none of the preceding boss weapons scale with Advance.
I know that there are a few DLC weapons that do, and I'll be curious to check them out (though I know that the lightning-dagger is more of an Advance/Technique hybrid build weapon). Actually, I also got the answer to "when does the DLC become available," which is when you return to Hotel Krat after the attack - so, pretty late in the game. It always struck me as surprising that you could go into the Old Hunters in Bloodborne pretty early on, though it does mean that on different runs I've been able to get cool weapons for the rest of my playthrough, like the Whirligig Saw or the Boom Hammer.
Anyway, what I might wind up doing is finishing the Advance playthrough on this difficulty mode and then, if I feel compelled to play more (and I don't totally know that I will) I might then do NG+ on that one but with the difficulty notched up.
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