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 (click for Intro Video) Darklands was released back in 1992 by Microprose, and remains the leading sandbox RPG to this day to a certain variety of nerd. I count myself among their number, and want to Darklands bills itself as a realistic, historical RPG, insofar as one can be realistic when you throw witches that actually cast spells and fly on brooms, alchemy that actually works in ways that the mundane, bullshit alchemy of the day did not, priests who can actually call upon the power of God for immediate, convenient results and all sorts of supernatural beasts into the mix. When you don't know what you're doing, the game can be pretty drat harsh. Healing is a slow process that can take weeks, death is permanent and a loss in battle can leave you stranded naked in the wilderness without a pfenning to your name. However, the game provides you many tools to avoid even having to put yourself in danger. A good use of alchemy, saints and skills can drastically decrease the number of battles you have to face. The first thing that I'm going to go into is the character generation, which will hit a great deal of the mechanical aspects of the game. Please feel free to throw out ideas for characters! Just... don't get too attached to them; I'm going to go out of my way to show the dumb ways a character can die. I also don't plan on save scumming.
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Dec 31, 2016 19:23
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This post is going to provide more information than you might want about the character generation, which will still probably not be enough. A lot of the information is based on the Darklands Clue Book, which is included with the GOG version of the game. Quickstart will start you off with a fairly well balanced part that's suitable to getting started, but is by no means perfect. Instead, we select "Create a new world," taking us to the character creation process.  If you want to take a couple of the quickstart characters, they're available here. We select Create a Character.  I typically use the generated names, which will use the first name as the nickname. The nickname is basically always used in the events, so the full name is basically just flavor. Gender has a couple of effects in game: -Because of historical accuracy, there are a couple of religious jobs that are not available to female characters. -To balance this, a couple of saints give extra prayer benefits if invoked by a female character -I believe that a couple of events have actions that can only be done if a female character is in the party -Some events will weight descriptions towards female characters -Male characters start with 2 additional strength, female characters start with 1 additional endurance and 1 additional charisma. If these differences sound insignificant to you, that's because they are in the grand scheme of things.  Finding a name I'm satisfied with, I select Begin Childhood.  The family background determines what occupations will be offered, base skills and stats and how many Experience Points (EPs) are offered. EPs, represented by that bubbling flask, determine how many points can be distributed to stats at this point. Below is brief rundown of the backgrounds. Note that the value of Skills and Stats here is the sum of the bonuses provided per the Clue Book Character Backgrounds Nobility: 89 EPs, 40 Skills, 0 Stats. Additionally, Noble upbringing allows access to the Noble Heir occupation, which is pretty decent for a starting character in terms of Skills and EPs available. This background allows one of the fastest paths to the Priest and Knight occupations. Wealthy Urban: 90 EPs, 39 Skills, +1 Stats. Allows access to Clerk and Courtier occupations, which are not very good on their own, but offer a quick path to better jobs. This background is slightly less effective in terms of skills for reaching priesthood and knighthood, but is just as fast as nobility overall. Town Trades: 93 EPs, 37 Skills, +1 Stats. Allows faster access to the Merchant line (which I don't recommend) and the Craftsman line (which I don't recommend). Allows access to Swindler. Country Crafts: 94 EPs, 33 Skills, +2 Stats. Pretty much the same occupation-wise as the Town Trades, but with Hunter instead of Swindler. Don't take Hunter if you pick this background, however. Urban Commoner: 96 EPs, 30 Skills, +0 Stats. I'm pretty sure there is no good reason to take this background. Rural Commoner: 97 EPs, 30 Skills, +1 Stats. Offers every occupation that Urban Commoner does, plus the Hunter occupation. In general, I typically go for Rural Commoners for everyone. Nobility and Wealthy occupations can offer some good advantages early on in terms of equipment and skills without making your characters too old, but characters with those backgrounds will always have lower stats overall than those of lower background. Note that with a few special exceptions, there is no way to increase stats after character creation. For this example however, I straight-up ignore my own advice and choose Nobility.  Next I allocate my stats. The EP requirements are: Less than 30: 1 EP per point Between 30 and 39: 2 EP per point And 3 EP are required to go from 39 to 40, which is the maximum allowed score at this time. Many occupations will increase or decrease these scores, however. Stat Descriptions: Endurance (End): Represents non-life threatening damage and contributes to the amount of equipment a character can use before incurring penalties. This stat drops temporarily as a character takes damage. Once a character's current endurance reaches 0, the character is knocked out. Strength (Str): Represents life threatening damage contributes to the amount of equipment a character can use before incurring penalties. This stat drops temporarily as a character takes damage. Once a character's current endurance reaches 0, the character is killed. Note- there is no resurrection in Darklands. Strength also has some other effects in certain circumstances. Agility (Agl): Gives a few bonuses for lightly encumbered characters that aren't really worth it. Also has situational uses when speed is necessary. It's honestly not a particularly necessary stat. Perception (Per): I believe having a character with high perception increases the chances of noticing a hostile encounter before it gets close, allowing a chance to escape without engaging. Also used to find traps and notice hidden doors in dungeons. Required for the Captain and several of the religious occupations. Intelligence (Int): Affects success with Alchemy and I believe helps in dealing with academic types. A high int is required for the alchemist occupations, and some int is required for many other occupations. Charisma (Chr): Affects shop prices and helps with actions involving speaking. Also required for the Captain and several of the religious occupations. Generally I focus on having a high Endurance and Strength, plus one of the other four stats. Some occupations require a fairly balanced approach, though in general I feel that a character is best served specializing. Most of the time, only one character will be required to have a high stat/skill combination to accomplish a task, and it's difficult to have a balanced character without hurting Strength and Endurance (which should be as high as possible).  Strap yourselves in, because here's where poo poo gets real. Once I finalize my stats, I can choose my first occupation. The clue book is a great guide to exactly what benefits each occupation provides. Each occupation ages a character 5 years and allows the distribution of a set EP value to skills, in addition to providing a set number of skill points and small stat changes. In general, jobs that offer a higher possible skill progression will offer fewer EPs. On top of that, once you reach 50 points in a skill, that skill will require 2 EPs per skill point. The end result is that a character will typically end up either well rounded with a couple of reasonably high skills, or have a couple of absurdly high skills but be awful at some necessary things (like combat). Certain jobs also come with other perks, such as saints, alchemical formulas and equipment. The last occupation chosen determines starting equipment, while saints and alchemical formulas are cumulative between jobs. So it can be a good idea to take a job that offers good equipment after a bunch of academic or religious occupations. For the most part, occupations follow certain lines. A few things to keep in mind about this approach, however: -There are alternate paths in many of these lines -A character isn't locked into a line once they start (so a veteran could become a student, then an alchemist if they meet other requirements) -Some lines can lead in to other lines (one could go into the merchant line from Master Alchemist or Master Craftsman if they wanted to). Occupation lines: Noble Line: Courtier -> Courtier/Noble Heir -> Manorial Lord/Knight Being a Courtier will allow a non-Noble background character to be a Noble Heir, but both jobs will fulfill the requirement to be a Manorial Lord or Knight. In general this line gives good Ride, Speak Common and Virtue. Additionally, Noble Heir and Knight aren't too bad for building combat ability. Knight requires a Virtue of 16, but gives you Brigandine and Chainmail armor- the best you can start off with. Manorial lord gives some very good bonuses to Charisma and is better for speak common, but it's probably better to be a knight if you go down this path. If you decide to make a character with a noble or wealthy background, it's probably best to go down this line. Merchant Line: Peddler -> Local Trader -> Travelling Merchant -> Merchant Proprietor These jobs all give good Speak Common, Streetwise and Read and Write. They also give bonuses to Charisma, which is good for your leader. However, with the exception of the local trader these are not very battle-ready occupations and they don't give saints or alchemical formulas to balance it out, so I tend not to go for them. Some Int is required for this line: Merchant Proprietor requires 20 Int. Alchemist Line: Student/Clerk -> Alchemist -> Master Alchemist Requires 30 Int for Alchemist and 35 int for Master Alchemist. Each time you take the Alchemist occupation you learn a new alchemical formula while Master Alchemist nets you two alchemical formulas. The formulas tend to be the lower quality ones, but since a character starts out with one of every potion they know the formula to, this can be a lucrative deal. Taking these classes raises a character's int, but is murder on Str and End so be careful not to overdo it. Academic Line: Student/Clerk -> Physician/Professor An alternate route from the Alchemist line, the physician provides a significantly higher Heal skill (but no alchemical formula). The professor is similar skill-wise to the alchemist (lower alchemy and higher heal) and provides a formula. None of these jobs have intelligence requirements, so this is your best bet if you want a stupid alchemist. Note that this is a bad idea since Int is necessary for using alchemy well. These classes also raise Int at a cost to Str and End. Military Line: Recruit/Bandit -> Soldier -> Veteran -> Captain -> Knight The Military line is primarily about using weapons, though it provides some of the survival skills as well (stealth, streetwise and woodwise). Each occupation gives better armor, so it's not a bad idea to have at least one person go down this path. Captain requires 20 in Per, Int and Chr, so it's better to use a rural commoner for this line to have enough EPs to distribute between these stats and keep a high End and Str. If a character reaches Captain and has 16 Virtue they could become a knight. The bonuses to strength and endurance that they get from these occupations will balance out the aging penalties, so this could actually be a good path for a rural commoner. Note that being a veteran lowers a character's charisma by 1, so plan accordingly to meet the requirements for captain. Religious Line: Novice Monk/Nun -> Friar* Novice Monk/Nun -> Monk/Nun -> Priest* -> Abbot/Abbess -> Bishop*/Knight Novice Monk/Nun -> Monk/Nun x 2 -> Abbot/Abbess -> Knight The jobs marked with an asterisk can only be taken by male characters. The religious line is a bit less straightforward than most other lines, mostly because of the restrictions on female characters. Friar is a horrible trap and is for washouts that don't have the requisite Int, Per and Chr to properly follow this path. You should plan on having 20 in each for this line, and bishop requires 25 of each. Being a Noble can provide some alternative paths into this line. Being a Monk/Nun lowers perception by 1, but raises int by 1 so this should be factored in when planning stats. All of these jobs offer a saint, with Abbot/Abbess and bishop offering two saints. The religious line doesn't offer equipment, but offers a path to the Knight occupation so it may be worth considering the extra 5 years (note that the knight occupation itself doesn't offer a saint). Craftsman Line: Apprentice Craftsman -> Journeyman Craftsman -> Master Craftsman This line gives good artifice, which is necessary for breaking locks, disarming traps and certain other events. Apprentice and Journeyman give better combat skills while master gives better speak common. All of these are urban jobs, so they offer good streetwise as well. Note that Urban Trades and Country Crafts backgrounds allow a character to start at Journeyman. The downside to this path is that it doesn't offer any equipment, saints or formulas, and there aren't any good paths to knight to balance that like in the religious line. Other jobs that don't really fit in anywhere else: Shulz: An alternate ending to the Noble and Military lines, offers good Speak Common and a wide range of other skills with a high number of EPs to distribute. Laborer and Peasant: Urban and rural themed respectively, offer high EPs but no specialties or real job advancement Thief and Swindler: Urban jobs that offer great stealth and speak common respectively, but actually lower virtue. Hunter and Bandit: Jobs with high stealth, woodwise and weapon skills. Bandit leads into the Military class starting at Soldier, hunter doesn't lead into anything. Vagabond: Offers a high EP with good streetwise, woodwise and stealth, but doesn't lead to anything. Oblate: Teaches religion and alchemy skills, and offers one formula per time the job is taken. The door to this job closes if you actually try to pursue a real religious or alchemical job. Hermit: Requires a virtue of 15, offers a saint and a ridiculous amount of Virtue. No real job progression, however. ...Ok, it's over now. Back to character creation. Since I made a character with a Noble background, I choose the Noble Heir occupation.  Noble Heir normally allows 21 EPs to distribute, but characters get a 20 point bonus for their first occupation, as well as two extra points to every skill. The skill numbers are given in the format of X:XX. The number before the colon represents the skill increases that happen regardless of how EPs are spend. The number after the colon represents how many points that can be purchased with EPs. One last massive text dump for this post, I promise. Skills and descriptions Melee Weapon skills: Edged Weapons (WEdg), Impact Weapons (WImp), Flail Weapons (WFll) and Polearms (WPol) are all melee weapons. In general, Impact weapons are better against heavily armed opponents but do less damage. Edged do more damage than impact and are lighter than polearms, but cost more. Polearms are similar to edged weapons in terms of damage and penetration, but are heavier. Flails are more similar to impact weapons, but don't give bonuses to high strength. Having a high melee weapon skill with the weapon being wielded by the character will increase the chances of doing damage against the enemy, while decreasing the chances of taking damage. Missile Weapon Skills: Bows (WBow), Missile Devices (WMsD) and Thrown Weapons(WThr) represent the ranged weapons. Missile devices tend have greater penetration and damage, but are very slow. Bows are less damaging, but much faster than missile devices. Thrown weapons have low penetration capabilities, but are quick and do more damage than bows. Skill in throwing is also helpful when using Alchemy offensively. Higher skill with a missile weapon increases the chances of actually hitting the enemy. Alchemy (Alch): One of the factors that goes into the success chance for creating a potion. More details on this will be given at a later time. Religion (Relg): Increases the likelihood that virtue will increase when doing good things, increases the rate of return of Divine Favor which is used to invoke saints. Virtue (Virt): The important stat when invoking a saint, determines which saints can be used by a character. This "skill" increases and decreases depending on whether the party performs good or evil actions. Speak Common (SpkC): The ability of a character to talk their way out of situations. Necessary for good party leader. Speak Latin (SpkL) and Read and Write (R&W): Academic skills that help when dealing with other academics. There are a few rare situations where these come up outside of the city. Healing (Heal): Is used to determine the rate of recovery when resting. For every 15 points of Healing Skill (rounded down), a character will regain 1 strength (so 2 Str at 30 points, 3 at 45, etc). Only the the highest Heal in the party counts towards this, so only one character should bother with this. Artifice (Artf): Crafts ability that's important for picking locks and disarming traps. This skill is helpful in a few other areas as well. Stealth (Stlh): Sneaking ability that's good for avoiding unwanted attention, but generally requires a high stealth for the entire part. It's difficult to increase this skill past character creation as it cannot be trained outside of using it. Streetwise (StrW): Comes in handy when you're doing things around town that will lower your reputation. Also difficult to raise. Ride (Ride): The ability to use mounts if a small number of events. This skill almost never comes up. Woodwise (WdWs): Helps in dealing with the various fauna that can be found in the overworld. And with that final dump out of the way, we can finish our character:  Sometimes taking one occupation can remove several other opportunities. Our list of choices has slimmed down considerable. We are just shy of the 16 Virtue that we need to become a Knight, so we take another stint at being a Noble Heir. You can see that this occupation only gives me 26 EPs this time: Taking an occupation at age 20 still gives 5 bonus EPs, so after this it would only be 21 EPs.  Here's my goal: Starting off as a Knight. It has an awfully low EP value, but the armor is worth it for characters that are just starting out.  I spend all of my EPs and select Begin Adventuring.  Not shown: Me clicking Add to the Party to actually add the character that I created. Now we can choose a couple more customization options. We can choose one of the four character models:  One of the 15 heraldry:  Elect not to give myself a garish outfit with the three color options, and check out my character by clicking on his name.  I'll have a good equipment dump later on, but the two pieces of equipment are tied for the best available. Starting quality (represent with the "q") us always 25. Since Lienhard's highest weapon skill is Edged weapons, he starts with a short sword.  Once he's equipped, the equipment shows on the character sheet.  Having gone through all of that, I start to make Lienhard a buddy.  Who is also named Lienhard, incidentally.  The path that I'm going to have him take doesn't gain any benefit from Nobility, so I make him a rural commoner.  Lienhard 2 is a seriously smart peasant. Somehow he manages to put together more money than his hamlet is probably worth and go to a university.  After 5 years of study, he's able to become an Alchemist thanks to his high intelligence.  Since it's as high as it is, he is able to work his way towards Master Alchemist. I select this occupation several more times...  And start to realize that I might have taken things too far. If a 30 year old character takes an occupation, they will take a penalty to some of their stats. It gets more severe as you age, and if you take an occupation that lowers strength on top of it, you can quickly render your characters physically weak. Note that, to the best of my knowledge, age only has an impact at character creation. Time passes in the game proper, but it won't actually cause a loss in stats.  Once a character hits 70 years old, you won't be able to click "Go to next occupation" anymore. By this point, the character is probably weak to the point of pure uselessness in battle anyways. That said, if you press the "G" key, you'll still go to the next occupation.  Kind of a silly oversight, really. Your stats will start to go nuts, which will also affect your occupation options.  At 135 years young, Lienhard 2 decides to quit the alchemy business, satisfied with having discovered the secret to eternal life.  I give him the fitting fat old man character image.   He has learned far more than any man ever should. Alchemy will also be covered at a later time so we can discuss the significance of starting off with all of this.   He also starts off with every potion that he knows the formula, though only at 25q, and only one of each. If you wanted to cheat, you could start with some serious cash if you did this on multiple characters, though you would need to spend it before you could retire the characters (voluntarily). This wraps up my character creation effort post. Please let me know what characters you would like me to
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Dec 31, 2016 19:24
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Not sure what format you're looking for, but here's a lady scholar and adventurer. Iolanthe Wealthy Urban Academic -> Alchemist path
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Dec 31, 2016 20:01
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Okay, I can't resist getting in on this on the ground floor. Ellis Male Rural Commoner Bandit -> Military Line If there is any helmet that even remotely resembles a stereotypical Viking one, I request that he gets to equip it, no matter how bad the stats. Also, axes.
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Dec 31, 2016 21:41
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Oh man, so many skills to collect and covet! How many of them get checked, like, once or twice? Well, I suppose you'll explain that as it comes.
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Dec 31, 2016 22:25
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Cythereal posted:Not sure what format you're looking for, but here's a lady scholar and adventurer. Not really looking for a particular format but there were a few things I should have mentioned. I'll be as close as I can to whatever details people include, and I'll fill in the rest. I won't necessarily be going for optimization (yet), so characters might be older/weaker than someone should normally make them. Here's an example format: Full name (23 characters and can include spaces or special characters) Nickname (9 characters and can include spaces or special characters) Background Which stats to focus on (by default including strength and endurance in that, but feel free to limit them here. It means the character is much more likely to die quickly however) Occupations (by the occupation lines or listed individually. You may want to include how far they get in the line or the final age of the character, divisible by 5) Which skills to focus on (runoff will typically go to weapon skills) Character Model Heraldry I'll fill in whichever blanks people leave, so don't worry about fitting this format precisely. Omniphile posted:Okay, I can't resist getting in on this on the ground floor. Regrettably, there isn't a proper viking helmet with horns and the like. Helmets in this game are considered part of the upper body equipment, so they're included with the Torso armor. We can do all kinds of axes, though. Glazius posted:Oh man, so many skills to collect and covet! How many of them get checked, like, once or twice? Well, I suppose you'll explain that as it comes. Ride in particular almost never comes up and as far as I know can only be improved in a single, rare random encounter. Streetwise is only useful if you're doing something that's really not worth it, and I expect I'll show off why within a few updates.
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Jan 1, 2017 04:49
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Samwise Gamgee, Rural Commoner focusing on Laborer/Peasant. Put everything into Strength and Endurance. Literally no other skills (since cooking doesn't appear to be an option). If you have to pump stats, pump Virtue. You say STR/END are good stats? Let's just see how good. 
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Jan 1, 2017 05:02
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Cool, an LP of this game. Is pretty cool. I usually start out with an alchemist/smartypants guy, a healer/saint dude, a knight/saint dude, and a laborer/craftsman dude to cover most of the bases. But if you're making characters based on our input... how about a sneaky hunter. Rural commoner, hunter -> hunter -> hunter, max out bows, woodwise, stealth and fill in whatever else around the edges. Obviously get Str/End up to 32 or so, then boost Agi (even though it is mostly useless). Char model, fat guy w/ green robes. Heraldry, eagle. Name: Nimrod of Nottingham
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Jan 1, 2017 06:20
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Oh, awesome. I've always admired this game from afar, but character creation alone was daunting enough to keep me from getting anywhere.
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Jan 1, 2017 06:42
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I had a pretty fun time with this at one point but really kind of lost the plot faffing about killing bandits and turning the tides on robber barons. One of my favorites was a roughly forty year old surgeon woman who kept the rest of them patched up through all the counter-banditry. To whit: Name: Heinrike Kuchenmacher Nickname: Gugelhupf Background: Born to common bakers, Heinrike caught the attention of an important academic, first with her excellent pastries and cakes, then with her wits. Taking a shine to her, he brought her into the academy off the books. With his guidance and some ingenuity, she proved herself an able surgeon and physician, but with his recent passing she has decided to continue her studies abroad. Occupations/Skills: starting with Student, taking whatever route ends up with Physician and as high a healing skill as you can stand before her strength and endurance are beyond hope. Appearance: Something doughty would be fine. Heraldry: Something round.
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Jan 1, 2017 06:48
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Okay, awesome. Chainmail armor works, in that case. Here's a full profile. Full name (23 characters and can include spaces or special characters): Ellis, son of Zerk Nickname (9 characters and can include spaces or special characters): The Idiot Background: Raised in the forest by barbarians that are like a cross between stereotypical Scotsmen and stereotypical Vikings. Doesn't understand high class social norms, or even regular social norms. Borderline illiterate. Prone to challenging others to duels for stupid reasons. Which stats to focus on (by default including strength and endurance in that, but feel free to limit them here. It means the character is much more likely to die quickly however): Mostly endurance and agility, with secondary focus on strength Occupations (by the occupation lines or listed individually. You may want to include how far they get in the line or the final age of the character, divisible by 5): Bandit, age is as young as possible, eventually goes down the Military Line Which skills to focus on (runoff will typically go to weapon skills): Almost all weapon-ish skills and woodcraft Character Model: First one on the left Heraldry: The one that's a gray shield with a rampant animal Omniphile fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Jan 1, 2017 |
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Jan 1, 2017 08:19
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 I love this game. It has really interesting setting and detailed combat and character creation. Shame I'm pretty OCD about fighting thieves until my party is full of greatsword wielding, Molotov tossing juggernauts in in plate armour, though. EDIT: Does the game have any modding scene at all? Because the available character sprites end up being pretty boring. Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 11:17
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Name: David Ogg de Nutt Nick: Our Dave Family: Town Trader Focus: WImp, SpkC, SpkL, R&W Career: Religious line -> Captain / Knight Model: Knight model w/ black, white, and green Crest: Acorn
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Jan 2, 2017 14:45
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I will absolutely be following this.  Suggesting Hildegard Already over 6 feet tall at the age of 15, and stronger than most adult men in her village, she fled her home for a reason she never told anyone, and ended up nearly starving to death in the woods when she lucked into a secluded abbey that sheltered her. She left her old name behind, taking up the name Hildegard, and spent many years as a nun there, learning about God and gaining a great love for humanity and for medicine. Her good-natured wit and compassionate charm led to her becaming the abbess at a surprisingly young age. After a complicated and bizzare incident involving the dying wish of a knight she tried to save, a group of bandits that terrorized a nearby town, and a clerical error, she became a knight, and is now travelling the land, helping the just and smiting the wicked who refuse the repent.   (ignore the name in the screenshot, I forgot to change the default I got - though kinda fitting the backstory, really) Rural commoner->novice nun->nun->nun->abbess->knight She's a good if unskilled combatant statwise (though certainly not top tier with only a 68 total of strength and endurance), but she'll pick up more skill quick enough, and as a woman she potentially has access to some extremely powerful combat blessings. 18 sharp is good enough for the initial thief hunting. Besides her combat role, she's a healer, religious scholar, and a holy woman, with very high virtue and non-alchemy intellectual skills, plus starting with 4 saints. As a knight, she should start the game with really great gear, and should be a nice all-rounder that the party can rely on. e: Model is the regular starting blonde dude, with a rose symbol
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Jan 2, 2017 14:52
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Man, I remember this game. I bought it with the $50 prize money I got for winning a regional spelling bee when I was 12, and I loved it to death. Trying to return to it recently, I've found the controls for overland movement are frustrating as sin, which bothered me less when I was a kid because I didn't mind just tromping in a straight line overland, but these days, I'd sort of like to be able to follow roads if I wanted to. Definitely going to be watching this.
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Jan 2, 2017 20:05
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Chapter 1: The Adventure Begins (not really) Thanks for all of the entries! I created the first four adventurers based on the submissions given. Once I've finalized my choices, I select "Begin the Adventure."   Ellis, Son of Zerk, simply known as "The Idiot" to his friends and enemies alike, was picked up as a child by a once noble clan of vikings who got stuck in Scotland and had to resort to petty banditry for survival. Once a wandering party of adventurers not unlike the one he gathered together slaughtered them in a failed attack, he found work as a proper mercenary. He ended his military career at a fairly young age as a Soldier. He has a bit of Stealth and Woodwise, as both his time as a bandit and as a soldier provided. He still carries his standard issue sword, though he holds it like someone who isn't him holds a dead fish. He has declared himself the leader of this rag-tag group of misfits, though it won't last.   Next we have the woman simply known as Iolanthe, who keeps her family name a secret but has shared that her family's connections allowed her to begin her career as a clerk. She moved on to a long stint as a professor at a college, a shorter period as a physician and finally ended up as a master of alchemy. An older lady, time and her life as a scholar have left her physically lacking, but her time as a physician taught her just where to stick a blade (the occupation seriously allows 8 EPs to distribute to WEdg. It's on par with the military line for that skill). Spending so much time in academia honed her diplomatic capabilities as well, so it won't be long before she get's tired of The Idiot's poo poo and takes charge of the situation.   Samwise Gamgee is a simple man from the country. He did not hone himself to his full potential (read: a whole bunch of unspent EPs), but time as a laborer both in the city and the country have made him strong. All he has on him is a large stick that he picked up off the ground, though he has made it perfectly clear that he wants an ax just like the one he used to chop wood as a child. He always imagined himself a hero of the common man, so he felt it best that he used an appropriate weapon.   Last is Nimrod of Nottingham, another man of humble origins who lived as a hunter. A bit more experienced than some of his companions, he is capable with bow or blade. His true talent lies in avoiding combat altogether, though the other oafs are likely to remove that disadvantage from him. He is swift in a way that his large frame utterly denies. He has his trusty bow, but strangely no arrows. He also doesn't have a proper melee weapon, though he technically is using a Small Knife (which is the default for characters without weapons).  Sam had a point earlier: why go out of our way for an adventure when we can have one right here. Nimrod has a point as well: we'll be great at dealing with street trash, but there's all sorts of fauna (and possibly flora) out there that will make short work of our rag-tag group of misfits. For now, we take a moment longer at the inn to get our bearings.  We take a look at our party information screen, which lists the time, the date, our location (and how much it loves/hates us), our wealth in both available cash and bank notes, and our Philosopher's Stone. It also includes an interactive map that will show your local reputation and is a total bitch to use to find the city you're actually looking for. Finally, at the very top we have Party Fame, which is essentially our score. The date has only one function as far as I know, and that's a secret for now. The season does come into play some, and will influence certain "encounters" out on the field. The time mostly matters inside of cities, though it influences a couple of events on the field as well. Per the manual: Matins: Midnight Latins: 3 AM Prime: 6 AM Terce: 9 AM Sexts: Noon Nones: 3 PM Vespers: 6 PM Compline: 9 PM Next is the city that we're located in. Note that there are 92 cities in this game, though when you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all (though some cities will have additional options available). Local reputation is how much the city likes or hates you. A few things you do outside of the city can affect it, though you can mostly only ruin it by screwing around inside a city (as we'll probably see at a later date). These numbers are probably not exact, but for an approximation: Hunted: -99 to -65 Wanted: -64 to -35 Suspected -34 to -12 Unknown: -11 to 11 Respected: 12 to 64 Local Hero: 65 to 99 Wealth automatically converts between the three different types of coin. Per the manual: 12 pfenniges (pf) = 1 groschen (gr) 20 groschens (gr) = 1 florin (fl) 240 pfenniges (pf) = 1 florin (fl) You can also store florins at one of the banking families. This money is completely safe in our adventures, so it's not a bad idea to have some saved up. Finally, we have the Ph (Philosopher's) Stone, which is used in the alchemy success equation. More on this when we get to alchemy. I believe that the best quality that is available is 29.  With all of that out of the way, we see our selection menu for the inn. Towns are navigated entirely using menus, and I'll spend this update going over a tour of the city. Wesel is pretty small, so there are some things that won't be present here that will be present in larger cities. Every town's inn allows you to check out the news. If we select "catch up on local news and rumors..."  We have all kinds of options, which I'm sure are important leads to all kinds of quests! In order:  Every city has a curfew for Compline. If we travel the city at night, we'll have a good chance of alerting the Night Watch to our presence.  Affairs within the empire is the most important piece of information at any time, though right now it's blank. We'll get to see the two questlines advertised here later on.  Local news always seems to be a message about how boring the city is, as to tell you to get the hell out and play in the sun for a change. Well screw you dad, I'm happy right here.  The final option occasionally allows a job for a florin, though it's not available this time. I'm not sure if anything in particular triggers which city has this job at which time.  If we leave the inn by Main Street, we have all of these options open. First, let's go to the political center.  Not a whole lot here in this town. The notices and gossip is identical to what's at the inn, so no need to go through that again. In a larger city there may be a town hall, which is where adventurers go to make it big. For now, let's check out the churches.  I'll probably visit the churches a lot as we go through the game, though mostly I'll be hanging out with the monks. Larger cities may have a cathedral here as well. For now, I check out that church.  I attend mass, thinking I'll get the "Mass isn't being held now" message...  Only to find out that is actually is being held now! This would have recharged a little of a character's divine favor if we had spent any. Here it did nothing but waste time.  It's night now so the background images have changed. We'll revisit the church at a later date to go into a little more detail about it. The Kloster is still open, so I decide to pay it a quick visit.  We have several options again, but two in particular are important. The monks will offer to teach people Religion, Speak Latin and Reading and Writing. It's basically impossible to raise these skill outside of being trained, and these guys train it at a much lower cost than the other place we can learn it from.   They aren't interested in training us today, however.    They DO let us check out their saint's library, and the one groschen is a dirt cheap cost for it. Being eager for all forms of learning compared to the three knuckle-headed men, Iolanthe learns of saint Agnes, which even she is just a few points of virtue of being able to invoke. Every action that takes a considerable length of time brings up the clock seen in the center of the screen. From the churches, the last place I can visit is the fortress.  Of course, it's locked up for the night, and we probably wouldn't have been allowed in anyways. I head down main street again...   And head to the local inn, where I sleep for the night like proper folks do legally. Sleeping for 8 hours like this fully recharges Endurance and heals one point of Strength, though we're all full right now.  The next day, I head down to the crafts guilds, where I somehow neglected to take a screenshot. The two main locations to visit from there are the Arms making alley and the street for less violent crafts.  Because Wesel is such a small town, only the blacksmiths are available. They will carry both armor and weapons, though of a lower selection and usually at a lower quality than in larger cities.  If we enter the blacksmith's shop, we can access the store/loot menu. The prices are affected by the leader's charisma, so right now The Idiot is pissing off the shopkeep and getting us poo poo prices. None of our crew are particularly well liked, with only Iolanthe being marginally capable of operating in society (though even she mostly kept to books and potions)  From there I head to the other guilds for all of those smarties and their training and stuff. I visit the alchemist first, because he's the most important person here.  I'll have to make a note of this place- the quality of a philosopher's stone is based largely on the price when it comes from an alchemist. This one will probably be good. We don't have the funds for it yet, nor for the formulas that he offers.  Iolanthe takes the lead here and offers up a trade. Fortunately for her, the alchemist was willing to trade. Quickmove is not particularly important however.  Next we check out the physician. If you don't have a good healer but you have a lot of luck, a physician may be able to train a person in healing. You can talk with them to determine their skill.  I believe that physicians are ranked in order of Excellent, Good, Modest, and Poor skill. There are also total quacks out there who will actually hurt your characters if you have them try to heal you. It's almost always better to just let wounds heal naturally or to use your own party's healer, however. Physicians of any decent level of skill are very rare most of the time. For fun, I ask this guy to teach us.  Actually, I believe that Iolanthe is significantly more skilled than this guy. I believe she would fall into the "Good" category of healer, and she practically did healing as a hobby.  The artisans at the Tinkerer's square sell weapons as well. I typically forget about them, which is bad since they can be of high quality as well. The more important thing is that they can teach artifice, and while it can be learned while out adventuring, it requires a certain level of skill to be able to build it up that way.  They're pretty much always willing to teach, too. I'll end up standing them up. Note that the price they mention here is complete nonsense, and it always ends up being 50 pf (20 gr and 10 pf) per day, which is still kind of a lot.  Finally we have the clothmaker's guild. If we visit them at night, we can sometimes by non-metal armor. We don't have anywhere near the alchemy required to make that worth it, however.  This time, we slink off to the side streets. It pretty much offers everything that the main streets offer, so there isn't much point in visiting them in the day time unless you're dirty felons.  The market place is the most important place in a town. While other locations offer better training and equipment, this is the place that offers us the leads.  The everyday items merchant offers us a few situation items (the rope in particular is useful in some situations, though they don't have it here), musical instruments that impact a couple of saints, and a whole bunch of crap that I'm pretty sure don't actually have uses in game.  The pharmacist offers alchemical ingredients. White Cinnabar is actually pretty rare stuff, so I make a note that it's available here. On paper, since Darklands offers no note-taking or journal entries other than the save files.  The Foreign Trader offers some weapons as well as alchemical ingredients. It's a good idea to check both places when you want to alchemize, since the foreign traders offers stuff not available at the pharmacist's.   The Medici and Fuggers both act as bankers, converting florins to bank notes. Since I don't have any florins, they aren't particularly useful to me right now. Both groups and the Hanseatic League all are good sources of employment in the early game, with the Fuggers being marginally easier to get to give you work.    Of course, all of them turn our party down. (We totally proclaimed our fame despite having none, since The Idiot was in our party)  One of the last stops are the docks, which can transport us to other cities. This method of traveling can be far safer than hitting the road, though it is not without risk. The available ship(s) cycle from bottom to top; on the first day ship 3 would be available, and the second day ship 2 would be available and on the third day ships 1 and 4 would be available.  With all of that out of the way, we head back to the blacksmith's place. Before Iolanthe can even say a word, The Idiot sells her hard earned Breath of Death and Sunburst potions. The sales are final, and The Idiot had already bought a throwing ax for himself before she angrily demanded her money. Sam bought a field ax with his own funds, and Nimrod managed to scrounge up a couple of arrows. Seeing the forlorn look on The Idiot's face as he eyed Sam's ax, Iolanthe sighed and purchased a field ax for him as well in exchange for his short sword. Nimrod graceously accepted it from Iolanthe, as he'll need it when enemies drew close to him.  She used her portion of the funds to buy some very uncomely armor. It's lightweight, but it won't be much protection outside of a city. We leave by the side street again.  This time, it's a bit later that we were expecting. Now that it's night, we're at a bit more risk. We attempt to move to a small grove for shelter...  Only to realize that we're in danger. Nimrod has the highest perception, so he always notices things like this before anyone else. Before anyone can do anything, The Idiot rushes forward!  And fails, horribly. Next time: We fight! A lot!
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Jan 3, 2017 08:11
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I, for one, expect great things from our party.
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Jan 3, 2017 09:09
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The Idiot has made all my expectations and more. Can't wait for the inevitable coup!
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Jan 3, 2017 10:34
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This is the best game. And i like where this party is going
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Jan 4, 2017 03:03
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No wonder Iolanthe is hiding her family name in this bunch.
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Jan 4, 2017 03:09
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Man, that's a complicated city. And they're all about like that? Maybe some small towns don't have the bankers?
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Jan 5, 2017 03:53
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Glazius posted:Man, that's a complicated city. And they're all about like that? Maybe some small towns don't have the bankers? This one is pretty simple, actually. We're missing, besides the shops the OP mentioned, some other buildings.
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Jan 5, 2017 08:59
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A couple of other things about cities, per the Darklands Clue Book, they can range in size from 3 (small) to 9 (Koln, the capital). Wesel is at a 4, so it's lacking several things that a larger city could have, including: Town Hall Cathedral University Slum Proper Swordsmith and Armorer It DID have a fortress, a pawnshop and an alchemist which not all towns will have. Pretty much everything else is guaranteed, so you'll be able to accomplish your banking, shopping and training needs pretty much anywhere to some extent. A city's size impacts a few other things as well: the size of the reward you get from a quest, the number and rarity of alchemical ingredients you can find in a shop and the prices of shops and the inn. The interactive map in the Party Info screen will tell you a general size (small, medium or large) of the city if you hover your mouse over it.
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Jan 5, 2017 15:50
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Chapter 2: We Forego Adventure to Act Like Medieval Batman Last time, The Idiot attempted to show off his bad-rear end skills with his farming implement... and failed! Now a bunch of unimpressed street thugs are going to try to rob us of everything we own.  In the battle screen, we finally get to see our actual characters. The battle system is kind of like the Infinity Engine from Baldur's Gate, but simultaneously a bit more complicated and a bit more primitive. To be honest, it's the part of the game that I feel has aged least well, especially in more complicated situations like mines and castles where you will need to maneuver through narrow passages. Now that they're actually relevant, note the three bars in each of the character windows on the left side of the screen. The Blue bar represents Endurance, the Green bar represents Strength. The Yellow bar represents divine favor, but we haven't gotten that far yet.   Right-Clicking brings up the menu. Under the Attack command, we see the six modes of attack: Standard Attack:+30 Speed, Will change to Vulnerable automatically if the extra penetration is necessary or to Parry if completely outmatched by the opponent's weapon skill. Parry: +60 Speed. Lowers the probability of being hit depending on weapon skill. Useful for the "tank" if fighting a single, powerful opponent, though manipulating this to a single character is probably more trouble than it's worth. Also good for low level characters to buy time until the stronger characters can help them out. Vulnerable Spot: +120 speed. Randomly adds 1 to 4 to penetration on a successful hit. Good against heavily armored foes, though arguably it might be more effective to use an all out attack to whittle the enemy down. All out attack (BERSERK): +0 speed, increases the probability of the attacker being hit and lowers the probability of hitting the target based on their weapon skill (to a max of 10%). Good for characters that have no clue what they're doing or when dog piling an enemy. Missile attack: Uses the missile weapon. The speed in this case determines the rate of fire for a character. Throw: Specifically used for potions that are suitable for throwing, like Iolanthe's Sunburst potion would be if The Idiot hadn't pawned it. Throwing Weapons use the Missle Command, which isn't confusing at all. It's grayed out because The Idiot doesn't have any potions to throw. To explain some of the terms that came up in the modes of attach. the primary variables that govern combat are Attack Speed, Hit probability, Penetration and Damage. Attack speed is dependent on the weapon type of the attacker, equipment weight and the attack mode. The higher the number, the greater the interval between attacks (so this number is ideally low). Having Normal Encumbrance increases this value by 30 and more than that increases it by 120. For Melee, Hit Probability is determined by the difference between the attacker's weapon skill and the target's weapon skill, then adjusted for the quality of a shield (if present), the strength of a character greater or less than a weapon's requirement, the mode of attack and the number of characters attacking a target. For Missile Attacks, Hit Probability is determined by the difference between the attacker's weapon skill and the defender's agility (which is also affected by encumbrance) plus the presence and quality of a shield. Penetration is determined by comparing the penetration value of a weapon versus the thickness of armor. If the penetration value is equal to the thickness, the damage gets divided by 3. If it's less, the damage is divided by 8. This value is only adjusted based on if a vulnerable spot attack is used or if an attack glances (which rarely occurs). Damage is impacted by the strength of a character above or below a weapon's requirement, penetration and weapon vs armor quality. Damage directly determines the Endurance Loss of a character. Strength loss is a fraction of the endurance loss, depending on whether an attack penetrates. As a result, Endurance always drops more quickly than Strength, which is good: If a character runs out of Endurance, they become unable to fight. If they run out of strength, they die, and there is no resurrection in Darklands. Note that the sum of a character's strength and endurance determines a character's encumbrance allowance. As a result, the general spiral is that as a character becomes damaged, they become less effective at combat, leading to taking more damage and so on. While there isn't a hard cap on how much equipment a character can use, it's a good idea to have a little bit of a buffer between a character's equipment weight and becoming over encumbered.  Here are a whole bunch of orders that are mostly irrelevant to our current situation; most of them will come up when we get to a dungeon. Combat starts paused and the game automatically pauses when you give a character orders. Finishing with the Enter key will make a character execute the command given... as would clicking another character or just unpausing, making it completely unnecessary. Enemy Info will give you a view of the equipment or level of the enemy's weapon/offense and armor/defense. Since these are humans, they have actual equipment. The two movement types are Walk and Flee. The only difference between the two is that Walk will automatically engage if you approach an enemy, while Flee will not. You also need to use Flee to break away from an enemy- there aren't any penalties for breaking away from an enemy to switch a target or run away, but it ends up being a bit inconvenient. Halt is included in case you want to make a character stop. The three combat end commands are Surrender, Exit Battlefield and Loot Bodies. Looting occurs automatically, so I'm pretty sure the Loot Bodies command is useless unless you're in a castle and for some reason didn't just take everything (encumbrance only applies to equipped items, so there isn't really a limit on how much you can carry. To a point.) Surrender takes you to the "lose" condition. The game only ends if all of your characters actually die, so you can lose a combat without is being game over (though most of the lose conditions will make you want to load an old game). It's only useful if you want to see what happens if you lose a fight, or if a fight is going so poorly that it may be the only way to make it out alive. Finally, if a character is at the edge of a battlefield, you can make them escape.  Including the Party menu for the sake of completion, Party Info is disabled while in combat. You can choose your marching order, but it's only relevant in dungeons.  A character will Walk by default. They'll go to the outline, taking the most direct path possible unless the direct path until they run into an obstacle, at which point your guess is as good as mine.  Using any of the attack commands, clicking on an enemy will make the character target it. If another enemy engages them, the command will be disrupted and the character will attack the engaging enemy.  If an enemy can't be targeted due to line of sight or crowding issues, the command will be invalid.  Combat starts with Nimrod firing off a shot. The first shot with a missile weapon is instant, but the second shot will require reloading. It's likely that you'll only get one shot with a missile weapon in a combat.  It hits, causing damage seen above the enemy in red. Enemies also have their own Strength, Endurance and Divine Favor, though the last one is never actually used by an enemy. Nimrod's arrow only knocked a little endurance off, so the attack likely didn't penetrate.  The Idiot threw his one ax, and is now out. Nimrod no longer has a clear shot, either.  Iolanthe manages to stab the bandit. Her Short Sword has good penetration compared to the morons' field axes, so it's reasonably damaging. Sam engages his enemy as well, opting to fight defensively. Nimrod and The Idiot are kind of stuck, however.  Unfortunately, Iolanthe takes some damage in return. She has taken a couple of hits, with the latest showing in white above her. The Idiot automatically changed from attack to vulnerable spot to be able to penetrate the bandit's armor.  Two enemies are ganging up on The Idiot, and Sam, who has no training, is struggling as well. Iolanthe, her experience in wielding a scalpel paying off, managed to down her opponent. Nimrod is attempting to find a clear shot, but isn't able to.   The Idiot, finally sick of this poo poo, throws caution to the wind and goes all in. Iolanthe assists Sam, who's still struggling.     That last bandit, by the power of RNG, manages to put up a good fight. Nimrod also has trouble finding where to put himself.  With three people ganging up on him, he doesn't last long.  The loot screen is pretty much identical to the shopping screen. Throwing weapons pretty much always come up here. It's all garbage equipment, but I take the clubs and leather armor to pawn. Clothing can't be sold had has no value other than maybe blocking your inventory when you're selling stuff.   After combat, characters will randomly improve in the skills that they used during combat. Sam and The Idiot improve a little here. I don't think that the difficulty of a fight greatly influences the chances of increasing a skill, so sticking in town and killing thugs until everyone masters a weapon is a safe and viable (if a bit boring) strategy.    And it turns out that murdering street trash makes you popular! It's a bit slow, but you can increase local reputation (but not overall fame) like this.  The night is still young, so we go back to the side streets and do this all over again.   Iolanthe, who's hurting from the last encounter, takes it easy in the back. Nimrod actually gets up close and personal this time and The Idiot starts to find his stride as a proper Berserker.  Sam gets lost along the way.   Iolanthe had to defend herself a little, but ultimately gets out without further scathing.   The Idiot gets a double increase to his edge weapon, and is now on par with Iolanthe and Nimrod in terms of his primary weapon. Not sure exactly why this happened, but it might be some glitch with the Field Ax- it's practically a joke weapon and wasn't really intended for combat use.  And so, we kept murdering bandits in the back alleyways, and the people looked on and cheered.   I finally actually show off an Enemy Info screen. The other bandits were running around with clubs, but these guys are wielding the deadlier falchions (which are still crap weapons).  They do a number on poor Nimrod, though.  Feeling both satisfied and horribly wounded, the four drag themselves to the inn and take up residence for a few days. The option to train that I picked up at the guild is still open.  It's far too costly for right now, however.  Thanks to her high healing ability, we can regain 3 strength per night. All endurance will be recovered after resting, so endurance loss isn't a big deal in the long run.   After a few days, Iolanthe and The Idiot are good to go again. They get jobs to pull in some additional income while waiting for the others to recover. After a few days, the four decide to travel to one of the neighboring cities.    Travelling by boat is far safer than running around the overworld, though there is still the potential for danger. Our trip was uneventful, other than The Idiot insisting (poorly) that having a fee to get in the city on top of having to pay for the boat is ridiculous. The other three manage to restrain him before things get violent.   Much of Paderborn is the same as Wesel, but this place has properly specialized weapon and armor smiths.  The thing about Paderborn is that it sells very good weapons. The quality (q) number is a straight improvement to damage. Quality is one of the less important aspects to a weapon, but it still affects damage so if you're going to buy, buy for quality. If you don't care about quality, just wear the junk you stripped off of those bandits you just killed.  Iolanthe takes charge here, having at least some basic haggling experience. Prices are directly affected by Charisma, and while Iolanthe's isn't particularly high, it's still better than the other three knuckleheads'.  After a bit of trading, The Idiot leaves, feeling incredibly happy. Next Time: We actually venture out into the world and try to get a job! Raiad fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Jan 15, 2017 23:39
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Small shields are a very nice early boost to melee if you can afford them and aren't dealing with encumberance issues - not so much for the bonus they provide but for the malus the remove. Quality is more important on faster hitting weapons since that extra damage adds up faster.
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Jan 16, 2017 00:30
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Not as bad as I expected, given our characters lack of armour. Raiad posted:As a result, Endurance always drops more slowly than Strength, which is good. The other way around, actually. Probably a typo.
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Jan 16, 2017 00:35
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Now seems like a good time to go into all of the weapons and armor available. From the first post, there are four melee weapon skills and three missile weapon skills. Each skill corresponds to one of the weapon categories. The skill works with any skill in the category, but does dick for any weapon of a different category. As a result, The Idiot's progress with his Field Ax isn't going to carry over to his new Halberd, which is classified as a polearm. Each weapon has its own damage, penetration, speed and required strength values, all of which are used in the combat calculations. Of course, none of these values are given in game, but the manual gives a fairly good generalization of these. The Code book gives all of the exact values in detail. The game does at least give the weight of the weapon in the shop/loot interface, so you can get an idea before you give your 20 Strength alchemist a full set of plate mail. Weapons marked with an asterisk require two hands. A shield (supposedly) doesn't work with two-handed weapons if equipped. Note that you are able to equip shields when wielding two handed weapons, they just (supposedly) don't do anything. I'm putting that (supposedly) disclaimer there because there are a lot of things that the documentation claims should happen that don't seem to occur. Edged Weapons Two-Handed Sword*: 14 Damage, 4 Penetration, 95 Speed, 21 Strength Required. This is probably the star of this weapon category, though it's quite pricey. Being two handed, a shield (supposedly) doesn't work if equipped. Note that you are able to equip shields when wielding two handed weapons, they just (supposedly) don't do anything. Long Sword: 12 Damage, 3 Penetration, 55 Speed, 19 Strength Required. This weapon is more damaging than any other one-handed weapon. The extra damage is probably worth the loss in penetration compared to other one-handed weapons. Falchion: 10 Damage, 2 Penetration, 45 Speed, 15 Strength Required. Costs the same as a short sword, so there is no good reason to buy one. Bandits often use low quality Falchions. Short Sword: 8 Damage, 4 Penetration, 40 Speed, 13 Strength Required. The default weapon for someone starting with an edged weapon, it makes most of the other Edged weapons unnecessary. Poniard: 5 Damage, 4 Penetration, 30 Speed, 12 Strength Required. Quite cheap, but there probably isn't a good reason to buy one. Dagger: 6 Damage, 3 Penetration, 25 Speed, 11 Strength required. The second cheapest edged weapon. Battle Axe*: 15 Damage, 3 Penetration, 100 Speed, 22 Strength Required. Also a two-handed weapon, the slightly higher damage probably isn't worth the lower penetration compared to the two-handed sword. It is cheaper, however. Hand Axe: 9 Damage, 2 Penetration, 45 Speed, 15 Strength Required. Only marginally more damaging and cheaper than the short sword, so there is no good reason to use this. Field Axe*: 7 Damage, 1 Penetration, 65 Speed, 14 Strength Required. This is one of the cheapest weapons in the game, but it's garbage. I feel like someone must have put it in the game as a joke. Small Knife: 4 Damage, 1 Penetration, 25 Speed, 10 Strength Required. Not actually a purchasable weapon, any character without a melee weapon is assumed to be wielding this. As a result, a good fisticuffs character is not allowed. Impact Weapons Great Hammer*: 11 Damage, 6 Penetration, 120 Speed, 24 Strength Required. This weapon has the highest penetration out of any melee weapon, so you straight up never need to use vulnerable spot attack with this. Very Expensive. Giant Cudgel*: 10 Damage, 5 Penetration, 130 Speed, 27 Strength Required. Quite heavy, but far cheaper than the Great Hammer. Maul*: 12 Damage, 4 Penetration, 90 Speed, 25 Strength Required. Slightly more expensive than the Giant Cudgel. Military Hammer: 8 Damage, 5 Penetration, 50 Speed, 15 Strength Required. This should be the end goal of anyone who wants to use impact weapons and a shield. It's pricey for a one-handed weapon. Mace: 9 Damage, 4 Penetration, 40 Speed, 14 Strength Required. This is the starting weapon that a character specializing in impact weapons SHOULD have started with. Club: 7 Damage, 3 Penetration, 45 Speed, 16 Strength Required. Pretty much garbage, this is what characters actually do start out with. They are dirt cheap, however. Flail Weapons (yes, there are really only two weapons in this category) Two-Handed Flail*: 12 Damage, 5 Penetration, 130 Speed, 20 Strength Required. The only downside to this weapon compared to the impact weapons is that it doesn't prepare a character to use a Great Hammer, which I would argue is better overall. Military Flail: 10 Damage, 4 Penetration, 70 Speed, 17 Strength Required. Unlike literally every other melee weapon, the military flail gains no benefit from a higher strength. This is the default weapon for characters that specialized in flail weapons. Polearms Pike*: 12 Damage, 4 Penetration, 140 Speed, 20 Strength Required. It's cheap, but too heavy to really be worth it for its damage and penetration capabilities. Halberd*: 15 Damage, 4 Penetration, 105 Speed, 23 Strength Required. Probably the best reason to even use polearms, it's slight heavier but significantly cheaper than a two-handed sword. Long Spear: 11 Damage, 3 Penetration, 85 Speed, 20 Strength Required. Continues the trend of being heavier and cheaper than an equivalent edged weapon. Short Spear: 9 Damage, 3 Penetration, 70 Speed, 17 Strength Required. See Long spear description, plus this is the default weapon for polearm users. Quarterstaff*: 6 Damage, 1 Penetration, 40 Speed, 16 Strength Required. Dirt cheap, but otherwise useless. Thrown Weapons Throwing Axe: 9 Damage, 2 Penetration, 240 Speed, 20 Strength Required. Good against lightly armored foes like the bandits we've been fighting, but otherwise not very good in the long run. Javelin: 8 Damage, 3 Penetration, 240 Speed, 18 Strength Required. Probably better overall than the throwing axe. Dart: 6 Damage, 3 Penetration, 180 Speed, 16 Strength Required. Might be better than the javelin if you have time to make use of the speed before entering melee, but this is pretty unlikely most of the time. Throwing Knife: 5 Damage, 2 Penetration, 240 Speed, 13 Strength Required. The starting weapon if a character specializes in thrown weapons, but you only start with one so that's not very helpful. Also more expensive than javelins and darts, so there is no good reason to use these. Bows Composite Bow*: 5 Damage, 6 Penetration, 210 Speed, 22 Strength Required. Absurdly expensive and difficult to find, more than likely you'll only see it for sale at an evil lord's keep or a village that you'll end up burning down soon after you buy it. Requires Arrows. Longbow*: 5 Damage, 6 Penetration, 180 Speed, 20 Strength Required. Slightly heavier than the composite bow, but also far cheaper. Requires Arrows. Shortbow* 5 Damage, 4 Penetration, 150 Speed, 16 Strength Required. The starting weapon for bow users and by far the cheapest bow. Requires Arrows. Missile Devices (note: none of these weapons benefit from high strength) Crossbow*: 7 Damage, 6 Penetration, 540 Speed, 18 Strength Required. The starting weapon for characters specializing in missile devices. Requires Quarrels. Arbalest*: 8 Damage, 7 Penetration, 660 Speed, 20 Strength Required. Absurdly heavy, Requires Quarrels. Iron Handgun*: 9 Damage, 5 Penetration, 720 Speed, 17 Strength Required. The lesser of the two guns, but far cheaper. Requires Balls. Brass Handgun*: 9 Damage, 7 Penetration, 780 Speed, 16 Strength Required. Slightly slower than the iron handgun, but you realistically aren't going to get more than one shot with any of these weapons. Requires Balls. Armor Armor's primary characteristic is Thickness. It will be the primary contributor to encumbrance, so it's important to balance having protective armor with not overloading the character. All armor is divided into Vitals (head and torso) and Limbs (arms and legs). Armor for vitals is lighter than it is for limbs, so the advertised strategy is to use heavy armor for the vitals and ligher armor for the limbs. However, since the clue book describes a 50 percent chance of hitting either area, does not describe a higher damage for the vitals as opposed to the limbs and the weights end up being close to the same either way this strategy doesn't seem to yield significantly better results than having the limbs have heavier armor. Plate: Thickness 5, the ultimate goal for a super-strong adventurer. Seriously heavy. Chainmail and Brigandine: Thickness 4, Chainmail is lighter but more expensive than Brigandine. Scale: Thickness 3, It's probably better to save up the extra cash to buy Chainmail. Cuirbolli and Studded Leather: Thickness 2, Cuirbolli is lighter and more expensive than Studded Leather, but the weight difference won't impact a character unless they are very weak. Leather and Padded: Thickness 1, Leather is cheaper and lighter than padded, but at this level the weight difference is negligible. Shields Finally, Shields the hit probability calculation directly. For melee weapons, it improves the defender's weapon skill, while for missile weapons it increases the target value. The quality of a shield likely matters here more than for weapons and armor. Note that fractions are dropped. Small Shield: 2/7*Quality added to Weapon Skill, 1+(2/7*Quality) added to target value. Medium Shield: 2/5*Quality added to Weapon Skill, 4+(2/4*Quality) added to target value. Large Shield: 2/4+Quality added to Weapon Skill, 8+(2/3*Quality) added to target value. With that, I am done with most (but not quite all) of the info dumping for the LP. I still need to go over Alchemy and Saints, but we lack the funds and virtue for them to be a concern yet. I'll visit those topics within a few updates, however.
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Jan 16, 2017 00:55
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Fat Samurai posted:The other way around, actually. Probably a typo. Yep! Corrected it now.
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Jan 16, 2017 01:14
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I actually got this on GoG and tried to play but drat, it sure doesn't hole your hand, eh?
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Jan 16, 2017 01:43
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Deceitful Penguin posted:I actually got this on GoG and tried to play but drat, it sure doesn't hole your hand, eh? Not in the least! I think I could enjoy it more if someone were to make an update for it that put the guidebook info in the game itself, added a quest log, and updated the combat to something more recent in the RTwP genre. But then again there are lots of older properties I'd like to see get updates.
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Jan 16, 2017 02:05
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Am I missing something regarding weapons? Lower Speed is better, no? Doesn't that make the Longbow strictly better than the Composite Bow assuming no typos?
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Jan 16, 2017 02:13
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If the clue book is to be believed, you aren't missing anything. I thought the exact same thing- the composite bow costs nearly 5 times as much as the long bow and is slower to boot, and only has a 1 point weight difference to show for it. The lack of a quest log is the other big thing where the game hasn't aged well. The best it offers is a 23 character save file name field. Other than that, you probably want to have a notebook nearby, which is kind of a ridiculous requirement. I love the hell out of this game, but it definitely had far more ambition than sense in some ways.
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Jan 16, 2017 02:25
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Raiad posted:All out attack (BERSERK): +0 speed, increases the probability of the attacker being hit based on their weapon skill (to a max of 10%) and lowers the . I think you're missing something there at the end. Raiad posted:you probably want to have a notebook nearby, which is kind of a ridiculous requirement.
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Jan 16, 2017 03:24
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Raiad posted:If the clue book is to be believed, you aren't missing anything. I thought the exact same thing- the composite bow costs nearly 5 times as much as the long bow and is slower to boot, and only has a 1 point weight difference to show for it. The game has a quest log, just check the text files in the game's directory.
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Jan 16, 2017 03:59
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I really dig the character creation's whole idea of having a life before you start adventuring, and tying that in with the four player party and RTwP has me wondering if someone could take, essentially, Tyranny's gameplay (with miracles and alchemy stepping in for spells) and Conquest mode and adapt it to Darklands.
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Jan 16, 2017 04:22
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Pierzak posted:I think you're missing something there at the end. You are correct, and thanks for pointing it out. And "ridiculous" was a dumb way to put it. It's inconvenient, but not really something unreasonable given the game's age. This statement will apply to quite a few things that I've brought up earlier and several more things that I'll likely bring up later. Raiad fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Jan 16, 2017 04:30
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marshmallow creep posted:I really dig the character creation's whole idea of having a life before you start adventuring, and tying that in with the four player party and RTwP has me wondering if someone could take, essentially, Tyranny's gameplay (with miracles and alchemy stepping in for spells) and Conquest mode and adapt it to Darklands. Somewhere, Josh Sawyer slumbers and waits for the stars to align.
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Jan 16, 2017 06:12
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Tallgeese posted:Lower Speed is better, no? Doesn't that make the Longbow strictly better than the Composite Bow assuming no typos? Each weapon class has 2 weapons. The best one and everything else.
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Jan 16, 2017 10:15
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You say that speed determines how fast you can attack with something, but how relevant are the numbers actually? I'm guessing you can't attack 4 times with the dagger for every 1 attack against a battle axe wielder, otherwise there wouldn't be much reason to use the heavier weapons apart from penetration.
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Jan 16, 2017 10:16
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Prosthetic_Mind posted:You say that speed determines how fast you can attack with something, but how relevant are the numbers actually? I'm guessing you can't attack 4 times with the dagger for every 1 attack against a battle axe wielder, otherwise there wouldn't be much reason to use the heavier weapons apart from penetration. What you're missing is that unless you're fighting all-out, which is not ideal in most circumstances, you're adding at least 30 to weapon speed. Slightly over two attacks with a dagger is less damage than a single battle axe attack, and the battle axe loses less relative damage output for the slow combat tactics like vulnerable strikes or parrying. Especially for vulnerable spot attacks, the extra advantage for fast weapons gets much smaller.
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Jan 16, 2017 10:35
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