Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 39: Pink Flamingos and Robot Love

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Will we find love... or just leg pain?

Welcome to yet another KoopaTV Fitness Friday, where I'm training in Ring Fit Adventure to get my fitness levels up so I can proudly compete representing Team Koopa at the Tokyo 2020 2021 Olympic Games. Specifically, I'll be representing Team Koopa in Fencing—the Men's Épée Individual.

Last week, we cleared the abs-focused World 38... and now this week, we're on World 39: Extra Fitness Lv. 243, which promises to be a hell of working on your legs. And squats. Lots of squats. This is based on World 16: The Steeliest Buns, which was started in this Fitness Log and concluded in the Fitness Log here. Still, despite the promise of pain, I'm sticking to Ring Fit Adventure's maximum difficulty of 30. I really need to work on my legs, since my specialty in fencing is supposed to be my technique, which translates to being good at stepping. With your FEET, connecting to your LEGS. There's a reason why Side Step is a Fitness Skill in this game.

Upon entering the world, we got to see Titanium White—a cyborg passing as a woman with buns made of steel—and the honest, truth-telling Magic Robot. Apparently the Magic Robot has a crush on Titanium White, while Titanium White has a crush on my...glutes.

The first level of the world is Wingflap Falls. It's a pretty place with lots of front-loaded Black Tea Leaves to pick up if you want to grind those—you also get to fly with flamingos. The next level is Flyover Pass, which has more flying (but at the beginning). And rain. On snow. Except for the path you actually run through. I disrespected the level by just jumping over the enemy fights, so not much to say.

According to this quack spirit animal website,
“ Flamingo Spirit sometimes comes into our lives as an omen of a new love interest.”
And the flamingo is symbolic of romance...
The flamingos are literally love in the air?!

South of Flyover Pass in the overworld is a Treasure Chest with a Garnet stone, and north of that is a Bank Balance (Advanced) Game Gym with a Dragon Fruit prize. The next level is called Scramble Wasteland, and this has more Black Tea Leaves—but much less—and flamingos to see, as you climb up a huge tower to reach the end. And what greets us there?

A Battle Gym with no prize for completing it. Yeah, can't run away from the battles in the dedicated battle facility. FIVE waves of enemies. Shout-out to wave 2, which is just one Ochre Scuttlebell, that I couldn't one-round KO even with a super-effective Abs Master II-boosted Overhead Lunge Twist Lv.3. (In English, that's the strongest attack available with the strongest outfit currently available in terms of raw stats, which happens to give an extra power boost to the Overhead Lunge Twist attack, which is also super-effective on Ochre-coloured enemies.) Through those waves, I earned a new title, very relevant to my opening in this log: Arena Stepper.

Not only is Side Step a Fitness Skill, but I've done over 5,000 Side Steps since buying the game.

North of the Battle Arena is another overworld Treasure Chest. This has 450 coins, which is a great chest to get. South of the Battle Arena is the Squat Goals (Novice) Game Gym...featuring visibility-nerfing FOG. There's no prize for completing this, and fortunately we only need to get an A rank to clear it. Imagine S ranking in the fog. Awful. The tokens you gotta pick up are mostly silver, and the fog is grey...

The very last thing on the first half of World 39 (map-wise) is the Beaut Camp, and when Ring and I got there, we encountered Dragaux torturing the Magic Robot, who can't complete Dragaux's lower-body exercise routine. Seriously, just listen to it scream below. (Ring doubts that robots can tone their bodies through exercise.) Dragaux wonders if we can... And it involves a miniboss battle with a given set of Fit Skills. ...LET'S GO! I GOT THIS! WHAT FIT SKILLS ARE YOU FORCING ME TO USE, DRAGAUX?

1. Squat Lv.3—1-range, 3-turn recharge, 655 base power
   
2. Wide Squat Lv.3—3-range, 5-turn recharge, 560 base power
   
3. Overhead Squat Lv.3—3-range, 3-turn recharge, 325 base power
   
4. Thigh Press Lv.3—1-range, 3-turn recharge, 615 base power
   
5. Mountain Climber Lv.3—5-range, 4-turn recharge, 510 base power
   
6. Knee Lift Lv.3—1-range, 3-turn recharge, 615 base power
   
7. Knee-Lift Combo Lv.3—3-range, 4-turn recharge, 490 base power
   
8. Hip Lift Lv.3—4-turn recharge, 16-heart recovery
   

I'm tasked with fighting two Dark Protean Shaker+s, as well as the miniboss, the Cobalt Sufferfish. The Dark Protean Shakers are spaced in a way that you need to use a 5-range Fit Skill to hit them on the same turn, and using a 3-range Fit Skill will only hit one Dark Protean Shaker+ and the Cobalt Sufferfish. While the fight will end when the Cobalt Sufferfish is defeated, the Dark Protean Shaker+s will be the biggest pain in the fight, because they can categorically nerf your Blue Fit Skills.

Greatly reduced is two stages down. That's as low as it gets.
(And Blue is all you have thanks to Dragaux... but there are ways around it.)

Maybe I shouldn't have started this while I'm already sweating and tired... To make this end faster, I immediately drank a Black-Currant Smoothie, greatly increasing the power of all of my Blue Fit Skills (which is all of them). Sure enough, the very first thing a Dark Protean Shaker+ did was spit out a liquid to not only nullify my buff, but reverse it entirely (turn Blue Fit Skills from ↑↑ power to ↓↓ power). A Chard Smoothie, which cancels out negative status effects, only brought the power to neutral, instead of buffed to take my Black-Currant consumption into account. Gah.

When the Cobalt Sufferfish got below half health, it did a SUPER ATTACK that you gotta sustain a MEGA AB GUARD for. After feeling like I was gonna die (I'm sure my face is some kind of colour it isn't naturally), I successfully blocked it. Right before the SUPER ATTACK, a Dark Protean Shaker+ did me a favour and greatly increased (↑↑ power) my Blue Fit Skills. LET'S GOO! I hit them with a Mountain Climber—a terrible Fit Skill in a Fitness Gym where you're graded on your accuracy, but fine in this context where I just want to deal some spread damage and don't care as much if it's a GOOD! or a GREAT! action command.

By the way, I just now figured out that if I drink a power-boosting smoothie when your power is ↓↓ from an enemy, it'll reverse the nerf and bring you back up. For example, after my Mountain Climber, a Dark Protean Shaker+ shot out its liquid at me, greatly reducing my Blue Fit Skill power (↓↓). I drank a Grape Smoothie (slightly increases attack power, or ↑), and now my Blue Fit Skills all have a ↑ boost, instead of being ↓. (So it resets to zero and then applies the boost or nerf, as opposed to adding or subtracting from your current power level like it would in Pokémon. Which makes the “reset negative status effects” line of smoothies totally useless.)

My final bit of advice is to actually forget about killing the Dark Protean Shaker+s and focus all of your efforts on drinking smoothies to deal with Cobalt Sufferfish as quickly as possible, since you can invalidate anything the Dark Protean Shaker+s do if you have enough smoothies in your inventory.

After the fight ended, Magic Robot explained how it wanted steely buns to impress Titanium White, which Titanium White overheard, and thought was very sweet. Magic Robot asked Titanium White out...and Titanium White accepted! ...And she also decided to become Magic Robot's personal trainer, which Magic Robot was excited about, until it (he?) realised that meant starting immediately. Magic Robot is exhausted, AND SO AM I. I NEED A SHOWER. Sunday done!

And we'll probably never hear from Magic Robot or Titanium White ever again?

By Monday, I had successfully taken a shower. (Curiously, the GameFAQs Poll of the Day on Sunday asked, “Do you bathe or shower?”) Now that I'm clean, I can enter Town and General Store Number 35, and purchase a Volcanic Athlete II set (set bonus: increase attack power by 10). They are also selling the Ocean Athlete II (set bonus: increase defense power by 10), but I can't purchase it because each whole set requires two Garnet, and I don't have enough. I prioritised the Volcanic Athlete II 'cause attack power is way more important.

North of Town is Flutterpeak Pass. I passed through it without incident. (It's mostly a flight level.) East of Flutterpeak Pass is the Crate Crasher (Advanced) Game Gym, with no prize for completion. West of the Pass is a fight with four Gold Hoplin, and behind that, a Gluting Galley (Novice) Game Gym offering a Strength Drink for an A rank completion. ...It's Novice because it's IN THE FOG. Not only are you struggling with the Overhead Side Bend controls, but you gotta have good reaction time because the bombs and tokens coming at you have very little lead time due to them coming out of mist. Still, despite my complaints, I got a perfect score (9500)...

I'm heading south of Town to Piston-Pump Rail for another filler experience. As the name of the course suggests, it's packed with rails... there's also one Black Tea Leaf. Hmph. Wish there were more. East of that is the Dreadmill (Advanced) Game Gym. Thankfully, no fog. I wore my Pink Flamingo II outfit for the occasion to make it easier to run on the Dreadmill. There's no prize for completion... but it does give access to a path.

IT'S ANOTHER SIGN OF THE FLAMINGO...

East of the Game Gym on that path is another course: Perseverance Valley. Nice place if you enjoy rowing and picking up Black Tea Leaves. Anyway, north of the Valley is the world's BOSS battle, but instead, we're gonna circle back to Pushover Corridor, which is north of the boss fight and to the east of the two Game Gyms that weren't Dreadmill. It's the block puzzle-based Pushpull Temple... except in FOG, just to mess with me and my puzzle-solving abilities. Well, the first Treasure Chaser you can encounter for successful puzzle-solving has 100 coins. The second (and stationary) Treasure Chest you can find for successful puzzle-solving has a greatly appreciated Garnet!

The stages with checkmarks have already been cleared by me.
That leaves the Fitness Gym (southwest of where I'm at in the picture) and Dragaux Stadium.
(The Town to the far west doesn't count as a clearable stage.)

I've now gotten to the point where every course in World 39 has been completed in two days... with the exceptions of the Fitness Gym and the boss fight. Those are both gonna be torture, and so they will get their own separate days...

It's time for Lower Body Set Fitness Gym Tuesdays! ...Well, that's not a catchy name for the day of the week at all. And it'll only be for this Tuesday only. Here's what I gotta suffer through with NO REWARD:

1. Thigh Press (x30)—I am a Thigh Press Maestro, you know. I can do thirty of these without breaking a sweat or breaking time. Easy 100 points per Thigh Press, as long as the Ring-Con doesn't fly out from between your thighs or something.
2. Squat (x30)—OOOH BOY IT BEGINS. You gotta hold each Squat down for 5 to 6 seconds. You really need to make sure your Leg Strap is tied securely and high up on your leg and your Joy-Con is as deep as it can go in there.
   
3. Mountain Climber (x60)—By the time I got to the end of these 60 Mountain Climbers, I'm panting heavily...Even though it's hard to tell what your score is on these because you're not looking at the screen, based on the below, I cleared it pretty well.
   
4. Wide Squat (x30)—This is now MORE ~five-second squats, but with a wider stance. Miserable.
   
5. Chair Pose (x16)—A relatively relaxing end to this arduous ordeal.

I got around the same dopamine rush seeing this S rank on the Lower Body Set as I did
when I won $20 in Nintendo eShop money at ShadowGirl7's April Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament.

Fortunately, through very hard work (which took significantly more time than what the game will tell you... like, more than triple), I not only passed the Lower Body Set, but I set a new record! And now I'm too tired to do anything else, including go up the Koopa Castle stairs. ...And y'know there are lots of stairs to go through...

And I'm sweating just like a try-hard Super Smash Bros. session...

It's time to finish this on Wednesday! Dragaux asked the Magic Robot who I should fight in Dragaux Stadium, and the Magic Robot replied it ought to be Allegra, because she's very... explosively enthusiastic.

The Dragaux Stadium is filled with swamp water and stairs, so I ate a Milk Pudding to increase my jogging and knee lift ability, which helped me catch a Treasure Chaser that opened up 150 coins. There was a second Treasure Chaser, but I couldn't catch it in time as it ran through a bunch of boxes. I got to Allegra, and she gave a... nonsensical quote as she said it's time to train my legs.

So I know this is supposed to rhyme with, “Don't count your eggs before they hatch!”
But this specifically doesn't make sense with legs... and she's acting like this is a common phrase.

Allegra is joined by two Cobalt Matta Ray+s, a Cobalt Naughtylus+, and a Cobalt Gobhoplin+. A Mountain Climber can two-round knock-out the whole squad except Allegra, which is important because the Cobalt Matta Ray+s will heal her, and Allegra herself can also debuff certain Fit Skill classes.

Here's Allegra being healed by a Cobalt Matta Ray+.
She's definitely making a strong pose on it, which has captured the gaze of her minions.

Since Blue Fit Skills are both annoying to perform and kind of sucky in power, you should drink smoothies like Grape Shake that can change the colour of all Fit Skills to blue (for super-effective damage) and also provide another power boost on top of that, letting you use Fit Skills that are normally of other colours to attack with super-effective power... and those other classes of Fit Skills have much stronger base power. I actually got her to 1/4 of her health bar left off one Grape Shake until she decided to show off her LOVELY LEGS in a SUPER ATTACK where I must do a very long Overhead Squat (since we already did Squats and Wide Squats at the Fitness Gym, so here's the third squat type in the game). How long? 44 seconds. But I deflected her energy leg, and that left Allegra with a sliver of health left for me to finish her off!

One...two...
Does this normally take longer for you, Allegra?

And that's the entirety of World 39. I would've thought that there would've been some commentary from Ring Fit Adventure on the Dragaux X Allegra ship, considering that, in this same world, Magic Robot X Titanium White just happened (which no one asked for). But, no, Allegra is still waiting to this day for me to finish counting my legs and hasn't been seen since.

Despite the wild differences in the days, Tuesday was the most difficult.

World 40 will also be another leg-based world, but hopefully it won't be as physically difficult as World 39. But who knows? Is Ludwig taking the wrong philosophy here? Should he want Ring Fit Adventure to physically challenge him so he's actually ready for the Olympics? Do you think Magic Robot and Titanium White will be a good couple? And can you understand why Ring Fit Adventure can be more gratifying than anything out of, say, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild?


Click here to learn how difficult World 40 truly was.
Ludwig's leg training was useful when he finally competed in the Men's Épée Individual fencing event. But it wasn't enough to win a medal.
Ludwig then returned to this area in World 62 and fought Allegra and the Lower Body Set again. No sign of Titanium White, though.