Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 43: Squats to Sleep

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Sort of a snoozefest... but that's the theme of the world, so that's intentional. Right?

We are continuing KoopaTV's Fitness Fridays, which are getting more and more relevant as the calendar gets closer to the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games. Last week (Week 42), I took real steps towards being prepared for the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games. This week, we should be returning to our regularly scheduled fitness training in Ring Fit Adventure—on difficulty level 30—without any whacky, debilitating physical gimmicks afflicting my body. As for the work-out itself, we'll see how gimmicky that is.

World 43: Extra Fitness Lv. 263 is based off World 20: The City of Open Eyes (started here; concluded here), which is named such because Dragaux kept everyone awake from his stadium by being noisy. It was a lesson in the importance of sleeping, which is a message that KoopaTV supports but doesn't always live out in practice.

I was one of the first ones to SPREAD that word, Snoozie!
(Well, there's thousands of years of people predating my pro-sleep message, but at least I predated YOU!)

World 43 opened up with Snoozie—the unique NPC of World 20—saying that she feels great now because she got some sleep and she agrees with me on the importance of sleeping. Meanwhile, Ring asks how much sleep I get (not as much as I'd like, partly KoopaTV's fault), claiming he gets 8 hours of sleep. ...Well, I haven't SEEN him sleep and we've been adventuring for 43 weeks now. General Store Number 39 is selling just one new item: The Guru Gear II, with a set bonus of increasing the power of green Fit Skills by 5%. It's only marginally better in stats than the Battle Machine II and its game-breaking 5% extra experience gain set bonus, so I bought the new outfit (which required two Rose Quartz stones, out of the two I have) and carried on...

No. I don't get enough sleep.
I'm kept up late at night writing KoopaTV articles while squeezing in one to two hours of Ring Fit Adventure.
On top of my daytime duties.

World 20/43 are unique in that it puts the most challenging parts of the entire world at the very beginning: The Trapezius Set Fitness Gym and Guru Andma's miniboss fight. I seek to conquer both of these on Sunday, starting with the Trapezius Set (which is supposed to train your back), consisting of...

1. Overhead Lunge Twist (x40)—The strongest Fit Skill in the game... and not a challenge to complete.
2. Overhead Bend (x30)—Bow thirty times!
3. Bow Pull (x40)—We just DID this in World 42's Upper Arms Set Fitness Gym, though it's quite a bit easier when one of your arms isn't feeling the side-effects of being jabbed by a vaccine.
4. Back Press (x30)—If your arms aren't exhausted from the Bow Pull, this shouldn't be a problem.
5. Warrior III Pose (x28)—I haven't done this in a while, but... I think I did okay.
6. Chair Pose (x16)—Not a problem to complete. Glad it's done.

Typing of my back, I haven't seen my chiropractor in months. I haven't felt the need to, but I should before going off to Tokyo. Well, I do keep cracking my neck. I gotta ask if that's... a bad thing to do or not. Anyway, I actually got an S rank on the Trapezius Set (average score of 99 points) and earned a 475-coin bonus. And now for the miniboss...

YOU'RE the one who woke up Guru Andma early, Ring.
Why am I the one that has to deal with the consequences?

We entered the Temple of Balance, and it turns out Guru Andma is sleeping (while standing up). Ring screams to wake her up, and she's upset we interrupted her sleep. And so we must FIGHT in a BALANCE BATTLE. And true to being the master of balance, Guru Andma lacks any weaknesses to exploit, unlike the other three of the Four Masters. She is joined by a Malachite Sufferfish and a Dark Sufferfish, but there's no real reason to attack them and not just use one-range strong attacks on Guru Andma. The Dark Sufferfish can actually do some noticeable damage (not really), but they have no utility to provide Guru Andma.

No matter how fast and hard you hurt Guru Andma, however, she'll still throw out THREE super attacks. For me, she first did a giant red energy arm I had to Overhead Press for about 43 seconds to knock back at her. A turn later, she tried to mash me with a giant yellow energy chest, but I also deflected that with a Seated Forward Press held for another 43 seconds. By the end of turn 2, Guru Andma is already at half of her health. Finally, by turn 4, Guru Andma decided it's time to use her third and last super attack, a giant energy leg that I need to hold an Overhead Squat to deflect. This is the hardest part! Even though for more than... I'd say half the time my knees weren't bent enough for my legs to be “firey” (great-range) during the Overhead Squat, it still deflected it at Guru Andma for about 5000 damage, or more than what one round of my Fit Skills would do. And by the end of my Turn 5 Fit Skill (Knee-to-Chest), I defeated Guru Andma, which instantly defeated her two Sufferfish companions that I did not touch at all. Had I tried to beat the Sufferfish, they'd each have their own SUPER ATTACKS I'd need to contend with for physically tiring extended periods of time, but the mission was always to beat Guru Andma, so I avoided those entirely. She dropped a Rose Quartz and remarked about my perfect balance.

Back to the overworld: the Treasure Chest south of the Temple of Balance contained a Carrot Soup (to double EXP gain), and behind it is the Squat Goals (Advanced) Game Gym offering a Defense Drink for an A rank or higher. Which I barely got. Hey, I don't need to try to get a perfect score. I already got that before.

Here's the overworld map that'll I worked through on Monday and Wednesday.

I'm only 23% through the world, and though I just did the two hardest parts at the start, I still would like to have a higher completion % before I'm done for the day. (Though I'm absolutely sweating.) So I headed into the warp zone, where the majority of World 43's content is, and went into the Howling Hollow. (Do you think we'll see Hollow Knight: Silksong at E3 2021? ...Apparently not.) Despite the promise of it being a hollow, it was mostly a flight level in the sky, not into the ground. One of the enemies I beat dropped a Peridot... A useless item for me, since all I'm missing is three Garnet. Either way, I'm now 30% done with the world, so that's enough for me to be satisfied with today's progress.

First thing on Monday is to clear out the overworld map of the Rare Hoplins. There's four of them in the fight, so you can get over 8,000 EXP by beating them (1,000 per Hoplin, and then use an EXP-doubling smoothie). I went west to Hang-Tough Temple, which is another Swing Climber tower-mounting level with Bootstrap Tower mechanics. After that I went north to Bolthole Tunnel... I unfortunately had misread the first word of that level on my first glance. It is a pretty ass level, however, immediately opening with an Overhead Side Bend cart segment. The very last enemy group of five (including four Megaphaunas) dropped... a Rose Quartz. I don't understand why Garnet is so difficult to get... Anyway, the overworld Treasure Chest at the centre-north point of this warp zone area? One Strength Drink. URGH.

I went back to the southern strip of the Warp Zone to Glowskin Ridge, which was a level I liked back in Week 20 because of the dystopian atmosphere yet plentiful bottles of milk. At the start, I accidentally missed an easy jump and took the lower route of the level instead. Usually, sucking at platforming in Ring Fit Adventure means you'll miss out on goodies like EXP Medals, as well as having to suffer through punishing terrain like swamps or stairs. But this one wasn't bad at all. When the routes reconvened, there was an unmissable Treasure Chest containing a Pumpkin Soup, which doubles your money gain in a battle. A very legitimately useful item. No item drops from enemies, though.

To end this rather uneventful day, let's head to the Battle Gym—the last time-consuming challenge of World 43 before the boss. It's five waves long, though not too bad. There were not any rewards for clearing it and there weren't any item drops either.

The Blue Pitbell almost falling asleep is really fitting for this world, actually!

On Wednesday I ran through Marathon Field. Well, a lot of it was flying and climbing a tower, so it's hard to call that a marathon. West of that, right before the portal to Dragaux Stadium, Ring declared that just going through the path would be boring, and he challenged me to clear the course, Swift Spire, within 130 steps. Is Snoozie asleep? Why can't she be the random NPC asking me to do an arbitrary challenge? Why is it my own companion, Ring? Ugh, he's such a jerk. That said, when these sorts of challenges happen, there's no enemies in the course, which makes things faster to go through. ...But with THAT said, with no enemies around, no one could possibly drop the Garnet stones I need to buy out the General Store's inventory. ...Not that enemies are dropping any of those anyway, but they COULD. I think.

Ring really wants to not be putting the “ring” in boring.
...At the cost of having many other terrible character traits.

I cleared it in 95 steps, as Ring said that coming up with new challenges is a good way to avoid being bored. Again, this challenge made it easier than if it was a standard level. I left the warp zone and noticed an overworld Treasure Chest atop the Temple of Balance. Inside was yet another Rose Quartz. Then I went back to the warp zone to fight the TWO sets of Gold Hoplin fights. The north one has three Gold Hoplins...as does the south one. Behind each Gold Hoplin on the overworld map is a Game Gym. The north one is Gluting Gallery (Advanced) offering a Dragon Fruit for completion. ...I happened to get a perfect score, no big deal. The south one is Crate Crasher (Advanced), offering a Rose Quartz for completion. ...I happened to get an S rank on this too—32,200 points, which is higher than my previous high score!

Since I'm clearly on a hot streak, I went back to World 33 to try to beat the Core Crushing (Advanced) Game Gym, which represents the only minigame/difficulty combination I don't have an S rank on yet. On my first try, I got a new high score: 12,500 points! ...Which is still just an A rank. I tried again. New high score! 13,050 points! ...STILL just an A rank. I kept trying, but my scores were getting worse, not better, and my arms were getting very tired very quickly. ...I gotta stop.

When I turned Ring Fit Adventure back on on Friday, I tried to go back to Core Crushing (Advanced) to S rank it. Failed both times I tried. I wisely stopped and headed back to World 43 to take on Dragaux. Guru Andma has apparently prepared Dragaux to “entertain” me...

Dragaux and Ring just now figure out that training one's arms, legs, and abs separately is an inefficient way to look at one's body, and you should be more holistic. ...Would've been cool if Ring Fit Adventure's game design figured that out sooner than one of the last worlds of the game.

We're only about to finish World 43...
This is why “better late than never” is usually misplaced relief.

Here's how the fight works: Dragaux has three health bars. On my turn 1, he's colourless Dragaux. On his turn 1, for me, at least, he transformed into Red Dragaux and immediately used a giant red energy arm super attack that I needed to Overhead Press to defend against...for an entire 60 seconds. Once he's red, he has a weakness to Arms Fit Skills. I got off an Overhead Arm Twist and then a Rush Lift follow-up, dropping Dragaux down to his second health bar. He then transformed into Yellow Dragaux and claimed that he could do planks for days. (By comparison, I can't do Planks for minutes.) So I had to Leg Raise for 60 seconds as well. Doing that is trivial.

To Dragaux's credit, a super-effective Overhead Lunge Twist couldn't wipe out his second health bar in one go, so he punched me twice for a combined total of less than one quarter of one heart of damage. Hmph. But an Overhead Bend did.

And now the real challenge: On his last health bar, Dragaux turned Blue, declared his legs a masterpiece, and used his final super attack: A three-clawed giant energy leg/foot. To which I must perform a 60-second Overhead Squat to win the fight.

I can't screenshot real life, but after holding an Overhead Squat for a whole minute,
this was basically how I looked like, too.

That, and a Ring Raise Combo and Knee Lift to clean up what's left of Blue Dragaux's health bar. There is no Green Dragaux, so Yoga Fit Skills are... useless to bring. Dragaux dropped a bunch of money and one Zircon stone, which seems to be the stone that comes after Rose Quartz (making the Rose Quartz I've picked up this world useless because now the General Store will ask for Zircon?). Dragaux flew away, but not before proclaiming that our body's muscles are an interconnected system of cells that gotta work together.

A minute or so later, I'd learn why Dragaux specificallyused the word “feed”.
You'll learn, too.

Except Dragaux didn't really fly away, and he instead summoned the Four Masters. They then VOLUNTEERED to be eaten by Dragaux to boost his power. So it's not just Dragaux who is into vore... Abdonis, Armando, Allegra, AND Guru Andma are all willing participants in Dragaux's vore fetish. While it's nice that this is consensual (unlike the end of World 20), it still makes me lose respect for everyone involved. I'm not into that on either end.

Personally, I'm super exhausted, so I went to take a nap. Then I remembered I need to publish this fitness log...Will I get eight hours of sleep...?

Wednesday and Friday's time counts also include my failed attempts to S rank Core Crushing (Advanced).

Find out if Ludwig will play Ring Fit Adventure during E3 Weeks 2021 by coming back next week! ...Hah, that's silly to write. Stay tuned to KoopaTV every day, including Saturday and Sunday, for E3 Weeks 2021 coverage and stay on top of what's going on in the videogame industry!


Yes, Ludwig played World 44 during E3!
Literally the exact same vore scene happened in World 66.