Lord of Mana/Breakdown

The main content of this episode focuses on the in-universe virtual reality MMO, Lord of Mana. Your party's level and gear is irrelevant when you set foot in the game, and you have to raise your party almost from scratch within the MMO's mechanics. If you wish to return to the overworld, you can logout at any time from the menu.

As you begin, you must choose a class for Aldo to take. As he levels up, you get to customize his gear and skills available with the unique menus. New skills can be purchased in the skill menu for Ability Points that are gained from leveling up, but Ability Points can never be refunded. You can change class with the assistance of an NPC in the Deserted Village, but your levels and Ability Points will not carry over between classes. Your party members don't have these options and are fixed to three skills and basic equipment.

While you will mostly have Hismena and the Operator as your initial party members, you can go about and recruit more IDA characters to assist you. Several IDA NPCs are available in the overworld, while IDA party members can be found loitering in Aldo's room.

Also unique to this minigame is a Friend Rank. This increases the damage your party members do, and hitting the max rank of 3 is needed to reap the episode's completion rewards. You gain Friend Points through a few activities - fighting and winning a random battle with them will yield 1 Friend Point, while spending time and IDAbits in Port Lezona yields Points equal to 1/5th of the IDAbits you spent. Once you reach the point threshold, you will have to talk to the Friend again to advance their Rank. NPC friends must be talked to in the overworld (outside Port Lezona) to trigger the rank up, while IDA party members must be spoken to in-game for the same effect.

Within the Tower of Stone and Tower of Bone, you can also find a Platinum Slime enemy on the second floor of each Tower. It doesn't attack and is easy to defeat, and it yields 1,000,000 EXP, 10,000 IDAbits, and occasionally a random in-game badge for Aldo. The Platinum Slime will respawn every 6 hours or after defeating 50 enemies (Aldo swatting away enemies in-game does count), whichever comes first, and will always replace one random enemy within those environments.

Battles are commenced by running into the overworld enemy. Leaving and re-entering the map (or entering into the skills area) will respawn all enemies on the map. If your team severely outranks the enemy, Aldo will swat them away with no experience or Friend Points gained.