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Artificer posted:I think the two mages (the young couple referenced in the lore) left because of a rant against "magical ethics" by...Urkis? I think? So I think they were inspired or something. Tannen. The guy who screwed us on the whole 'Orb of Many Ways' thing. Honestly, I'd love an opportunity to go 'hey maybe we can join forces or something' because Tannen's arguments make a disturbing amount of sense - maybe you SHOULD learn about stuff before using it as a weapon of last resort and blowing up the world. Also, gently caress the Ziguranth forever. Every spellcaster I have that gets that far joins up with the Grand Corruptor to burn that place to the ground (and then backstabs the Grand Corruptor because gently caress that guy). vdate fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Sep 8, 2017 |
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Sep 8, 2017 13:22
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| # ? May 13, 2024 16:06 |
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Time to end this.      And with that, the battle begins. Let’s look at what we’re up against.   The more offensively focused of the duo. Elandar is a powerful mage that relies largely on his negative energy spells, but mixes it up with his archmage spells every once in a while. Upon taking enough damage, he Phase Doors away, then attempts to heal/regenerate his way back up, stalling with tactical use of Freeze and Invisibility. As you can see, he’s managed to awaken the Staff of Absorption, which grants him a very powerful set of magic bonuses.   The more defensive focused of the duo, with significantly more armor, health, saves and all resist. In addition, Bone Shield and Spine of the World makes landing damage/debuffs an annoyance. Her focus is Corruptor/Reaver skills, and she’s largely content to debilitate you with Hexes/Curses/Diseases while Elandar is still alive. When it comes down to the wire, though, she’s no slouch in melee combat either.  We open with our usual salvo: toss up all our buffs (Temporal Form now included), throw down a Gravity Well, then try to land Cease to Exist (stuck to Elandar), Attenuate (failed to stick), and toss up a Rethread to braid Elandar and Argoniel together. With that done, it’s time to Channel Staff like we’ve never channeled a stave before. Both Elandar and Argoniel tend to focus on Aeryn while she’s alive, so we have the luxury of deciding who to focus on first – Elandar’s the obvious choice.  Here’s how things stand after the first few turns. Temporal Form is almost out, but we’re still in pretty good shape – Hidden Resources and a focus on damage via Channel Staff procs means we haven’t strained our Paradox too much, Unstoppable Force Salve has kept most of Argoniel’s debuffs off us and we’re pretty good on health thanks to careful shield use + high life regen. For his part, Elandar is down to slightly less than half health and has entered his ‘running away’ phase, so we’ll have to chase him down. Argoniel and Aeryn are still at it, though Aeryn might not last much longer. We haven’t been focusing on Argoniel, but she’s picked up a fair bit of damage from being Braided with Elandar and clipped by the occasional Rethread/Lightning firing at her. The portal over to the left is a summoning portal. There are four portals at each corner of the arena, each of them occasionally spitting out a demon/dragon/elemental/undead respectively. They can be closed by standing over said portal and activating the corresponding command orb, though they don’t summon monsters all too frequently. It’s up to you whether you choose to close the portals or not – for more offensively-minded builds, going out of your way to close them might take too long, but defensive builds might find themselves overwhelmed eventually.  After landing a few more hits on Elandar while running after him, we get caught up on this heavy bone giant summoned from the undead portal. While clearing it out, Elandar dies a somewhat ignominious death offscreen – braid damage from the bone giant and Webs of Fate damage from his attack finish him off, while we absorb his lightning spell entirely and heal from it thanks to our colossal lightning resistance + affinity.  After that, it’s down to Argoniel. Aeryn was overwhelmed and had to retreat, but she did her job of keeping Argoniel occupied. In our fight against Elandar she took a significant chunk of braid + Webs of Fate damage as well – it shouldn’t take too long to finish her off. We managed to stick an Attenuate on her, so if we can chip away just 5% more of her health Attenuate just might be able to finish her off.   Woo! Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the achievement for keeping Aeryn alive, but such is the price of progress.   There’s a couple of additional ways the ending can play out, revolving largely around the Charred Scar. If you fail to stop Elandar and Argoniel’s ritual there, then by the time you arrive at High Peak, their ritual has advanced to the point where killing them only mildly delays it – to stop it completely, the farportal must be destroyed from the other side. If Aeryn is still alive, she may volunteer to jump in and destroy it. Otherwise, you jump in and destroy the farportal, saving Maj’Eyal from Gerlyk’s wrath at the cost of cutting yourself off from it forever. And finally, if you play as a Yeek, jumping into the Farportal connects your mind to the remnants of the farportal network. In that instant, you spread the Way of the Yeek to every mind in the world, ushering in a new age of peace and psychic unity. Right now though, we’re a kick-rear end skeleton who didn’t have to bother with any of that stuff, so let’s collect the fruits of our labor.    The Pearl of Life and Death is a unique gem that offers all-round bonuses when carried. However, it can’t be imbued in a ring.    The Awakened Staff of Absorption is one of the strongest staves in the game, though like Telos’ Staff it can only be tuned to mage-type damage. There’s a couple more bonuses below the cut-off point: it grants an additional 15% spellcrit, allows us to read/speak the Sher’tul language when held, and can be used to absorb an enemy’s essence, instantly removing 30% of their health and boosting all our damage by 30% for 7 turns. The 200-power cost means that this can effectively only be used once per battle, though.  To exit the floor, we have to activate the Orb of Many Ways on these farportals that open up once Elandar and Argoniel are defeated. Now, let’s see what’s left for us to finish up.  Oh, looks like Aeryn made it back to the Sunwall. Good for her.  Now that we can read the Sher’tul language, we can finally see what those murals say.          Interesting. Now for our next destination.  This is probably a bad idea, but for the sake of completion, we’re gonna take a shot at it anyway.   Atamathon himself is a gargantuan golem with the highest health, armor, and general offensive stats in the game. Skill-wise, he comes with the usual golem loadout of high-powered 2h skills, a large selection of runes, plus a smattering of magical sustains, including Reflective Skin. He also comes with Giant Leap and Rush for distance-closers, and can use Arcane Pull and Irresistable Sun to keep enemies close. We almost certainly aren’t going to make it out of this. Everything else aside, we have no way of removing that Reflective Skin, which grants us a fairly high chance of killing ourselves purely through our own damage even before accounting for Atamathon’s own. Still, we have the Awakened Staff of Absorption, maybe that might be enough to turn the balance.  Hey, a good start. The Staff of Absorption took off a solid chunk of his health and boosted our damage by a significant amount. Maybe we could pull this o-  …nope. One solid hit from Atamathon completely shredded us, even through our various defenses. When you die in adventure mode, if you have any lives left, you end up respawning in this area – the Eidolon Plane.  You can chat with the Eidolon and request for more time to rest, or to let you rest eternally and end you right there. You can also request the Eidolon send you back, at which point you usually have the choice between respawning at the exact spot you died, or at your last spot on the worldmap. However, some areas don’t allow you to respawn on the worldmap – including the Temporal Rift and the Golem Graveyard. Once we have all our talents up, though, escaping from the Golem Graveyard isn’t too hard. With all our speed boosts up, we can just about make it to the exit in stopped time. Defeating Atamathon doesn’t yield much of a reward, but it does change his eye to its awakened form (not that impressive either, just a slightly larger fire damage bonus) and grant you two voratun amulets. There’s one more bonus boss we could take on…  …but we’re not going to bother. Our chances of survival aside, Linaniil is a slog even if you’re winning. The only enemy to come with multiple lives in the game (the occasional lich aside), Linaniil revives several times when you kill her, gaining more health and strength with every life. And unlike Atamathon, killing her has absolutely no benefit except for bragging rights.  If you do want to take her on, here are the capabilities of her base form just for reference. A weapon-user who can pile on the physical debuffs can do pretty well if they can manage their resources, particularly if they can reliably remove her sustains and burn away her mana. With them gone, Linaniil spends most of her turns re-activating them rather than attacking. Pack fire and physical resistance, though, because that Meteoric Crash can easily one-shot unprepared opponents.  Finally, we could just hop in the Infinite Dungeon and dungeon-crawl forever, or delve into our fortress farportal and grind for loot as long as our fortress energy holds out. For Skeletor, though, I’m gonna go with the canonical ending as presented in the winning text above.   The End
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Sep 8, 2017 16:34
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One year later… The Prides lie in ruins! The Sorcerers have been defeated! Orcs in all Var’eyal are in dismay, hunted by the Sunwall and their newfound allies from the West. The Scourge from the West is back in the west, but their legacy stays strong: the orc race is once more on the brink of destruction! But not all hope is lost. On the isolated Clork’s Peninsula lies the fifth Pride, Kruk Pride, unseen and unharmed by the Scourge. Yet not all is great there either - the Sunwall offensive has set up an outpost blocking the way to the mainland. But the worst threat comes from the peninsula itself, for the main inhabitants there are not the orcs, but the Atmos tribe, a civilization of giants whose mastery of steamtech makes them incredible foes… Races Orc  Orcs have a long and sad history. They are seen, and are, as an aggressive race that more than one time managed to imperil all of Maj'Eyal. But one year ago the Scourge from the West came and wiped four of the five Prides. And a hundred years ago King Toknor wiped all traces of orcs from Maj'Eyal. The orc race is dangerously on the brink of destruction. One wrong move is all that is needed. But they are strong and will face whatever is needed to ensure a future of their own! Stat modifiers: +2 Strength, +1 Dex, +1 Con, -1 Mag, +1 Will, +1 Cun Life Rating: 12 HP/Lvl EXP penalty: 25% An all-rounded race that performs reasonably well in any role, though melee combat is their forte. Orc racials grant them an activable damage boost based on number of enemies in sight, a chance to automatically remove mental debuffs under half health, a bonus to damage resistance and respen every time you kill an enemy and an activable instant skill that immediately removes several debuffs and heals you. Excellent when combined with the new steamtech classes. Yeti  Yetis are a towering mass of muscle. While normal yetis are non-sentient beasts this kind is special. A few orcs of the Kurk pride have mastered techno-psionics, allowing them to literally hijack a yeti's mind and transfer their own mind inside. Doing so drains their old knowledge and they need to start afresh, gaining considerable strength in the process; for the good of the Prides. Stat modifiers: +5 Strength, -3 Dex, +4 Con, 0 Mag, +1 Will, -1 Cun Life Rating: 13 HP/Lvl EXP penalty: 25% Yetis are even greater melee monsters than orcs, at least as far as their starting statline would have you believe. Their signature racial is Algid Rage, which grants every damage instance a chance to freeze your enemies for a few turns, and boosts icecube penetration while active. Later racials grant them bonus cold/physical resistance, a burst of automatic healing whenever hit by a debuff, and an activable cone-shaped mindblast that can confuse enemies. Whitehoof  A clan of minotaurs turned to necromancy when faced with imminent destruction. Whitehooves are resilient and magic imbued undead, hardened by their trials and made stronger by their undeath. They now seek to help their orc allies, in hope they will help them back. Stat Modifiers: +3 Strength, -1 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Mag, -3 Will, +1 Cun Life Rating: 14 HP/lvl EXP penalty: 30% Special: 100% Poison Resistance, 100% Bleed and Fear Resistance, 50% Silence Resistance, no need to breathe As undead minotaurs, Whitehooves suffer from the usual undead drawbacks (though the easy access to tinkers in the EoR campaign alleviates this slightly). Their unique racial trait is Death Momentum – every time they move, they gain a stack of Death Momentum, which increases their movement speed by 20%, but lose a stack every turn they do not move. Further investment in their racials allows them to gain more Death Momentum stacks and grants them flat damage reduction and damage bonuses based on the number of DM stacks, plus the ability to drain an enemy’s life to delay DM stack reduction. Very strong if their racials are heavily invested in, but doing so is a fairly generic-heavy endeavor. Classes Sawbutcher  A formidable behemoth of war using steamsaws to improve his deadliness. Their most important stats are Strength and Cunning. Life Rating: +2 HP/lvl Stat Modifiers: +5 Strength, +1 Con, +3 Cun A melee class that focuses on dual-wielding saws to rocket around the map and stab people in their faces. Sawbutchers are possibly the best all-round melee class, with offenses second only to the doombringer (and the requires-its-own-scale Arcane Blade) and several skills to reduce melee damage taken. They’re a bit plain playstyle-wise, though – most of their complexity comes from tinker/sustain choice, and they have few activable skills even compared to other melee classes. Gunslinger  A tinker who dual-wields steamguns to great effect. Their most important stats are Cunning and Dexterity. Life Rating: -1 HP/lvl Stat Modifiers: +4 Dex, +1 Con, +4 Cun Gunslingers are a tinker class who dual-wield guns for a tremendous amount of damage output, but that damage comes at a price – they have few defensive options, and rely largely on mobility, evasiveness and healing to survive. As with the sawbutcher, their offensive options are also rather plain, though they fare slightly better in that regard. Psyshot  Powerful psionics are able to enter a gestalt with steam generators and technology to enhance their own mental prowess. The Psyshot combines this ability to gestalt to enhance his mindstar all the while shooting her steamgun to devastate the enemy lines. Their most important stats are Cunning, Willpower and Dexterity. Life Rating: -1 HP/lvl Stat Modifiers: +3 Dex, +3 Will, +3 Cun One of the more interesting classes in TOME, the psyshot can best be described as something akin to a ranged mindslayer. Psyshots wield a gun in one hand and a mindstar in the other, and augment their shots with psionic attacks. Compared to the other tinker classes, they tend to fall behind damage-wise at first, and building one is slightly less intuitive than the above two. Nonetheless, they’re a very strong class in their own right, and can surpass the other two given time.
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Sep 8, 2017 16:35
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Amazing, as always. Hopefully Zigur spent themselves taking down Giant Robo over there. As for this, I'll go the vanilla route and vote for an Orc Gunslinger. Gotta make some use of all those artifact guns we kept finding!
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Sep 8, 2017 17:05
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I vote for Orc Swabutcher. Thanks again for doing this, I started playing again because of the LP and have won for the first time since then!
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Sep 8, 2017 17:07
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Orc Psyshot I tried one once and wasn't able to get it off the ground so I'd like to see how to do it.
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Sep 8, 2017 17:12
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Bo-Pepper posted:Orc Psyshot I recently won with the no-gun Psyshot, I wouldn't mind seeing how it's done with a regular build.
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Sep 8, 2017 18:20
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Let's double down on melee craziness: Yeti Sawbutcher. Any sawbutcher, really.
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Sep 8, 2017 18:22
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Sawbutchers are so boring. Turn on a million sustains. Bump your way to victory.
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Sep 8, 2017 18:27
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I want to see an Orc Psyshot. The Psyshot just sounds more interesting than the other two.
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Sep 8, 2017 18:54
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Ork Gunslinger!
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Sep 8, 2017 19:24
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Whitehoof Psyshot Also, did we have any deaths at all during the first run aside from Atamathon?
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Sep 8, 2017 19:32
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Yeti Gunslinger, if only because it's the closest we can get to playing Gunslinger Bear.
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Sep 8, 2017 20:09
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Yeti Gunslinger. Or, barring that, Yeti anything.
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Sep 8, 2017 20:28
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Orc Gunslinger. Sawbutchers are fun to play, but I suspect they wouldn't be much fun to watch in an LP, and I'd like to see something less caster-y after the Paradox Mage. Very mild spoiler for Embers: Maybe pick up antimagic from the dispenser to show that off?
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Sep 8, 2017 20:37
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Going with Orc Gunslinger as well. Just for the fun of it.
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Sep 8, 2017 22:44
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Psyshot, don't care what race.
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Sep 9, 2017 01:08
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Bo-Pepper posted:Orc Psyshot
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Sep 9, 2017 01:44
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Orc Psyshot
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Sep 9, 2017 02:11
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Orc Gunslinger.
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Sep 9, 2017 02:32
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Looks like Orc Psyshot and Orc Gunslinger are currently tied. I'm going to break the tie myself and go with the Psyshot because Gunslingers are about as interesting as a rock. Update will be up sometime in a day or two, hopefully.
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Sep 9, 2017 03:08
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Inadequately posted:Looks like Orc Psyshot and Orc Gunslinger are currently tied. I'm going to break the tie myself and go with the Psyshot because Gunslingers are about as interesting as a rock. Do you have any plans to show off the demon content from that expansion? Or is that far enough in the future you haven't really thought about it till after Embers?
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Sep 9, 2017 05:28
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Orc Psyshot, especially the gunless build. e: missed that the vote had ended, but request still stands.
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Sep 10, 2017 00:19
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I'll vote for a Psyshot
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Sep 10, 2017 01:05
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By popular demand, we will be an Orc Psyshot named Dr. Orktopus. (The reasoning for this name will be apparent eventually.) And upon that intro, we’re immediately tossed right into the thick of things. Steam giants are invading our home!  Luckily, with the help of our sawbutcher and gunslinger orc buddies, they don’t last very long. Now let’s take a look at what we have.  Not much. We start out with a steam generator that generates 5 steam/turn, two medical injectors with 100% efficiency and cooldown, and a basic healing/frost salve. Equipment-wise, we have a basic gun, mindstar, pouch of shots, linen robe and lamp.  As a quick refresher, here are the stats for the starting gun. The gun boosts shot speed to 600% and has a range of 6, so anything in range will be shot pretty much instantaneously unless they have projectile-slowing skills/equipment. It uses 2 steam per shot, but we’re more likely to run out of other resources (like shots or psi) first.  Our starting mindstar stats. The usual – pure mind damage, high armor penetration, slight bonus to mindpower and mental crit chance, but actual damage fairly miniscule.  Our basic shots. Nothing especially notable about them right now. And our robe and lamp are barely worth mentioning.  Now let’s look at our skills.  Our namesake skill and weapon mastery talent, from the Psytech Gunnery tree. Every time one of our bullets hits a target, we also punch the target with our mindstar from a distance. The mindstar punch has a large damage modifier, but with the mindstar’s low damage it’s still not that impressive right now, and it can’t be used while Psiblades is active. The real benefit of it is that every one of our basic shots can proc both ranged and melee attack bonuses, but we won’t be getting much benefit from that until later. It can also be activated for a shot that does boosted mind damage with a 7 turn cooldown. Since that doesn’t have the mindstar punch that the basic shoot talent grants us, we won’t use it that much later on, though. Remember that Mind damage can be successfully saved against, which heavily reduces the damage done.  The first skill in the Thoughts of Iron tree. A ridiculously useful sustain that grants us bonus fire retaliation damage, debuff length reduction and all resistance. However, activating it drains 4 steam per turn, which drops our total to 1 per turn at the moment. We’ll have to pick up a better steam generator soon.  The first skill in the Mechstar tree. Knocks away and dazes enemies around us. Good crowd-control skill for a class that doesn’t want to be in melee range.  The eponymous skill of the Gestalt tree. A sustain that increases psi every time we use a steamtech skill, and steampower after we use a psionic skill. Not very notable in and of itself, but a prerequisite for more useful skills, and more psi always helps.  The first skill in the Action at a Distance tree. One of our bread-and-butter attacks, Condensate is an AOE fire attack with a decently low cooldown that applies Wet to enemies affected. We’ll be using it a lot throughout the game.  multiplied by 33% for each charge, and apply the Wet effect. The effect will fizzle if the charged grid is currently occupied by a creature or not in sight. The damage increases with your steampower. Forget all that stuff about accumulating charges and all that – it’s helpful if you can leverage it, but often requires a bit too much setup to work. The real benefit of Vaporous Step is that it’s an instant, completely accurate range 7 teleport. Toss down a step locator whenever you’re in trouble, then instantly deactivate the sustain and hop over (while blowing up in your enemy’s face, to boot). On the generic side, we start with Combat Training, Physics and Chemistry (the tinker skill trees), the Orc racial tree and Steamtech/Engineering. That last one is going to go largely neglected (it’s not too useful compared to some of the other stuff we could be spending generics on), but let’s take a look at our orc racials.  Instant 10% (give or take) damage boost once every few (well, a bit more than a few) turns. A good start.  Now, before we take a look around, let’s take care of this tunnel.  The tunnel is a long, winding underground zone. Steam giants of all types block our way. The Steam Giant Gunslinger is one of the generic steam giant enemy types – none of the really fancy gunslinger skills, but just the dual-gunwielding can prove a problem.  Another common steam giant enemy type, the steam giant berserker is pretty self-explanatory.   Vaporous Step in action. Plunk down a step locator at a point in range and in sight, deactivate sustain to hop over.  Moving along. These small narrow tunnels don’t give us much room to maneuver, but at least we only have to face one enemy at a time.  The counterpart to the steam giant berserker, the steam giant guard is a bulwark instead. Luckily, they don’t come with most of the really troublesome bulwark skills.  Despite the fancy-looking giant cannon, the steam giant gunner is generally easier to face than the gunslinger, on account of only wielding one gun.  At the end of the tunnel, we face the leader of the strike force, Commander Fralor. Fralor is a steam giant berserker with Spring Grapple (a steamtech skill that pulls us into melee range), Battle Shout (health+stamina restore) and Unstoppable.  Our strategy is largely to just walk backwards and condensate/shoot at him, then Vaporous Step away whenever he Spring Grapples us. It’s not a complicated strategy, but then again this is just the first boss. As Fralor falls, we hit level 4 and pick up a bunch of fancy toys.   For now, this is useful largely for the mindpower boost. The additional effect comes in a bit later.   An upgrade to our plain old gun. It also grants us the Ceasefire skill, which does massive shot damage and dazes enemies hit, but has an 8 turn cooldown and a very high steam cost.  An upgrade to our mindstar. Not much, but every little helps. We also picked up the Rod of Recall.  Since we invested in Dex to use the Counterpoint, we only have one new skill we can pick up at the moment. One of the drawbacks of the psyshot is that with three different core stats, getting a decent early-game skill spread takes a little while longer, compared to other classes (such as the Paradox Mage, where Magic investment was pretty much all we needed to access anything). It’s less of an issue in the compressed Embers campaign, where the early game doesn’t last very long by comparison, though. Anyway, Boiling Shot is the second skill in our Psytech Gunnery tree. It does bonus damage and causes an explosion whenever it hits a wet foe. The Condensate-Boiling Shot combo is often enough to eliminate large groups of common enemies for at least the first half of the game.  Finally, we spot a structural weakness in the tunnel. A quick bomb drop and recall makes short work of the tunnel. No time to rest on our laurels, though, we have to press the counterattack.  The Vaporous Emporium is the steam giant outpost closest to the orc pride. Whitehooves and Yetis start here – only the orcs have to deal with that whole tunnel thing. Of course, since the tunnel means extra loot and EXP, we’re coming out on top.   The Vaporous Emporium is a large mountainous area reminiscent of Daikara, with the usual steam giant enemies. These hastily abandoned market stalls are scattered throughout, and we can loot them for free gold and items.  Steam Giant Commoners are found only in the Vaporous Emporium. They have no skills and their only pattern of ‘attack’ is to run away and occasionally cry for help. We, uh, may not be the good guys in this scenario.  These machines are automated stores – we last saw one in the tinker cave in the main campaign, as you’ll recall. They can be accessed to purchase their stock, and reprogrammed to teleport to Kruk Pride.  We found an ad by one of the stores. The giants sure are committed to the whole steam motif.  Steam Giant Yeti Riders are fancy berserkers who can use Ice Claw, and cripple enemies to reduce their speed.  And speaking of yetis, these pet yetis pop up here and there, but they don’t pose much of a threat compared to their wild cousins. Their only skill of note is Howl, which alerts all nearby yetis to your presence.  The stuff we looted from stores on this floor. It’s a start – at least it’s better than ‘literally nothing’.  Another advertisement on the next floor.  These attack yetis and guard yetis are a step up from their tamed brethren. They can use Rushing Claws to close in, and cripple/Ice Claw us as well.  Kaltor, eh? We’ll keep that in mind.  Ruh-roh. A mindslayer/bulwark yeti randboss popped out of this chest. Our first proper challenge of the run. It’s a good thing we’re a psyshot and can toss psionic attacks at him – a gunslinger would have found getting past the shield wall hard, and even a sawbutcher wouldn’t have lasted long in melee combat this early in the run.  As with Fralor, our strategy is running away and tossing Condensates at him from a very long distance. He can still damage us with Brainfreeze from a distance, but it’s preferable to him closing in and stabbing us. Eventually, he falls and we level up from his death. Now that we’ve picked up some more stats, let’s look at the new skills we invested in.  The second Thoughts of Iron skill. Lowers fear/sleep resistance and makes enemies fail talents sometimes. Talent fail is always useful.  Our Vaporous Step now restores steam and health whenever we use it. Very helpful.  The raw damage is okay, but the really helpful bit is that it creates a massive cone-shaped area of solidified air walls for a few turns, potentially trapping a large amount of angry enemies in a bubble while we safely stroll away. A very potent area management weapon.  On the third level of the Vaporous Emporium, we run into High Guard Talosis shortly after our entry. He’s a steam giant gunslinger who appears to be wielding his eponymous gun (the one which we’re currently also using), so this will be an interesting battle.  Solidify Air in action. We can just sit and chill for a bit whenever we’re threatened, while all he can do is wait there. Thanks to this (and the fact that we can outdamage him massively, that helps too), Talosis falls shortly afterwards.   We sure are picking up a lot of yeti-related items today. For a low-level cloak, it’s okay, but we can do better later on.   While clearing out the rest of the level/stores, we run into this public service announcement.   And another ad from Kaltor. He appears to have relocated his business.  With the Vaporous Emporium cleared out, we now have lots of gold, loot and EXP under our belt – enough to pick up the last two tier 2 skills from our currently open skill trees.  An upgrade to our Gestalt skill. Grants us a tiny shield every time we use a steamtech talent. Not much, but every little helps.  An upgrade to our Metalstar skill, Bloodstar saps a small amount of health from every foe affected by Metalstar for a few turns.  And our second orc racial, which grants us a free mental debuff removal whenever we go below half health.  Now that we have time to spare, let’s check out our little town. The usual amenities are on sale – heavy and light armor, standard weapons and infusions.  In addition, this store sells tinker implants and schematics, and will grant you the Physics/Chemistry trees for 100 gold each if you lack them – a pittance compared to their main campaign cost of one completed escort mission, one cat point and 500 gold.  There’s also a saw store and a steamgun store, plus the automated stores we transferred here. We’ll save our money for the moment, though.     While relaxing back at home for a bit, we borrowed a book from the local library.    And had a chat with this minotaur over a drink. We’ll keep an eye out for Nektosh.  Now, here’s the reason we’ve been saving our money.   We’ll play along for now, and head on over to Kaltor.  The chests on the floor are all locked. Naturally, Kaltor has the key.  While it’s a very tempting prospect, it’s far better to play along with Kaltor than to kill him right away. Why?  Because Kaltor is the only decent moneysink in Embers of Rage. Almost all his equipment is artifact-level, and he updates his stock at several points through the campaign. Attacking him and clearing out his guards (a battle we could probably win right now, though it would be chancy) grants you the key to all his chests, but he doesn’t drop his stock upon being killed. Despite the gold we looted, we don’t have enough to afford all that we want yet, but it’s a good idea to check the place out first. We’ll almost certainly pick up those Brass Goggles when we can afford it, and maybe one of the artifact shots. Umbraphage, Dreamweaver and the Cloth of Dreams would be nice to have, but we can hold off on those and see how things play out for now. And of course, the Blood of Life is always a tempting prospect, but it costs a pretty penny. We’ll head back to our village and do a bit of offscreen shopping, first. Next update, we’ll hopefully be a little more kitted out, and ready to get into some yeti heads. Inadequately fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Sep 10, 2017 |
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Sep 10, 2017 12:48
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I still have a hard time deciding if you're the good guy or the bad guy in Embers of Rage. I mean, you do bad things... but by and large you do them to assholes who deserve it.
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Sep 10, 2017 17:41
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Skeletal Emancipation? Not sure I like the sound of that.  Or "Rectal Carpeting" for that matter.
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Sep 10, 2017 18:29
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Zaodai posted:Or "Rectal Carpeting" for that matter. Just as long as it isn't shag.
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Sep 11, 2017 02:01
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PurpleXVI posted:I still have a hard time deciding if you're the good guy or the bad guy in Embers of Rage. I mean, you do bad things... but by and large you do them to assholes who deserve it. I'd say it's more between neutral guy or bad guy. I see two main possibilities, depending on how you interpret orc culture: 1. The orcs are basically the Krogan, in that while they have been made to suffer enormously, that suffering comes as a direct result of their own behavior; everyone is to blame and no one is innocent. 2. The orcs are basically Kender, only they also disembowel you and set you on fire, in which case their continued existence is an unforgivable oversight.
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Sep 11, 2017 04:48
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Wonderslug posted:I'd say it's more between neutral guy or bad guy. I see two main possibilities, depending on how you interpret orc culture: A bit of the problem the older versions of D&D had: The book says Orcs are always Chaotic Evil. Okay, so you kill their rampaging horde of murderous warriors to save the city. A Good action! But then you stumble on their camp. Is is morally right (in the context of D&D alignment) to kill the women and children? The book says they're ALL Chaotic Evil, after all, but you're still killing women and children, and non-combatants in general. So you see these particular Orcs being hunted down by their kind despite being the engineers and medics of their society, but they still kill the poo poo out of everything against them when thrown into it and people still see them as evil rampaging orcs like all the others.
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Sep 11, 2017 05:41
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Wonderslug posted:I'd say it's more between neutral guy or bad guy. I see two main possibilities, depending on how you interpret orc culture: Or, like most other things in the setting, we can find a way to blame the Halflings.
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Sep 11, 2017 12:34
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Zaodai posted:A bit of the problem the older versions of D&D had: The book says Orcs are always Chaotic Evil. Okay, so you kill their rampaging horde of murderous warriors to save the city. A Good action! But then you stumble on their camp. Is is morally right (in the context of D&D alignment) to kill the women and children? The book says they're ALL Chaotic Evil, after all, but you're still killing women and children, and non-combatants in general. Speaking of which, in earlier versions of the game (not sure when, sometime before I started getting into it), there was a zone called the Orc Breeding Pits. The main enemies in it were orc babies and Orc Broodmothers, gargantuan bloated wombs covered with babies and breasts. Clearing it out caused orc patrols to slow down/stop spawning. This zone was eventually removed from the game for being generally bad and tasteless. People still got up in arms about it because gamers are terrible people, and to this day 'Orc Breeding Pits restoration' is one of the most popular addons. I won't be showing it off because amongst other reasons, it's not technically part of the game anymore, but you can look it up in addons if you really want to. (Please don't tell me if you do, I do not want to know.) (Also I just realized it's hinted at in the 'Shunned Kruk' lore. Oh well, it's an oblique enough reference that you wouldn't get it unless you were already familiar with it and reading closely.) Inadequately fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Sep 11, 2017 |
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Sep 11, 2017 14:00
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I remember that from the earlier LP of this game It was some of the most tryhard edgelord poo poo I've seen in my life. It was Karen Traviss level garbage
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Sep 11, 2017 14:21
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Inadequately posted:Speaking of which, in earlier versions of the game (not sure when, sometime before I started getting into it), there was a zone called the Orc Breeding Pits. The main enemies in it were orc babies and Orc Broodmothers, gargantuan bloated wombs covered with babies and breasts. Clearing it out caused orc patrols to slow down/stop spawning. There is a reason that Kruk pride fled from the other orcs with instructions to A)hide the women, and B)don't even ask what the other prides did, better to not know.
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Sep 11, 2017 15:25
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The breeding pits weren't exactly tryhard edgelord garbage, they were mostly just gross. Despite that, they also helped give a bit of depth to the orcs, by explaining just how desperate they were and how ruined and hosed up the remnants of their society were after losing the fight against the humans and halflings. They helped give a sense that the orcs had been pushed literally to the brink of extinction and that this had in no way helped make them less crazy, as a society. There's probably a better way of getting it across, but it was nice that something tried to do it. The only reason I could see to re-implement it exactly as it was, though, would be for the sake of giving the East some more content, since it's kind of sparse. The actual dungeon itself was kind of uninspiring in terms of gameplay. The short version of the fluff revealed in the Breeding Pits was that when the Orcs got pushed out of the West, the humans and halflings also burned down all of their actual towns and villages, where most the women and children were. What remained, in the East, was literally just military training encampments, staffed by 99% men. So in order to avoid a total population collapse, the orcs resorted to a variety of creepy magical experiments to allow their remaining women to still produce the population necessary for an entire civilization(with the high casualties from constant warfare and military training) to stay afloat demographically. And then it noted that the lead researcher realized what an utterly hosed up thing he'd done and killed himself.
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Sep 11, 2017 15:36
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 Here’s how things stand. We didn’t do all that much shopping in the end, but we did pick up a new steam generator implant and ditched one of the medical injectors, then swapped out the remaining injector for a better one with half the cooldown. Equipment-wise, we picked up a belt that gives us a bit more willpower and the Wind Worn Shot.  We’ll hopefully find a better set by the endgame, but for now these will work out, and they weren’t too expensive an investment. In the meantime, we’ll hang on to our gold so we can afford some of the actual endgame-quality equipment Kaltor has. Some more tinker schematics would be nice, but we’ll hold off on that unless we get really unlucky and don’t find any decent ones by midgame.  Anyway, it’s off to our next location, the Yeti Caves.  The yeti cave is a large, icy cavern with twisting walls. Wild animals are abundant here, as well as the eponymous inhabitants.   The common yetis pose no real threat to us at the moment. If we weaken them enough, we can use the Yeti Mind Controller to mind control them, hijacking their minds and sending them back to Kruk Pride. It’s actually hard to hold back enough to weaken them - we had to sit around for a few turns waiting for this one to chip away his health with Molten Iron Blood retaliation damage, for reference.  If we use all eight charges and successfully mindhack eight yetis, we gain the Yeti Psychoportation Beacon, which can be used eight times to summon a trained yeti to our location once the yetis are trained. I’ve never really used it, but an emergency summon can always be useful in a pinch, I suppose. Completing this quest for the first time also unlocks the Yeti race. While our mission here is largely complete, might as well finish the job and clear the rest of the place out.   The Condensate-Boiling Shot combo in action. Since the Vaporous Step explosion also wets foes, that’s a decent opener as well. Late-game, it can be hard to successfully beat saves and inflict Wet to rely too heavily on it, though.  On the third floor of the Yeti Caves, we run into the big daddy of yetis. The Yeti Patriarch knows Algid Rage, Rush, Knockback and Ice Claw. He’s nowhere near a patch on the yeti mindslayer we defeated several levels ago, though.  We picked up a set of randart light armor that grants a small set of all-round elemental resistances (which is admittedly an improvement over our current one, so on it goes) and this Yeti Muscle Tissue. Maybe we’ll find a use for that later.    On our way out, we stop to appreciate the indigenous art. From clearing out the yeti caves, we hit level 12, so it’s time to do some investing. With our first cat point, we’re going to unlock the Steamtech/Avoidance tree, a tree shared with the Gunslinger and their primary defensive tree.  Automated Cloak Tessellation grants us a small amount of flat damage reduction and a chance to deflect projectiles. As with most flat damage reduction talents, it won’t save us from big hits, but shaves off a lot of the threat of damage-over-time effects, especially when an enemy stacks several different kinds on us. Drains 3 steam per turn, and requires a cloak to activate. Our Steampower isn’t very good right now, though, so the flat damage reduction is lackluster right now.  Cloak Gesture creates a small wall of fire that blocks line of sight, and at max level enemies can lose track of us. We probably won’t be maxing it out, though. The main use of it at lower levels is to set up for the next skill in the tree.  This sustain provides an automatic instant heal once every several turns when no enemies are in sight. The heal can crit, and becomes very potent and rapid with further investment. Great on a gunslinger, amazing on the far more defensive psyshot. As a side note, the heal activates when no enemies are in your sight, not vice-versa – thus, getting blinded will trigger the heal because you can’t see any enemies.  And with one more point to spare, we’ll invest in the third Thoughts of Iron skill, Psionic Mirror. With further investment, Psionic Mirror can clear several mental debuffs at once. Enemies can still resist the mirrored debuffs if they save against it, but we’ll still be cleared of the debuff/s nonetheless. With our new skills, we’re a good bit more defensive, but at the cost of about 5 steam per turn. That’s the reason why we picked up a new steam generator earlier.  Now that we’ve cleared out the Yeti Caves, the Sunwall Outpost opens up. If we clear it out, we can open a path to the mainland of Var’eyal.  Before we do that, let’s poke around our starting continent first. Down here is Krimbul territory – the home of the Whitehooves. We’ll have to check that zone out later once we’ve cleared out a couple more areas.  These mountains are steam-giant territory, and the main bulk of the Atmos Tribes resides here. Taking them on at this point would be suicidal, so we’ll just leave it alone for now.  Upon entering the Sunwall Outpost, we’re joined by a fellow orc buddy. This one happens to be a gunslinger. As long as they don’t get in the way, we’ll take all the help we can get.  The Outpost is a large area reminiscent of the Rhaloren Camp or the Prides – a large field filled with densely-packed buildings, with impassable trees and fences breaking up the path. The most common enemies are Sunwall Sun Paladins and Sunwall Guards, basic bulwark-types. The Sun Paladins don’t know too many of the really troublesome skills, but they come with Chant of Fortitude to extend their HP, and focus mostly on shield Sunpal skills.  Sunwall mages and Sunwall mage recruits are the second most common enemy. They focus largely on anorithil skills, particularly light and fire spells.  While clearing out the buildings, we found this dropped diary entry.  Sunwells are scattered throughout the fields. Standing around one provides you with increased light/sight radius, light damage and blindness resistance, and bonus see invis/stealth.  Sunwall archers are pretty much just archers – though given what archers are currently like, ‘just archers’ can be challenging enough in and of itself.  One good thing about being a psyshot – few of our AOE effects/skills cause friendly fire, so we can spam them around ourselves or our friends without undue worry. They still get in the way of our actual shots, though.  On the next floor, we’re joined by an orc sawbutcher instead. Also helpful, but has a penchant for getting in the way of shots, or wandering off and getting stuck on terrain. Oh well, we can deal without him if that happens.  The polar opposite of the sunwell, the moonwell decreases light/sight radiance, increases stun/freeze resistance and grants a small amount of stealth to anyone standing within its aura.    We pick up a few interesting points of correspondence from the mailroom.  Clearing out this floor wasn’t much of a challenge. Let’s hope the same holds true for this vault.  Wonder of wonders, it did – just regular sunwall guards for the most part, higher-leveled than their non-vault counterparts but not that much more trouble than the usual. Sunwall Outpost vaults have a high chance of containing Sunwall Vindicators instead – elite sun paladins twice the level of their non-vault cousins with a focus on two-handed Sun Paladin skills. I was kind of hoping there’d be one I could show off/test our might against, but I suppose ‘not dying’ is a decent consolation prize.  We’ve been picking up a few tinkers here and there – not much, but we might as well make use of what we’ve got. We craft a Mental Stimulator for bonus Cunning, an Iron Grip for disarm resistance, Rocket Boots for an emergency speed boost and two Acid Grooves for our steamgun/mindstar.  Looks like the third floor buddy is also a sawbutcher. I’d have preferred a gunslinger since they don’t get in the way as much, but you take what you can get.  Among other issues, he keeps loving blinding me with his Sun Infusion.  Hah, well, that explains all those letters we keep finding.  Not long after, we run into Outpost Leader John. John is for the most part a souped-up Sun Paladin (the basic kind that staffs this place), but he comes with a couple of new Celestial skills.   Astral Path shoots out a high-speed ball of negative energy at a target location, which teleports the user into said location once the ball reaches it. Solar Orb is a bouncing ball of positive energy that travels towards the target location, then back to the user, searing all enemies hit along the way and reducing its own cooldown once it returns to the user. Both of them are skills from an old addon Celestial class, the Ethereal, that Darkgod briefly considered making official but eventually decided against. If you look it up in addons, you can probably find an updated version or two if you want to give it a try.  Mind Drones in action. They fly slowly, but the fact that you launch five drones means it’s hard for the target to dodge. They have a pretty high chance of being shrugged off, but at least you get five chances for the effect to stick.  Taking him down is a bit of a slog thanks to his Healing Light, but seeing as how we can outheal, outdamage and outrun him, the outcome was never really in doubt. With his death, the Sunwall Outpost crumbles, and the path to the mainland is now clear. Let’s see what else we’ve got.   The thrilling conclusion to that little saga.   And a nifty little amulet. Bonus fire damage and steam generation? We’ll take it.   Clearing out the rest of the buildings, we find one final letter. I must say, this Tantalos fellow is not exactly endearing himself to me.  Now that we’ve taken down the Sunwall Outpost, we can travel to slightly more familiar environs, though we’ll have to keep an eye out for all these drat anorithil/sun paladin patrols. Defeating Outpost Leader John with any two tinker classes also unlocks tinker classes for the main campaign, and causes the tinker escort to start showing up.   And Kaltor updated his stock slightly. The Eye of the Wyrm could be useful, as could that ring of misery – with our Psyshot mechanics, we essentially have double the chance to proc its gloom effects with every shot. We’ll need more gold for that, though, and I know just where to get it. Looks like we’ll be headed out to the high seas in the next update.
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Sep 12, 2017 19:24
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Man, Kaltor never stocked anything THIS cool when I played.
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Sep 12, 2017 20:04
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I love that the Steam Giant's intro letter is "We could totally kick all your asses because we are better than you in every conceivable way, but, uh... if you could spot us some guns, and money, and maybe an army or two, we wouldn't turn it down..."
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Sep 12, 2017 20:38
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On one hand, the elves are clearly racist and some of them literally want to genocide all orcs. On the other hand, every concern the racists had was valid, and in not killing you when the racists said to, the ones who thought orcs could be redeemed already got murdered and shown that they were wrong to let you live. We're the baddies, aren't we?
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Sep 12, 2017 21:10
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KittyEmpress posted:On one hand, the elves are clearly racist and some of them literally want to genocide all orcs. We also only started the rebellion because the racists decided to strike first. There's one bit I should've mentioned in a mob description earlier: the Atmos invasion force's armor was of Allied Kingdoms manufacture, and the Kruk orcs would've noticed where the Atmos got their shiny new equipment - going on the offensive is a fairly reasonable response to someone who, by all appearances, is trying to organize your genocide by proxy. By the time you figure out it was just one rogue commander, you've already started the war and killed their ruler's lover. Given their status as our Unwitting Instigator of Doom, I am so sad there was no lore-compatible way to make Trelle a halfling. 
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Sep 12, 2017 21:26
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