|
 About this game Age of Decadence has been in development by Iron Tower Studio since March 2004, unlike many games stuck in such a long development cycle it managed to actually be released almost a decade later, being officially released in October 2015 after surviving the early access hell known as steam green-light. The game uses the Torque engine which dates back to 2001 and Tribes 2 (lol) and it has just recently had its final update I think back in March which supposedly fleshes out the fairly hasty endgame upon release. It has some of the meatiest choices you can make in comparison to any of the current CRPG's released by Obsidian and the other Interplay splinter studios. While one of the more recent CRPG's I have played Tyranny have 3 or 4 different paths that can be taken to different endings, AoD probably has closer to 10 varying outcomes. Much like the original Fallout games your stats are incredibly important, you can easily play through this game as a melee bruiser and unveil a very fragmented and inaccurate picture of the world's history, and honestly know pretty much nothing about the world that existed before the apocalypse. However with a high intelligence and lore skill, you can slowly piece together like a detective the world that was and understand a ton of the game's rich backstory and do some really cool poo poo. Or with charisma and guile you can manipulate your way into a position of power. Setting Overview According to the Imperial Scrolls, the wicked kingdom of Q'antaar and the Empire were locked in a bloody magical war that devastated much of the known world. Each side called upon powers both arcane and divine, summoning Gods and other beings of immense power, whose contest ultimately destroyed both sides. Cities of the once glorious Empire lay in ruin, and bodies of the dead were strewn across the land. Centuries later, the world still suffers from the shadow of civilization's collapse. Where there once was unity, there are now factions struggling for dominance in the ruined world. Where there was once knowledge, there is ignorance of both science and magic. Where there was once chivalry and honor, there is only pettiness and betrayal. The Age of Decadence is set after the traditional RPG story, the great battle for the fate of the world has already been fought... and lost or even if it was a victory it was Pyrrhic at best. What has been left behind is a world slowly dying, with the collapse of the Empire and to an extent civilization all that is left is a handful of city states and villages slowly collapsing ever further into despair. With the fall of the Empire so did all of Magic and most of technology disappear from the world, the glories of the past are left buried under shifting deserts or lost in the forests and mountains at the edge of the world. Historians dig through the dust and scrolls to piece together fragments of the worlds once great technologies. Meanwhile the remnants of the Empire and its Great Houses futilely squabble to re-unite this broken world and restore the glories of the past that may never be recovered. ===About this LP & Getting Started=== I envision this to be a goon participation LP, (assuming there is any interest). While we won't vote on every little aspect of the game (oh god that would be difficult) How we will try to resolve certain major quest beats, general approach for sections of the game and pick the character archetype and what are goals should be. I.e should we be a lore master uncovering secrets, an assassin murdering everyone important or a simple soldier doing their duty to their commander. Now we get to make some choices, here is the character creation screen  So now we can make our first major choices of the game, The game have several loose classes, which will drive the game we are trying to play. If we are going to play a Merchant, probably should not try to fight every battle and generally talk are way out of things. In this game combat is lethal and while a dedicated combat character like the mercenary can and generally will be fine fighting even professional soldiers. A guy not built for fights will get owned by thugs with a rusty pocket knife in the streets. Here are the main classes, Merchant: This is the least combat heavy background, where we would spend most of our time talking and scheming.  Assassin: Combat Heavy, however we will get a decent number of infiltration missions, where we can get essentially skills checks on how well we can sneak and assassinate people using our crit/dodge combat skills.  Thief: Not as combat heavy, however you will see a little bit of fighting, also most people hate you and we will spend alot of time skulking.  Praetor: Agent of the Noble Houses, we start off with access to important people, and a Praetor should be expected to be able to Schmooze and also handle themselves somewhat competently in a fight.  Mercenary: Pretty much the inverse of Merchant, there will be lots of fighting including big clusterfuck battles and to ensure we have the stats for fighting our civil skills will suffer.  Loremaster: Actually understand the past, you don't start working for everyone and can pretty much freelance the story. Will mostly be built around the Craft + Lore Skills so we can figure out ancient tech. I would say the Loremaster is probably one of the better backgrounds/play styles for a first run-through.  While the classes themselves don't lock us into a certain play style, they do set us on our initial starting area quest and line up who we will start out working for. However over the course of the game we generally will be given the option to stab our employers in the back or work against their interest and work for different groups. Just for the record here is a list of the major organizations. Factions quote:Noble House Daratan - Once the largest and most influential Noble House, controlling seven provinces and more than 20 legions, House Daratan was almost destroyed during the War. Today less than 100 people still loyal to the Daratan name control a small town named Teron, that has definitely seen better days. As House Daratan draws its last gasp, some within are preparing for one last fight, to shift the balance of power and restore the noble House at any cost. ---------------------------------------- So Now Voting Begins for the next ~48 Hours~ Just post the Name Class You want to see on this play through, in event of a tie we will have a run off of the top 2 choices, and then we can start this poo poo! Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 23:02 on May 22, 2017 |
#
¿
May 22, 2017 01:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 21:09 |
|
|
Doopliss posted:Spartacus the Grifter They didn't cut the Grifter, I just don't want to play one on an initial playthrough essentially.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2017 06:00
|
|
|
Siegkrow posted:PLEASE. Timgs kill SSLPs I will for the following updates and ill just have cropped normal images, I just didn't want to clutter up the screen with a ton of nearly identical character creation shots / main menu.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2017 18:57
|
|
|
So 24 Hours left in voting, and so far the tally is 11 Loremaster Votes (Lead By Bill Nye 10:1) 3 Mercenary Votes (Butch Deadlift) 1 Praetorian Vote (Sulla Goonius) 1 Merchant Vote (Bacillus Anthracis) 1 Assassin Vote (Konrad) Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 05:43 on May 23, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 23, 2017 05:33
|
|
|
Alright, The Votes are in and Bill Nye the Loremaster has won by a pretty significant margin so welcome to Let's Play Age of Decadence: Bill Nye the Lore Guy ============================================= So Here is our intrepid Loremaster, and master of science Bill Nye  So before we get off to the start I should probably explain some of my choices on Bill Nye, in Age of Decadence there are multiple types of skill checks in this game, some are determined by skills e.g. Lore which can be leveled up. Yet others are determined by our base attributes which with one solitary exception cannot be altered. Some of these attribute checks will mix with skills or other attributes. So for example, we might want to talk a thug out of stabbing us from coins so the threshold might be Charisma + Streetwise = 10 or something of that nature, usually this is only for more difficult checks though. Strength: Is not that important for a loremaster, it boosts our physical damage if say we wanted to use an axe. Its a pretty desirable stat to pump up on combat focused characters, but our guy is not going to be a melee powerhouse. Strength can be used as a intimidation check in conversations, or at times to say punch the ancient door that won't open well... open. Luckily with our Lore focus we should in theory be able to fix said door so it opens for us. Dexterity: Determines your action points, this game uses action points kind of like most turn based rpg's usually a normal attack is about ~4 action points so we should be able to make two attacks a round (if we do get in a fight) and dexterity is used in conjunction with constitution on a couple of attribute checks. Also sometimes we will have the opportunity to climb stuff, or sneak around it isn't that important for a loremaster, but if we were playing as a thief or assassin this would be our primary trait. Constitution: Determines our hit points, also there are some pretty hard checks on our constitution of which 6 is pretty much the minimum to avoid things killing you outright. While the hit points aren't that important, I want us to be able to survive some potential physical checks. Perception: Is an important stat as a Loremaster as without it we would miss a ton of small details in this game, be it environmental factors like a crumbling wall we can dismantle to find a secret passage, or simply being able to perceive say imperfections on a "totally genuine" ancient artifact. In combat it helps us in a high perception boosts are ranged hit chance, and the few fights we might get in I "hope" we can use a crossbow or some other ranged weapon to avoid getting stuck in. Intelligence: Our bred and butter, Bill Nye is the smartest man in the world why? Well his show says he is and dammit he is gonna save the world from the age of decadence. Intelligence works like in the old fallout games of giving us more skill points on "level up" and with level 10 intelligence that will give us 30% more skill points this playthrough which is massive, and will be a big help. Also lots of lore and crafting checks use intelligence as well, and there are a couple really hard checks late in the game where you "need" intelligence ten to succeed. Charisma: To a Grifter, Merchant or Praetorian this is a hugely important stat, it essentially gives a boost to your skill checks in conversation, while technically we have a penalty I don't think it is actually that severe at level 6, I have done a little bit of a test run before this and I didn't see a difference, there are a couple of bonus skill points via "training" we will miss, but those are mostly not that helpful and high charisma will help us say trick people, but it is more important if we we're going to try to politick in the high courts, and while we might... well I don't think it will hurt to much. In regards to skills, I will bring them up as we use them, the important thing to know is Lore is how much we know about ancient technology and can explain it, Crafting is how well we can make equipment and also how well we can fix up old machines. With that out of the way let's, launch the game  So what you're saying is there is a chance for Bill Nye to Save the World by combating religious fanatics? Sweet!  Welcome to Teron, our lovely doomed hometown... except the doom happened sixty years ago and now it looks like Ancient Detroit.  In this world it turns out the history majors are in demand! Suck it Business Majors.  Now gaze at the Glory of a 15 year old graphics engine, does this bring back flashbacks to Runescape? Well it does for me at least. Here we are in our boss's backroom normally this area you need to sneak into with lockpicking, but since we're his apprentice we start the game here, and might as well look around.  Hmm? I nothing here, but I wonder why Feng is looking into this guy I wonder who is paying him. One of the the nice things about this game is its pseudo-isometric and you can rotate the camera so you don't have the weird awkward see-through walls like you have in say the Shadowrun games.  Sweet, we were able to level up our lore skill, this game incentivizes you to look around and explore environments, luckily while this graphics engine is archaic its not as bad as those old adventure games where you had to hunt pixels like a demented madman. Also a Roman Legion was about ~5000 dudes, so good on Galbo being able to win against 4:1 odds, I bet Feng is researching this for Lord Antidas, considering he is facing entire legions and he has maybe 100 soldiers left under his command keeping order in this crappy town. Oh next to the documents in those boxes is a book on lockpicking so we leveled up that skill as well.  Sometimes as a loremaster you just have to waste a motherfucker, Feng might not be the best loremaster in the world, but if you can't beat them I guess poison their tea and dump them in a ditch. Also he has a great shtick being the "mysterious asian" peddling exotic knowledge, it works on new age yuppies and I guess it works on Roman aristocrats as well.  Yeah, in a world where the past is important every idiot thinks they stumbled across a splinter of the true cross, but then again we have to figure out when something is actually valuable or not? So let's see this Gracius guy and see if this map is worth anything or not.  Sweet, let's visit the local dive bar and meet with a mysterious man trying to sell us poo poo... no wonder Feng thinks its junk.  Okay that's easy we got the map although I failed the trading check to ensure I got paid up front which I forgot to capture.  Time for some lore dumps! Thor Agoth sounds like a pretty cool guy  Well Thor Agoth seems pretty cool, I bet we're gonna hear more about him.  Probably should head back to Feng get him the map and wrap up our starting quest.  Oh, well you never know this might not be a waste of time if we find something useful we can let Feng know, he's probably gonna be annoyed we don't have the money for the map.  Maybe this actually is a waste of time  Wait... magic glows in the dark and is dangerous? That sounds suspiciously familiar.  Yeah magic in this game is not safe at all and actually pretty loving terrifying when we encounter it.  Well that sounds promising, a amulet that might negate lethal levels of radiation?  Yeah lets try to under sell it however this sounds like a good find, a pity we don't have gold from the map. Streetwise as shown here is a useful dialogue skill, it actually is probably the best in the game since it is pretty much a generic street smarts skill. It is really helpful in dealing with gangs, poor people and just regular people in the world. Alot of this times it is almost as helpful as trading in getting random guys like this to haggle.  Cool we talked him down to 200 Imperials, which is nice... if we had the money. Luckily we will be able to come back and buy the amulet before the innkeeper throws him out let's get back to Feng.  Well hopefully he won't get too bad...  Okay that went better than I thought it would, at least we got skill points and finished up the initial quest might as well get a good night's sleep...  Okay, wait... why aren't we going to get any money from the trader?  Oh that escalated quickly, I wonder who wants him dead... on an aside the starting mission for the assassin is to kill the trader and get the map, the thief steals the map from his room, the grifter smooth talks it away from him and the mercenary finds him dead in a ditch and picks it up, the Praetorian just buys the map from Feng. Its kind of cool and alot like how Dragon Age Origins has all the origins happen except Duncan is only there to save the player character in one.  Oh... I guess there is a rival loremaster coming in on our turf. This guy might uncover all the bullshit Feng has been selling Antidas for years.However do I really have to kill him I have terrible combat stats, then again this guy Cassius is a fellow nerd so shouldn't be too tough. I might even be able to just scare him away or cut a deal.  See what I mean when I said Feng doesn't gently caress around he wants us to ice this dude. ================================================= Up Next: Teron City Blues So FIRST IN GAME Goon Vote: What should we do with Cassius A) Kill Him, I mean I don't think he will be tough B) Scare him away (if we can) C) Screw Feng lets see if this Cassius guy can make a deal After that we will also explore Teron in all its dumpy glory! Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 09:44 on May 24, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 24, 2017 09:29
|
|
|
Gonna give this another ~24 Hours~ to break the tie. Right now the vote stands.... 4 for scare 2 for kill 4 for deal
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2017 02:21
|
|
|
Okay Voting closed, with the new votes it looks like we're gonna sell out Feng and cut a deal with Cassius
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2017 04:20
|
|
|
Update 2: Teron City Blues Where we sell out Feng, Take Cassius to Antidas and explore Teron and find mystical wonderments!!! ===========================================  So lets go explore Teron for a little, first here is a map you can use this to fast travel around locations although I don't really know why considering the locations in this game, even the hub cities really aren't that large.  Let's run by the Inn, Cassius is in there along with the prospector with his magic amulet, there is also a merchant outside with his Ordu bodyguard. For the record the Ordu in this game are essentially the Huns, however they have been trapped to the North of the Imperial territories by a nearly impassable mountain range, however a handful trickle over the pass in trader caravans to find work throughout the shattered Empire.  Past the inn is a town graveyard, it looks like the undertaker is there let's see what he has to say  Well, I guess Business? I am a loremaster maybe this guy can tell us something interesting about who is buried here. quote:
Okay that was enlightening at least we can afford a grave if we need one, let's head north along the wall.  Oh look, mushrooms! In this game based off your perception and alchemy skill you can find reagents that you can make into things. Here we found some blood mushrooms, which can be used to make a berserker potion. It won't benefit us much because even beserk we still suck at fighting. However there are some good things we can craft using alchemy including gunpowder bombs which should help us considerably if we do get in a fight.  Continuing on there is also a ruined tower we can investigate, after all its our job to delve into ruins even if they are like 50 feet away from our home.  This looks bad, but in these people are actually solidly Roman middle class, the Shantytown for the actual poor is outside the walls!  Rats! Perfect a starter dungeon so we can get some xp! (which triggers this amusing exchange) You don't gain xp from killing things in this game, although you do get xp from combat encounters. So in theory if you pick a fight and win the xp is pre-set determined by encounter not how many chumps you slaughter. quote:
 Let's go exploring... well there is a grate which is probably full of poo poo.  Hmm a perception check triggers on the wall, it looks like we can take it apart and find... a motor pump? This triggers a crafting and intelligence check which we easily pass and we fix it up.  Explore the drain that was full of goop!  Ohh we got a artifact, once we get up to the surface we can get a better look at it.  Goddamnit, loving squatters. While the option of picking a fight would be hilarious we will get the poo poo kicked out of us even though we have a knife since its 4v1 Luckily with streetwise we can bluff our way out. quote:
 So sweet, we got some cool loot a sapphire worth 150 imperials... (we can sell it for around 1/4th that) and a Jellyfish artifact. It obviously has some use, but who knows if we will actually be able to find out what its used for. Spoiler: its something cool. Now lets head to the Darotan Compound Feng told us to take the map to Antidas and we might as well get that done.  Wait... there is a preacher trying to raise a rabble! TIME FOR BILL NYE TO SAVE THE DAY FROM RELIGIOUS NUTTERS! This is actually an interesting scene though kind of long. http://imgur.com/a/Ji0PE the conversation is here for those interested in the whole thing and gives some good exposition on House Crassus. You also get an option to throw a rock at him mid speech. TLDR: quote:
Essentially this conversation highlights, that since the fall of the Empire people including entire great houses are kind of going bat poo poo insane as things get worse. House Crassus as mentioned before used to be filled with powerful mages and loremasters. Now its last member is a gibbering prophet of long dead gods... and he is raising up the rabble in an attempt to start a holy revolution.  While the game has a limited engine, it does do a good job of conveying locations and just the general decay of the world from its golden age, including snarky comments about the seamless blend of architecture. Also that guys standing there is a noble, just like in 40K PAULDRONS! are an important fashion statement in the Post-Imperial period.  He asks us to come look at his artifacts, which leads to this interaction. Essentially we found a power glove and an ancient Orrey, if only we could get our hands on those items. Unfortunately this guy Thessalos is one of those assholes who buys priceless paintings and then puts them on his walls instead of a museum. He doesn't even care what they do he just likes the crap because its "old" and just wants to show off to us and make us jealous.  Well lets look next door, I know there is this noble lady with more money than sense... I really need to raise some money to buy that prospectors amulet which should be useful if we need to go exploring. quote:
JFC this lady is dumb, she just gave me 6!!! sapphires and a pair of gold rings. This should be more than enough to be able to buy the amulet and have change left over. Now finally lets go to the compound and get this map sold.  Okay, well I don't think sneaking in would be a good idea, lets go talk to the guard captain.  Okay, yeah maybe stabbing Cassius wouldn't be a good idea, this guy doesn't look like he fucks around. quote:
Okay well that wasn't helpful, lets I guess collect Cassius and maybe Dellar will let us in that is doing something useful right?  Okay, just got back to the inn, sold the gems and rings to a merchant up front and now we have about $500 imperials baby!  Yeah, hand us the magic amulet...  Wait... is that a gas mask with the filters missing? ... damnit.  quote:
 quote:
=========================================== Okay thats the end of the update, feedback is appreciated this is the first LP I have done. So advice on the formatting would be nice. This game has alot of ~10+ screen info dumps, and would people like me to make the screenshots of these and put them in an album(s) on imgur to avoid cluttering up the OP and also providing some context to backstory which is one of the strong points of this game. Now with the update ended how should we deal with the bandits to get to Dellar. A) Violence? We might be able to gank their leader and scare them into releasing the prisoner. (This might get us killed) B) Talk to them figure out what the ransom is, and try to negotiate it lower. C) Find a third option? Maybe we could figure out an alternate solution? E) Maybe we could get help from one of the guilds to get access to the palace. This would tie us into another quest line from an independant run however. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 21:03 on May 27, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 27, 2017 09:47
|
|
: Business?
: Business it is then, 5 coins for a group grave and only 10 coins for those who like the finer things in life they can get a solo spot!
: Why would you want to fight our rats?
: We have turned away from the LORD! AND HAVE TURNED TO SIN! The old world fell due to decadence, and we need to return to the gods! First Acolyte Meru has spoken to them and he calls all the faithful to Ganezer to begin the restoration! Antidas struggle against Gaelius is nothing compared to the redemption of the world.
: My name is Camilla, I have never heard of a lady Athnea, isn't that just Athena misspelled?
: Yeah and Feng is a charlatan. Antidas is busy and so am I, why should I let you in?
: This doesn't seem suspicious, please get me to the palace this place suddenly seems unsafe.
|
Cathode Raymond posted:C I actually thought we might, we can critical kill Esbenus, but couldn't pass the intimidation checks and would get murdered. Also I agree this game does a good job of setting up the intro, Teron is pretty well polished and while still the tutorial area each of the start's has a much different feel.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2017 22:56
|
|
|
MiddleOne posted:VVVVVVV: *Mechanical spoilers* *Mechanical Spoilers* No thats one of the flaws of this game, there are many options and unless you are doing a hybrid build (my personal preference) you really are railroaded in certain instances at times. Luckily because we will have alot of specialist skills in civic's and skill point bonuses from intelligence the game generally will give us multiple non-violent paths we can utilize to keep things fresh, and we should still have a couple choices for participation votes throughout the game. Likewise once we get out of Teron the game opens up a bit in Act II & III where we can choose where to explore etc. and shift between factions, plus we will have to make some choices on what ancient artifacts we can use or power up as there is a cap. Also as a word of advice for people, combat in this game is hard yet not impossible and I won't give us an option to pick a fight that Bill Nye has no chance of winning, without me doing some incredible combat cheesing (which isn't fun) or me just using console commands, because the combat in this game has alot of RNG bullshit.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2017 08:40
|
|
|
Cathode Raymond posted:There are not really any save-or-die effects, and there is probably less save-scumming overall than Infinity Engine games just because there is less combat and the combat tends to be more decisive. Combat is rarely mandatory and usually takes the form of you vs a tough handful of enemies and is often decided in a few turns. However combat often comes down to whether you roll a crucial dodge or land an especially important knockdown hammer strike, and that's where the RNG really shows. Personally I don't think any skill checks are unworkable, there are some very difficult ones in this game and if I remember the check your talking about. I think you are talking about the monastery? I agree its bullshit, you can impersonate an Imperial Guard (The check is actually really easy if you are one), Throw the leader off the cliff and scare a couple away. Finally join them in the attack and holyshit it is hard... run across a bridge while archers shoot you, get up the wall while archers shoot you, its miserable. Luckily as a loremaster we can bypass all of that and get the rewards at the end of the quest through a secret back door. PurpleXVI posted:Are there any outright trap options or useless skills? Or is everything roughly equally handy? There are trap skills depending on playthrough, a big one is splitting your weapon points. If your going to fight alot pump all your combat skills into one offensive weapon and one defensive weapon. I.e Spear/Axe or Dodge/Block splitting your weapon skills is a bad idea. In regards to civil skills it really depends on your playthrough, all the dialogue skills have a good number of checks, and outside of the aforementioned gating checks. 3 or 4 points in a skill is usually enough to get by, the biggest trap I could say is trying to spread yourself too thin though. In this game you can't be "good" at everything. Likewise unless you plan on sneaking alot or stealing... don't put skill points into that it would be a waste. On our loremaster lockpick and traps can be useful as some ruins are indeed booby trapped and locked. Fundamentally the game dev did not like the idea that in say Skyrim, your warrior with minimal magic ability could end up the archmage of the College of Winterhold, while also simultaneously running the Dark Brotherhood and so on and so forth. The best way I would put the game is you need to set aside the mindset that you need to have 100% completion on everything or even just an "optimal" resolution to a quest. There are simply some things you can't do and almost every event does have multiple solutions, just sometimes they are pretty... obtuse? for lack of a better word, this is pretty much the closest thing I can think of to a grognard crpg possible before delving into roguelikes. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 21:47 on May 28, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 28, 2017 19:57
|
|
|
Sorry about this guys for some reason the game kept crashing every time I tried to launch it, I have managed to get it to work after uninstalling some video drivers that seemed to be causing the issues, then I got distracted by Steel Division. My goal is to get the next update out tomorrow, I have most of the Screenshots just need to get it all assembled, things are going to really start picking up from this point on.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 6, 2017 06:01
|
|
|
Part III: Let's Make a Deal! Alright lets leave Teron and go visit the bandit encampment... oh wait it looks like there is a commotion at the gate  quote:
 quote:
Okay so that didn't work, as seen we have the option of stalking him home. If it was just Aemolas we could take him, but he has his entire family who will shank us to death if we try this. If we didn't demand the repayment and paid to let him in he would have just given us some really lovely barbarian armor we could buy for like ~30 Imperials. However letting Aemolas in will unlock another quest to visit his village if we level up our word of honor rank (which determines how honest we are in dealings) where he may or may not have some valuables. Okay finally lets go visit the Bandit Camp and figure out their demands. Okay so its a dumpy little camp, there is maybe half a dozen bandits here holding Antidas useless cousin. This big guy up ahead looks like he should be in charge lets go talk to him.  Hey this is the head honcho, if we picked the comedy option to critical strike him several things would happen with critical strike 3 and a knife we could try to slit his throat if we succeed we kill him and can try to pass an intimidation check on the remaining bandits to scare them off... if we fail they turn hostile and would kill us, if we succeed they would run away. If we failed the critical strike attack he knocks us unconscious, but doesn't kill us and sends us to deliver ransom terms to Dellar. Also the other bandits kick us while we're down and our health is perma de-buffed by a few points, but our dodge score gets boosted. We could also demand the prisoner, but lol it starts combat and we die. quote:
Note if we choose, we can now try to convince Dellar that the ransom is 1000 Imperials and pocket the difference, there also could be an alternate angle here. House Aurelian has set up an outpost near Teron, which obviously is a huge danger, maybe House Darotan would be more willing to pay them 1000 Imperials to go attack the Aurelian Outpost. If we could pull this off we could probably get ourselves ingratiated to House Darotan. Also something about Esbenus seems interesting he doesn't look like a common raider. We could also just simply tell Dellar what the camp looks like and how best to attack it if we pass the perception check.  Hmm, I wonder what the background is most Imperial Guards don't get the opportunity to desert and even fewer bandits and raiders manage to live long enough to get grey hair.   Serving in the Imperial Guard sucks... wanna know why? It exposes you heavily to this games combat mechanics  However after describing how his raider bands failed miserably he drops these dimes of interesting information...     Yeah, go down the elevator platform in a place known as the Hellgate... wait that sounds suspiciously like an end game location... oh god I don't want to imagine what hosed up demons and poo poo are there and still kicking centuries after the apocalypse. Alright with that taken care of we can return to Dellar to let him know whats going on with the kidnapping situation.  quote:
So now we come to a major decision point, the Aurelian Outpost is now the gate for the next section of the game and now we have a few really important choices to make that will impact how Teron is resolved and what we are doing in Part II. Vote 1: Solving the Raiders A: We convinced Esbenus to take a 500 Imperial Ransom, we can get Dellar to give us 1000 Imperials and embezzle the difference B: Tell Dellar how to kill Esbenus and his bandits and rescue the useless cousin C: Convince Esbenus to attack the Aurelian Outpost for House Darotan Vote 2: Aurelian Outpost A: Try to talk our way in as a lore master and sabotage the machine for house Darotan B: Switch sides, lets see if we can fix the machine in the outpost for House Aurelian to ingratiate ourselves with the most powerful post-apocalypse side C: Same as above, convince the bandits to attack the outpost D: Find work with one of the various guilds like the Merchants/Thieves/Assassins/Imperial Guards to bypass the outpost. Even the Imperial Guard play through will give us plenty of ways to non-violently resolve the quest lines. ----- Bonus Content ----- Note: There are actually another two to three options for dealing with the outpost, that unfortunately we can't pass due to our build.  First we can simply go to the outpost and sneak in and sabotage the machine using sneaking skills and alchemy skills to build a bomb and collapse the mine. Note you can also talk your way in and do the same thing, we can't pass the sneak checks this is a good option for assassins or thief characters. Or we could use lore to figure out a way to sabotage the machine in a more elegant solution. Two we could simply assault the mine and try to kill the guards. This is naturally pretty stupid as highlighted by the following snarky death screen. The game has a bunch of death screens for dying in various ways, usually topical to the situation at hand some being much much worse than this.  Thirdly we can figure out how to poison the outpost to make attacking / sneaking in easier and soften it up.  go to the market and bribe the merchants into ratting out Rhaskos in the slums  He initially demands 100 Imperials, though you can bribe him down to 20 or you could just kill him and take his place using your disguise skill  You can either make your own poison or you can buy a weak poison from the thieves guild for 5 Imperials or a strong poison from the Boatmen of Styx for significantly more. Then go attack the outpost at your leisure, this makes it alot easier for combat skilled characters to attack. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Jun 7, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2017 08:36
|
|
gently caress off we're full
:What why won't you let us in were refugees raiders sacked our village
They all say that
:Yeah we found this nice young man wandering the woods and we felt we should keep him safe from harm
|
Kaboom Dragoon posted:What's most likely to leave Esbenus breathing by the end? He sounds like a solid guy for a kidnapper and thug. Well I will spoil this because it isn't a huge issue... Esbenus can survive and we will run into him in an act III location assuming we don't directly kill him ourselves, or send Dellar and his men to raid the bandit camp. He shows up at a different set of ancient ruins we can explore. MiddleOne posted:Are we getting more of the joke gamover screens? Yes OutofSight posted:Sounds like Esbenus and his merry band of muderous thugs found this game's version of "The Glow" form Fallout 1? I guess I can explain a bit about House Aurelian, they are the most powerful faction left after the apocalypse. Their leader Gaelius is a pretty competent guy, I would say he would be closest to say an Octavian type not particularly nice, but knows what needs to be done to win and willing to admit he needs others to complete his goal of winning the civil wars becoming Emperor. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Jun 8, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2017 21:14
|
|
|
As far as I can tell the votes look split between taking a skim of ransom money and paying Esbenus to attack the outpost I will give another 24 hours for people to vote,
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2017 00:17
|
|
|
Okay so from what I can discern we're gonna pay Esbenus to go attack the Aurelian Outpost, also yeah I will show our stats next update.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2017 00:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 21:09 |
|
|
Pvt.Scott posted:Yeah, that's pretty on the nose. The "optimal" way to play is to not spend any skill points and savescum through scenarios, spending the bare minimum of points to succeed at what you're trying to do by reloading multiple times if you fail and finding the magic numbers to skate through. People complained that the game made them do that. Yeah the game is really un-fun if you try to power game it in my opinion, the game really shines when you just try to wing it and then sometimes pull off crazy poo poo... the game always have options even for the most hilariously incompetently statted characters for the most part. Just modern RPG's even very good ones like the Witcher make people go crazy with "100% optimal completion run"!!! I went through blind on three playthroughs before looking at guides and felt I got a completed game and was astounded at all the poo poo I missed. Avalerion posted:My favorite thing is how on every single negative steam review pointing out these things the actual dev will show up and post "naw you are just bad/playing wrong, go try again with one of these minmaxed guides". Also yeah the Developer is insane. Plenty of stuff is gated, but as mentioned you can pretty easily play your way through the game without min-maxing, just sometimes people hit a hard check and then start beating their head against it to unlock the content. I did that trying to fight a group of thugs for an hour or two in Teron before I just embraced I wouldn't be able to accomplish everything in a play through and this game went from terrible to pretty fun in my eyes. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Jun 11, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2017 08:54
|
|
