Duneman Isle Side Quest - Xenogears
Duneman Isle is the second optional location that becomes available at the end of Disc 2 when you regain control of the Yggdrasil ship. Much like the Lighthouse, this location isn't shown on your map so you'll have to search for it yourself. You can find Duneman Isle just west of Bart's Lair in the northeastern portion of the World Map.
If you're having trouble finding this location, click on my screenshot below to make it bigger. You can use the map in that picture to navigate here. To land here you'll have to hover over one of the green spots of grass, I wasn't able to land anywhere on the sand. So much for originally being a sand crawler.
When you enter Duneman Isle you'll encounter some angry sand people who will insult and fight you if you don't leave. Once they're beaten you'll have free reign of the area. The first four screens of this dungeon are all identical, you'll need to run towards the sandfalls and then exit the screen to the east each time. After those screens you'll come to a desert which looks just like the desert around Aveh from earlier in the game.
Exit the desert screen to the north twice and you'll arrive at a huge skeleton. Jump ontop of the skeleton and climb to the top to find a Yamato Sword that you can pull out. My advice for jumping up the skeleton is to turn your camera angle so you can view everything from the side. You'll need to climb up the rib bones to reach the top.
From the screen with the skeleton you'll want to go south once and then west once. This will trigger a scene with some sand falls, you'll be shown two chests during this scene. We can only get a single chest each time, then we have to fall down the sand waterfall and run all the way through the desert again. Inside one chest you'll find the Kingly Armor and in the other chest you'll find a Godfather Gun. The Godfather is much more difficult to get and may take a few attempts.
The first time you slide down the sand fall you'll get into an encounter with a Wyrm enemy. You can get into random battles with these guys too but it is more rare. All of your regular attacks will hit the Wyrm for 1 damage so instead hit it with an Ether attack to take it out.
Once you slide down the sand fall you'll have to run back through the desert to get back to the top. From where you land head east once, then north once, then west to arrive back at the sand fall.
Aside from the two remaining treasures there is only one other thing worth mentioning about this area and that's the Dragon enemy. You will rarely encounter Dragons here which will be a tough but rewarding fight. They'll give you 30k EXP and have a chance to drop any of the following: Death Adder, Blessed Habit, Blessed Helm, Kaiser Helm, Mumyo Sword. Pretty much all of these will be great upgrades for your character(s).
If you got the Trader's Card item from Hammer you may want to grind the Dragons a bit for some better equipment. This isn't required though, but if you want to... Equip a HerculesRing for bonus EXP and get to grinding!
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