Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 14: Ghostly Abdominals

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Don't be an ageist jerk. (Except if one is so old they're senile.)

As of when I'm starting this, Week 13 wasn't even published yet. There is a funny situation about that, and it's still not even resolved as of publishing. Either way, there's two Ring Fit Adventure fitness logs published on KoopaTV in one week, except this one is actually on Friday (hence KoopaTV Fitness Friday).

At the end of Week 13 I started World 14: Moppets Gone Missing. Here's the continuation of that story, starting on Sunday:

At the end of Week 13 I completed the first half of the map (left side).
Week 14 is dedicated to this half.
(My difficulty level in week 14 is still 29 out of 30.)

The first thing I do in World 14 second half is enter... General Store Number 12. Honey and Hubby are discussing the dangers of fog and children disappearing. They now sell Ginger as an ingredient, and the Bleached Skeleton clothing set, as well as the Blue Skeleton clothing set. The skeleton clothes are black with white/blue painted-on bones and the same power rating (more than Peacock Contender). Bleached has no set bonus, but Blue will restore your hearts if you do repeated knee lifts. That's a useless set bonus, since it's a ridiculous notion that I'll be in a heart deficit with my abundance of healing items and monstrously high defence stat.

There's a story-relevant woman in town, Martha, who is crying about her daughter (named Carrie) disappearing. Ring volunteers us to find her, though it's also noted that ALL of the children have disappeared in this unnamed land. Meanwhile, the other townspeople are speaking of an abs instructor who used to hold seminars and sing abs-related songs, but that person has disappeared. But if I score at least 1500 points in 40 seconds in Bootstrap Tower (Novice), I can get the Abs Master top clothing, which looks suspiciously similar to Abdonis's zipper-challenged jacket. You have to try to fail this challenge.

Disturbingly, it turns out that the Ab Master not only is Abdonis's jacket, but it also comes with Abdonis's hair. Does that mean that his isn't natural?

I'm not wearing this creepy thing in public, believe me. It's going right to the wardrobe and staying there.

Rather than immediately advance the story, I'm going to head north from the town to High-Roller Complex. It's literally World 11's Rumbling Road, except with fog. I skipped the enemy fights by jumping over them, so... nothing else to say, except I did a much better job in the Overhead Ring Pull zipline segments with not getting hit by the rolling spiky logs. Right after, marathon runner Dashley asked me to do the same course again, but in under 200 steps. This can easily be done in half that, especially since you really can just jump through most of the course that does take place on the ground, which isn't much. She gave me 600 coins.

Behind the Rare Hoplin is Aerochute (Novice), which features fog. This is not fun, because you need to slowly descend to floating silver rings below you, which are the same colour as the fog. Still, you get 350 coins for at least B-ranking it, and the overworld treasure chest contains Ginger recipes: Pineapple Ginger Juice and Cinnamon Ginger Smoothie. They're made of what you expect, and they are affiliated with the Abs Fit Skill. Now, ignoring the overworld Gold Hoplin for now, we move to the next place after town to the right: the Ghostship Tower, which is certainly going to be a miniboss battle.

Ring seems to think that the missing kids are probably the ghosts, but I'm focused on the miniboss fight: Two Dark Hoplin+s and one Dark Stomper. I guess the upgrade for the no-adjective (colourless) Hoplin is Dark? The Dark Hoplin+ minions really aren't worth the effort to beat them, since they're relatively harmless and only doing a quarter of a heart of damage (or less) each. It took 6 rounds of my strongest Fit Skills to knock out the Dark Stomper, which took the two Dark Hoplin+s with it. No special moves from anyone. Unlike most boss fights with supporting minions, since the Dark Hoplin+s will only do weak attacks and not any supporting buffs or healing, there really isn't any point to fight them. Beating them got us to level 128, unlocking the super-good Warrior III Pose Lv.2 (3 recharge time, but 330 base attack and 3-range), as well as making it very obvious that the Stray Ghosts are actually Ghost Children that are invisible to adults, except for us and the monsters that kidnapped them.

I stopped playing after that, but on Monday, I go to fight the Gold Hoplin group in the overworld, and there are a whopping FOUR of them. These encounters are what all of the extra turn smoothies are for. With a Russian Twist Lv.2 (five-range attack), a Warrior II Pose Lv.2 (another five-range attack), a Chia-Seed Smoothie (extra turn), an Asparagus Smoothie (turns all Fit Skills into green, and powers green Fit Skills up), a Pumpkin Soup (doubles money), and the Peacock Contender set (increases power of green Fit Skills by 5%), I beat all four Gold Hoplin before they could run away, netting a very lucrative 4,000 coins. This also grants us access to the Thigh Rider (Novice) Game Gym, which features incredibly dangerous driving in the fog with no lights. Despite repeatedly driving into bombs and the whole thing being a course in memorisation (aka trial & error), I got a B-rank on my first try and obtained a Sapphire. Then I did the request to do the Abs Set Fitness Gym again, got tired from the planks, received three Cabbage Soy Potage, and then had to end the day early because my right Joy-Con lost its charge. Whoops. KEEP THOSE JOY-CONS CHARGED.

This is horrifyingly dangerous. Just ask your boss to work from home.

Tuesday got, uh, skipped. But on Wednesday, we rush right to the alliteratively-appealing Turmoil Territory! Ring gets the idea that Abdonis is involved in the children's disappearance, and he's the famous abs instructor. All signs point to that, yes. After easily going through Turmoil Territory (which itself isn't interesting), we head to Gazelle Channel. A gazelle wouldn't be able to navigate through all of these human-intended squat/chair pose/back press-powered vehicles, or the overhead side bend cart. However, I did reach level 130, which means an even more-expanded skill point tree! And this features Lv.3 skills!

This third edition of the Spend Skill Points screen should last me until the end of the game, right?

I don't get any yet, though, opting for the +15 attack boost. (See the far-most left column's sword icon in the screenshot above.) Instead, I head to the Battle Gym, which features FIVE (that's the most so far) rounds. The upgraded, dark influence-infused form of green is “malachite”, and they're no match for my power. After clearing this in nine turns, I unlocked the recipes for Caramel Coffee and Caramel Milk Tea, which as far as I'm concerned, is a waste of both caramel and of milk. They both raise defense power by ↑↑. Not that I'll need it. Anyway, the penultimate course of the map is the ominously-named Disappearance Path, featuring both Milk and Soy Milk as collectibles. Along the way, I earned level 131, which still doesn't get me to the Lv.3 skills, instead getting Overhead Arm Spin Lv.2... which is great by Lv.2 standards, at least. (5-range at 295 base power? Yes!) After clearing this without fanfare, there's a request at the Battle Gym to beat it again, but within thirteen turns, in order to get Abdonis's shoes. Done.

You'll notice that the whole Wednesday had no story in it. Really, nothing plot-wise happened since the miniboss on Sunday. The next time I play happens to be Friday, since Thursday was marked by me getting yet another bloody nose. Yikes. Something in the air here. (Or nothing in the air here might be the problem.)

Your colleague, Armando, already demonstrated in World 9 that the point of children is child labour.

Abdonis doesn't deny turning all of the children into ghosts during an abs-related seminar, though how someone like him can get that power is a mystery. Still, we're tasked with running to Six Park and defeating him, which will hopefully restore the kids. ...Well, the entire Six Park is made up of nothing but squat trampolines and squat hold person-launchers. Not my idea of fun. At the end, Abdonis is there with four enemies—two Ochre Matta Ray+s (these can heal) and two Ochre Kennelbell+s (these are just added muscle). Allegedly, Abdonis dislikes children because they're jerks and wounded his delicate heart, thus he has a rock-hard six-pack to guard himself.

Abdonis prefers the Kennelbells observing his six-pack instead of children. ...I don't blame him.

...Yeah, I don't get it either. I beat Abdonis in only three turns, with a Russian Twist Lv.2, a Standing Twist Lv.2 (these two moves disposed of the Ochre Matta Ray+s), an Overhead Bend Lv.2, an opportunity to do an Abdominal Twist Press Rush, and then countering Abdonis's super below-half-health attack with a Seated Forward Press.

After beating Abdonis, Carrie, who was the main stray ghost, asked Abdonis why he stopped doing abs seminars. Apparently, it's because these stupid bratty kids kept calling him an old man, despite Abdonis being only twenty years old. (This is literally post-battle dialogue.) Prior to the slander, Abdonis was actually doing abs seminars out of the goodness of his heart, contradicting the fact that he's still currently under Dragaux's dark influence. (The dark influence really doesn't seem so bad.) Somehow, Abdonis got ghost-making powers, and fueled by his rage at being mis-aged by the eight year olds, turned them into ghosts. Still, he found it cute that they genuinely enjoyed his seminars.

...With World 14's stupid story out of the way, let's finish the rest of the requests. One is to achieve a perfect score in the foggy Aerochute (Novice) by passing through the centre of all of the rings and clearing the course. My reward was two Sapphires. Beating that unlocked the next request, which is collecting all of the score tokens in the foggy Thigh Rider (Novice) and clearing the course for a Dragon Drink. Remember what I wrote about memorisation being key in the fog? It turns out that the layout of the course is different each time. Oof. Eventually, I gave up on trying to avoid the bombs, which makes getting the tokens easier without worrying about maneuvering in-between them. 

The next quest was to return to Turmoil Territory and search for a Gold Hoplin to impress a boy. They happened to be at the very, very end of the level, which seems to be the pattern for request-specific enemies. After finishing the request and getting a Watermelon Smoothie, I leveled up to level 134 and unlocked the Abs Fit Skill, Flutter Kick Lv.2. If you look at the fit skill tree screenshot above, you'll see I never unlocked the first level of Flutter Kick, at the fifth column and third row from the top left corner. Still, Flutter Kicks (flutter jumps specifically) are an important part of my abilities, speaking as Ludwig Von Koopa.

Marvel at my flutter-jumping abilities here.
That said, having your back to the floor and waving your legs isn't quite the same concept.

After that, there was a girl with a very similar request, but for Rare Hoplins at Disappearance Path. Both the boy and girl had talked to monsters while they were ghosts to learn about these creatures. I got 600 coins for beating the Rare Hoplins, though one ran away. The next request is a girl who wish she could've been a ghost for longer, because she enjoyed flying and talking to monsters. She says monsters gave her secret information that she'll tell me only if I give her three caramels. She gave me two sapphire, as well as telling me that Megaphauna can summon Rare or Gold Hoplins, a piece of information I already told all of you about. ...Well, I thought I told you that. I must've imagined it, since I knew that already really early on.

Yeah, that Monday could've gone a bit longer. KEEP YOUR JOY-CONS CHARGED.
(Tipp tells you that after almost every play session is completed.)

There is one more request I need to do to complete the world, but it's not unlocked yet. That means that's all I can do for World 14.


In case you're wondering, Ludwig is still about the same weight or even slightly heavier compared to Week 1, most likely because he hasn't changed his diet at all, and because he's probably at his natural weight class already. ...Don't tell him that, though, since he'd love to be smaller. By the way, Ring Fit Adventure never referred to the missing children as moppets, so it's still unclear what's going on with that.


Ludwig completes World 15 in Week 15, and Abdonis returns.
While the “abs-related songs” got no play in World 14, they're all the rage in World 37, the Extra Fitness version of World 14.