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Darkness at Sethanon, which is the climax of the first, arguably second, story arc in the novels, is indeed where Locklear has to go from naïve spoiled rich country boy to hardened veteran pretty quickly. After Sethanon, the next novels in that canon, at least in release order, are set 20+ years later and involve Arutha's sons. Jimmy and Locklear carry over into those to various degrees although Arutha himself is basically retired to the simple life... as prince of half the bloody kingdom, but he's not fighting anymore false prophets to save the world. Arutha has a fairly good arc in Silverthorn and Sethanon where he goes from just trying to save the lives of those he loves to genuinely realising that he has some destiny. I didn't really love that. He was always portrayed as a pragmatist and somewhat reluctant leader and having him buy into a prophecy, even one that proved true, seemed rather contrived. The Murmandamus reveal fell slightly flat to me as well, at least initially. That he was a false prophet I found a good twist and appropriately ironic, but the pantathian thing was a bit of a damp squib at first. However, if one payed close enough attention to the ancient lore, and it's easy to miss because there is a lot, the panthathians were actually a death cult who would do anything to bring back their former masters and Murmandamus played the 'evil races' for suckers, big time, in order go et to the big magical Maguffin at Sethanon. I will add that I did not realise that the dark elves were greatly weakened after Sethanon. I suppose that I should have, given the death toll, but I always assumed that they just went back to living in the northern mountains or southern forests. Perhaps it was in a book that I haven't read. They were definitely not the friends of the Tsurani during the war. The kingdom people would provoke the Tsuranni and the dark elves to fight, and the book 'Honoured Enemy' is all about the kingdom and Tsurani forces barely managing to work together to save themselves from the Moredhel. (spoilered just to be safe) I actually did not know that this game had been novelised. I will try to read it right after this LP ends.
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Sep 11, 2021 04:00
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From my long off memories from playing this game a little, you should save-scum haggling without buying anything to boost the skill. Then find a lute in an abandoned house somewhere and practice far too much to boost that skill. Use the haggling to pay for replacement strings (or full lutes?) as needed. Following that, notes on Tolkien influences. I checked the dates and the first Riftwar book was published five years after the Silmarillion. So influence from Tolkien's deeper legendarium isn't too surprising, nor is random mashup of word parts from the glossary in the back. Not that I'm tooo familiar with that. Let alone accidentally mixing words from different languages and not noticing until well after the nickname/handle was established. Whoops! In any case there wasn't much more than the name stuff I noticed at first: * Moredhel is a Sindarin word meaning 'dark elves' - 'mor' is dark, 'edhel' is elves. In Tolkien's works these are elves that wholly rejected the summons to the Blessed Realm at the start of the story*. The one example in the Silmarillion is a pretty nasty person, as is his son. * Eledhel is another Sindarin word meaning 'star elves' - 'el' is star, 'edhel' again is elves. All of Tolkien's elves are star-obsessed, predating the sun and moon, so this doesn't map to any of his categories. * Ardanien seems to be a mashup of Arda, Tolkien's word for the whole world, and -ien a typical English-language way of denoting a country. Other words either just have a vague similarity to words from Tolkien's works: Armengar is a little like Angmar, the evil kingdom founded by the lead ringwraith. Valheru is a little like Valinor, the name of the Blessed realm (and where the High Elves came back from). It could also be Valh (a made-up syllable) + 'eru' (desert), but that seems a stretch. As does 'Eagle cavern' as a translation for Thorgath, especially since Gorath corresponds to nothing at all.
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Sep 11, 2021 05:33
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By the way, Feist's writing has a very specific distinguishing quality: every chapter, and many descriptions in the game, have a first sentence that is always always of the following form. "(The) [subject] [verbed] ([preposition, sometimes]) [object or description]." Examples from this very LP: "The ashes were cold." "Blood-soaked rags collected at the boy's feet." "Owyn checked the corpse." "Locklear gritted his teeth." "The Garrison was impressive." "Gorath looked distant." And so on.
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Sep 11, 2021 06:09
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quote:I'm not sure if "Chocha" is meant to be coffee or cocoa, since the descriptions in the books seem to combine a bit of both, but it helps add to that Aztec flavour for the Tsurani by tying them to some "new world" plants. Its similar to coffee, but not. There's a scene in the third Tsuraunni book where they're setting up to start importing chocolate and coffee both.
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Sep 11, 2021 06:22
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Snugglecakes posted:Bookmarked! Wish you better luck then I had, as the LP curse hit me hard in trying to LP this game. I'm glad someone beat me to the punch. That site was the most antique HTML ever but the most helpful BAK site ever. I was trying to dig up a rehosted link in another tab when I scrolled to this post, so heck yeah  JustJeff88 posted:I was aware that it was based on his personal RPG experiences and I assumed that the other main antagonist civilisation was based off of something that iI have not heard of, but that remark about Pug and Thomas is one of the dumbest opinions I've heard on the Internet - no mean feat. cmon. this is needlessly hostile, it's okay to just say "I don't agree with that take" or ask why or even to let it slide rather than this Psion fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 06:38
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Xerophyte posted:Technical note, DOS games running in 320x200 aren't intended to be displayed with square pixels like this. All your screenshots are squashed. Honestly didn't even notice something was off, it's how the GoG version defaults when windowed, and honestly how I recall it always looking when DOSBoxed. I'll see if I can figure out how to fix things. Perhaps I can, perhaps I can't. JustJeff88 posted:I was aware that it was based on his personal RPG experiences and I assumed that the other main antagonist civilisation was based off of something that iI have not heard of, but that remark about Pug and Thomas is one of the dumbest opinions I've heard on the Internet - no mean feat. Even as someone who likes some of the books, I kind of have to agree with the statement about Pug and Tomas. Once they top out their powers, a lot of their personalities just... vanish, earlier for Tomas than for Pug. Tomas is just kind of generically stoic and wins every fight, Pug actually has a somewhat interesting arc on Kelewan and at least has his intense dedication to his family to give him some flavour, but Tomas is just the most bland "lawful good" character in the books. He chops all the bads, rarely ever needs to think about or do anything tactical, and his part-Valheru powers mean he's basically never challenged. Most of the books they're in feature things happening both at a "street level" with Arutha, Locklear, Jimmy, etc. all the usual suspects, and a "cosmic level" with Tomas and Pug, and the "street level" stuff is always by far the more interesting. Solitair posted:I've heard some interesting things about the Riftwar books, and so far this looks like a pretty good translation to another medium. Haven't actually read any of them yet because of how many other fantasy books have caught my interest over the years, though. I'm not sure I could justifiably recommend the Riftwar books if you don't have some sort of nostalgia for the setting from reading the books or playing BaK when you were in your formative years, frankly. As mentioned, Pug and Tomas end up as kind of wet farts of protagonists(and sadly remain present in most of the major stories despite this) and aside from that there are just some things Feist isn't good at writing like, uh, women with any kind of agency, which you might not notice when you're a kid, but which kind of makes you wince when you're older and more aware. Just go read Gideon the Ninth instead. Snugglecakes posted:Bookmarked! Wish you better luck then I had, as the LP curse hit me hard in trying to LP this game. Thanks for the well wishes and thanks for the link! Very good source. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 08:20
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I've only realized I've read the series up to book 4 (at least) upon reading the lore post about Locklear. None of this left any impression whatsoever.
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Sep 11, 2021 09:02
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That is an extremely weird list of foods to find in a pack of rations. Sliced apples? Is this for a weeks-long journey, or for playlunch? Salted sweetmeats? Like, Dutch liquorice?  PurpleXVI posted:VOTE
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Sep 11, 2021 12:17
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Solitair posted:I've heard some interesting things about the Riftwar books, and so far this looks like a pretty good translation to another medium. Haven't actually read any of them yet because of how many other fantasy books have caught my interest over the years, though.
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Sep 11, 2021 12:18
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I read them all when I was younger. They made 0 impression on me because I cant remember any details about them at all other than 'interdimensional war bullshit' also the wigs are exactly as bad as I remember.
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Sep 11, 2021 12:20
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Tiggum posted:That is an extremely weird list of foods to find in a pack of rations. Sliced apples? Is this for a weeks-long journey, or for playlunch? Salted sweetmeats? Like, Dutch liquorice?
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Sep 11, 2021 13:05
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Maybe it means slices of dried apple. That makes more sense.
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Sep 11, 2021 13:32
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PurpleXVI posted:Honestly didn't even notice something was off, it's how the GoG version defaults when windowed, and honestly how I recall it always looking when DOSBoxed. I'll see if I can figure out how to fix things. Perhaps I can, perhaps I can't. There's an aspect correction setting in dosbox which determines if it will stretch 320x200 or not. You can try playing with that plus the scaler. You will likely need to make sure that the window resolution is an appropriate 4:3, either manually or in the .conf, don't believe dosbox deals with it well otherwise.
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Sep 11, 2021 15:11
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Psion posted:cmon. this is needlessly hostile, it's okay to just say "I don't agree with that take" or ask why or even to let it slide rather than this I answered a ridiculously hyperbolic statement with another one. If you had said 'I think that Pug and Thomas are rather bland' I would have replied 'I don't think so'. They certainly aren't Amos Trask, but let's just agree to disagree. On the Pug/Thomas thing, and I don't want to spoil too much about them in case this LP motivates anyone to read the books, perhaps I haven't read deep enough into the later works. I quite liked the humble origins to demigods, and I liked that Silverthorn & Sethanon had the larger-than-life P&T doing the impossible in another world while Arutha and friends took care of the more practical things in the world that they know. For example, I quite like that in Silverthorn Thomas flatly states theat he won't journey with them because he has a family of his own to think about and a nation to run, but when trouble comes to his door he's a proper badarse. I feel like those two demigods were fairly well phased out in the second generation/20 years later books, but again you lads might be referencing even later works. I have hundreds of books that I have not read on top of the Feist books that I have not read, so there is a lot that I have not seen. I will say that one trope in fantasy literature I am absolutely bloody sick of is that of prophecies. That was my least favourite part of Silverthorn and especially Sethanon - I didn't like it in DS9 either, and I was quite fond of that show. Fiction books and games need to pack that poo poo in and just have people who care taking steps to keep bad poo poo from happening and stop pretending that it was foretold in the stars or some such claptrap.
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Sep 11, 2021 17:13
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JustJeff88 posted:I answered a ridiculously hyperbolic statement with another one. If you had said 'I think that Pug and Thomas are rather bland' I would have replied 'I don't think so'. They certainly aren't Amos Trask, but let's just agree to disagree. Hey! That was my ridiculous statement, not Psion's.  I'm not terribly offended here either, but I do think there's a difference between hyperbolic snark aimed at fictional characters written in the 80s by an author who is very likely not reading this LP and hyperbolic snark aimed directly at a poster in the thread. I try not to read too much tone over the internet but it read as though you took my piss-take personally, which certainly was not my intent. Happy to agree to disagree, in any case.
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Sep 11, 2021 17:55
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Xerophyte posted:Hey! That was my ridiculous statement, not Psion's. I apologise for my mis-directed snark; I did not realise until just now that it was the wrong target. I'm a world-class piss-taker myself but, no, I was not taking it personally, I genuinely just get tired of ludicrous hyperbole and unsupported opinions and responded with some of my own to try and point out how disporportionate the original comment was. I actually don't see much of a difference between both kinds of hyperbolic snark, but we will indeed agree to disagree. In any event, let's forget this and look forward to another fine Purple LP. I never played this is a lad and, while I do have the games on GOG they are buried in my backlog. I think that I will enjoy the writing in this one even though it looks perhaps too janky for my tastes, but if Purple has proven anything it's that he's nothing if not patient and can make chicken salad out of chicken poo poo. Held og lykke Purple! The above was my best attempt at bon courage! in Danish. It is most likely wrong and apologies to any Danes offended by same. JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 18:35
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JustJeff88 posted:I apologise for my mis-directed snark; I did not realise until just now that it was the wrong target. I'm a world-class piss-taker myself but, no, I was not taking it personally, I genuinely just get tired of ludicrous hyperbole and unsupported opinions and responded with some of my own to try and point out how disporportionate the original comment was. I actually don't see much of a difference between both kinds of hyperbolic snark, but we will indeed agree to disagree. "Held og lykke" is kind of an odd line to translate(Even though it's proper Danish!) because in English it could potentially translate into "luck and luck!" though the more proper translation would be "luck and joy!" But either way, you got it right! Also, I maintain that while BaK has some mild jank it's actually a well-made game, both on a gameplay level and a presentation level, especially for its time. With regards to snark directed at thread posters, please save that for my hyperbolic recaps of setting lore and books, thank you. I would be slightly disappointed if it doesn't get some hardcore Feist Head(which is the name I just invented for Feist superfans) heated at some point. But I also wanna say this one thing, like, however much I may critique Feist at points, my general impression of him is that he's a decent person, and what mistakes he makes in writing(like not being good at female characters with agency in the earlier books, a bit of exoticism regarding the Tsurani, etc.) is well-meaning and/or due to blind spots, rather than because he's an rear end in a top hat.
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Sep 11, 2021 19:45
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PurpleXVI posted:my general impression of him is that he's a decent person, and what mistakes he makes in writing(like not being good at female characters with agency in the earlier books, a bit of exoticism regarding the Tsurani, etc.) is well-meaning and/or due to blind spots, rather than because he's an rear end in a top hat. This is my take on him circa whenever I fell off reading the books as well. Quite a few of those blind spots are seemingly based on just uncritical acceptance of genre conventions in particular. As for the rest I'm glad it's all figured out and settled but I'll just agree tone is hard on the internet and I think "i'll just hyperbole harder to demonstrate how much I dislike hyperbole" is extremely likely to backfire as a strategy, but good work on everyone being responsible. What forum is this  e: One other thing. The primary writing for BAK was straight out of Dynamix and Feist had very little involvement. Per wikipedia, quote:Feist states in his afterword to Krondor: The Betrayal that he was busy writing The King's Buccaneer during the game's production and that the plot, text, and new characters were created solely by designers Neal Hallford and John Cutter. Feist did have editorial final say on the game, but most of what Hallford and Cutter created was left intact. basically the dynamix team nailed it on getting the feel and voice right, which is cool and good. I have not turned up any specifics on what was changed and it'd probably be massive spoilers right now anyway, but I'll go looking later. Psion fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 00:47
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Fun fact I learned from drinking with some ex dynamix developers, there were a shocking amount of strippers in the office on a near weekly basis. I'm more than willing to bet at least one of them ended up in cheap renaissance cosplay and in the final game.
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Sep 12, 2021 01:30
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Guildenstern Mother posted:Fun fact I learned from drinking with some ex dynamix developers, there were a shocking amount of strippers in the office on a near weekly basis. I'm more than willing to bet at least one of them ended up in cheap renaissance cosplay and in the final game. Congratulations, you've added a new pair of sentences to the English language.
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Sep 12, 2021 17:22
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I mean, the Betrayal Collection does greet your with a pair of headless tits in your library. Classy.
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Sep 12, 2021 18:01
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Guildenstern Mother posted:Fun fact I learned from drinking with some ex dynamix developers, there were a shocking amount of strippers in the office on a near weekly basis. I'm more than willing to bet at least one of them ended up in cheap renaissance cosplay and in the final game. lmao well I guess now we know your motivation for following the thread!
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Sep 12, 2021 19:09
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It was a weird conversation, and if I hadn't been so excited to talk about BaK with a dynamix people I don't think I would have stuck around long enough to hear that story, guy was a real douchebag, although apparently not the stripper hirer.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:35
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Betrayal at Krondor is one of my "must play" games that I'm never going to actually play all the way through, alongside Ultima 6 and System Shock 1. The farthest I've ever gotten is the second Chapter, when you lose Locklear and get Jimmy the Hand. Then you wonder why Jimmy keeps whiffing all the strikes Locklear was landing. I remember the map making the first Chapter look deceptively easy. It looks like you can just go down the coastal road to Krondor, but I think there is a difficult encounter that causes you to be waylaid. Either that or I was terrible at this game.
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Sep 13, 2021 02:59
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raifield posted:Betrayal at Krondor is one of my "must play" games that I'm never going to actually play all the way through, alongside Ultima 6 and System Shock 1. The enhanced edition of SS1 allows mouselook. It still doesn't bring the controls up to the level of the second game, but it's a major improvement.
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Sep 13, 2021 06:26
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Read the books for the first time a month or two ago, they aren't amazing but they aren't horrible and if you have time to kill they are a fair option. The sauur were handled fairly well imo.
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Sep 13, 2021 08:45
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Telsa Cola posted:Read the books for the first time a month or two ago, they aren't amazing but they aren't horrible and if you have time to kill they are a fair option. Due to a brief bit of confusion, I thought you meant a novelization of System Shock 1. Which I can only imagine as the weirdest thing if it existed.
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Sep 13, 2021 10:18
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PurpleXVI posted:Due to a brief bit of confusion, I thought you meant a novelization of System Shock 1. Which I can only imagine as the weirdest thing if it existed. Welllllllllll... https://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/
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Sep 13, 2021 11:43
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Oh, and arguably even weirder is this: https://www.it-he.org/sshock.php
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Sep 13, 2021 11:47
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This game. This game is one of my RPG white whales. I will forever be chasing after it, but whenever I actually get anywhere something happens to knock me completely out of it. Computer problems, real life problems, whatever. It's a personal invitation to trouble. The novelization was okay, though. One early bit that stuck with me that I'm almost certain isn't in the game is Owyn describing his spellbook as some kind of mix of journal and workbook - messy, confused, and deeply personal, instead of some orderly tome. That's actually done a lot for how I think about and present wizards or the arcane grimoire in stuff like D&D. They aren't using some deep code to decipher, it's just highly idiosyncratic.
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Sep 13, 2021 18:50
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Feist never really clarifies how magic works in his, well, works nor does he codify the rules like D&D, and I am absolutely fine with that. It preserves the mystery.
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Sep 14, 2021 02:05
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I loved this game as a kid. I never did figure out how to complete the 3rd mission, but still had a blast tooling around the world fighting baddies and discovering whatever I could. Definitely will be following this LP
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Sep 14, 2021 04:28
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Update 03: Caves, Traps and Laundry   So that's one vote for charging down the coast road, collecting the skulls of our enemies and raising them as a gruesome banner to march before the gates of Krondor- It's what we would have done back in the good old days. -and one vote for fleeing to the Free Cities, changing our names to Xygox, Darksmoke and Steve, and living our lives in obscurity as crab fishermen- But we'd secretly be master criminals! I'd be the brains of the operation. -cute. But all your votes are invalid. Gorath can go to Krondor all he wants, but without me they'll just throw him in chains. And you have to do what I say, or I'll tell Gorath to snap your neck and leave you in a ditch. If it helps I'd pause for a split second to think about how bad I felt. Well fine, but what's the plan if you're so smart? Step one, we find somewhere the moredhel would never think to look for us and hide out for a while.   A bit south of LaMut, along the western border of the map, there's a small side path leading off the road.   Ugh, a cave? No, a mine.Interacting with the mine produces a bit of dialogue from Locklear and a yes/no prompt. BaK posted:A sulphurous stench was in the wind.   Popping a torch indoors has no gameplay benefit, but it'll give you a chance at spotting enemies in the distance, loot on the floor and eventually other... features... that it would be bad luck to stumble upon unaware. The moment we take a few steps farther in, though... BaK posted:Sparks rocketed down the corridor.  Beastie? Beastie, aye! 'alf a week ago we 'eard something fierce a'bayin' in the mine, terrible cold like. Of course a dwarf knows the sound instant whether he's heard it before or not - Brak Nurr. Curse of every hole delver since first dwarves took up hammers. I've never heard of them. No one has in quite a while, laddie. There 'asn't been a Brak Nurr in the upper mines for well on since Delong the Great laid claim to the Kingdom of the Isles. We thought we'd laid low the lot o' them but the kobolds are stirring them up on their quest. Kobolds? Your folk call them gnomes. They used to worship a dragon what lived down here, but when the dragon disappeared, they thought the dwarven folk 'id him away. Every now and again their leader Feydhir takes a notion to undertake a holy quest to find him. This time they must've woke up a clutch of Brak Nurr. Now the Nurr have collapsed the main passage an' kilt thirty of our kin. We've a reward to whomever can do it in - if you're of a mind and 'ave the spirit that is. I'm not saying we're interested in killing your Brak Nurr, but if we were looking for it, what would it be like? 'alf again your height, and a'made of stone, like living rock they are. From out their nostrils they breath a green mist but I'd be wary of getting too close to look, for they'll drop a boulder on your head sure enow. We've already 'ad a few bravos what's come in to try a hand at killing the beastie, but there's not much they've been able to do themselves beyond get themselves so mangled they needed the help of a temple. I'd be as wary of them though as I would be of the beastie. They, none of them, want else but then to claim the gold that we've offered to the creature's slayer. Thank you for your time, Naddur. I hope you can get things straightened out down here. We'll be fine, soon as we're through some o' this rock and the Brak Nurr is laid low. Ya canna keep us down. I didn't think so. Perhaps we'll meet again.  It's entirely possible to stumble in here without talking to Dubal in LaMut about it, especially if you're of the "do anything BUT the main plot first"-school of gaming style, like I am, because I'm a dick and I like making game designers cry. Owyn even starts with a few torches in his pack so you won't be stumble around in here blind, as well as a spell to replicate their effect, though there's no reason to spend good Stamina when you've got pieces of wood to burn instead. From a first person perspective, trying to keep track of where I'm going and what the hell is happening is rough, especially when it's all screenshots, so allow me to furnish the good readers with... a map!  The party enters from the east, the yellow numbers indicate enemy encounters and in the lower left there's an exit into a deeper tier of the Mac Mordain Cadal that we won't be able to access for the moment. This mine actually features in the first Midkemia book, Magician: Apprentice. Travelling from the far West of the Kingdom of the Isles(there's a whole section of human settlements along the coast west of Elvandar, missing on our current map of the region), to the central Kingdom to report on the Tsurani invasion, the Tsurani have secured all the major passes(and the sea is too rough at the time of year), forcing Tomas, Pug and several other characters to instead travel through the Mac Mordain Cadal. While travelling through the mines, they find themselves ambushed by a Wraith, and Tomas is cut off from the rest of the party. Wandering the tunnels, he ends up in the deepest chambers where he meets Rhuagh, an ancient and peaceful dragon who's about to die. As she dies, she grants Tomas a seemingly innocuous suit of armor, sword and shield from her hoard, and eventually he's found by Dolgan, a dwarf, who escorts him back to the surface on the Western side of the mountains(not wanting to risk the Wraith again). In any case, the door immediately south of the entrance is locked at the moment, and beyond our lockpicking, so instead we head to Encounter 02 and the trapped chest. Along the way, the party whines about being sleepy, which they will occasionally do, forcing me to spend a few hours having them roast sausages and marshmallows in the corridors. Generally they can go about a day and a half without sleep before they start complaining.    Must be some of those "bravos" Naddur mentioned. Right everyone, keep quiet and approach them slowly. ...so we can sneak peacefully past them and avoid conflict, right? Hell no, they're camping out in our hiding spot.  Meet human rogues. They're not much more threatening than blue-cloaked Moredhel one on one, they're a bit sturdier, but aren't any better at hitting or doing damage for the most part, though Betrayal doesn't trade much in "standard" enemies. Enemies with the same sprite tend to be similar, but they'll almost always have slight stat variations, health variations, gear variations, and even AI thresholds for when to retreat. So you can never expect two encounters to be entirely similar. It's just a shame most of these differences are hidden from the player until a rogue suddenly whips out a crossbow and plonks Gorath in the head with a bolt.  Not being complete idiots, these rogues recognize that the guy in a nightshirt and holding a staff is probably a wizard and immediately attempt to mob Owyn. Since they won initiative, this is a pro move and prevents him from neutering any of them with magic on round one.  Except for magic and some consumables, it's generally pretty hard to prevent an enemy going somewhere they want to go. There are no threat zones or attacks of opportunity, so usually the only way to keep Owyn from getting beat like a pinata is to mob the nearest bully with swords until he falls down and stops moving.  Once he's down, Owyn blinds the survivor and he has a very poor time of it. Since almost no enemies in the game are immune to Despair Thy Eyes, any single enemy that isn't in that category(and which doesn't win init and rush Owyn right away), tends to be a complete non-issue to defeat.   And then the looting begins.  One of them has a new type of sword!   It has slightly better damage and slightly worse accuracy than our default broadswords, but note the racial modifier for elves. It means that Gorath gets a minor bonus to hit with it, which he wouldn't get with the broadsword, which negates the penalty entirely and means its a pure upgrade for him. Plus kind of thematic for him to be wielding it since the sword is a "Moredhel Lamprey."   Past them is a dead end room with a single chest. Before interacting with them I cast "Scent of Sarig," you'll notice it appears as a small red icon at the top of the screen.   Eh, what's the worst that could happen? It's just a chest trap that you can encounter right out of the first city. I'm sure it'll just mildly poke us or s-  BaK posted:Something clicked and suddenly the box detonated into flame and hurtling splinters... You pricks! I warned you it was trapped! In my defense, you're a weenie, so I assumed it was just you being a coward. Lesson learned.So, two important things here. First, what did we earn?  Good news! We more than doubled the party's money reserves AND we got a shovel for looting graves with! I mean, we probably won't loot any graves. ... While anyone's looking. It may be a matter of life or death! We're never going to make it to Krondor, are we?Second thing, how badly did we get hosed up?    Completely ignoring all defenses, it blasted about 80 points of life off everyone. For Owyn, it was mortal since he'd already spent a bit of Stamina on spellcasting, but thankfully Locklear and Gorath are still mostly alright. The big problem for Owyn is the near-death condition which makes it supremely hard to heal him back to full life again, camping won't do it except over geological time scales, and the nearest temple is REALLY far away. Thankfully, I have exactly 20 Restoratives(green potions), and in addition to restoring Health and Stamina, they each cut 5% off of all negative conditions. So between them and some camping, everyone's okay again! It's just cost, uh, literally all of my emergency medical reserves!    This is coming in from the east of encounter 03, where you can actually snag the chest and then continue north without getting in the fight. It's a plain Locked chest, which is slightly more interesting than just being Locked. Most things that are Locked can be lockpicked, but some of them also have a generic key that open them(if they use a unique key, they cannot be picked), though figuring out which key has really no in-game guides and keys that are used "wrong" will often break permanently(though if used correctly they will never break, so if you have, say, a comprehensive FAQ, you only ever need one of each key. Sadly I don't think you're able to sell spare keys.).   The lock graphic on the left is usually your hint in terms of key requirement/lockpicking difficulty, since it upgrades to less shoddy-looking locks for the tougher ones. This one is pickable even by Locklear, so I grab the contents and turn north to encounter 01.     As per usual, I attempt to gain ambush status, so I try to click on the opponents on the far side of the door, but accidentally interact with the door sprite instead while standing in it... unlike in some games, this does not lead to a physkill, instead it leads to the game making fun of me.  Assuming that Locklear tried to close the door while standing in it, and just mindlessly smashed it into his own head. Anyway, ahem. Battling ensues.   Fights against just one or two enemies are in no way the norm in BaK, most fights number between 3 and 6 opponents, and since the party caps out at 3 members, that means you're often at risk of getting outmaneuvered and drowned in quantity of enemy actions, especially if they can lock down your mages by standing threateningly next to them.   As usual, Owyn leads by blinding the guy on the right, but then, unexpectedly, the guy in the middle whips out a crossbow and starts sniping at Gorath. It does middling damage(8 compared to the 13 or so from a sword hit), but it's still something to avoid since later enemies will absolutely do more damage, but also risk bringing stuff like poisoned crossbow bolts that make your dudes start slowly melting.  Eventually the AI gets back on point and starts mobbing Owyn again, though for some strange reason he keeps dodging practically everything they throw at him.  And he even gets to land a killing blow! This is almost as fun as financial crime. Locklear, meanwhile, gets bullied out of all his stamina. For some reason the enemies have a lot more luck hitting him in most of these fights than anyone else.  Still, a win without any deaths. As long as everyone survives and you have spare rations, situations are rarely dire since a nap cures almost anything. Now it's time to root through the corpses and see if they dropped anything good...  Hell yeah, an early armor upgrade! Usually it's a while before we see elven armor, which Gorath gets in this case since he also gets the racial benefit from it. In general you don't want to be too concerned with the racial boosts, since usually just the raw stats of better swords, crossbows and armor matters more, but if you only get the one upgrade, you may as well slap it on whoever will benefit the most from it. As an oddity, some items are tagged with a Tsurani or Dwarven racial modifier, but there are no Tsurani or Dwarf player characters in the game, so I wonder if that's just for verisimillitude or a sign of cut content. They also have some light crossbows, which I pick up just in case I need some ranged action, but will likely not see any use until I upgrade to better stuff.  All their rations are, sadly, spoiled, which I only noticed because they didn't stack with my normal rations. If I hadn't kept a sharp eye out, I would've fed the team a bunch of rotten ham.  Everyone consumes about one ration per day, and a full heal from nothing while resting in the wilderness will usually require several full days of napping if not boosted by healing herbs. Inns are slightly better, and the only way to cure really quickly is temples. Unless you're hosed by Near-Death or other nasty conditions, though, it's almost always more cost-effective to just spend a week at the nearest inn instead, however, plus, if I didn't mention it already, it has the side effect that sufficient sleeping actually boosts the party's base Health and Stamina.   Next up is encounter 04 in the upper left. Three goons guarding a chest, hmmmm... I wonder... You fellows mind if we bust open this chest in front of you? : Go right ahead, partner, we're just guarding this corner. Thanks to interaction ranges, it's entirely possible to crack the chest, turn around and leave.   This one always baffled me some because who the hell calls a wheelbarrow just a barrow? I understand they probably had a character limit, but I feel like I wasn't the only one confused by this one.  It contains several items of interest, though! From top to bottom they are... A Ring of Prandur, which just casts a light-creating spell. Owyn can already do this, so very niche application, though there IS one late-game area we'll want some of these for, if I remember right... Some spare change. A rope, which we desperately need to hoard some of since ropes are necessary for fully tapping out some of the game's dungeons, though I don't remember if any of them are necessary for actually completing the game. A vial of Dalatail Milk, which boosts a character's Defense. Since consumables can be swigged down in fights without spending your turn, it's entirely viable to toss this to someone who finds themselves surrounded and having them chug it. : Nice work with that chest, folks. You gonna head out now? Actually, no, we're gonna kill you and take your stuff, too.  Scoring ambush when outnumbered is INCREDIBLY vital since it's necessary to get off crippling/killing spells from turn one before your mages get mobbed and prevented from participating.  Even when Gorath and Locklear rushing in to lock the rogues down, you have one slipping past to Owyn a couple of turns into the fight while his buddy hangs around in the corner peppering everyone with crossbow bolts.  Which gets even worse in short order.  Despite Owyn being the one surrounded, though, Locklear is the one who almost eats poo poo.  I only just luck out and bring him away from the fight in time, leaving Owyn and Gorath to clean up while he relaxes in the corner. Rah rah go team! I'll make sure to offer moral support! Not. Helping. Is it a bad sign that I don't feel anything after my second time caving someone's skull in with my staff? It's one hell of a haul, though. Aside from some gold, rations and sellables, they all drop weapon repair items(the blue lozenge is a whetstone) and this Clerical Oilcloth, which provides the "type 1" weapon enchantment for the entirety of the next fight of a weapon. The "type 1" enchantment doubles damage done, which can make a huge difference if a high-damage fighter, like, say, Gorath, is using it, since it'd allow him to flatten human/elf opponents in sometimes just a single swing.    I feel like we've been down here for days. I don't even remember what the sun looks like. That was the point of this, Owyn. If Delekhan's agents don't see us topside for days, they'll think we're dead or have gone to ground and disperse. Maybe we should just stay down here. It's warm. It's safe. It's- It's a room with a seven-foot titan made entirely of stone up ahead. Why are we fighting this thing again? If we help the dwarves out with their "little" problem, we can use the money to pay for things I want.I slap the Clerical Oilcloth on Gorath's sword, scout out the Brak Nurr and move ahead...   Now, you might expect a single large enemy to hit like a freight truck(it does), and have tons of health(it does, almost as much as 50% over Gorath's total) and be immune to trivial, start-of-the-game save-or-suck spells like Despair Thy Eyes. But you'd be absolutely wrong on the third point.    Owyn blinds the Brak Nurr and then Gorath reduces it to rubble in short order. It's slightly anticlimactic.  You've doone it! I 'eard the conflagration down the shaft but I 'ad no idea what was a'happenin'! Congratulations! Right now, I think we all could just use a rest... A rest you'll have and you'll be a'needin' it! You'll 'ave to 'ave your strength to be carryin' about all the gold in rewards! Well done!After this, Naddur vanishes into thin air again, but what the game doesn't point out is that he left us with 150 gold extra, which is huge at this stage of the game. It'll afford us some well-deserved upgrades. A chest in the corner of the room has a few more green potions and some more rope, but otherwise there's no real loot in the room itself, the bounty is the reward we were here for.   The last fight in here is the encounter marked 03 on the map, the one that's easily bypassed, but they might have interesting things to pick up OR Gorath might learn something useful from carving them open. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV8V2o8FNB8  The most interesting part about this fight is the guy with the yellow pants, he's a rogue mage rather than a rogue fighter and he could insanely ruin our day if he chose to, since has three spells: Despair Thy Eyes, which is Owyn's trick. Dragon's Skin, which renders an ally of the caster's invincible for a while. Hocho's Haven, which gives a coating of ablative extra HP to an ally of the caster's for a while. It should go without saying that with only three characters, having one of them taken out of action for two rounds would be really bad news. In any case, the fight is prevented from getting too interesting by having Owyn constantly chase the mage around so he can't cast anything. It also prevents ME from casting anything, but Gorath and Locklear can whittle down the enemy fighters without Owyn's help for the most part. It earns them a few dents, but it works out in the end.  There's one interesting piece of loot on the dead rogues.  This ugly blue brick is an armor booster, something I rarely use, since most boosts for armor are just one-battle counters to weapon boosts. In this case, this dragon stone is like a nice asbestos covering for your armor, so that if an enemy has set his sword on fire, you don't take extra damage. Unfortunately, you won't know an enemy has a boosted weapon until he hits you with it, or unless you read a guide, so I mostly find these items to be vendor trash. Now the only remaining thing is to loot the two chests in the lower right, since we've got a key that opens the door to them. There's no reasonable way to have the lockpicking skill to get in there without said key, but the Brak Nurr's chest also has it, and with Owyn blinding him he's easy to take out, AND you can get to him without fighting any of the rogues if you know where he is.      The drum one used to puzzle me, because I feel like I'd generally associate drums with pig skin rather than leather, but I don't know, maybe some sort of deep drum lore expert can tell me how wrong I am on that point. So what does cracking these chests get us?  The first one contains two spare swords, a pretty shell for selling and a little lore book.   It has no real purpose except to remind you that these are the caves where Rhuagh once had her lair, sadly that lair is in the deeper Mac Mordain Cadal which we won't be able to access in this chapter.  The second chest has some spare change and a pair of green booties which give a +30% Stealth to whoever's carrying them. One thing that always felt unintuitive to me is that non-armor, non-weapon "equippable" items like said boots, rings, amulets, etc. have their effect just by rattling around in the character's backpack, as a kid I could absolutely never grok it. It's also worth noting that they're all cumulative.    I never thought I'd be so glad to see the open sky again. Pointless as this side trip otherwise was, it should have thoroughly confused Delekhan's agents. What now? No reason leave a job half done, let's utterly confuse them. We're headed back north.On the way north, we stop by LaMut to sell some trash, and on the way there we also stumble across a well-hidden little graveyard.    And, I mean, we do have a shovel now... Digging graves is usually a good idea! There are a few standard responses to doing it. BaK posted:An hour passed. These are the replies you get if you carve into a grave with no contents. Some of them have... surprises, and others contain some actual loot. There's nothing too interesting here outside LaMut except for a single grave containing a mysterious note: "Please relay our thanks to the Six for the shipment of magical traps. The Witch we have employed has been informed NOT to step between them. She has promised she shall test them at her leisure." Who are the Six? A group of mysterious magicians who have been destroying Delekhan's enemies, I only barely escaped the Northlands before I was next on their list.  Since the party's spectacularly flush with money, I also decide to take Sumani up on his offer of combat training while we're here.  I'm going to need you to kick our asses until we learn something from it. I shall meet you by the river in five minutes time. I should forewarn you, however, I sometimes seem quite different when I am armored for battle. I apologize in advance for any harm that I should do you.BaK posted:Locklear gaped. With no tagged skills, this is a +5% to Melee Accuracy and Defense for everyone, which is actually a pretty nice boost, especially this early on. Now we can leave LaMut behind and not see it again for, probably, several chapters worth of game.    There are actually no road encounters or hidden gear on the way north to the next town, Yabon. Despite canonically being a sizeable settlement, in-game it's represented by five houses and a shop on a side road.   Most houses, when interacted with, just produce this generic "no one's home"-response, so the party heads straight to the store to see if there's anything good and oh man, is there ever some stuff they're badly in need of.   Locklear gets a two-handed Broadsword, which is both more accurate and harder hitting than his basic one(when using the Swing attack it gets another +5% chance to hit and has an extra 14 base damage. Considering that his normal damage when doing a Thrust is about 16 and most enemies at this stage of the game have generally about a total of 50 Health+Stamina, that means he'll be able to drop most non-special enemies in one hit less, and it wouldn't have been possible at all without our side trip into the Mac Mordain Cadal.  Additionally the party stocks up on repair items, because lower-level gear also decays faster than the better stuff, so at the moment their armor and weapons are threadbare after just a few hits exchanged. Lastly, there are a couple of non-generic houses at the northern edge of Yabon.  BaK posted:Gorath pointed to the house. Two things about this amuse me: Firstly that this guy just calmly admits he's spent the night trying to break into a locked building, and secondly that the Kingdom of the Isles apparently has armor laundry businesses. The second non-generic building is said business at the north end of town, all it contains is a suit of basic Kingdom armor, the brown stuff everyone started with, and thus is really only good for selling unless you come here first thing in the game and slap it on Owyn.    At this stage of the game, going north is, oddly enough, actually a pretty safe move, since a lot of the tougher encounters meant to populate the area don't spawn until chapter 2 or later.    Which occasionally means you can pick up some intended-for-later stuff early from various out-of-the-way chests.   This one is just more money and vendor trash, though I still appreciate seeing some non-standard riddles on these chests.   A duo of moredhel fighters don't pose a threat to the party, they go down without even landing a single blow.    Travelling by night, the party comes across this seemingly abandoned house, but I happen to know that if you attempt to disturb the owner during the day rather than the dead of night, he'll actually have something useful to say, meaning everyone gets to nap on his doorstep until he's ready to give us the time of day.  BaK posted:The face of the door was covered with a pattern; a strange semi-circle formed of oily black smudges that joined at the iron door latch. On closer examination, it seemed that the smudges were actually fingerprints of some kind. Among other amusing things is the way that random loot chests in the wilderness are apparently something the NPC's acknowledge, rather than it just being handwaved as a gameplay thing. This is a very good quest to complete, though, as the book he's talking about gives +5% to all skills for a character(though is sadly single-use).    Almost back to Tyr-Sog now, they'd never expect this. I'd never have expected us to do something so stupid, either. Say, was that corpse there last time you came this way?As far as I remember there are only one or two actual purple-cloaked moredhel as enemies you fight, mostly they're used as decorative corpses, but this one is actually a warning. When we get too close...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSDYo4Vr1bM   Welcome to the second type of combat encounter: traps. In addition to containing some enemies, they also contain various ways for the party to get themselves killed, and I wish there were more of them as they spice the battles up some. The yellow-cloaked fellow in the middle of the field is a moredhel spellcaster, so we should really do something about him. Sadly, Gorath is just barely too slow to put him under threat and prevent him from casting anything(he knows Despair Thy Eyes, Hocho's Heaven and the rather nasty Skyfire, a single-target damage spell, so locking him down would be good). Don't worry, I've got this one.   Trap battles don't end the moment all enemies are dead, though, they also require you to navigate a party member past the trap obstacles as well, though that's usually easy enough when no one's trying to plunk a crossbow bolt into your brain at the same time.  The remainder of the walk to Tyr-Sog is safe enough, though there are a few distractions in the form of terrain and more chests hidden in every nook and cranny.   Can't have a riddle section without at least one of them having "shadow" as the answer.  The rolled-up scroll is how spellcasters in BaK learn new spells, in this case Eyes of Ishap, an overworld spell that pops open the local map and indicates any containers(which includes corpses and holes in the dirt), saving you from hugging the mountain ranges or referring to FAQs all the time. The other is another spynote left by the moredhel... BaK posted:The Six have advised the field commander that Gorath of the Ardanien has now moved south. He may be accompanied by a Seigneur of the Krondorian Court. Be careful to monitor his activities and take measures where appropriate. Which tells us that the moredhel expect us to be south of our current location and therefore don't have a lot of assassins in our general area.    Practically right next to is the "candle" password chest...  And I loving love this chest. Firstly, two new spells for Owyn: Flamecast and Stardusk. Stardusk is an ourdoors light-generating spell, Flamecast is just hurling big beach-ball sized orbs of fire at the enemy. Unlike Despair Thy Eyes, they can miss, but they also come with AoE damage, so hucking one off on the first round of combat while enemies are still clustered can be very meaningful. Secondly, a blessed Moredhel Lamprey for Gorath. Blesses are permanent boosts(from temples), and in this case it's a "type 2" bless that applies a permanent +10% to hit. BaK posted:Nighthawks should be advised that the magical traps sent earlier are of an inferior grade and are often unreliable. We have staked out two sections of the Kingdom roads to the south of Zun and west of Tyr-Sog to test a new design engineered by the Six. Ah, good job, genius. You lead us away from assassins and into traps. I feel a lot more confident that we can sneak around a trap than away from a dozen moredhel with swords.  This is what Stardusk looks like in action, by the way. Not pretty, but beats everything just being a dark blur.   BaK water is also a bit odd. It's not just a uniform blue plane, but it's also non-animated, which gives the waterfall and river a sort of sense of being frozen in time.     Tyr-Sog, despite once again being one of the bigger border towns in the Kingdom, is reduced to a whole six buildings, none of them having any unique dialogue, and a pawn store with only one interesting item: a practice lute. Barding XP progresses by some weird method I don't understand, so I just burn all of the charges on Owyn, which puts him at a threadbare 51% barding skill up from his starting 42%. It's not immediately obvious, but effective barding hides probably something like a quarter or a third of the total money available to the party over the entire game. Oh, and the place has a small tavern, where we get the piece of descriptive text someone referenced earlier...    Don't write item descriptions before you've had lunch, developers. In any case... what happens if we try to go farther north from here?   BaK posted:A horn sounded in the Inclindel. This guy looks like a cave dweller, not a Kingdom border guard. Where's your company, Lieutenant Finn? Why aren't they standing standard guard on this pass? With all due respect, Seigneur, we're digging ourselves out of a pretty mess presently. Not long after you and the moredhel trounced through here, a white screamer came up out of nowhere, worst snow storm I've seen in sixteen years. Ten miles on down the dell, the pass is buried under five feet of snow. I sent out guards to help our forward positions but I'm not positive they can do much. Kind of like lighting your pipe under the Bitter Sea. There's no way to get through the Inclindel at all? Not unless you're a snow burrowing mole or a firedrake, no sir. Whoever may be in the Northlands or in the Kingdom, they've got a long wait on their hands if they need to get down this road. Well that's it then. We'll have to turn back. Take care, Lieutenant. I guess that's as far north as we're going, then. Now we just have to figure out how we're going to go south. Now that we've shaken pursuit, the sensible thing would be to go south through Loriel and Hawk's Hollow, then skirt the Dimwood until we're just north of Krondor. Which means it can't possibly be what Locklear has planned for us. Mmmm... the silence may just be intended to make us drop our guard. We should head farther east before turning south again, and then we'll cut through the Dimwood, no one will stalk us through that. But how far east...Vote Should the party turn south at Highcastle or Northwarden? Either way, the gem smuggler quest won't be bypassed, since if I remember right we can only do that here in chapter one.
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Sep 14, 2021 16:06
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Update 04: Lore Dump 2 Dwarves Dwarves in Midkemia are a bit of an oddity. Humans are, of course, the main species involved, and the moredhel, elves and other elf sub-types occasionally feature as important characters, but the dwarves are more or less persistently side characters that just mind their own business except when war literally comes to their doorstep. According to Feist, they also have their own unique type of magic, but as far as I'm aware it's never featured in any of the books unless it pops up in the later volumes which I haven't read. Their main roles in the first seven-ish books is, first, to help Pug and Tomas in the Mac Mordain Cadal, then working alongside the elves to blunt the western Tsurani front during the Riftwar, and lastly during A Darkness At Sethanon, where they have a role in helping cover the refugees from Armengar. Magic Magic in Midkemia is a dense topic, but like in any good fantasy setting, it's split into as many varied paths and types as possible, and no two species seem to handle magic the same way, so let's just stick to human magic for now. When the series begins in Apprentice, there's only one type of magic on Midkemia "Lesser Path" magic, which requires focus objects and tends to be very centered on crafting magical items and affecting natural forces. One of the reasons the Tsurani kick the Kingdom's rear end at first is that they bring "Greater Path" magic to Midkemia for the first time. The caster doesn't need focus objects or to prepare artifacts for their spells and can just casually vaporize armies and sweep aside enemy enchantments if he's sufficiently powerful. Pug later turns out to be the first Midkemian "Greater Path" magician, hence his trouble mastering "Lesser Path" magic at the start of the novels, and eventually becomes the first(and to my knowledge only) human magician(aside from Macros the Black) who discards the "paths" entirely and groks that they're just a framework for understanding, not physical law. In Betrayal at Krondor, that whole thing is just swept aside, and all mages function the same. Not that anyone could really pin down how they exactly should function, since Feist isn't very focused on pinning down the exact mechanics and details of his world, there's no encyclopedia of Kingdom heraldry, or exhausting listing of Tsurani political factions, which is sometimes frustrating when something mentioned in passing sounds very interesting, but is honestly probably to the benefit of the setting in general.
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Sep 14, 2021 16:22
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PurpleXVI posted:Hocho's Haven, which gives a coating of ablative extra HP to an ally of the caster's for a while. Interesting. Hocho (full name Hochopepa) is a Tsurani Great One, one of Milamber's friends. And from what I remember probably too lazy to bother creating his own personal spell, especially a combat based one. Anyway, let's go to Northwarden and see if there's anyone interesting up there.
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Sep 14, 2021 18:05
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I honestly prefer that they don't try to explain the exact mechanics of magic primarily because magic's existence and use in the various political struggles of the setting tends to be more important than the magic itself, especially in Betrayal. It's just a tool, it exists, magicians are an important resource and a part of politics and it takes a fair bit of training and intellectual curiosity to master it (like Owyn wants to), and then they go from there and get on with it. It worked well for the sort of story they're shooting for.
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Sep 14, 2021 18:13
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Night10194 posted:I honestly prefer that they don't try to explain the exact mechanics of magic primarily because magic's existence and use in the various political struggles of the setting tends to be more important than the magic itself, especially in Betrayal. It's just a tool, it exists, magicians are an important resource and a part of politics and it takes a fair bit of training and intellectual curiosity to master it (like Owyn wants to), and then they go from there and get on with it. It worked well for the sort of story they're shooting for. My one issue with "unexplained" magic is that it also takes a lot of authorial discipline to not just haul a new thing magic can do out of your rear end every time you've written yourself into a corner and Feist kiiiiiiind of has a bit of an issue doing that with Pug. Like, magic doesn't need to be described exhaustively in a PhD thesis, but the limits of what it can do, when and where it can function, need to be established pretty solidly. Even if it's just very basic rules like "no resurrection, no time travel," that still helps it not be a "rescue the author from his own mistakes"-machina rather than an interesting part of the setting.
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Sep 14, 2021 18:18
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Sure, but that's Pug. He sucks. There's no rescuing Pug, especially after naming him after the sad cute ugly dogs who have trouble breathing. For like, Owyn scale stories it works perfectly.
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Sep 14, 2021 18:23
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Scale is one of Feist's biggest issues and it's thankfully not relevant here whatsoever, so yeah. We get all the benefits and none of the downsides, basically. Also this is an excellent, excellent start: Going off route is fun and lucrative (or can be anyway) and for those of you who eyed that extremely expensive sword in Yabon and thought 'I wonder if anyone was insane enough to grind for that' the answer is yes and giving it to Gorath should probably be classified as a crime.  It's not just that you can wander around and do stuff - it's that the developers accounted for it and put in dialogue and events and stuff to reward you for wandering off course. You can still completely beat the game and have a full experience just following the 'expected route' though so it's never required or obligated. It's just neat.
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Sep 14, 2021 18:56
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It also helps that the actual underlying combat and gameplay engine is pretty solid. One of the things you want to do is manage when you have the various skills 'focused' by clicking on the sword; that'll get them more EXP as they gain EXP. So like if you buy the Practice Lute you obviously want to select Barding and only Barding for that character. Also, getting thrown out of a tavern loving up Barding does get you EXP even though you failed. You can just keep sneaking back in to LaMut until Owyn has practiced to an acceptable level to get some money. The game's soundtrack also has several variations of how badly the character butchers the hell out of the song until they finally play it perfectly competently at higher levels.
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Sep 14, 2021 19:11
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