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Ifan deserves some love. As much as I stan for Beast, Ifan is just too good at range. Red Prince is a good support unit, moreso than Lohse, and we don't need her around. Sebille is edgy and could clash with Mr. Slaveowner up there, but she is a wicked damage dealer. Edit: Massive and important update on the previous page.
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Sep 10, 2021 15:38
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Olive Branch posted:Ifan deserves some love. As much as I stan for Beast, Ifan is just too good at range. I agree with this arrangement. Also I support the face ripping. Good stuff.
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Sep 10, 2021 23:38
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I like the team that we've been rolling with the last few updates. Let's go with Ifan, Red Prince, and Lohse
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Sep 11, 2021 00:26
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Prince, Lohse, Sebille. I don't trust this Malady lady. Can't we go back and hitch a ride with the Seekers, or did they already leave?
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Sep 11, 2021 04:50
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ifan, lohse, prince i feel like having sebille and prince in the same party is semi-awkward.
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Sep 11, 2021 06:20
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Prince, Lohse, Sebille I want Red Prince because I didn't play as him or Fane and want to see their stories. Lohse because she had the best story of the four I did play, and it wasn't even close. Sebille because she had the second best story of the four.
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Sep 11, 2021 08:08
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Ifan, Sebille, Beast. How can you not love that dwarf?
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Sep 11, 2021 09:30
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dude789 posted:I like the team that we've been rolling with the last few updates. Let's go with Ifan, Red Prince, and Lohse Yeah, there's a reason we haven't been voting to swap anyone around for a bit. We've got a good squad here.
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Sep 11, 2021 09:52
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I've caught up with this LP, and it has quite a bit going on, wow. The battles seem like a lot to keep up with. Red Prince, Ifan, and Lohse seems good to me too.
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Sep 11, 2021 13:14
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Schwartzcough posted:Prince, Lohse, Sebille. They've left already. We're stuck with Malady.
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Sep 11, 2021 14:04
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GuavaMoment posted:Prince, Lohse, Sebille Sounds good to me
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Sep 13, 2021 06:28
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GuavaMoment posted:Prince, Lohse, Sebille Yeah, I'm agreed.
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Sep 14, 2021 01:41
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I donno if I missed you getting it, but there is a chest you missed in the gargoyle maze. In the lava portal area, in the portal that opens after putting out the historian, you can leap or teleport up a level, and there is a ornate chest there. For vote, I say Lohse, Prince, Sebille
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Sep 15, 2021 08:40
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We’ve made our decisions. And it’s time that we said goodbye to two people in particular. The first is Beast. Not too surprising; he had one session with us and his loadout really struggled. And he’s just not that interesting of a character to be totally honest. But the second…   : It wasn’t too long ago that you had shown me that contract on Alexander’s life. We were prisoners in his open-air prison and it seemed like an impossible task – and now here we are.: Here’s to you, Ifan ben-Mezd. : Ifan salutes right back, then grabs you in an unexpected bear hug. : Truth be told, I couldn’t have done it without your help. Yeah, about that.  Please strip naked and get out of my party, thanks in advance. : Can’t say I’m not sorry to see you go, but you’ll be alright. These Swamps won’t get you down.: Good luck out there. Might be we’ll see each other further down the road.  There he goes. His pants and his bow the only things left to his name.  And then he disappears. Our party is now forever Ifan-less. The votes were Prince with 12 votes and Lohse and Sebille tied with 10, with Ifan at just 6 (and Beast with 1). Which means we’ll be bringing our elf with a chip on her cheek back into our fold. And since Sech Zapor’s armour set is based on Finesse, she can wear them just fine.   Sebille picks up all of the experience that we had accrued since she was last left out of our party, which is more than enough to level up once, and nearly enough to level up twice.   Miraculously, the outfit fits her like a glove, meaning she and Ifan have the exact same measurements. Go figure, huh? Sebille being a stabby-type of rogue, her armour set would probably be a bit more useful on her than on Ifan since her kit is geared more towards her being in the thick of the fight rather than picking a spot and chunking away at the enemy over a huge distance. The armour that she was wearing last time, Solace, was actually leagues better than Sech’s chestpiece – it gave +1 Finesse and Warfare and +2 Scoundrel. It was made for Sebille. But the armour set doesn’t work if she isn’t wearing the whole thing, so… I’ll hold onto it, though, and maybe save up enough money for one of those Sourcerous Sundries to level it up. Sech’s suit is going to be outclassed eventually, just like Braccus’ armour set on Fane. For her level ups, I put one point in Memory, of course, and one in Wits, ensuring that she has an easier time going first in combat. Her one combat point went into Scoundrel, giving her more mobility on the field and higher critical hit damage. And naturally, her new Talent is Mnemonic, giving her a shitload of new memory. In the last update, I picked up an elven dagger from Alexander’s corpse, but I didn’t know if it was any better than what she had. Turns out: it does a handful more damage and gives +1 Finesse, but her main-hand weapon also gave +5 Accuracy and +7% life steal. I wound up going with the new dagger but it’s honestly a pretty close call either way.  I stop with Feder to unload some wares – I could unload more, but I’m about to leave Fort Joy and I’m going to need a new fence, and every vendor in the game absolutely loves disposable garbage. I’m really only offloading my stuff because I hit my carry limit. But before I leave Fort Joy, there’s one thing that I want to do. One thing that I’ve been putting off for this entire LP until now.  Back in Griff’s kitchen, all the way back in the fort’s ghetto, there’s a cellar door leading underground. I wanted to put this off until last.  Although we’ve actually been here before, as I described two updates ago. The mirror to respec your characters is just to the right of the ladder once you drop down. The Arena of the One is a… recurring event in Divinity: Original Sin 2. Long story short: it’s a cult that’s dedicated to beating the poo poo out of other people.  If we head a little deeper, there’s a handful of people here, with four of the five of them facing forward into some sort of arena in the distance. All you have to do to participate is talk to the lady in the center. Might as well introduce ourselves to the spectators, though.  : A deep grumble emerges from him as if from an endless cavern. Your bones vibrate to the rhythm of his greeting. : You have quite the commanding, sonorous voice. It must have taken years of training to achieve. : First time I spoke, Momma ran through the street cryin’ ‘demon!’ Poor thing, shook her to the core. : Can you tell me about where I am? One of the, uh, patrons aboveground invited me down, but she didn’t elaborate on what’s down here.: It’s a fighting arena. A temple of sorts, too. You step into it when it’s your turn, and take whacks at whatever comes barrelling towards ya. : … ‘the One?’: The One is a living god. : (Attain divinity through battle? … Sounds familiar.): And what do the Magisters think of this place? : And you believe you might be the One? Out of all the others Ones here?: Yep. One thing the old woman taught me is to ignore anybody sayin’ they’re better than me. And lemme tell ya, runt, by the looks of ya, I ain’t got no reason to stop believin’ her now.: He grumbles what sounds like a farewell.For reference, I came to the Arena very, very late. The game expected me to come here when I first found it. Everyone here is level 3 and I am nearly level 9. I would have to try to lose against them. And what about the ladder next to Ivor? : She sizes you up as you approach. Her eyes narrow. : I respectfully disagree, but I also think there’s more to life than combat. Take it from me. : not much, I wager. Should you wish to ascend as the One, you must aspire to more than mediocrity. : What do you mean by ‘go far?’: This is how we worship. This is not just an arena, but a temple too. : And what, in your words, is ‘the One?’ : (I’m starting to see some parallels between ‘the One’ and a certain other religious process.): And you think I could be ‘the One?’ : Why are you encouraging me like this? Don’t you want to be the One as well? And unless my math is off, there’s only one One.: I fight not to be named the One, but to reveal the One.Okay, so we know what this place is, and what it is they do. They all get underground, beat each other up, and the last man standing is one step closer to becoming the One, whatever or whoever that is. There’s a reason why I wanted to do the Arena of the One last, but I’ll get to that later. For now, I have a special treat in mind: for the Arena of the One, I invited three of my friends, including forums user and thread regular Olive Branch, to join me in this contest. Divinity: Original Sin 2 can be a multiplayer game, with multiple players taking control of one or more characters. I am a team of four, and therefore I can invite three other people to take charge of any of the four characters – including Fane. Just because he’s the avatar character, that doesn’t mean he must always be my avatar character. So that means that I’m only in charge of one character. I let everyone else pick who they wanted and I’d just go last – and it turns out, nobody wanted to be the undead guy whose job was to run in and hit people with his axe. I couldn’t imagine why.   One of my friends is unfamiliar with the Divinity: Unleashed mod, and I thought an easy fight, where I’m hilariously overlevelled compared to the competition, would be a good way to introduce him to the combat. Again: I’m only in charge of Fane. The other three party members are controlled by other people, so you’ll get some insight into how they think and how they fight. And I’ve left the commentary on in the video, so you can hear from their own words what it is they’re doing. That said, all the screenshots and the video is from my perspective, since I was the only one recording.     : Combat Music 1 : The Arena of the One, Part One (w/ commentary)Turn 1 Sebille, manned by the guy that’s not familiar with Divinity: Unleashed, climbs the nearby ladder; wastes some AP moving a water barrel on the platform beside her; and she throws some knives at Veerle, the enemy team’s wayfarer.  The enemy team has a pet dog named Rex, who spawned at the very rear of the arena and he spends all his AP heading towards the center. Weird that they’d let a dog enter the Arena of the One, with the implicit understanding that it’s a fight to the death.     Lohse, played by another one of my friends (who is a med student, and is therefore a healer irl), joins Sebille on the platform and hits the team with Encourage, Favourable Wind, and Soothing Cold.   Veerle climbs the platform opposite of us and hits Fane, Prince, and Salem with Throw Dust, making them all Blind. Attendant manages to dodge the dust cloud, at least. Prince, played by Olive Branch (who normally likes playing the pyromancer in our personal games anyway), delays.   Ailsa, the enemy team’s healer, gives Rex Armour of Frost, and then she heals the little damage Sebille did on Veerle with Restoration.    Fane, played by me, runs up to Rex and swings, but the Blindness reduced my chance to hit to 74% and I whiff the shot. Which is unlucky, the odds were in my favour, but at least it’s a reasonable unlucky, if you get me. I only have one AP left, which isn’t enough to attack, so I might as well spend it on Sparking Swings.  Gedeon, the enemy team’s bruiser, takes a few steps forward and uses Encourage, but doesn’t approach any closer.   Salem jumps onto the platform with Sebille and Lohse, giving Fane a bit more movement options.   Secretary moves last in the turn order, and it puts the hurt onto Rex with its long-ranged attack followed by Mosquito Swarm. With those two hits alone, Rex is already down to nearly half. The level difference is already coming up big.  Prince gives himself the Think Fast combo, and then ends his turn…     Turn 2 … so he can go first this turn. He climbs the ladder and joins the other three on the high ground, then hits Gedeon with Fireball; Rex with Searing Daggers; and Gedeon again with Staff of Magus. There’s a decent chance that neither Rex nor Gedeon will survive to the next turn.  Case in point: Rex tries to run from Fane, who no longer has dust in his eyes, and he gets an AoO, which instantly kills him – and Sparking Swings does extra damage to Gedeon as well.   Sebille uses Cloak And Dagger to jump next to Gedeon. “You’re on fire.” “It’s fine.” She then uses Backlash on him and whiffs entirely. “Ehhhh… gently caress it.”   Veerle leaves her perfectly good high-ground perch to run past Sebille, getting herself infatuated as she does so, and she takes a spot closer to Fane and Lohse – and wading through a puddle of oil to get there. Fascinating move by the level three AI.    After a fair amount of deliberation, Lohse hits Ailsa with Staff of Magus, followed by Uncanny Evasion and Armour of Frost on Sebille, since it’ll be a hot minute before she gets to go again and she’s standing in the fire.    Ailsa apparently had a fair amount of AP banked: she hits Fane with Fossil Strike, which puts down enough oil that it connects to the other spill just to his side; then she hits him with Searing Daggers, making it all explode (and hitting Veerle, who, along with her Succumbing To Charmed, is probably thinking real hard on if she’s on the right team); and finally, Ailsa hits Fane with her wands, although one shot misses. That’d be a total of 6 AP spent.    There are two treasure chests in the Arena of the One containing levelled loot, but it’s only possible to get them during this fight: not only are you kicked out after the fight, but even if you stayed, they become sealed shut once this fight is over. So, Fane uses Mosquito Swarm on Gedeon before repositioning slightly and using Battering Ram to get himself towards the chests. It’s essentially free loot and this fight isn’t exactly stressful, so I might as well. My reward is one water balloon, which is good, and a knockdown arrow, which would have been good, if anyone on my team used a bow or crossbow. But nobody does, and it’s unlikely anybody ever will ever again. And besides, picking up/putting down items or equipment costs 1 AP per action, and I only had the one left. And on that note: it’s possible to pickpocket people during fights, and the rules for pickpocketing is the same, but on top of the restrictions you already have, you’re also ‘charged’ one AP per item you steal. It’s also possible to put things into pockets. This is useful in two ways: first, there’s a Scoundrel/Pyromancer hybrid skill called Sabotage that will detonate one random grenade, arrow, or bear trap in a person’s inventory, and using it can be more advantageous/damaging if you pickpocket a grenade into a person’s inventory rather than just throwing it at them. The second is, if you poison a potion, food, or other consumable and then slip it into someone’s pocket, it’ll show up as untainted in their inventory. This could be a sneaky way to trick a person into chugging a potion they think should be good for them. If you’re the type to want to play a sneaky rogue that tricks people into doing things against their best interests, slipping things into their inventory can be a good – and viscerally satisfying – tactic.    Gedeon makes things difficult for me collecting those chests by waltzing right over to me and breaking my knees and pushing me over. What a dick, right? Salem is next, but he passes entirely.   And Secretary finishes Gedeon off with a long-ranged attack. I probably won’t be able to reach the second chest regardless, but at least now I won’t be accosted when I try. Turn 3 Prince delays.  Veerle steps forward and uses Ricochet on the water barrel on the platform with Lohse, Prince, and Salem. It hits the barrel (I’d be shocked if it dodged, but knowing this runthrough so far…) and it hits Salem, but Prince has the wherewithal to avoid the bouncing arrow. And with that, her charming is complete, and she fights for us next turn.   Lohse makes it rain on Fane (who is not in Spain) – I’m about to try and run through ooze to get to the last chest and it’d be nice if I didn’t make it explode as soon as I did. After that, she plugs Ailsa once and saves the rest of her AP.   Ailsa hits Fane with Restoration and her wands… which reignites Fane, and, worse, Sir Lora. Greg brought up a good point that I don’t think I ever really considered with that move: Fane is covered from head to toe in fabric. He is a ‘veiled’ undead. Nobody should know that he’s a skeleman. So then why does the AI know to use healing moves on him? It’s rude and annoying, but I guess the game balance would be wackier if they didn’t.    Sebille makes her way up to Ailsa’s platform and hits her once with Throwing Knives, which only costs one AP but does less damage in exchange, followed by a regular stabby-stab between Ailsa’s shoulders. Salem can’t really do anything, so, once again, even with a full bar of AP, he passes.   Fane is Crippled and Knocked Down, and these two screenshots show just how much distance he’s able to move. That cost me all four of my AP to travel about two steps. Secretary is next, but it passes, saving all its AP for when Veerle is no longer Charmed. And Prince opts to pass as well, progressing his cooldowns and saving up a buttload of AP for the next turn. Turn 4 Once again, Prince delays. He’d rather just stand around and watch the underlings dance for his amusement.  Veerle takes one step forward and Throws Dust onto Ailsa, Blinding her and Sebille. I guess I can’t be too annoyed. It messed up Ailsa real good and it’s not like I’m playing Sebille right now.    Lohse misclicks her Staff of Magus and bashes Sebille in the face with her magic missile, and then immediately uses Restoration on her as means of apology. To ensure that her turn wasn’t a total write off, she uses Electric Discharge on Ailsa, making drat sure she clicks the right person this time.  Ailsa, from a combination of the static shock and the acid damage applied from Sebille’s knives earlier, dies from her wounds, leaving only Veerle remaining. Sebille and Salem both pass their turn. I think Sebille’s player forgot that delaying and passing are two different things.   All of that for a Restoration scroll. Which… I guess is better than nothing. Scrolls are pretty useful, and Restoration is never really going to fall out of favour over the course of the game.    And Secretary finishes the fight with a Mosquito Swarm, a Battering Ram, and a regular attack on Veerle, doing nearly 80% of her maximum HP in those three hits. And that’s the enemy team. We’ve overcome the “odds” and emerged as the champions of the Fort Joy Arena. But… Well, unless I’m mistaken, there can only be one One. And we are four. Which means –   : You may yet be the One. You prove yourself again. And again. And again. The fight challenges you, but you do not give in. You do not give up. I… I am happy to see this. You are capable of much. … Well, it’s all levelled loot, so it’s all worthless to me. Even the money they’ll bring in isn’t enough for me to care. So… what was supposed to happen is, in the Arena of the One, you’d be forced to fight with any friends you might be playing with for the distinction of being named champion and progressing further up the ranks to being named ‘the One.’ The reason why I brought three other guys in to do this was so I could have a fight against them, to see who among the four characters we’ve chosen is indeed the strongest. But I had it mistaken: it’s not that you need three other human players. It’s that you need more than one avatar character.  Take a look at Fane’s portrait: you notice the little gold crown in the corner? That means he’s an avatar character. Avatar characters are chosen at the character creation screen at the beginning of the game: if you have two or more human players playing with you when you start Divinity: Original Sin 2, then any character they create, or any named, story-related character they choose, would also get that crown and become an avatar character. So, because Fane is the avatar character, he is the champion of the Fort Joy Arena, even though he did very little actual fighting in that round. Which I guess is nice and all – he’s the face of the group and he’s going to be doing the most talking, and being the champion of the Arena means getting more talking options in some conversations later, but it’s ultimately just flavour and being named the champion isn’t necessary to progressing the story. But I wanted to put on a show for the thread. But that doesn’t mean my luck is out! Larian actually thought of that!  If you have other players playing in your game, you don’t need to travel as one unit – you don’t even need to be together on the map at any point, strictly speaking. It’s possible to have some friends, or even some strangers, join your game if you opened it, and when they take a character for themselves, they could just leave and have their own adventure on the map. If I opened up my game to strangers, for example, I could gently caress around with Griff’s camp while one guy dealt with the frogs in Saheila’s cave while one guy helps Gawin cross the cliff while one guy tries to pickpocket some Magisters. If a player-controlled character isn’t in your party, then if you right-click on them, you can choose to ‘Make War’ with them, turning you both hostile towards each other, and then when you enter each other’s line of sight, you’ll engage in combat. (You can also ‘Make Peace’ with them afterward, even after engaging in combat, if you don’t want to fight.)     So, after a bit of finagling and working through some game mechanics so that we’re all at war with each other, while still standing far enough away from each other that we don’t immediately engage in combat, we all head to the wharf with Alexander’s dead crew at declare war on each other at once. Fane, as me, takes the front door, ‘cuz I ain’t afraid; Prince takes the first raid high ground to Fane’s left; Lohse takes the high ground to Fane’s right, where Prince started in the actual story fight against Alexander; and Sebille takes her spot way in the back, where Fane resurrected Prince in the story fight. I wanted to put this fight off until the end of Act One rather than do it as soon as I found the Arena in the campaign because I wanted everyone to be fully decked out and levelled up. If I did it when the game wanted me to, we would all have been level 3 and we wouldn’t have known jack diddly. Us being level 8 makes for a much more exciting battle. All that’s left is to start it.  : The Battle for Divinity: Right Here (w/ commentary)Turn 1 So, fun fact: if a rogue isn’t friendly, then when they sneak or when they go invisible, you can’t see them at all. Which is how it should be, of course, but… it’s just weird that Sebille can go invisible between rounds and not see her waddle around as a rock or barrel or bush. Sebille makes her way to Lohse and hits her with Throwing Knives, getting both a backstab crit and a sneak attack, but movement is harder when you’re sneaking, so that cost her all of her AP.    Lohse can’t quite see over the barrier next to her to teleport Sebille away, so she steps forward – forgetting that Sebille’s armour Charms everyone within arm’s reach – and manages to check her an entire battlefield away with Teleport. Rather than wait to succumb to Charmed, though, she happens to have a Peace of Mind scroll in her possession, which clears that right up, and gives her a shitload of buffs.   Prince uses Haste on himself, but not Peace of Mind. He has three AP remaining, so he uses two to summon Secretary (we opened the fight with no summons at all, to make it fairer), and he uses the last AP to retreat from the ledge and protect himself. Not a bad move, but perhaps Peace of Mind would have been better over Haste, since he didn’t plan on running very far.  Likewise, Secretary repositions slightly and uses Mosquito Swarm on Fane, but keeps one last AP for itself. In my opinion, Secretary should have been spawned a little further into the center of the arena, closer to Lohse. Since Sebille was teleported away, that means Lohse is all by herself, able to harass people from a safe distance, and a summon like Secretary would have been perfect fodder to pressure her.   Fane, controlled by me, uses one Haste scroll on himself, then repositions to the ladder underneath Lohse, but he doesn’t climb it. I’m hoping the proximity to the wall would help prevent LOS attacks from Lohse. If Secretary isn’t going to pressure Lohse, then I might as well.    Turn 2 Lohse really, really doesn’t want to fight Fane – his DPS is much higher than hers, and she’ll lose that fight, even with her sustain and utility – so she makes it rain, then freezes Fane’s feet in place with Winter Blast. Which sucks; that’s a thing I have to deal with now. But at least it doesn’t cancel my Haste. She ends her turn with Favourable Wind on herself. I believe it improves dodge chances while it’s active, so it’s a good move when you’re expecting to get bashed in the skull soon.    Sebille climbs the ladder right beside her to go straight to Prince, and then she guts his ankles and stabs him in the back before disappearing. The guy controlling Sebille hasn’t been keeping up with my thread and doesn’t know about the Ruptured Chicken combo, but all the same, Ruptured Tendons by themselves is pretty devastating. Sebille is hidden next to Prince, meaning she will get a sneak-attack AoO if he moves, and his ankles are ruptured, so he opts to delay.     Luckily for me, I have an Armour of Frost scroll that’ll cure my Snap Frozen, so I can proceed with plan A. With my legs unbound, I climb the ladder next to Lohse, and I use my Teleportation scroll to send her on top of Secretary, doing the exact same thing to her that she did to Lohse. Incidentally, now I’m the one that’s away from the pack. I don’t see a problem with this, personally. This seems like a good place for me to be.    Secretary, though, opts not to take the squishy wizard that I just served it on a golden platter, and instead climbs the ladder behind him to target Sebille and punch her once. And it winds up succumbing to Charmed for it. Certainly not the play I would have made. Squishy wizard, with zero physical armour, placed next to the thing that exclusively does physical damage…    Prince takes his delayed turn to give Secretary both Power and Farsight Infusion, giving it more skills and damage, as well as Peace of Mind. I suppose, if the goal was to buff the poo poo out of Secretary, then moving it back onto the platform was the better move. Prince ends his turn by summoning a totem on a splotch of blood at his feet–  Which ends the round with a shot on Sebille.     Turn 3 Lohse isn’t a huge fan of me being by myself (again, I’m not seeing the issue here), so she casts Erratic Wisp on me and then hits me with Staff of Magus. There’s a chance it could do essentially nothing, or even teleport me further away from the fight. But, it puts me almost smack-dab in the center of the arena, the one place I wasn’t especially keen on being. So it worked out, except for the fact that now I’m back to within swinging range of her once more, so she ends her turn with Uncanny Evasion on herself.   Secretary hits Sebille twice, and now she’s down to just a sliver of HP remaining.   Sebille buys herself a bit of time by using Cloak And Dagger to jump away from Prince and his small army and turning herself invisible, but she’s also Bleeding, and Comeback Kid, which her chestpiece grants her, won’t kick in if she dies from a non-aggressive attack, such as surfaces or statuses; her next turn isn’t going to end well if something doesn’t happen quickly. To that end, she uses Chloroform on Lohse, which doesn’t break her invisibility… but Uncanny Evasion kicks in, and the bottle goes wide.   I don’t trust myself to hit Lohse, and I don’t really want to bully Sebille out of the fight just yet, so instead, I head to a small puddle of blood that Sebille had dropped in the previous turn and I use Blood Sucker to soak it up. It only gives me 46 HP, but I also save two AP, so, why not.    Prince repositions next to the edge of the high ground so he can target Fane – and he forgot that his tendons are still ruptured, and he’s instantly put down to about a third of his HP remaining. That Haste spell really putting in work there! In that case, he scraps his earlier ideas to start attacking Fane (good thing, too, because his Staff of Magus would have done poison damage) and instead uses Rallying Cry on himself to heal the massive holes in his ankles, and then he puts down another blood totem next to Lohse.  Which plugs her in the face, of course. The other totem passes, since it has no targets in sight to attack.     Turn 4 Lohse repositions and hits Fane with Staff of Magus, teleporting me roughly three feet away. Annoying, but not devastating like she had hoped. She runs away, trying to get further from the fight, but she slips and falls on the ice, giving her Knocked Down. I get a lot of poo poo for not putting nails in her shoes for it, but in my defence, the game is awfully stingy with its nails!   Secretary tries its hand on teleporting me somewhere else too, but Prince’s player misread the line of sight on the projectile’s trajectory, and Secretary winds up clubbing the side of Malady’s boat. You can still target people even if your projectile would be interrupted by obstacles – you need to watch for that! It tries Mosquito Swarm next, but not only can Fane not bleed, but Erratic Wisp only applies for direct attacks, and Mosquito Swarm isn’t that.   Sebille spends one AP to approach Secretary, then two more to turn it into a chicken – a drat good move, actually, because Secretary is Prince’s primary method of offense in this fight. She has one AP remaining, and she spends it on Throwing Knives, sticking two of them into Prince’s chest from a distance.    Fane climbs the ladder Sebille used earlier, then hits himself with Time Warp to give himself another turn before capping it with Battle Stomp.   And on his next turn, he uses Shackles of Pain on Prince, followed by Crippling Blow. If that blood totem targets me now, it’ll do some pretty serious damage to Prince as well.    Prince retaliates with a scroll of Restoration on himself to buy another turn, maybe two if he’s lucky, and then he uses his own Source skill Demonic Stare on Fane. Which is real bad: now I’m locked in place and I have no armour to defend myself with. Prince caps his turn with Haste on himself, particularly now that his tendons have healed and he doesn’t need to worry about bleeding to death while going on a brisk stroll.  The blood totem opts to fire on Sebille, since she has less HP and is closer to death. Which… I guess I’d prefer: even with Shackles of Pain, I’d rather not get hit at all now that I have zero armour. Still, it’s an attack from an enemy, meaning Sebille’s Comeback Kid kicks in, and she’s suddenly healed for a handful of HP. She’s still not in a great place, and her one gimme has been cashed in, but she can keep fighting for now.  Turn 5 Lohse spends three AP repositioning to the higher ground, where the Markswoman was in the Alexander fight. It costs so much because she was Knocked Down from the ice. She gives Sebille a Restoration, “because it’d be funny,” meaning she wants us to fight amongst ourselves while she does the one thing I didn’t want her to do at the very beginning: sit somewhere safe and plink away at us from a longer distance away. Secretary is next, but it is a chicken and therefore opts to do nothing.     Sebille, driven to the edge by her near-death experience, uses Backlash and Throwing Knives on Fane, since he has no armour and is technically the spongiest out of everyone at the moment. Then, with a kamikaze battle cry, she uses Flesh Sacrifice for a quick boost of AP followed by a Nailbomb Grenade on Fane, Prince, the blood totem, and herself.     Despite Sebille being invisible, I know for a fact that she’s standing right behind me, so I swing with Whirlwind – and while it hits Prince, it whiffs on Sebille, which is a bummer. Oh well: one more regular swing and Prince is killed, removing him, his remaining totem, and Secretary from the fight. That refunds me two AP, so I use one on Blood Sucker to keep me up and active (although I couldn’t get as much blood as I wanted because of Demonic Stare), and, with my last AP, I use Raise Bloated Corpse on Prince’s body, bringing Splodey back into the fight for the first time in a long while.     Splodey repositions near Sebille, becoming Charmed and taking an AoO for it, but it’s not like it’s meant to last for very long. It whips Sebille once with… something, before it turns and explodes. The physical attack hit for 18, but the explosion whiffed entirely, which is good and cool and awesome and actually what I wanted.    Lohse picks up the oil barrel after I had suggested in the previous turn to burst it, so now we can’t do that – not unless Sebille goes over there, pickpockets the entire oil barrel from Lohse’s pocket, puts it down, and bursts it herself. Which could be done! But it’s not what’s done. So instead, Lohse uses Electric Discharge on Fane and Uncanny Evasion on herself.   Sebille makes a big misplay by hitting Fane with Chloroform, which is already a bad enough idea because that’s me and I don’t like that, but she also hits me with Tentacle Lash, which wakes me right back up. Ah, we’re just fuckin’ around anyway.    Well, Fane is Atrophied, and I can’t move without getting stabbed by Sebille, so I focus entirely on sustain this turn with chugging a vitality potion; using Bless on myself; and Purge, which Braccus’ helmet gives me, on Sebille to take her own Source point from her and add it to my own. I end the turn with one AP remaining.  Turn 6 Sebille convinced me not to kill her last turn, which I could have done with Mosquito Swarm, because she had a plan in mind to help deal with Lohse – but her bleeding from the Nailbomb Grenade and the air damage from the electrified blood are more than enough to take her out, leaving just me and Lohse still in the fight.   Lohse tries the same tactic again: making it rain on Fane, but he’s immune to Stunned thanks to his… amulet, I think. But that’s not her goal: she uses Hail Strike on him next to freeze his feet in place, and I don’t have a second Armour of Frost scroll handy.   I only realized I could do this on this fight: I can’t move and I don’t have the means to attack Lohse from where I am, so I summon Salem in the gap between us. And in order to keep up my sustain, I use Mosquito Swarm on him instead of Lohse, since she’s out of reach. Salem doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment, but I’m in a desperate position if I want to win, so, I have to do what I can.     Salem puts in his turn by swapping places with Fane, putting himself directly into the electrified water, which isn’t the best place for a bleeding cat to be. So he tries to jump out – but for whatever reason, every attempt I make to jump him out says that the ‘path is interrupted.’ So, he’s forced to walk all the way through the bad water to the platform and jump from there. Which is ultimately pointless, since he’s bleeding and he’s going to die next turn, but… you know. At least he got Fane out of there.    Turn 7 Lohse hits me with Restoration – and it hurts, goddamn, it doesn’t hurt nearly this badly when any of the enemies do it. Lohse is really a powerful healer already. Her player apparently has a plan in mind and it involves hitting me with Electric Discharge, but thanks to Bless giving me an additional 10% chance to dodge attacks, it whiffs, which screws up his whole plan. So, instead, he uses Bless on Lohse to try and curb whatever plans I might have coming up.   Fane throws a water balloon onto Lohse’s platform, followed by an ice grenade to freeze her in place. I had two ice grenades and I wanted to freeze her solid, but I miscalculated the amount of AP that I had available. And it wouldn’t exactly have been the best use of my AP or my grenades anyway – I had a handful of other options that could have been put to better use, including oil grenades, poison flasks (which I could have thrown at myself to counter the Restoration), and a Charm Grenade. It wasn’t exactly my best play, but it’ll at least buy me a turn.  Salem succumbs to his Bleeding – And, apparently, Fane got the Executioner bonus for killing his own familiar. That’s… good to know for the future. I’m learning things with familiars and Mosquito Swarm and Executioner.    Turn 8 Lohse’s player does what I did in the Alexander fight with Winter Blast: it’s a vertical AoE spell, meaning you don’t, strictly speaking, need line of sight on your target for it to be effective. So Lohse hits Fane with it, Chilling him and freezing the water beneath him. She’s frozen to the ground, so she can’t do much else – she uses Armour of Frost on herself (which fixes her frozen feet, but even if her player knew that, she wouldn’t have had the AP to do much anything else), followed by Uncanny Evasion, making it a real pain in the rear end to hit her.    Thanks to the Chilled status, it’d cost too much AP to make it to the ladder, and the ice means Fane could slip (idr if he has nails in his shoes), so instead, I use Battering Ram to move me to the ladder instead. Once I’m there, I climb up it and use Blood Sucker to put me from single-digits all the way up to roughly one quarter, and then I try and hit Lohse with Mosquito Swarm, but her Uncanny Evasion kicks in.    Turn 9 This fight is pretty much over; I’ve missed too many shots and made too many misplays to really make it back from this deficit. Lohse hits Fane with Electric Discharge and Restoration, and then she waits it out with Favourable Wind. All she needs now is for the Restoration to do its job.    The Restoration does kick in, but so does Comeback Kid, which heals me for more than Restoration would kill me – but only just barely. I have roughly 20 HP remaining. The best I can do is summon Splodey once more with the Markswoman’s body, and then reposition to beneath Lohse in an attempt to avoid her spells. But it doesn’t matter – Restoration is active for two more turns, so unless I can kill her now, this fight’s done.   Splodey has its turn, whacking Lohse once before exploding – and it whiffs again. Splodey is two for two on that.  Turn 10 One more Winter Blast is all it takes for Fane to burst into a pile of bones.   And, of course, Lohse teabags me in celebration by entering and leaving sneaking over and over. So, there you have it: of the four characters in our team, Lohse is the most powerful of us all, with Sebille being third and Prince being the weakest, as determined by other players playing characters they aren’t familiar with, and one of them playing a modded version of the game he’s never seen before. I’ll take second place with Fane, that’s still pretty respectable. That was a lot of fun! I’m looking forward to doing it again in the future, when the characters are much stronger and have way more going for them. We’ll see who the champion of round two is going to be. That wraps up Act One entirely. There’s nothing left for us here. In the next update, we set for the Lady Vengeance. We capture it from the Magisters and we leave Fort Joy and Braccus Rex’s island behind us forever. 
Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Sep 23, 2021 |
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Sep 23, 2021 02:27
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Ruptured Tendons is a killer move. It also affects undead, even though they have no tendons to rupture. We made the right call bringing in Sebille to the team.
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Sep 23, 2021 02:43
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Geez, that was only act one? I can't even imagine how act two could stack up to this.
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Sep 23, 2021 03:14
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How does a point-blank explosion miss? Twice?
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Sep 23, 2021 06:17
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Tombot posted:Geez, that was only act one? I can't even imagine how act two could stack up to this. You thought the ship at the beginning was the tutorial? No, Act One was the tutorial; there's...a bit more content to this game to come.
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Sep 24, 2021 17:12
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Im enjoying the power level your characters have narratively from out the gate. you toss your level 1 healing spell on some dudes hurt in a prison camp, people treat it as a miracle. Because it is. You are defeating thousands of year old liches, dread pirates, and saving dragons while in cast off scraps looted from tombs. And the locals react like you are doing big poo poo right out the gate.
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Sep 25, 2021 07:33
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winterwerefox posted:Im enjoying the power level your characters have narratively from out the gate. you toss your level 1 healing spell on some dudes hurt in a prison camp, people treat it as a miracle. Because it is. You are defeating thousands of year old liches, dread pirates, and saving dragons while in cast off scraps looted from tombs. And the locals react like you are doing big poo poo right out the gate.
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Sep 25, 2021 12:15
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Before I start getting into the update proper: I mentioned a handful of updates ago that soap was a good crafting ingredient that you should hoard whenever you could. Well, now that Sebille is back in our party for good, it’s time I showed off what it does:  If you take soap and combine it with any key that you own (this key was from the tutorial that got us through the locked door near the sleeping Magister)…  It’ll craft two lockpicks. It’ll consume the soap, but not the key, so there’s no risk of doing something irrevocable with any keys you pick up and use willy-nilly. I wonder what the logic is, though. How does soap plus key equal lockpick, according to the game?  A little bit of inventory and hotbar management later, and I’m ready. Fort Joy hasn’t exactly been a pleasure and I’m ready to put it behind me.  : Malady grabs the vessel with two hands and pushes it into the water. She hops on board behind you. : Godwoken. Wait ‘til she finds out.: Salty water wets the gauze in which you’re wrapped; the bright sunlight seeps into your bones. The boat bobs forward through the water, and Fort Joy shrinks behind you. Video : The Grand AdventureTired but victorious, the party makes for the Lady Vengeance, the horrors of Fort Joy behind them. They arrived as Sourcerers. They left as Godwoken. The fate of this godsforsaken world now rested on their shoulders. Or at least: on the shoulders of one of them…    : Don’t stand between a prince and his principles! The Magisters learned that the hard way. : I’ll be damned if I ever step foot on that island again. Don’t care who I have to bury. : A hard-fought freedom, sure, but if spilling blood is bad, it shouldn’t be so agreeable.: Onward, now; the sooner Fort Joy disappears from the horizon, the better. Perhaps the Seekers need help manning the ship. : The Lady VengeanceAnd then all of my party members disperse to explore the ship at their own leisure, leaving me alone to myself. I’ll have to track them down and recruit them again to actually put them in my party.  Except Sir Lora and Quercus, who are always at my side. And Sir Lora has something he’d like to say.  : Well well, this is a fine sight. Utterly barbaric, of course. Destroying a tree and turning it into a boat? Grotesque. But – well, look at it, Quercus! A floating nest, surrounded on all sides by salt water – pure poison to a tree’s root. The Great Acorn could never reach us out here.: …Well yes, of course we’ll continue our research, Quercus, we’re not monsters. : I’m glad that we’re making progress as well, but from one scholar to another, you should keep your focus on your research.: Oh – *cough* ahem, yes, it– eh – it seems our Shield is still here, Quercus… How does something so large and ungainly sneak up on a person?: …Pfft, you give the giants too much credit, Quercus. I think the salty air has addled your mind. It has certainly been useful, but ‘elegant’? ‘Kind’? ‘Surprisingly attractive’? : No no, we have no time for your fawning. We may be safe, but the world is not. Come, we must return to our research! And with that, we’re free to explore the Lady Vengance ourselves. And the first thing to greet us on the desk is a ton of dead bodies. Most of them are wearing Magister uniforms and colours, including one Gheist, which is no small feat, but there are a handful of bodies wearing armour, but no uniforms – meaning they’re Seekers.  This one dwarf, laying in a pool of his own blood, is Klaud, one of the three wounded soldiers that we had Ifan heal at Amadia’s sanctuary. He lived long enough to fight one last fight. Fane even has something to say about the people he recognizes: : Klaud. So close to escaping…Most of the bodies aren’t carrying anything special. A bit of gold here and there and the occasional bit of wares to sell.   There’s also the occasional barrel of fish meant to be food for the sailors. Fish heal a decent chunk of HP (meaning they’re poisonous to Fane, but Zaikk’s Talon can fix that), but they also grant +1 Intelligence for five turns, so it’s something worth considering for my mages.  Matis, the second of three soldiers we healed at the sanctuary. Fane has nothing to say about this one.  I make my way towards the stern of the ship, where the ship’s steering wheel is – : Spare me, Gareth. We got what we came for. This is what success looks like. : I won’t see them tossed overboard. Not here. We’ll hold a proper service.: What’s-his-face and so-and-so would want us to get the ship sailing before all else. They died for those Godwoken, after all.: You know their names, Malady. Can’t you even pay them that much respect…?: Gareth inhales sharply, then catches you out of the corner of his eye and smiles, barely.: Our guest stirs! Welcome, Godwoken. Glad to see you safely aboard. : It’s hard not to notice that there’s been an intense confrontation here. How many people died in taking this ship?: Too many.: One too few, actually. But… no. I did the thing. With the face ripping and the exploding. How did this man survive his face being torn off his head and his body detonating as a result? I turned him into blood and giblets. I have his face in my pocket right now. Man. Maybe he really is meant to be the next Divine if he could survive that. : I… sort of doubt that.: Apparently you didn’t hit hard enough. : Okay… let’s say he’s really down there and he’s really still whole. What are we planning to do with him?: Question him. Someone has been hunting your kind, and Alexander fancies himself the only Godwoken worthy of ascending. : Well then, we’d better get moving before the Order realizes that he’s somehow not dead.: Yes, we certainly had better, but the ship won’t move. : I hadn’t realized ships could speak in the first place.: This is barbarous magic…: Expedient magic, actually. The ship is made of livewood – it has the spirit of an elven Ancestor Tree within it. It seems Dallis has found a way to bind that spirit to her. : Have you learned anything on how to accomplish this?: The Seekers – the survivors of us – have been combing the ship from bow to rudder. It hasn’t been easy; this place is laced with dark magic.: These Seekers have such a limited skillset…: We lost a man in the search. Malady might not appreciate that, but I do. And I hope you do, too. : … And what in the Hells do we keep you around for? Certainly not for the morale.: Hopefully you’ll never have to find out. Well, alright: we’ve learned of our current objective. The ship technically isn’t anchored, as I understand it, but she won’t move regardless because it contains the soul of an actual elf and she… just doesn’t want to. We need to find a way to convince her.  Gareth! Let’s bond, man to man. Um, trying to ignore the corpse of our fallen man, anyway. : Void-slayer. Worm-killer. Godwoken. You have many names. Let’s add ‘ship’s captain’ to the list once we get this thing moving, shall we? : Lucian? It’s Amadia that leads me, not Lucian.: The Divine is the avatar of all the Gods, my friend. It was through his spirit – and maybe one day, yours – that the Seven do speak. : So… about that conversation we just had with Malady.: I won’t let the fallen be forgotten. I’d be no better than Dallis, no better than Alexander, if I just tossed their remains into the sea. To think that whelp spawned from greatness. He deserves no better fate than his silent monks. All this… blood. Children ripped from families. Seekers ripped from me…: He’s down there now, guarded like some precious jewel rather than leashed and flogged like the dog he is… : What ‘others’?: Other Godwoken. When Lucian died, we waited. And waited some more. Alexander never rose to Divinity. Then we started to find more like him. We weren’t the only ones who noticed, either. Not every Godwoken we found was… alive. And so the Seekers were born. We found Godwoken, housed them, fed them. I loved them like family. I was… naïve. : Is Malady also a Seeker, then? She’s with us, so she’s either that or a Godwoken…: She’s not exactly a Seeker. She’s not exactly an elf, either. Half demon, Meistr Siva says, and I don’t doubt it. I don’t know how Siva came to know her, but Malady’s a proper ally. She’s not easy to like, but… but there are times I admire her coldness. : Let’s focus on something more immediately pressing. Once we get the ship moving, what’s our destination?: Driftwood, of course. Little fishing village. Not very welcoming, but you’ll brighten it up, I’m sure. Got family near there. Not the adventuring types. For the best, really. Meistr Siva’s there, too. My leader – our leader. : What could cause a group as tight-knit as the Seekers to ‘fall apart’?: Gareth pauses, then shakes his head. : In that case, what makes this ‘Siva’ so special?: Hmm. Think of her as a teacher. The powers of the Seven stir in you. She’ll reveal them to you. Show you how to manipulate them.And that’s all that we can get from Gareth at this point. Our destination is Driftwood, an unwelcoming fishing village on the other side of the sea. The Seekers aren’t as tightly-packed as we thought. Meistr Siva will teach us how to properly utilize our powers as Godwoken. And Malady is apparently a good ally, even if she isn’t a good friend.  I continue to explore the Lady Vengance. Halfway up the mast is Tarlene – we rescued her near the old dilapidated fort when she was being held down by a Shrieker. We found a dead squirrel next to her and we looted a rabbit’s foot from its corpse. She didn’t have much to say then and she doesn’t have much to say now. She’s a fun one.  Simone, the team’s cook and backup physician, is wandering the deck. It’s good that she made it.  At the stern of the ship is Jules, the third of the three soldiers we healed in the sanctuary. He managed to survive! So that’s good, it’s nice to know that my efforts as a good Samaritan weren’t totally pointless.  And next to Jules on the stern is the Red Prince, just milling about and waiting for someone to say something to him.  This puts him back into our party, so I can continue exploring the Lady Vengance with my favourite prince slash slaver at my side. Before I leave this half of the deck, the last person to speak with is…   : You mentioned earlier that the ship could be controlled, but that 'she’s mute.’ Can you tell me more?: This is Dallis’ ship, but she can’t have been the only one who could get it moving. It’d be too risky – and Dallis is anything but careless. : How many places to search could there be? This is only one ship, after all. : If the Seekers have been ‘combing the ship from bow to rudder,’ there can’t be too many more places for me to start looking.: The figurehead has certainly caused a commotion lately. But then again, so have the doors downstairs. Everywhere you look, a hunk of wood looking to incinerate or stymie you.Okay, two places to start looking: the ship’s figurehead, and some doors in the ship’s hold belowdecks. As good info as any. : I have a few other questions, while I’m here.: Dying to hear them.: Yes, about that. How did you know…?: Malady smiles at you – bright eyes, cruel mouth. : I’ve heard the name ‘Meistr Siva’ a few times now. Can you tell me more about this woman?: Meistr Siva is one of a rare breed: She’d do anything in the name of a cause, and her cause happens to be you. She’s desperate to meet a living Godwoken. She’ll be exceedingly pleased we’re on route. : (Ignoring that statement on meeting a living Godwoken…) That doesn’t answer my question, though. Who is Siva?: She’s the founder of the Seekers, and she’s powerful. That means something, when I say it. : Can you tell me more about where we’re headed? I heard something about a ‘fishing village’ from Gareth.: A place called Driftwood. Host to putrid fish, putrid dwarves, and Meistr Siva herself. You’ll probably find it quite comfortable. Hmm. Malady mentioned that the ship won’t move without someone in command of it, and Gareth mentioned that they had lost someone when they investigated the figurehead of the ship a little too closely. Surely no harm can come of gripping the wheel.  Well, alright then.  As I continue to explore abovedeck and make my way to the figurehead, I loot every body along the way for any spare change and sellable junk. But this guy in particular has something else.    Another, not-very-subtle clue on how to open the doors that Malady had mentioned were misbehaving downstairs. If there’s a talking door, odds are pretty good that someone wrote down the password to open it nearby.  Kerban was the weapons master of the Seekers back in the sanctuary. He had a broken sword, and we broke it even more in exchange for allowing it to do a bit more damage. : I remember this one. His name was Kerban. His friend’s sword couldn’t save him, it would appear.Unlike all the other corpses, Kerban is holding onto a fair amount of loot, including weapons and armour and some crafting ingredients, but it’s all lower level than I am, so none of it is worth anything to me beyond some gold. Except, curiously, one item in particular:  The game won’t let me set this sword as wares, and it’s listed as unique. Hallorn is the name of the guy who’s sword we snapped in half, so, you could say that this is what we had ‘crafted’ a handful of updates ago when we spoke with Kerban. I guess it’s good for a sidequest later?  As we come up to the ship’s figurehead, there’s an elf praying to Tir Cindelius over a charred, still-burning corpse. A fire can’t be a great thing to have on a ship, but then again, maybe livewood is harder to burn than that.  : I suppose… this is the Seeker that I learned had perished in the attempt to investigate the figurehead. : That’s right, Godwoken. Another Seeker is dead, so you might live long enough to face your destiny. I hope Malady is right about you…: She glances over towards a smouldering pile of ash on the desk nearby. Something is nestled within it – fragments of scorched bone. : Not to be callous about it, but… did you learn anything before the attack? : Unfortunately, the Magister Order won’t appreciate us having commandeered their ship, and they’ll be here soon. We can’t afford to wait. I’ll have to take the risk.: She sighs. : And I’m… sorry to hear about your companion.: Her eyes flick over to the smouldering ashes once again, her head held at a despondent angle.: Thank you… we were held captive together, on this ship. He kept my spirits up… now he’s dead.Maeve is a little bit of a trader, selling a small collection of weapons, armour, and potions… and she has one chestpiece in particular that I really want.  This Full Metal Coat is a head and shoulder better than my current Heart of the Tyrant. I spend the cash and buy the coat, but… I’ll need more equipment to trade out the entire set before I can swap it in. I have the Claws of the Devourer that are still better than my current gauntlets, so, if I’m not mistaken, I still need a better helmet, pants, and boots.  The figurehead is this massive, beautifully carved dragon. It’s somehow one of the key components in getting the ship to move – if I were an elven soul that was once a tree, and I was cut down and turned into a boat, and I wasn’t able to haunt the whole drat thing with boundless eternal undead fury, I’d probably put myself in there.  : At that moment, the ship serendipitously creaks beneath you, almost like it is acknowledging your observation…The Lady Vengeance and Sebille have quite a lot in common, it seems.  There’s nothing left for me to see abovedeck, so let’s start heading down and seeing what there is to find.  The first thing to find belowdecks is the ship’s cabins: this is where the captain and crew stay, where the ship keeps its provisions, cargo, and equipment, and there’s a kitchen just around the corner from where I stand. There’s a trapdoor right next to me that’ll lead even deeper into the ship, down to the hold – presumably where we’re keeping Alexander.  There’s a chest for storing things here, but it’s empty. It’ll come in handy a little later.   The kitchen. There’s a handful of dwarven stews already made and ready to serve, but otherwise, the place is pretty barren.  This looks to be some kind of common area, or a lounge, for the crew to relax in. There’s benches, tables, and more liquor than I care to keep track of, as well as some training dummies nearby. There’s also, uh, two Silent Monks: a male dwarf and a female lizard. They’re non-hostile and they’re ready to obey whatever command is given to them, not that I can give one. So… jeez, it’s like if a cadaver could breathe. Even zombies typically have some form of drive (i.e. consume brains/flesh) and autonomy.  Exter, the Seeker’s tactician, is here. I liked him, it’s nice to see that he’s made it unharmed. He doesn’t sell anything new at the moment, though.  Oh. Uh, this is awkward. Apparently the five other named characters did make it onto the ship and I could have chosen them here. Well… we’ll save any votes on switching for later, if they come up.  Moving on and exploring the cabin some more, I come to what looks to be some kind of armoury, or blacksmith. Lots of place to repair your weapons if you need it. Weapon durability is a thing in this game, but durability only goes down when you use weapons for things other than hitting enemies, such as beating up doors or chests or hitting them against the ground to set off traps. As such, it’s unlikely you’ll ever run a weapon out before you replace it with something better. In Divinity: Original Sin, this wasn’t the case, and weapon durability went down with every use, no matter against what. Weapons breaking mid-fight was a constant concern because of that. Yet another good change from 1 to 2.  Here’s Beast, fidgeting with some bric-a-brac a short ways from the blacksmith.  At the opposite end of the cabin is the crew quarters: hammocks are strung up between the ship’s pillars, sometimes bunking up one on top of the other, which seems pretty dangerous to me, on a ship that’s constantly moving and swaying. Also, there are only five. That’s a tiny crew. But then again, apparently, the ship can crew itself…? If Fane wasn’t our avatar character, this is where we’d find him.   Leya and her caretaker Duggan are both here, too. Leya’s a sweetheart and she got those collars off me and my party, so she’s cool with me.  That’s all there is to explore in this part of the ship… but there’s a ship rat here to speak with. Maybe it can help me out with getting the ship to move – they (sometimes) know quite a lot about the world around themselves.  : I’m just in a bit of a stupor about getting this ship to move, is all. : The ship moves to a song, does it? That’s news to me. : Dallis had a book, you say? How did she use it? : She opened it and looked at the marks on the inside, how the hell else?: Alright, alright. Go to the nose bit of the ship. Open the book. Look at the markings inside it. Sing the song. That’s it. Get it right and the ship’ll dance to your tune. Get it wrong and the ship’ll kill ya.: That’s always entertaining. For me, anyway.Well, hey, we learned something! Dallis controlled the ship by using a song of some sort, but she also needed a book for something or other – the book would be related to either the song or the ship, but either way, it sounds like a key component. So, our order of operations so far is: find a talking door and get it to open. Find Dallis’ book that she used to command the ship. Take the book back to the figurehead and sing a song, and then the Lady Vengeance will start to move again.  I’ve explored the whole of the cabin, so there’s just one level left to investigate.  Well, finding the door was easy. That’s the exact same door as Sech Zapor’s. And Samadel and Han are both here, too! Samadel I’m not too surprised by – she deals with pyromancy and she’d be a tough fighter to bring down. Han, though, he’s just a kid. Might as well take a look at this door.  : (Perhaps what I’ve learned in my studies might be of some use here.): The wood groans and creaks. A face appears in the wood, tortured and tormented. A six-sided indentation is carved on its forehead, as if a gem or amulet had made a mark there.Hmm… it looks like the verbal password isn’t enough. I need that six-sided gemstone or amulet to get it to listen to me.  There’s… a lizard I don’t recognize here. Her name is Zrilla, apparently.  In Divinity: Original Sin, you played as two custom-made characters, even in single player, but you could also have up to two other named characters (out of four options) travel with you in your party (the game only supported up to two players in multiplayer, by the way). If you wanted a full party, but you didn’t want to use a named character, then you could hire mercenaries to fill in your vacant slots. The mercenaries would have absolutely zero story relevance. You can do the same thing here with Zrilla: if you didn’t want to bring any of the five (or six, if you made a custom character) named characters along with you, you could hire mercenaries to pad out your team instead. Mercenaries cost a lot of gold, and while they come in a variety of levels, you could only hire as high as your current level allowed. That said, they have some uses. You could hire a high-level mercenary, remove all their equipment, and sell them all to make a small profit. And there’s one exploit involving mercenaries that we could abuse a little bit later, if we wanted (but I won’t because I like the game being a little challenging).  I continue to explore the ship’s hold, scouring through whatever barrel or box is available for me to look through – when I realize that I should really find Sebille before I start rummaging through any more boxes. Her armour gives a ton of Lucky Charm and I should probably have her with me so I don’t waste any more opportunities for it to kick in.  Luckily, she’s down here in the hold with me – and her Tyrant’s Charm aura makes her particularly easy to spot.  Now I just need to find Lohse and the gang will be back together again.  And, curiously… she’s levelled up. By a fairly substantial amount. I have no idea where all that experience could have come from. That’s… a little annoying. I prefer to keep my party evenly leveled if possible, if for no other reason than to keep things orderly. Still, that’s not to say it’s unwelcome. I put one point into Memory and one in Constitution, and her one Combat point into Polymorph, which gives me another attribute point to put into Constitution again. Even with those two points, her HP isn’t anywhere close to Fane’s.  The ship’s hold is split into two floors, with the top floor holding Zrilla and Sebille, as well as a ton of crates to loot through. Lucky Charm doesn’t kick in, so, might as well start on the lower floor now. Down here, on the lowest floor, should be the brig, where Alexander is being kept.   Prince’s Wits is high enough to spot a loose plank upon heading down the stairs – and there we find a small stash of goodies. The hybrid grenade in particular is pretty useful for beleaguering a person: it’ll Blind them and put down a poison puddle, both in one move. If the ship is made of livewood, I can’t imagine it’d be too thrilled to have one of its planks pulled off to make for a hiding place. That’d be like having a hair plucked out.  In the ship’s hold is this: a mirror to respec your characters with. This exact same mirror was in the Arena of the One in Fort Joy. Before the Larian Gift Bag mod that installed the Fort Joy mirror, this was meant to be the only place in the game where you could respec your characters as you liked. The mirror can be used infinitely and can be accessed any time after you first board the Lady Vengeance. Once you’ve completed Act One, you’re free to change any of your characters as much as you liked for free.   Fane can change everything about his appearance other than his voice. He can change the colour of his bones; he can change his entire face and bone structure; and he can give himself hair and facial features, such as beards, moustaches, or scars, if he had skin.  I mentioned way, waaaaaay back in the second update of the LP that we’d have the possibility to give Fane a suave look, such as something like this: a full, quaffed head of hair and a well-kept and groomed beard are among the possibilities. This is a personal thing that I do for immersion, but every time I enter a new act, I like to change my character’s hair. I like to pretend that it shows that time has been passing and the characters are taking the opportunity, when presented with a mirror, to clean themselves up a bit and change their look. Also, the character’s profile icon adjusts their clothing to match their current armour: the Fane icon we’ve been using up until this point was taken back when he wore a plain coat, and now, we can see the collar of Braccus’ Heart of the Tyrant in his profile icon in the top corner. Since Fane is the avatar character, I’ll leave it to you: do we update Fane’s look? Give him hair? Change his face? Dye his bones? Or do we keep him as-is? If you’d like to see our options, there doesn’t seem to be an easy-to-access catalogue online, so I just uploaded them here as a video. I decided to upload them post-recording, and I wasn’t interested in the hair colour options at the time so I skipped over them, but if you want something in particular, just say a colour and I’ll try to find it.  And as before, we can change our attributes, abilities, and Talents as we like, as well as the instruments that play when that character scores a kill. I’m pretty satisfied with Fane as-is so I won’t be changing anything now.  For every other character, though, I’m going to change their look very slightly. Like I said, it makes it more immersive to me  This is Sebille’s default look. We can change everything about her, including her face, except for her voice… and any facial features, since the scar on her cheek is plot relevant to her and we can’t cover it up or remove it.  I like her with her hair down. She looks prettier that way imo  This is Prince before…  … and after. The spines on his head are much, much longer now. Prince can adjust his face and ‘hair,’ but not his voice, his skin colour, or any facial features. The first two are for obvious reasons, but I’m not so sure on the last. Previously, everyone but Fane played the bansuri, which made victory music sound a little samey. Now, Prince plays the oud.   A short walk down the way in the hold, and we come to the brig with Alexander… and there’s Lohse, waiting for us to recruit her again. Unlike the other two characters, she has a bit more to say to us. : Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere? : Indeed it is. And the only way it’d make for a better tale for a bard to sing is if I have a bard to accompany me… assuming that bard is who she says she is.: The old band back together again, hmm? I guess that depends, doesn’t it.: Look at me. Hard. What do you see? : … I’m sure you’ll appreciate my honesty when I say… you’re looking worse for wear.: Exactly. Exactly. Your god wants me dead. My… god…? Devil…? Who knows…? It wants me. It’s getting stronger, and I need to outpace it. : I’ll understand if you explain to me what those risks are.: I can hear its thoughts… it isn’t out for blood. It’s out for pain. Domination. Total domination. I was wrong to think I could hold it off. I might hurt you. I might hurt anyone. Uhhhh, going by that last free-for-all fight in Fort Joy…? : I did it once before, Lohse, if you remember.: Do I ever. Still sore from that one. At the time I wanted you to defend me. I didn’t realise how bad things had gotten. I know better now. : It’s a difficult thing to imagine, but… I’m certain you’d rather die than be a puppet. I can do what needs to be done if it comes to that.: Well, alright then.: She pinches your cheek, a sparkle in her dim, grey eyes.: I knew I could count on you to murder me in a pinch. Let’s go, chief.And with that, Lohse’s back in my party. On the condition that, if the devil possessing her gets the upper hand, we… don’t let it. It probably won’t come to that. But it might. Let’s keep that in mind. I can’t change Lohse’s voice or facial features. I wanted to give her a new hairstyle, but… honestly, none of them really fit her. None of the hairstyle options for Lohse really feels like Lohse other than what she has now. So I keep her aesthetic the way it is. That said, she plays the tambura now.  Patrolling the brig is this one woman, named Constance. Despite clearly wearing a full suit of armour, she has no physical armour to her stats.   : Magister Ranley, Caulker’s Mate of the Divine Eminence vessel, Lady Vengeance. : Can’t you say anything else? Bloody Magisters…: The Seeker flexes her arms stiffly – her joints audibly pop. She sees you draw near.: I owe you, Godwoken. Without your help, I’d likely still be a prisoner around here, not guarding Alexander-the-Bloody-Divine himself… : You seem to be in pain. Were you injured in taking the ship? : I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not much of a seafaring Godwoken. Correct me: this is the ‘brig,’ correct? Where the Magisters kept Seeker prisoners?: No… they had us down below, chained up in the dark… but the Reds were up to something in here… : … It’s a big risk, keeping Alexander with us, but at the same time, he and his life could make for valuable bargaining chips.: (How did you do it, Alexander? Is this what comes with being the son of the Divine?) : There’s someone in there with him. Is she important?: The Seeker throws a toxic look at the imprisoned Magister. : Let me in to speak with her. She may have information on how to move the ship. : We’ll see.: Alright then, just… don’t make me regret it.  There he is. Alexander, the son of the Divine, in all his non-exploded, non-giblet, still-face-having glory. Beaten so badly that he’s lost consciousness, but very much not as dead as the game had me believe – and with an unblemished face, perfectly identical to the one I literally have in my pocket. On the one hand, it could be a silly oversight on Larian’s part, but on the other, not being able to rip off Alexander’s face would give away that he’s not dead, since the Face Ripper will only work on corpses, and him still being alive is meant to be a shocking reveal. I imagine they knew that you could explode his body either with the Face Ripper or Raise Bloated Corpse, but they kept it in for plot consistency’s sake – and because, frankly, it’s kinda funny. We’re not about to get any information out of Alexander, so let’s try his stewardess. : A young Magister paces about the brig, fussing over Alexander’s unconscious form. She leans over and applies a damp cloth to his brow. She notices you observing her. She straightens her back and sets her jaw in a defiant scowl. : I’m not a Seeker – but I am a Godwoken. And the Seekers would be much more lenient to anyone that could help me out. Even a Magister. : Fine, don’t talk. Just listen. : You seem awfully attached to Bishop Alexander.: The opposite is true, you know – the Seekers don’t need Alexander. In fact, they’d be better off with him dead than alive. It wouldn’t take much convincing to see it done… unless someone starts feeling cooperative, and soon.: Persuasion Success!: There’s a shift in the Magister’s expression; a flicker of doubt. Then…: I’m a good Magister, loyal… but Dallis… some thing about her has changed – she’s toying with dark magic, like a common Sourcerer. She used to… to sing to the ship. It let her control it. She had this old book of hymns and incantations. It was only ever in her hands, or else locked away in her cabin, at the stern… that’s all I know.Okay, so we didn’t learn a whole lot more than what the rat told us, but we at least know where Dallis’ book is being kept. Behind the talking door with the face. All we have to do is get it open. : You spoke, didn’t you? Ha! I knew you would eventually…: Magister Ranley, Caulker’s Mate –: Too late for that now, red! The bell can’t be unrung! Hmm… even though Alexander is very much not in a talking mood, maybe we can still get something useful off him. He’s Dallis’ boss, after all, and like Malady said, it’d be too risky for just her to be able to control the ship.  : You’re alone, with no weapon, a housefly surrounded by spiders. Reconsider your position, Ranley. For your sake, and for his.: Persuasion Success!: Alright… don’t harm him – I’ll be watching.    : The gem sits heavily in your pouch. Hmm… it’s a little black and distorted for a diamond, isn’t it? It doesn’t look very pure. Still, though, a six-sided gem, just like the indentation for the door leading deeper into the ship. This is probably the key that I needed to get in.   : A shudder of pleasure wracks the figure in the door. It seems to breathe. All of a sudden, all anguish is gone. It gives you the sternest of looks. : I thought that the gem would have been proof enough. : (The only thing I’ve learned that could be considered a password is –) ‘Fortitude’? : Yes, and yes again. The word is spoken. Welcome to the stateroom. Well, alright! Progress! From what I’ve learned so far, the book that Dallis used to recite a song to the ship’s figurehead ought to be somewhere in here. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 13:36
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 Entering the stateroom grants me enough experience to level up (while it’s pocket change for Sebille). I wonder if I shouldn’t expect a fight sometime soon, the timing seemed a little… convenient. Fane’s points go into Memory, Intelligence, and Necromancy; Lohse’s, into Memory, Constitution, and Aerothurge; and Prince, into Memory, Intelligence, and Summoning.   The stateroom looks pretty swanky from the doorway: an enormous amount of bottles line the nearby wall, and plush rugs roll from the door and further in, guiding me inward. There’s opulent furniture in the middle of the room, and against the far wall is a table that’s weighed down with drinks, fancy glasses, a little pile of gold…  … and a dude.  : Just… one more moment, please…: He clicks together two halves of some type of gauntlet sitting in his lap, and turns his full attention to you. A curious smile plays across his lips as he takes you in.: An undead, eh? Wonders never cease aboard this vessel… : Usually, people aren’t so… casual when they realize they’re speaking with their own mortality. : My compatriots have taken the ship from the Magisters, and I’ve been searching for a method to get her moving before the Order can catch up with us. Now, your turn.: I’m a prisoner, of course. Do you think I’d be sitting here calmly if I was a Magister holdout? : ‘Prisoners’ are usually held somewhere other than the captain’s quarters. Why are you here?: Dallis took a… particular interest in me, and my skills. I’m an expert in healing, crafting, and, eh, more arcane practices… : With skills like those, you make yourself out to be some form of mercenary.: I’ve offered my services for gold in the past, yes… but my labours for Dallis were far from voluntary…: He extends his arm and pushes up the sleeve – beneath, the skin is withered and discoloured, as if it were magically decayed. : Fascinating… what did she have you do?: Oh, cast spells, tinker with relics, meddle with the laws of nature – all the sorts of things power-hungry despots love to do. She had me enchant a dead cat over there, so it would seem alive.: He clicks the gauntlet into place around his withered forearm, his eyes on you the whole time. : A ‘prisoner’ that stays in the ship’s master cabin, free to tinker with all the resources he likes; necromancy; casual acknowledgement of the undead; and now, memory loss. Your story is getting a little too convenient, prisoner. : (I suppose there’s no reason to be uncivil just yet…): He takes the copper with a nod of gratitude. His sleeve slips back, above his elbow. In its crook, you see part of a tattoo – a pattern of concentric circles, rendered in black… : (It sounds like he won’t tell me more even if I call him out, short of violence.) : The Lady Vengeance refuses to move, and she ignites anyone that touches the wheel or the figurehead. You’re experienced in ‘arcane practices’ – do you know what’s causing these reactions? : I’ve read that the lizards could combine songs in their language with marks of slavery to control the minds of their targets. And I know at least one woman that can attest to it. I suppose, if the ship itself is literally alive, it could be possible to perform the same magic on it… : What is this gauntlet you’re futzing with? Some Magister equipment you took from them?: Took it? No, no… I made it. Have you seen the kind of metalwork the Magisters deploy? This is in a different class to them! : If you’ve been in close contact with Dallis, as you say, then you can tell me what you know about her.: Despite what she did to me, I can’t help but admire the woman a little… she’s unwavering. She will break before she bends… : This whole time, I’ve been considering your story, and… honestly, I can’t say I believe it. : There’s just too much going on with you. Your dress, your skills, your tattoos. You’re more than just a prisoner, that much was obvious from the start.: I’m more than a sum of my parts, friend, indeed… but I fear you might have come to the wrong calculation about me. How about you just let this matter rest?: If this one was enslaved by Dallis, then he could still be under her thrall. We can’t risk keeping him around.: Anyone who faced enslavement deserves our sympathy, not our blades. Leave him.: Something tells me that he’ll only bring us woe… but I can’t judge him. Yet. : He takes your hand in his gauntlet-clad fist and shakes it – there’s a lot more power in his grip than his slender frame would suggest. : Based on your work, it seems that you weren’t lying about being a skilled craftsman, at least. Is there anything you’d be willing to trade? Tarquin is the first new trader that we meet for Act Two. Although he’s clearly a necromancer, doubly based on the skillbooks he sells, he’s more of a general store than a specialty one: he has all manner of weapons, armour, and equipment to sell, including medium-sized runes; epic-grade weapons and armour, and even a legendary-grade chestpiece; some whole new necromancy spells to add to Fane’s arsenal; and…  Source Orbs. A ball of condensed Source that a person could hold in their hand. It’s a powerful crafting ingredient; it’s a consumable, granting a single Source point on use; and it’s even a rune and can be slotted into rune slots. For example, a rune slotted into a weapon would grant the Source skill Venomous Aura, which grants every ally in range of the caster additional poison damage on hit. Source Orbs have a ton of uses, and they’re things that you do want, but… they aren’t something you would be willing to spend 10,640 gold on. They’re something that you’d very much rather find than buy. Tarquin is going to be a regular merchant that stays with us for the remainder of the game as a shipmate on the Lady Vengeance, so it makes sense to make him into our fence. To do that, we need to bribe him until he loves us. 99 gold gives us +28 attitude, which puts us at 43 total, so to make him our best friend, we’d need to give him roughly 303 gold total to make him like us.  Not a small sum, but absolutely miniscule compared to the deals he’ll give us in return.  I offload a bunch of wares I’d been holding onto for the past several updates and clean Tarquin out of his gold reserves, and I still have more wares than I know what to do with. But I also have a ton of gold now, so… time to buy stuff.  This wasn’t everything that I wanted – I wanted that epic amulet as well, but even with the maxed-out attitude and all the wares in the world, it just barely wasn’t enough. So I’ll have to make due with some new skills instead.  Summon Fire Slug: Summon a fiery slug to your side. The slug will create fire surfaces wherever it goes and can launch powerful linear fire attacks. Black Shroud: Create a cloud of cursed smoke in an area, inflicting Blind and Suffocating on any character within. Bone Cage: Use the bones of nearby dead bodies to create a suit of armour around the caster, increasing their physical armour. The more dead bodies nearby, the greater the bonus will be. Can be used if there are no dead bodies nearby. Raise Bone Widow: Summon an arachnid composed of human skeletons to fight by your side. The Bone Widow can burrow into the ground and re-emerge elsewhere in the battlefield, and it can consume dead bodies for a powerful temporary boost to its Strength and Constitution. Living On The Edge: Target yourself, an ally, or a summon; for one turn, that target’s HP cannot fall below one point, allowing them to survive even the most powerful of attacks. If the target is a summon, allows the summon to survive past its ‘expiration date.’ (Base game only)A small handful of fun new techniques to play with! If a skill takes up more than one memory slot, as Black Shroud and Summon Fire Slug do, they will also cost a Source point to cast. So they’re expensive to cast, for sure, but they’re worth it – the Fire Slug in particular is a whole lot stronger than the spell’s description might have you believe.  Talk of the Bone Widow got me realizing that I don’t have Salem by my side, which doesn’t feel quite right, so I summon him back. Fane can only have one summon, though… he’ll have to choose between Salem and the Bone Widow if he wants one or the other. I could summon Salem with the whistle and having him follow me as an ‘uncommitted’ summon, but then I’d lose control of him in fights and Fane would lose his best mobility option. But that’s all concerns for another time. And I’ll leave the vote to naming the Bone Widow after I summon it, so you can have an idea of what it looks like.  There’s a lot of stuff sitting on the table beside Tarquin that’s up for grabs: more wares, the pile of gold, a Trap Disarming Kit (very useful, I was feeling a bit naked without at least one), and… two other things in particular.   More talk of some ‘mistake’ that the Seekers had done, at a place called Besan, but it doesn’t go into specifics, annoyingly. That’s a story for another day, clearly. But the other thing on the table that I’m interested in is… some kind of… tiny pyramid?  : This looks like a Teleporter Pyramid; it could certainly come in handy.: A Teleporter Pyramid! Only one way to find out if it works; try using it!Teleporter Pyramids were used in Divinity: Original Sin. Like I said before, that game focused primarily on two custom-made characters from the beginning, and Teleporter Pyramids were a device used to ensure that, if they ever got lost from each other, one could just access their pyramid, and poof; they’d appear wherever the second pyramid was. It works the same way in this game, and you can even use them in combat – for six AP. You need to plan ahead to use it if that’s what you want. But just ‘using it’ is absurdly dangerous. For all I know, the other pyramid is back at Fort Joy, or at the bottom of the ocean. I have no idea where I could be teleporting to if I were to just use it. And Tarquin isn’t much help. Anyway, I use the Teleporter Pyramid.    : Combat Music 1: BelowdecksTurn 1 Well, the good news is, I’m probably still on the ship. The bad news is, wherever I am, I’m facing down two Gheists in close quarter combat, and they get to move first. The both go by ‘The Hammer’s Pet,’ which really ought to tell you enough about her choice in pet company. Gheist 1 uses Backlash on Sebille followed by Gag Order on Lohse. Gag Order is an intermediate Scoundrel skill that does heavy air damage and sets Mute for two turns, so it was pretty smart in targeting Lohse with it.     Sebille hasn’t been in our party for a while, so it’s nice to break her back in by doing what she does best: She uses Cloak and Dagger to move behind Gheist 2 before it has a chance to move, then, after a quick short of Adrenaline, she uses the classic Ruptured Chicken on it, ensuring that the most it’ll do for at least this turn is hurt itself.  It doesn’t move very far, only doing enough damage to itself to take off maybe one eighth of its HP, but still, that’s better than it attacking. Gheists hit very, very hard. Bonus, it’s Succumbing, too.      The Divinity: Unleashed mod grants a new skill to anyone that’s been hit with Mute: a pretty simple skill that’s simply called Undo Mute that grants the caster Mute Immunity for one turn. It costs no AP to use, but it costs one Source point, and those aren’t easy to come by in the heat of a battle – but Lohse also doesn’t really have anything else to use it on. It makes some sense to give wizards some form of counterplay to muting. Typically, while most melee builds will have some countermeasures to Atrophy – offensive magic, or healing spells like First Aid or Bless – mages don’t usually know any offensive physical attacks; they aren’t usually grenadiers; and Mute ensures that they can’t use spells like First Aid to help themselves. A Muted mage is way more devastating than an Atrophied fighter, so giving them a chance to sustain themselves seems fair, at least on paper, and the cost to do it is still fairly steep to compensate. Lohse uses her new lease on magic to cast Restoration on herself – Gag Order did quite a lot of damage, on top of Mute – followed by Favourable Wind on the whole party and Blinding Radiance on Gheist 1. It was Succumbing, but there’s just two enemies in this fight, so whatever, I can probably beat them up faster than they can beat themselves up.    Prince takes full advantage of his Pet Pal perk and the fact that he can now have two summons by summoning both the Fire Slug and Secretary: the Fire Slug near Gheist 2 and Secretary near Gheist 1. Summon Fire Slug only costs one AP (but one Source point as well), making it unusually cheap – and Prince uses the last AP to buff Secretary with Power Infusion.   Secretary does its duty with Mosquito Swarm followed by one physical attack on Gheist 1.   The Fire Slug knows two attacks (on top of its standard melee attack): Laser Beam and a unique skill called Slug Rush. Laser Beam, like most Pyromancer skills, has a real bad habit of causing friendly fire, so I’ll hold off on that one for now. Instead, it uses Slug Rush on Gheist 2, followed by a melee attack. Slug Rush has the same animation and icon as Battering Ram, but it doesn’t cause Knocked Down, which is a bummer. Combined, it does 163 damage – a fair amount, actually. Secretary only did 114. Oh, that reminds me – the Fire Slug needs a name! What do we name Prince’s Fire Slug? For now, I’ll call him… Slugger. And I’ve decided it’s a him.    Fane’s in an awkward spot: he’s caught between a desk and Prince, who is blocking his way, so he can’t just walk out. He can use Battering Ram, but only straight ahead and into Gheist 2. Which normally wouldn’t be a big issue, except there’s a ton of freshly-laid fire right where I’m trying to Ram to. Well, whatever, I just go ahead and do it anyway. With Fane’s last two AP, he uses Swinging Sparks and Shackles of Pain on Gheist 2.  And Salem hits Gheist 1 twice. Good kitty. Turn 2 Sebille has only two AP and she’s safely hidden inside a barrel at the moment, so she’d rather delay than cause any more trouble.    Gheist 1 attempts to reposition, taking an AoO from Salem, which hits, and Secretary, which misses. A bummer that the giant, burly bull demon missed its attack but Salem the housecat landed it successfully. Gheist 1 tries using Corrupted Blade on Lohse, but it whiffs thanks to Blinding Radiance. In frustration, it uses a standard melee attack, which hits – better that than Corrupted Blade, I guess.    Lohse uses Uncanny Evasion on herself, since Gheist 1 seems particularly interested in her, followed by Encourage on the whole team and Winter Blast on Gheist 1.       Gheist 2, having not done much in the previous turn, has an assload of AP to work with. It walks around Slugger and Fane, taking an AoO from each. It wades through the fire and its tendons are still ruptured, so it’s taking an enormous amount of damage with every little movement it makes. Apparently understand what Gheist 1 wants, Gheist 2 targets Lohse with Gag Order, landing a successful hit – Uncanny Evasion didn’t do dick to help me out that time. In response, she gets an AoO on it as well, inflicting Suffocating on it in return. It still has enough AP to use Backlash on Prince, taking out a quarter of his HP in that one hit. And it still has enough AP to use Death Wish on itself, giving itself a massive attack boost – a misplay, since it should have done that before Backlash, but I’m not complaining. That was a hell of a turn for Gheist 2, and with Death Wish active, I’m going to want to take it out before it can attack again, because even a standard melee swing will hurt.    Prince is in a sorry spot, backed between the wall and Gheist 2, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hand out buffs like candy: he gives Secretary Farsight Infusion; he gives Fane the Think Fast combo; and he cures Lohse of Mute with Bless. Hopefully the Gheists stop trying to rip out her throat now.   Fane hits Gheist 2 with Mosquito Swarm, then, after repositioning, he hits them both with Whirlwind. Thanks to Sparkstriker, they both take extra fire damage as well.  Salem hits Gheist 2 twice, doing what he can to help out. It causes Gheist 2 to bleed; the blood touches the Blessed Ice at Lohse’s feet; and now all of the liquids in the battlefield are Blessed, which… doesn’t really benefit me. The Gheists have all the movement power right now.  Slugger would like to use Laser Beam since both of the Gheists are lined up for it, but it would mean hitting Lohse and Prince as well, so instead, he just slugs his way over to Gheist 1 and hits it with his proboscis.   Secretary, likewise, wants to hit them both with Battering Ram, but Salem, the cat standing up to its ankles, is in its way, and he doesn’t want to step on the poor cat! So it tries to reposition, taking an unfortunate AoO for it, but at least it does get the Battering Ram off on them both.  Sebille takes her delayed turn. Although Gheist 2 is very close to death, she can’t reasonably be the one to take it out, so, instead, she hits Gheist 1 with Chloroform. Hopefully Fane can finish the job with his boosted Initiative.     Turn 3 Which he does, thanks to a lucky crit, but the Sparkstriker spark hits Gheist 1, waking it back up. So I can’t just cruise through the rest of the fight, unfortunately, but the kill did refund Fane his two AP. He uses them to cast Time Warp on himself, followed by Crippling Blow on Gheist 1. And with his last two AP, he uses a skill he hasn’t actually tried yet, as far as I know: Enrage. Enrage clears Clear Mind, which is a bummer, and it gives himself the Muted status, but in exchange, every attack he makes with basic attacks or weapon skills is guaranteed to crit.  With his extra turn, Fane hits Gheist 1 twice, dealing a whopping 239 damage in two swings. Maybe I should use Enrage more often. That wasn’t a small amount of damage Fane just did. But it would mean losing access to all of his necromancy skills for a while….  It, in return, hits Fane twice, doing more damage to me than I did to it.   Sebille comes out of hiding to hit Gheist 1 with Tentacle Lash, followed by Throwing Knives. The Gheist isn’t going to survive to another turn, and even if it did, its Atrophy from Tentacle Lash would prevent it from doing anything particularly meaningful. To summarize the rest of the fight: Lohse hits it once; Prince puts down a Blood Totem and hits it with Battle Stomp (which, because his staff has a 100% chance to ignite surfaces, turns the Blessed Blood into Holy Fire); the totem, Salem, and Slugger all hit the Gheist a few times; Secretary uses its long-ranged attack and Mosquito Swarm; and Sebille gets the fight-winning blow on the next turn with another Throwing Knives.  : Were those guards, or victims?: Both, I fear.For the looting, the Gheists typically don’t hold a lot to them: usually just some crafting ingredients. Gheist 2 had a ring that gave +1 Marksman, meaning it’s vendor trash, so that’s nice. So, there’s a… situation that I hadn’t considered regarding Slugger.  Slugger puts down lines of fire everywhere it goes. Thanks to how Divinity: Unleashed changed how summons work – they don’t dispel over time – there’s no way to ‘un-summon’ Slugger to prevent it from following me everywhere on the ship and spreading fire everywhere it slugs to. I could kill it myself by wailing on it for a little bit, but there’s a second option: when a person has a summon already on the field, then summoning a second creature will dispel the first. So Prince would just need to summon something other than Secretary in order to remove Slugger from the field. As we learned previously, the Incarnate Champion is a different summon from the Incarnate, meaning if I can summon Attendant, it should overwrite Slugger and let me continue searching the ship without fear of burning it down. (Which is not a thing you can do, but, you know what I mean)  Removing a handful of equipment from Prince’s body puts his Summoning score back down below 10, so if I try and summon the Incarnate now…  There’s Attendant, as expected. Well, except, I summoned it on nothing, so it has no element. If I’m going to be leading around two Incarnates for the rest of my investigation of the ship, it might as well have an element. The only surface to summon it on in this room is blood, so, I guess I’ll take two blood Incarnates. Blood Incarnates do a great amount of physical damage – you can never go wrong with that.  It took a bit of finagling with my summons and my equipment to put me over 10 Summoning, but there, we’re all squared up.  Anyway! When we used the Teleporter Pyramid, we were brought into this little… prison? Torture chamber? There are cages in the corners and one suspended off the ceiling, and there is at least one science-y device that I don’t recognize. There’s a counterpart Teleporter Pyramid on the desk beside a book and a Jar of Mind Maggots, which is always a nice thing to collect. The book doesn’t tell me anything; it just says it’s filled with ‘beautiful calligraphy that I don’t understand.’ Sometimes, you might come across something, such as a book, containing information that the character reading it can’t parse. In that case, try reading it with a character that has a background as a Scholar or Mystic – different backgrounds can provide different insight into the thing you’re trying to understand. An Outlaw might know something about an obscure law; a Noble might understand the significance of an emblem or insignia. Fane is both a Scholar and a Mystic, and he has no idea what’s in this book, so, missed opportunity. Neither does Prince, the prince from a foreign land.  And here’s the other Pyramid. Like I said before, activating one will instantly teleport you to the other, no matter how far apart they are on the map. It’s a useful thing to have. I give this one to Lohse.   There’s not much else to see in this rickety old room – just a pair of wardrobes against the far wall remaining. One of them has a key, a Charm arrow (officially useless to me), and a Nailbomb grenade (pretty useful to me).  And a logbook. Maybe I can actually read this one.  This is all I have discovered, thus you may assume this is all there is to discover about these particular relics. Tarquin And that’s all there is to know about Teleporter Pyramids, really. After looting the place clean, I remembered that I actually came a decision about something earlier, after we held the vote on who to keep forever. We have two staff users. Two magicians isn’t a bad thing, of course, and if you’re not going all-in on physical or magical attacks, it’s best that you have two of each. But just because you have two magicians doesn’t mean they both needs to be staff users.  Lohse’s current staff, Oath of Insanity, grants +2 Intelligence, does 65-79 Fire damage, and has a rune slot. That +2 Intelligence is the big one, but I have a bunch of wands in my possession that grant some real good buffs, too. Namely: Grand Scepter, which gives +1 Intelligence and has a rune slot, and Redeka’s Thorn, which grants +1 Intelligence, +1 Hydrosophist, and also has a rune slot. That’s an extra +1 Hydrosophist and an extra rune slot over Oath of Insanity.  The biggest difference is the wands do 11 damage less, but my wizards don’t do a lot of attacks with their weapons anyway, and once I slap some runes on them, they wind up doing 3 damage more. And besides, on top of being the better min-max move, I want to swap out her staff for the wands for their variance. Two staff wielders is boring, don’t you think?   The ladder out of the room takes me back up to the captain’s cabin. There’s a trap door right next to the grandiose desk next to the window.  There’s a handful of stuff to pick up, here. The three most prominent things of note are the potion, the Dense Notes, and the Dusty Tome.  On top of the desk is a massive, beautifully-painted mural of… something. A pretty significant event in the lore of Rivellon. Lucian the Divine is in the top painting, holding a sword covered in lightning, and presumably, the painting beneath him depicts some form of Void creature, but I’m not positive what the two paintings on the sides are supposed to be. As for that Dusty Tome:  : This is written in ancient lizard script. It appears to be a song…… How in the world are you supposed to read that phonetically? Can you do it? Prince doesn’t offer anything helpful into translating or reading this nonsense phonetically. Still, though, this is clearly the book that I’m after. A book containing a Lizard “““““song””””” that I’m supposed to bring to the figurehead and sing to in order to get her moving. Before I do that, though, I’ve only picked half this room clean. Next to read are those Dense Notes:  [A handwritten note curls across the bottom of the page] Need stronger relic; technological medication = failure From the sounds of things… Kniles the Fletcher was trying to create his own Purging Wand. The Magisters knew that Braccus’ Armory was going to run dry eventually, so they wanted to start making their own in the event. He found some success, but he needs a ‘stronger relic,’ whatever that means, to make something more consistent.  Each bookshelf here can be interacted with as a type of treasure box, meaning Sebille’s Lucky Charm can kick in any time I open one. It does exactly once – for a crappy one-handed sword. Oh well, that’s free money. Otherwise, I find a bunch of scrolls, which are always useful.  The last place to search in the captain’s cabin is the bedroom. That’s a drat big bed. The captain even gets their own washtub in the corner, complete with privacy screen.  Along with… an undead cat. Tarquin mentioned something about ‘enchanting’ a dead cat to make it ‘seem’ alive.  : I’m a monsterrr… I click and clack as I stalk my prrrey. My tail rrrrattles like a snake’s. : I understand better than you might realize.: Fie! No-one understands me! : There, there, now. How did you find yourself in the state you’re in?: Don’t touch me! My verrry being is a curse! It was Tarrrquin, that wrrretch! That rrrat! I ate an ill mouse and passed in my sleep, and the brrrooding boorrr brrrought me back on a larrrk! : If Tarquin was the one that brought you back from oblivion, then that must mean you’re Dallis’s cat, correct? : *snrk* Booply Bear…?: Hssssss : Well, Booply, I’m afraid Dallis isn’t here, but she had sent me in her stead to retrieve the ship for the Order.: You? She sent… you?: …: The cat begins to purr and rub itself on your ankles. : I’ve found the song in question, actually. What can you tell me about moving the ship? : Well, thank you, Booply. I’ll let Dallis know that you were a good kitty.: The cat purrs, an eerie clicking sound.: Tell Mumsy to come back soon! Now that I am but bone, I’m too light to trrrip the moving doorrr. I’m surrre therrre’s a rrrat back therrre… : Oh, Quercus, don’t be like that. I was looking at his bone structure for academic purposes. There’s nothing to be jealous of! Honestly… I wonder what Dallis (or Alexander, maybe) kept in her (or his) personal chest.  Not a lot, except for a third-tier Hydrosophist skillbook. Lohse skipped a tier entirely!  Steam Lance: Fire a burst of Blessed Steam in a straight line, healing everyone it touches and curing Burning, Necrofire, Diseased, and Decaying.Oh hey, something else that counters Decaying! Bonus! However, because it’s a third-tier spell, it costs two Source points to cast, and Lohse currently only has one. So there’s no point in keeping it memorized, since she can’t possibly cast it at all. But when I get to that point, it’s a thing that’ll be available!  As I comb over the bedroom area for things to loot, Fane finds a hidden switch in front of one of the dressers. Booply mentioned something about being ‘too light’ to ‘trip the moving door.’ Maybe this is what he meant.  Stepping on the switch doesn’t open the door leading into the next room, but it undeniably moved something in this area.  It moved one of the cabinets along the wall off to the side, revealing a button to press. Opening the door into the next room – and the last one to explore in the whole ship – is a two-person job. None of the furniture, even the ornate treasure chest, is heavy enough to keep the switch pressed.   The last room in the ship is… some kind of personal vault, maybe? There’s another mountain of gold coins; some necklaces on the table that offer nothing special, so they’re all vendor trash; some artwork; some weapons that are more vendor fillings; and a treasure chest.  And another button to open the other door back into the hold, completing the circuit.  That chest contains a pretty hefty magic armour potion, some money, and a Decaying Touch scroll. Would go well on Sebille. And that’s that: I’ve picked the entire ship clean as a whistle of everything that I care to pick up. One last trip to Tarquin to hand in some wares and rebuild my coffers, and I’m off to the figurehead, armed with the book and the song.    : The deck beneath you groans and trembles, like the ship itself is awaking from a slumber. A deep sigh emerges – unmistakably the sound of a living being. : You… you are not the witch. You are not Dallis. : You’ll forgive me when I say that… this is a lot to take in. I opened a book; sang a song to a ship’s figurehead; and now I’m being asked if I’m to be the master to a living creature.: Can I ask you some questions before I come to a decision like that? : For as elegant as a ship this is, I can’t help but… sense that there’s nothing but pain within each plank. I’m told that you’re made from an elven ancestor tree – whoever made you would have done the equivalent of unearthing and then desecrating a grave.: The bow of the ship creaks downwards on the swell of the ocean. In the breeze above you, the faintest hint of what might have been a melancholy sigh.: Once, I was an elf… I passed away and was reborn as an ancestor tree, in a beautiful forest surrounded by kin of both flesh and root… : Do you have any recollection on how this came to be – how you took the form of a living being, formed into a Magister war vessel?: The sails overhead billow outwards suddenly. The sun is blocked, momentarily casting the dragon figurehead into shadow.: Magisters. They razed sacred elven lands, and uprooted ancestor trees from the earth… I was one of them… : I think I’ve heard enough to make a decision. : I may never have been a slave, but I have been a prisoner in more than one instance, and I know what it’s like to have your freedoms stripped from you. I am not one of them – if you’ll do me one favour, I can see to it that you’ll have your freedom in return.: You are kind… but I can never be free again, not truly. I am a vessel, and must be guided. Let me take you wherever you wish. We can depart as soon as you are ready. Oh, I have guests. : The ship’s awake. Good. : Well, she, uh, said as much, yes.: A slow, toothless smile stretches across her face.: To Driftwood, then.: Right. It’s time we move forward.: It most certainly is. Forward! Video: Troubled Waters Ahead : The Battle for DivinityWith the sun on their backs and the wind in their sails, the Godwoken watched Fort Joy shrink behind them.  But their capture of the Lady Vengeance had not gone unnoticed.   To recap, we have two votes: Do we change Fane’s appearance? If so, to what? Refer to this video for our aesthetic options. What do we name Prince’s Fire Slug? Let me know in a few day’s time! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 13:37
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I don't really have an opinion on Fane's looks. Let's name the slug Butler.
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Oct 8, 2021 16:33
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Scrotch! You likely know this, but if you get an item to boost hydrosophist, necromancer, or aerotheurge, Prince can learn skills using those skills, then infuse the slug with water, shock or blood to prevent the all burning, all the time. Because the summon is permanent, so are the skills used to buff them, so you put the item on, memorize the element infusion, infuse, then change back to more normal skills while its active. I've used this to gain all the standard, blessed and cursed infusions on my summoner Lohse.
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Oct 8, 2021 20:48
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Black Robe posted:I don't really have an opinion on Fane's looks. I like this name. And Fane needs a goatee and mohawk
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Oct 9, 2021 05:28
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I agree that Fane could use some distinguished facial hair. As for the problematic slug, let's name him chauffeur. I also love how nonsensical everything about the Alexander twist of him being on the boat is, even above you stealing his face and exploding his corpse. Even though all the Seekers had already left for the ship by the time you fought him it seems (they weren't around anymore), and you not bringing him on your boat that went directly to the Lady Vengeance, somehow somebody grabbed his unconscious body after you left and beat you to the ship, with time enough to lock him up in the hold. What? Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 08:19
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Fane is a man (???) of distinction, and his bone-dry visage should remain as-is. As for Prince's slug, Courtier seems good. I mean, we did cross those fire slugs near the prison, after all.
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Oct 11, 2021 06:25
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Olive Branch posted:Fane is a man (???) of distinction, and his bone-dry visage should remain as-is. I agree with both of these. Comedy option name the slug Braccus and wed it to that woman slug
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Oct 12, 2021 15:52
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I also prefer that Fane be left as-is. I like Chauffeur for the slug, it fits the theme we’ve got going.
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Oct 12, 2021 21:03
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I recorded the next update already and I have him a full set of hair before those last two votes came in. Rather than rerecord, though, the beauty of the respec mirror is that I can change Fane's appearance whenever I drat well please, so I'll shave him again next time.
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Oct 12, 2021 23:34
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 The vote on what to do with Fane’s appearance ended kind of awkwardly. While I don’t set hard deadlines, I usually stop counting votes after around three days, and after I recorded this update, I suddenly got a handful of votes to keep Fane the way he was. I didn’t feel like rerecording the update, so, I’ll just shave Fane back to normal once it’s over. While I’m currently in the past, it turns out that there are a few conversations I can have with my party before we depart for Reaper’s Coast.    : What’s your opinion of our travel companions, the Seekers?: Depends which one. Most of ‘em seem a little too earnest for my taste. But Malady? She’s my kind of gal.: In any case, it looks like they’re probably going to help me find out whatever’s leechin’ off my magnificent brain. So I’m not too pressed about being in the same boat.: Hah. The same boat.: On a hopefully-lighter topic: what do you hope to do once all of… this is over?: You know… wherever the next road leads, I guess. I never was one to sit in one place too long. : It’s… not a place that I want to return to. It’s a time.: So I might be out of luck. It’s going to be awfully difficult to go back in time as opposed to going back to a home. : There’s… someone. Someone I miss. If I can’t have a home to go back to, I’d like to have a person, but… well… those odds aren’t much better.: I guess that’s tough. Maybe you’ll find ‘em again, after all this is over.That was a nice chat with Lohse. How about Sebille? For a woman that’s, uh, as intense as she can be, she can also be pretty tender when she wants to be.  : I had noticed that the figurehead on the ship has the same scar that you do. : (The times aren’t as coarse as she believes them to be.) Can I ask – where are you from? What is ‘home’ to you?: Home? There’s no such thing. I hail from the land that was. The kingdom of fog. The grave of divinity. If ever I had a home it has long since gone up in the smoke of Deathfog along with so many elves.: So, no home. Except… everywhere, really. The world is mine! It’s mine because I say it is.: She looks at you expectantly. : (A rare sign of levity from Sebille. I shouldn’t spoil it.): We, the Queen of the World, smile upon thee with favour! We dub thee… Knight of the Needle! Arise, good sir, and wear your title proudly.: She takes you by the hands and laughs heartily as you stand up.: How kind of you to play along. We won’t forget.That got us a bit more attitude with Sebille. Attitude with our teammates doesn’t have a lot of gameplay impact, other than if it’s too low, they’ll leave our party, but a higher attitude can have a positive narrative impact in different locations. So it’s better to play nice with your teammates when you can. Speaking of: Prince’s turn.  : The Lady Vengeance is more than a ship – she’s a living creature, and she’s been enslaved with the same techniques that bind Sebille.: Slavery isn’t a practice unique to the modern world, but I’m not familiar with how it works in the Ancient Empire. What could you tell me about it?: Rather straightforward isn’t it? Some rule; some serve. It’s the way of the world.: He rolls his eyes, sensing his answer didn’t quite satisfy you.: It’s a custom as old as time. We conquered, established rule, and demonstrated our unequivocal authority by making slaves out of defeated nobles and royals. Now the rules have… relaxed somewhat. Slaves have simply become a commodity; a given. They come from all walks of life from all over Rivellon.: Of course there are some that struggle with accepting the honour that is serving the exalted House of War, hence the scars. : Magic can do a lot of things, but even in my time, there was no application to use magic to contort a person’s very actions. How does this magic work? For purely academic purposes, you understand.: Ah! Straight to the scholarship of the matter. Very good! Here’s the beauty of the scar, see: it lives. It is one of the slave’s tissue and bends his actions against his will.: All this can be achieved by means of music. Every scar is attuned to a unique song, sound or melody. He who knows the melody, controls the slave. Whistle, and oh, how they’ll come a-running!Asking Prince about how the slave magic works increases his attitude towards us, which is pretty in-character for Prince, honestly. Now that we’re all acquainted with each other, and Fane’s got himself a nice head of hair, it’s time to move on.   : Dancing With The Wicked: Rumble in the DeepTurn 1 Whoa, straight into it!  : I respect your mettle, Sourcerers. You steal my ship, kill my bishop, and ally with demons. But you have no idea what you’re really dealing with.Maybe I don’t. Everyone that I’ve spoken to that knew Dallis in person says that she’s different now. Who knows ‘what I’m dealing with,’ indeed.  : We are ready, mistress.: Yes. But are they?: I swear mistress. I swear they’ll perform admirably.: Very well. Show me.: Goodbye, Sourcerers.  The Cloaked Figure standing beside Dallis uses Meteor Shower, the highest-tier Pyromancer Source skill, on a group of Seekers standing on the decks with me: Simone, Leya, Duggan, Samadel, and others. This attack is scripted to go first in the fight, and in the base game, it’s usually enough to kill every single Seeker on the deck because all of their magic armour is bootycheeks. In the Divinity: Unleashed mod, their armour isn’t any better, but their Vitality is highly boosted to balance against the changes made to the armour systems, so as a result, they all survive the strike – but none of them are in good shape, obviously. Samadel and Leya in particular are in danger of dying to their Burning as soon as their turns come up. : Oh for the love of the Void…: Listen up. We can’t win this one. But I can get us to safety. You’ll need to buy me time. Show us what you can do, Godwoken.: Godwoken…? Parasites, rather.: I’ll take care of it, mistress.  Because Meteor Shower cost 4 AP to cast, the Cloaked Figure gets a second turn for the sake of the script, which is bullshit. He uses Fiery Malediction on Prince – a skill that I can’t actually learn at any time in the game. To add insult to injury, he casts Curse on Prince as well, giving him a slew of debuffs on top of the malediction. : Stop that elf! Her Sourcery must be silenced!Like Malady said, the goal of this fight isn’t necessarily to win: it’s to keep Malady alive long enough that she can get us away from Dallis and her hoard of weird un-zombies. Malady isn’t going to be able to fight or defend herself, so she’s going to need assistance in the way of different armours and the occasional heal. Luckily, she’s extremely tanky, so keeping her alive isn’t actually that challenging. And I’m pretty sure I could win this fight, if I had more time than this fight gives me. While killing enemies isn’t the objective of this fight, every downed enemy is worth a handful of EXP, so I naturally want to kill as many as I can regardless.   Exter survives his burns, and he uses Tactical Retreat to jump to a nearby platform for the high ground bonuses. And from there, he throws a Razzle Dazzle grenade on the group of Dallis’ monsters staring down Prince.    The Silent Watcher, Watcher 1, attempts to reposition onto the platform opposite Exter, and she takes three AoOs from Prince, Secretary, and Sebille on the way. Prince whiffs (but he’s Cursed, so I forgive him); Secretary lands; and Sebille whiffs with her offhand.   Duggan eats a raw chicken leg, which heals him for a fair amount, but it also gives him Diseased. Then he charges straight through some fire so he can get a better shot on an oil barrel on the opposite side of the deck, which ignites Gheist 1. Kind of a weird turn, all told, but he establishes a goal and he accomplishes it.   Monk 1 has her sights set on Malady, but she suicidally runs through the fire to get there, and she doesn’t even get close enough for Gareth to hit her with an AoO. Priorities, woman!   Sebille finally has her turn – she’s unusually late in the turn order, given her Wits stat – and she spends it throwing two water balloons on the burning Seekers, putting out their fires. Their HP is all still critically low, but at least they won’t burn to death immediately on their turn.    Watcher 2, a Silent Monk wielding a sword bigger than he is, chugs right past both Gareth and Fane, taking an AoO from both, so he can whack Malady, who immediately gets snippy at me. She’s going to do that a lot this fight.  Samadel retreats slightly and uses Staff of Magus on Watcher 2. She deals 114 water damage, which is more than triple what Fane and Gareth did individually (although, to be fair, Watcher 2 has a ton of physical armour and zero magic armour).   There’s a new enemy type introduced with this battle: the Weaponized Monk. It moves and sounds like some kind of hound, but if you look at the thing’s model, it’s actually a dude in a hosed up harness that’s covered in spikes. It’s pretty gross, but I’m sure there’s a demographic for that. Weaponized Monks have no magic armour, but they bite pretty drat hard. Weapon 1 charges straight through the fire to get to Samadel, taking an AoO from Leya (who is unarmed, which is just great), but it doesn’t have the AP to attack as well. Which is good: Samadel is one hit from death and she apparently hits pretty drat hard, so I’d like her to live.  Tarlene helps out by firing one bolt into Weapon 1 and, despite having two more AP to attack again, passes the rest of her turn.   Weapon 2 does the exact same thing: it attempts to chase down Samadel and runs through the meteor fire to reach her, but the oil that Duggan had spilled make Slowed, so it has to spend every AP it has to reach her.   Gareth hits Gheist 2 with Ice Fan, making it Chilled. That’s a good strategy: one more ice attack, and it’ll be Snap Frozen, preventing it from moving to attack. So, naturally, Gareth uses Searing Daggers, melting whatever ice he just put down and making the Gheist Warm instead. Gareth’s AI… needs help.    Gheist 2, now freshly toasty, uses Backlash on Exter and kills him. Thanks, Gareth. The Gheist apparently can’t climb ladders and it only has Backlash for self-teleportation (or maybe it just ran out of AP), so it passes, unable to do anything more.   Leya downs a whole bottle of booze before repositioning next to Weapon 2. If you know you’re about to die, then I guess it’s better to go out the way you want to go out. It’s better to die than to be killed, and all that.   Gheist 1 wades through the fire to use Gag Order on Simone, the Seeker’s cook and amateur nurse. It’s way more than enough to take her out, and now we’re down two Seekers.    Lohse has her turn, and she spends it using Restoration on Jules, the only surviving Seeker that we rescued from the infirmary in the Sanctuary. With her second AP, she uses Encourage on herself, Fane, Salem, and Malady, and with her last two, she attacks Watcher 2 with her wands. The first swing lands, but the second whiffs. We’re having a pretty rough go of it with our accuracy this fight. Just another update for the LP.  Jules spends his turn eating food, which sounds silly, but eating food is a decent move in Divinity: Unleashed, especially if you have the Five Star Diner perk. It puts him back up to max HP.    Prince (and his entourage) and Sebille are separated from Fane and Lohse, so he can’t use Think Fast on Fane. And from his complaining, it sounds like the Cloaked Figure put something inside him with Fiery Malediction: ‘lava flowing through him,’ and he ‘can’t contain it for long.’ Little known fact about this fight: the Lady Vengeance is equipped with ballistas on her bow. For 3 AP, you can actually fire them on the enemies in this fight. However, you don’t get to choose where the bolt goes. The bolt fires on the landing where Dallis’ monsters had boarded the Lady Vengeance, which is normally fine, except Prince’s move is towards the end of the turn order, and all of the enemies have moved out of the way. I didn’t know that second part at the time, and even if I was ready for it, I didn’t get a good shot of me using the ballista, unfortunately. So, for Prince’s turn, he used one AP to give Sebille Haste, and then he used three more firing a ballista bolt at nothing.    Salem goes next, and he walks up to Monk 1 and swipes him in the shin with his kitty paw before swapping places with Fane. This was perhaps a little overkill, but it means that Fane is in striking distance of Monk 1 and he doesn’t need to spend any AP to walk there. With his last AP, Salem repositions beside Malady, ready to beat up Watcher 2.   Fane uses Swinging Sparks, followed by All In on Monk 1. Monk 1 has no physical armour, so I’d like Fane and Gareth to keep their focus on him.  Likewise, Secretary does physical damage exclusively, and Watcher 1 has no physical armour either, so I use it to keep the pressure on her. It uses Mosquito Swarm on her and then repositions right beside her.  Attendant is the last one to move in the turn order – it’s a big fight – and it, likewise, does only physical damage, so it turns its attention to Monk 1, also hitting him with Mosquito Swarm. The Bleeding statuses will go a long way.   Turn 2 Dallis continues barking orders from her own ship and Malady… starts looking pretty sparkly. Whatever she’s about to do, it’s going to be big.  : You will not take me again, Dallis! The Lady Vengeance herself gets a turn in this fight, and she uses it to buff every controlled and allied unit with a skill called Vengeance. And it’s one hell of a buff: with Vengeance active, every single person and summon on my team gets +8 Constitution and Wits; an additional 10% chance to dodge every attack; and a bonus 20% resistance to every element. The Lady Vengeance really, really wants us to win this fight.    The Cloaked Figure beside Dallis hits Fane with another Fiery Malediction, and then Gareth with a Staff of Magus.   Duggan retreats and plugs a bolt into Weapon 2.     Watcher 1 retreats from Secretary, and since she does it by climbing a ladder, it doesn’t trigger its AoO. But the platform she’s running to is absolutely caked in fire, and walking through it does more damage than a punch to the skull would have. Once she’s in position, she uses Ricochet on Sebille, which misses her but hits Prince, and then she puts out her fire with First Aid. That’s not going to go a long way but it at least works for her. With her last two AP, she puts another arrow into Prince.     Watcher 1 putting herself up so high works to me advantage really nicely: Sebille uses Backlash on her, which puts herself on fire, sure, but it also gives her eyesight on the whole battlefield and it puts immediate pressure on Watcher 1. With her height advantage, she hucks a bottle of Chloroform onto Monk 1, who’s going to go next, and then, with the last of her AP, she uses Tentacle Lash on Watcher 1, forcing her to drop her bow. And since she just used First Aid, there’s no way for her to heal herself next turn. Monk 1 spends his turn waking up, as expected.  Samadel, my favourite powerhouse ally, turns around and uses Staff of Magus on Gheist 1. Perhaps not the best move when Watcher 2 is right there, but it’s still a hard hit all the same.  Watcher 2 follows up with Battering Ram, hitting both Malady and Salem, followed by a regular strike on Malady. Since Malady isn’t actually performing any actions, giving her any status effects isn’t necessarily a thing I need to worry about, short of anything that lowers defenses or resistances.   Tarlene displays her Girl Boss-ness by repositioning, dodging an attack from Weapon 2, and turning around and shooting Weapon 1 twice, landing a crit with one of them.  Unfortunately, Weapon 2 has enough movement and AP to run to Tarlene and respond with Crippling Blow, which she doesn’t dodge. However, because the deck is so congested, it had to run all the way around the outside of the deck to get there, so it doesn’t have any AP left to follow up.    Gareth, doing the exact thing I didn’t want him to do, turns away from Monk 1 (taking an AoO for it, and her staff apparently has Cleave so it also hits Fane, which sets him on fire, and apparently it also has a chance to Slow, and it triggers on Fane, thanks Gareth); runs past Watcher 2 (and takes another AoO); then climbs the mast beside Malady and uses Crippling Blow on Gheist 2. This was a dumb move for a handful of reasons, but, Gheists are the most dangerous unit in Dallis’ entourage, and keeping one of them from harassing anyone on my team is a big help, so…  Weapon 1 turns around and uses Crippling Blow on Duggan, putting him down to about a quarter of his HP.   Lohse is standing right next to Watcher 2, and Watcher 2 has no magic armour, so she hits her with Shocking Touch (which shocks the blood she and Malady are both standing on, which hits Malady as well, but only for 38 HP so it’s fine), followed by one hit from both her wands, dealing 99 damage total. Those two moves did almost 300 HP worth of damage, which is a big number for what is reasonably early in the game.   Gheist 2 accepts Gareth’s challenge and responds with Gag Order, followed by Chameleon Skin. Gareth has very few magic spells at his disposal, so him being Silenced isn’t all that damning.   Jules the elf decides to be a bro and makes his way over to Malady to heal her with Restoration – which begs the question on why he didn’t just do that on his turn instead of stuffing his face with food. Well, either way, he turns around and hits Gheist 1 with Fossil Strike. The oil puddle touches some nearby fire and detonates, so now Gheist 1 is Slowed and on fire. That means both of the Gheists are decently controlled, at least for now.    Despite that, Gheist 1 gets the idea to attack Malady and it’ll stop at nothing to accomplish that. It’s Slowed, and the most direct path there is blocked by Jules and Samadel, so it walks clean through the fire on the deck, taking an AoO from a drunk, unarmed Leya and one from a fully-equipped and sober Fane, before finally stopping a stone’s throw away from Malady. It must have been maxed out on AP from the previous turn, but after all of that, it’s down to less than half its HP.    Fiery Malediction lasts for three turns, and it does explosive fire damage to whoever it’s cast on after the second and third turns. It detonates once inside of Prince, putting him down to about a quarter. He repositions next to Attendant for the quick boost to Rallying Cry, but it’s not enough for me to be comfortable that he’ll survive another turn, so he chugs his only potion, putting him up to 3/4s full. But that costs him the rest of his AP.  Salem only has three AP because of Knocked Down, so he just hits Watcher 2 once and takes a break.    Fane mentions ‘having a bomb in his belly.’ His what? He hits Gheist 1 and Monk 1 with Whirlwind, landing a crit on the Gheist, and then he uses Time Warp on himself. Time Warp affects cooldowns and statuses, so, might as well deal with Fiery Malediction while he’s at full-ish HP.     Fiery Malediction kicks in, and Fane explodes – which actually does a bigger chunk of damage to Monk 1 than it did to himself. He uses Mosquito Swarm on Gheist 1, making it Bleed, and then he hits Monk 1 with a regular swing. It’s enough to kill him and refund him two AP, so, he uses Battle Stomp on the Gheist, giving it another status effect and clearing the way forward of all the fire.    Secretary climbs the ladder, chasing after Watcher 1. It only has a 78% chance to hit her – so it uses Battering Ram, which, if successful, will give her Knocked Down, which will dramatically drop her Dodging stat. It succeeds, and its next melee strike suddenly has a 99% chance to land, which does. Watcher 1 is at less than half HP, and she probably won’t survive the next round.   Attendant uses Battering Ram to traverse the deck as quickly as it can to get to Fane. Battering Ram can be a better movement option than just walking because the distance it can travel can be higher than your movement speed, especially if you’re Slowed or Crippled. After that, it hurls a glob of blood with its long-ranged attack on Gheist 1.   Leya moves last, because she’s Drunk, which badly nerfs her Wits and Initiative. And her sense. She uses Haste on Malady, an ally that’s specifically not doing anything for this fight, much less running away, and Leya then turns around and throws a Fireball at Weapon 1, which whiffs. I don’t know if Drunkenness actually effects an NPC’s AI, but if it does, that’s honestly kind of funny. This turn could not have gone worse for Leya.   Turn 3 You know, it’s interesting: in the above screenshot with Dallis, you can see that there’s an Ornate Chest on her ship next to her. And according to my mouseover tooltips, I’m able to loot it. But I can’t actually reach Dallis’ ship from here. I can’t use a self-teleport skill and I can’t target either Dallis or her hooded friend with Backlash. But I can still target them with long-ranged spells and attacks, such as Prince’s Demonic Stare. Which… huh. That should mean that I can target them with Teleport. I wonder what would happen if I Teleported one of them onto my ship and I killed them well before the plot would normally allow me to. I doubt I’d be able to do it with this save file. They’re both incredibly overleveled compared to me and I just wouldn’t have the damage numbers to pull it off, especially in the Divinity: Unleashed mod. I know it’s possible to take out Dallis when you first meet her at Fort Joy (be careful of major spoilers if you look that up!), but I don’t know what happens if you take out the Cloaked Figure here as well. It’d require a specialty build that was meant from the beginning for an event like this. Or… well, a liberal use of the respec mirror in the Lady Vengeance’s hold, anyway.  The Cloaked Figure hits Prince once with Staff of Magus. There’s nobody in range that doesn’t already have Fiery Malediction, so, that’s all he can do this turn.  Duggan shoots Weapon 1 twice, dealing 77 damage total. The Weaponized Monks have a boatload of physical armour, so they aren’t about to die from pot shots any time soon.    Watcher 1 uses Armour of Frost on Weapon 1, so now it’s just straight-up not going to die at all from any focus fire. She attempts to run from the burning mast, but not before triggering both Sebille’s and Secretary’s AoO’s. Sebille lands a hit, but Secretary whiffs, which is a shame – it probably would have taken her out.     Secretary can deal with Watcher 1; Sebille will turn her attention elsewhere. She jumps from the mast and lands behind Weapon 2, then uses Flesh Sacrifice for a quick AP kick, followed by the classic Ruptured Chicken strategy.   Watcher 2 repositions very slightly (taking an AoO from Salem) to use Whirlwind, hitting Lohse and Malady, but whiffing on Salem. The hit makes Lohse bleed a puddle of blood, which touches the electrified blood on the deck, which deals air damage to Watcher 2 and Gheist 1. Overall, a pretty weak turn.   Samadel shows Duggan how it’s done by hitting Weapon 1 twice, dealing 203 damage total, even with Armour of Frost up.   The Weaponized Chicken runs away – but because every route nearby is blocked off, it runs to the edge of the ship’s deck, ultimately not doing a lot of damage to itself. Well, it’s Succumbing, at least.  Tarlene fires two bolts into Watcher 2. Every enemy nearby has a ton of physical armour, so it makes sense to prioritize the one that’s focusing down our main objective this fight.  Weapon 1 returns the favour by biting Samadel twice, dealing 269 damage in those two bites. Samadel has zero physical armour, having one all-in on the mage motif. She survived, but she won’t if she takes two more.  Gareth continues to solo Gheist 2, hitting it twice. At least he’s keeping it busy.  Case in point, Gheist 2 responds to both melee hits with two melee hits of its own. One of them crits, but even without it, it’s doing a ton more damage to him than he is to it. Not that I’m concerned for his health – the fight is going to end as soon as Malady is done with her spell, and Gareth has way more HP than the Gheist does.  Lohse has a handful of offensive options available to her, but I wanted to try and do something involving water since her Magic Cycles Talent is currently on fire and water. Unfortunately, she doesn’t really have anything, so she just uses Teleport on Gheist 1 instead, throwing it back into the fire. It’s pretty close to death; Prince ought to be able to take it out, I think.   Its HP being so low means it’s the perfect time to use Death Wish on itself. Gheists already do a ton of damage; with Death Wish being as effective as it is right now, it’ll one-shot drat-near anyone in the fight. So it trundles its way towards Prince… … and it turns at the last second, heading into the fire on the deck to target someone else. Possibly Samadel, since she’s technically in range, has no physical armour, and has very little HP. And thanks to that sudden course correction, Prince gets an AoO, finishing it off.  Jules hits Weapon 1 with Burning Blaze, followed by one strike from each of his wands. With that Gheist down, and not counting Dallis or the Cloaked Figure, there’s only five enemies left in this fight, and the two Watchers are knocking on death’s door.    Prince is holding a handful of Restoration scrolls, so he uses one on himself to put out his fire and start recovering a bit of HP over time. He has four AP remaining, so he hurls a Fireball across the deck onto Weapon 1, and then he ends his turn by giving Secretary Clear Mind, saving one AP for later.  Salem’s Swap Places skill is still on cooldown, so he just hits Watcher 2 with his kitty claws some more. One of the attacks even crits.  After a bit of maneuvering into place, Fane manages to get a Battering Ram off on Watcher 2. The electrified water and blood has the movement do more damage to him than the attack did to her, unfortunately, but he’s in a good position to start wailing on her next turn. While he has one AP to spare, he might as well use Shackles of Pain on Watcher 2 as well.   Secretary chases after Watcher 1, climbing down the ladder and hitting her with Mosquito Swarm. This was a minor misplay, since it should have stayed up top and used the height advantage to deal additional damage. It wouldn’t have killed either way, but the Bleeding and the Burning ought to be more than enough now – and if it isn’t, she’ll trigger Secretary’s AoO if she tries to run.  Attendant does the same thing, hitting Watcher 2 with Mosquito Swarm.   And finally, to end the turn order, Leya, still drunk off her rear end, stumbles on up to Watcher 2 and kicks both her knees in, dealing 50 damage total. Leya was the one that curled into a ball and vanished from the world when Gareth left the Seekers to find that vault, and she only re-emerged when I brought him back. And here she is drunkenly waltzing up to a woman holding a sword longer than she is tall, fully decked out in knight’s armour, and attacking her unarmed. Alcohol really changes a person.   Turn 4 Based on what Malady’s saying, this is probably the last turn of the fight.    The Cloaked Figure throws out another Fiery Malediction, this time on Secretary. With the rest of his AP, he uses Staff of Magus on Prince, followed by Curse (which should have been the other way around – Curse absolutely demolishes resistances).   Thanks to Clear Mind, Secretary is way up in front of the turn order, so it goes next – and it promptly caves Watcher 1’s skull in. With a step to the left, Secretary also gets line of sight on Weapon 1, so it throws a glob of blood at the person-in-a-dog’s-harness and ends its turn.   Correctly realizing that Weapon 1 is all physical armour and no melee armour, Duggan finally gets the sense to use Electric Discharge on it, dealing 87 damage in a single strike. And then he shoots it with a bolt anyway. Maybe he just knows the one skill?   Watcher 2 takes two swings at Malady (and takes one AoO from Leya, who… I don’t believe is drunk anymore), and Malady gets all snippy about it. Sebille is next, but her only nearby target is Weapon 2, which is currently Succumbing, so, she delays.  Weapon 2 takes three steps, then stops immediately, realizing that it’s still Ruptured Tendon’ing to death. And also, it steps into Sebille’s personal space again, and the Succumbing status doubles-up to go straight into Charmed.   Samadel needs to put about a step in between herself and Weapon 1 in order to hit it, which triggers Weapon 1’s AoO. She’s one bite away from death. But Weapon 1 is very close to death itself, and Samadel hits surprisingly hard for a mage. She turns around and hits it twice, and it explodes into a pile of frozen giblets. The only targets remaining are Gheist 2, Watcher 2, and Weapon 2. Weapon 2 is Charmed and Watcher 2 is only a few hits from death. The Gheists offer the most EXP by far, and I’m unfortunately not going to take it out, but still, this fight has gone pretty well.  Tarlene just keeps doing what she’s doing, and that’s putting crossbow bolts into Watcher 2.  A bit more concerning, though, is that Gheist 2 uses Backlash on Malady, followed by a standard melee hit. After this whole fight, Malady is down to three quarters of her total HP remaining. Which is a lot. She’s not in danger of dying, especially if the fight is scheduled to end next turn. So I guess it’s not concerning at all, haha. Better it hit her than Prince, who’s been struggling to stay afloat this whole fight.   Gareth, although he’s not exactly a brilliant military mastermind, knows not to leave a plate unfinished: he uses Phoenix Dive to jump right back down beside the Gheist, and he uses Crippling Blow on it to make sure it can’t try and use Cloak And Dagger or something to try and run a second time.  Leya goes next, now that the drunkenness has worn off and her Initiative has recovered. And she spends her turn punching Watcher 2 in the head. It’s a bit surprising to me that Leya knows absolutely zero skills. She never healed; she never used any support or healing magic; nothing. This whole fight, all she’s done is get drunk and punch people. Which is rad for the setting and scenario, but it’s also, frankly, a liability, if I want her to stay alive.   After some deliberation, Lohse uses Chain Lightning on Gheist 2 and Watcher 2. Along with the electrified liquids at their feet, Watcher 2’s HP is in the single digits by now. Rather than attack her to finish her off, though, I fire another Electric Discharge on Gheist 2, leaving Watcher 2 for Salem. Hopefully I can take Gheist 2 out in time for some of that sweet, sweet EXP.    Jules, bless his heart, is worried for Malady’s health, so he uses Restoration on her to make sure she survives to the next turn. After that, he’s actually the one to finish off Watcher 2 with a swing of his wands. Whatever: as long as the enemy dies, I get the EXP, it doesn’t matter who does the killing. And finally… Jules uses the remainder of his AP to run through the fire on the deck to get to the other side. Based on his stance once he ends, it looks like he’s fixing to pick a fight with Dallis. Which I respect. That takes balls.   At this point, the fight’s over; I just waiting for the turn order to flip so that Malady can cast the spell to get us out. To that end, I gently caress around by casting Demonic Stare on Malady, a woman that cannot possibly attack me anyway, and then hauling rear end in the other direction, just to make her mad.   Salem is dying from the electrified water, but he has just enough HP to perform two moves: first, to jump next to the Gheist, and second, to Swap Places with Fane. As soon as they swap, Salem dies from the electricity. But hey, he saved Fane an AP so he doesn’t have to walk to the Gheist, so that’s nice.    Since Fane doesn’t have a summon with him anymore, I figure it’s the perfect time to whip out his brand new one: Summon Bone Spider. These screenshots don’t really do it well since it spawned on fire – or, perhaps, that means these screenshots do it much better. With his last two AP, he strikes the Gheist, landing a crit.  It lands two blows on the Gheist, dealing 89 damage total. Not bad considering the Gheist is decked out with physical armour. Now that it’s here, it’s time to ask: what do we name our spider made out of human bones?  Attendant is present and it contributes by throwing a glob of blood at the Gheist.    Sebille takes her delayed turn now. The fight is going to end after this round, and she can’t reach the Gheist from where she is, so she pumps herself up with Adrenaline and hits Weapon 2 twice, once with a melee attack and once with Flurry. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly enough to get the kill.  Turn 5  : drat, I’m good! With a burst of Source magic, the deck of the Lady Vengeance is replaced with stone cut into hexagonal shapes, and everyone in the field is knocked unconscious. A hexagon stone floor…? Where have we seen that before?  With the help of the half-demon Malady, the Godwoken escaped through the veil that separates life from death.   : The smell grows stronger. It closes in around you, creeping into your nostrils, through your lips… then suddenly vanishes. Now you smell only the faint scent of wood and a cold, metallic tang, as yet unfamiliar. We’re in the Hall of Echoes, the place where the dead go to rest. We met Lady Amadia here some time ago, after we prayed at a statue that honoured the Seven. We’ve been here before, but… it’s a little different this time.   The centerpiece of this particular visit to the Hall is a giant tree made of Source. Something hangs from it, like a tree bearing fruit, but we’re too far away to get a good look at what it is.  The path forward is linear, but eventually, it cuts off before we can get to the tree.  A small detour takes us to this cliff that’s been shut off from the main path. There’s a high-quality crafting ingredient on the ledge above here, but the only way to reach it is via a self-teleporting skill, of which Fane has none. He does happen to be holding Lohse’s Teleporter Pyramid, though, and his throwing arm is strong enough to get the pyramid up there…  … but Teleporter Pyramids don’t work in the Hall of Echoes. And now I have no way of getting that Pyramid back. I’m sure the game would just slip it back into my inventory to prevent me losing it forever, but, one reload later, just to be safe.   The answer to the broken path is to just walk across it anyway, just like in Trompdoy’s cavern. The ground reforms underneath Fane’s feet as he goes.   Dangling from the tree of Source are the Seven – the gods of Rivellon, the progenitors of each of the races within the world. They’ve been strung up and left to bleed their Source out here. Who could have done this? Who could have not only breached the veil into the Hall of Echoes, but then overpower every single god and string them up like puppets? All seven of them are Cursed, and they each have a puddle of Source underneath themselves so you can refresh yourself to cast it again (not that we need it in Divinity: Unleashed). The story wants you to rescue your character’s deity – Amadia, in our case – but there’s no penalty for rescuing everyone else first. : A small, stout imp winces under the countless cursed threads that bind her.Imps and orcs were all over the place in Divinity: Original Sin, but there are vanishingly few of either in the sequel. Presumably, they have Godwoken of their own, but we never meet any and we can’t play as any. Xantezza is the god of imps and she calls herself the ‘god of Mirth;’ she just likes having a good time. Sometimes, though, having a good time means it’s at the expense of someone else.   : You… your time is short… your time is short…Well, that’s not very funny.  Vrogir, the god of orcs, is all about just being the biggest, strongest brute there is, and all of his orc children take after that philosophy. His tactics at diplomacy begin and end with his fists. I can respect a guy that knows what he’s about.  : GRAAAAAAAAGHHHH… U’rak! Ksze-durek. Mirst… mirst haggyi…Good talk!  Zorl-Stissa is the god of the lizards. She’s vain and pompous, and while all of the gods consider themselves to be above of all of the other gods, Zorl-Stissa is the most vocal and ardent about it. And even then, The Red Prince considers himself above her – or, he thinks he will be, someday. She also apparently has a beautiful singing voice, but as we learned from Prince earlier, maybe it’s best not to listen. : The cursed tendrils slacken; Zorl-Stissa inhales deeply, air wheezing in her throat. : My one; my one… Tir-Cindelius is the god of the elves. You’d think that the elves – known for living in the forests, being one with nature, and for their hospitality to their friends – would be a bunch of pushovers, but Tir-Cindelius is notably brutal and cold towards Sebille in her own story.  : Begone! Begone from here! Ngh… where is my champion?!
Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Oct 28, 2021 |
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Oct 28, 2021 01:13
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Rhalic is the god of the humans. Did you ever watch The Suicide Squad? If you have, and I compare him to the character Peacemaker, then you know what Rhalic is about. And if you haven’t, then one of Peacemaker’s lines in that movie is, paraphrased, ‘I love peace, and I don’t care how many men, women, or children I need to kill to maintain it.’  : Bring… my… my… champion. Duna is the god of dwarves. Unlike the other six, Duna is a bro that lived among his people in the dwarven mountains, tending to him and his kind with whatever it is dwarves like to do in mountains. That said, he’s also highly isolationist and very much prefers that the dwarves keep to themselves forever – up until he needs a champion to beat up every other race, anyway.  : Begone! Begone from here! Ngh… where is my champion?!You’re welcome.  That just leaves Fane’s god, Amadia. While she has the outward appearance of a human, she’s actually the god of mages, and therefore technically doesn’t have a single race of her own – aside from the Eternals. : Amadia hangs before you, her face cut and bruised, her chest barely moving. You think you see a tear run down her cheek. You lean in – that’s no tear: it’s Source! The shimmering liquid is seeping from her wounds and dripping to the ground below her.Time to fix ‘er up.  : Your whispered blessing slithers up the tree, cutting the heavy, dark vines that hold Amadia in place. She jolts awake with a gasp, golden light pouring from her eyes. : My child. Oh my dear child. : Are you alright, Matron? You’ve been cut so deeply that your wounds are bleeding Source…: She flinches away from your touch.: No! Do not–… dear Fane, I know you mean well, but please, it is not necessary. The King’s minions have done their worst for now.: I knew I was right to trust in you. Even the other Gods–: She pauses, looks over her shoulder and sees the others hanging from the tree, all but lifeless, for the first time.: *Gasp* Our brothers. Our sisters. This – this is… : P-perfect? These are the last of the Eternals, Amadia! They’re all we have left! They all need help!: No! It is too late for them. You need that Source more than they. I do not say this out of malice. I say it out of love. My love for you, Fane. My love for our people.: These misguided fools would sacrifice this world to the very forces that saw us strung up like so much fruit. : You said it’s not the King himself that did this, but his minions. What are we up against?: As I hung from the tree, I had a vision. I saw Rivellon overrun by monsters – Voidwoken creatures that destroy all in their path. : (A part of me is hesitant towards this shift in priorities, but… she is my matron.) What needs to be done?: There was a time when you wielded tremendous power. You must search within yourself and unlock that power once more. And then…: You must ascend to Divinity! : … You would have me become the next Lucian? The next avatar of the Seven for all of Rivellon?: No. Lucian was weak. Lucian was mortal. You are neither. You will rise as the Eternal Divine, or the world will fall to the Void. : (… I should stow my hesitations for now. It’s a fact that the Voidwoken are terrorizing Rivellon and Sourcerers are being held to blame. If it means working towards a safer world, I should focus on that.): You have my word, Amadia.: She starts to answer but her eyes change, turning from their gentle glow to a dark shimmer. She looks up and gasps.: No… I see them. The servants of the King. The forces of the Void. They’re – they’re here. Fly, dear Fane. Fly!: White-hot cold pierces your heart like a blade. You are frozen to the spot. The burning ice pumps through you like a curse, and then…‘White-hot cold,’ huh? Piercing my what?  The screen fades to black, and when it returns, my party is all back together again. We’re back on the Lady Vengeance… but we’re still in the Hall of Echoes. And Sebille, humorously, is Sneaking, since that’s how she was when the fight ended abruptly. : What’s happened here? Where is everyone?And we all have something to say to each other.  : The gods are dead, long live the Godwoken. If the Seven should indeed come to nothing, I’ll be ready to take their place.: What can yet be blessed can yet be restored. One way or another, divinity will survive, through all of you, and all of me!: Gods, schmods. They aren’t interested in me, and I’m not interested in them. It seems whatever’s inside me is more powerful than any of them, anyway. Or at least more cunning…You, uh… you okay, Lohse? I’m still speaking with Lohse, right? : Well, at least they added a shrub to this ghastly place…: … I’m not sure, Quercus, I rather liked the tree’s ornaments… While there’s still debris from broken barrels, the deck of the Lady Vengeance has been scrubbed clean. There are no errant surfaces; there are no corpses; no pools of blood or water; no other sign of a struggle at all. It’s like it never happened. Likewise, aside from the others in my party, there is nobody here to speak to. Not a soul on the deck remains.  Maybe it’s not a person I should be speaking with.  : And how am I supposed to do that? : What’s happened to everyone that was aboard before? It’s like they were never here to begin with…: Death washed over me as we entered this place. I felt many lives extinguish in a single moment… but others still draw breath. They are sheltering below decks.A ton of people are dead, but the Lady can tell that a handful of people are still alive, including Malady. Belowdecks is as good a place as any to start looking.  There’s nobody at the helm.  There’s nobody in the cabin. Nobody at the ship’s smith. Nobody in the crew’s quarters. Nobody in the mess hall. : Where is everybody?: Hidden away somewhere, safe from the storm, I hope.: Not a soul down here. Just… stillness.That’s real dialogue that Prince just said, I didn’t make that up.  Heading down further, Tarquin isn’t in the captain’s quarters. Neither is Booply Bear. Another rare miss in Larian’s worldbuilding is that sunlight is still streaming into the captain’s quarters, despite us being in the afterlife. Usually they get little details like that.  There’s nobody in –  … There’s no body in the ship’s brig. Ifan and Beast died when Malady moved the ship into the Hall of Echoes. This is where their story formally ends. And here would be anyone else that we didn’t have in our party during the conflict with Dallis earlier.  : … Ifan? Ben Mezd?: He gives no sign of seeing you. Ifan’s eyes flicker rapidly from side to side, as if trying to take in an expansive sight. He whispers ‘Glechou dumar, glechou dumar’ over and over, and suddenly you seem to hear that chattering of thousands of elven voices in the distance.: Then, before your eyes, his spirit dissolves into the sound, his own voice joining the cacophony that you can hear.: … that you could hear, for now no sound remains. All is calm. And Ifan’s soul vanishes into the mist, never to be seen again. That is the end of Ifan ben Mezd. How about you, Beast?  : People are going to perish. People are going to die and I can’t stop it.: She’ll do it now. She’ll never stop. She’ll never stop! He doesn’t, though. Beast decides to stick around in the Lady Vengeance’s brig, for the time being. Speaking of the brig, there’s only one place left to check out. That must be where everyone is.  In the only prison cell we have is Malady, joined by… Gareth, Han, the two Silent Monks that we found in the mess hall an update ago, Tarquin, and Zrilla. … Is that it? Out of everyone aboard the ship, you prioritized two Silent Monks? You prioritized Zrilla? And not one single Seeker that I kept alive in that fight? Also notably absent: Alexander.  : We can’t leave, we’re down more than a few men and women. I’ve scoured the whole ship; where could they be?: Seekers: Dead. Alexander: Missing. Godwoken passengers: Deceased. : Where exactly are we? I feel like I’ve been here before.: There’s no time. I can’t hold us here. Brace yourself. This… might hurt.: A lot. Video: Welcome To Reaper’s Coast : A Part of Their StoryThe chill of the Hall of Echoes clung to the Lady Vengeance as it returned to the shores of Reaper’s Coast.   The Godwoken were alive – but what of the gods? : The Lady Vengeance: Solid ground materializes beneath your feet. Your weight falls back into your body all at once and bright sunlight suddenly illuminates your surroundings. As you look around, you realize you’re still aboard the Lady Vengeance. A gust of fresh sea air caresses you, and warm sunshine coaxes the bones of your skull and hands to tighten pleasantly.: *HACK!* *SNORT!* *AHEM!* One moment please – *COUGH* *PHLEGCHT* – just a moment.: Malady explodes in a fit of retching that wracks her body. At last she sneezes and expels a glob of something shiny and silver onto the deck. It wriggles quickly off the siding and plummets into the sea with a splash.: Ah. Better. : A lot has happened in a very short amount of time. Now can you tell me what’s happened?: Well, we needed to escape, didn’t we. So I took us the one place I was quite certain Dallis couldn’t follow. I suppose you recognised the Hall of Echoes from those vision you’d had before. Realm of the dead, realm of divinity. *Shudders.* : ‘Learned something,’ yes. ‘Useful,’ I’m not so certain. I met with my matron again, and she… wasn’t as well-off as when I last left her. She seemed desperate. : […]: I see. So your god seemed uncharacteristically frightened, told you the Void was coming and that only you could ascend to Divinity, after which you felt a cold, deep within you.: Well then. It sounds like you need to ascend, doesn’t it. And quickly.: She inspects her fingernails with great attention, then looks up at you from under an arched eyebrow. : She didn’t. I understand that I must regain the powers that I had before the era of the mortals, but I’m lost as to where to start.: Oh, what confidence you inspire. Luckily for you, Mama Malady is here to help.: We already know you can bless, but as far as I know, you can neither see Source, nor take it as you see fit. I may not know much about divinity, but I do know that any Godwoken worth their salt will know how to perform all these oh-so-fantastic feats. : I’ve cast Source before and I’ve taken it in order to do so. I already know these feats.: Fane’s Theme: As have I, but not in the ways a true Godwoken can. Forget those ghastly little jars and wands to which small people must resort. You ought to be able to see and speak to the spirits that wander our realm. And you ought to be able to extract the Source they leave behind, too. All this, just by your little old onesie. No devices, no gimmicks.: When you’re done, you’ll be able to amass and unleash quantities of Source so great that Lucian himself would blush.… Malady is suggesting that the power of the Purging Wands is something I’d be able to do without a Purging Wand. The ability to consume a person’s very Source straight from their living bodies without their consent. Which, if you’ll remember, will result in a Silent Monk. A living body, but with no spirit inside of it. A breathing husk with no agency. Wielding power like this is what is meant to be a Godwoken.  : Where can I find the Meistr?: She’s got one of those things in Driftwood. You know, a building where people go, and they do things inside of it. Home. That’s it. She’s got a home in Driftwood.: Give me your map. There you are. Tell her I sent you, and she’ll handle the rest. You’re at the beginning of a long journey, Godwoken. Long, but exceedingly interesting. : Where do you need to be? : Okay… and how are we meant to get to shore?: Why, our faithful little sloop of course. We can all ride together. Won’t that be terribly fun?: Before you go: If I’m not back by the time you find out where our journey takes us next, you can call me back here. Tell the ship – she’ll know how to summon me.: And in the unlikely case you don’t manage to do… whatever it is you’ll need to do to become what you need to become, you could call me. But I would be… grateful if it doesn’t come to that. That was one hell of a trip. Straight from Dallis the Hammer into the Hall of Echoes, and now here we are, in bright, sunny Driftwood. This is the main body of Act Two: whereas Act One was Fort Joy and Braccus’s Island, Act Two is a location called Reaper’s Coast. This game has four acts to it, and Act Two is easily the largest. Our goal here in Reaper’s Coast is to attain, or at least get as close as we can to, divinity – which, in gameplay terms, means getting more Source Points to spend. As before, all of the Seekers died in the trip between the real world and the Hall of Echoes, so everyone in the brig with Malady were the only survivors. And Alexander is MIA. Actually, that begs the question: if Alexander is Godwoken, doesn’t that mean that he’s also Rhalic’s champion? In any case, everyone has something to say now that we’ve entered a new chapter in our lives, so, get ready for tons of character building. We might as well start with Sir Lora. : drat it, is nowhere safe?! Red-robed lunatics at sea, those Voidwoken seedlings in the swamp: it all points to the Great Acorn. It’s coming, Quercus! : ‘Knights of Drey?’ That’s a new one.: At least here our Shield’s ignorance can be forgiven, Quercus. The Knights of Drey do not go out of their way to boast about their existence.: You know their order, my friend. Mystic squirrel knights, sworn to the Great Acorn, trying to bring about its return.: The squirrel absentmindedly runs a paw over Quercus’s spine. The air fills with the sound of soft, dusty purring. : But the whole purpose to your journey was to research the means to craft a spell that could prevent all this, correct?: It thinks we are sitting here, twiddling our paws, Quercus! Perhaps we haven’t succeeded yet, but we have other worries. The Knights of Drey are a dangerous, dangerous order. Lunatics with a single-minded devotion to bringing about the end of the world. Together, Quercus, we can develop some magic to save us from the Great Acorn – if our Shield can keep us alive.: … Yes, yes, it has done an admirable job so far. It’s certainly lasted longer than I thought it would. : You’re doing a lot of talking down for a rodent that stands up to my shins. I might understand more than you do.: … It’s an idiot, Quercus.: Still, it would be a shame to see any harm come to it. Here’s a little something I uncovered in my research.: The squirrel reaches out and touches your ankle, sending a hot flush rippling through your body. Your mind’s eye sees new potential spells swirling before it.: Now, listen carefully, Shield. The plan is thus: Do. Not. Die.: If the Shield can hold up its end of the bargain, we might just have a chance to complete our research. We might make it yet, Quercus.… Bargain? As I remember it, I woke up on the beach at Fort Joy; I killed some slugs; and then Sir Lora decided for me that he was going to bum around. From speaking with Sir Lora, I learn the Bleed Fire recipe, which requires you combine any Pyromancer skill with any Polymorph skill, although both of them must be non-Source-reliant. I actually already have a Bleed Fire skillbook in my inventory, but Sebille doesn’t have any points in Pyromancer to take advantage of it. Maybe I should change that, if there isn’t a better skill she could be triple-dipping into. Next, let’s speak to Lohse. She, uh, had opinions about meeting the gods earlier. Maybe she’d like to elaborate.  : What do you think is next on our list?: Well, I think I should focus on getting this demon out of my head. And of course I think you should help me. … and if we pick up a few new Source tricks along the way, so be it!: While we’re talking, I’d like to speak with you about some of the people we’ve happened to come across lately. : I know I asked you this once before, but what do you really think of Malady? : That makes sense. She may be abrasive, but at least we know what she’s about.: Do you have anyone from home that you miss?: I dunno about ‘home,’ but I do sort of miss the gang I’d travel with now and then. Kroller, Madcap… Papa Joris, for sure. Musicians, mostly. We all had our own stories, our own troubles, but when we were together and the music was with us, it was like none of that mattered at all.: When you have people like that around you, you know – a family – even rain feels like sunshine.Lohse’s a woman with priorities. She mentioned in Fort Joy that she was captured because she sang a song that made people lose their personalities and go rabid on one another. That’s probably why she stopped travelling with them, and, moreover, why she’s travelling with us – we’d probably be more capable of dealing with an all-powerful Lohse with a demon in control of her than some musicians. Sebille, your turn!  : What would you like to do next, now that we’re here in Reaper’s Coast?: Didn’t you hear Malady? We’re off to find the Meistr. And the Master. : You’ve mentioned the Master more than a few times by now, and I’ve learned more about the scar on your cheek and the magic that the lizards use to control slaves since then. The odds would seem insurmountable to anyone else – how did you manage to escape? : (It almost sounds like she’s more eager to tell it than I am to hear it.) Of course! I wouldn’t have asked if I weren’t.: Wonderful!: She bows with thespian flair.: Imagine… A black room. It’s been your room for years. You know it by touch more than by sight, for it’s always dark. And when I say always dark, I mean always dark. You’re either in the room or in the box, for it’s in the box that you travel.: You’re only left out in the night, because you only hunt in the night – with the Master’s voice in your ears urging you on. : … You’re serious, aren’t you? You’ve only ever lived in a dark room, or a box? How did you manage to get out of that… intact?: Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping questions lie…: The thing is: the box didn’t break me. Though I confess it taught me to hate.: One night, I killed a scholar. With my needle through his fragile old skull, he fell head-first upon his writing desk, blood mingling with spilt ink. It’s when I saw the ink that timid thoughts of rebellion first bloomed. Back in my dark room I dipped the needle that killed the scholar in his own ink, and engraved his name in my skin. : May I see it? His name on your arm?: Of course.: She bares her left arm and shows you the name. You softly run your finger across it.: Mindaran. He was Turesh-Ar: a keeper of stories. I’m sure he was loved by many. People like him, the beloved dead, they kept me going.: Then one day it happened.: A gush of wind. A sliver of light. Light! I hardly knew it for what it was. A simple oversight that comes with habit: a door left slightly ajar – that was all I needed to feel a rush of blood, a thirst for liberation like never before.: I tore at the shackles that kept me chained to the floor; iron thick as a smith’s wrists. Of course they wouldn’t budge – they never did before – but now, now that I saw the light, something welled up inside me: a raw and undeniable burst of power.That’s probably the moment she realized she’s a Sourcerer, for anyone keeping score. : The shackles broke and next thing I knew I was free. I stood alone outside the ruins of a fortress, snow-capped peaks all around me. : That’s the climax of the story, but it still needs an epilogue. What had happened next? You found yourself in the middle of nowhere with only your wits to guide you.: Why, I travelled back to civilisation and had myself a long, luxurious bath.: (… Alright, that’s the end of that story, I suppose. For now.) : A needle seems unwieldy and not typically suited for assassinations. Why use it instead of a more typical weapon, like a dagger? : That gives me every reason to suspect that ‘sentimentality’ is not why you keep it.: Fine. If it means that much to you.: She draws her needle and holds it up between thumb and index finger. : Uh… that seems like a bad idea. But…: Barely have you touched the needle’s pinpoint surface when it pierces your fingertip’s bone marrow-deep.: Sharp little minx, isn’t she?: Fane’s ThemeI don’t know why it’s playing Fane’s theme when it really ought to be playing Sebille’s, but I don’t make the music decisions. : Sebille, this needle was forged in an altogether different world. It wasn’t wrought upon a crude anvil, hammered into shape with rough blows. No, it was cast with demon precision. It is absolutely priceless, and it’s yours.: The Master’s own words. And he was right: as an instrument of assassination it’s absolutely priceless. But one day soon he’ll find out just how much he overspent on his gifts for little old me; just why this needle is a girl’s best friend.: One might say I’m a bit of a sucker for poetic justice.If it’s really so deadly, why can’t I use it as a weapon? Maybe it’s too difficult to wield in a tense situation like combat, but then again, the game’s never gone into depth about the needle’s description – like, is it a knitting needle, or is it more of a thumbtack? The last person in our party to convene with is Prince. Now that we’re in the second act and we’ve chosen the group we’re going to be Forever Friends with, we should get as well acquainted with each other as we can.  : What would you like to do next, now that we’re here in Reaper’s Coast?: We should seek the Meistr. Anyone with such a fine authoritative title should surely aid us on our journey. : You’ve spent all your life living in laps of luxury in glorious marble palaces and eating the finest dinners that could be made. How does it feel to be the one wearing the boots on the ground?: At first, I admit it was rather trying. I was, after all, marched out of my own empire, and I’ve been hounded by the odd assassin ever since. After that came the indignity of the collar and incarceration, but ever since we decided to be so bold as to bid our farewell to Fort Joy by any means, it’s all been rather… fun.: Oh, I could complain about the food and the lodgings and the sheer barbarity of the common folk, but in truth, all of that fits within the larger frame that is adventure. Adventure was precisely what my life was missing.Uh oh, that sounds like character growth to me. I wonder if his opinion on slavery has adjusted at all since being made a prisoner.  : Well, that’s good to hear. A bit more grit, dirt, and some manual labour, and we’ll have you indistinguishable from a commoner before the next lunar cycle. : Actually, while we’re on the topic – ever since we met on the beach in Fort Joy, you’ve been dancing around the subject of how you were expelled from the Ancient Empire. Care to elaborate now that we’re, well, in it for the long haul?: He sighs rather dramatically. : (… This sounds familiar. The body language, the exuberance in his tone and words… it sounds like a ritual that the mortals call ‘playing hard to get.’ But isn’t that normally for attracting mates?): (If I remember right, it’s more likely that he wants to tell the story, but he wants me to drop the pursuit so that it seems like his idea from the start.) I’m curious, but it’s also your business, Prince. I won’t pursue if you don’t want me to.: Thank you. But I suppose you’ve earned the right to know.: (How about that?) : … I… don’t think I’m surprised to hear that. But I’m curious to learn how you managed it.: Because I invited her in of course, how else? You clearly have a hard time understanding all this, so let me paint you a picture.: I am a Prince of the House of War. There are others with that title, but none of them are the Red Prince, the jewel in the crown of the Empire. I lived in the Forbidden City, a vast complex of palaces that houses the royal family and its servants. No others are allowed to enter it. As for myself, I was never allowed out.: That is the price I paid for my genius. I was too valuable to be exposed to the dangers of the outside world. All the wars I won – and I won them all of course – I won from the comfort of sofas. Bring me information, and I will deduct, then instruct. From amid the ultimate opulence of my quarters, I expanded and very much ruled the Empire. : From the sounds of things, you may have gone from one prison to another.: Exactly. I did not suffer the boredom of some spoiled brat: mine was the absolute absence of challenge – the longing not simply to watch the horizon, but to journey towards it. If I could not experience the joys of the world beyond, I had to bring the world to me.: Miraculous what a Sourcerer can do with a little arcane lore.: I summoned demons, the most dangerous game in the world. But they knew they met their match in me, and so we conversed; we drank wine; we played chess. Converse with demons, and you learn of the shadows behind creation. Drink wine with them, and you have visions of worlds beyond worlds. Play chess, and you know that one wrong move is certain death. : I wouldn’t know about ‘bodily rejoicing,’ as you put it, but to learn of the worlds and fabrics of creation beyond our realm by speaking with some of the most dangerous and untameable creatures of our reality… I admit, the scholar within me would love nothing more than taking the opportunity.: So you do comprehend… : … Even if you knew there was more to be had?: He gives you a long, respectful look.: How unexpectedly shrewd you are…I mean, you’re not a difficult guy to figure out, in all honesty. : What happened next was simply… unforeseen. One moonless night, the succubus that was my lover turned to me, fangs exposed, but I could tell from the glint in her eyes she wasn’t bent on our usual fang-play. There was no light in that glint. It was the darkness of the Void; the wet darkness of spilt blood.: And in short, I was afraid.: I tried to move away, but it was too late. She was upon me. She had done it: she had outmanoeuvred the Red Prince. Finally, I was vanquished. : Clearly, that’s not the end of the story. Not unless I’m speaking with the Red Prince’s evil red twin.: Which, admittedly, would explain some things.: How witty. Perhaps if I had a moustache to twirl. But, no, you can rest assured I’m quite unique.: Of course there’s… No, but never mind that now. Now where was I? Ah, yes! The succubus.: She went for my neck, quick as a charging cobra, but then suddenly it’s as if time ground to a halt. Something deep inside me welled up: a power I never knew I had. She simply froze under my stare.: Then she screamed. A scream so abhorrent its ripples caused birds to fall dead from the sky. People covered their ears in vain as they went insane.And she was on top of you at the time? Are you sure you’re not evil? : The Imperial Guard forced itself into my chambers and found me with the succubus still on top of me.: I believe the phrase is: caught red-handed.And that’s The Red Prince’s backstory, at least up until this point. He considered himself a brilliant mind; a masterful military genius and a shrewd practitioner of the arcane arts, able to summon demons without being overwhelmed, to the point of regularly having sex with them. Then it turned out he was a Sourcerer in the middle of the Voidwoken attacks, and, well, not even your birthright can protect you from that, apparently. Well, you know, that and the demon-loving. I can't imagine the other royals would be too keen on sharing their palace with that. There’s a couple more people to talk with before we make for Driftwood. Malady didn’t rescue a lot of people in the transition from the real world to the Hall of Echoes, but among the people she did rescue is Han. Han’s been lucky as hell and he’s drat tough to kill. We rescued him from those Magisters that were about to ship him off to the orphanage, and ever since then, he’s been strutting over the hot coals up to this point. He’s outlasted nearly everyone else.  : Hullo again. That’s twice now you’ve saved my skin. Han’s purpose is a gopher. If there’s any crafting ingredient that I need, I can have Han go run onto Reaper’s Coast, and he’ll find it for me after enough time’s past. I can send him to find any non-unique ingredient, provided I’ve already had it once before.  That includes hard drugs. Drudanae sells for an obscene amount of money, and although I could break the game by growing it in buckets thanks to that one Larian Gift Bag mod, that doesn’t feel very genuine. But having Han go find it is fair game. : Sure thing! I’ll start hunting that down right away. Don’t wait up… And off he goes. I wonder if he even understands what it is I asked him to get. Gareth! Please pretend you didn’t just see me send a child off to procure my next high.  : My own objective is fairly set in stone for me. What about you? What will you do, now that we’re here in Reaper’s Coast?: Paradise awaits, my friend!: Not an actual paradise, of course. I don’t think there’s such a place in all of Rivellon! Paradise Downs. My parents still sow the soil there. And if the Order hadn’t called me to its ranks, I’d still call their farm my home. : You have your plans set for yourself and the Seekers, I imagine. What should I expect here in this new world? : One final question before I depart: why are you so compelled to quote Lucian all the time? (Amadia’s opinion of him wasn’t nearly as high as Gareth’s clearly is.): Only as often as I need his guidance, ancient one. When I invoke Lucian’s words, I invoke his deeds, too. He stood for the defenceless when the Black Ring rose up. For all of us. For my mother, my father.: Gareth’s nostalgia lasts for just a moment longer. He composes himself, clears his throat, and waits for your next question.So, here’s the thing about Gareth: he deals in Warfare and Geomancy skills. This was true back in Amadia’s Sanctuary, but now that we’re officially shin-deep in Act Two, he now has Act Two skillbooks for sale.  Which is a handful of stuff, including two Source skills. There are three books that I want – Phoenix Dive, Blitz Attack, and Thick of the Fight – but they would altogether cost me 4,186 gold, and I have only 3,070. And I’m fresh out of wares, now that I made Tarquin my fence. Phoenix Dive and Blitz Attack are both self-teleport skills, and Thick of the Fight is the Source skillbook and is therefore extremely expensive. So I’ll pass on that for now. Good thing, too, because Fane is actually totally out of Memory to even equip the two I did buy, and Thick of the Fight would cost two Memory to equip. I’ve been putting points into Memory the entire LP up until now, with the Mnemonic talent, and it’s still in hot demand. I decide to un-memorize Black Shroud to make room. When you ‘un-memorize’ skills, you still have them in your repoirtore and you don’t need to buy their skillbooks again. It just means that you can’t use that skill anymore, in or out of combat. Once you have the Memory, you can memorize them again at your leisure.  Phoenix Dive: Self-teleport to a nearby area. Upon landing, spawn a circle of fire around your landing spot. In Divinity: Unleashed, also Taunt any enemies nearby. Blitz Attack: Leap forward and attack two targets nearby. Can be used to scale or descend height differences instantly.Now that Fane has two mobility options available to him, it means Salem is probably going to get a lot less limelight since his main utility’s been overwritten twice now. But I still have that whistle, at least.  The second-last person to speak with before leaving for the coast is Tarquin. He’s standing right next to the sloop (which is made into a Waypoint so I can easily access the Lady Vengeance whenever I want) – he seems to be in a rush to get going.  : Even after Dallis’ attack on the ship earlier, we had lost many lives when Malady moved us into the Hall of Echoes for our escape. How is it that you survived? : You mentioned earlier that you had been hearing ‘things’ about me? : And does this new information change your opinion of me somehow?: Tarquin pauses, taking you in. Genial smile and calculating eyes. : (It’s difficult to admit out loud, but… knowing that my race has been gone for aeons has left me feeling… lonely. Tarquin is a man of many mysteries, but at the very least, a mortal of his learned background would make for good company.): Frankly, transactional or not, I’m… not averse to making more allies. They can often come in short supply.: Marvellous. Great things abound in our future, I’m sure.Tarquin is still our fence, and he still offers a general store’s worth of wares – weapons, assorted skillbooks (but specializing in Necromancy); and other general knick-knacks for our perusal. Nothing he has at the moment is new from when we spoke in the captain’s quarters, though, and even if there was, I’m fresh out of cash. But when I finally get some more, I know where to start spending it frivolously, at least.  Before I end this update, there’s one last lady in particular that I’d like to chat with, now that we’ve escaped Dallis and we’ve made it to Reaper’s Coast.  : Could you tell me more about how you came to be this way? As harrowing as the experience surely was, it was still quite the journey.: The wood of the sacred ancestor trees has long been coveted for its ability to resist magical attacks. The consciousness of the elf within was always lost when they were uprooted though…: I am different. I think and feel. It is the work of Vredeman – Dallis wanted more than a ship; she wanted a warrior slave who was bound to obey. So Vredeman used Source magic to keep me alive as I was torn apart and rebuilt… he made me feel every moment of agony, then marked my wood with a slave scar.: When I was an ancestor tree, the Mother Tree demanded loyalty also, but at least I was one of many… now I am alone.Whoa, that last part is a pretty intense thing to just slip in. The ‘Mother Tree’? Presumably, the biggest and oldest of the ancestor trees, but I’m more interested in how and why a tree apparently whips other trees into obedience.  And with that, we’ve spoken with everyone and done everything we could here on the Lady Vengeance. All that’s left is to interact with this sloop, and we’ll land on the beach near Driftwood. Just one vote today: what do we name the Bone Spider? Let me know in 72 hours! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Oct 28, 2021 |
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Oct 28, 2021 01:14
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Spider is Bones McCoy obviously
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Oct 28, 2021 02:40
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I feel the only possible name for a spider made from human bones is Why?!
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Oct 28, 2021 09:14
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My suggestion for our bone spider's name is Mr. Hands.
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Oct 28, 2021 09:22
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Reload and get that pyramid back :V For the spider, Why?! is a good name.
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Oct 28, 2021 14:23
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Lynneth posted:Reload and get that pyramid back :V I did! Maple Leaf posted:I’m sure the game would just slip it back into my inventory to prevent me losing it forever, but, one reload later, just to be safe.
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Oct 28, 2021 18:54
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Mr. Bones Wild Ride for the spider. While I'm glad I that the other seekers survived the initial attack I'm sad they were all still wiped out in the jump.
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Oct 28, 2021 21:41
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I like either Mr. Bones's Wild Ride or Bones McCoy. SOMETHING with "Bones" in the title. Boneantula?
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Oct 29, 2021 02:47
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I like Bones McCoy for the spider.
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Oct 29, 2021 15:24
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