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Speaking of voices, on one of my playthroughs I had the female new age voice drop a pretty big hint about some endgame stuff when the Dark Savant popped up and threw the fake astral dominae at the party. It was one of those things that probably don't mean anything on a first playthrough, but is a pretty big "woah" moment on a 2nd time through. It's little touches like that that really endears this game to me.
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Aug 20, 2020 03:06
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Zurai posted:If you can beat that fight at this point, I'd love to see it. I usually have to come back closer to level 20, and even then it takes a couple reloads. It's generally considered the hardest fight in the game. Seconding this, that fight was the only fight that really gave me a hard time during my playthrough, and I'd love to see you try it at your current level, so take the long way back. Actually, set up a portal at the T'rang base, go pick up the Cane of Corpus, then take the long way back.
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Aug 20, 2020 12:15
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Zurai posted:If you can beat that fight at this point, I'd love to see it. I usually have to come back closer to level 20, and even then it takes a couple reloads. It's generally considered the hardest fight in the game. Nailed it on the second try.  Once I get the video chopped into screenshots, and get post up, prepare to be dazzled by my pro strats.
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Aug 21, 2020 20:21
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I bow to the master. Definitely interested to see how you managed it.
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Aug 21, 2020 21:19
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Croc sells mana stones, usually. And you can sell them back and they get recharged. Great way to grind out magic. e: and if the fight you're referring to is the one I'm thinking of, holy crap if you managed it at this level. That fight is HORRIBLE.
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Aug 23, 2020 02:56
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Update 007: Programmed To Kick rear end So the party wakes up in one of the towers of Marten's Bluff, having, among other things in their pockets, a fake Astral Dominae(indicating that the Rattkin have clearly ganked the real thing from the Dark Savant, hence his flipout) and a quest item from the T'rang that needs bringing to Arnika. But what's the fun in that? Let's have a detour.    So the Swamp has five exits, starting at north and going around clockwise they are: Bayjin, The Mine Tunnels, The Southeast Wilderness, Marten's Bluff and Trynton. As far as I'm aware no things in the game will ever directly point you to entering Bayjin from the Swamp or to entering the Mine Tunnels at all. In fact, you could beat the game entirely without entering Bayjin(assuming you're up for one of the less "perfect" endings to a major quest), but beating the game without entering the Mine Tunnels would be... rough. Technically I suppose it could be done if you're allied with the Umpani and are all in for spiderslug genocide and thus do not give a gently caress about pissing off the T'rang, but if you're friends with the T'rang you'll need to take this path or, as mentioned, abuse the combat-pauses-time mechanic to run past where NPC's would otherwise warn you to stay out.    Along the way Chewbecka eats a Drain from yet another giant ant queen. I can't wait to be done with this area.     One thing I generally appreciate about the area design of Wizardry 8 is that for the most part, each area flows into the next. Like you don't just warp from the Swamp into the middle of the Mine Tunnels. There's a short transitory period where things get less boggy and marshy and more greeny and cliffy.    On first arrival the Mine Tunnels are always deceptively peaceful.      And here we go. What I'll be fighting the rest of the time here. loving Tanto Wasps. They're not fundamentally tough to beat, the worst their stings can really bring is a bit of damage and the Sleep condition which is probably the least bad thing an enemy could inflict at this point, they just keep loving coming.  I clear out the first group but get turned around in the fighting to avoid getting pincered and having wasps reach my squishy backline, at which point even more wasps show up from my right flank and this time they brought friends.   Just look at all those drat red dots. I scatter the nearest Tanto wasps, partially by Stony managing to make them Afraid, and charge the Blooddrinkers and androids who are plinking at me from a distance.   While I chase the Blooddrinkers over to these huts and try to finish them off, Werdna spots someone potentially friendly in the distance, note the yellow dot on the radar.  Hmmm... looks like a Savant android. But those are always hostile, aren't they? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyhGCvIdtZw So we're off to a good start with RFS-81 here. He's programmed to be fanatically loyal to the Dark Savant, and he thinks we're the Dark Savant. He's also apparently programmed to attack and dethrone god, which is a further bonus and will feature well on his yearly performance report. Note that I somehow managed to initiate a dialogue with him just as combat started, never had that happen before and it made things a bit buggy. For instance, after the fight RFS-81 wasn't showing as part of the party formation at all, and I had to boot him and reinvite him before he did. I didn't want to enter a battle with that bug as I have no idea how it would interact with anything. Pros of RFS-81: Will go anywhere with us, has the laundry list of resistances that all Savant Androids do, punches like a truck. Tends to yell out "TERMINATOR MODE" before punching a boss to gibs. Cons of RFS-81: Even though Monks normally learn Psionics, RFS-81 will not as he literally lacks a brain.  He gets welcomed to the party with a punch party against a bunch of wasps, and once that's sorted and the slime cleaned off I bring him along. The main reason for this is that A) I have an empty slot anyway and B) RFS will, unlike any other RPC, stay where you leave him rather than returning to his "spawn," which means that if I bring him along, I don't have to haul my rear end back to the goddamn Mine Tunnels and collect him if the thread vote should remain in favour of keeping him once we get back to Mt. Gigas and Saxx.     The "base camp" for the Mine Tunnels contain a bit of mediocre loot, but as I'm collecting up the last of it, a couple of giant spiders spawn in and notice me. I wouldn't even have commented on it except that they try a novel strategy for engaging me.   One of them crawls into the level geometry to hide from me, which would probably be effective against archers, but RFS just reaches in and yanks its heart out like a Mortal Kombat fatality.   The way onwards is going up along that steep incline, but there's a reason to come into the little cleft below it first. Though you should be careful as that cleft sometimes spawns unicorns, and unicorns in Wizardry 8 are not noble and lovely creatures, instead they are huge assholes that you want to avoid at all costs.    There's a fixed-spawn Amulet of Healing down in the cleft, which is a nice find. Firstly it's an improvement over all the generic +1 AC misc. gear and secondly it has a mild HP regeneration effect which can also matter over longer fights, as well as saving you needing to waste MP on healing spells after fights.       The Mine Tunnels are, verticality excepted, probably the smallest area in the game, content-wise and size-wise. The odd part is also that no part of the game ever references it, as far as I'm aware. No one tells you that the Mine Tunnels have a back entrance to Lower Marten's Bluff, or that there are are a whole two recruitable PC's here.      I think getting this hint, like some others in the game, is down to a check against whether any of your characters have a sufficiently high Senses stat, or possibly it's a Scouting check for your ranger.    This sign isn't kidding, btw, if you step on the pressure plate the party gets insta-crushed. So let's not. Instead let's go back and poke the secret switch rock.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNSSBhkLX8I Meet Tantris, he's a T'rang Samurai. Like most recruitables in the game, he's not fundamentally bad, especially as Samurai is a decent class that you could usually always use another of, since they can use most swords(but are slightly restricted in armor compared to normal Fighters, Valkyries and Lords). Unfortunately, he starts at a very low level considering how in-the-boonies he is(level 6) and will not go with you to the final area of the game. We've already met the three RPC's that will: Saxx, Vi and RFS. It feels like an oversight, frankly, that you have an Umpani RPC to bring into the endgame but not a T'rang RPC to bring into the endgame.   The outpost doesn't contain anything other than Tantris(and a slight clue to another puzzle about a minute down the road which you can brute force in like a second once you figure out the logic, anyway), so it's time to head for the exit. Thankfully the outpost has a second one that takes us out through the laser grid and on the other side of the Crush You Flat-plate.   By the way, much like in Trynton, assume I'm cutting out a fight with another dozen Tanto Wasps between every lump of screenshots. In hindsight, the Mine Tunnels may actually be a decent place for grinding as the Tanto Wasps give out a lot more XP than they're worth in terms of the danger they present. I guess if you got hit by like 20 of them or something they'd be scarier since they could envelop you and sting your squishy back line if you were in the open, but they never really manage to threaten me, just to function as a roadbump.    There are a couple of mysterious, unopenable doors around the place, which will cease to be mysterious AND unopenable shortly.  I also assume this giant boulder, balanced cartoon-like by a single stick, is what falls on you if you step on that DO NOT ENTER T'rang floor plate. The lyre in the other screenshot, by the way, causes Silencing, a status ailment I've never made use of for two simple reasons. Firstly, if you're fighting enemy mages they're usually pretty squishy and just damage rushing them down tends to be more effective. Secondly, being paralyzed, webbed, blinded, turned insane, KO'd, put to sleep, afraid, nauseated, etc. works just as well on casters as it does on enemy physical attackers, keeps them from casting spells just as well as Silence and gives those sweet, sweet 2x damage bonuses if you stick the right status effects. So there are just almost always better options unless you have no Wizardry casters along but do have a Bard along.     This little shack is the last bit of the road, past that there's just a cliff where you can look down into the picturesque Swamp and smell the festering cholera and tropical diseases.     So the mine carts. You have this little setup where you can twist the dials to choose what path your cart will take. As long as you understand that you start in the upper left, it's easy to get to each of the four locations. Only one of them matter and actually has anything of interest in it, though, the bottom-most exit. So let's go for a ride! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Sw-fuVGGo For whatever reason the camera is stuck at an angle while riding the carts, which is a bit of a shame. Still, being able to ride a mine cart is a bonus to any game. Three of the four destinations lead to behind closed doors along the track and no real loot, just a couple of potions and stix, nothing I care about. The fourth one, however...    Doesn't loop back on to the main area of the Mine Tunnels.    This monstrosity is part of a future crafting recipe and is also INSANELY HEAVY. Even in the party inventory it nudges everyone's encumbrance up a notable bit and worsens everyone's AC and initiative. I haul it along anyway. It's a giant silver nugget, how am I meant to NOT haul it along.   As mentioned this tunnel takes us into the back of Marten's Bluff, behind the guard who yells at us not to proceed. Oddly enough, no one back here minds our presence, further confirming in my mind that said guard keeping us out even when we're part of the T'rang Empire is a bug and unintended.    The T'rang are actively patrolling, so there's little danger down here except for the occasional spawn of milipedes which are literal speedbumps of no danger. I'm not sure if anything much nastier can spawn here at high levels, since there's little-to-no reason to come down here again unless you want to genocide the T'rang.    The first room is this little cul de sac of small rooms around a pond of slime. All of the rooms are locked but effortlessly picked open by Stony. There are a few interesting things in the rooms:   Like a literal flamethrower.   And an electronic lockpick that helps you break into parts of the T'rang tunnels where you aren't meant to go. The only use I have for it is opening a shortcut back to the main hall a bit later.    This place. It's what's behind the little hatch Z'ant hides behind, so we can also come back here if we just want to say hi to him. If I remember right this console is used as part of the genocide-the-T'rang quest chain.   Aside from that, there's only one more area we're allowed to go. The T'rang yell at us if we go anywhere near their labs or the power station for the facility. Which is a shame, because the labs hold what's probably the best Monk weapon in the game, the Mindblast Rod, which dummied-out stuff says was also meant to be a reward for assisting the T'rang to the end of the kill-the-Umpani quest chain or the alliance quest chain. Aside from doing a solid amount of damage it's nearly guaranteed to KO, paralyze or tap out anyone who gets whanged by it. I've never had it legitimately because even on the runs where I don't go for the alliance ending I've always allied with the T'rang.     Anyone observant may well have noticed that there are plenty of parts of the above-ground Marten's Bluff we don't visit. It could be assumed this is simply because they're "solid" and don't actually contain interiors. The real reason is because the only way to reach them is to go into Lower Marten's Bluff and then come "up" into them. Aside from the quest-relevant reasons to come here, there's some extremely good loot, and good lute, too.   And the opposition is low.  Unless you get unlucky there's a total of one combat encounter against a few weak ghosts, and the traps are mostly of the "being annoying"-kind than the "actually hurting you"-kind. Though one of them is somewhat mean.   See this discoloured piece of ground you might well rush through to get to that sword? It drops you down into the moat outside Marten's Bluff. This means that if you didn't open the shortcut back to the main hall next to the Mothership Console, using the Pulse Pick which it may not have occurred to you to do since you might just assume it needed a key or was opened by a button elsewhere, and didn't set a Portal before approaching it, you would have to trek all the way back through the Swamp, and then the Mine Tunnels, and Lower Marten's Bluff. Oh and there's often a pack of Mauligators lurking below the trap door, too, so if you drop down facing the wrong way your mages become gator-chow.  I would rate it an eight out of ten on the scale of "evil traps." Especially because the sword isn't even very good! It's just barely better than a Fighter's starting Longsword.   What's better is this Gadgeteer ingredient lurking in the corner, which we combine with our Porthole from the Arnika harbor to make...  Silly as it is, giving your Gadgeteer an AoE attack spell helps up his usefulness against groups considerably, and the chance of Nauseating or straight up KO'ing enemies also ends up evening the playing field in some fights.   I just could not manage to grab any screenshots of this thing actually firing any arrows. But trust me when I say the mouths fire arrows that do extremely limited damage and are deflected by Missile Shield 80% of the time anyway. Not very threatening. Aside from the gadgets, instruments and other loot, however, we are here for two primary reasons. Firstly:  Pulling this lever. There's a big rumble in the background when it's pulled but it does nothing obvious. We shall see what it does shortly.   Then we're back into the Lower Bluff again for the second part.    This, by the way, is what's behind the first door the T'rang wouldn't let us through. If we had snuck past that guy we could have bypassed a hell of a lot of travelling.  On the other side of the hallway...   Is a goddamn teleporter. It's broken when you arrive, randomly flickering between four locations, but the two wires we snagged off the dead T'rang up top will let us fix it. Let's see where it leads:  Umpani base camp...  Mystery House outside Arnika...  A place we haven't been yet but it sure looks spooky...  Just outside Marten's Bluff...  So obviously I plop down a Set Portal spell here right away and it's unlikely I'll be moving it any time for the remainder of the game. There's really no better place to place one as it can save you a silly amount of travel in the long run. And then we hop the portal to the Mystery House real briefly. It's also worth noting that without Set/Return Portal this place is a lot less fun since only the Mystery House has a teleporter to take you back, the other trips are one-way.    We can now open the door from the inside so this location also serves as a fast travel beacon to Arnika. Aside from that there's a gadgeteer ingredient and another instrument in here. The ingredient is a Strobe Light, combined with an Oscillator we found in Lower Marten's Bluff...  He can't use it yet, but heck yeah. As for the instrument...  Holy poo poo! This is part of why Bards are so loving rad. It's an attempt to paralyze literally every enemy in sight. Even if most of them will likely resist it, it's the sort of thing that can really turn battles around. Anyway, back to the Bluff for the last bit of fun...    At the far end of the corridor is the lever to open that hatch we saw behind the Bluff a while back. Time to pop that and loop back inside the fort for a surprise.   It turns out that the lever we pulled in the first part of Lower Marten's Bluff actually opened the big door here and finally let us into the last area of it that we hadn't been in yet.   There are two ramps up. One leads to nothing interesting(a single giant bug, some potions and a mandolin that casts Magic Screen), while the other one...  Why, that looks like an idol! And it's somewhere related to Marten! Could it be... Marten's Idol?! Let's snag that bad boy and head back to Trynton for the Astral Dominae and our reward from the squirrels.   Son of a bitch! Someone knocked us out and stole our Gadgeteer! The fucker! Let's look around for clues and by clues I mean only and obvious clue.  We got outwitted and owned by a 100+ year old swamp hillbilly. If you'll remember, Crock has a bunch of blue flowers growing around his house in the Swamp. Time to go shake him until answers come out.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXWz0P6m8o So this old rear end in a top hat has apparently had this trap primed for a hundred years or something just to catch him a city slicker. At least he's bright enough not to try and pick a fight with a half-dozen heavily armed kleptomaniacs.  At least it's a short-ish trip. Crock's house is just west of the magnifying glass and Brekek's lair is the big pool just north of it north of the river. Still, this being the swamp, it's perfectly possible to run into a couple of nasty encounters just in that short trip.   loving Nightmares. Their name is appropriate as they are probably the worst enemy to encounter. I make the genius decision to charge them rather than waste time buffing up, casting Soul Shield would probably have been smart, though.  See, in addition to being competent mages that as far as I can tell are mostly loaded with Psionic spells, Nightmares also have the ability to "Rear" a full-party attack spell that seems to just have a chance of slapping every "mental" condition on someone. In particular it's one of the rare few places you'll likely see Turncoat, the one that's been applied to RFS. Now, Insane party members may occasionally infight rather than just losing a turn. And Blind party members who don't stumble may occasionally mistarget. But Turncoated party members intentionally target allies and never "just" lose turns. I take a guess that it probably has a low duration and decide to Walk for the next turn. When you Walk, party members who are too slow lose their turn, and if you Walk your entire allotment, none of them get a turn. So in this case I'm using it to wait out the Turncoat rather than having RFS pull Werdna or Stony's skulls out through their assholes. Of course, it's a gamble because if the Nightmares use their Rear again, they might just Turncoat someone else, like there's a good chance Chewbecka could kill two party members a round if it was her.  By the time I get up close, it's Vi and Aurora that have been turncoated instead, but the rest of the party turn the Nightmares to glue before it gets any worse and get back on the road to Brekek's lair.   Brekek is thankfully a non-threat with no real dangerous attacks beyond being able to potentially Swallow(he can also give the party some nasty poisoning doing upwards of 20-something damage her turn. But as it's only single target it's not hard to heal/cure through). I feel like this may have been intentional as the devs knew the party would be down some power prior to facing him. Coincidentally, if you try to do a one-character run, grabbing the idol is an instant loss since you suddenly have no active characters at all, and the only solution is to bulk up the party with RPC's beforehand. Or at least so various guides claimed. Turns out, because I just tested it, that if you go stab Crock in the brain before you grab the idol, the party still blacks out but no one ends up KO'd and there are no blue flowers on the ground. I hadn't actually expected the game to account for that degree of sociopathy, but guess it does!   Son of a bitch, we did all that just to get that old rear end in a top hat lunch, didn't we? Well, let's get back to Crock... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9jhxZj2Z80 Well, at least we've got Stony back, now to get out of this swam-   The funny thing is that on a normal run I end up with someone getting hit by Drain maybe once, maybe two of my characters at worst. This one? I've just been getting hosed by it endlessly compared to normal. I didn't even know that ant queens and flesheater slimes COULD hit you with it, but I guess they can!    Tour Guide RFS points out the many local animals that might try to disembowel us, and now the ones in the treetops are being joined by Rattkin angry that we killed their breeders. They're mostly not a threat in the numbers they arrive in, especially not with the geometry of Trynton to keep them hemmed in and prevented from really bringing their numbers to bear. If they had some mages in their number, they might get scary, though, since while bodies block arrows, they do not block fireballs.    Let's go see the Don. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImX06dgQBWA  So, we can just buy it through his trade interface but he wants almost a hundred grand for it, which is absurd. So instead I'm going to pay him in stab dollars.   Tons of HP, slippery as a snake, practically magic immune... usually it takes me ten or more tries before I luck out and paralyze him or something similar so I actually have a chance at taking him down. This time...  This is what the first round looks like, the party whiffing literally everything that they can. Then round two rolls around.   Normally the Don guts half my party but in this case he manages to wing Twinkles and then RFS tears out his spine and poses with it dramatically before resuming the fight. Good robot, best friend. Then there's just Milo to deal with, he's nowhere near as scary, though... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5RF734weJs The fight does contain a bit of comic relief before we eventually make him explode like a blood sausage.  Now to loot the corpses.    In addition to the CANE OF CORPUS, the Don of course also has the Astral Dominae, some random loot, and he and Milo always drop Thief Daggers, which are pretty nice weapons only usable by, predictably, thieves. Now the Cane, though... in aside to being a one-handed weapon with great base damage(I give Twinkles a pair of nunchucks for his off hand a bit later), it also has a considerable chance to instakill(15% chance to make the attempt), will always attempt to poison and will attempt to paralyze on every second hit. It's lovely and makes Twinkles a real terror of the skies. Now let's get this idol back in place.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3xczcKEhNs It's worth noting that it also accepts partial input for things like this, stuff like "eternal" or "eternal trust" will do. Also how the hell does the Shaman get out to go to the bathroom or go grocery shopping. Is he stuck in there with those two guards until someone comes along with an ancient idol? Anyway, his key opens a door back in the Rattkin bough...   The place has obviously been looted by the Rattkin and we also had to mulch a couple after opening the door, making you wonder if we couldn't just have paid them to pick the lock rather than going on that quest.   See, the Shaman's key doesn't actually open the door down below where the actual item is. Instead it opens the door up above, allowing you to drop down through a hole in the floor to get to the Helm of Serenity. Was it always planned like this? loving Trynnies.    The helm has the advantage of being equippable by anyone, so it's usually a good move to slap it on a class otherwise starved for good headwear, or a faerie, or both. It goes on Twinkles, in this case. Between it and the Cane(which provides 50% Divine resistance) he is now able to shrug off most of the really bullshit things the game can throw at him, like insanities and instant death.  Yeah, let's get out of here.    I think this is just a coincidental spawn, since I've never had an ambush like that on leaving the house of the helm before, but GODDAMN. As mentioned before the Rattkin can't really bring their numbers to bear, so it's a foregone conclusion that I'll win, but it still took me upwards of 20 real-time minutes to smash through them all. I stop by Madras and Chief Gari for comments, and Fussfaz for more Renewal potions, and then it's time to head for the Southeast Wilderness.    Oh and I kill the giant bat on the way. First try, though, Stony blinds it and it runs away and I need to wait for it to get close again. Goddammit Stony.     Welcome to scenic Southeast Wilderness. Home of such sights as "you will be reloading multiple times" and "hope your rear end in a top hat is ready for this loving it's gonna get."    If you piss off a "faction" sometimes they'll send out revenge squads to poo poo-talk you and attack you. They're usually not very scary. I know the Rattkin and Savant androids will do this, and I suspect the Umpani and T'rang also will if you ally with only one of them. But I'm not sure if other factions you're unlikely to be hostile to, like the Trynnie and Higardi, will do the same.      So the Southeastern Wilderness is a not-very-open area, basically a circle of paths connecting to the Swamp, the Mountain Wilderness and the Wilderness Clearing. The latter is a small hollow in the mountains where I got repeatedly owned by high-level fairies until I managed to sneak close enough to them to ambush them(thanks to X-Ray letting me see them on the radar so I could plot the perfect moment to make my move). It's completely irrelevant(so far) except for having more unicorns for me to fight and a small cave with some CAVE LOOT. The SW Wilderness usually has nasty wander Mage spawns and one big set piece in the center that is, as mentioned, regarded as one of the biggest challenges in the game, if not THE biggest.  There are also some nice magic items scattered around the pagodas. Now, those mages.  Three-man squads, elementally themed, with a pet elemental of the appropriate type. As it's a pre-spawn you can't destroy it by killing its "owner," sadly. The mages are fragile, but, at least in the case of these assholes, keep spamming spells like Tsunami until the cumulative damage took out Werdna before I got them locked down.  Also some less dreary beaches than the Swamp. Before I went for the big set piece at the center, I went to the Wilderness Clearing to get my rear end kicked a bit to prepare.  This is what one turn of engaging the Wind Sprites from the wrong distance looks like. Ow.   On coming back, I get accosted by some androids and then promptly turn them into spare parts for RFS. They are persistently un-scary for the time being.  The poor render distance really negatively impacts views like this since half the time half the building is missing from view.   You climb a twisty path to give you a sense of foreboding on the way up.  Sometimes there aren't any randomly spawned guards out front and I keep expecting those statues to animate and attack me like they would in 90% of all games.      Thanks to having Chameleon up, the locals don't immediately go into combat mode but instead get suspicious and start advancing towards the front of the cathedral. There are six Cultists in groups of 3, mid-level casters that love Fireball and summoning elementals. Two Death Lords, a pair of real rear end-rippers with giant swords that love to cast Death Wish and Death Cloud. Don't you love having the entire party checking for instant death every round? And lastly there's the Sorceress Queen who tends to round out the team with a bunch of direct damage spells for the most part. I wait for them to get a bit closer to the entrance before striking. The first time I prioritize closing the distance over getting buffs up and don't queue them for the first round. This turns out to be a mistake.    This is ONE ROUND without Element Shield and Soul Shield up. Jesus. Let's try that again.    This is round three WITH those up. Hell of a difference even if one of the Death Lords tagged me with a Death Cloud that makes every party member save-or-die every round. Twinkles' Ring of Breezes also failed to clear it, whomp whomp. Werdna summoned an elemental for muscle, and I charge in to try and get some damage done in melee.   Not ideal, but I manage to kill the sorceress queen and then... I loving leg it. Woob woob woob!  Turning and running means I eat a couple of salvos with no response.  One Death Lord and group of Cultists give up the chase pretty early, but the other and his buddies keep coming. I do my best to break sight lines so they don't peg me in the back of the head with a Death Wish or a fireball.   Finally, halfway down the path they give up. I can now rest up, rez up, heal up and take out the survivors piecemeal. Pro strats, folks. Vi distrusts my strategic acumen. Then, I take a nap on the ground and...   I get awakened by unseen savant androids poo poo-talking me! I think they're in the valley below, it's the only thing that makes sense, but it's still pretty weird.  Also, smug as I am, the first corner I round, RFS and Stony both eat it from a Death Wish. Goddamn those big assholes can be nasty. Still, the rest of it goes smoothly. So let's check the place out.    There's also a basement crypt(it's guarded by mummies that go down without a fight. One of them has a special "Possess" attack that I've never seen him land on anyone, so I've no idea what it even does. I assume it's just a fancy Turncoat effect.).     Nice. So what's this earned me, aside from the awe and respect of my internet peers? Well, I'm able to construct a couple more gadgets...   Stony will definitely have the former in his active inventory for the rest of the game. The crypt had a full suit of magic plate for Lady and...  There's only one of these in the game and it will be on RFS 81 for the remainder. Unless you guys make me boot him, of course.   I also finally uncurse Chewbecka so she can wield the black blade Fang instead of the Bloodlust sword. Testing it out, it seems to do about as much damage at base as the Bloodlust did 2x, and not berserking should buff her defense and chances of hitting.    And with that, I've impressed everyone who knows what hell that encounter is and we've also almost circumnavigated the world of Dominus. Vote Time Once we get back to Mt. Gigas, should the future RPC's be... Vi and Saxx, Vi and RFS, Or Saxx and RFS? Technically we could also make a different setup but I would really hate not to have Saxx along and having multiple NPC's constantly moaning about getting their hair wet or visiting a volcano would be a real drag. My personal vote is with the latter since I need a bard more than I need Vi's limited divine casting abilities and RFS is less cowarly than Vi. Plus, c'mon, we get our very own Terminator!
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Aug 24, 2020 00:10
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Saxx and RFS all the way. If you really want to cheese the wilderness temple fight, camping while you are still being pursued by enemies will trigger an ambush by a maximum of one enemy group. So you can initiate combat outside the door, run past to catch their attention, then camp in the courtyard and you'll get a fight against a single enemy group (from an encounter that is mostly single enemy groups), at melee range where they're nnot inclined to cast spells, and if you have the Shadow Hound buff up you start the fight on equal footing instead of getting sucker punched while half the party is asleep. Meanwhile everyone except that 1 enemy groups forgets about you when you hit the camp button, so you can take them out 1 by 1 at your leisure.
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Aug 24, 2020 01:17
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Saxx and RFS are a good set of bruhs
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Aug 24, 2020 02:05
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RFS and Vi Vi is literally the only RPC in the game with a significant amount of plot relevance, and RFS owns. Bring Saxx for the few areas Vi won't go to, though.
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Aug 24, 2020 02:38
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EclecticTastes posted:RFS and Vi Saxx objects to the same areas Vi does, unfortunately.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:06
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So what happens if you kill Croc before doing his quest? Is the kidnapped party member forever gone?
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Aug 24, 2020 03:09
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Mr. Dragoon posted:So what happens if you kill Croc before doing his quest? Is the kidnapped party member forever gone? Naw, you can go yoink your missing PC out of Croc's back room. There's also a chest back there you can loot and no way to get back there without killing Croc to get to it, as far as I'm aware. Still, having Croc around as a merchant is worth more. He occasionally stocks some real good poo poo and was, for instance, where I got Twinkles' new nunchucks.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:41
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I always roll with Vi and RFS. I am impressed that you got through the Sorceress fight; that thing kicked my teeth in when I originally ran across it.
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Aug 24, 2020 05:05
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I recall beating that fight once by triggering it outside the room and then backing out while doing preps. You can separate out the enemies that way and defeat them piecemeal. This is one of the rare spots where anti-undead magic works well, too. I believe summons can also be useful in holding aggro. The trick to pulling a group at a time without exploiting the resting mechanic is not losing aggro too soon. If none of the monsters follow you out, it’s no good.
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Aug 24, 2020 05:41
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Vi and RFS, robots forever!
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Aug 25, 2020 03:44
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Definitely keep RFS. Vi is handy to have around too. Also, you didn't get a Giant's Sword from that fight? Shame, it would have been a good extended reach weapon for Chewbekka. Fang however, is a better weapon anyway. wafflemoose fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 14:30
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RFS and Saxx, robots and hippos!
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Aug 25, 2020 16:38
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wafflemoose posted:Definitely keep RFS. Vi is handy to have around too. I did get a Giant's Sword, yeah. The Death Lords each drop one as a guaranteed thing. Unfortunately while they are considerable shitwreckers, they're not quite as good as Fang. If I had a plain Mook Fighter or multiple of them, I would probably have picked it instead. Plus alongside Fang, Chewbecka can keep using an off-hand weapon for extra damage. Her poison dagger HAS been stacking up some decent additional damage over time, especially as it tends to poison enemies.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:04
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Giant's Swords have an enormous KO chance, and KO is tied for Paralysis for second best status after "dead". Also the extended reach shouldn't be underestimated. That said, they're heavy and slow, so they get fewer attacks than Fang will.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:08
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Giant Sword is probably not a genius brain option for samurai since it eats up so much stamina that you pass out as soon as you Lightning Strike. I like it a lot for rangers, since you're spending most of your time shooting and are probably not front and center anyhow.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:11
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Saxx and RFS, why not.
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Aug 25, 2020 21:57
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Vi and RFS. And I hope it's better behaved than the other RFS. Let's see how these game systems go, probably completely bomkers but so long as nuclear blast is an acceptable spell option, I'm happy.
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Aug 26, 2020 01:15
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Yeah forgot that the Giant's Sword eats stamina like no tomorrow. Probably not the best option for someone who has a chance to attack four times in a row. I'd still consider it since it can be annoying when an enemy is just out of reach for melee but not extended.
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Aug 26, 2020 15:46
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Part 008: The Hell Of Being Trapped In Cubes  So, the Mountain Wilderness. We've already been there once before, but only briefly as it had very scary enemies, and now we're at the far side of it, and it still has scary enemies. In fact, a lot of areas are now relatively easy to breeze through, like the Arnika/Trynton Road, but the Mountain Wilderness can absolutely still kick the party's rear end if I'm not careful about how I play it. Not counting single boss battles like the Sorceress Queen, I'd say there are two areas that are in my experience nastier than the Mountain Wilderness, but of course that's generally with a more magic-heavy and chopping-light party, so I may feel differently by the end of this run.  Just around the corner to the right after leaving the tunnel is a narrow pass leading to...    The last of the T'rang teleporter's locations that we couldn't identify. The Rapax Rift is a place you need to go to complete the game and is, predictably, stuffed to the brim with Rapax, including several varieties we generally won't see anywhere else. It doesn't lead back to Arnika, however, so I'm skipping it for now.   Going the main way, we run into one of the enemies that are primarily only here and the Rapax Rift: Scorchers.  Ugly fellas. They're big buckets of HP that can hit pretty hard in melee, as well as having extended-range punches and thus being able to reach over our front line. I didn't even know this and only learned it when one of them kidney-punched Werdna to death. Their big thing, though, is breathing fire. It doesn't do a lot of damage, especially not with Elemental Shield up, but when you've got an entire pack of ten or twelve of them doing it, it amounts to considerable ablation of HP each round. The MVP of this and many future fights is Stony for using his new gadget from the SE Wilderness to keep everyone topped up. Unfortunately since I've invested primarily in things that make him better with his Omnigun, because it took him so long to get any decent gadgets, his Stamina total is dogshit and just using it or the Invigorator Belt once almost KO's him, leaving Aurora spending most of the fight keeping him topped up with casts of Stamina. It works, but it chews into the party's damage-dealing ability some.  This is also when I start experimenting with Werdna summoning elementals to speed things up. Pure damage-dealing magic doesn't do much against the Scorchers but, perversely, elementals' punches are always physical damage no matter what they're made of, and considering that the elementals he can summon about 80 damage per punch, it adds up, especially as they're also big buckets of HP that don't die easily and this, like any other punching, gets doubled against opponents that can't fight back. The main issue is that they can't be summoned in cramped conditions. You may also notice some yellow markers on the radar, let's see who they are...   Ah, yes, the Rapax also have their assassin squads, though they mostly seem to be active in this one region of the game. Politely put they are not to be hosed with.  Because the Samurai are, appropriately enough, Samurai. They hit decently hard, but worse than that they cast even harder. They're also usually fast enough to get off a first volley before you can get Elemental Shield up. That one cast of Crush took away half of Vi effortlessly.  And there's almost half of the party not being able to act because of a cast of Noxious Fumes. These fights can very easily go south on me.  And they're not afraid of self-buffing either. Missile Shield is just as effective on them as it is on us.  Still, they explode like anything else once Chewbecka and Twinkles get going at them. During rounds where the party doesn't need healing, Stony hits them with the Invigorator Belt, which simulates their suddenly gaining several levels in terms of being able to hit enemies and get bonus attacks. At least Rapax still have a habit of dropping decent gear, this party dropped a pair of Mantis Gloves, which are more or less the best piece of heavy hand armor in the game, and the only type of hand armor that does anything but give better armor class. There are a couple of odd "empty" slots like that which just seem to be there more out of formality than anything else, but Hand/Glove slots get screwed the most, with even "leg" armor having more gear that isn't just +AC.   Enemies formerly used as roadblocks are now just casual enemies, but appropriately enough they also go down easily. Now, let's look around for one of the special landmarks of the Mountain Wilderness. It's a reasonably open area, but most of the places worth hitting are all more or less along a single road winding through the place. Including...    A retro dungeon! I'd argue this is probably the only one people could have found on their own. There's a ring of stones containing all the runes to activate, and the stone in the middle, well, I think that assuming "sword goes in stone" isn't too far-fetched. Still, it's easily activated, which I'll shortly come to regret...     So on the one hand, the Mtn. Wilderness Retro Dungeon is the simplest of the three. Compare the Cemetary dungeon...  With the Mtn. dungeon...  On the other hand...   This is the loving doorman!  I may be in slightly over my head here! Thankfully golems aren't the worst, they hit hard, but waste a lot of time throwing rocks that the Missile Shield deflects, and since they have no multi-target attacks(which could hit squishy mages) or the ability to kill a character in a single turn, it's easy to outheal the damage they do. What's behind door number one?  Oh gently caress oh poo poo.  This is how my first shot at it goes. Time to get serious, by which I mean abuse the game engine. Now, we can't enter combat mode and THEN open the door, as it's locked, but what we CAN do is... ...stand just like so when opening the door...  ...thus allowing the door and the doorjamb to block our view of the room...  ...while we initiate combat and queue up Soul Shield, Elemental Shield and Bless for round one rather than round two!  Still not a flawless victory(just before the end of the battle Werdna got hit with Boiling Blood and literally exploded from the damage, injuring the rest of the party), but at least it's a victory. So all three doors have teleporters behind them. One takes us out(glows blue), another takes us further in via a detour with no extra loot(yellow) and the third takes us onwards in the most "direct" way(also yellow). Where does it take us?  A corridor full of teleporters that shove us backwards and forwards until we get lucky and hit the one that takes us out! At least it isn't a loving spinner room, I guess. gently caress those things. But I bet the teleporter takes us somewhere nice, right? Somewhere full of loot and good things?   Instead how about a bunch of incredibly hard-to-hit Rapax ghosts that don't drop any loot at all?  Oh and their leader is a full ten levels above the party and sometimes just decides to hit someone with a drain attack. Still, with sufficient perserverence it's possible to muddle through as they do relatively low damage for how resilient they are to dying and have no casters. Onwards ot the next door and maybe that huge cluster of items I see at the edges of the minimap!    Slowly getting closer, winding corridor after winding corridor...  Ha ha, yeah, that's like eight enemies that are each ten levels above the party's. Oh and they've got a Gibbering Head for one type of caster backup and a... Nebdar? What's a N-   Nebdar starts the fight by casting Nuclear Explosion and wiping out most of the party. Unfortunately, the door opens in the wrong direction, and if I hide to the right of it, I can see the other half of the Vampiric Wraiths and the Gibbering Head on round one even if it keeps Nebdar out of sight. Still, better than getting Tiltowaited, right?   I'm a genius. From here I can casually whittle down her troops until it's time to engage Nebdar herself! Except that Nebdar is apparently a Bishop since not only can she blast me with Wizardry's equivalent of a Dragon Slave, she can also cast Heal All and buff up her entire army! Well, at least now I have Elemental Shield online, the only thing that'll solve this is literally putting the party in the line of fire, since the enemy AI will generally prioritize blasting you over buffing/healing allies. Of course I only think of doing this after trying to outpace Nebdar's healing(and failing) like five times.   Once again it's an initiative/targeting/stamina regen race of trying to keep Stony well enough to Heal All everyone. I actually need to top up Aurora's spell points with a Magic Nectar just to keep her capable of pumping him full of magic meth.   But little by little, the Wraiths get whittled down. The Invigorator belt helps a lot since it feels like it changes Chewbecka, RFS and Twinkles from missing four times out of five to hitting every second time. Of course at this point the stamina management becomes even trickier as the fighters, having spent about half an hour real time(not lying the battle took about that long) swinging away are starting to pass out from exhaustion. Now Lady gets put on casting duty as well since she's the only one who's got Rest All as a castable option. Werdna's mostly there to keep Elemental Shield topped up since both it and Soul Shield manage to tick down I think about three or four times each in the fight, when in most fights once cast is enough to keep them up for as long as matters.  Finally Nebdar goes down, though in the process Aurora managed to get bonked down as well. So was it worth it?    (and also a +4 AC cut off at the top) HELL YES. Look at that, biggest XP reward we've gotten so far, over a quarter of a million XP per character, and an insane caster amulet. HP, Stamina and spell point regeneration and a Power Cast boost and elemental resistances and a huge AC boost. This is going on Werdna and never coming off(which is good, because it's Cursed, though who gives a poo poo? It's one of the best misc. slot booster items in the game if not THE best!). And in addition there's the big loot room in the back...  The potions are irrelevant, spellbooks are always nice, the weapons...  The second best if not best bow in the game, unfortunately Rangers are unlikely to be able to equip it since it requires 85 Strength, but, say, Lady could snap it up with ease.  Probably the best axe in the game, but the Giant's Sword is still a better two-hander, so as long as your fighter is a Mook, you don't really care. Alternately just use the goddamn Fang or Bloodlust and a shield.  An eh cursed staff, not sure why it's even cursed.  A cool-looking sword which is sadly still not that great. If you can clear this place I'd argue you can clear the SE Wilderness and get Fang, which is a tougher boy than this thing and a one-hander, not a two-hander. Then it's a round of rest for the party and then...  Back to the real world.   Oddly enough, sometimes hostile factions will just show up to bloviate and threaten rather than to actually attack you. Of course, this just means that I get to get into position and attack them first. They want to see how strong the allies of the Umpani are? They'll get a first-hand demonstration. Get dunked on.  Shortly past the entrance to the Retro Dungeon, the terrain turns more grassy, but not exactly verdant, and if you're following the road the first thing you'll come across is a burial mound. And we all know that tombs = treasure in Fantasy worlds. Time to get our Indiana Jones on.    If you didn't have X-Ray on to see that the barrow is inhabited, the skeleton out front is a hint, as is the occasional ethereal moan coming from inside.   Oh, just one Death Lord? What's this, an encounter for newbies?  Oh gently caress oh gently caress oh gently caress he cast Death Cloud. I can't tell you how much of a butt clencher that was, because between the Scorchers, the Samurai and the Nebdar encounter I was completely at zero for resurrection items, and Death Cloud means everyone gets a save-or-die once per turn. Hooray!  The actual battle was just a numberslam of melee attacks peeling apart the Death Lord and then the heads, though. They never managed to stick any conditions, not even any instakills from the cloud, thank God. It's a shame we didn't get to this tomb earlier in the game, or with a different party setup, because then it would have had a lot of nice things. As it is, it just has a couple of nice things.   There are a bunch of pre-set item spawns on the floor and two chests with random gear in them. The chests contain little of any real interest, but among what IS interesting is...  A replacement off-hand weapon for Chewbecka. The extra base damage outweighs the loss of the poison considerably.  The Staff of Doom has a constant -1 HP loss effect, but if you have a +1 HP regen item it outweighs it, and as far as staff weapons go this is, short of the Mindblast Rod and Cane of Corpus, which are limited by what class/race combos can use them can use them, probably the best one out there, tied with the Zatoichi Bo(which does similar damage but replaces the Hex chance with a KO chance). Unlike the Zatoichi Bo, though, anyone can equip this sucker. I give great thought to slapping it on Werdna so he can contribute in those fights where he either runs out of magic or there's no reason to use magic or the enemies are almost completely magic immune. The extended range would allow him to deck dudes from the back row.  There's also Diamond Eyes, which is... okay, so there are even fewer worthwhile blunt/mace-type weapons than there are axes in the game, and damage-wise they never manage to sidle up in the vicinity of what you can do with swords and polearms, even if there are a couple of interesting extended-range ones and a few that have decent side effects. Diamond Eyes and the Nunchucks, however, can be wielded as off-hand weapons(generally the only other off-hands are daggers and wands). However, only a few classes actually get the Dual Weapons skill to mitigate the penalties for dual-wielding, and of them, the only one that can wield Diamond Eyes... is the Lord. So you'd never really ever use Diamond Eyes without a Lord in your party. Any of the other available classes would wield something else, possibly a two-handed weapon. Which is a shame because the 20% paralyze chance would be great to have added into the general damage/condition mix. If you have a Lord, you'll really want it. If you don't, you'll never care about it.  This... thing. I mean, okay, theoretically it's useful, except using the Dulcimer of Mending to cast Heal All will more or less always be superior in terms of healing, and busting out the Arresting Aria or Siren's Wail will hit more enemies and taking enemies out of the fight with conditions is superior to just doing damage to them.  Anyway, on the far side of the tomb I choose to hug the southern side of the valley, because there's actually something there you can miss.   A cave wherein the X-Ray map shows a combination of hostile and friendly characters. The obvious response is to pop combat mode outside and wade around the corner to see what's what.  A group of (pre-placed, low-level, around level 9 and 10) Rapax threatening some monks. The monks are pretty badass, honestly, and could probably clear out the Rapax on their own, but I saddle up and kick some rear end to speed things up.   I think it took me like two or three rounds of combat to clear them out. Now let's hassle the head guy and find out what these nerds are all about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3ozNGhaQ4 Anselm is... a bit odd, really. He's a big ol' plot dump that again, you're unlikely to meet until a variety of other NPC's have already dumped all of this on you. I could swear I remember there being some way to milk a reward out of him by bringing him the right item, maybe the writ naming you a member of the order from back in the Monastery, but I can't find any mention of it in various guides and walkthroughs. He isn't even a merchant.    The rest of the valley is more or less empty EXCEPT for a sneakily-hidden stash of treasure guarded by this big golem fella. Again, he's not really much tougher than the one guarding the entrance to the valley from the Northern Wilderness side, so if you can make it down the mountain slope(easier said than done considering it can be patrolled by everything from scorchers to swarms of burning ants to sprites), you should have a decent chance of getting in and looting away.  Once he's down, note the waterfall and...   Getting close enough makes X-Ray reveal the loot beyond.  It's... again it would be nice if we got here several levels ago. As it is, most of the equipment slots worth filling up have already been filled up.  I trek up to Bela to unload some gear because the party's combat abilities are starting to be severely impaired by hauling around a small armory's worth of equipment. Sadly he doesn't buy armor or weapons from us, only wands, potions and scrolls, but it still helps. The new windfall also helps me buy three nice items off him.  The Eagle Eye Bow, it has better base stats than the Strong Bow, in fact the best base stats for a bow in the game, but a lower chance of instakill. It'll be Aurora's weapon for the rest of the game, with only ammo getting upgraded and swapped out.  The Ring of the Road, as an upgrade for Saxx when he gets back into the party, a +20 Strength boost is pretty huge.  And the Dread Spear for Lady. It's an upgrade in basic damage, and the chance of dropping Hex on enemies isn't to be sneezed at either. It also has a +20 boost to the Polearms skill which further upgrades its murdery potential. The only weapons with better basic stats are the Raven's Bill(not to be confused with the Bec de Corbin which is a wholly different weapon, being the only one-handed polearm-skill weapon in the game) and Faust Halberd, but both are also literally quite cursed with heavy HP drain. Valkyries can't use the Mindblast Rod and aside from that it requires killing the T'rang. And the Maenad's Lance, while in the game data, apparently can't actually be imported from 7 to 8, so you could only have it through using an editor. So unless the internet is wrong (perish the thought!) and the Maenad's Lance pops out of a random chest at some point, Lady has reached the end of her weapon upgrades for the game with this.    Let me know if I'm cutting out too many in-between travel images. I just don't want to bog the posts down with 50 images I don't have anything to add to. In any case, we're back in the Northern Wilderness where I attempt to activate the retro dungeon. I gently caress up and think I've got all the necessary runes activated and... the activation stone just eats my one-of-a-kind short staff. Doesn't drop it on the ground. Doesn't give it back. Doesn't warp it into party inventory. Just eats it, thus postponing the visit since my last save is a way back. I hope no one minds the fact that I'm going to use an editor to re-add the short staff to my inventory because this feels like a bullshit bug.  The runes here are also annoying to find, because they're carved into trees. Now, half the trees in this area are the kind made out of two flat planes at right angles to each other, intersecting, so at a distance they kind of look believable. You can rule those out. Only the ones with a pentagonal or hexagonal trunk, can host a rune. Of course then the issue is that there's still 50-something of them in this area. Once you find a couple, though, you know that most of them are arranged in a sort-of straight line, even if they're spread far apart.  While exploring, I also run across another squad of sassy droids.  It's amusing to me that the party is never worried by or convinced by these lies. They always call them bullshit right away. In any case, despite having higher levels, the androids still get flattened as they're relatively fragile(other enemies of similar levels tend to have upwards of double the hit points) and not present in the big volumes they need to really give me trouble. If I didn't have Missile Shield, I might feel differently since the orbs' Neuro Bolts can cause some debilitating conditions, but since I do... they're no big deal.     Since we're in the area, I go pick up Saxx. Now, the vote swung back and forth a bit, and while everyone wanted RFS, more or less, the Vi/Saxx vote ended up being in favour of Saxx at the point that I did the recording, during which it swung back to a tie again. So apologies to everyone who wanted more Vi. I did have an odd experience on arriving, though.  Like 10 seconds AFTER I go through, Private Panrack yells at me that I'm allowed to go through. Not sure what's up with that.  And for some reason Vi is hexed after leaving the party. Possibly the game trying to translate her Drained condidition and loving it up?  Saxx bears us no ill will over his temporary liberation and hops back on board, after which I clear some space in the party's inventory by offloading all of our spare gear on Kunar's commissary and go to have a chat with Balbrak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQpICFAwFcY This gives us access to the interior of Mt. Gigas, thus leaving us with yet another path to explore. But for now, I pop the Return to Portal and use the T'rang teleporter to bring us to the Arnika Mystery House so we can speed things up a bit.    Immediately outside of Arnika we're accosted by some more Rattkin.  Though they're polite about it and thus I choose not to gut them like fish.    First thing I do is beeline for He'li's bar.   She extorts us for a measly 2000 gold in return for not loving up our alliance quest, which I'll happily pay. Kunar can still gently caress things up, but apparently the only one he'll tip off is Z'ant, and as long as you start dialogue with Z'ant by tossing him something, like a quest object or a pair of old boots, apparently he'll never trigger his "FOOLS. HOW DARE YOU BETRAY US."-dialogue and turn hostile. Still, I figure we'll ice Kunar sooner or later, one way or another. Then I hit up the usual round of merchants to check for any worthwhile spellbooks, any warcrime ammunition and... I actually get a bit of dialogue from Braffit I've never seen before! Apparently the trigger is visiting him with Vi once and then visiting him without Vi again later, and any time I've had Vi along previously she's been a permanent party fixture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vkiBBDs5zA His small donation to the party's coffers at the end is... irrelevant. Generally anything you'll actually want to buy will be costing between 10k and 20k or upwards for the rarer stuff. Still, we appreciate the gesture. Now let's go defraud the Mook.      The Mook embassy is kind of lame, sadly, clearly one of the game's areas that could have used more love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyPGcOFPDNA I'm afraid Aurora is wrong, though, if Screg had been clever he would have bolted the doors and sounded the alarm as soon as we showed up. But for now, we're gonna have a little look around to allay suspicion, as the embassy also has a first floor.    Under one of the benches is the other part of building an X-Ray Scanner, which predictably enough casts X-Ray. If your casters have better things to spend their points on, or you don't have the right type of caster to cast X-Ray, this can be pretty useful. Until Stony maxes out Engineering he'll also be taking over X-Ray-casting-duty. I've also strongly been considering switching Werdna over to a Bishop once he gets any level 7 Mage spells I care about, so I can pour all of the Psionic books I keep picking up into him and also generally broaden his spell selection.      There's also an NPC chilling in the corner up here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPF7hCzT5tY Urq is... oddly placed. Firstly he starts CRITICALLY underlevelled compared to the party for when you'd get him. Secondly, he'll only visit a staggeringly small variety of planetary locales. Thirdly, he's supposed to be a field explorer you show the various parts of the planet, and each new area you bring him to he gives you... 500 gold. Like, just a single battle in any given area will usually get you more than that. He feels like the embassy should have been accessible as one of your very first locations so you could have brought him along from the start. Mechanically there's nothing wrong with him, he's a plain Mook Psionic, but everything else about him just screams that the embassy was originally supposed to have been accessible all the time and only the Chaos Moliri chamber was supposed to require a faction invite to go take a peek at it. And speaking of, let's go investigate this ancient artifact of raw chaos and change. I'm sure it will be guarded by impenetrable defenses and stealing it will require all my brainpower.   Call me when you invent an anti-Chewbecka field.   I wonder what happens if we just... yoink it.   Ah, yes, monster closets for our protection and convenience. On the one hand I want the Chaos Moliri, on the other hand I don't want to have to mangle these Vulcan Wookies. Now... what else do I have in my pack I can shove in the beam...  The Astral Dominae? Hm, that's just trading one problem for another. However...  Surely they'd notice. SURELY. They'd notice me switching an artifact of epic cosmic power for a marble.   Time to woob woob woob the gently caress out of here before these idiot walking rugs actually decide to check our packs.   So, we're now 2/3rds of the way towards being able to ascend! With the small issue that if we try to do so, the Savant will blow up the planet, which would somewhat complicate matters for us. So if we consider that to be a fourth, secret, artifact we need to find, we're 2/4ths of the way there. Still, it's progress! Next Destination Let's head to Mt. Gigas and see what exciting quests the Umpani have for us. This will give us access to the interior of Mt. Gigas. Head back to Marten's Bluff, show Z'ant our new toy and get another quest from him. This will take us to Bayjin along the way. Explore some place new. There's still the Rapax Rift to poke around in and get horribly mangled along the way. Class Changing Unfortunately most of the party members would need a lot of fresh gear if they got class changed, with no real practical gains, but there's one that could get a relatively effortless swap... Should Werdna become a Bishop?
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Aug 28, 2020 17:19
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Head to Mount Gigas.
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Aug 28, 2020 17:53
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I have no strong opinion on whether you do the Umpani or T'rang questline first, but do NOT go to Rapax Rift until you've done everything else. It just feels more fitting to save it for last. Also, no class changes. If you wanted a Bishop, you should have picked one at the outset. 
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Aug 28, 2020 18:03
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Mount Gigas. The main faction quests are a lot simpler if you keep them up to pace with each other. Also, if you're going to dual class Werdna (which I'm all for) I would recommend doing it sooner rather than later. The XP differential on mage vs. bishop suuuuuuucks at endgame levels. If you take a few bishop levels now and then switch to mage when you get level 7 spells you will be able to level fast enough to get some use out of them, but if you switch to bishop at level 18-19 it's going to take a very, very long time to get enough levels to cast level 7 spells at a worthwhile power.
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Aug 28, 2020 19:40
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The only part of casting spells that is level-dependent is that they all have a minimum level to learn them. Aside from that it's entirely stat/skill/number-of-spells-you-know-in-that-element dependent.
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Aug 28, 2020 19:48
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PurpleXVI posted:Ha ha, yeah, that's like eight enemies that are each ten levels above the party's. Oh and they've got a Gibbering Head for one type of caster backup and a... Nebdar? What's a N- Brenda Romero is about to make you her, uh, hound? [E:] Also appropriate that she killed Werdna first, since we didn't have a Yeldarb. Xerophyte fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Aug 28, 2020 |
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Aug 28, 2020 19:50
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Zurai posted:The only part of casting spells that is level-dependent is that they all have a minimum level to learn them. Aside from that it's entirely stat/skill/number-of-spells-you-know-in-that-element dependent. Caster level is a huge part of backfire calculations, particularly higher level spells. A level 18 bishop with 125 in every stat and skill and a completely full spellbook will still be stuck at maybe 2 circles of power if they want to safely cast their new level 7 spells, but every level up will basically give them another green circle. Moreover, having a higher caster level helps overcome enemy resistances.
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Aug 28, 2020 19:55
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That's definitely not my experience. Raising the spell school skills raises both the total amount of spell points you have in that school as well as the amount of spell points you can safely spend on any given spell. I've definitely gotten a level 7 spell, only had 1 yellowish-green circle, then gone off and grinded my Earth (or whatever) casting skill and gotten to 3-4 green circles without ever earning a single point of experience.
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Aug 28, 2020 20:03
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https://steamcommunity.com/app/245450/discussions/0/2139714324759466927/ Well, assuming this guy's data is right, Power Cast percentage is a MASSIVE modifier, while caster level is the (potentially) biggest modifier (as soon as you're level 14 or above it's almost by default the most important one) and the level the spell is cast at is the second-biggest. Of course then the question is whether dual-classed characters use their total level to calculate caster level, their total caster levels, or the level of their currently active class.
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Aug 28, 2020 20:33
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Zurai posted:That's definitely not my experience. Raising the spell school skills raises both the total amount of spell points you have in that school as well as the amount of spell points you can safely spend on any given spell. I've definitely gotten a level 7 spell, only had 1 yellowish-green circle, then gone off and grinded my Earth (or whatever) casting skill and gotten to 3-4 green circles without ever earning a single point of experience. I think you might be mistaken. My own experience is that level 18 casters just don't get past 1 dark green circle period, and need to break triple digits on both realm + school skills to get power level 2 down to light green, which also matches the numbers that are being pulled out by data miners (which say that regardless of skill there is a flat 7% chance to fail for each power level past the first, which goes down by 7% for each subsequent caster level; if your skills aren't up to snuff then you'll face a bigger penalty on top of that too.) Jumping up multiple power levels from grinding skills can happen if you are playing a bishop and wind up having to wait past level 18 to pick up some of your level 7 spells, though.
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Aug 28, 2020 21:21
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Class changing Werdna into a Bishop would open up his spell casting abilities to other schools but he'll be dead weight for quite a while since it takes forever for Bishops to level up. I'd say keep him as a mage, both Saxx and Stoney can provide most of the important spells via their instruments and gadgets
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Aug 28, 2020 21:35
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Part 009: Mt. Gigas In-Depth  And we're back on the scene, here to clear up some Umpani quests.   A quick portal back to Lower Marten's Bluff to use the T'rang teleporter makes it a quick trip. I really cannot imagine playing the game without having a portal set there, to be honest, it would add a hell of a lot of extra wading around. But before I hit up Mt. Gigas, I decide to get the Northern Wilderness retro dungeon out of the way.  At least the activation rock has a faint purplish glow once you've tagged all the necessary runes, which wasn't easy. Even with a map, some of them are hidden behind 2D sprite bushes and other similar cruel tricks.    Much like the Cemetary dungeon, this one is rather mazelike.  To the point where I actually end up being lost in it near the end and having trouble finding my way out. This is compounded by, unlike the other two, not really having a "boss" monster guarding a way out, so you never have any real sense of whether you've cleared the place or not. It does contain a few interesting things, though.  In a dark corner I find the Plague Axe which is, I think, the only way in the game to inflict Disease on monsters. As far as I'm aware it has no real immediate in-combat impact but drains stats over time, so I guess maybe you could tag a nasty monster with it, retreat/portal out of the fight and hang around somewhere while their stats melt to zero? Or you could just be a badass and kill the monster in one go instead. Also, while the Northern Wilderness Retro Dungeon has no pre-set boss monsters, it does have some unique monsters that spawn nowhere else. For instance...  Hoarder Slimes! They're not exactly difficult to beat down, even if they're big blobs of HP, but more importantly they have a unique drop list featuring a bunch of, quite powerful and useful, items that drop nowhere else in the game. I may come back here eventually and grind them for a bit just to show some off.  In my case I get the poor end of the drop list. Only Lady in the party can use the armor, and she already has some of the best leg armor in the game from the crypt in the South East Wilderness.  The Sword of 4 Winds is a nice enough two-handed weapon, I suppose. But once again, it's one we've already surpassed.  There are also these human "adventuring parties" that can get pretty nasty since they're A) split into 3 groups, making Group-target spells less effective, B) have a dedicated buffer and C) have a meat wall for their mages. They're a lot scarier than "pure" enemy groups, for instance. Of course since we got here late-ish we outpower them considerably.  I do have a fun little bug happen with this group, though.  They summon up an elemental and I think it just got placed around a corner and that's why it can't path past the front liners to get to me. But as I get closer...  They managed to summon it behind a door!   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJzzC00sSw8 As for this one I don't even have any comments. I'm sad that they don't have any special cube-related drops. But they still make me smile.  Anyway, back to the real world.    Access level 3 gives us permission to poke our heads into the interior of Mt. Gigas, there are two other ways to get there, but really only one of them is useful. You can also get here via Bayjin, but then you get stuck in a dead end, or if you follow the T'rang questline to its end, Sgt. Kunar will give you a forged full-access pass. You also get said pass if you just murder Sgt. Kunar, of course.     Once we get full access to Mt. Gigas, we'll be able to play with the EWAXX station, but it's a bit disappointing to be quite frank.     So while the T'rang have set themselves up in an abandoned and haunted fortress, the Umpani have set themselves up in a series of natural caves. They've hung up lights in most of the corridors, but it's still mostly a bunch of boxes dropped in the larger caves, connected by smaller, winding corridors. At least they've also clapped up a bunch of signage, though, to make it navigable. The signs direct us towards the various hubs, and Delta Hub is our target for getting deeper into the mountain. Of course, there are also a couple of non-hub locations, and we'll be hitting those up first because progress is for suckers.      Probably most players will first be attracted by the Storage sign. It's sadly not very interesting, though, just some long-outdated Light Healing Potions and some generic arrows, quarrels and bolts.    From Charlie Hub, this odd cube-like symbol directs us towards the Power Station.    Unlike the T'rang, the Umpani don't care if you go clomping all around their power generator. You also can't do anything here, there isn't even a pile of bullet stones in the corner or anything. It's just a piece of decoration with some guards.     Does look neat, though.     Third one is near Bravo Hub, and is unmarked. Just gotta walk down the corridors until you find a little appendix dead end...   Featuring the only instance in the game of weighing down a pressure plate with a dropped item.    It opens up this secret door a bit further down the hall containing some rats and a chest with some randomized loot which rolls on some tables most likely to give you garbage.  In my case including a perfect copy of the Ring of the Road I paid Bela a bunch of gold for. Starting to feel mildly ripped off!   Lastly, at Delta Hub, there's this big cave where there's almost ALWAYS a random spawn of some bats or a morax or whatever. I think this is my only time, ever, playing this game, that there has not been a spawn here. Now, you make your way across the cave...    I wonder what's down the other way?    Unexplored treasure, you say? This direction sends you barrelling into a twisty, windy dungeon that almost feels randomly generated. Though thankfully there's plenty of signage to indicate the way out, so you'll never REALLY get lost. Sadly, most of the treasure here is also pre-placed and thus, at the party's current level, there's little reason to go visiting it. Still, there are a few chests that might roll something good.  Also it's practically littered with skeletons all over the place.  One oddity about the Wizardry automap is that water planes tend to show up from much farther away than you actually need to be to see them, so you can see a bunch of the water in the corridors ahead of time, and thus have a mental outline of how things twist and turn, since they're often at corners.  This is the signage, by the way, as long as you follow the yellow arrows you're always headed towards the exit.   There are also a few cave-ins to watch out for. They're not deep enough to do serious damage, but if someone's already banged up, it could finish them off. However, I'm gonna jump right into this one.  Enemies can't path into the pits, so paradoxically enough the unsafe collapsed sections are also the safest places to rest. And speaking of resting, a not-remarked-upon effect of having a Bard in the party is that resting happens much faster, and the faster you can finish your rest, the less you need to recast buff spells and the less the chance of patrolling enemies spawning and bumping into you. I wasn't kidding about it being a maze. Without the automap and arrows you could get lost in here forever.   This is what we're really here for, though, this one particular cave-in.   Drop down, fight some jellies.  And find this underground lake, with even more jellies. I could swear that sometimes a Djinn spawns down here, but maybe I'm misremembering or I just got unlucky this time. Anyway, there's a chest down here that has a better chance of spawning decent loot than the rest(it gave me trash this time, though), where I've often found some great spellbooks.  Unrelated to the exploring, Stony also got a level-up from murdering slimes and now his omnigun can fire normal arrows and quarrels. This is a MASSIVE improvement both in terms of damage and ammo types usable, plus it also means I can finally drop all those bullet stones he'd been using and which weigh a shitload compared to other ammo types.    Seriously, look at this trash.  Another chest has yet another Ring of the Road and yet another Sword of 4 Winds. I feel like the game is making fun of me at this point.   Anyway, let's get out of here.     I'm not sure if you even can open this thing if you arrive at it from the top side first.  And a final-ish map for a sense of how big the "maze" section of Mt. Gigas is. Now, for the one part of this maze that got me stuck...  You see this corridor? I always keep to the sides of corridors in case there are traps or anything else, because then the activating part is usually dead center. But in this case, I stepped in that little pool on the right and got goddamn stuck in the geometry. The party just started vibrating and I decided to portal out before the physics engine attempted to launch me out at light speed or otherwise kill me off.  So after a quick trip back to Marten's Bluff via portal, and then a jaunt up through the caves again, I arrive at the elevator I was meant to go to, the one that leads to Upper Mt. Gigas.   This is where the Umpani have all sorts of fun things like their officer staff, General Yamir(though we can't see him just yet), their own version of the T'rang teleporter, their training section and the way to annihilate their faction(though we can't access it quite yet. Interestingly enough, we don't have to aggro anyone to get to it, unlike the way to finish off the T'rang, which is another point in favour of the T'rang being considerably smarter than the Umpani).   In appearance, though, this level is almost exactly the same as ground floor of Mt. Gigas.     And yes, that IS a room full of lasers you can see through the grating in the door.      I'm not sure if the Humpawhammer name for the Umpani teleporter is a reference to something, but once you've activated it, it does look a bit Stargate-ish.   Where it takes us is the first Mystery House we found immediately outside the Monastery. It's... a terrible location for a teleporter. It's not near any merchants, it's not any sort of "hub" area, it only has one destination unlike the four offered by the T'rang teleporter, and while the T'rang teleporter takes you literally across the world, thus offering a considerable time save, the Umpani teleporter absolutely does not. I open the door out of principle, just in case I should need this thing again, and march right back inside.  Now, there are a few things to pick up in the Upper Mt. Gigas tunnels, there are some officers' chests to raid and some lockers to raid(though they all drop trash for me, so I just leave it on the floor considering that I currently have a pleasant overflow of gold).   There are also a couple of bricked-up cave entrances you can bust down. Again, usually nothing too exciting in them. But... what's this...   Rockets?! Oh boy, I'm sure that when we get our hands on a rocket launcher, it won't be incredibly disappointing in any way, shape or form!  I eventually make my way to the training section. Just gotta plop my keycard on to this reader to open the door and...    I don't get this part. First time you use it, a back panel falls off exposing these wires, and you just gotta click them to get them back in place and you can use it no problem. Like... I could see it if there was a wiring puzzle to solve, a wiring item to collect, or if it was just, say, to get you to turn your back so you'd spot something behind you or something ahead of you could sneak into position for a surprise.   But nope, we just get to walk right up to Sgt. Rubble. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alZRNOYLgPc So. The rocket launcher. The goddamn rocket launcher. Yeah, sure, let's throw it on Stony and have him take a pop at those firing targets.  Look at that lovely damage. Now, thanks to their level scaling, it would take like twenty rockets to kill these dummies, not to mention I can't cast spells over the wall, all I can do is fire bows and arrows. I decide not to bother, since it's not a requirement for advancing, and just keep the rocket launcher to sell to Antone or Croc later. Now let's find out where Rubble snuck off to while we were taking pops at the scenery.    Now, he isn't kidding, all we have to do is kill five monsters that are in no way threatening because, as mentioned before, single large enemies with single-target attacks are rarely threatening unless they massively out-level you and it's early game, and also because they're fixed spawns and now we outlevel them. Let's have a look at the line-up guarding these precious flags.      Now, the Morax actually has spells and could be mildly threatening if he cast, say, Sleep or Web or actually attempted to lock down a large amount of the party. The Deathsting Apus might manage to instakill ONE character before getting mulched. Swallower and the Flint Golem are total non-entities. Now the Djinn...   Could very theoretically be mildly dangerous if it used its spells and special attacks rather than just hacking away with its sword because I closed to melee range instantly. I pat myself on the back and congratulate myself for owning this so hard and then proceed to accidentally softlock the quest.    Now it turns out, if you give Rubble one of the flags, like I did, since usually that's how NPC's want their quest items handled, he just eats it and then chews you out for not having enough flags! It happens even if you give him all five! Cue me popping out and editing another fresh five flags into my inventory, and then just talking to this massive dickhead of a rhino. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoZ7GH47ftQ What a dick. Anyway, back to Balbrak! This is more quickly done by teleporting back to Marten's Bluff, warping to outside of the camp via the teleporter, and then walking back inside. Thank God for modern area load times.     Unsurprisingly both Factions have a "Mook Alliance quest" since otherwise you'd be locked out of getting the Chaos Moliri if you teamed up with the wrong faction.   This "very clever man," in Aurora's words, doesn't notice that he's already greeted us as diplomatic envoys from another faction and also that we swapped out his artifact of epic cosmic power for a green marble made by rats. So, I just hand him the piece of paper and bail. Before I head back to Balbrak though, I do a bit of shopping(that Djinn dropped an eye that was the last part we needed for Antone's Featherweight Armor for Chewbecka, for instance), and Braffit has some new dialogue:  This happens once you have two of the Astral Dominae, Chaos Moliri and Destinae Dominus. Now what you could do, to circumvent an actually quite large part of the game, would be to march up Ascension Peak before you grab the second item, set a Portal, and then head down again. If you did this, then you would literally never need to visit the whole Rapax Rift area of the game. But it would also be boring and limit our ability to do a heist and kill some royalty. Anyway, back to Balbrak and a well-earned reward for delivering one whole letter.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG5rrMguz-Y Oh boy, now we get to mess around with the CYBERTRONIC MEGACOMPUTER of the Umpani. Let's go google some things before doing what we're supposed to do.   Sadly the EWAXX files aren't voice-acted, not even by some lovely voice synthesizer or anything.      I think literally the only thing in here that we can't just find out by asking some rando on the road is that Z'ant is female. Good on her for managing to break whatever glass ceiling exists for spiderslugs. Time to head up and see what Yamir's got to tell us.     The door on the left leads to Yamir, but there's a door on the right that leads to a bunch of lockers to rifle through.      In between ripping open all the lockers and dumping their contents on the floor when they inevitably disappoint me, I also check out the monitors and diagrams in the room, now we can go see Yamir.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDN4aQdYtJg Yamir is definitely the nicest rhino we've met so far, but I still like Z'ant and the T'rang more. Especially since Z'ant never sent me to go talk to Sgt. goddamn Rubble. Blah. Off we go! ...after we take a look at the screens behind him.    Nice triple monitor setup. Now we go!     This is the technical alternate entrance. This connects to the underwater section of the game, which connects to Rynjin. So you could come up here after entering from Rynjin, but as far as I'm aware there's no way to open the UTU doors from the inside. Let's put on some scuba gear.     So two things about the water areas. Without scuba gear, characters just die, and scuba gear takes up one of your two misc. slots, thus weakening you slightly. Secondly, all fire magic fails underwater. And of course, the weakpoint of most underwater creatures is fire, so it's a bit oof.    Lastly, Saxx won't go there. But it's alright since we do in fact need an open character slot for this specific mission. When we come back later, we'll just make Saxx take a nap so he won't mind entering.       Welcome to the underwater areas, folks, they're probably going to kick my rear end.
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Aug 31, 2020 18:17
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Either you didn't mention it, or you missed a Gadgeteer gadget component in the unexplored area of Mt. Gigas. It's at the bottom of one of those pits with the ropes.
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Aug 31, 2020 18:37
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Zurai posted:Either you didn't mention it, or you missed a Gadgeteer gadget component in the unexplored area of Mt. Gigas. It's at the bottom of one of those pits with the ropes. Oh, yes, the PTorch. Since it just lets you cast "Light" and the upgraded version(slapping a lens on top) lets you cast Detect Secrets, it's one of the least exciting gadgets in the game if you already have a perma-scouting Ranger along.
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Aug 31, 2020 18:39
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Are you going to show off any of the alchemy stuff? Also, holy crap you showed it off a bit when you were exploring the swamp, but man do I hate Bayjin and Rynjin. I don't know why the Rapax are supposed to be this enormous threat when the planet has much worse to offer!
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Aug 31, 2020 19:35
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Ah yes, the light heals. Not so outdated if you have an alchemist with you, then you can just mash them together with medium heals to create heavy heal potions. (Also a good source of money if you have tons of medium + light potions) The cube-enemies remind me of Lufia II, where you sometimes encounter evil cubes, too. And remembering that Japan loves Wizardry, I now wonder if this a coincidence, or if the cubes in Lufia II are an obscure Wizardry-reference?
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Aug 31, 2020 19:49
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| # ? May 11, 2024 10:11 |
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FairGame posted:Are you going to show off any of the alchemy stuff? I have literally never interacted with the alchemy system any of the times I've played Wizardry 8, there are already plenty of potions around for the most part. Supposedly you can bust the economy wide open with it but... most of your really good upgrades aren't purchased anyway, they're found.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:00
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