Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 51: Ring Ringsplains Dragaux

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Armando takes the stage.

Welcome to another KoopaTV Fitness Friday featuring Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch! I've been playing through this game for a long time now, and this is the 51st week—that's enough to be on my third playthrough of the game, which is officially known as “Fitness Master” mode. Unfortunately, Nintendo's designers have put in very little effort so far, resulting in my pretty short Week 50 log about how bored I was because of the lack of in-game dialogue and events.

For this week, I'm playing World 51: Fitness Master Lv. 298, which is based off World 28: Extra Fitness Lv. 192. That Fitness Log was very notable because this world features all four of the Four Masters in some capacity at various points in the world, plus a Dragaux boss fight. You can look at the length of that article and see that... it's quite long. It's because it featured so many important characters who had dialogue and interesting things happen. That means I'm... really interested to see if Fitness Master just sucks all of that away or if some of it is retained so I can not only be personally interested in this game, but I can write interesting things for you to read.

At least the world opened up on Sunday by saying that Armando really wants to help train us, and I better head to the Arms-Race Gym for that. Ring was fired up about it. First, we crossed Exertion River, which reintroduced the Naughtylus enemy type. I could ORKO it by hitting it super-effectively with a super-effective one-range Fit Skill with reps to spare. But a Mountain Climber (five-range Fit Skill) barely didn't have the needed power. More level ups needed. Or a smoothie. Or an attack-boosting outfit. And I don't mean a Strength Drink, which was in a Treasure Chest in the level. Because that only increased my Attack stat by one point... up to 1905 points.

Ring is all fired up. You can see it in his eyes.

After the river, I headed to Fitness Master's first Fitness Gym: the Leg Set. If I get an A rank (above 90 points), I'll clear it and get a Citrine (which I'll sell for money). The difficulty of the Leg Set is directly connected to my chosen difficulty level being 30 (the max). This involves:

1. Squat (x30)—The first Squat I did got only 47/100 points. Oh boy. To get an actually acceptable score, you need to... basically sit down, except instead of your butt being on the floor, it needs to be hovering in the air and you're actually standing. And you gotta hold that Squat position for four to five seconds.
2. Knee Lift (x60)—As Ring and Dragaux said in the last world... I looked forward while doing these and got 100 points per Knee Lift. You can't really take breaks during this, unlike the Squat.
3. Mountain Climber (x60)—I just did this at Exertion River as a Fit Skill in battle. So here's 60 more.
4. Thigh Press (x30)—I've stopped doing Thigh Presses in battle a long time ago because I maxed out getting their Title a long time ago since I was doing so many Thigh Presses. I really enjoy them. So it's nice to do them again.

My score ended up being a 98, so I passed! Now I'm tired, but... I'm only 12% done with the world, so if I want to finish it this week, I better keep going... So I went to Twilight Highway and was disappointed that I'm one rep away from being able to ORKO Matta Rays with a super-effective three-range Fit Skill. BENCHMARKS...! Anyway, I cleared it... so... 18% done. I'm tired, but I I gotta do more to clear the world this week. The overworld Treasure Chest had one useless Defense Drink. Argh. So I ran through Loot Pass. ...Very slowly, because I had to hold a Tree Pose for a whole minute to disperse some Slinkbugs. I kind of wanted to test what'd happen if I didn't maintain the Tree Pose, but I get the feeling that the loot on Loot Pass would have been me if the Slinkbugs had their way, and money is the most important resource in Fitness Master. After Loot Pass, that's 25% of the world done, so I'm done for the day. I also helped move a King Dad-sized mattress around.

I got off to a very bad start on Monday, since a spider was crawling on me right before my dynamic stretching. With that post-Halloween freak-out in the back of my mind (and my skin), I dashed into Armie Temple and cleared it of its local monsters. As a small experiment, I let my Ab Guard down immediately at the Scuttlebell at the end of the level (which should be the strongest generic opponent at this part of the game, since the Scuttlebell takes two turns to attack) and it only did half a heart of damage. (Normally it'd do a small fraction of one-quarter of a heart if I actually guarded the attack.) So my Defense stat is WAY too high. After that, I had a brief diversion at the Aerochute (Novice) Game Gym, which offered... no reward whatsoever. (But Ring did say it'd work out my arms.) But I had to go through it to get to my appointment with Armando...

I've screenshotted many Armando flex poses in this series, but never this one.

I entered the Arms-Race Gym with every Lv.4 Arms Fit Skill in my inventory, while equipped with the Flame Contender III outfit that increases their power by 5%. All Armando had to say is that he's going to beef up my arms and that it's time to begin. I also sipped a Raspberry Smoothie to further (greatly, or by ↑↑... or about a 25% power boost) increase the power of my Arms Fit Skills. Since Armando is the only opponent, it only makes sense to use whatever combination of one-range Arms Fit Skills I want: Overhead Press Lv. 4 to work my Deltoids; Overhead Arm Twist Lv.4 to work my upper arms; and/or Back Press Lv.4 to work my Triceps.

I think it's sort of rare to have five-digit damage output, but I later learn it's... not.
(This is with the smoothie boost plus clothing boost plus super-effective advantage.)

But there's more! When Armando gets below half health (which took three turns at my amount of boosts), he'll unleash a very beefy arm energy attack that I need to deflect with a Front Press (to work my Pectoralis Major) for about 30 seconds. The deflected attack does damage to Armando, too, but not as much as my normal round of attacks. (Only about 80%.) After another round of attacks, Armando dropped a compliment about how my arms are already built up. In addition, he also dropped a Citrine stone, and access to the second half of the world map.

At that second half, I ran through the now-legs-focused Stepfoot Wastes. ...Not much to say about it, but now I'm 50% done with the world, so I'm done for Monday.

I didn't have as much time in the night on Tuesday as I would've liked. Still, apparently it's my 200th day playing Ring Fit Adventure, and I spent it on the Birdseye Mountain Trail. The course wants you to use Abs (Yellow) Fit Skills. At the end of it is a Treasure Chest with two Phosphophyllites. That's NOT a post-Citrine stone. It's a very early game stone that I haven't had to spell in a very long time, so it's really useless. North of the trail is the Bank Balance (Novice) Game Gym, which provided me a reward of two Cabbage Soy Potages (doubles ingredient drops for one course) for completing it. An overworld Treasure Chest also provided me a useful 500 coins, and a forced Gold Hoplin fight (x1) in the overworld for another 500 coins. This is also on top of the 500 coins from Multitask Mode I got today. It turns out that some of the outfits in the Fitness Master General Store ask for Phosphophyllites, so I bought all of those out with the new funds I got plus my reserve funds, and... ended Tuesday, since it's already midnight.

This basically means on average, I spend four days per world.
Which is right and what I prefer. Won't be the case for this world, though!

Behind the Gold Hoplin was the Exertion Corridor, which has green enemies weak to Yoga Fit Skills. I didn't exert much going through it. Next is the Bootstrap Tower (Novice) Game Gym, where I won a Dragon Fruit. (If you get 5 of those, that's the equivalent of 10,000 EXP, or one level up.) Next was Leap-of-Faith Falls. In the process of fighting monsters there, I earned the Unscathed Warrior II Poser title, which is given to any trainee who performs at least 2,000 Warrior II Pose repetitions throughout their adventure. That's the highest achievement for Warrior II.

I ended Wednesday with a miniboss battle at the Temple of Balance. Much like Armando earlier, there is just one enemy: a giant Green Sufferfish. It's weak to Yoga Fit Skills, so I consumed a Lime Smoothie to greatly increase my power, wore the Guru Gear III, and chose from my favourite one-range Yoga Fit Skills of Tree Pose Lv.4, Revolved Crescent Lunge Pose Lv.4, and Warrior I Pose Lv.4. Like last world's boss fight, I had to MEGA AB GUARD once I got Green Sufferfish to below half health for 35 seconds. I did a crummy job, but still successfully blocked it. Unlike Armando's super attack, this doesn't deflect any damage back to Green Sufferfish. If this fight had any dialogue whatsoever, maybe we'd be reminded that the Green Sufferfish's name is Ball and it is Guru Andma's pet, but... we didn't get any of that. That did it for Wednesday.

I guess five-digit damage outputs in one round aren't uncommon.
It's just only something I'll find on bosses with tons of HP but low or nonexistent defence stats with an elemental weakness.

After taking Thursday off, it's time to finally finish World 51: Fitness Master Lv. 298 on Friday. Before charging into Dragaux Stadium, there's one more location in this world: The Thigh Rider (Novice) Game Gym, which gave me a Citrine for sitting down with the Ring-Con between my thighs and squeezing it as necessary to jump in a robo-kart. I happened to get a perfect score.

Ring... Just let Dragaux finish...

As for the Dragaux Stadium, it involved a long series of Squat Hold jump pads. Sometimes you'll use Ring's suction to suck in coins or EXP Medals. Eventually I reached Dragaux, where he instructed me to go slow, with my chest perpendicular to the floor when engaging my hips. Ring chimed in to not lock my knees when I stand up, which upset Dragaux, who was about to say that and didn't appreciate being Ringsplained. And so starts the fight, with four Matta Ray+s (two are blue, two are colourless) and Dragaux. You could only bring one five-range Fit Skill and use it three times to wipe all of clerics out, but I wouldn't recommend it because doing 180 reps of Mountain Climber Lv.4 is physically grueling. (Instead, I did 120 reps and then used two turns of one-range Fit Skills to knock out the colourless Matta Ray+s.)

Dragaux pulls out several other giant boulders from the pile of wooden crates.
You'd think we'd be able to see these before he lifts them since they're so big.

Then it's just a matter of knocking out Dragaux with one-range Fit Skills of your choice. I did a bunch of Tree Poses and drank Green Tea. Without his sentiment Yoga mats around anymore, Dragaux wasn't into the vibe and went berserk when he got under half health, jumping to his pile of wooden crates and throwing... large boulders at me. More durable than crates, sure, but his pile is clearly of wooden crates. I'm pretty sure Dragaux wasn't trying to actually hurt me, because you have to have the reaction time of a stationary rock to just stand there and not break the solitary screen-wide boulder with Ring Press air blasts. He just wanted to practice his lifting motions. Anyway, afterwards it was a matter of finishing Dragaux's HP off!

At the end, he stopped dropping Citrine stones and dropped a desperately needed Onyx stone—the General Store has a LOT of items that need this and I ran out. Dragaux flew off to chug some water since he had an intense workout lifting and throwing giant boulders, and he recommended I drink up too. Well, alright. Maybe you reading this should also drink some water.

Five days. More than average. But worlds of this size are quite unusual in “early game”...

It's pretty obvious that Ring Fit Adventure won't have anything exciting coming in terms of dialogue, besides Ring continually Ringsplaining to Dragaux. At least the coming shopping should be nice.


World 52 has all of the Four Masters with speaking roles... and their pets, too.